Steam internal updated a couple of hours go.

And Sean tweated an emoji (this time a pirate flag)

Here we go again ...

FYI, there's a new internal/experimental build which was released a few minutes ago. Hope that it will fix some of the oopsies in 3.85.

In the meantime, be careful running 3.85 especially if you're on a Permadeath save. Tales of extremely rapid cycles of planet-side attacks (every 2-3 minutes) and of players on foot being killed by the raiders with no way of defending themselves.

Was using Galaxy and tried to see what version it was going to update to but it started downloading 11.65 GB. I cancelled the download within Galaxy but had to do something and foolishly left Galaxy open. It downloaded and installed the pirates downgrade or whatever it is called. I had skipped the Sentinels patches as those disabled the pet sentinel from doing the only positive thing that it possessed which was to disabled Sentinel attacks when on extreme sentinel planets.

Launched actual game and planet that I was on was a pirate system so every few minutes of game time there was a new set of whining and crying messages to come save us. Supposedly there is an Experimental to fix this but GOG players are unworthy.

EDIT: I did not engage in any of the requested "combat" but it that had no effect on the repeating messages or prevent a new set from a different location. I ignored an attack on a location that I was in but that also made no difference.

Yes, AIUI if you install version updates as they become available then the download is around 2 GB. That contains the patch instructions to delete this code, change that code, and add this other stuff. Unfortunately the patch only works for successive versions, 3.84 to 3.85 for example. Earlier versions, 3.82 and prior, require downloading the full version.

Thought that there was a Beta channel available on GoG for pre-release versions. Never tried it myself so I'm not sure if it's still available.

I did okay-ish yesterday running 3.85 in my Permadeath save. In hindsight, probably a stupid thing to do. Until the patch or patches show up, I think I'll stick with Creative and practice some base building. ;-)

GOG users are not considered to be worthy. GOG support stated that the decision to block for 3xperimental was not entirely theirs (just like not allowing Twitch drops).

Probably true. To a first approximation, GoG user participation in the beta releases was likely similar to the activity in the GoG forum as compared to activity on the Steam NMS forums. No hard data, simply an estimate.

If GoG had only a handful of participants and only some fraction of those provided substantive and useful feedback to HG then their decision to terminate the experimental channel here was a rational cost/benefit tradeoff and not unexpected.