If you've been itching to turn to the darker side in No Man's Sky, developer Hello Games' exploratory space sim has you covered in its new Outlaws update, giving players the chance to trade their life of relatively wholesome interplanetary meandering and base building for one of rather more criminal pursuits as they take on the role of fearsome space pirates.
Just as February's Sentinels update sought to improve ground combat, Outlaws aims to do the same for space combat. That means better ship handling, shields for enemy starships, plus visual enhancements and various specialist secondary effects for weapons. The latter for instance, might give players the ability to slow enemy engines or disable their shield systems. Additionally, combat can now move down into a planet's atmosphere and AI pirates can even attack your settlements - and if all that sounds a little intimidating, Hello Games has introduced a new Auto-Follow mode to improve combat accessibility.
Elsewhere, there's a brand-new class of ship in the form of the sleek, solar-powered, and rather unimaginatively named Solar Starship (plus the maximum number of ships players can store has now been increased to nine), and it's now possible to create squadrons, recruiting and upgrading AI wingmen, each with their own unique abilities, for assistance in battle. Oh, and all ships now have high-capacity (and expandable) cargo inventories for specialist goods.