We're delighted to provide you another free update to XO!

INITIAL MODDING SUPPORT:

The biggest news in this update is that we’ve added initial support for modding - you can freely edit ships, items and sectors!

Ships:

Stats and abilities on all existing ships in the game are now editable* - you can add or remove abilities, increase weapon loadouts and initial weapons, armor, acceleration and more.

So, you want to add gunboats(fighters) to the battleship? Easy. Increase capacity on cargoships? Trivial. More weapon slots? You got it.

*somewhat obviously, this can break the game if done wrong. Adding too many ship slots will break the UI, changing acceleration/top speed too much can cause unpredictable results, things like that. Keep a backup!

Items:

You can edit and add new items as well, changing their cost, charges and functionality.

Sectors:

Sector size and composition can be changed including the types of planets, factions present, number of shipyard or trade planets, and where sectors lead to.

Howto:

Simply edit the text files (make a backup first!). Most of it should be self explanatory, but read moddingGuideV1.text file for more info. The editable text files and docs are found in your StreamingAssets folder where you installed XO

NEW SHIPS:

The extremely rare Irenic Refuge is a massive shielded farmship that provides your fleet even more capacity for growth.

The Rover Maker is a jump-capable shipyard that can convert ships into other ships.

The Harvester Pusher joins the growing list of enemies; they’re equipped with a tractor beam and not afraid to use it

The Galacticonn Concenter allows you to extract ore from gas giants

The Harvester Neutralizer is equipped with ion torpedoes to blunt your offensive capabilities

We had to make the difficult decision to axe the Pact Carrier. It just wasn’t providing enough variety to justify the dev effort required. After launch we can revisit.

OTHER FEATURES/GAMEPLAY:

More sector goals were added; these optional missions have no timers associated with them

You’re now given a list of options when an enemy boarding party tries to take over one of your ships

Quite a number of events were added, we won’t spoil anything but there’s a fairly diverse array of rare as well as common events to spice up your voyage.

Jumpgates got substantially harder if you earn a bad rep with that faction.

We made a number of improvements to the tutorial as it nears completion.

Random cargo types were expanded

BALANCE:

Easy mode now defaults to a harvester wave that only propagates between jumps

Ion torpedo max duration (aka damage) was increased to 5

Mining/melting rates increased by 50%

Damage control speed is 2x in easy mode and 1.5x slower in hard

Normalize repair cost on items to 1 ore for each point repaired

Lots of playtesting and improvements to enemy behavior

Stowaways can now occasionally appear

Caches no longer self destruct, giving you a place to leave things behind

Using the refinery transmogrify to bring fleet water to zero now clears the water riot

Sped up short range ship moves

Enemy ships recover disabled boarding parties by tractor if equipped

Added a number of ‘stall for time’ options to events where it made sense

Fixed some issues when starting custom games

Beginners are now reminded about damage control

Several events were given longer time to complete

Disabled or destroyed shuttles no longer count against you for certain achievements

Harvester reinforcements are now randomized

QoL and BUG FIXES:

We made substantial improvements to the UI, cleaned up a boatload of bugs and brought a number of quality of life improvements to the game. This will likely be our last QOL update until launch.

Improved mouse click recognition, especially with catching right clicks

Panning the camera is now bound to Mouse button 3 (you can set it to anything you like in options)

Refineries now have better continuous processing options

Loiter / Form Up commands are greyed out when the entire formation is selected

Player-owned ships should no longer autojump

Corrected an issue with ctrl+tractor failing when used with a Pact Tender

Made quite a number of tweaks to ship movement

Added some videos to the captain’s guide

Items with an onTransfer effect now trigger whether they are retrieved or transferred

Fixed an issue with events not properly ending

Finishing the tutorial now properly gives you the Academy achievement

Got rid of a nasty soft lock bug

Seizing another ship would sometimes fail, no longer

A good number of HUD timers were fixed/properly cleared and given abort options

Fixed an edge case with the hyperspace beacon

A wicked issue with ships duplicating themselves was nuked

Acceleration/speed can no longer drop below zero due to an item being used

Corrected an issue where multi-selecting a group of ships where one ship had no weapon was throwing an error

Fixed a few collider issues that Unity likes to throw at us just to keep us on our toes

Squashed an infinite loop with enemy defense ships

Corrected an issue where the tractor beam would fail on a diagonal attempt where the target was below the line of no return

Improved some logic issues with the demo

Put a stop to an infinite lifeboat loop

Fixed a bunch of duplicate or missing text messages on ship hovers

Score is now modified based on your selected difficulty

Nonplayer ships now follow the fleet better

Logic improvements for gutted ships and boarding

Fixes for ‘unknown ship id’ when attacking

Corrected an issue where thrusters weren’t showing

Quicktrainers now work as they should

Too many event fixes and tweaks to list

WHAT'S NEXT?

In 1.50 we will open up even more of the game to modding. You'll be able to add your own events, replace any events in the game, add your own ships including using your own 3d models, and even do a total conversion replacing all events in the game!

And as we always do we will definitely be adding some more ships, more content and fixing bugs in the run up to the full release of XO!

I'm so grateful for all of the support, kindness, well-wishes, bug reports, suggestions and all of the goodness I've gotten from you. Thank you so so much! It really keeps me going!