Executive Assault 2 News

Hello executives, today's patch has quite a few things fixed and added focusing on improving the direct control experience on stations.

• Added fighter bay to Executron facility
  
• Rearming stations now heal units.
  
• More obvious where the capture terminal is on outposts
  
• Added green bar to show rearm time of weapons
  
• Weapons now have heat glow.
  
• Added sequential mode in scenario editor.
  
• Tracer fire has been added to weapons so easier to see where shots are coming from
  
• Added hit effect so you know when you have been shot
  
• Added hit direction effect so you know which direction you have been hit from.
  
• Location based damage with headshots doing 3x more
  
• Internal turrets now have a new look
  
• Executrons now have a death camera
  
• Telling a gateway probe to dock will now show a little arrow
  
• Docking bay has now been given more controls such as recalling ships, opening/closing outer doors and preventing takeoff, these controls can be found from the internal subsystem panel (same as turrets and doors)
  

• Z11 bots and turrets aim has been more relaxed to increase enjoyment of the game in First person mode.
  
• Grouping units is now done with the left control like the manual says.
  
• Hit areas on bots/mechs/executives have all been improved.
  
• Ducking and hiding behind crates now actually helps
  
• Bullet weapon graphics have been improved.
  
• Smaller ships now have flames come out the back when damaged
  
• Ion cloud will no longer damage docked ships when the docking bay doors are closed
  
• Reduced Ion Cloud chance and increased Meteorite for now.
  
• Crates added to ore refinery.
  
• Removed repair button from internal turrets so has to be done now during the upgrade/repair sequence.
  

• Weapon damage will no longer multiply depending on how many players there are
  
• Starting a new skirmish game after loading an old one no longer breaks the game
  
• Victory conditions are now correctly applied to skirmish saves.
  
• Defence upgrades are now better synced over the network
  
• Fixed robots stopping while trying to move a lot of them.
  
• Navigation stability has been improved.
  
• Text colour in tutorial progression now correct
  
• Shotgun spread has been fixed
  
• Reduced audio issues a little
  
• Brought tech is now properly applied if you have the correct amount to buy it
  
• Cockpit should vanish now when the CEO crashes into something while inside a star fighter
  
• Fixed gateway teleporting into space issues.
  
• Lights now start off on all derelict outposts
  
• Long range load out will now only become available when missles/railgun is researched.
  
• AI now builds better tech
  
• Hovering over and selecting units now showing correct tech
  
• Executrons respawning now get correct system fog.
  
• Ion cloud position now synced over multiplayer
  
• Cockpit now vanishes when game is over
  
• No longer dock rolled over
  
• Fixed issue where direct controlling a robot would cause the hands to vanish.
  

Adding an executive fighter to the Executron facility really opens up space flight and gives Executrons something to do early on the in the game rather than just waiting for a star fighter to be built, let me know what you think. If you decide to take one out of a spin as the CEO please make sure you have a docking bay built as its a one way launch system.

I will be continuing to improve the Executron experience which will include new buildings to improve defence such as a garrison, an inventory system so that turrets and other devices can be placed down, facility upgrade tech which needs to be installed, damaged systems which need repairing, new models for smaller ships and eventually bring back laser weapons.

A lot of people have been asking for an official discord channel so one has been setup so that you can all chat about the game, organise matches, see where its going and start the formation of an active community. I will also be using it to bounce ideas off you or show any new cool features I am working on.

https://discord.gg/ranDWCU

Thanks for continuing to support the game and thank you for all the bug reports.

Cheers,
Rob

Hello Executives,

Seems the Scenario editor is stable enough to release onto the main branch of the game so if you are on the Experimental branch please switch back to the main one by opting out else you will not get this update.

Along with the release I have also fixed a fair few major bugs.

• Can no longer buy tech for free.
  
• Buying new tech should update the tech tree.
  
• AI now shoots rocket launchers again.
  
• Fighters now shoot at gateway probes.
  
• Tech which you have already researched is no longer applied when purchased.
  
• Light levels on all stations have been increased.
  
• Economy stability has been improved.
  
• Multiple of the same outpost has been fixed on the economy screen, especially when loading from save.
  
• Mining outposts on economy screen now show how many ships are assigned to it so you can see if it needs more cargo/mining ships.
  
• Right clicking on a quick nav system with a mining outpost present while a cargo ship is selected will now make that mining outpost the cargo ships new home base.
  
• Correct amount of ships constructed when taking over an outpost in multiplayer.
  
• Deploying a monolith will now tell you if you have hit your fleet cap and not start constructing
  
• Out of bounds warning system radius has been increased when flying ships
  
• A bug where ships would continue to fly forward after exiting direct piloting mode has been fixed.
  
• Improved AI on stuck robots so they will try and unstuck them selves.
  
• Giant green reflection in defence outpost has been removed.
  
• Wall collides have been thickened to help improve glitching through walls.
  
• Error in outfit screen showing wrong weapon has been fixed.
  
• Factions no longer ask for money twice.
  
• FXAA is now being applied to the game.
  

I noticed that some of you were constructing extra bits of your base to the side of Research facilities, this was not an intended feature therefor it has been removed. However I actually really like the idea of being able to construct to the side of an outpost especially ship yards as this allowed you to bring your ship construction closer to the front lines. I am going to investigate this and look at bringing it back into the game in a better state.

Thank you again for all the testing help, as mentioned in a few posts I am looking at improving the first person experience of the game next by giving Executrons more things to do as well as looking at adding a fighter bay to the Executron facility so that they don't have to wait for the docking bay to clear and can just dive into a fighter and explore space from the get go.

Enjoy!
Rob

Greetings executives,

Today I have uploaded a copy of the game featuring the scenario editor allowing you to make your own single player campaigns.
It also features a proper single player tutorial for new people to follow so by all means let me know what you think.

I felt that now would be a good time to get feedback about the new features from the community and make sure its going in the right direction, be sure these are not their final versions.

There is also new battle music for you to enjoy.

Since its experimental I highly recommend not putting a too much effort into making campaign just at this moment in time due to the fact that you might loose it if I update certain variables (which I will try and avoid doing)
However the files it outputs are in JSON format so they are most likely fixable if worse comes to worse.
Once out of the experimental phase I will enable workshop support so you can share your campaign with your friends.

This update will be going into a special experimental branch and not onto the main one to make sure its all working first

To access the experimental branch you need to:

1. Right click on the game in the library and click properties
   
2. Click on the betas tab
   
3. Type in iloveexecutiveassault and the click check code
   
4. Select experimental from the list and the special version should download.
   
5. Remember to switch back when the patch comes out officially.
   

A few bugs have been fixed as been spending most of my time working on this however the game should no longer crash when playing as an Executron in single player mode and taking control of a derelict station, rockets will now fire in the right direction and the monolith should be better synced over multiplayer.

While I await your feedback I will be working on bug fixing again which judging by the bug reports I have been getting mostly happens in multiplayer games especially with Executrons.

If you haven't seen it already here is the road map for the game.
https://steamcommunity.com/app/510500/discussions/0/1639789306558917877/

Thank you again for all the help and I hope you enjoy the new features.

Cheers,
Rob

Evening executives,

The experimental branch is now live for everyone as it fixes a few important issues.

In addition to adding the map editor and everything announced in the last announcement, this patch also fixes the following:

• Infestors should no longer go under the station and crawling around in space.
  
• The spawning of hundreds of protester ships when a faction declares war with you.
  
• When a CEO has been assassinated, all of their assets will self destruct with the station blowing up 2 minutes afterwards.
  
• Buying tech will now instantly be applied rather than having to click a separate button, tech trade will be added at a later date.
  
• Mechanoid navigation has been improved.
  
• The fabrication should no longer break when buying tech from the trader when you already have it researched.
  
• Tier 2 and 3 rocket launchers have been removed from the tech tree.
  

Please remember if you have been testing the game on the experimental branch to revert back to the standard one else you will not get this update.

Thank you again for all the testing and help.

Cheers
Rob

Hi Executives,
I would like to present the beginnings of the map editor for you all to try out.

It can be accessed from the main menu and it will generate a seed which can be shared around or saved/loaded from a game creation screen.

Later more control will be added along with the ability to make scenarios.

This update will be going into a special experimental branch and not onto the main one to make sure its all working first as I had to rewrite most of the map generation code to get it working, testing has shown it works in both single and multiplayer but I want to be extra sure.

To access the experimental branch you need to:

1. Right click on the game in the library and click properties
   
2. Click on the betas tab
   
3. Type in iloveexecutiveassault and the click check code
   
4. Select experimental from the list and the special version should download.
   
5. Remember to switch back when the patch comes out officially.
   

I also wont be giving any instructions on how to use it and want to see how you all get on first and see how intuitive it is.

Also fixed in this patch is:

• Mechanoids hack bug has been fixed by removing the ability to hack doors, this was never meant to happen and is a game play mechanic to encourage players to bring along bots.
  
• Coolant countdown removed from Executron menu.
  
• Ships no long continue to shoot outposts which you have just captured.
  
• Research bugs have been fixed which caused the design menu to break.
  
• Save bug which caused outposts not to spawn correctly has been fixed.
  

Enjoy and let me know how you get on with it.

Cheers
Rob