A few weak back, Captain Berf made new textures for the dredgers. Looking at the quality of the work, it seemed almost a waist, not adding them in the oxp itself. So we now have a
new version 2.3, download-able from the
Deep Space Dredger page page.
I also started looking at the original meshes of the various dredger ships. Most had small bugs when examining closely. All meshes are fixed now or are at least better. Also the annoying dots visible when flying the dredgertrader ship are removed by editing the meshes.
Most issues around the docking bays are solved. Sabre used for all three ship sizes the oolite default dock. That was right for the smallest ship, but the bay was much to small for the bigger ships. The main problem was of course that a black wall did hide the bay entrance so you never could line up for a proper docking. The only way was using the docking computer for docking.
I have long doubted to cut out the black wall and making the bay visible from the outside. (I think even that most board members were in favour of it) but at the end I decided against it. According to some reactions, it has something special when you are swallowed by a black hole while docking. Therefor I wanted to respect Sabres choice in this.
Still, I compromised a bit with the dock. Capt. Berf redesigned the bay with brighter walls. I also made other compromises to the bay, so I now hope most players will be satisfied by the changes. However, as with all compromises: nobody gets everything he wished for. Happy docking.