We're delighted to provide you another free update to XO!
CUSTOM PLAY STYLES:
You can now customize how you play XO!
The Harvester wave speed can be set - including movement between jumps only, which gives you effectively infinite time at a given location.
You can also now control when your game is autosaved, as well as save when you want.
There are a number of other options from turning off politics altogether to controlling how frequent lifeboats appear.
Starting fleets were also separated from game difficulty.
If you have ideas on things you’d like to see added here, we welcome your feedback on the Steam forums or our Discord.
I’ve playtested a fair bit, but setting the Harvester wave to expand only while you jump might make the game too easy, so we may need to come back and balance that one after I’ve had more player feedback. Do please chime in.
We also took the opportunity to clean up the NEW GAME dialog, and add options for saving the game when exiting to the main menu and quitting.
RESOURCE DETAIL:
Hovering the Fuel, Water or Ore icon now give you a comprehensive breakdown of how much you can store, where you can store it, how much you are collecting and how much you are using.
This took a little over two months to fully implement. We expect there to be some small issues, please let us know if you see anything that doesn’t look right. There’s a lot going on in there.
MOVEMENT:
We spent an absolutely epic amount of time polishing up movement, which proves that a) rocket science is really, really hard and b) we’re not rocket scientists.
Ships and boarding parties are much better at not overshooting their targets compared to 1.47. We expect that there are still some bugs in movement, please report them when you find them.
Captains be advised that if you order a ship to try and intercept a target that is moving towards you, your ship almost certainly will overshoot trying to reach the target as quickly as possible. Use waypoints or Ctrl+ orders for finer control.
NEW SHIPS:
The Pact Tender is ordinarily equipped with a tractor beam, although it can later be upgraded to a laser. It is a fast, lightly armored ship able to seize and salvage other vessels.
The Empiric Armorer The Armorer is used by the Empire to permanently add armor to ships. Passengers must be placed aboard the armorer in order to operate the factory.
NEW ITEMS:
Mk V Armorplating permanently adds +5 repairable armor to any ship in your fleet, but permanently reduces acceleration and top speed. Be advised that adding too much armor can cause a ship to be unable to move.
Turbo Thrusters and Slow Burners allow you to increase acceleration in exchange for a lower top speed or increase top speed at a cost to acceleration. Both items are permanent. At the moment, they can only be found as cargo items and in trade. Should we add a factory ship for them?
The Quantum Container contains a mystery upgrade. The longer you wait, the better it is!
The Superplotter is even faster than Networked Computers at reducing jump plot times. And yes it can be stacked with Networked Computers.
MINIMAP ICONS:
Ship classes are now visualized on the minimap: cargoships appear as circles, farmships as drops, industryships as boxes and warships as triangles. Stations, mines, and Harvesters are also displayed with unique icons, making it a lot easier to identify what is in system at a glance. This is particularly useful when jumping in.
BOARDING PARTY UPDATES:
Pirates are now able to steal cargo when boarding a ship.
Training boarding parties is a little easier now that the battleship has gained the TRAIN BOARDERS self-action. Just select and right click the battleship.
Have you ever wondered what would happen if a ship under duress needed maintenance but had no slots free, because the boarding party was taking up its only slot? We did. And now you can find out.
If you put a cargoship or an industryship under duress, and you’re enemy with that faction, there’s now a small chance of sabotage occurring.
Diplomats can non longer plant explosives on stations, it was correctly pointed out that this goes against their nature.
Diplomats now have a ‘no duress’ boarding option, which brings a ship into the fleet without causing duress if successful, assisting those Peaceful Victory attempts.
Speaking of that, having the Irenic faction leader in your fleet increases diplomat’s boarding success by 20%.
It’s now possible to ransack a jumpgate station with a boarding party after the jumpgate has been opened, for those of you fond of that kind of thing.
Boarding shuttles no longer retain their previous velocity after impacting a target.
If the only boarding party aboard a ship under duress is put into stasis, that ship will now try to jump and require being retaken
CONTENT:
Completing the tutorial now gives an achievement. Ordinarily I’m against giveaway achievements, but I feel like completing the tutorial is an important investment that I want to reward.
I put a lot of time into adding new enemy attack modes. Enemy ships now employ tractors, there are more multi-faction attack types, and more sophisticated boarding actions.
A number of warship types are now more self-aware and will seek out certain types of ships, including nonplayer ships. In particular, be on the lookout for pirates.
I added a number of new events early game into the rotation to help keep runs fresh, including starting station events.
More events were given a ‘stall for time’ option.
Several new events were created that give plans as a reward.
I adjusted Empire gunboat behavior and reactions at Empire jumpgates.
Behind the scenes we added variables tied to ships which allows us to do a lot of fun and interesting things, but also helped us make gutting, duress, mustering and ship factories work better.
I made sure an event referenced an Empire Sleeper awakening, just because I think Dune is a great movie and even greater book.
I dusted off, cleaned up, added to and otherwise improved the Captain’s Guide. Access the Guide from the main menu in-game. When I get around to it, I’ll make it even betterer.
You can now continue to trade with a station that is taking damage from nonplayer ships.
BALANCE:
I rebalanced and added events to make sure that the Peaceful Victory achievement was more easily attained. It’s still quite hard as you cannot disable or destroy any ships or put any ships under duress* for your entire run.
*However, if you use the Resort to remove duress on any ships in your fleet before you reach the final jumpgate, you will still qualify for the Peaceful Victory achievement.
I don’t like to see wasted shots, so ion torpedoes gained some new rules. In version 1.48 an ion torpedo will fire if:
its target has a charging or charged weapon
another ion torpedo has not already been fired at this weapon, including by other ships
if a target has X weapons, never fire more than X total ion torpedoes at it across all attacking ships
This makes the weapon much more effective at suppressing enemy fire.
Laser targeting was also improved to reduce and possibly eliminate the chance of wasted shots when defending or attacking ships.
Destroying Harvester Reapers that have latched onto a ship now has a variety of possible results instead of just disabling the latched ship.
Ships with a WEAPONS FREE or DEFEND ROE will now target reapers that have latched ships they are protecting or that are in their formation.
You can now only have one item of Networked Computers per run.
Networked computers can now also be equipped on the Irenic Questar.
I increased the number of ships that start a timer before jumping away instead of straight up jumping away.
Harvester warships are much slower and some now attack using large sweeping moves that cut across your entire fleet.
If you have no weapon aboard the battleship, your odds of coming across a laser were increased, particularly early game.
Nerfed the harvested Sector 1 jumpgate, it was way too brutal.
Early game Harvester waves always come from spinward (the left), simplifying fleet defense.
Irenic jumpgates can be pretty tough to crack when enemy. They now have a parley option that gives a nonviolent method to pass the gate.
Mustering with a Pact Scout can now be aborted once the Scout has jumped - this will cause you to lose the Scout.
Added a salvageable ship on the far side of the final jumpgate if the player jumps in without ore but with salvage ability.
Added a Hypermaul spawn if the player jumps into Sector 5 with no weapons above range 4.
In easy mode, added a range upgrade drop when reaching the final jumpgate with no weapons above range 4.
I experimented with ship loyalty tests only popping up when you were enemy with a fleet, but it makes more sense to allow them when neutral as well.
Removed the Hail Mary diplomat launch that some Irenic jumpgates would attempt.
Confiscation attempts can now be made on ships that are attempting to jump away.
Additional Harvester reinforcements added to prevent ‘all quiet on the starward front’ scenarios.
Removed Harvester wave delay items if the game is set for waves to propagate only during jump.
Reapers now latch and hold abandoned ships if they have passengers aboard.
QoL and POLISH:
I read all of the feedback we get, and respond to as much as I can. I can’t fully express how deeply meaningful these comments are, but I’m honored to receive each and every comment, thank you. Over the last few months I’ve gone over all the feedback and made a heck of a lot of changes as a result. I hope you’ll see the results and enjoy XO even more.
You can now rename ships once they are in your fleet. Hover a ship icon in the fleet list, then hover the name of the ship and left click.
If you hail a ship and the hailing ship has no space, cargo transfers are now jettisoned as containers next to the ship so the cargo can be retrieved instead of lost.
Similarly, if you receive ore that exceeds your storage capacity as a result of a trade or salvage action, excess ore is now jettisoned as cargo containers.
The game now handles multiple timers much more gracefully. Hovering timers now gives a little more information about what the timer is tied to. The most recent timer will always be on the left.
Damaged ship parts and explosions now inherit the velocity of the ship; lasers also track to moving explosions
Input is not allowed in the first 250ms when a dialog with multiple choices appears to try and catch accidental keypresses.
When a target ship is already held by a tractor, aborting a new tractor hold order on the same target ship does not turn off the tractor, only the new tractor hold/move order.
Bloom levels were adjusted and balanced; weapons have increased HDR emissons including the tractor beam. Among other things, this should really let you bring out your inner Klingon with those Ion Torpedoes.
The resolution and sharpness for achievements and medals were increased. They really look amazing in 4K!
Hovering a ship now displays it’s target if it has one, e.g. “ATTACK RAVEN”
The fleet list was improved with better scroll arrows and logic. The list now extends to the bottom of the screen and is a little higher.
A ship’s starting weapons are now shown when hovering the ship in the new game dialog.
Jumpgate stations now reply when you hail them a second time.
Randall our genius UI master talked me down off a cliff of adding UI where no UI should ever have been added. Thank you Randall.
Playing in Master mode no longer shows the mini-tutorial tooltips.
Water riots, particularly the last stage dismiss ship dialog, will not trigger (or go away) when water reaches or exceeds zero due to a shuttle or ship being destroyed during jump.
Ship names and planet names are no longer be duplicated in a single run.
Spare parts can now be installed using a self action or by hovering their cargo slot.
Current ROE is indicated by a box on the contextual action menu.
There’s no longer a ‘rescue’ action on abandoned lifeboats. Did you know you can maroon passengers in those?
I added another somewhat obscure way to get rid of passengers, you’ll have to find out how.
Range rings are no longer displayed on warships without weapons
Nonplayer ships do a better job of following the fleet when on a quest
Damage control got a sound effect
Tips and the tutorial now reference the actual key you have bound
Ship timers were added to quite a lot of events and actions
Warships now react better if all of their weapons are destroyed
Ctrl+ actions are no longer cluttered by the “ACTIONS” text and RMB icon
A lot of ship positions were adjusted and improved in multi-ship events
Course lines for Reapers are cleared when they are destroyed
A minor bug in the ultra diveboats item was fixed
Hidden beacons were made to work better
In multi-choice dialogs ship details are only shown when the ship icon in hovered
Things like Jumpgate instructions were made clearer
Crew details are dismissed when not hovered in crew transfer window
It’s less likely for ships to jump in on top of one another
Lots of minor window position adjustments and text positioning adjustments
Made some adjustments to better accommodate 1024x768 and 1366x768 resolution gameplay
Simplified Reaper destruction animation
Made some changes to the Elysian Hauler event based on player feedback
Ye canny no more drag a ship you’ve already dragged into a scouting box, into a different scouting box
Seized ships should, in theory, no longer be subject to certain failure events
The logic for nonplayer ships following the fleet was improved
BUG FIXING:
We fixed an enormous number of bugs for this release. You can scroll through a few pages of the bigger ones in the in-game Changelog.
I can't say it enough: THANK YOU so much for helping us find bugs. I am eternally grateful.
WHAT'S NEXT?
In 1.49 we will finally be adding the long awaited Pact Carrier and fighters!
The last big task before release is adding support for modding. I plan on making my event creation tools available with the next update for those of you interested in creating your own events.
And of course we will definitely be adding some more ships, more content and fixing bugs in the run up to the full release of XO!