Major Update! XO 1.47 “A New Direction”

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