All ships can now equip a tractor beam. Tractors use lots of fuel and can be temporarily disabled by ion torpedoes. Tractors have a lot of uses:
Tractor beams, as you might expect, hold ships in place. If a ship is disabled, tractoring it will keep it from being lost in the atmosphere of a planet. You can even grab things that are already beyond the point of no return and move them to a safe zone for further recovery operations. And if the tractoring ship moves, the held ship should also come along.
Tractors can rescue ships, cargo and shuttles that have fallen deep into a planet’s gravity well
If a tractor beam has sufficient power, active ships can be held, preventing any movement. If a tractor lacks sufficient power, the object will be slowed. Since tractor beams have the longest range of any weapon, this can be used as a purely defensive strategy by holding an attacker out of range.
With enough tractor power, a ship can be pushed into a planet’s atmosphere and held there, causing damage!
Multiple tractor beams can be combined to slow, stop or move an incoming enemy.
Tractor beams can be set to Autotractor mode, which will automatically pull in any cargo containers and lifeboats within range. Disabled ships and boarding shuttles have to be manually tractored, because they do present a danger.
Tractors can be set to Autorepulse. In this mode they automatically push enemy ships (including Reapers), boarding shuttles, mines, (and soon asteroids and comets!) away from your ship. Entering minefields just got a lot easier!
Ships will autorepulse other ships in formation that are being attacked (if in range)
You must choose between autorepulse, autotractor, or manual tractoring.
Disabled ships are not autotractored; use a Tractor Retrieve action instead. Tractor Retrieve can be used on a disabled or abandoned ship, which automatically pulls the ship in for a transfer, allowing you to cherry pick what to bring over from the wreck.
Tractors do not hold ships through jump, but if a tractor beam is equipped on a ship that can seize, the Tractor Seize command will tractor in a seizable target and then automatically seize it which will hold it through jump.
Enemy boarding shuttles that are retrieved by a tractor will face a boarding action; it’s because of this that boarding shuttles are not autotractored.
PRECISE POSITIONING:
All movement commands now give you the ability to precisely choose where the ship will position itself with respect to the target.
Hold down the CTRL key while left clicking any movement order such as Attack, Follow, Support, Protect, Nuke, etc. to enable precise positioning.
This also works with multiple ships and formations.
NEW SHIPS:
The Irenic Argosy is the Irenic ship of plenty, capable of manufacturing Intoxicants and Snacks that can be sold at any trade location for a handsome profit.
The Pact Armored Refueler or ARF is a smaller tanker that can also package spare fuel into cargo containers for rapid resupply in combat or sale at trade outposts. As its name indicates, this ship is also lightly armored. Good doggie.
MAINTENANCE AND CANNIBALIZING SHIPS:
Dealing with ships that have been forced way past their normal operating limits has always been part of XO. This used to be totally random, and not very fair as pointed out by a few players.
We have heard you! In 1.45 we’ve reworked all of those events with a maintenance simulation that puts interesting choices into your hands.
Here’s how it works:
Once you are deeper into a run, Industryships, Farmships and Cargoships will begin to notify you that they require maintenance.
Maintenance requires one day and spare parts. Spare parts are relatively cheap and can be obtained through trade, by activating distress beacons, or by cannibalizing other ships using a Pirate boarding party.
You can choose to defer maintenance on a ship, but the more jumps you wait the more likely something bad will happen to that ship.
Once you install spare parts on a ship that needs maintenance, it will no longer require maintenance for the rest of the run.
The longer your run, the more ships in your fleet will require maintenance.
If you choose to cannibalize a ship for spare parts, that ship becomes Gutted. Gutted ships cannot jump by themselves (unless spare parts have been re-installed aboard). Note that Disabled ships can be gutted.
This new mechanic (see what I did there) replaces all random ship disaster events that used to disable Industryships, Farmships and Cargoships.
At this point just about anything bad that can befall your fleet is now preventable, and also addressable before things get too out of hand.
It will probably need some balancing and other tweaks, but I look forward to hearing your feedback!
BALANCE:
Added an impossible/insane mode medal for dying without pausing. Hint: use that pause!
Boarding shuttles can now be used against other boarding shuttles
The Rover Fixer, Empire Miner and Corp Extractor gained a cargo slot
Reduced water use on Irenic Casino ships
Mining lasers no longer increase in price during a run
Fleet ships can now be seized even when not abandoned or disabled
Your chances for coming across ore-producing ships were greatly increased
Industrial shipyards are a little more balanced
Hailing disabled, defended ships with non-warships now gives more interesting results
Crews in stasis are better accounted for in events. For example, a boarding party in stasis no longer defends against an attacking boarding party, and ships with passengers in stasis no longer demand food in events.
Timers give even more time when trying to reach a destination in another sector
Lasers can now be added to MegaFixers
Trade items are more balanced with less duplication
Laying minefields no longer triggers automatic enemy ship aggressive actions, but being hit by a mine sure does
Having a second battleship no longer adds additional fuel or water capacity
Boarding shuttles gain the same vector as the launching ship when launched
Added a few new enemy tractor events like cargo stealing pirates that use tractor beams
Did a full logic rework on boarding actions for consistency
QUALITY OF LIFE IMPROVEMENTS
We added better camera control. The scroll wheel no longer selects ships, instead it zooms all the way in to a ship and quite a ways up and out. Looking forward to hearing your feedback on this one!
Right clicking with selected ship(s) automatically moves them to a waypoint, not sure why it took me so long to do this lol
Temporarily exceeding your ore capacity while paused (by melting weapons, using ore cargo, etc) is now allowed so that ship actions that take more ore than your current capacity can be started
Stasis can now be controlled by selecting and right clicking your stasis-capable ship
Many ship items (such as repairbots) can also be used by right clicking the ship they are equipped on, giving you easier control
The game now pauses automatically after the battleship jumps in (before the rest of the fleet arrives) -- this can be toggled on or off in Options from the Esc menu
Ship abilities and benefits have been made clearer and easier to see, both when scanning and also when hovering a ship in your fleet list
Timers (at least, those with negative consequences) can be immediately skipped, triggering the consequences immediately
Choices can now be selected by using the number of the choice
Weapon hardpoints, gunboat hangars and cargo holds are better explained in the UI
Seized ships now sit in more logical locations, making them easier to select
Ships added to the fleet now immediately have a grey icon added to the fleet list so you can add them to a formation without having to wait for the entire new ship animation to complete
We added better camera movement during jump, visual improvements to weapon range ring, and added boarding party types to passengers in stasis
Made improvements to the Captain’s Guide and updated info for 1.45
A ship’s class is now shown on the scan dialog
Fleet ship details are now available in the starmap
The formation editor now shows a formation’s speed and flags slow ships
If a ship is repaired between a destroy order being issued and the weapon being fired, don’t destroy the ship when hit, just damage it
Faction leader actions no longer work if the leader is in stasis
Gunboats continue to be repaired through jump
Individual mines can how be hovered
The main menu got a little more active
Non-formation ships are a little better about not jumping in on one another
BUGS
Harvested worlds no longer steal a trade event in sector 1
Several exploits closed off
Stuck jumpgate(s) unstuck
Log improvements
Sending feedback now shows progress
Trade event bugs were fixed
Literally dozens and dozens of other bugs were fixed
WHAT'S NEXT?
In 1.46 we’ll add space hazards, at least one new ship, more events, plus the usual QOL and balance improvements and maybe a surprise or two!
GIANT Update! XO 1.44
Version 1.44 brings three new ships, achievements, new abilities for boarding parties, new events, a proper beginner mode, and a ton of balance and bug fixes!
NEW SHIPS:
Three new ships join the fleet in 1.44!
The Corp Merchant ship is a small warship that makes up for its lack of speed with plenty of cargo space.
The Rover Dreamer is a small food producing ship that is also outfitted with Empire stasis tech, allowing passengers to be put into stasis (where they consume no resources until revived).
The Rover Drencher can package available water into water cargo - just the ticket for surviving low-water worlds or staving off water riots in an overpopulated fleet.
ACHIEVEMENTS:
At long last, we've added 17 achievements!
Try and obtain a second battleship. Attempt to hold out against the Harvesters with a massive fleet. See if you can complete a run as a peacemaker.
We've also added a number of special awards for losing the game in a variety of different ways. Can you collect them all?
Also note that a couple of these achievements unlock new fleets!
BOARDING IMPROVEMENTS:
Mercenaries now have an improved bribery option that mixes in some RNG. But as long as you have enough ore you have a good chance of bribing a ship's captain to join the fleet without a need to leave armed guards aboard.
Since Pact Marines cannot be used unless you are enemies with a faction, you're now given the option to declare war on a faction when one of your Marine boarding parties boards a non-enemy ship!
The Diplomacy faction leader power can now be used to try and persuade ships that you took by force to stay in the fleet -- without keeping a boarding party aboard. Right now this is only possible once you've removed a boarding party from a ship under duress. Tell us what you think!
FEATURES:
You can now leave us in-game feedback by hitting the F8 key or by clicking the leave feedback text at the bottom of the screen. Add your email if you want a reply (we do not keep email addresses or use them for anything but replying to your feedback).
Quite a few new events were added, as well as additional variations for several types of encounters.
We added animations for some of the more recent game actions like launching boarding parties, recovering gunboats and the like.
BALANCE and BUG FIXING:
Starting with the Beginner fleet now slows the Harvester propagation wave speed and reduces the number of Harvester enemies. The final jumpgate remains the same. If you prefer a slower pace to play, this is for you!
All repair locations are now also shipyards. Shipyards specialize in either industryships or warships. Some carry ships from other factions, too. Ship prices were reduced. They also no longer increase during a run. Lastly, ships can be traded as early as day 10 in sector 2. Ships traded at a shipyard will require a crew (or you can seize them if you have a ship capable of seizing).
Ever have a non-fleet ships become disabled during a mission? That used to end the mission. But now you can seize or repair those ships and keep the mission going!
After a lengthy optimization of the game, Harvester Reaper swarms are back! We also reduced the number of Harvester warships to account for more Reapers on the field.
There's a much greater chance to obtain gunboats for your Empire Carrier now.
Seized non-fleet ships now react if left crewed for too long.
Enemy ships defend better against incoming boarding parties. Protecting ships now stay closer to protectees.
Shield ranges on all Irenic shields were increased.
Weapon ranging and ship closing distances were improved.
We increased the number of quests available to help give you more options to add certain types of ships into your fleet.
Investigators no longer show up at the final jumpgate.
Marooning a faction leader aboard a non-fleet ship will now incur the same consequences as leaving them behind any other way.
Marooning is no longer allowed on Harvested ships (same as the other transfer options).
It's no longer possible to reset trade items by force quitting.
We continue to improve the early game flow. It's not quite there yet, but it keeps getting closer.
We were able to fix dozens of bugs and annoyances thanks to your great feedback! Thank you so much for your help, we deeply appreciate it.
WHAT'S NEXT?
Tractor beams. More new ships, more new items, more events, more achievements and more QOL improvements!
Minor Patch: 1.43e
1.43e is a small patch to fix some minor but annoying event logic bugs, and clean up some tags.
Thank you Admirals for your excellent in-game and Discord bug reports!
Beta 1.43 Feature Overview
Watch Brian Jamison, Creative Director of XO cover the major features of XO 1.43!
MEGA Update! XO 1.43
XO 1.43 Rolling the Hard Six
Version 1.43 brings several new ships, many new items, more events and a totally new way of starting the game!
NEW SHIPS:
Three new ships join the fleet in 1.43!
The Irenic Casino ship generates ore from passengers! When passengers are aboard, right click and select the Market action to open the Casino for business; ore will be created over time at a high cost of water and fuel. Also note that the Casino requires two water whether or not its market is open.
The Rover Planner takes any weapon placed aboard and creates a plan from it (destroying the original weapon in the process). As a reminder, an unlimited number of weapons can be created from plans (given sufficient ore), and a maximum of two plans may be stored at any given time.
The Rover Snarf is able to non-destructively extract weapons from ships, allowing you to move weapons between ships, salvage weapons from disabled or abandoned ships, or even use the Snarf as a type of attack. If you do this, active warships will target and fire on the Snarf if they can! There may be some strategies to uncover there...
NEW GAME - STARTING FLEETS:
You can now rename your battleship and avatar as well as customize the look of your avatar. Your avatar name and battleship name will persist between runs, or until you change it.
Starting a new game now gives a micro-tutorial if you select the beginner mode. Both modes now start you off with a laser. Only the tutorial starts with a weaponless battleship. Future modes will probably include “OG/Hard” mode with no weapon.
Just for fun we temporarily added a ‘tanked’ option that starts you off double-enemy with everyone, a frigate, a laser and a tanker.
You’ll also immediately notice that we have a proper main menu now. And you now start the game with different ship and loadout options. We plan to add more starting fleet options as unlockable achievements (in version 1.44 or 1.45)
WEAPON UPGRADE ITEMS:
There are four new items! The Supercharger, Overcharger, Extender and Optimizer are low-cost single use items that permanently upgrade one weapon’s stat at the cost of decreasing another weapon’s stat. Look for more such items in v1.44!
FEATURES:
We added a number of early game combat events to match the battleship’s now-beweaponed starting state.
We improved the flow of the tutorial as well.
New Harvester ships were modeled to better differentiate between classes.
The auxiliary can now be seized and repaired.
Boarding parties can now be launched from gunboats.
Added a number of more complex/varied early events as well.
BALANCE:
The Harvester wave now starts one or two jumps away from you at game start, depending on which type of new game you choose.
Harvester warship speeds were reduced. Harvester Investigator had 1 laser removed.
Rover Getter speed was increased.
Ships given an attack order no longer switch to the closest target.
Ships purchased at shipyards are now abandoned; you must have a crew or be able to seize them Covered off an exploit where you could fake a crew transfer and gain control of a ship.
Attempting to extract weapons from a ship that is not yours is now considered an attack.
Boarding parties now work even if a ship has no space aboard due to cargo, other passengers, or even weapons aboard. Cargo is jettisoned preferentially, then passengers, finally a weapon is destroyed to make way for a hostile boarding party if all else fails.
Minelayers no longer target friendly ships.
UI/QOL:
Mining and market ships now pause operations when ore is at maximum. Market ships resume marketing the same way mining ships resume mining when ore is depleted.
Scouting with civilian ships now asks for confirmation since they can be lost.
Having more than two plans now triggers a ‘discard one’ dialog.
Salvage now works as a self-action when a ship is already seized.
NO JUMP is only displayed where it makes sense (e.g. when jump is plotted but dialogs are up).
Launch all gunboats action no longer launches disabled gunboats.
Added a bunch of mouse tooltips, improvements to tooltip text, and made a number of small improvements to the overall UI.
BUGS:
1.43 is a result of a lot of your feedback! Thank you for the ideas and support! We addressed a number of bugs that were found by our awesome community, here are the most substantial ones:
Hailing jumpgate stations a second time now works.
Selling plans now gives the proper ore.
Opening a jumpgate, then jumping away, then jumping back after it was harvested no longer gives an empty result.
Boarding parties can no longer make infinite runs taking cargo from stations.
Salvaging self action now works.
Fixed two rare hard lockups.
Fixed an issue where an enemy ship refused to jump.
Rejiggered the victory dialogs to work with new menu layouts.
Fixed numerous event logic issues.
Several missing ship names and lore were created.
Shields don’t switch on until jump is complete.
WHAT'S NEXT?
More new ships, more new items, more events and achievements!
Also, after this current sale we will be increasing the price of the game!
BUG update! XO 1.42c "Xenomorph-reduced edition"
We really, really strive to have a bug-free game. An enormous amount of time is spent testing and fixing bugs before release. But 1.42b did not live up to that. Moving forward we’re going to release to a beta branch first before updating the main branch. Beta is available to all players, just hop on our Discord for info.
Thank you so much for your patience, and in particular thank you to everyone who submitted bugs and gave great feedback! We are SO GRATEFUL!
Balance:
Time restored when using water cargo during water riots was increased.
Events that change relations without player interaction should all be removed. If you spot one, please let us know ASAP.
Numerous events like The Commandeered Farmship were made better.
Several new events were added including The Looted Barge, The Rioting Station, and The Foreigners.
Features/QOL improvements:
- The Recall All Gunboats action only appears now when there are active gunboats that aren’t in the hangar - Launch All Gunboats only appears when there are gunboats in the hangar - Carriers now display a repairing progress bar when hovered - You can now store passengers in a gunboat hanger bay (slot) - Disabled, recovered enemy gunboats now automatically join the fleet - Recovered active enemy gunboats now do something... interesting - Non fleet ships given a jumpfollow command no longer try to jump if they are disabled - You can scout jumpgates now - Sector nodes no longer appear to be harvested - Training marines now immediately updates the contextual action menu for immediate launch
Future updates and upcoming price increase:
I worked on mockups for the main menu, renaming your ship, and choosing your appearance among other things, so expect those in 1.43.
At least one very unusual new ship and more events are also coming in 1.43!
We will continue with updates relatively frequently. We are still focused on adding new ships and items, additional events and QOL improvements. We are getting closer to announcing a release date and this is your final warning that we will be raising the price of the game one more time, reflecting all the new features and months and months of work we’ve put in. So now is a good time to buy before the increase!
There is still time to get your feedback in and have an impact on our development, but that window is closing.
Bugs destroyed:
- You should no longer be able to exploit the game into giving you a Harvester-free experience (Sorry Ainz) - Jumpgates remain unlocked now - Jumping is now restored in cases where it was denied - Many range-related firing and closing issues were fixed - An edge case related to boarding defended ships was fixed - The status of passengers in stasis is now saved properly - Fixed a soft lock edge case at harvested jumpgates - Stations should now always spawn where jumpgates are required - Aborting the board action no longer causes text to flip out on the contextual action menu - Scripted launch boarding party actions now work as designed - Restoring a saved game, ships that were already mid-jump now resume - ShipJumpFollowAction.Execute bug was executed with extreme prejudice - A graphical glitch hovering weapons was unglitched - Enemy formations given formation attack orders now attack properly - Hovering certain mining ships no longer floods the log with errors - Invisible ships no longer show when scouting - Several boarding-related bugs were fixed that also flooded the log with errors - An issue with proximity destruct showing when it shouldn’t was addressed - Fixed a problem related to destroying a farmship in an event - Scout icon no longer sticks when scouting with the planet info dialog up - A goodly number of minor text issues were corrected - Invisible ships no longer show up on the minimap - DynamicText.getText bug murdered - ShipOrderCondition.CheckState bug is no more - An issue with sweeping mines was swept clear - Range 1 lasers and ion torps should now fire properly - Abort animations now play properly - Certain integers no longer display as floats. Bad floats! - An edge case related to using water cargo during a riot was washed away - Numerous issues surrounding the board command were fixed - ShipTransferController.UpdateShipSlotsView bug was smooshed - ResourcesProjectileModel.IsResourcesAvailable bug was thrown out - another DynamicText.getText bug was demolished - PlayerContextualActionsModel bug was put away - DockedShipModel bug was mothballed - ShipsController.HoverShipSlot bug was shot down - ShipView.IshipView.SetIsActive bug was deactivated - Access now displays the right tag - Repaired gunboats no longer leave messy pieces of themselves on the playfield - SystemCollections.Generic.List bug was systematically eliminated - Invisible ships no longer appear before they should
Big update! XO 1.42
Huge thank you to our players and especially our awesome Discord community! Thanks to your input we keep making XO better!
New Ships:
Please welcome the Empire Occupier, our first carrier! You may have seen gunboats from time to time - those Empire ships without jumpdrives? The Occupier can carry up to six of those through jump. It is also able to repair damaged boats, making it a highly valuable ship. Like the Empire Auxiliary, repair takes time and requires ore.
Also new in 1.42 is the Empire Sleeper ship! The Sleeper acts as a farmship of sorts for the Empire. Sleeper ships can put up to six passengers aboard into stasis so they do not consume resources. It takes time, ore and water to put passengers in and out of stasis, and if the Sleeper is disabled, all passengers in stasis will be immediately lost.
We also completed work on a number of new ship abilities! Look for them to arrive in 1.43 and beyond! There are functional ‘test’ versions of several of these new ships in the game right now, but they can only be purchased at the (very rare) shipyard trade events right now...
Balance:
Event timers are extended by two days if the event crosses sectors
Plotting a jump now only uses active ships for calculating jump times.
Features/QOL improvements:
- We are working on improving how ships deal with the range of their weapons. This is an ongoing bit of work that will spill into the next version. - Passengers aboard ships are now colored per their own faction relations with the Pact. - Ships with a single mining laser no longer autotarget and destroy mines in range while on berzerk. Ships with multiple weapons retain this ability. - Range rings now show when hovering (paused) a shieldship that has its shield(s) disabled by ion torpedoes. - Every single event in the game was overhauled to reduce the number of initial messages on hail, in some cases adding questions or additional options. We removed almost all of the combat timers, allowing for longer battles to play out. And we added more variety and some more randomness to quite a few events too! - On top of that we added a number of new events! - Sector nodes were made much more visible. - The starmap plotting line was finally made 3D! This fixed an issue where the dotted plotting line broke away if you rotated the starmap. - Repair ships now show an ore-starved icon if they run out of ore while repairing. - Repair ships also now display a progress bar when hovered. The bar fills for each point of hull / armor restored. - Boarding parties can now be launched by the type of boarding party (e.g. Marines, Pirates, etc) - Ships that are scouting no longer disappear from your fleet list and formation editor; instead their icon is greyed out. - We cleaned up more of the contextual actions for transferring crew between ships. We use several words to describe the same action: crew, maroon, evacuate, rescue, crew transfer. They’re all the same action, but we use different words to help you understand things like the state of the target, and what kinds of passengers you have aboard the selected ship. - We added some additional hover tips for things like hovering a plan when you don’t have enough ore to replicate it. - Your fleet now stays a little closer together after jump even if you’re not using formations. - The way we delete save files when we detect a version mismatch was improved. - You can now attack your own shuttles, should the desire strike you. - Scanning a mine now shows its damage and range. - In trade, weapons of the same type now always have different values. - Hovering non-equippable weapons no longer displays the red ‘nope’ cursor (since they can be stored in any slot), but instead adds a tooltip warning the player. - Hovering empty slots no longer shows trade tooltips. - Multi-selected ships now all display an animation when an action such as Abort is selected, and when ROE changes. - Explosions are now located on the area of the ship that is damaged. This is purely visual; we do not model ship damage at that level. - Abandoned and disabled states were added to event conditions, so, for example, fleet events no longer select disabled or abandoned ships when an active ship is needed. Internally I continued to do work on the event creation pipeline and expanded the automated tests for events. - The lowest resolution the game now supports is 1024x768. (Our recommended resolution is 2560x1920).
Future updates and upcoming price increase:
We will continue with updates relatively frequently. We are still focused on adding new ships and items, additional events and QOL improvements. We are getting closer to announcing a release date and this is your final warning that we will be raising the price of the game one more time, reflecting all the new features and months and months of work we’ve put in. So now is a good time to buy before the increase!
There is still time to get your feedback in and have an impact on our development, but that window is closing.
Bugs smunched:
- Jumpgates now unlock when they should - Boarding parties can no longer be launched against lifeboats - Sector entry nodes are now properly labeled - Ship’s cargo is now properly displayed in COYA hovers - Diplomacy is no longer an option on disabled ships - Boarding shuttles and lifeboats can no longer be added to formations - Fixed an issue with incompatible weapons placed on non-warships - Dragging all ships from a formation no longer throws an error - Maroon action no longer appears if you don’t have passengers aboard your selected ship - Low orbit formations no longer move veeery slowly - Ships that shouldn’t ought to be showing on the minimap no longer are shown - Ships that shouldn’t ought to be jumping no longer jump - Stopped a bug related to aborting waypoints - Boarding shuttles no longer display ROE options - preventSectorJump is now saving properly - An issue with conditional choices and event variables was fixed - Solved an issue with follow spinward contextual actions - Fixed a problem where adding a cargoship and then jumping was causing incorrect values to show - Targeting lifeboats no longer shows Intimidate or Diplomacy actions - Evacuate action now only shows if a station has passengers available for evacuation - The scan animation no longer plays when you set a waypoint - Numerous issues fixed with ship actions due to some required refactoring - Some integers in COYAs were incorrectly displaying as floats - Solved a strange issue in ‘the cutters’ event - Hitting X multiple times no longer drops ghost ships - The addEquipment action was restored to a properly working state - Squashed two good bugs that froze the jump button - Corrected an issue related to map rotation - Adjusted an event so hailing harvested ships worked properly - Fix some tags that weren’t displaying the correct text - Saving games is again possible - Ships no longer always try to keep their range in combat - Fixed an issue with player contextual actions - Corrected something with setting colors that was throwing errors - Took a 2,200 mile road trip, woo - Lots of minor text errors fixed
Major update: XO 1.41
While our last three updates have been very large, this (also very large) one brings the most game-changing aspects. We have much more in the works but this should be the last of the large updates. More on that below.
Thank you to our players and our terrific Discord community! We’ve listened to your feedback and ideas and you will see a lot of that in this release.
Sectors
Instead of one large galaxy, we’ve broken your journey into five smaller sectors. The number of jumps in a run should be about the same.
Each sector is controlled by a jumpgate. Jumpgates must be unlocked to proceed to the next sector, and there are a variety of methods to do so including fleet battles and diplomacy.
Most sectors are controlled by a specific faction, giving you a larger degree of strategic choice as you build your fleet.
Certain faction-specific events will now only occur in a faction’s sector.
This affected many aspects of the game, and while we spent a lot of time testing and tweaking, it’s almost guaranteed there will be things we missed. Please let us know if you spot anything!
Starmap
The starmap and galactic map are now combined. You can now rotate, zoom in/out and toggle between faction or planet type views!
Harvesters
The Harvesters now propagate planet-to-planet instead of in an expanding wave. There is a noticeable visual change that clears up some graphic problems in the wave-based method, and is now 3D.
Overall the speed of the Harvester propagation wave was greatly slowed, allowing much more time to explore a sector and engage in combat.
When Harvesters arrive, they do so much more slowly, although larger and deadlier ships will show up over time. Harvester Reapers are also much slower.
Combat
Charging time was increased for all weapons, resulting in slower, more strategic battles.
Ion torpedoes now prefer to hit active weapons.
Stations can now launch boarding parties.
Several ship stats were adjusted to further differentiate certain warships. In some cases, slots were added. Gunboats received the largest changes in anticipation of 1.42’s carriers.
Events
We’re most of the way through overhauling the events. Most combat timers have been removed, allowing for longer, more strategic combat. We’ve vastly cleaned up the narrative, and refactored quite a few events to give more interesting options. This is an ongoing effort.
The tutorial was improved and polished and a victory event was added.
Faction leaders no longer appear randomly, but only in quests based on certain parameters being met in faction-owned sectors.
I plan on creating many more events, so I vastly improved my event creation tools. It’s now much, much faster to create events, and I’m finding that I am creating more interesting and varied events as a result. Events now run the same battery of automated tests that I use for pre-launch testing, but they do it before I even try them out, massively cutting down time wasted chasing down syntax-related bugs.
Other features:
- Quests can cross sectors - Disabled ships are now more consistent - Added more lifeboat events and increased their likelihood of occuring - Greatly improved handling of lifeboats - Several new actions were added to our event system - Camera angle and drift adjustments - Improved visibility and handling of the jumpgate pointer - Playfield slightly increased to allow for larger formation size - Improved how jumpgate pointers were handled in the starmap - Added a new HUD action to better draw attention to missions
Future updates and upcoming price increase:
Future updates will be more frequent from here on out. We are now focusing on adding new ships and items, additional events and QOL improvements. And while we don’t have a release date yet, we will be raising the price of the game one more time, reflecting all the new features and months and months of work we’ve put in. So now is a good time to buy before the increase!
There is still time to get your feedback in and have an impact on our development, but that window is closing.
Bugs squashed:
- It should no longer be possible to die in the tutorial - Multiselected ships no longer choose the long way when given orders - All multiselected ships now accept orders (as long as they are able to) - Aborting multiselected orders now works as expected - Fixed the visual effect for shield mining - ROE is no longer shown on ships that have no weapons - Destroying abandoned ships no longer penalizes relationship - Fixed several issues with ships not mining ore - Formations no longer drop ships or reform when crews are transferred between ships - Quite a few boarding party issues were corrected - I began taking my cat on walks again - A bug related to laying minefields was fixed - Gatherers no longer fall behind a formation when gathering - Adjusted several items and ships to display properly in their portrait view - An issue that caused the game to lock up when ordering a fleet jump was fixed - The fleet can no longer jump away on its own - Several issues related to restoring saved games were fixed - Bugs related to hovering were fixed - Many bugs related to editing formations were squashed - Many dozens of bugs you never saw were caught internally - Several minor issues with older 3D models were cleaned up - An uncounted number of minor event tweaks were made
Watch the developer play
Watch as we take XO for a run!
IWOCon Dev Plays - XO
Join us on a run of XO with one of the Devs. We promise close shaves, hair-raising escapes, and ships going kaboom!
