Four new ships, friends, territory and accessibility

Four new ships join the fleet, from a mining command ship to a flagship built to hunt world bosses. Move ships between stations, add friends, fight for territory, choose where boss loot goes and learn the ropes in a new Flight School.

New

• Stonecutter. A tier 4 mining command ship with two slewing booms, a 16,000 m³ hold, an on-board furnace and extra yield per Mining level.
• Cataract. A tier 5 missile ship of the line. Six large launchers gain damage and reach from your Missiles skill, and volleys split to swamp point defense.
• Sanctuary. A tier 6 fleet support ship with five remote projectors that repair harder and farther. It fires almost nothing of its own.
• Anvil. A tier 7 heavy flagship with six large turrets that grow with Gunnery and deal 35% more to world bosses. Huge and slow.
• Ship transfer. Bring ships stored at other stations to the one you are docked at. The fee depends on the hull and the jumps; delivery takes a minute per jump, or pay triple to arrive at once. Cancel for half the fee back.
• Friends. Send mutual requests, see who is online and roughly where, and choose a privacy mode. Warp to a friend in your system or travel to theirs (More > Social > Friends).
• Territory control. Capturing a Lawless system takes about 20 minutes and at least 3 pilots of one clan, and defenders push progress back. Owners get a daily two-hour vulnerability window, Fortification levels 0 to 5 and 24 hours of protection after a capture.
• Boss loot choice. After a world boss dies, everyone who took part gets a Loot rolls card: take the loot into cargo or ship it to the nearest named station.
• Strike wings. Carriers launch and recall fighters in wings of six, with guard, assist and attack orders.
• Flight School. The tutorial is now a guided coach with an arrow and a glowing ring on the real control, one short step at a time.
• Accessibility. Settings > Accessibility adds text size from 85 to 150%, high contrast, reduce motion, reduce flashing, three colorblind palettes with shape and word cues, larger tap targets and a stronger focus ring.
• HUD layout editor. Settings > Interface > Edit HUD layout moves and resizes the Autopilot, Hunting, target and Tactical cards.
• Module key order. Drag a module tile onto another to choose its number key. It is saved per hull.
• Racing. Courses are about twice as big, with a course map and a ghost line. Choose Circuit, a lane of light with no crashes, or Gauntlet, with solid rings, hazard buoys and 1.25x Racing XP.
• Liveries. Six premium liveries, including Diamond Pave with brilliant-cut stones and the Gold Sovereign and Rose Foundry bullion finishes.
• Paragon honors. New painted medallions and wreaths in the Honors tab.

Improvements

• Smoother planets on WebGPU. Planet scenes ran far slower than they should on some GPUs. That is fixed.
• Galaxy map activity. Systems show how busy they are, from empty to very crowded.

Balance

• Retainers and Captaincy are open to everyone. Writs now cost about 2.5 times as much, and Vanguard members pay 28% less. Retainers do not fight world bosses or inside Rifts and Strongholds, and deal a tenth of their damage to other boss-class ships.
• Boss difficulty tiers. Each world boss now has a difficulty from 1 to 5, shown in the Almanac. The Tellurion Keel Charter only drops from tiers 3 to 5.

Thank you to every pilot who reported a problem or suggested a change. Questions and feedback are welcome on Discord. The Game Guide is updated for everything above.

New to XETODUS? The Game Guide explains how the game works, chapter by chapter.