DevUpdate & Patch 0.10.0.1 Notes

Hey everyone, time for another update and a major patch. As we mentionned a few months ago, we entered a relatively uneventful phase of development for Battlescape, focusing our efforts on polishing the experience, especially for new players.

We're happy to report that we've made significant progress on that front, with the first implementation of our custom internal scripting system which allowed us to build the first tutorials. Basic Flight, Basic Combat and Advanced Flight are now available in the Training menu (we got ride of the old & mostly outdated Youtube links, finally !). Each training mission ends with a trial, a small challenge for players to test their skills on (the flight tutorials have racing courses in an asteroid field, while the combat tutorial a small wave defense against some Interceptor drones). The pacing is relatively slow but each training mission sets up all the concepts needed to understand 6DOF space combat mechanics. We intend to add more tutorials in the coming months prior to the 1.0 release.

We're also happy to release a new ship in this patch: a Support-class frigate that can repair and rearm capital ships. Support ships are considered capital ships, slightly smaller than Destroyers but more industrial. Some of you may notice that we've recycled the Hauler, which was an NPC-only ship from a few years ago when the game had a factory/resource system. They're now player flyable. Supports have a very asymmetrical design: weak hull but very strong regenerative shields, making them hard to pick up by interceptors. They have light MK4 defenses, mostly on the upside, with an almost empty belly. Their movement lies between the Corvette and the Destroyer as you'd expect. They are equipped in standard with auto-aiming, manual-firing repair/rearm beams as nearby support (up to 3 km) and repair/rearm guided drones for long range. They can repair/rearm a capital ship, even a cruiser, to 100% in a minute or two, so they can be pretty powerful in the right hands to help the capital fleet survive longer.

This patch also includes a number of new weapons & upgrades. Worth mentionning, an Active Shield ability for the Interceptor allows players to recharge their shield to 100% instantly at will.. but the shield decays instead of recharging over time ! Needless to say, finding the right timing to use it will require experience, but may be powerful. Note that AI/bots can now spawn with randomized loadouts and also use those abilities (Stealth bots may surprise you out of nowhere occasionally !)

Speaking of AI, this patch introduces major AI changes in terms of Battle flow & Strategies. The AI commander should now be smarter and battles more balanced. Stategies involve being more or less agressive and adapting the reinforcement wave's composition to the dynamics of the battle. Pathfinding was improved especially around structures or asteroids, which should prevent some unfortunate.. accidents from our automated friends. There are still some known issues with the AI (especially related to Spinal cruiser's AI having difficulties aiming at long distance) which we'll try to address in the next patches.

Coming next, we'll be working on the Sandbox mode and various UI "quality of life" improvements such as Weapons management. We still have some content to add (new planet environments, weapons & upgrades) but this Summer we'll focus most of our efforts on the next big visual polish phase, including some new new special effects (atmospheric re-entry, warp jam..) and the missing tutorials. Stay tuned and as usual, do not hesitate to provide us with your feedback on the forums. Have fun,

-Flavien Brebion

• Added Basic Flight Training (basic controls & navigating around an asteroid field, using boost, tactical view, etc..)
  
• Added Basic Combat Training (targetting, weapon types, switching weapon groups, fighting drones, using missiles & chaffs and dogfighting in 5 waves of increasing difficulty)
  
• Added Advanced Flight Training (flying without flight assist)
  
• Removed old Youtube tutorial links
  
• More tutorials to come later this year (ex.: Warp Navigation, Starmap, Advanced Combat, Flying capital ships..)
  

• A small capital-ship class/Frigate Support ship that can repair/resupply bigger Capital ships (yes, even including the Carrier)
  
• Has limited Hitpoints (weak Hull) but has the stronger Shield Regeneration rate in the game, making it very hard to be damaged by Interceptors
  
• Has chaffs, but is weak to Torpedo's splash damage
  
• Asymmetrical Hardpoints design: all MK4 defense hardpoints are situated on its top, leaving the underside exposed
  
• Has medium mobility, between a Corvette and a Destroyer
  
• Doesn't have boost
  
• Has manual repair and rearm beams in standard. 3 Km range that can repair/rearm a capital ship in a few minutes. Can also almost instantly repair/rearm smaller ships as well, provided they're in this range. The beams are single target (unlike the passive Corvette's repair/resupply field aura)
  
• For long-range repair/rearm, uses guided drones that have mobility and range equivalent to those of a torpedo. Can repair 8K HP instantly as the drone hits the allied target
  

MK5 Trigun Turret:

• Fires a small burst of 3 shots in a conic shape dealing a good amount of damage
  
• Has a limited forward-facing 180 deg firing arc
  

MK6 Flakball:

• Fires 20 flak projectiles at once over a huge area (1+ km)
  
• Low firing rate (every 5 seconds)
  
• Its low precision makes it bad against isolated small ships, okay against a clump of ships in a small zone, and good against bigger targets like corvettes or destroyers
  
• Can also be used as a last resort solution to hit incoming torpedoes/mines
  
• Almost feels like a low-range brawling weapon against capital ships (ex.: Destroyer vs Destroyer)
  

Notes:

• Removed MK3 Repair and Rearm beams from the Corvette. Medic Corvette is no longer a standard loadout
  
• Added MK5 Repair and Rearm beams for the Support
  
• Added Repair and Rearm drones (they act like guided weapons, except they work on allies instead) for the Support
  
• Added the ability to repair weapons on static base defenses with the repair beam
  

Active Shield:

• Transforms the passive shield to a manual, active ability. Shield points decay over time by -20%/s but activating the ability instantly recharges the shield to 100%
  
• Ability's cooldown is 5s
  
• Energy cost: 60
  
• Designed to be a high skill, high reward upgrade, forcing you to pay attention to who's firing at you at every moment and requiring a lot of attention. In exchange you can recharge the shield very often
  
• Only available on the Interceptor and Bomber
  

CIWS Cooling:

• The cooling system on CIWS Turrets (Phalanx MK4) is upgraded which allows them to fire as a continous stream instead of bursts. The firing rate is reduced by -50% and the max range by -20%
  
• Note: the heat generated per projectile decreases significantly (-40%) however the fact that this weapon now fires continuously means that it still generates a huge amount of heat
  

Overflak:

• Doubles the splash radius of Flak canons and increases the range by 20%. The projectile speed is reduced by -20% and the ammo cost increases by 1
  

Spinal Cooldown:

• increases the fire rate of the Spinal canon at the cost of DPS and range, making it an anti-capital ship weapon instead of a long-range artillery weapon
  

Firewall:

• passive upgrade that prevents enemies from seeing your hull and shield status when targetting you. Mostly used in PvP
• does not really affect bots in any capacity
  

Analysis Computer:

• passive upgrade that allows to see enemy target stats when they're protected by a Firewall
  
• also gives extra info on allied ships (Energy and Ammo supply status)
  

• Rebalanced the cost of certain upgrades (credits) in relation to their required rank
  
• Tweaked credits & rank requirement for some advanced weapons
  
• Fixed (removed) credits penalty and warning when carrier squads accidentally cause griefing on other allied ships
  
• Reduced a bit the base frequency of apparition of nemesis
  
• All weapons now firing in a circular arc shape (previously it was in a square shape)
  
• Projectile hits on a sub-targetted hardpoint/weapon will now also damage the hull of the target-
  
• Powering off a ship now increases the damaged system's (ex.: Flight assist, Radar, Sensors, Engine..) self repair rate by +30%
  
• Improved precision of missile launch aiming system (instead of snapping the reticle on the target when there is no interception solution, an estimated firing solution is now computed, providing a better aim reticle)
  
• Battlescape generator now allows more land battles around sunsets
  

Repair Crew:

• Increased repair crew max repair cap to 33% of max HP (from 25%) so that it can repair higher than the propulsion damage debuff (set to -25% thrust below 30% of max HP)
  

Plasma cutter:

• Increased firing precision (spread reduced by -33%)
  

Decoy missile launcher:

• Decoy missile launchers are now available on the bomber
  
• The decoy missile now has the lifetime of a real torpedo (60s up from 10s)
  
• The decoy missile now has less HP (75 HP down from 150 HP)
  
• The decoy missile now has the emission range of a torpedo (25 km up from 10 km)
  
• The decoy missile now deals a bit of damage (50) when hitting a target (from 1)
  
• There are now 8 decoy missiles per launcher (up from 5)
  

Our goal here was to make the decoy missiles a soak up a little bit of damage from AMS defenses, giving a higher chance for torpedoes to hit their targets

MK4 Flak Turret:

Flaks were reworked to deal more reliable damage and not just act as an area detractor

• Flaks now fire at a slower rate (2/s instead of 5/s) but with twice the amount of projectiles before the cooldown starts
  
• This means that instead of firing a whole bunch of flaks in quick succession, the flak turret now spreads firing flaks over a longer period of time
  
• Increased turret rotation speed to 80°/s (from 40°/s) to more easily track quick nearby targets
  
• Increased firing precision (spread reduced by almost -50%)
  
• Increased ammo capacity to 1500 (from 1000)
  
• Slightly reduced damage per projectile (kinetics by -20% and energy by -25%)
  
• Increased splash radius to 200m (from 150m)
  
• Decreased heat generation when firing by -50%
  
• Introduced a minimum detonation range of 1.5 km. Flak projectiles cannot detonate at a lower range for safety reasons. Direct-hit damage is still dealt at a 50% rate. This was meant to introduce a short-range weakness to the weapon
  

MK4 Railgun Turret:

The railgun turret was rebalanced to deal more damage per projectile, but at a lower firing rate, resulting in the same overall DPS. Projectiles are faster and precision was increased, making it easier to reach longer-range targets

• Reduced firing rate by -50% and burst count from 4 to 3
  
• Firing cooldown increased to 2.25s (from 0.85s)
  
• Kinetic damage increased to 16 (from 6) and energy damage to 3 (from 1)
  
• Increased firing precision (spread reduced by -33%)
  
• Increased projectile speed to 3 km/s (from 2.5 km/s) and reduced projectile lifetime to 2.67s (from 3.20s). As a result, the range remains unchanged (8 km)
  
• Decreased heat generation when firing by -33%
  
• Decreased max ammo capacity to 2000 (from 2500) and increased ammo cost to 3 (from 2). Slightly reduced energy cost to 4 (from 5). Due to the lower firing rate and increased cooldown, this nerf still results in being able to use this weapon almost twice longer before it runs out of ammo
  

MK4 Phalanx Turret:

• Slightly nerfed kinetic damage per projectile to 8 (from 10) while increasing burst count to 10 (from 8), resulting in a similar DPS
  
• Slightly increased firing precision (spread reduced by -25%)
  
• Increased max ammo capacity to 3000 (from 2000), allowing the Phalanx to fire for a longer time before depleting ammo
  

MK5 Gun Turret:

• Reduced heat generation when firing by -33%
  

Missile Retargetting:

• The missile retargetting upgrade now also applies to torpedoes and SSM battery (note: despite the description saying so, this upgrade didn't apply to torpedoes before..)
  
• Fixed guided weapons that keep their spinning momentum after losing their target, causing random re-acquisitions of new targets with the smart retargetting upgrade
  

Defense towers on bases:

• reduced MK7 defense towers DPS to match those of normal MK7s
  
• new MK9 Space canons replace the small defense platforms floating away from space stations. They now act as long-range artillery against space fleets composed of spinal cruisers, up to 150 Km range. They have similar stats to their ground equivalents (MK10 Orbital canons)
  

MK7 Heracles:

• Reduced firing arc from 50° to 40°
  
• Reduced kinetic damage by -33% and energy damage by -6%
  

MK7 Thunderbolt:

• Reduced firing arc from 50° to 40°
  
• Reduced kinetic damage by -50% and energy damage by -36%
  

Both Heracles & Thunderbolt were far more powerful than the MK7 Titan canons. The limited firing arc was supposed to be the main tradeoff, but in practise doesn't seem to be that limiting. So here we're nerfing the damage and add a bit more constraint on the firing arc.
Those canons should still feel good alternatives compared to Titans, without being a must anymore.

• New main menu entries for Challenges, Workship or Join a game (currently placeholders)
  
• Added a slider for HUD color saturation in the general settings (Note: will default to 50%, so new players won't get an over-saturated HUD)
  
• Exiting or pressing escape on the options menu now resets the settings to their previous state (like the cancel button does)
  
• Ships displayed in the deploy panel or in the loadout screen now get sorted by ascending SP
  
• Player's XP info is now displayed as a progression percentage instead of the flat number (those numbers still appear in the tooltip though)
  
• Changes to loadouts are now automatically saved on disk for custom loadouts. The undo system now works from the previous checkpoint in memory (which can be updated with the save icon in the loadout management panel)
  
• Updated the notification/popup panel (match start/end, battle start/end, ranking up etc..). It now displays in game menus as well
  
• A "!NEW!" notification is displayed in the loadout panel for newly available weapons/upgrades after ranking up
  
• Transmissions now wait until the audio voice has finished speaking if the audio was longer than the text.. (might be useful for localization in other languages)
  
• Added a new icon for manual-fire auto-aim weapons in the loadout/weapons MFD
  
• Removed opaque black panel backgrounds in options menu
  
• Added fallback to other fonts when a glyph does not exist in a specific font
  
• Repair/rearm impacts no longer cause the reddening of the screen sides as if taking damage
  
• When selecting a hardpoint, the HUD's target info now displays "destroyed" when that hardpoint is under non-repairable cooldown, and "damaged" later when it can be repaired
  
• Fixed display units for rearm beam/drone in weapons info details panel (was showing "DPS" when they're not dealing damage, but repairing/rearming..)
  
• Weapons with a large cooldown between shots now show their actual hit damage, instead of the DPS, on the ship loadout weapons info panel
  
• Visual improvements to the objectives MFD (checkbox, color pulsation, target icons)
  
• Added more zoom levels to the tactical view
  
• Added randomization of splash screens when loading a game
  
• Waypoints now blink when they're obstructed
  
• Supply ships can now see an indicator under the nearest ally with low supply
  

• Cleaned up the display names of keybindings (they will be more explicit, and better match the actual symbol on the keyboard)
  
• The selection cursor is now visible on screen center at all times when using head tracking
  
• Revamped nearby threat ('G' key) prioritization, should now behave much better and more often target enemies closer to you in your class range
  
• Fixed an auto-turn bug in the capships control scheme that made the ship continue rotating in the wrong direction after manually overriding its orientation
  
• Fixed capital ship automatic alignment mode not working when rotation assist is turned off
  
• Fixed a small bug that prevented allied support ships to be selected via the "nearest support" key when they were further than 30 km away
  

• Tweaked carrier spawn position in docking bay to avoid collisions with station when spawning
  
• Fixed stereo sound imbalance on x4 firing weapons sounds on small ship configurations
  
• Fixed a bug that caused out-of-ammo hybrid weapons to drain energy very quickly when firing, despite not generating a shot
  
• Fixed weapons overcharge mode not affecting the burst cooldown between salvos of multiple shots (this will affect the most weapons that fire a lot of shots at once with long cooldowns, such as the shredder, flaks, mk6/mk7+ etc.. )
  
• Fixed a rare client crash that can occur when a planet gets destroyed right after being created, causing a memory corruption leak in the atmosphere rendering pipe
  
• Fixed a client crash happening when a carrier loadout references a ship loadout file that doesn't exist anymore
  
• Fixed a turret targetting bug that prioritized the out-of-view primary selected target over secondary in-view target candidates
  
• Fixed flooding of log files with warning notifications from server
  
• Fixed a bug that caused the background scene to not be properly displayed on the main menu after an error popup has occured
  
• Client no longer crashes when trying to spawn with an actor that has no hardpoint, engine or propulsion component..
  
• Fixed a bug that caused the "undo" icon to be available on an old, custom loadout despite doing no change to it
  
• Fixed warp jam effect position not properly centered around warp interdiction towers on bases
  
• Fixed a bug that didn't apply some changed graphics settings until the next restart
  
• Fixed warp jam crash & jam duration incorrectly applied
  
• Fixed a bug that prevented manual firing on manual-firing, auto-aiming turrets on the corvette when there is no selected target
  
• Fixed a bug that prevented critical ship systems to get repaired over time when they're being repaired/resupplied by a beam or a drone
  
• Fixed a couple of small tooltips bugs
  
• Fixed "out of ammo" alert sometimes incorrectly popping up when firing missiles
  
• Fixed a bug that prevented the main menu from showing up after you changed a graphics option and had the "this operation requires a restart" dialog popped up
  
• Potential fix for a bug that caused the camera cockpit view mode to be stuck enabled after alt-tabbing while joining a game
  

• Fixed chaffs sometimes being fired by AI right after it gets spawned (this was particularly noticeable when deploying AI carrier squads)
  
• AIs now have a chance to get a randomized loadout and abilities (including active shields or stealth) when they spawn
  
• Massive improvements to 3D pathfinding of AI bots around base structures or asteroids
  
• Bots now have new tactics (ex.: Bombing Run for bombers or Spinal cruisers)
  
• Space Assault was revamped: the assault fleet is now further away (120-150 Km range), forcing the defenders to go on a counter outside the safety of station shields all while defending the station structures from small ships. This change should make space battles feel more dynamic,
  with both sides switching from attack to defense depending on the progression of the battle
  
• Improved AI commander's Battle strategies in Assault mode, which should bring more stability in the balance of battles
  
• Improved reinforcements waves during battles: the AI commander will now try to adapt the fleet composition dynamically to match the chosen strategy's
  

• Implemented new shield mesh "enveloppe" effect around capital ships (previously, the shield impacts used a flat cross-quad particle effect, which looked bad when it was too big)
  
• Fixed slight blurriness in UI shader. Text should be a bit sharper than before
  
• Added lateral inertia camera movements to cockpit view (+ sliders in the graphics settings)
  
• Added cockpit stress (shaking) when speeding in normal flight
  
• Improvements to visibility/size of space dust effect, to have a better sense of flying speed
  
• Visual improvements to the tactical view (new shader "holographic" effect, background less dark etc..)
  
• Smog (battle smoke) effect tweaks (density, culling, lighting..)
  

• Increased lights intensities for bigger weapon projectiles and muzzle effects
  
• Reduced a little bit the visual size of the projectiles for the biggest weapons (MK6, MK7s & variants)
  
• Reduced opacity of bubble shields around bases by -80%
  
• Reduced opacity of spawn markers holograms by -75%
  
• Base "bubble" shields are now powered off by default until a battle starts around them
  
• Scaled repair/rearm beam's impact effects to avoid blinding the player under a flood of visual effects
  

• Replaced repair beam sound fx (new welding sound)
  
• Added sound effects when clicking buttons or tabs in the UI
  
• Improved ship's ambient sounds (side thrusters, idle ambiance, speeding)
  
• Added or replaced many Weapons sound effects (machine guns, shredder, halcyon, many turrets, mine explosion..)
  

• Optimized Carrier collisions
  
• Exceptions occuring while loading an XML config file are now better reported and show the error's location
  
• Improved error messages presented to the user in case of network or authentication issues
  
• Added a /EditPath mode for recording cinematic cameras when editing a mission script