Infinity: Battlescape News

This patch is the first iteration for the new HUD. It mostly focuses on small ships; while it also works for capital ships, it still needs multiple tweaks and improvements that will come in future iterations.

Also note that the targetting system (and the target indicators) and the planetary indicators will be revamped in the next iteration. The patch also introduces HUD color themes (you can change them in the general options menu) and adds support for Russial localization.






HUD changes are too numerous to list, but here are the main changes:

• The default color theme is now green (but you can also set it to blue or orange in the general options menu)
  
• The speed and energy bars have been redesigned and moved to the left side of the screen
  
• The right side of the screen is now reserved for the selected target's information. The information panel on the top-right corner of the screen has been removed. It'll be re-introduced later as a special target MFD
  
• The bottom-left center part of the screen now displays counter-measures (CM) and the overcharge mode (None, Engine, Weapons, Shields)
  
• The bottom center part of the screen is now showing your ship's armor and shield points are a percentage
  
• The bottom-right center part of the screen is displaying the heat percentage and the currently selected weapon and its ammo count
  
• A circle and locking status information is now displayed at the center of the screen when selected a missile / torpedo launcher (note: disabled for capital ships)
  

• Improved per-turret targetting selection: now takes into account distance, tries to minimize rotation angle, prioritizes the selected target and/or the incoming missile threat (for AMS)
  
• Increased hitpoints for most turrets (MK4 to MK7) as they got destroyed too quickly in big battles
  
• It is now possible to fire missiles even in heat overflow mode
  

• Fixed client crash bug when selecting a target far away with a missile launcher
  
• AMS / lasers no longer fire after engaging warp
  

• Increased width of system menu (to better fit longer localized strings)
  

This patch mainly aims at laying down the foundation to revamping the weapons groups / management system and introduces a number of important changes. On small ships (up to Corvette, included) weapons are now exclusive (you can only select one weapon group active at a time). On capital ships, it is possible to toggle automatic vs manual firing and aiming. The locking system for missiles / torpedoes has been updated to be less constraining (locks are acquired instantly so that you can fire as soon as you select a target). Finally, we updated the radial menus and assigned a new weapons selection contextual menu to the right mouse button (for keyboard profiles). The goal of all these changes is to prepare for the upcoming HUD update.

• Weapon groups are now exclusive on small ships: for ex. selecting blasters will unselect guns
  
• Weapon groups on capital ships can now cycle between disabled, automatic and manual firing
  
• Revamped missile locking system and alerts. To fire a missile, just select the missile's weapon group and press fire. Locking is instant as long as the conditions are met (enough ammo, in range, not on cooldown etc..). The angle restriction has been rempoved
  
• Revamped HUD weapons list (now showing group ids, name and ammo as a bar)
  
• Reduced amount of heat generated by laser AMS by half
  
• Most weapons groups are now active by default on capital ships (default configuration: automatic)
  
• Cleaned up corvette groups: there's now only one group for kinetic guns and one for blasters
  
• Changed ordering of some groups on destroyer to go in increasing power
  

• Revamped keyboard input profile for weapon groups hotkeys (1-9 activates the matching weapon group, instead of ctrl 1-9). Note: ctrl 1-9 is now used to set the throttle.
  
• Chaffs have been moved to the middle mouse button instead of left-alt (for keyboard profiles)
  
• Removed "Secondary fire" and "Missile fire" input event
  
• Revamped radial menus: introduced the Flight mode menu (default: hold X on keyboard, which is the ex key for weapons)
  
• Cleaned up other radial menus and reduced their content so that they fit into 10 slots
  
• Moved the weapons radial menu to the right mouse button (for keyboard profiles)
  
• Radial menus now resize dynamically according to the amount of slots they contain (ex.: a 4 slots radial menu will look smaller than a 12-slots)
  
• Added an optional event to cycle through active weapon groups ( "CycleWeapons" ). Currently left unassigned by default
  

• Fixed music volume slider in audio options that required a game restart to take effect (it can now be changed on the fly)
  
• Fixed camera free-look not working when spectating / in kill-cam of a capital ship
  
• Fixed missiles/torpedoes still locking and tracking a target even when satefy lock is off
  

• Increased a bit AI probability to fire missiles/torpedoes
  
• Revamped AI to actively manage weapon groups in a smarter way. The AI now takes into account more parameters, such as heat (for ex. interceptors switch to blasters when kinetics are overheating), ammo depleted, damaged weapons, etc..
  They try to switch to the weapons with the best DPS according to their target.
  

In this image you can see the weapons group HUD update. For each weapon group, from left to right:

• Weapon group ID ( matching the number hotkey )
  
• Number of usable weapons ( not damaged, having ammo, not under cooldown ) over the total number of weapons in that group
  
• Name of the weapons in that group
  
• Brackets+asterisk if the weapons are automatic
  
• A bar showing the average amount of ammo for weapons in that group. Note that energy weapons ( blasters ) share their ammo together ( so the bars will be synced ). Kinetics use per-hardpoint ammo, so it's technically possible that some hardpoints have exhausted their ammo while others still have some ammo. The bar represents the average. The orange portion represents the ammo already exhausted. When the whole bar is orange, none of the weapons in the group have any ammo left.
  

It’s been quite a hectic few months since our Early Access release last October and we wanted to provide an update on what we’ll be doing as we progress through 2020 with an eye towards getting Infinity: Battlescape to “done” by the end of the year. Back in October we provided a roadmap of what we would be working on in the coming months. This was put together based on the deluge of feedback we were receiving at that time from players both old and new. Broadly speaking the feedback can be put in one of 2 categories:

1. The game needs more retention features such as missing gameplay, more ships, weapons, skins, unlockables, etc.
   
2. The game is too confusing, too difficult to learn, and I have no idea what I’m supposed to do.
   

From October to the end of the year we focused on bug fixing and implementing items from category #1. We hoped to have capital ship anti-missile systems (AMS) and a number of other features, including ship upgrades, finished by the time the Christmas sale began but unexpected issues kept popping up and we weren’t able to get it done until early January.

Once we released the AMS patch we took a look at what we wanted to do for 2020 and plotted a course that mostly consisted of working on category #1 retention features starting with the ship upgrade system. The reason for this is that, while our initial Early Access sales were quite healthy, the number of active players in the game has dropped precipitously and lack of players is currently one of our top complaints.

Over the last week or so, after talking to more players, it occurred to us that we may have tunnel vision. Most of the feedback we receive is from players who have already suffered through the learning curve and emerged victorious. After some conversations with people who struggled with the learning curve we decided that it represented a more immediate problem than ship upgrades, etc and decided we needed to shift our priorities.

What this means is that features such as ship upgrades, additional weapons, and weapon balancing will be deferred by a few months. Instead we will be focusing on the new HUD, AI, mission system, spawning, situational awareness, team communication, and the star map. It’s going to take some time to get everything polished up but our goal is to see a material increase in average players on our servers by the summer.

Your patience is greatly appreciated. We know we have something special here, we just need to properly nurture it as it grows into something we’re confident will be one of the best space combat experiences you can find.

Hey all, sorry for the time it took to release this patch. We encountered a lot of internal issues related to the AMS (aka. Anti-missiles/torpedoes/mines system) lasers implementation. Please keep in mind this is only a first implementation, and as such, until we get more player feedback, is likely to cause some balance issues. The patch also contains multiple bug fixes as usual.

• Initial implementation for AMS lasers for capital ships
  
• AMS are currently available on destroyers (4 hardpoints) and carrier (2 hardpoints). To promote the escort role of the destroyer, the cruiser currently does not have any AMS system
  
• AMS produce green-colored lasers that hit their target instantly and cause a very low amount of damage over time
  
• AMS lasers automatically target heavy missiles, torpedopes and mines within a 10 Km range. Since light missiles are no serious threat to a capital ship, they currently do not target light missiles
  
• Remember to enable the AMS systems in your ship's weapons radial menu (they're disabled by default)

• Introduced heavy missiles and renamed the old missiles to light missiles
  
• Light missiles are available on small ships (interceptor, bomber, corvette) and do the same amount of damage as before (150)
  
• Heavy missiles are available on capital ships and do more damage (500) but are less maneuverable than light missiles. They're still faster than torpedoes.
  
• Rebalanced missiles, torpedoes and mines hitpoints so that they're harder to kill
  
• Slight reduction in activation time for missiles, torpedoes and mines
  
• Reduced chaff activation range from 1.25 Km to 1.0 Km
  
• Removed chaffs from destroyers, as they now have AMS

• Target speed now resets to zero automatically after exiting warp
  
• Increased ramp-up / warmp-up propulsion factor
  
• Tweaks to missile detonation and distance calculation algorithm (sometimes missiles were exploding too far away from the target)

• Changed default font
  
• Fixed friendly fire warning while being on the spawn menu / star map
  
• Added a checkbox in the controls menu for automatic view reset
  
• Added effects quality setting to options menu

• Fixed options menu staying opened after clicking "apply" with settings asking for a restart
  
• Fixed invalid initial position of navigation cursor when entering the game due to accumulating mouse input on the splash screen
  
• Fixed /SetSkin server crash when player is on spawn menu
  
• Other minor coherency fixes / checks for player commands
  
• Fixed a bug that caused some input event groups to randomly stop working
  
• Fixed a bug with error correction that gets ignored when client receives server's tick before client validated its own
  
• Fixes and checks related to custom quality levels which were causing crashes, or weren't being take into account properly for smoke / damage effects
  
• Fixed lack of camera control in spectator and kill-cam mode
  
• Fixed rare server crash during corvette ammo resupply
  
• Fixed a bug that caused weapon muzzle sounds to sometimes originate from the actor center instead of the actual gun position

• Added eye tracker interface + experimental Tobii eye tracking support
  
• Added eye trackers selection list to the controls menu

• Updated many stations / modules layouts (some modules had gaps and holes)
  
• Added input profile for Logitech X-55
  
• Particle system culling now better takes into account per-particle size to calculate its bounds
  
• Slight Increase of brightness of space debris

Hey everybody,

Just a small update about the next patch for AMS (anti-missile/torpedo/mines system) lasers for capital ships. We've been working on it for a while and it's almost finished, but unfortunately due to the timing (winter sale starting on Steam and Christmas holidays) we decided to postpone the release of that patch (we didn't want to risk servers stability during the sale since the patch could potentially introduce a lot of new bugs) to the end of the year or early january.

Laser countermeasures, aka AMS, are currently installed on Destroyers and Carriers. Cruisers are already full of weapons, but will eventually receive them too. Once ship upgrades and custom loadouts are implemented, players will be able to select how many and where AMS are installed on their ships. Due to the energy requirements, AMS aren't available on smaller ships (which use chaffs as countermeasures instead). Lasers track and fire automatically once toggled and will cause a low amount of continuous damage on the targetted missile, torpedo or mine, causing it to explode after a few seconds. One of the reasons we couldn't finish the patch in time are the consequences to the game in terms of balance; as you can imagine, this can easily make the bomber and its torpedoes useless if not carefully adjusted. There's no doubt that it'll take a while and require many iterations before it's well balanced and we'll need a lot of feedback after the AMS patch is out.





We'll update the roadmap to reflect the new priorities right after the patch is available. Our next focus will be on ship upgrades, which is long overdue. In January we'll also work on sub-systems targetting, battle reports and the new scoring/ranking system, which should help with player retention.

Have a nice holiday and a merry Christmas !

-The I-Novae Studios team