VO 1.8.273-274 include:

- Music now crossfades when changing sectors.
- Killing 3 players in a 7-day period, within a single faction's Guarded space, will result in that faction placing Temp KoS status on the killer for 24 hours. Exceptions are made for killing players of Hated or lower standing with the local faction, and active duels. This only impacts Guarded regions (ie, station sectors). Corvus stations ignore all kills and are not affected by this change.
- Linux Sandybridge and Haswell Intel drivers use full shaders now.
- Lowered the default texture detail settings for Android devices with 512megs or less of system memory.
- Other internal changes.

We're putting quite a bit of time into enhancements to the faction system, aiming to allow self-defense in monitored and guarded space, as well as other improvements. Beyond this, we expect persistent capships to debut in the near future. A little later in the month of January, you should see some changes to game balance that are likely to continue in the first two quarters of 2014.

Many more announcements to come, including the overall plans for VO 1.9 and 2.0. Happy new year, everyone!