From The Depths News

Sorry if this pops up but steam is really unhelpful in setting this up :P

Hey Depthians!

We are releasing an experimental build to beta test which will have the steam overhaul. We will publish the change logs soon.

Hey Depthians!

We know most of you have been waiting eagerly for the Camo and CJE power/energy generation, and we thank you as always for your patience and support!

This update also has a number of voice-overs for our tutorials with more coming soon! A load of music and you can now play adventure with your mates in multiplayer! I wish I had friends now :'(

You may be thinking why are those CJE’s not in the usual orientation facing the front with the exhaust towards the back, and this is because they now have another function and that is generating power or energy.




By no means are these two made optimally, that’s for you all to figure out :p but they do generate a decent amount of power or energy for their size and fuel consumption. Hoping to see some optimal builds from you, good peeps!

I guess I should wrap this up with some more epic news and that is the ability to skin our constructs and not the White Flayer way.

The first screenshot is showing my Green Hornet, its hull colour slot 21 and the “cockpit” paint slot is 2. It’s looking quite dull right?


But what about now?


In this instance, I did not want the “cockpit” colour which is slot 2 to have any camo texture so I turned that off by right-clicking on the paint slot 2 “Enable camouflage for this colour” to off. I also turned off any paint colour in slot 21, which allows me to increase or decrease the alpha of the camo texture. Had I left “apply paint over the top of the camo layer”, the alpha would increase or decrease the actual colour set on slot 21, so if you are unable to see the camo while you have the paint active I would suggest decreasing the paint alpha until the camo is visible.

You can access the skinning section by pressing V on your construct and “Camouflage textures” tab, and choose which material should take the camo skin. Even wing parts can be skinned!!



[h2]Addition[/h2]
[h3]CAMO[/h3]

• Added a camouflage texture skin system for adding skins to alloy, metal, heavy armour and wing blocks on the vehicle. Press V to engage with it.
  
• Added non-PBR support for camo textures
  
• Vehicle colour palettes now include an option for each colour to disable/enable the rendering of the new camo textures on blocks painted that colour
  
• You can also decide whether you want the paint on top of, or below, the camo
  

[h3]CUSTOM JET GENERATOR[/h3]

• ACB commands added for switching between jet generator output modes (power/energy), and for changing the maximum thrust reserved
  
• Generator reserves a fraction of the custom jet’s maximum thrust and generates up to THRUST_RESERVED
• 0.05 power or energy/second
  
• Generators are 3x3x1 and 1x1x1 parts fitting the main block’s line, costs are 100 and 20 materials
  
• New block for both custom jet sizes: generator
  

[h3]MULTIPLAYER[/h3]

• Adventure mode can now be played multiplayer
  

[h3]TUTORIALS[/h3]

• Added a voice over for the APHE cram tutorial
  
• Added a voice over for the APS build guide
  
• Added a voice over for the Carb engine tutorial
  
• Added a voice over for the Injector engine tutorial
  
• Added a voice over for the laser build guide
  
• Added a voice over for the resource management tutorial
  
• Added a voice over for the strategic control tutorial
  
• Added a voice over for the Vertical Launch missile tutorial
  

[h2]Change[/h2]
[h3]CIWS[/h3]

• Anti missile cannons can now target and damage CRAM shells. Max diameter slider up from 1000 to 2000mm
  

Beta test is now 3.0.0!!



[h2]Addition[/h2]
[h3]TUTORIALS[/h3]

• Building tutorials are now better at figuring out whether a placement is functionally equivalent to the recommended placement and allowing it
  
• The rotation instructions in the building tutorials have been tweaked to be a bit more clear
  
• The tactical control tutorial now has a voice over
  

[h2]Change[/h2]
[h3]MANUALS[/h3]

• Many updates and tweaks to the in-game manuals and how they are displayed
  
• The manuals are more usefully integrated into the inventory now
  

[h3]STRATEGIC AI[/h3]
Strategic AI now uses a finer pathfinding grid- all custom campaigns must recalculate the grid in the ‘garrison’ tab of the map editor
[h2]Fix[/h2]
[h3]ACHIEVEMENTS[/h3]

• Fixed the achievement for declaring war on an ally
  
• Fixed the Oynx watch HQ achievement for QfN
  

[h3]AI[/h3]

• The empty manoeuvre routine no longer bothers to check for ‘out of control’ state
  

[h3]CAMPAIGN[/h3]

• AI scuttling rules for distance now only take effect if the unit is moving away from all of your units at least 5 m/s
  
• Capturing a board section now takes 10 minutes (1 minute at x10 speed), this gives the AI more time to respond.
  

[h3]DUCTS[/h3]

• Set EMP susceptibility and resistivity values to match parent blocks.
  

[h3]MULTIPLAYER[/h3]

• A number of adventure mode (beta_test only) issues fixed that resulted in clients not spawning properly or receiving incorrect data
  
• Fixed an AI exception on clients in multiplayer
  
• Players who are not in an adventure mode (beta_test only) session have their previously saved positions wiped (when saving) so they don’t end up spawning in the middle of no-where should they join a future session
  

Hey Depthians!

A quick sneaky update and a new addition...Achievements xD



[h2]Addition[/h2]

[h3]ACHIEVEMENTS[/h3]

• Added a stats and achievement viewer, accessed from the main menu single player tab
  
• Added achievements (32 of them) for defeating faction HQs in Quest for Neter on various difficulties.
  
• Added an achievement for building up 1 million explosive combo damage (in campaign/adventure/missions of built-in planets with standard game constants)
  
• Added an achievement for doing high damage per second in a campaign battle
  
• Added an achievement for getting a unit with maximum radar range in campaign
  
• Added an achievement for getting into a 3-way battle in campaign
  
• Added an achievement for going 150m/s under 500m in designer, in your own vehicle
  
• Added an achievement for killing 20 planes in the campaign, story mission or adventure mode (in built-in planets with standard game constants)
  
• Added an achievement for RTG usage
  
• Added an achievement for Scarlet Dawn kills in campaign and adventure
  
• Added an achievement for shooting down 1000 missiles in built-in campaigns/missions/adventures with standard physics
  
• Added an achievement for winning a battle in the campaign where you bring approximately an x10 smaller force and defeat the enemy with approximately 60% of your force intact
  
• Added in achievement for saving a huge sub-object (i.e turret)
  
• Added in two achievements for creating and gifting commodities in campaigns
  
• Added in two achievements for killing large and small godlies in (fixed difficulty) campaigns/missions/adventures in built-in planets
  

[h2]Change[/h2]
[h3]LUA[/h3]

• Lua missile transceiver cost to 100 (from 2000). Lua missiles are now affected by ECM unless they have an intact cable connection
  

[h3]UI[/h3]

• Updated the enemy spawning UI for designer
  

[h3]CAMPAIGN[/h3]

• Damage difficulty for all preset difficulties is now 1 (easy was 0.4, hard was 2, godly was 4). You can still edit this slider in ‘custom’ if you want.
  
• In the campaign, the kill to death ratio used to adjust difficulty is now only calculated for blocks destroyed on a vehicle with >85% health. This should get a better estimate as below 85% health the fate of most vehicles is sealed.
  

[h3]CIWS[/h3]

• CIWS damage multiplier down from 2.5x to 2x
  
• Flak damage up from 50% of HE to 85% of HE. Increased armour effectiveness bonuses against flak and the customizer tooltip now shows that flak is weak against armour
  
• Kinetic projectiles now do not check the angle of impact against missiles and CRAM shells. Damage is noticeably higher/more consistent, performance increased
  

[h3]DAMAGE[/h3]

• Frag AP up from 3 to 4. The buff paired with ricochet changes was not enough to keep frag close to HE damage
  
• HE mechanics adjusted so it does less damage with lower variance, and smaller HE is comparatively better. Geometry is more important(hits on flat walls relatively weaker, in tight places stronger)
  
• HE scaling adjusted to make huge explosions slightly stronger
  
• Missile impact damage done for each m/s speed up by ~11%
  

[h3]LASERS[/h3]

• Base AP without frequency doublers up from 20/30 to 40/60 AP (pulsed/continuous)
  
• Frequency doublers give 1 AP if there are 100/150 pumps in the system, down from 180/270
  
• Laser cavity capacities down to 5/6 the previous value
  
• Non-armoured optic variants have 300 health and 60 armour, up from 250/40
  
• Pumps convert 30 power into 24 cavity energy/second, down from 30
  
• Short-range combiner armour up from 50 to 60
  

[h3]LEADERBOARDS[/h3]

• All old leaderboards wiped
  
• Leaderboard UIs updated and added, where applicable, to the debrief screen and mission launch screen
  
• Missions and campaigns with leaderboards will now frequently check to see your game configuration constants are standard and offer you the choice to reset them or opt-out of the leaderboard
  
• New leaderboards added for all DWG and SS missions. Quest for Neter retains it’s four leaderboards
  

[h3]MISSIONS[/h3]

• Mission allied units are now all configured so they spawn full of material but you cannot resupply from them, build on them, scrap them or retrofit them. This is an optional setting, should custom campaigns need different settings for allies.
  

[h3]NETER[/h3]

• Fixes to board section capture locations, many of which were erroneously on land, sorry about this
  

[h3]SCUPPERING[/h3]

• The old ‘fleeing’ check that would kill a unit that was deemed to be running from battle has been removed, now that the out of control check is in for problematic faction vehicles.
  
• You are alerted when you AI thinks it is out of control
  

[h2]Fix[/h2]
[h3]MISSIONS[/h3]

• The system that migrates your selected custom vehicle from one mission to the next (where appropriate) has been fixed
  

[h3]YOUTUBE[/h3]

• Fixed a bug where the youtube plugin would spam error messages. All old error messages will now be deleted