From The Depths News

What is up awesome FromTheDepthians!
We have released the current devtest build into stable, which brings you good people the following goodies and some new additions :D

Some minor changes to a few block types such as;
Munition warners can see through railings
Sheild projector UI has been updated
APS and Crams now have the option to aim straight at the enemy, ignoring gravity and movement, which can be found in the dropdown list when using Q on the turret and changing from Only low to Direct line.
Crams also have a tiny bit of guidance and built-in gravity compensator when using aim setting “Only High” this will give them a slightly better chance of hitting an enemy.

In terms of propulsion changes;
Dedi-blades are now more powerful when the blades are further away from the centre axis. This reflects the increased area of air swept
Helium pumps are now more powerful. Both air and helium pumps have changed the way that they leak to be more realistic.
Propellers now have a pitch adjustment so that they can be angled -15 to +15, so we can now “counter” wheelies or nose dives if we place a number of props under the or over the centre of mass for forwards push. This may be added to all propulsion types in future.

We have also created a patreon page and we have had two Patreon requests already which we have added to the game.
We now have a slider that changes the clarity of the ocean depth you can see through. This can only be used if you have GPU ocean enabled. This slider is also available in the planet editor too.
Spot the difference:

The settings for these two screenies were clarity factor 10 first pic and 0 second pic. Set this to 1 for default settings.

Our second Patreon request was to add gravity, drag, particle count and lifetime to the smoke generator for a more realistic smoke trail.

Nick has also added a new laser fire piece Short Range Laser, which can deal very powerful short-range beams for bombing runs, interceptors or melee style constructs.

The shorter the focus range is the higher the damage multiplier will be. 50m would have a x10 multiplier so you can indeed dish out quite a bit of damage! 300m is the max distance for this system, the multiplier would be x2.880665 which is still very good (imo) :D

As many of you already know during this latest devtest we have finally got our hands on the epic Undo Redo feature by Weng :D
So just in case you did not know, the Undo Redo feature is in stable!

Have you accidentally chopped your whole boat in half??
Fear not little Rambot! Smash that CTRL Z and bring it all back!! And if you are still not happy smash CTRL Y and lose half your boaty again :D rinse and repeat until content.

The Undo Redo feature does not have a limit as to how many blocks it keeps track of for you to undo, so you can manually delete 100 or 1000 blocks one by one and spam CTRL Z to bring them all back. However, once you save and exit the game that history will be lost!
The Undo Redo will also resolve misclicks like deleting the turret block by mistake or deleting the block under the turret block thus killing your turret. One CTRL Z and you have the block you deleted back again and also the turret :D Spin blocks and pistons, stacked or not, are also recognised by this feature and any blocks that were attached to them.

Our latest new addition is the Steam Jet, from our most awesome Weng :D

Steam Jets can use a maximum of 2000 steam per second, which will give us 2000 thrust.
You can also hit Q on the steam jet and lower the amount of steam used. As an example, I have a light flyer and using steam jets for yaw, I would set these around 500 to be on par with a small jet or even lower to 150. The minimum is 1. Currently the steam jet does not have a max speed, however, this is subject to change! You can find this awesome new addition in Steam Engines/Piping - Steam Jet at 50 material :D

To continue on this steamy subject, Weng has also made us a new drill which is currently quite deadly! As you can see below. I have attached the steam setup and drill on two telescopic pistons, just to help reach those parts that matter most :D and if you find people are making fun of your drill, feel free to extend your shaft much as you please with the shaft extension block.

The steam drill is made up of two parts the drill head 150 materials and the drill shaft 100 materials. Currently, the health and armour are the same for all 3 steam setups small/med/large at 1500 health and 25 armour.

We are also tweaking up tutorials to also have voice instructions, currently, the 1st tutorial has the voice of T3hJimmer.

Patch notes

: [REQ-835] Munition warners now see through railings (and any other block transparent to IR light).
: The power of a dedi-blade is now more powerful the further away from the axis it is- which reflects the increased area of air swept.
: [FTD-7] shield projector UI updated.
 : Helium pumps are now more powerful, and air pumps and helium pumps have changed the way that they leak to be more realistic.
: Propellers now have a 'pitch' adjustment so they can be angled -15° to +15°
: Added a short-range laser that can deal a very powerful short-range beam for bombing runs, fighter-interceptors or melee style laser units.
: Added a voice over to the first tutorial.
Controls>: You can now modify the pitch of water propellers.
[Patreon request]: Added a slider for water clarity that affects the depth you can see through the GPU ocean. It's available in the planet editor for weathers but the player also has their own slider in the options menu for it.
[Patreon request]: Added a gravity, drag, particle count and lifetime slider to the smoke generator to achieve more realistic smoke trails
: [BUGS-1491] Fixed an issue existing since april '19 caused could be caused by repairing a mainframe with particular AI behaviours on it
: [BUGS-1550] laser target data now saves for CRAM cannon laser target block.
: [BUGS-1545] short range laser beam is now correctly colorable
: [BUGS-1544] Circling Ship and Circling Tank simple AI cards now correctly configure the adjuster when freshly placed.
: [BUGS-1464] some small fixes to sub object saving and loading
: [Bugs-1463] Out of play repairing bug causing massive speed and altitude fixed
: Added in undo/redo functionality for building.
: Added Steam Jet.
 : Added Steam shaft and steam head.
Added added to APS and CRAM to aim the cannon straight at the enemy, ignoring gravity and movement.
: Shells fired by a CRAM cannon set to aim using only high trajectories now have a tiny bit of guidance to give them some chance of ever hitting an enemy. They also get a build in gravity compensator.

What is up, awesome people of the internet.

We have been working our empennage’s off once again like someone strapped a Small Custom Jet Engine to it!

We are really pleased to introduce you all to the new Small Custom Jet engine, which has been created by the awesome Weng! :D. We also have Draba’s legendary APS overhaul, which has been a very hot topic (Any APS numbers are subject to change) we also have a new missile warhead! And other missile tweaks, not only that but tweaks to the shield generators, and projectors, its an extensive list which you will find in the patch notes section and the proposal post linked above. Our artistic Mattia has created a number of new sounds and updated a number of sounds. Of course, we cannot forget Gladyon and Nick with the bug squishing, and Joris getting things ship shape for the campaign overhaul, and if you have missed the discussion you can find it .

So before this little intro gets plane boring, let's get into some detail with all the new stuff and things.


Small Custom Jet Engine.
If we create two CJE’s exactly the same however one would be the small variant, we should see a difference in force and fuel usage at around 1/9th of the large CJE.

The CJE’s have a number of parts exactly like the standard CJE, the major parts are currently 5 materials cheaper, while the addons like extra compressor, fuel injector and combustor are 2 materials cheaper than the standard CJE.
Large and to some extent small CJE addons have had a small change in the way they work. Prior to this update, the addons connect in a number of directions and when they connect, the model of the addon automatically rotates to line up with the main jet. This is what will be changing, they will only connect in one direction and must be manually rotated to fit on.

The caveat to this is that they will still provide their benefit even though the model is not visibly being attached and also showing us the warning in the tooltip, which will be sorted out in the next few updates.
In future add ons will not work if they are not properly attached and this of course means the sharing of addons between CJE’s will be removed

Both CJE’s have had their sounds changed which also changes in comparison to the force they are outputting.

We are looking forward to seeing all your builds using these little babies :D and if you cannot wait to build something to use them (unless you have been using the DevTest branch), then I have you awesome people covered :D I have also left it plain for you to colour in :P
SmallGunShipThing
This is by no means efficient or the best way to setup CJE’s and don't expect it to 1 shot a moray or live too long :P We won't be held responsible for the loss of life or being sacrificed by the White Flayers.

Seeing these missiles brings us to the next sweet addition to From The Depths, which is the Shaped charge head. It has the same drag as a thumper and uses the HE warheads placed directly behind it, blasting a stream of superheated armour-piercing copper into our target. So feel free to change the missiles in the little drone, they should be long enough to have some fun :D

While you are using the little drone above and if you add some munition warners, or your own construct, you will be able to hear some new beeps and alarms when you ‘Q’ on the warner.

We have added alert noises for missile detection, torpedo detection with active sonar, shell detection, radar ping detection and sonar ping detection.

Now if you do want to sit there and listen to all the new alarms but don't want to see your construct full of holes, then we suggest you turn on God Mode! :D (or be boring and just hover the cursor over the options in the ‘warning sound settings’)
Yes!, we now have the ability to make our constructs invulnerable in designer mode only.


Yellow / Gold is on and white is off :D

Our Crams have had a little bit of love as we now have tooltips showing damage and shell power/firepower at the highest rate of fire the cannon is capable of.

Michael has also been busy with the story missions and they are now accessible in the Fight menu, however they are still being worked on!

As always I pic something sweet you awesome people create.
This was posted by Object2791 @Object2791 on our @FTD_Game twitter
Boss Ship from Darius Gaiden


Patch notes:

: Added in a smaller 1x1x1 variant of the Custom Jet Engine.
: Flags are now moving using wind, vehicle and SubConstruct velocity, and they also are oriented correctly [REQ-34].
: The assault cannon is now displaying the build arrow [BUGS-1361].
: The name of the ammo controllers is now displayed in the list of controllers attached to a simple weapon [BUGS-1360].
: Loading a blueprint with the avatar in the chair is now working again [BUGS-1423].
: PAC charge time is now saved/loaded properly [BUGS-1417].
: Spinblocks mode not locked properly [BUGS-1390].
: Exhausts are now detected correctly even when the CPU is under heavy load [BUGS-1389].
: When the limit number of shells is reached, the oldest ones will be removed instead of the newest ones [BUGS-1382].
 : Fragments shouldn't go through armor as often as before when the target is moving fast [BUGS-1172].
: Flags are now updated immediately when changed [BUGS-1344]
: Up to 4 fleet colors can now be saved, named and/or protected (*** : Game configuration panel of options menu now has an alternative (2019) Neter physics setting that we are experimenting with.
: Added missile launch sounds.
: Added missile reload sounds.
: Tidied up the missile burn sound.
: Fixed the sound manager so that fast firing cannons do not become inaudible.
: Replaced the simple laser sound.
: Updated jet SFX.
: Added a sound when rambot jumps.
: Added the #hashtag system for sounds.
: Added a button to the UI displaying how to get into the avatar inventory screen.
: Added alert noises for missile detection, torpedo detection (with active sonar), shell detection, radar ping detection and sonar ping detection.
: God mode for vehicles is now toggleable in the 'C' menu in designer- allowing easier testing of a craft or weapons without being blown up.
: Right click with the river tool now removes a neighbour-merge on one specific side- allowing you to make better rivers and mountain ranges using the river tool .               : [FTD-118] ability to add custom scripts to all instances added.
: Added sliders in the game config for adjusting APS speed, missile speed and CRAM speed.
: I have removed the building control variant where G locks and unlocks the build marker orientation (when unlocked it automatically followed camera placement orientation) and tab would flip the build marker upside down when unlocked. This is a hang over from the initial style implemented 6 years ago where blocks were all 1x1x1 and their orientation was not that important. You can still tap G to orient the block in the direction of the camera, so you are not forced to use the rotation widget (tab).
: Changing the controller mode of a vehicle controller can now only be done by looking at the controller and pressing Q.
 : Story missions have been removed whilst we work on fixing them up
: Dangerous waters has now been entirely removed from FtD
: [BUGS-1418] fix for saving vehicles in multiplayer obelisk assault map
: Fixed a bug with ailerons and universal control surfaces when placed on spinners / turrets.
: [BUGS-1425] Fixed an issue with the point at behaviour and the ship/tank manoeuvre combination where the vehicle would never 'idle' because it never met it's point at combat altitude.
: Fixed a bug where you can be left with two avatars if you restart designer whilst drop pod is falling
: Fixed a number of bugs with the map editor height map editing screen.
: AICirclingTankCard, AICirclingShipCard, AICirclingPlaneCard,AICirclingHoverCard have been adjusted so that the IDs of the routines they make are actually unique. This change will cause some small issues for cards that have been placed so far (duplicate behaviours and maneouvres) but will fix other issues in the long term.
: [BUGS-791] Rudders now respond again to custom controls.
: [BUGS-1476] default pitch angle for altitude control is now 15 degrees in the AI plane cards.
: Lasers cavities now spawn with up to 30 seconds worth of pump energy.
: LAMS node cost down from 200 to 100.
: Laser cavity energy back from 100/400/4000 to 150/600/6000.
: Laser shields are now the equivalent of 100 smoke strength/shield strength, instead of 175. Final AP at STR 10 from ~24.9% to 30%
: Missile damage cut to 1/2 the previous value.
: Missile HP reduced by 25%.
: Missile body/thumper HP modifier back from 150% to 200%.
: Missile thump damage up by 25%.
: CIWS damage multiplier up from 8 to 10.
: L missile 50% HP bonus removed".
: Signal jammer maximum error added to remote guidance reduced from 15m to 10m.
: Prelock thrust now can't reduce thrust below 50% of the minimum setting for the propulsion component.
: Shaped charge head added, same drag as thumper. It fully uses the HE warheads directly behind it.
: Thrust-based detection range doubled.
: Multiple HE/EMP/flak warheads give a linear damage increase (also goes for HE behind HEAT/HESH).
: Smoke warhead smoke amount at 500mm up from 600 to 1000, has linear stacking.
: Velocities of shells with the same modules now match at different sizes(no more penalty for small ones).
: Kinetic damage down to ~¼.
: Kinetic AP up to 1.5-3 times the previous values.
: Kinetic damage scales linearly with shell length. More bodies with same propellant and rail draw = higher kinetic damage but less AP, lower speed, higher ammo cost and higher reloadtime.
: Hollow point AP now scales with speed/shell AP modifier.
: Explosive radius has the same scaling as missiles, DAMAGE^0.3 (slightly higher for low cal, lower for high cal). Missiles down from 0.34 to 0.3.
: Flak radius is now 3x the radius of a HE explosion with the same damage.
: Frag adjusted to match the missile HE-frag damage ratio.
: Frag damage changed to have the same scaling as everything else (total frag damage is proportional to MODULE_VOLUME^0.5).
: HESH now spalls in a single line perpendicular to the surface hit.
: HESH now spalls on hitting a non-structural block, like HEAT.
: HESH heads now give 80% of a full warhead's worth of special charge, and 20% plain HE.
: Effective spalling metric of armor can't get below 3 against HESH.
: heads now give 80% of a full warhead's worth of special charge, and 20% plain HE.
: now won't spawn more frags than 20. Above 20 frags damage is increased instead.
: pen metric is now linear with factor(range tightened).
: frag counts reduced.
: Autoloader clip modifier is now: 2 / (1 + UNIQUE_CLIP_DIRECTIONS).
: Autoloader clips don't have to have shells to provide the loading speed bonus.
: Autoloader complexity modifier removed.
: Autoloader length modifier removed.
: Casings only cost half as much ammo as other full-length parts.
: Casings only count at half length for intake and loader reload times.
: Intakes attached directly to the firing piece take twice as much time to reload.
: Loader and intake times ~doubled.
: Reload time multiplier at a given diameter: 2 + SHELL_LENGTH, where casings only count as half length.
: Smaller shells have an additional VOLUME^0.15 firerate penalty, to account for lower gauge/barrel overhead. They are still slightly stronger in smaller guns.
: Barrels have enough base cooling to sustain ~2 intakes with 5 gunpowder casing shells each.
: Additional barrels increase base cooling time. COOLDOWN = BASE_COOLDOWN * (1 + 0.2 * (BARREL_COUNT - 1)), so 6 barrels give only 3x total speed.
: Gauge coolers give a 50% additive bonus to cooling rate(each one can support 1 intake).
: Cooler bonus % is reduced with multiple barrels, total increase is the same as with 1 barrel.
: Cooler bonus % is reduced with higher calibers, to match their lower intake-loader ratios.
: Bore evacuators give a 15% additive bonus.
: Overclock setting removed.
: Barrel length requirement now ignores casings, to reach 0.3 inaccuracy: SHELL_LENGTH ^ 0.75 * 4.
: Inaccuracy is: 0.3° * (BARREL_LENGTH / LENGTH_FOR_0.3)^0.4. Roughly doubled base accuracy, and barrels lengths matter less.
: Additional barrels increase inaccuracy by 20/25/30/35/40%.
: Rails triple the shell's accuracy at the maximum possible draw(without casings). Scaling is linear, small charges are much weaker than before.
: Tracer's maximum accuracy bonus is 50%.
: Stabilizer fin now uses the same component modifier system as other parts, 0.2 inaccuracy multiplier/0.95 speed multiplier.
: A 500mm gunpowder casing is 2000 recoil. 1 recoil = 1 kinetic energy = 1 rail draw.
: Barrels give enough recoil reduction capacity to fire a 5 GP shell at their caliber.
: Barrels recharge enough recoil reduction to sustain ~2 intakes with 4 GP shells at 0 recoil.
: Shots with recoil over 0 have increased inaccuracy. The penalty is 2x base inaccuracy with completely unmitigated 5 GP shells.
: Recoil absorbers give 800 capacity and 120 recharge/sec for each meter of length.
: Recoil force of a 5 propellant shell reduced to ~70% (won't push things around as hard).
: Absorbed recoil doesn't increase inaccuracy and only pushes the vehicle with half the force.
: Gunpowder and rails use a kinetic energy system: a single 500mm gunpowder module gives 2000 kinetic energy, 1 rail charge gives 1.
: Shell speed is roughly SQRT(KINETIC_ENERGY) / SHELL_MODULE_LENGTH, before volume scaling and shell speed modifier from different parts.
: Every shell has a maximum energy it can take from rails without being destroyed(scales with module count). At max draw shells reach ~1000-1500 m/s without rail casings.
: Rail casings increase the maximum usable rail energy without adding mass to the shell.
: Maximum rail draw is now a fixed number, instead of total battery energy %. Final rail draw is the minimum of this value and the shell's maximum possible energy.
: Magnet attaching fixtures and barrel magnets now provide 10000/5000 maximum rail capacity. Only fixtures having at least 1 magnet count.
: Rail charger energy/s up from 100 to 200.
: Rail charger overclock setting removed.
: Shield reflection chance now does not depend on projectile speed.
: Base reflection chance between 0-90° impact angle is 20-40% for STR 10, 5-10% for STR 1.
: Shield stacking limitations removed.,
: Projectiles roll a shield penetration value on being fired and use that for all shields(stacking only matters for different angles/strengths).
: Disrupt shield mode removed.
: Shield projector cost down from 300 to 200.
: Disruptor-tipped shells now pass through all shields, and cut their strength to X% of current value(debuffed strength is tracked separately, doesn't reduce power cost).
: Disruptor effect strength depends on the EMP payload of the shell.
: Disruptor head reduces all payloads in the shell to 50%.
: Disruptor head now has the standard fast head component speed modifier, and counts as an EMP warhead.
: Shields hit by disruptors regain their strength over time. The higher the power cost of the shield, the faster it stabilizes.
: Railgun charger cost up from 15 to 400.,
: Autoloader costs up from 20/volume to 200/250/275/300/350/400 for 1/2/3/4/6/8 meter ones.
: Clip costs up from 5/volume to 100/125/140/150/175/200 for 1/2/3/4/6/8 meter ones.
: Beltfed loader cost up from 35 to 400.
: Ammo input feeder cost up from 15 to 50.
: Gauge increase cost up from 15 to 20.
: Gauge splitter cost up from 15 to 50.
: Gauge cooler cost up from 20 to 50.
: Railgun magnet attachment fixture cost up from 15 to 50.
: Railgun barrel magnet cost up from 15 to 50.
: Hydraulic recoil absorber cost up from 10 to 80 material/meter.
: Firing piece cost up from 30 to 100.
: Heavy barrel weight down to 50%.
: Railgun chargers can now connect to each other (back-front).
: The back of a firing piece can now connect to autoloaders.
: The sides of gauge increase splitters can now connect to autoloaders.
: Gauge splitters are now coolers, and accept the same connections.
: 6 way connectors now connect to recoil absorbers.
: The module in the first slot determines the base AP/kinetic damage/speed/HP/accuracy modifiers of the shell.
: Modules behind the first slot average their modifiers, weighted by their length.
: Final modifiers are HEAD_BASE * MODULE_AVERAGE.
: AP cap renamed to heavy head, slower and has less AP but does more kinetic damage.
: Composite head is faster with higher AP and has a higher KINETIC * AP value than heavy head. Downside is its kinetic damage is lower, prone to AP overkil.
: Sabot head is even faster/higher AP than composite.
: HP increased to ~5 times the previous values.
: Fuse lengths are now capped at 100mm.
: Ammo costs of short parts are now proportionally lower.
: Pendepth fuse time after first surface slider now has 3 decimals.
: Pendepth fuse defaults are 5m depth, 0.01s time after first surface.
: APS clip explosions are now merging their HE, flak and powder damage into a single explosion, radius is FINAL_DAMAGE^0.3.
: APS clip explosion uses HE at 1/4 strength and flak/EMP at 1/2 strength.
: APS clip explosions of lower calibers are slightly weaker than higher calibers with the same amount of clips(clip volume, not count).
: APS autoloaders and clips now display how much explosive/emp/frag damage they do if destroyed
: CRAMs got tooltips showing damage and shell power/firepower(at the highest rate of fire the cannon is capable of).
: Laser combiners have a tooltip showing the estimated firepower of the multipurpose laser they are attached to. 1 laser firepower is 400 DPS at 50 AP (or 200 DPS at 100, ...).
: All craft show a firepower breakdown in their V menu, below volume stats. It only counts APS, missiles, CRAMs and lasers for now.
: Stone cost up from 2 to 3 materials for each cubic meter.
: The option to target AI mainframes and ammo was removed from the aimpoint selection card.

What is up, and how are things going? :D

We are setting our DevTest branch to stable, as I type this.

Unfortunately, there is not a lot of new additions in this update, this has been more of a bug fixing round.
However, the few visible additions are:

Flags are now moving using wind, subconstruct velocity and are also oriented correctly which was a request on our request page REQ-34. Flags can also use the hashtag system which I will explain.

As you may know, Nick has setup a method to change the background of the main menu screen, it now comes with a default image that turns on when your mouse is not over any part of the menu and then turns off when your mousy is hovering over the menu.
We know that this is not something you all may like, and we shall be adding a toggle so that you won't have any image and just the usual dark background.

You can add your own favorite images to the default rotation by locating the imagery folder in
/Documents/From The Depths/Imagery and they need to be named as follows ‘name #background’
Yes I chose ship girls to upset a few people :p

This same method is also used for setting up flags too, you can setup a #flag for example and type that into the old URL box for flags. The # does not need to be flags it can be #AnyWordHere and would still work.


Projectors are also affected with the hashtag system too


Patch notes:

 2.4.9.27[Fix]: Copy/pasting will not change the reload time anymore [BUGS-1368].
 2.4.9.27[Add]: Flags are now moving using wind, vehicle and SubConstruct velocity, and they also are oriented correctly [REQ-34].         
  2.4.9.27[Change]: You can now browse the built in designs in campaign load menu.
 2.4.9.27[Change]: Load and save UI moved over to the new formats.
 2.4.9.27[Change]: Map editor and modding UIs now use the unscaled UI display with font size selection.
 2.4.9.27[Change]: Destroy all vehicles now removes APS,CRAM,other projectiles and missiles.
 2.4.9.27[Change]: Destroy enemy vehicles now also removes their APS, CRAM, other projectiles and missiles.
 2.4.9.27[Change]: Broken mods are now less likely to cause the boot of the game to stall. Broken mods can be disabled from the main menu so they do not load on the next boot of the game",
 2.4.9.27[Change]: Wireless channels are now changed using a UI to avoid accidentally swapping them and causing issues.
 2.4.9.27[Change]: Fixed a bug where thrusters were being assigned to be strafe and hover when they should be pitch and yaw.
  2.4.9.27[Add]: Right clicking the mirror button in build mode (when extended options are shown) will place a mirror immediately down the middle of the vehicle",
 2.4.9.27[Add]: Damaged mimics now fall off the vehicle with the correct position, size and rotation.
 2.4.9.27[Add]: When launching a new campaign FtD will prompt you to complete some essential tutorials first.
 2.4.9.27[Add]: Added artwork to the background of some of the menus to add a bit of spice.
 2.4.9.27[Add]: Putting files in From the Depths/Imagery/ with the name including #background will allow them to be used on the UI backgrounds.
 2.4.9.27[Add]: Flags can use the same #hashtag system as described above.
 2.4.9.27[Add]: Projectors can use the same #hashtag system as described above.
  2.4.9.27[Removed]: Story missions have been removed whilst we work on fixing them up.
 2.4.9.27[Removed]: Dangerous waters has now been entirely removed from FtD.
  2.4.9.27[Fix]: Fixed an issue where vehicles would warp around every time the coordinate system changed if building on them in mouse based build mode at the time.
 2.4.9.27[Fix]: [BUGS-1313] Fixed an issue in large battles where velocity is calculated completely incorrectly leading to odd gun aiming.
 2.4.9.27[Fix]: Avatar death has been broken for a while- since the immortal in designer option was added a few weeks ago. Fixed now.
 2.4.9.27[Fix]: Ring generator now saves it's drive settings.
 2.4.9.27[Fix]: [BUGS-1203] [BUGS-1271] Systematically retrofitting RTGs onto a vehicle can no longer produce infinite materials.
 2.4.9.27[Fix]: [BUGS-1373] Fixed a bug with ammo supplies that allowed NaN ammo and negative ammo to occur.
 2.4.9.27[Fix]: Fixed an issue with terrain when changing planets and swapping between different modes.
 2.4.9.27[Fix]: Fixed a multi-threading issue with chaff emitter.
 2.4.9.27[Fix]: Fixes and improvements to the AI broadside calculations to help get the correct angle and achieve the correct range to target.
 2.4.9.27[Fix]: Fixed a bug where thrusters were being assigned to be strafe and hover when they should be pitch and yaw.  

We are carrying out a poll on our main forum, as we would love to know which of the three following videos to use for as a promo advert.

Please leave your votes, opinions and suggestions in the official poll thread here
Thanks for your support as always :)

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

What is up you impressive builders!

We are back with another round of new features, updates and fixes 😀

We think we should get some of the bad news out the way first. Unfortunately, we have had to move cluster crams and also the steam jets to our next sprint as we had a cluster of higher priority issues which we wanted squared away.

Abyay, has been working his stern off, revamping and tweaking our tutorials under the Essentials section. He is also working on story missions and would love to know what you liked / disliked from the missions, in order to make new ones or fix up the current story missions . He has also tweaked the price of cram and steam parts including the health of some steam parts.

Joris, has also been working on a ton of stuff for this update and these are just a few that I think are the most interesting;
Custom battle mode, which you can find under the Fight tab of the main UI.
We have plenty of options to set up our battles which can be saved and loaded, so we can jump right into a battle 😀

Yet I think the most interesting part of this is the ability to setup teams 😀 but try pay attention to how much volume/blocks are going to be in play at the same time 😊

Joris has also tweaked the UI to show the material costs for our constructs.
Numerous bug fixes and tweaks as well as also focusing on the coming campaign changes, which are going to be awesome!

Note: in-order to notice the material costs you would need to resave the construct in this update.

Draba, has been breaking our LAMS and missiles tweaking up and balancing our LAMS, missiles and missile distractors. He is also currently (it's not in this update) working on future ammo changes and more APS tweaks, while keeping in mind our new shields system, which gives an AC buff to any block that is on the outside of the construct (more on that below).

We now have groups for the simple weapons, Light / Medium / Heavy and the Custom shell weapons, thanks to Rhea for the models and Gladyon for implementing them.
The new additions from our last news update are:

Light

T-Class 20mm AA gun – 79 Material, uses simple shells with an AP of 10 and Kinetic of 150, reload 0.16s.


Medium

40 mm Quad AA Mk-I – 211 Material, uses simple shells with an AP 10 and Kinetic of 150, reload 0.225s.



40mm Octuple AA Mk-S – 331 Material, uses simple shells with an AP 10 and Kinetic of 150, reload 0.5s.


Heavy

Assault cannon – 59 Material, uses simple shells with an AP 4 Kinetic 250, reload 0.1s.
Custom shell weapons

Type A(L)3.7” Gun Shield – 173 Material, uses customised shells, reload time 3s shell calibre 94mm


Type L Casemated Gun – 277 Material, uses customised shells, reload time 4.5s shell calibre 130mm


Gladyon, has also tweaked the rail decorations so that they do not block detection gear and increased the distance that mimic blocks can be moved, as well as the numerous bug fixes and tweaks which you guys and girls can see in the update log below 😊

The following though is the most exciting thing (for me) from this whole update and that is the Ring Shield.

Ring shield is found in the misc tab under Shield Generator. The ring shield is created using 3 parts: The Generator, ring pipe and ring corner.

This simple setup will buff the AC of the front most or rear most block. When creating your ring shield ensure that the generators “tube/spike” is facing inside the ring.


Translating the tooltip, currently this size shield wants 510 power to run, and the area inside the ring is 120m2. However, the issue is “charged with”, if our pipe gets destroyed the power flowing through the system, which is coming out of the side of the tube/spike (in this case to the right-hand side), all that energy will shoot out and damage anything in its path.


This is how the setup will affect our outermost blocks. As you can see everything in green is what is currently being buffed and red are blocks that are not affected. If it is the outer most block it will have the AC buffed, this will also be added to the AC when stacking. This applies to every block type in the game.


However, if we add another ring horizontally, we have now buffed the top and bottom of our construct. Also note that the whole area is affected which can be bigger than the shield size.


Our single ring shield on this construct is giving us a bonus of 5.3 so this is buffing this single 4m wood beam to 8.3. This buff remains the same up to 16m, however after extending our wall 17m we can see that this drops to 8.2 AC, at 30m this drops again to 8.1.


In the following shot you can see that I have doubled up on our rings in every direction. The AC buff stacks so you can have multiple rings looking after top + bottom, left + right, front + back and the more area you have within your ring, the bigger the AC buff will be.


Please note: the bigger the area the shield has to cover (bigger the outer wall is) you will get less of a bonus as the shield has to cover a larger area.

To clarify some finer points, as an example you have 3m of 4m long beams stacked. Once you lose the outermost beam, the second beam (which is now the first) inherits the AC bonus and then the damage remaining from the shot will be applied to that block.

Turrets and anything placed on spin blocks are also affected by the AC bonus.

You cannot use both types of shields at the same time.

You can build your ring in any shape as long as it connects back to the generator block, so go and experiment, think about the direction of the beam should a pipe be destroyed so that it may not destroy a whole row perhaps :p .

If a part of your ring gets destroyed, be prepared for a stream of raw energy destroying blocks in its path.... (Sitting here waiting for someone to turn that into a weapon 😀 just don’t tell Nick about it)

Later on, we shall have an effect showing which blocks are affected via shift+p and also a “shielding effect” on the blocks for a bit of eyecandy 😊

Our fav build since our last update / news, is created by Dullparchment18, which we found over on Steam.

v2.4.9 [Add] : [BUG] path-finding did not use the player set turning circle value- now it does
v2.4.9 [Add] : Added a 'surface' view mode- this shows which blocks can be buffed by shield rings and also which blocks contribute to detection cross sections
v2.4.9 [Add] : [FTD-88] There is a new reason for vehicle destruction- prolonged fleeing from the battle area. This is to catch out of control enemies and destroy them to allow the battle to end. Sustained movement away from the centre of the battle will trigger this clause.
v2.4.9 [Add] : Added a custom battle mode where you can configure teams and add various settings to make vehicles fight in a controlled environment
v2.4.9 [Add] : [FTD-84] The effect of explosions on vehicles and debris has been tweaked as now looks much better
v2.4.9 [Add] : A new shielding system has been added that buffs vehicle armour class. It's based on the construction of large shielding rings that buff armour class in either the forwards/backward axis, the up/down axis or the left / right axis.
v2.4.9 [Add] : Circling simple ship and tank cards added
v2.4.9 [Add] : Added aesthetic tank tracks to the game. Tracks can be applied around existing wheels from the wheels UI.
v2.4.9 [Add] : A large number of new tutorials have been created to replace the old ones
v2.4.9 [Add] : [FTD-55] Aircraft can now be ordered to 50m their maximum recorded altitude so you no longer need to manually fly them high to record a high altitude
v2.4.9 [Add] : Right clicking the mirror button in build mode (when extended options are shown) will place a mirror immediately down the middle of the vehicle
v2.4.9 [Add] : [FTD-86] Added in a walker foot that supports useful terrain friction
v2.4.9 [Change] : Blueprints, prefabs and saved subobjects now store the material cost and block count in the file to allow faster loading. They now all display the block count and material cost in the file browsers, but only if saved in the this or a newer version of the game. Old blueprints won't show block count anymore until loaded and saved
v2.4.9 [Change] : Improved file loading to load blueprints for the file browser faster. Opening a folder with many blueprints should be significantly faster
v2.4.9 [Change] : [FTD-26] Overhauled the way that prefabs are captured, saved and loaded
v2.4.9 [Change] : [FTD-26] Overhauled the way that subobjects are saved and loaded
v2.4.9 [Fix] : Small quad launcher inventory tooltips fixed (they stated launcher supports 1 missiles)
v2.4.9 [Fix] : Fixed projectiles, especially frags, sometimes flying through blocks without hitting them ... again [BUGS-1086]
v2.4.9 [Fix] : Simple AI cards now properly maintain their used routine count [BUGS-1285]
v2.4.9 [Remove] : Changing the controller mode of a vehicle controller can now only be done by looking at the controller and pressing Q.
v2.4.9 [Remove] : I have removed the building control variant where G locks and unlocks the build marker orientation (when unlocked it automatically followed camera placement orientation) and tab would flip the build marker upside down when unlocked. This is a hang over from the initial style implemented 6 years ago where blocks were all 1x1x1 and their orientation was not that important. You can still tap G to orient the block in the direction of the camera, so you are not forced to use the rotation widget (tab).