We are very pleased to release another major update to XO!
SHIP THRUSTERS and MOVEMENT:
All ships now use RCS thrusters for movement. This was the last major feature remaining prior to release and wow it was a massive effort. We’ve been working on this movement update since the middle of last year. Can’t wait to hear your feedback on it!
NEW SHIPS:
The Rover Free Trader is a medium warship that sports ion torpedoes and (illegal) lasers, and also comes equipped with a hacked replicator that allows you to make valuable repair items.
The Irenic Questar is a science vessel equipped with labs that allow you to research technologies and create a variety of items extremely useful to the fleet.
The Irenic Resort can repair damaged and disabled vessels and also has rest and relaxation facilities that can remove the “under duress” state of any ship.
The Empire Indoctrinator allows you to change passengers of another faction into a crew loyal to the Empire. Very handy for filling your carriers with gunboat crew.
LOITER and FORM UP
You can now toggle whether or not ships in a formation return to their position after completing an order. Set any formation ship(s) to Loiter and they will not automatically return to formation. Set them to Form Up and your ship(s) will return to formation. Form Up is the default for all formation ships.
The hotkey for Loiter/Form Up defaults to L.
Also just a note that if you select an entire formation and then issue a Go To Waypoint order to it, the origin (or home location) for the formation will change to the new waypoint. This origin resets every jump.
NEW MISSIONS and EVENTS:
We added even more variety to missions and events including Slavers that want to trade you passengers for ore, new combat events, greatly expanded ship tragedies, and a number of surprises for you to come across along the way.
NEW ITEMS:
Several new items were added including mystery cargo, Harvester Reaper jammers, shield range upgrades, and more.
CONTINUOUS PRODUCTION:
Several ships including the Corp Refinery and Hypermaul can now produce items or transmogrify continuously - even through jump.
PLASMA SHIELD UPDATES:
We did quite a bit of overhauling to Plasma Shields.
Plasma Shields now discharge if a ship or shuttle is damaged by it, making them more susceptible to overwhelming force attacks.
Plasma Shields no longer automatically attack stations. We found this was leading to a lot of unintentional interstellar incidents.
Plasma Shields are much, much better at defending against boarding shuttle and Reaper attacks.
BOARDING PARTY UPDATES:
Boarding shuttles now have a cargo bay to (facilitate stealing cargo and crew).
Boarding parties can now board disabled ships (to repair, take prisoners or cargo, etc.).
Shocktroopers can now take prisoners at stations.
Fleet defense for boarding shuttles has been improved, and will likely receive more improvement in future versions.
COMBAT UPGRADES and BALANCE:
Weapon ranges are now identical for all weapons of a given type and range. (We used to have variability within each range). For example, all Plasma Shields of range 3 will have the exact same range.
Enemy pirates now target unprotected ships and attempt to steal cargo and/or hijack the ship. NPC ships also target unrelated NPC ships. And as a result, actions like this will worsen non-Pact relations when they occur. So for example, if Rover Pirates board an Empire Supplyship and steal its cargo, Rover - Empire relations will worsen.
Ships no longer attack or counterattack when their target becomes abandoned.
Stations now respond better to various forms of attack.
Jumpgates now eventually call in reinforcements.
Enemy shieldships now only attack if the battleship has weapons aboard.
Nuke damage capped at 30 maximum for a given blast.
Harvester warships now have greater flexibility and a bit more smarts.
Tractoring another ship is now considered a hostile action.
Enemy warships now wait for the entire fleet to jump in before attacking.
Empire Perpetuators can no longer recover disabled gunboats (because they lack the ability to repair them)
Enemies now recover boarding shuttles based on the difficulty level chosen.
Dramatically reduced the speed of Harvester Carriers
Mixed enemy flotillas no longer spawn minefields
Crews under duress now have a chance of discovering their orders were set to Hold Fire before their captors were removed. This chance increases over time.
Harvesters now spawn faster at your starting location.
Improved enemy ship targeting of fleet assets.
GENERAL QOL and BALANCE:
During trade, any ore that you earn that puts you over max ore capacity is now dropped as ore cargo.
When jumping with unrecovered gunboats, you’re now given an opportunity to abort the jump. (But seized gunboats do not throw this warning)
In trade, the frequency of ship items and upgrades was increased.
Several items were made easier to use by adding them to the right click context menu on equipped ships.
Cross-sector events have even more additional time added to complete them fairly.
Mines and Waypoints now display on the minimap.
Toggling autotractor while paused no longer discharges the beam.
Fuel cargo created on the Armored Fueler was buffed to 0.7 (from 0.3).
Scout ships sent away using the Muster action no longer consume fleet water.
Autosaving is now more resistant to corruption.
Mustering in the final sector now remains within the final sector.
Cleaned up the New Game UI, but a larger improvement is coming soon there.
A greater number of ships can now have their cargo confiscated. If you see a ship that seems like it ought to be confiscatable, please send feedback (F8 key).
Added more sound effects to a number of actions.
Ore-producting ships were made more likely to appear.
The Rover Dreamer is no loger available in shipyards if your max water cap has been reached.
The screen edge camera rotation preference now saves properly.
Even more ‘Beginner’ text was moved so that it only appears in ‘Beginner’ mode, so that Experienced play is faster and has less distractions.
Seized ships no longer move if a transfer is made by the seizing ship.
Intimidating ships now produces visible hover text on the target ship.
Hotkey customization was improved and expanded.
The filter UI was improved, hopefully eliminating annoyances and behavior that made it appear the game locked.
Irenic Observatoria ships were made a little more common.
Easy mode gains an easily obtainable Pact Scout.
Snacks and Intoxicants are now 60% off!
Formations and precise positioning were added to the tutorial. If you don’t know about precise positioning, check it out!
Faction leaders now spawn more commonly in Sector 2, as long as relations are friendly.
Abandoned ships that are repaired are no longer automatically released (which can lead to them being inadvertently left behind at jump, ouch!)
Added more solutions to the Get The Battleship achievement that some players more clever than I figured out.
Added additional enemy reinforcements to the end game.
Mining rates were adjusted up to be more favorable.
Visual jump timers that display when a ship is hovered were added to quite a few ships
Overall non-combat AI was improved in a number of areas.
The Resourceror event was moved out of ordinary trade rotation as it was a bit of a rip-off.
Scouting logic was improved.
We made dozens and dozens of tweaks and adjustments to missions and events based on your feedback, thank you so much!
BUG FIXING:
For this release there are four pages (!!) of bugs that we fixed. You can scroll through them all in the in-game Changelog.
We are so grateful for everyone’s help tracking down bugs. This game would never be what it is without all of your help and ideas.
Logging was also improved to help us find bugs.
WHAT'S NEXT?
In 1.48 we’ll be making final adjustments to UI, adding at least one new ship, more missions and events, plus the usual QOL and balance improvements!