Vendetta Online Edges Closer to 2.0

Vendetta Online, the space massively multi player online game which places you in the seat of a pilot traversing the many regions of space, has been edging closer to its 2.0 goal. After many weekly updates and years of development the game has progressed substantially in the past few months. New developments including new missions, new badges, graphics updates, icons, as well as a few major developments.

One of the larger updates to the game occurred on May 9th when the developers of Vendetta Online (Guild Software) released multi player ships. This addition allows pilots to man turrets within another player's ship while the captain of the ship drives  the ship and has control over the main weapons on board. Up to four players can be in a ship at a time (depending on the ship) but some ships have smaller maximum crew numbers and can only have one or two turret operators.

With the addition of multi player ships came the new turret shield weaponry. This allows turret operators within another pilot's ship to fire shields from their turrets creating a defensive barrier from pirates and enemies alike. Gray space, the lawless region that connects nation space, sees the brunt of pirate attacks. With the addition of multi player ships and shield weaponry for turret operators, travel through gray could become safer due to the addition of heavily fortified turreted ships. These additions allow for a whole new dimension of combat to be utilized within the dangerous universe of Vendetta.

One of the largest updates in a while occurred on May 23rd when the developers introduced "Dynamic Warfare" to replace the old border skirmish system. Dynamic Warfare is based around the ongoing Serco-Itani war that has been raging for centuries. The "ground zero" of the warfare currently resides in Deneb, an Itani system under constant attack by the Serco military. The war zone in Deneb was greatly expanded with the addition of Dynamic Warfare which introduced "capturable sectors".

The Dynamic Warfare in Deneb consists of one hundred and seventy seven (177) sectors of small, medium, and large scale battles in which the victor of the battle is awarded control over the contested sector. The winning faction gains control over the sector and the color on the navigation map for the sector is altered either red or blue depending on if the Serco or Itani gain control. The battles themselves consist of player piloted ships as well as NPC capital ships such as constellations and heavy assault cruisers. Players have the ability to hail capital ships and then dock them where they can repair their ship, reload it, chat in the bar, and even man the multiple turrets that jut out of the exterior of the vessels. Each capital ship in particular has multiple turrets which can provide another dimension to the warfare spanning the contested war torn sectors of Deneb.

Eventually the developers are going to make the entire system of Deneb conquerable by either faction. When Deneb is conquerable and eventually conquered the war will move to a new adjacent system (either the Serco system Geira Rutilis or the Itani System Eo) where battles will rage on over the control of the territory. The war has intensified as the conflict has spread out from a couple of sectors to over one hundred and fifty sectors as the Serco Itani war continues on.

On June 22 the developers unveiled a new game wide update which improves the current texture detail levels. Guild Software has been constantly tweaking and updating the graphics within the game so that Vendetta Online (or VO as most fans know it) remains asthetically pleasing to all its players. Here are some before ( http://images.vendetta-online.com/images/before.detail.jpg ) and after ( http://images.vendetta-online.com/images/after.detail.jpg ) pictures of the detail texture improvements. As you can tell the after picture has a lot more detail to it, and since Vendetta Online has many stations, ships, and asteroids (ice and rock based) an increase in the detail of the textures goes a long way. High resolution compressed textures were added on some of the ships in the game as well. Many icons have also been redone along with the implementation of new missions and badges to go along with the icon improvement. Along with the graphics updates, there have been a couple of notable economic updates that have increased the balance within the game.

The developers have also inserted "training sectors" to provide almost complete protection for new pilots just entering the universe. These training sectors provide enough tutorial missions and direction to fully train pilots in trade, combat, mining, and travel. Although no place in the Vendetta Online Universe is completely safe, the increased security has had large benefits to the protection of new members of the VO community. The three training sectors are located in Itani, Serco, and UIT national space, far away from the hostile reaches of gray space systems. With the implementation of training sectors, the developers have also removed friendly fire within gray space which has increased piracy as well as combat possibilities. Friendly Fire restrictions remain in effect over the rest of nation space, but for the eight systems of gray space conflict remains a constant.

Although Guild Software has a development team of just four people, the game has been substantially improving over the past three months as the developers push new content and updates into production. The goal of all of these updates is to eventually get to Vendetta Online 2.0 which will give the game much more depth, options, and paths. Guild controllable territory, stations, and cap ships are all slated to come online sometime soon although the developers refuse to give a date and time for those additions to the game. Even though 2.0 seems a long way off (game is currently at 1.8.83) the recent improvements in the game point to 2.0 being sooner rather than later.

Visit www.vendetta-online.com to follow the continous updates and additions to the game.