Oolite Bulletins

You find version 1.70 (not 1.7!, in computer-speak this is not the same!) via the forum appropriate to your operating system, whether it is Mac, PC or Linux.

You simply open the thread that announces the availability of Oolite 1.70 and follow the download-link in Ahruman's initial post. Duh!

Here you will find version 1.70.

Install is indeed straightforward. You can either:
1) Uninstall previous version and install 1.70 in the same area. You don't have to worry about anything, your saves and OXPs are protected from the uninstall routines, at least on the Windows version (not sure about others).

2) Install 1.70 in a different folder. In this case you will have to copy your OXPs and saved games manually to the appropriate places. This option has the benefit of having more than one game versions installed, so if there is a problem you can always go back to your previous version.

the only thing to look out for is your key mappings. Mine aren't quite the same a default so I'd need to manually copy it over as well.

The problem comes if the newer version adds another feature with it's own new key...

2) Install 1.70 in a different folder. In this case you will have to copy your OXPs and saved games manually to the appropriate places. This option has the benefit of having more than one game versions installed, so if there is a problem you can always go back to your previous version.

On the mac I always used the updater. I duplicate the program and run the updater on the copy. This way I end with two versions in the same folder. (five versions by now). As 1.70 has still bugs it could be necessary under certain conditions to temporarily run an older one. (e.g. 1.69 crashed on a mac with trumbles on board and during that time I had to use the older version). So it is nice to have also one older version in place. The save files are inter-changable between versions. At least from versions of 1.55 and up.