Infinity: Battlescape News

Hey everyone,

As you've noticed, we haven't released a patch in a few weeks. That's because we're working on what is arguably one of the most important / complex game systems in a while: ship upgrades and custom loadouts. Since it requires massive code changes / rearchitecturing, we don't have enough new contents / fixes to release a transitional patch. The good news is that the wait is almost over; the next patch is currently scheduled for the end of the first week of december, with maybe a follow-up minor patch focusing on bug fixes for the new system.

So, how does the ship upgrades system is going to work ? Originally, we were going for something that is capacity-based ( a bit like in Elite, with a max capacity of "cargo points" per ship that you could spend on various upgrades ). After working a bit more on the design, we decided against it. The main reason is that we still want the ships to focus on their assigned roles, and a pure capacity-based system would be too versatile ( as in: in a "bland" way, which would make all the ships feel the same in terms of abilities and what they can do ).

Instead, we're going for an extension of the hardpoints system. You're already faimilar with the weapons hardpoints; we're going to introduce new internal hardpoints, and all hardpoints will be assigned categories ( such as: weapons, electronics, structual, engines, etc.. ). These categories will restrict ( along with the hardpoint class we already have, such as MK1 to MK7 ) which upgrades can or cannot be mounted on a given hardpoint. Different ships will of course have different hardpoint layouts. This system means that we are in full control of the type and amount of hardpoints each ship has. Another advantage is that it'll allow us, at a further point, to extend the damage system so that even internal hardpoints can be destroyed.

The implementation of the new ship upgrade system requires a few steps:

1. Refactoring the hardpoint system to introduce internal hardpoints and hardpoint categories.
   
2. Implementing the network code that allows hardpoint configurations to be communicated to the clients.
   
3. Implementing modifiable ship attributes ( instead of just being constants ) that can be overrided by upgrades.
   
4. Implementing loadouts ( a list of what upgrade or weapon to mount on each hardpoint ), their config files, their validation by the server and using it ( plus consuming credits ) when a ship spawns
   
5. Splitting the current abilities ( ex.: scanner, warp jam, repair/resupply fields ) into proper upgrades.
   
6. Designing a bunch of new upgrades ( / and maybe some new weapons, as time permits ).
   
7. The ship upgrades + loadouts UI screen ( which will be in the ship menu tab )
   

On all these steps, we've already implemented ( or are close to completion ) on 1 to 4. 5 is the next step and 6 is at the design phase ( we already have a bunch of upgrades implemented, just to test the new systems ). Steps 5 and 6 should be done in a few days. The UI work ( step 7 ) is also the biggest one. It's not technically hard, but there's a large amount of complexity in the new screen. Here's a concept draft made by our artists, just to give you an idea of the layout and how it'd look:



The small cards in the 2xN format at the left will of course contain details about the upgrades ( type, cost, dependencies, main stats, etc.. ). There will also be an information panel with more details about each upgrade, which will show up over the chat box at the bottom left. As you install upgrades in your current loadout, the ship's stats might change and this will be reflected on the stats in the right panel.

Note that you'll be able to manage your loadouts ( creating new ones, saving, resetting ) via the icons at the top of the left panel. When selecting an upgrade ( in this draft, it's actually weapons classes ) the 3D viewport will highlight the hardpoints that can potentially receive this upgrade ( so there will be a filtering system to avoid showing a hundred hardpoints on a capital ship, for instance ).

As for the upgrades themselves, they will be described in an XML config file, which will allow modding in the future. Just to give you a quick idea, it looks like this:

	
		Heat Dissipator I
		HeatDissipator
		Increases the rate at which heat generated by firing kinetic weapons gets dissipated when cooling down or overheating. Consumes a small amount of additional energy to help cooling the weaponry systems instead
		
		
		
	

This is just an example and will not necessarily be implemented as is in game. But here you've got a heat dissipator upgrade, which gets mounted on a structual MK1 hardpoint ( basically: for small ships ). It costs 25 credits, has no other upgrades dependency requirements, is passive ( the player doesn't have to activate it manually ) and does not stack. The names / descriptions will of course get moved to the strings localization file.

The most interesting part are the properties. Each property defines a "target", which is basically the name of a ship attribute that gets modified; a value, and an operation ( addition or multiplication ). So a "Mass" value of 1.05 with operation Mul, means adding 5% to the mass of the ship. The ship becomes slightly heavier.

Of course, we'll have to do a lot of balancing, especially as we introduce new upgrades. The first patch in december will have a limited list of upgrades, so that we can test the new system thoroughly. After that, we expect to introduce new upgrades regularly over the months in new patches, so it'll be a continual work in progress.

We welcome feedback on the new system and what kind of upgrades you'd like to see. More importantly, we haven't figured out yet the internal hardpoint layouts that will be avaialble on each ship. Of course, the amount of internal hardpoints on an interceptor will be more limited than on, say, a capital ship; so there will be a quantity relationship with the size of the ship. But beyond that, we ourselves aren't clear yet on how we'll structure these hardpoint layouts. How many would you like to see on an interceptor, bomber, destroyer... ? Where to place them, what categories should be available to which ship ? Just let us know if you have thoughts about it. I look forward to testing the new upgrade system in game with many players.. I think things are going to be.. interesting :wink:

This small patch focuses on some important bug fixes related to planets, and introduces a new moon: Rygol, an arid Arizona-inspired moon full of canyons and terraced cliffs with a radius of 4250 Km and a green-ish atmosphere.

• Introduced a new planet: Rygol. Note that the current Battlescape still only has 4 moons max, so not all matches will necessarily feature the new moon
  
• Updates to new base locations on Sarake and Aresthia
  
• Fixed incorrect (floating) hardpoints when mapping a defense (tower) module on a planetary surface (turrets were sometimes floating in the air far above their tower)
  
• Fixed warp-in incorrect target location that lead an AI ship crashing into the ground after a ground battle started
  
• Fixed planetary collision issues due to the difference of precision in some noise functions between cpu and gpu. It mostly affect Aresthia, the Mars-like planet, where some craters had invalid collisions (sometimes you'd hit a ghost hill far above from the ground)
  
• Fixed haulers that sometimes had trouble engaging warp and leaving a dense atmosphere
  
• AI ships now know when to overcharge their engines on planets where gravity is too strong for their mass
  
• Corvette turrets will now keep auto-aiming at their target even when they're not the active weapon (this will minimize the re-targetting time when switching between turret guns / turret blasters)
  
• Light weapons and MK4 turrets slight increase in max hit points (corvette weapons were very weak and easily destroyed by opponents)
  
• Respawning will no longer open the starmap menu. It will now retain the previous menu that the player had selected in game
  
• Fixed spawn marker colors for capital ships in docking bays (the markers remained red, as invalid, but should now properly be displayed as green, meaning busy)
  
• Minor bobblehead/textures tweaks
  

The in-game AI can be a challenge for newer pilots, but there's nothing like going head to head with a human pilot. They're better at evading your hits, use countermeasures more often, use the environment to their advantage, and don't tend to back down if they think you've started to break... add co-operative play to the mix and things get interesting fast.

We'll be meeting up in game to review the latest patch notes on a DevStream, and then follow it up with a few hours of PvP combat. Get a feel for the current state of ship to ship gameplay, co-operative engagement with other players, and a look at the latest updates we've been working on.

Check our official Discord channel for in game communication.
We'll be playing on the USEast#1 Server for this event.

[h2]Event Details[/h2]
Saturday, Oct 24th 2020 : DevStream & Community Event
19:00 Coordinated Universal Time (UTC)

[h2]Event Schedule[/h2]

• Review the latest patch notes, discuss any new developments with the project.
  
• Gameplay ːsteamhappyː PvP & Co-operative play
  

We have posted these updates to both our forums, and social media pages in the past, but will be including steam events as we move forward.

See you in game!

This patch implements a new match progression system to act as tug-of-war, in order to focus players on a specific battle/location instead of spreading out over multiple battlefields. The changes are pretty experimental so might need urgent balance tweaks in a future hotfix or patch.

The way it works is the following: instead of having multiple battles run at the same time, we only allow one single battle ( AI-commanded directed ) at any one time. One team is attacking, the other one defending. If the attacking team wins, the objective gets destroyed and it can attack another objective again. However, if the team loses, then the initiative goes to the defending team, which then gets its turn to go on the offensive.

Our goal with this change is to focus the action on a specific battlefield instead of spreading the playerbase over multiple battles ( so sometimes players didn't even encounter each other due to participating to different battles ). The other goal is to make the battles feel more important - which is why we got ride of the critical vs non-critical battles system: now all battles are critical. Losing a battle as a defender means losing the base, period. As a side consequence, the rules should also be easier to understand, especially for new players. Destroy all enemy bases to win the match, that's it !

Feedback on whether the new system works or not is very much appreciated. This patch also contains a lot of AI tweaks, a new neutral color-theme for the menus/UI, a new panel to compare ships statistics, and as usual plenty of HUD improvements and bug fixes.

• Removed the concept of critical vs non-critical battles. All battles are now critical (the base will get destroyed if the enemy wins the battle) even if it's no longer explicitely said. This should help to reduce the duration of matches, but also feel like each battle has a stronger impact on the match flow
  
• Removed condition threshold (
• Increased countdown to battle ending from 10s to 2 minutes (battles were ending too quickly with no time to clean leftover ships, and sometimes the same battle restarted at the same location)
  

• Changed match progression to act as a tug-of-war for battles. Only one battle is active at a time. When a team loses a battle, its opponent gets the initiative for attacking. As a result, the match ping-pongs between teams. However when a team wins an attack battle, it has the opportunity to attack again instantly
  
• Static defenses on structures are now taken into account when showing a battle's victory odds to the player
  
• Attacker teams now have a slight advantage in fleet's credits budget compared to the defender team's, to take into account that the defender team's slightly advantaged due to the static defenses/turrets/platforms
  

• Shields no longer break down when they're depleted. Depleted shields now start recharging instantly. A critical hit has been added for shields being damaged instead (like other ship sub systems). It'll take 30s for shields being repaired
  
• Energy no longer recharges at the same time as firing weapons in weapons overcharge mode. Weapons overcharge mode felt overpowered compared to the other modes, as if you fired in bursts, your energy was naturally recharging at full rate; so if you alternated between firing bursts, there was little downside to using this overhcharge mode
  

• Rogue AI/bots will no longer accidentely reinforce/participate in active battles (they were interfering with the score calculations)
  
• Reduced a little bit the probability of spawning AI capital ships in battles (this should make capital ships more valuable)
  
• AI can now fire kinetic weapons when their target's shields are low (previously, shields had to fully depleted or damaged for a bot to start using kinetics)
  
• Fixed too many AI ganging up on a single enemy. The ratio was previously 5:1, but is now limited to 2:1 (in ship's score worth)
  
• Fixed AI ships getting forcibly killed by the server due to remaining in warp in for more than 2 minutes, which could happen for AI destroyers entering a planetary battle. The limit is now 5 minutes
  

• Fixed a bug which ignored projectile collisions on planetary surfaces (projectiles were passing through)
  

• Fixed multiple collision issues/bugs with asteroids
  
• Adjusted asteroid rotation speed (massive asteroids now rotate slower, almost unnoticeable)
  
• Fixed a major resource leak issue in asteroid fields/rings, which could potentially cause slowdowns over time (collision bodies were not properly destroyed when the ring was unloaded)
  

• Fixed planetary/atmospheric battles ships that were warping in too fast and colliding/dying on the ground before they could even get into battle
  

• Implemented new user interface / menus color theme (previously: the UI was using the HUD's color theme, so the colors were messy/all over the place. The new color theme is more neutral to the eye and coherent)
  
• Added team assets to mission screen's info panel when selecting a battle. The victory odds are still shown as previously, but the panel now also shows the absolute credit's worth of assets owned by each team in the battlefield
  
• Added new ship description and statistics panel in ship menu screen. This will allow to compare the different ships's statistics together
  

• Fixed a bug related to textured brushes, which made some images flicker or appear incorrect in the UI (ex.: team selection menu background images were sometimes incorrect for a frame)
  
• Fixed missing trailings length slider bar in sensors tactical screen
  

• Added new HUD notifications for being repaired/resupplied (or, as a corvette, doing repairs/resupplies), either by an allied ship or in hangars
  
• Updated spawn marker colors: they're now only blue for hangars that can fit your ship class (otherwise they're now red). This will make it more obvious to new players where they can repair/resupply
  
• Added new floating text indicators on HUD to notify player of closest hangar or resupply ship (corvette).
  
• Added a new floating text indicator on HUD to notify player of the the closest heavily damaged ally (so as a corvette player, you know who's in need of repairs)
  

• Tweaks to HUD warnings/alerts: they're now colored as a function of importance/priority (info alerts are in cyan, normal alerts in orange, critical alerts in red)
  
• HUD indicator tweaks (they're now more opaque)
  
• Tweaked selected target's color so that it is more easily visible on the HUD
  

• Added horizontal alignment to MFDs (ex.: mission MFD is now right-aligned if it's in the top-right corner of the HUD)
  
• Changed bounty indicator icon
  
• Added more explicit target-out-of-range alert if manually firing weapons at a far-away target
  
• Locking targeting circle color is now shows up as green only if the ship's direction is aligned to its velocity. This will help firing missiles/torpedoes at targets within the circle
  

• Fixed friendly fire warning not showing up when hitting modular structures
  
• Fixed credits being reset to 0 instead of 50 when the match restarts
  

• Updated a dozen station modular assets with their upgraded visuals (better geometry, improved materials/colors, added ambient occlusion etc..)
  
• Added ground (planetary surfaces or asteroids) impact projectile effect
  
• Updated bobblehead models with new look and textures
  

• Dust-particles effect now uses a non-uniform, more realistic density model (rings and close to thick atmospheres = higher dust density)
  
• The dust-particles effect is now affected by the 'effects quality' setting
  
• Modular structures destruction/explosion effects now fade off over time (previously, the small explosions never stopped and could become annoying)
  
• Updated spawn/hangar modular markers (also, fixed the ones for ground bases)
  

• Updates to spawns: dimensions tweaks, added new markers, added some new spawns in ground modules
  
• Updated destruction materials and added some missing materials ( some modules, like HUBs, did not have destruction materials and did not appear destroyed to the players)
  

• Fixed a major bug when initializing the audio device. It defaulted to 5.1 output, even for stereo users. As a result, if you were using a stereo device, sound quality was negatively affected. The game should now properly use your default audio device's setup and most users should notice a sound quality increase (especially if you were playing in stereo or 2.1)
  
• Added menu option to change the output audio device on the fly (without having to restart the game)
  
• Audio volume adjustments for rotating turrets, weapons firing sound range, explosions sound range..
  
• Updated some audio effects after last patch's feedback (new AMSl laser sound effect, improved machine gun sounds, improved some projectile impact sounds)
  

• Updated some default game settings (ex.: MFD layouts per ship, increased navigation targets from 30 to 50, .. )
  
• Updated game's initial settings to better take into account quality level based of CPU speed and GPU video-ram
  
• Moved default viewpoint in corvette slightly to the left (to be seated)
  

Hey everybody,

As we recently finished releasing patch 0.7.6.0, this pretty much closes our months-long focus on the UI. The next patches will refocus on gameplay and related features, such as match progression, ship upgrades and the squad system. There is of course a lot more work to do on the UI, but it won't be the exclusive focus of any single patch and will instead be spread over the next patches as we were doing before.

We now have a Trello board for development tasks. If you're curious to see what we're working on / will be working on in the next few months, check it out.

The main ones are:



The credits system is made of two parts: a "passive" part (the AI commander distributes credits every minute to all team members, based on team income from haulers) and an "active" (/skill-based) part (you earn credits by killing other ships or destroying modules). The problem right now is that the system favors too much the active credits, which basically makes the economy a footnote and removes the strategical aspects of the game. Most players aren't even aware of the existence of the economy and the AI haulers carrying resources between factory and bases, and that it's possible to attack them

Of course, improvements have to be made to the missions system too, to emphasize that haulers can be attacked (or should be protected), and to the ship upgrades (so that you have more options to find and intercept haulers in flight, which is currently quite tricky), so everything ties in together. But at least in the
short term we are looking at addressing the credits system and rebalance it to the passive side.



So instead of getting credits as rewards for killing ships, you'll earn something else instead, which we'll tentatively call SP (Skill points). Like in an ELO system, you'll start with a fixed number of SP, and you'll earn (or lose) points based on your actions.

We also want the new system to take into account more than just killing other ships, but accomplishing objectives and helping your team. For example, corvette users repairing/resupplying others will earn SP.

Your rating will be displayed in a leaderboard in the teams tab of the in-game UI. At the moment we're thinking of merging the teams together, to show a single competitive leaderboard with mixed teams. The leaderboard will also display player stats (SP, kills, deaths, assists, time played etc.. ). This screen will also in general show team assets, like the number of factories/bases/stations, their distribution/type, their income, the team's income per minute, etc.. Eventually this screen will become pretty advanced, with graphs showing stats over time.

Finally, the last component are the battle reports. We'll be revamping the battles progression too, but in terms of reports, we want to better signal to the player that a battle is ending and why. A lot of players are currently unaware that the battle they've participated in has ended, simply because they didn't notice/read the popups at the top of the HUD. We'll be showing a full battle report screen, with stats over time, your rewards, and of course the outcome of the match and how you were able to impact it.



As the game is called "Battlescape" (a battlescape being a location of the solar system where the factions are competing, like a planet and its surroundings), we'll be introducing more Battlescapes to the game. In the first step, it'll simply be a new planet + moons over a different location, and once a Battlescape has been conquered (as we have a single one in game at the moment), the match will continue to the next Battlescape.

We haven't decided how the scoring will work yet, maybe we'll try to keep it simple and easily understandable like a best-of-N to win the entire match. Eventually we'd like the game to feature an entire solar system with multiple Battlescapes. As for traveling to another Battlescape after the current one has been conquered by a faction, you'll be able to undock at allied bases and respawn over the new Battlescape, or simply take a few minutes to manually warp travel there by yourself.

There will be changes to the match progression within a single Battlescape too. The current in-game match progression feels completely chaotic and unpredictable. We haven't made a decision there just yet, so posting your ideas is welcome. We'd like to keep the progression simple and understandable, even predictable, maybe with a graph or a series of nodes representing bases and showing where the next battles will take place. Of course we're only talking about the AI here: players will still be able to form their own fleets and coordinate to attack wherever they want.



We are going to get ride of the notion of "critical battles": all battles will become critical, as in: if the defending team loses the battle, it'll lose its base. This will likely shorten the duration of the matches, at least for the current Battlescape (this will eventually get compensated by adding new battlescapes to conquer).

We'd also like to improve the AI so that it physically attacks bases and their weak points; so by losing the battle, the enemy will naturally have free rein over destroying the base. This requires a lot of AI improvements, especially in terms of sub-systems targeting (needed for players too) and 3D pathfinding/obstacle avoidance.

Another thing we are looking at is staging the battles in terms of progression. We still need to implement base shields, with shield generators that have to be destroyed by smaller ships to disable the shields, to let capital ships attack. Other ideas include overhauling the defense platforms and turrets to pose a real threat to capital ships, so they would have to be disabled by small ships during the first stage before capital ships can warp in. At the same time, we don't want to set the game on rails too much, so everything described above would mostly apply to the AI, with players opting in to follow these objectives, or follow their own tactics.

Let us know in the comments below what your vision of a battle would play like under the new system.



The mission system is in dire need of an upgrade. Instead of just saying "participate to this battle here", it should provide you with a list of battle objectives which you can do or not. This should be ship-specific. For example, for corvette users the HUD should emphasize which nearby allied ships are in need of repairing or resupplying, and give you a reward if you do it (skill points). Interceptors would have to chase bombers, destroy turrets/engines on capships, destroy defense platforms/turrets on bases, destroy shield generators etc.. The difficult part here will be to provide a good variety of sub objectives so that it doesn't feel too repetitive.

In addition to that, we'd like to do a lot of AI improvements, the main one being fleet/squad formations. AI ships would regroup after a fight, form up in a small squad, destroyers stay nearby cruisers or carriers to escort them, and so on. We can even imagine the AI squad system to integrate players and/or follow player's orders, but to be honest that's a lot of work to implement, so this will likely be implemented step by step over the longer term.

New missions will be integrated to the missions system and screen. They already partially exist today, but will get more developed and streamlined. Within the next couple months, we'd like to refine at least the hauler attack/escort missions, the scouting missions (finding out where enemy bases are located) and the bounties missions. We'd like to see players be able to place a bounty on another player, and that show up as a bounty mission (probably time-limited) in the missions screen. We can add other mission types and variety at a later stage when the game is closer to completion.



Our goal is to implement the first version of the ship upgrades system by the end of the year. We'll split all the existing ship modules/weapons into upgrades (ex.: deploying mines, warp jamming, the scanner) and add some new ones (new weapons, missile types, and maybe electronic warfare).



Squads/fleet system, directional shields, sub-systems targeting, hauler/carrier gameplay revamp, improved damage model, VoIP, atmospheric flight, persistent progression.. we'll try to fit in as many of these features between the bigger ones as we can. But there is no doubt that we will be very busy in the coming months and next year to bring the game closer to completion. Keep in mind that we're a very small team, so progress is going slowly, but we appreciate your patience and sticking with us. We believe that after implementing all these new systems and streamlining the experience, the game will be massively improved and become ready for a marketing push towards our 1.0 release.