Patch 0.10.5.4 ( 26th of June 2025 )
Hello everyone. In this patch we are introducing a new tutorial (Warp & Navigation) and revamped two major features. One major flaw of the game was that battles often became stale passed a certain point, when reinforcements dried out. In this patch, we've modified the reinforcements mechanics so that ships never fully run out. The 'final wave' now repeats every 3 minutes and guarantees that a minimum amount of small ships (interceptors, bombers and corvettes) regularly join the battle.
This makes it easier for the AI to finish battles on its own, and provides more targets or assistance to the players. As a result, this change has modified the delicate balance between attackers and defenders, so we might need to do further adjustments at a later stage. Let us know in the comments if you feel this is a step in the right direction and if the battles are indeed more interesting in their later stage.
Another major change was the addition of a new atmospheric flight model. Keep in mind that our ships have no wings (by conscious design) therefore flying in an atmosphere is mostly driven by drag and friction. The idea here is that you'll more easily take damage at higher speeds, potentially lose control if you fly and try to turn too fast, and burn your shield. It'll be very difficult to rotate your ship around (especially in the horizontal direction, aka. yaw, but easier if you roll & pitch). However, one advantage you'll get is that friction will slow down your ship much more rapidly, allowing some sharper corners to change course at a much faster rate than before. Overall, our goal here is to provide more differences between space and atmospheric flight. Note that the AI hasn't fully adapted to these changes, and may struggle to turn in atmospheres in some cases.
We've added a new re-entry effect (when your ship causes friction with the atmosphere), fixed various assets and bugs as usual. In our next patch we'll continue the polish pass and iterate on the AI commander and bots behaviors and balance.
-Flavien Brebion
Tutorials
- New Warp & Navigation tutorial is now available. It will teach the player how to deploy a ship, navigate and warp around a planetary system. It ends with a little bit of gameplay challenge with the instructor and the player responding to a strange distress call...
- All tutorials are now unlocked and available to play in any order
- Tweaks to existing tutorials: fixed incorrect hangar hologram color during Basic Flight take-off cinematic, switched team to Scoria to reflect the lore, changed instructor's portrait..
- Note: we're not happy with the quality of the instructor's voice over. We'll probably update it to a newer one when we're closer to the 1.0 release
Battle Reinforcements & AI
- Reinforcement waves never run out. A minimum final wave of about 4000 SP's worth of small ships (~15-20 ships) gets deployed every 3 minutes. Capital ships are excluded. This prevents battles from becoming stale and taking forever to end, and provides more targets to players towards the end of a battle.
- Changed attack fleet momentum win/lose condition: 'momentum' was a concept too complex for players to really understand, and took too many variables into account. This has been simplified to the attacking fleet capital's power. It now only counts destroyers, cruisers and carriers. Wiping out the attacker's capital's fleet is now the objective of the defenders to win the battle, which is clearer. Attacker's objectives are unchanged (they still need to destroy the station's reactor or land base's power plants). Players are only taken into account in the attacker's fleet objective within 5 minutes of the battle start (if they join later, they can still play, but won't affect the objective bar)
- Tweaks to the AI commander's tactics and reinforcement ship's ratios
- Added a minimum cooldown timer to AI commander's switching tactics. Previously, an AI commander could switch back & forth almost instantly between tactics, which resulted in confusion for the bots..
- AI bombers can now spawn kinetic and energy torpedo loadouts
Atmospheric Flight Model
- Revamped atmospheric flight model: drag now more significantly affects ships, and prevents them from turning horizontally (yaw) at higher speeds. They also receive more damage (shield first) due to friction at high speeds. Drag increases by 2x when shields are down, and decreases by -50% in warp. Aerodynamic profile (angle to the wind flow, causing more or less area exposure) is taken into account in the friction calculations. Also keep in mind that air density varies on different planets, and is much stronger at lower altitudes (<5 Km) than at higher altitudes (>20 Km)
- Added atmospheric Re-entry effect to all ships
- Added a Planetary Free Flight script to the Workshop (players can directly deploy any ship in an atmosphere to fly around)
- Friction damage on the bubble carrier now affects shields before hull
- Added Aerodynamic Coating upgrade (reduces drag in atmospheres by -30%, available on small ships)
UI/Menus Fixes
- Fixed match countdown popup staying opened on the main menu screen after a match has ended
- Fixed battle report not showing after the final battle of a match, before the match ends
- Fixed FPS & Stats on top-left corner sometimes showing as white boxes instead of text
- Increased max navigation and combat HUD target indicators from 200 to 500 (in the options menu -> Gameplay -> HUD tab settings)
Generic Bug Fixes
- Fixed server freeze due to certain parameters in battlescape generation being too much constrained
- Fixed a bug that caused the set heading to be retained after dying & respawning with the capital ship control scheme
- Fixed a bug with respawning in a hangar on a planet that caused the ship to randomly move instead of staying properly aligned with the pad
Misc
- Updated Interceptor asset missing skin on lower LOD levels (resulted in popping between LOD levels with different skins)
- Reduced warp charge effect's brightness to avoid darkening the rest of the screen