eXoSpace Combat Engineer — Patch 1.0

Released: 9/22/2026, 1:00:40 PM

Source: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2876200/view/699900155194769699

Summary (AI)

Patch 1.0 for eXoSpace Combat Engineer introduces the Wild Waste customizable multi-boss mission and a dynamic sector map where factions build bases, patrol, and fight for territory, with player actions influencing outcomes. Improvements include new hangars and drone controls, EMP weapons, updated AI behaviors, and expanded difficulty scaling up to danger level 250 with rank progression beyond 16. Hyperjumps, trading, and faction reputation systems have been enhanced, alongside UI upgrades like improved ship info, a revamped tech tree, and an integrated modding tools screen. Numerous new parts, bosses, and encounters have been added, with significant performance and stability optimizations, plus fixes for many bugs affecting gameplay, AI, and achievements.

Tip: expand all for quick scanning.

Shadow sword beam weapon energy demand halved.
You can jump home early during a Wild Waste mission, giving partial XP depending on the number of targets eliminated. For the other missions, jumping home early now also gives XP. Depending in how far you traveled, up to 50% of the mission XP is granted, for exploring the target area.
Working wormholes letting you jump to a random far location and back. There are other types of wormholes as well, that let you (or any ship) teleport locally or black-hole ones that make you explode specularly.
Friendly and allied traders may now sell tech!
Traders now have mercenaries parked next to them. These can be hired for a sum and will follow you into battle.
Veiled Consortium now has a crew role for reducing mercenary hiring cost.
Shadow Consortium has a crew role for increasing mercenary slot count.
Difficulty is now replaced by a danger level slider. You get an indication whether the selected danger level is expected to be easy or hard for your rank.
All missions now have a difficulty that scales up to danger level 250.
The highest completed danger level per mission is shown in mission setup.
Hyperjumps now normally end at the edge of a gravity well.
Made faction reputation effects a bit more local: the first attack in an area results in a larger reputation loss than subsequent ones.
Traders now may sell a blueprint for a weapon, thruster or shield module.
FluxCreds are renamed to X-Coins, and icon is updated. You now keep your X-Coins over missions.
Improved tech tree layout for extra modules.
You can now store 2 of each type of powerup. Select a different powerup by short-pressing the powerup key, and activate the selected by long-pressing the powerup key (T by default).
You can now use your excess credits to buy a random powerup at any trader, to use in subsequent encounters.
Improvements to spawn variety (actually more of a bugfix), now correctly using the faction fleet doctrine.
Toggling parts now keep their status in sync even when destroyed and repaired.
For each hangar you can select or design a drone to be launched from it. A hangar can support more drones if they are cheaper.
You can take control of your drones.
When the launching hangar is destroyed, drones will become disabled.
The flight screen shows stored and launched drones.
The ship editor shows info about drone size and cost limit.
Updated the selected modules config panel layout, improving its usability.
Part details are now shown on hover in editor instead of in bottom-left. Much improved clarity of part info.
Warnings are now integrated in the ship info sidebar.
Selecting "Unknown" classification override is now possible.
Joint rotation range is shown when hovering over or selecting a single joint part.
Bosses can now spawn other ships whenever a phase activates.
Boss phases can now define set part groups to be disabled during that phase.
Exploders now have different cost and explosion strength.
Several parts had their graphics improved.
Ship AI behavior is shown on mouse over.
Improved ramming AI to better hit its target, as well as use strafing to stay on course.
Faction fleets can be spawned in the sandbox, for example to see if you can defeat it or whether it matches up against your own fleet.
Fast-forward now lets you speed up time in the sandbox.
Arena combat screen now has all status bars.
Localization via mods: add your own localization in mods, with custom font support.
Ship drops can now be edited in the editor details panel when modding tools are enabled.
Lots of workshop uploader fixes and improvements.
Parts animate into place when a ship is spawned or repaired (small change, big visual improvement).
Hyperjumping is now accompanied by some nice effects.
The particle system now adapts to rendering speed to avoid slowdown in extreme situations.
Restart is no longer needed when changing graphics quality.
Controller pointer movement speed fixes: ramps up from slow to faster.
Ship preview image directory is now cleared on loading.
Crew retraining did not take effect until reloading.
Opening and closing tech tree after being destroyed in boss fight broke the boss encounter.
Sneaky Snipers modifier did not unlock correctly.
In-combat repairs with repair powerup active did not work.
Arena statistics (victories) were not loaded correctly in some situations.
Exiting game immediately after defeating boss would make collecting XP impossible.
Exotics cost was mixed up with metal cost when editing ship for arena.
Bosses with parts with joints initially destroyed bugged out when these parts were repaired.
Faction fleet doctrine was not used correctly by mission spawners.
Editing non-active save game could change active slot color and name.
Antimatter engineer would give free antimatter.
Arena achievements would be granted even if the player did not win.
Ship with joints sometimes jumped around after hyperjump.
Faction reputation changed while killing ships in test mode.
Removing parts in undo broke when test mode was activated.
After a full year in Early Access with many updates, eXoSpace Combat Engineer is ready for full release!
Full release definitely does not mean "I'm finished with the game". I have lots and lots of ideas for cool things to add, so expect many more updates after release as well!