The Kitten Roster
Every kitten in your program now lives in the Kitten Roster, accessible straight from the Universe topbar menu.
At a glance it shows:
Which vehicle (if any) a kitten is currently assigned to, double-clicking an entry will jump the camera straight to them.
Mission Count, how many separate missions each kitten has flown.
Current Mission elapsed time, for whoever's actively out there right now.
Total Mission time, banked up across each kitten's whole career.
Total Distance Travelled, banked up across each kitten's whole career.
Fastest Speed reached, banked up across each kitten's whole career..
Assigning Kittens
In the Vehicle Editor, the new Crew Assignment window (Editor menu -> Crew Assignment) lists every seat across your entire vehicle and lets you assign a kitten to each one from a dropdown.
The same assignment screen is also available from the main menu's Launch Existing Vehicle flow, so you're not forced back into the editor just to crew up a saved ship.
We've also added a warning pop-up if you try to launch a vehicle from either the editor or the main menu with no crew assigned at all, so an empty rocket doesn't slip through by accident.
Under the hood, boarding and exiting is now seat-aware rather than generic. EVA doors are linked to their specific internal seat, so a kitten leaving a vehicle always spawns from their door and when they climb back in, they return to the exact seat they left rather than grabbing the nearest free one. Already-occupied seats are hidden from the boarding list, so you can't double up.
Mission clocks only start once a vehicle actually leaves the pad, not the moment you assign crew in the editor.
Recovering Vehicles
Landed or splashed down back home with nowhere left to go? You can now recover the vehicle instead of just abandoning/deleting it.
In the Universe Manifest any vehicle that's settled on the home world's surface (or floating in the ocean) and isn't still moving shows a green tick instead of the usual red "delete" cross.
Click it to recover the vehicle, once you confirm:
Any kittens still aboard have their mission ended and are returned to the roster, free to crew up their next flight.
The vehicle itself is cleared out.
A "Vehicle Recovered" banner confirms it went through.
You can also recover your vehicle via the matching Recover Vehicle option in the (esc) pause menu, so if you're actively flying something that qualifies, you don't need to dig into the Manifest to recover it.
Kitten Death
Yes, kittens can die. Before you ask, No, they only have one life.
KIA kittens appear in a memorial tab in the kitten roster window.
Final note: A lot of the UI and kitten roster, etc shown here today are by no means final.
