Infinity: Battlescape News

In this patch we're introducing the first version of the offline Sandbox mode. It allows players to configure a single battle, a series of battles or an entire match (assuming you'd want to spend an entire day to play it) and select a battlescape environment (small, medium and large).

The match is hosted on your local server, and in time we are hoping to extend it to local coop or dedicated hosting. By changing options it is possible, for example, to play a single battle in a large environment (randomizing where the battle takes place), and that battle will take place around a space station on defense. It is also possible to play around with the various ship classes that the AI is allowed to spawn during these battle(s). More options as well as gameplay modifiers (ex.: all enemies are elites, all weapons are unlocked from start, etc..) will come in a future iteration.

We're also doing a lot of tweaks to the Support ship's gameplay & balance. We're introducing the concept of Resource crates, which the Support ship must collect on a regular basis to replenish its Resource points, which are consumed by the repair/rearm lasers. Picking up resource crates also replenishes a certain amount of repair/rearm drones, which come in a more limited amount than before. Their effect is now applied over time instead of being instant. We also reduced the Support ship's shield generation rate and amount of countermeasures (chaffs) to make it weaker to enemy small ships.

We are hoping that those changes will make the Support's gameplay more dynamic and less abusable than before, while preserving all its potential for saving friendly capital ships in battles.

An EMP torpedo has been added to the game and we've revamped all the warp effects (charging, field and exit) and got rid of the previous "tunnel" effect.

In the next major patch (ETA: winter holiday) we are planning to introduce the weapons loadout/groups management screen, iterate on the sandbox mode (more options and gameplay tweaks) and focus on our next visual polish pass. This will include decals, new planet environments, an update to the gas giant's visuals and some more UI polish, before focusing next year on our 1.0 release.

-Flavien Brebion

• The sandbox mode is now availabe to play from the main root menu
  
• Note 1: The sandbox mode runs a server locally which may affect performance, especially in massive battles
  
• 3 game modes are available: single battle, multi battles and full match
  
• single battle is pretty straightforward: you play a single battle, and whoever wins the battle (offense or defense) wins the 'match'
  
• multi battles plays a maximum of 3 battles, switching between offense and defense. Each battle is worth one victory point. The first team to 3 VP wins the match. It is a limited part of the full assault mode
  
• full match plays the full assault loop over an entire battlescape, from 8 to 32 battles
  
• the environment can be selected, from small (8 bases) to medium (16 bases) to large (32 bases). The selected game mode will play a randomized subset of all potential bases
  
• it is possible to enter a "seed" number for the generated battlescape. The same seed will generate the same battlescape (planets, moons and bases) every time. If you encounter any bug/issue related to the battlescape or bases layout you can communicate the seed to us to help us debug it
  
• various options are available: selecting the faction/team, the starting side (offense vs defense), the type of battles (space and/or land bases), and which ship classes the AI can spawn during the battles
  
• Note 2: trying to play a battle with Carriers only, or Support ships only, may not work as intended. Carriers are by design limited in amount by the AI, and Support ships do not have their AI implemented yet, so will not spawn
  
• Note 3: while it is possible to try playing a massive battle with Interceptors only, the local server's load may result in unpredictable performance. Disabling certain ship classes may result in some battles being unbalanced, or difficult to complete objectives (but, well, that's kind of the purpose of a sandbox mode, to play with various things, I suppose.. but just be warned..)
  
• we have plans to add more options and gameplay "modifiers" to the sandbox in the next iteration
  

Our feedback and internal tests clearly show that the Support ship, which we introduced right before summer, was easily abusable (infinite repairs/resupplies, or Supports repairing each others..). Its gameplay was also very passive, following the capital ships fleet. In this patch we're trying to make its gameplay more dynamic and require more effort from the Support player.

The Support ships now carry a limited amount of "Resource points" (displayed on the bottom-left central part of the HUD, right below countermeasures) which the repair/rearm lasers consume over time. The amount of repair/rearm drones was also drastically limited. All of those can be replenished by collecting "Resource crates" from the battlefield. Those crates spawn from destroyed capital ships (allies or enemies). This will force the Support ship to move away from the fleet and introduce some danger from times to times.

• Added resource points (used to repair/rearm targets). They can be replenished via dropped resource creates from destroyed capital ships during battles (or on an allied base's docking bay as usual)
  
• Resource crates are automatically collected by the Support ship on nearby (< 1Km) range like a tractor beam
  
• Repair/rearm drones now apply their effects over a duration of 15s (instead of instantly before)
  
• The "select nearest support" key (default: alt+H or menu entry in the Targetting radial menu) can now also select the nearest resource crate if flying on the Support ship
  
• Increased acceleration and speed of repair/rearm drones so that they can reach a far-away target a bit faster
  
• Decreased Support ship's shield regen rate by -25%
  
• Decreased Support ship's chaffs to 5 (from 25)
  
• Decreased Support ship's drone reserve to 8 (from 15), but increased the firing rate to 10s (from 30s)
  

• Warping-out speed is now capped to combat speed cap (ships will no longer retain their warp-entry speeds at exit). The target speed is set to the minimum warp entry's speed
  
• Added EMP torpedo launcher on the bomber and on the cruiser. EMP torpedoes deal 50% more damage compared to normal torpedoes, but their damage is pure energy and will only affect the target's shield
  
• It is no longer possible to fire a missile/torpedo on a friendly target with safety lock enabled (same for repair/rearm drones on enemies)
  
• Decoy missiles now have a reduced firing rate (1 decoy per 10s instead of 2s), generate less heat, and have a max lock distance reduced to 25 km (from 50 km)
  

• Ships that have a resupply ability can now see any friendly target's ammo ratio on their HUD target info by default
  
• Leaderboard panel now defaults to "Match Only" instead of showing "All" players
  
• Fixed hangar MFD being available on ships without a hangar and defaulting weapons groups to hangar mode
  
• Added an error notification message when trying to select an invalid squad group in hangar mode
  
• Switching audio devices now gets instantly applied (previously, you had to press the "apply" button to hear the change)
  
• HUD "Blood" effect on screen sides no longer shows up when HUD is turned off (F3)
  

• Fixed a bug that allowed a Support ship player to target itself through the tactical map, to launch a drone to repair/resupply itself
  
• Fixed a bug that prevented the Support ship's MFD layouts from being loaded from/saved to/reset in the general options menu
  
• Fixed a rare multithreading crash bug when switching audio devices
  

• Added new warp charge, field and exit effects. Removed the old purple "tunnel" warp effect
  
• Added extra log file errors when failing to open or create a local DB when launching the tutorials
  

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
  

Greetings everyone. In this update (most likely the last one of the year) we're bringing you the next iteration and improvements to the carrier gameplay. The behavior of the squads under orders was changed to be more reactive and consistent (for example, ships in escort mode shouldn't fly dozens of Km away from the carrier anymore).

We revamped ramming damage as well as griefing which were often a source of frustration for new players. We started some preparations for our future modding support plan and replaced old placeholder weapons meshes with new, unique ones. A quality-of-life pass was applied to the UI, including a speaker icon for voice chat or an automatic radar/tactical view zoom-out at high velocities.

Starting from january we will focus our efforts on the major remaining missing features such as tutorials, the single-player sandbox mode or the private/dedicated servers hosting. These may take a few months of development (probably at least until Q2 2024) during which regular patches will be lightweight (bug or balance fixes, but no new major feature). After that we'll start our final polish pass and prepare marketing for our 1.0 launch around (estimated) Autumn 2024.

Happy winter holidays,

-Flavien Brebion

• Carrier ship points (SP) cost now has a base cost with an empty hangar (1800 SP), and a cost per hangar's carry point (CP) (+15 SP/CP). An empty or default (unupgraded hangar) carrier now costs less SP to deploy (previously the cost was set to a fixed 2500 SP)
  
• Rebalanced AI budget reinforcement waves during battles to better take into account carrier hangar costs and to be more stable (the value no longer fluctuates based on deployed/undeployed ships)
  
• Fixed some carrier hangar loadout changes lost when switching menus
  
• Carrier squad rewards (xp, credits & damage stats from kills/assists) reduced to 25% for the carrier owner (previously, the carrier owner received full rewards for its squad kills/assists)
  
• Carrier orders should now be more reactive to squads when changing targets
  
• Carrier squads now retreat (warp out) after about 30s once the carrier has died/undeployed. This addresses the problem of players deploying their ships, then undeploying the carrier, and repeating the operation to spawn an infinite amount of ships
  
• Carrier squads in escort mode should now be less agressive and stay within a 10 Km defensive range of the carrier (or of the protected ship)
  
• Carrier squads on orders to attack a target (ship or base structure) that gets destroyed should now return to the carrier instead of switching to search & destroy
  
• Corvettes in carrier squads should now prioritize repairing/rearming ships in their squads, and then ships in other squads, over "foreign" ships not belonging to the carrier at all
  
• More tweaks to obstacle avoidance AI, as capships like the carrier sometimes had a massive (30 km+) avoidance range causing allied fleets to fall apart
  
• Carriers can no longer replenish their lost hangar ships at the base under attack during a battle (they can still replenish their ships at another allied base though)
  
• Removed 8 MK4 turrets from carrier hardpoint layouts (now that the carrier can manage squads, we want it to be more vulnerable to small enemy ship assaults and to use its squads more actively to protect itself)
  

• Revamped collision/ramming damage to punish more severly the rammer. Damage is now capped, so a smaller ship at insane ram speeds (many km/s) cannot destroy a bigger ship anymore (ex.: destroyer vs cruiser)
  
• Fixed a bug with collision damage that was incorrectly calculated for a warping rammer, due to warp interruption cancelling out the contact speed before damage was calculated
  

A minority of players sometime do griefing for fun. We obviously want to discourage this behavior, so we're increasing the penatly for the griefer while refunding his victim

• Griefing now refunds ship points (SP) to the dead player
  
• The griefing count no longer fully resets after a match restarts (previously, griefing was forgotten after every match, it will now stay persistent accross matches, but decrease slowly over time)
  (As a reminder: after a grief count of 3, a player gets auto-kicked from the match, then auto-banned if he continues griefing)
  
• Added a more explicit griefing automatic warning notification
  

We do not have any plans to support modding before our 1.0 release, however in this update we made some preparations for future modding (mostly code architecture changes). We've added support for a C# .NetCore plugin system as well as a C# SDK. In the future we plan on supporting config files (XML) modding, assets modding (through our engine editor/cooker) and audio modding (already partially supported with FMOD).

Both the client and the server can be modded and we'd like the mod system to automatically download missing client mods when connecting to a modded server. This is a lot of work so keep in mind that the extent of our modding support will largely depend on the success and popularity of the game after our 1.0 launch.

• Fixed warp-in AI bots slowdown failing in atmosphere of gas giant, causing capital ships to fall to their death shortly after being spawned
  

• Added a dedicated UI sound effects volume slider (this can be useful when recording a video)
  
• Leaderboard now displays the ship class icon for every player (if spawned)
  
• Fixed death/skull icon being displayed for the player on the starmap despite being well alive
  
• Tactical screen and radars now automatically zoom out in warp or at high speeds (> 1 km/s)
  
• Added a speaker icon to VOIP (squad menu and squad MFD)
  
• Player VOIP chat volume is now independent of global volume (if global volume is set to zero and voice chat isn't, you can still hear people talking in squads)
  
• Cleaned squad MFD (removed player role and rank icons)
  
• Replaced all isometric ship class icons in menus with top-down ones (more coherent and easier for new players to recognize the ship's shapes?)
  
• Fixed "ammo" instead of "energy" warning flashing on active low-energy weapons stats on HUD
  
• Minor fixes to default MFD layouts for some ships
  
• Added a credits page (Note: backers list is a huuuge vertical flat list and needs to be adapted to multiple columns at some point)
  

• Fixed server shutdown notification popup not showing up
  
• Added proper unique meshes and materials for all weapons in game
  
• Removed launchers placeholders
  
• Added skin-specific paint colors to weapons materials
  
• Russian localization update thanks to whirsil
  

The carrier gameplay patch is now available! The carrier needed some love for a long time and was usually considered the most boring ship to fly in game (it had the lowest mobility due to being a mobile fortress, so its gameplay was more situational). We're introducing AI squads management to its gameplay like in a simplified RTS game. We wanted to stay away from too much micromanagement so you cannot assign orders to individual ships, only to squads as a whole.

Orders include attacking, escorting, search & destroy and of course (un)deployment and are available in the new orders radial menu (default key: O). A hangar MFD was added to the HUD when flying the carrier, showing the state of ships in every squad. In hangar mode, the 1-9 keys can be used to individually (de)select active squads, while F5 allows to switch the interactive MFD (loadout or hangar). Alternatively, it is possible to switch between MFD modes in the weapons radial menu too (default: RMB).



Also note that a spectator mode is available through the orders radial menu. This allows to quickly observe the battle from a squad's ship's perspective. On escort/protection orders, the AI flies into simplified conic-shaped formations until an enemy enters its attack range. Search & destroy allows ships to select a target individually. Squad ships will always prioritize defending themselves when attacked and may ignore the assigned order temporarily. The only exception to this rule is the emergency docking mode, which forces all squads to come back to the carrier and undeploy as quickly as possible.

The carrier update also comes with a bunch of new upgrades, most of which are dedicated to the carrier gameplay (see the list in the patch notes).

As AI behavior is becoming pretty complex, we have no doubt there will be bugs and strange occasional behaviors. Do not hesitate to report them on the forums so that we can investigate the conditions in which they happen.

While the focus of this patch was the carrier gameplay, it also includes an upgrade to the Interceptor asset (texture optimizations and new skins). As we're entering the last quarter of the year, we're entering the final development phase before our full release. We still have a lot of work to do but in terms of gameplay, the carrier was the last major feature that was remaining to be implemented. We now consider the game to be more or less gameplay feature complete and will start to focus on to polishing the experience, introducing tutorials/training, cosmetic content and the offline sandbox mode.

-Flavien Brebion

• Introduced the concept of Carry Points (CP) in the carrier hangar. The default budget is 30 CP
  
• In the ship loadout menu, added a hangar management tab to the ship panel
  
• In this hangar management tab, you can see the current amount of CP used by all ships in the hangar, and the max amount
  
• Use appropriate buttons to create new squads or delete existing ones. A new squad is initially empty. Click the "add ships" button to open the ships loadout selection panel. Only standard ship loadouts (not user-customized ones) are available
  
• Each loadout has a different cost (typically: 1 CP for interceptors, 3 CP for bombers and 5 CP for corvettes). Select the loadouts you're interested in to add them to the selected squad
  
• In the squad panel, it is also possible to click the up/down icons to add or remove ships of the same loadout, without having to open the loadout panel manually every time
  
• Note that default loadouts names are displayed in green
  
• There is a limit of up to 4 carriers in play per faction, so not all players may be able to fly one at any time
  
• Each squad can have up to 6 ships, and there may be up to 9 squads in the hangar. While this may allow up to 54 ship slots, keep in mind that you'll be limited by the max CP budget sooner
  
• Some upgrades may increase or decrease the CP budget
  
• A new hangar MFD is available on the carrier HUD. Each line shows one squad, starting with its ID number (corresponding to the selection key 1-9) and the current order's target name. Then comes the status for each of the 6 ships slots (the ship icon shows the ship type, the coloring the health status. A red cross is displayed
  if the ship has been destroyed. Finally, on the right side of the line, an icon shows the order type
  
• When the hangar MFD is interactive (use F5 to switch between the hangar MFD and the loadout MFD), the 1-9 number keys can be used to individually (de)select squads
  
• Press O to open the orders radial menu. One or many squads must have been selected. Then select one of the orders to assign to the squad(s). Some order types (attack, protect) will use the current carrier's target to assign as the squad's
  
• Alternatively, it is possible to use the loadout radial menu insteead of using F5 and O. A new entry is available in the loadout radial menu, to toggle the MFD modes. The orders radial menu will contextually open instead of the loadout's if the hangar MFD is selected
  
• It is not possible to (un)deploy squads while in warp
  
• It is possible to replace destroyed ships while repairing the carrier in an allied base's docking bay (this is also partially possible in game via the salvage upgrade)
  
• Docked ships that are damaged but not destroyed will repair automatically over time
  
• Squad's ships that are under escort/protection orders will fly in conic shape formation next to their allied target
  
• Damage kills, assist and stats from a squad ship gets credited to the carrier owner
  
• While this is currently not implemented yet, we have plans to make squads, orders and targets selection available through contextual menus in the tactical screen in the future
  

• Fixed AI ships occasionally firing random shots on allies they're escorting (ex.: corvettes on ships they're trying to repair)
  
• Bomber AI from carrier squads are more agressive than normal bomber bots
  

• The ship points distribution curve is now inverse exponential instead of being linear
  
• Our design goal here was to make it faster to accumulate SP if you're low on SP and want to reach the more expensive ships more quickly, but also to help new players struggling with burning their SP on small ships too frequently
  
• Under the old distribution model, players received a constant +30 SP every minute
  
• Under the new distribution model, players receive a variable amount of SP every minute. This amount is high (up to +60 SP) when the total amount of SP assets is low. This amount is about identical to the old number (+30 SP) when the total SP is around the 1000. This amount goes lower than 30
  the higher you go. The minimum amount of SP received is 10.
  
• Under the new model, it takes as much time as before to reach a carrier's cost (2500 SP) from scratch (about 84 mins). It is slightly faster to reach a cruiser's. It is 10 minutes faster to replenish a destroyer's (20 mins instead of 30 mins). It is a few minutes faster for the smaller ships.
  
• One key difference is that the new model uses the total amount of SP assets owned, which is the sum of the SP account and the SP value of the currently flown ship. This should make it impossible to abuse the system by refunding the ship after profiting from a low SP account to earn SP at a faster rate
  

• New upgrade: Detonate (all ships): provides an active ability to instantly detonate all activated MTBs (missiles, torpedoes, bombs, mines) currently in flight.
  
• New upgrade: Launch tubes (carrier): doubles the rate at which ships get deployed, by using the launch tubes system at the sides of the carrier instead of the main hangar. The repair crew and heavy repair field's effectiveness (optionally used) are reduced by 10%
  
• New uptrade: Repair rate (carrier): doubles the repair rate of damaged ships docked in your hangar. Does not replenish destroyed ships (you need to fly back to an allied space station's docks for that). The repair crew and heavy repair field's effectiveness (optionally used) are reduced by 10%
  
• New upgrade: Hangar capacity (carrier): increases by 50% your hangar carry points (CP) capacity. The repair crew and heavy repair field's effectiveness (optionally used) are reduced by 25%
  
• New upgrade: Veteran pilots (carrier): increases the military rank from AI ship squads deployed by the carrier. They originally range from level 1 (RCT) to 10 (MPO) and are deployed with a random rank in that range. This upgrade increases the minimum range to 5 (PO3), making the AI more experienced and agressive
  
• New upgrade: Salvage parts (carrier): recycles 3 wrecked ships of the same class from your hangar into one brand new ship, once per minute. The recycled ship has half hitpoints. The remaining wrecks become unsalvagable. Due to storing extra salvage parts, your hangar capacity is reduced by 15%
  
• Note: all new carrier upgrades require a fairly high military rank (13+)
  

• Fixed abilities that do not consume any type of ammo
  
• Fixed a rare client crash related to projectiles multithreading
  
• Fixed a rare client crash bug that happened when a missile would lose its target the same time it got destroyed
  

• Tweaked the HUD's central information (speed bar, status, target info) max separation to the left/right so that it can't overlap with center left and center right MFD
  
• Fixed a bug which caused damaged guided weapons (missiles/torps/mines) to be displayed with the "damaged" status below their HUD indicator. This now only applies to ships
  

• Updated interceptor asset: optimized UV coordinates and improved the texture/material. It should react better under various lighting conditions, and look less clean than before
  
• 7 interceptor skins are now experimentally available (use "/SetSkin SkinName" in the chat box with SkinName being one of the following: InterceptorScoria, InterceptorHavoc, InterceptorFire, InterceptorBee, InterceptorGold, InterceptorIndustrial or InterceptorMilitary
  
• Added 2 new external camera views (F2) to the interceptor
  
• Reduced volume of rotating turret loop sfx
  

Saturday's event will start off with a review of our latest patch notes, with Flavien Brebion.
We'll be hosting an official Live-Stream, links will be posted prior to the event.

We'll follow up our development commentary with some community gameplay. PvP if you'd like, or co-ordinate with others for some team PvE. USEast server this Saturday, at 19:00 UTC

Join us for some PvP and PvE gameplay, squad up or go solo, fleet up with capital ships or dogfight with your favorite fighter loadout.



In addition to acting as forward spawn points, and directly supporting small ships, Carriers will now have the option to deploy their own AI Squadrons.
We've built a new Hangar customization screen in the Loadouts menu, and have added a new VMFD to help keep track of your new squadrons when deployed.

Full release notes will be posted later this week, stay tuned!

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Join the Discord for Fleet Comms, or use the in-Squad comms to co-ordinate.
Discord Invite Link - https://discord.gg/wTeDTaK

See you in game!