Alpha 8 was released today along with an update video.

Information on bugs mentioned in the changelog below can be found on the bug tracker. The changelog is here:

New Equipment & Items
• Fusion Reactor
- Uses Deuterium fuel pods and requires at least 500Mw for about 10 seconds to activate.
- Produces a power output of 50-500Mw.
- Deuterium (fuel pod)
- Deuterium Recipe (Chemical Lab)
• Solar Panels
- Must be installed on the outside of the ship, built onto scaffold beams.
- Produces 10Mw normally.
- This reduces to 5Mw in a nebula, and 0Mw in Hyperspace.
- Solar Panel recipe (Assembly Table)
• Tutorial (continued)
- Work continues on the in-game tutorial for new players.

New audio work
• Suit radio chatter for crew when they are wearing spacesuits
• New UI sounds for construction, pipes, cables, installation, deconstruction
• New ambiences for common equipment: reactors, fabricators, smelters, assembly tables
• Delivery shuttle engine sounds

New 'Exterior' graphics
• New graphics for all gun turrets when viewed from exterior
• Docking port exterior view improved
• Thrusters now more visible in exterior view and tactical view
• New exterior graphics for Small Tank, Medium Tank, Large Tank, Battery
• Gun Turrets can now be distinguished in Tactical View
- Railgun - a long single line
- Cannon - two medium-length parallel lines
- Gatling gun - three short parallel lines

New community ships added to the base game - thank you!
• ZORBANE
- DragonFly-A
• RUSH
- Andromeda's Fury
• R0NALXD
- Chakrali Corvetter
- Chakrali Frigate
- Chakrali Miner
- Chakrali Starbase
• JOHNNY STRUGGLES
- Big Martha
- Defense Platform MK1/MK2/MK3
- The Gas Man
- The Wild Goose
- Fat Duck Fighter
- The Leviathan
- Scavenger JS
- Florence Bulk Hauler
- Angry Frog Mining Rig
• ORION INDUSTRIES
- Bellatrix Frigate
- Hawk Light Fighter Mk1/Mk2
- Krait Mk2 Fuel Rat
- Mighty Miner
- Minor-Miner Mk1/Mk2
- Orthrus
- Procyon Cruiser
- Rescue Shuttle
- Rigel Heavy Corvette Mk2
- Roadrunner Corvette
- Starhopper
- Trident Heavy Fighter

SMALL CHANGES

• The PAUSED and SLOWMO messages will now flash, to minimize players not realizing why the game has stopped
• New STARGATE games will no longer generate a distress call in the starting map. This is because new players would often get very confused trying to do the rescue - without thrusters and without any skills in docking. Nb. Rescue Missions are still generated in the mission board
• Fleet orders for gathering salvage, gathering minerals, and repairing hull now default to ON
• Drones will now automatically return to their home ship if that ship is preparing to jump to FTL, regardless of Fleet Orders
• Hostile forces in stargate mode will now correctly attack the player, and not random NPC vessels
• Deconstruction UI effects improved
• If the player destroys a Neutral ship, all other neutral ships in the system will immediately turn hostile to the player
• Added a new Fleet Order: \'Mining\'. This enables and disables all active mining from Mining Lasers within the current system.
• Schematic view has been made more tidy and clear.
• Improved the visuals when laying pipes and cables - removed unnecessary distracting visuals
• Weapons Officers now wear a RED uniform, to distinguish them from regular crew
• Weapons Consoles now support up to four guns, without requiring any research. Removed the research tree for Weapons Console Additional Slots.
• Player-owned ships will now always render on top of other ships, derelicts, etc
• Derelicts will be removed from the list of all ships after 3 minutes
• Derelicts now slowly erode away to nothing over time
• Damaged and Destroyed engines now belch flames

BUG FIXES

• FIXED: The equipment panel will now close if you select another ship or another location
• FIXED: issues with the Equipment Panel not popping up when you right-clicked because it was 'blocked' by the open construction menu
• FIXED: Missing pickup and drop sounds when crew is working
• FIXED: The tick sound effect when installing equipment was wrong when the equipment had an even width or height
• FIXED: Issue with Delivery Missions with a difficulty of 84 and 890 boxes!
• FIXED: Main Menu ambience continued to play after clicking Import Friendly or Import Hostile
• Issue #175 - After an FTL-jump, the suits are turned off. Orders are now carried through from system to system when FTL jumping unless you already have a fleet at the destination.
• Issue #179 - (Survival) Cross-sector passenger missions can never be delivered
• Issue #183 - Tutorial text modal not advancing correctly. Fix overlap problem and tutorial loop.
• Issue #188 - Derelict ships will now automatically remove themselves from the layer list after some time.
• Issue #190 - Fighters can attack a ship in another system
• Issue #195 - Fuel canisters aren't getting loaded. Validate existing fleet transfers to ensure that they are still satisfying requests.
• Issue #194 - A full "circular" track gets jammed and doesn't move. Allow tracks to move more freely.
• Issue #196 - Can't see all ships in logistics screen. Fix a bug where the ships were overflowing the window. Present ships in the same order as the ship list on the right.

Undocumented changes (not shown in original changelog, but reported by the community)

• Max zoom level is now 5000 (rather than unlimited)
• Percentages removed from tanks in schematic view (only absolute values displayed)
• Hyperspace isotopes can be refined into stable isotopes, which can be turned into deuterium in the chemistry lab

Any chance of planet away missions?

I would be contented with something primitive, ala Star Flight, Space Rogue (1989). Even, Star Command (1988).

Stuff like that was simple yet old school procedural...kinda....Space station boarding 2D over head like Mines of Titan and Space Rogue would be very satisfying to walk around as a ship captain.

Ideas for planets:

1)Hostile encroachment and colony needs;
-Defense by soldiers drop in or land
-Ship in orbit can risk a bombardment attempt
-Landers or transports or mass telwportation to rescue people

2)Planet event that will make a habitat uninhabitable, similar needs as written above.

3)Trade and ferry passengers

4)Base and/or mining/colony building

5)Pirate base and all that could happen.
Such as trade, attack, negotiate a treaty or hostage negotiation etc..

I'm a community volunteer. I'm not sure if Introversion looks here for questions. You can submit a feature request on GitHub. So far, I haven't seen any indication of away missions, but I also haven't finished watching the latest alpha video.

Ok. Not really an option. I do not want to sign up for another place I do not use. If the devs dont bother interacting with people, I guess they have the same interest in their projects.