Patch 0.6.4.0 ( Thursday October 17th 2019 )
This patch focuses on bug fixing and improvements to the existing functionalities, with a number of significant changes to the chat box. Note that control scheme unification and input improvements could not make it in time, so we'll most likely be including them in next week's patch instead.
Game balance
- Rebalanced resupply rates / costs, in particular it will now take many seconds for corvettes to resupply missiles / torpdedoes on another ship
- Reduced shields recharge and resupply rates on spawning points
- Spawning points will no longer recharge / repair / resupply if they received damage in the last 10 seconds (note: this already applied to corvettes)
Resupplying was imbalanced, and possibly still is. It should now take more time for the corvette to resupply ammo to nearby ships, especially missiles/torpedoes
- Small reduction of chaff's duration, launch speed and activation distance (chaffs were buffed a bit too much last patch)
- Adjustments to credits rewards for ships deaths and battle participation bonus
The battle participation bonus was very unbalanced and giving too many credits for kills during battles. The credits rewards have been rebalanced. Overall it'll be more difficult to accumulate a lot of credits now if you aren't careful
- Increased torpedo damage from 3500 to 5000
After last patch's buff to the capital ship's hitpoints, bombers in particular needed to be more threatening to capital ships
Chat box
- Chat box welcome messages show up when entering the game instead of when the client initializes
- Team channel now also displays local zone channel (including voice commands)
- Auto-close setting for chatbox is now the default
- Initial implementation for private message chat. Type /msg playername text to open a private channel to another player
- Added commands /team /global /local commands to chat in a different channel than the one currently being selected
- Added support for custom chat channels. Use /join channelname to create or join a custom channel. Warning: channels are public, and not password or team restricted
- Implemented a /mute command to mute a player in all chat channels
- Fixed chat box being visible despite HUD being hidden
Improvements and features
- Installation modules can now self-repair too (this also includes turrets on modules). However once the module is destroyed, it no longer repairs / come back up
- Spawn button can now display "can't afford" or "not available" states if the selected ship is too costly, or if there are no spawns available left at the selected base
- Selected spawn now defaults to closest upon dying, unless a manual spawn was set
- Added buttons to filter spawns, players and other entities on the starmap
The "select closest spawn" button has been removed: it is now the default upon dying, unless you had manually set a respawn base before dying. Three new buttons have been introduced, to filter out spawns, players and other entities (that last one includes enemy bases). All three filters are enabled by default. If you want to more easily see which spawn bases are available, you can just disable the "players" and "other" filters to only keep "spawns"
- Added randomness in probability curve for selecting ship classes in battles generation
This was almost a bug: the algorithm deciding which NPC ship classes to spawn when a battle starts was using the same seed for all battles. Different battles and waves will now use different seeds, bringing more "variety" to the battles in terms of ships composition. It is also possible to see battles with a higher proportion of small ships / interceptors or other battles with a higher proportion of capital ships. Overall, this change should add variety to way the battles "feel".
Bug fixes
- Revamped spawn system to better take into account selected ship class
- Fixed stuck situations when it wasn't possible to respawn in an interceptor when the capship spawns had been destroyed
Destroyed capital ships spawns were especially problematic when the matching was ending, sometimes getting players in a stuck loop where they tried to downgrade their ship, but the available spawns list wasn't correctly refreshed. This shouldn't happen anymore.
- Fixed hauler pathing and death at arrival that happened at some stations
Investigating and fixing this bug took an entire day of work. Haulers were often colliding with station modules upon arriving at their destination, exploding and losing their cargo. This disrupted the flow of resources and team credits income. Haulers should now behave much better. I've still witnessed a rare occurence of haulers coincidentally reaching the destination docking platform at exactly the same time (despite spawning from different factories!) and pushing into each others. But this should be extremely rare and not disturb the resources flow.
- Fixed incorrect sound location for special effects attached to an actor (ex.: impact sound)
Impact sounds were always played at the actor origin. Usually not a problem on small ships, but on a station, a hit could have happened kilometers away from the origin, so it was a deaf impact..
- Fixed positionning of chat box and main menu in non-standard / wide screen aspect ratios / resolutions
- Fixed crash bug at startup due to corrupted quality settings
- Fixed bouncing projectiles flipped orientation
- Projectiles can bounce on static actors too now
Weapon projectiles were flipped after bouncing. They were never bouncing on non-ships such as bases..
Misc
- Improved algorithm for selecting default starting spawn base
Upon joining a game for the first time, the server tried to select the first spawning base available. The new algorithm is smarter and tries to place the player at an allied base where there are other players, and possibly a battle
- Server browser population now displays player count as a number and not as a percentage
- Added support for FMOD live update for modding. Disabled by default, but can be manually enabled in ClientConfig.xml