These are some pretty major updates..

VO 1.8.278 includes:

- Serco Vulture Guardian turbo drain changed from 56 to 55, top speed increased from 220 to 225.
- New Raptor UDV available in UIT stations, requires high Admire standing with UIT, also minimum of Dislike with both Serco and Itani.
- Faction standing for major "foreign" nations (to which your character does NOT belong) are now capped at +600. This only impacts Serco, Itani and UIT standings, there are no changes to minor and corporate factions.
For instance, this means if your character is UIT, the highest Itani faction standing you may acquire is "Respected" (the reverse also being true). The levels of "Admire" and "Pillar of Society" are reserved for native faction members.
- Serco/Itani mutually exclusive faction standings have been changed to equalize at Neutral (0). This means that if a character achieves +600 with Serco, the character's Itani standing will fall to no-higher-than -600, and visa-versa.
- The default faction standings for Itani on a new UIT character has been changed to Neutral (0) to reflect the updated mutual exclusion of Itani/Serco.
- Player-owned capships now inherit the owner's keychain so the capship won't get attacked in conquerable stations.
- Player-owned capships are always visible on the keyholder's radar no matter how far away they are in the same sector.
- Turreted non-capital scale ships no longer persist.
- Player-owned persistent capships should now use their custom name.

VO 1.8.277 includes:

- Players can now leave their capship if they have a flyable ship in the cargo hold. The ship is chosen in the PDA Tactical->Hangar tab. When the capship owner docks to their own capship, they can regain control of the capship through the PDA Tactical->Operations tab. Passengers will experience a short interface update when the capship owner logs out/in, launches from, or regains control of the capship.
- Capships now stay around for 5 minutes after their owner logs off.
- When a player logs in and they have a capship floating anywhere in space, it will immediately spawn whereever it was last located.
- Capship owners will be notified if their capship is under attack. The capship's health in the owner's inventory list does not currently update.
- While the capship owner is not in control of their capship, it is displayed in the sector list as the custom name of the capship if set, or the owner's name plus a unique identifier.
- The capship owner currently can always dock with their own capship even if no space is available, so they cannot be locked out of the capship.
- The same capship access key currently works for all of a player's capships. This will change to allow a different access key per capship in a future update.
- The Connecting dialog text has changed and now includes a timeout progress-bar.

All the additions, like new fighters and capship-features will likely be well-received..

But there may be some controversy over the factional changes, and let me say that I understand where people are coming from when they see their hard-won standing going away. However, I strongly believe this is the best overall direction for the game, especially in light of changes I intend to implement over the coming months, and it seemed best to "quickly rip off the band-aid", get it over with and move forward.

A few things to keep in mind, in relation to the changes:

- Items / Ships that are faction-exclusive is really just an opportunity for a more player-driven economy, something I plan to help enable.

- Mutual exclusion does not rule out the possibility of changing factional "citizenship" via some specialized and very difficult mechanic. But, it was beyond the scope of what I could deliver this week.

- Options like "dual respect" might even become possible, again, via mechanics that are very difficult to achieve and maintain. We can still have flexibility and let people find their own path, without it being as fast of a pendulum swing as the "game of standing" had become.

- As always: Nothing is cast in stone! I'm still open to continued feedback on all of this, particularly on the Suggestions Forum. I'm really aiming to change a LOT of gameplay over the coming months, and the reality of my.. commitment to that, is hopefully becoming self-evident. I'm all for tweaking whatever I can to make the best possible game for everyone involved, across all play styles.

Thanks everyone, and have a great weekend!