Patch 0.8.8.0 (Saturday 12th March 2022)
This patch mostly focuses on gameplay balance changes, including a major damage model update. Meanwhile we've started our gameplay redesign/revamp phase to tighten the match loop and improve the battle experience. We're not ready to communicate on these yet (we need to implement the changes internally first and playtest them) but as soon as we do, we'll make a major announcement. This means that the next few months are probably going to slow down in terms of public patches: we'll mostly focus on balance updates (the damage model change in this update will probably mess up with the balance quite a bit, and need further adjustments), bug fixes and UI improvements.
Gameplay
Damage model
The most important gameplay change in this patch is an update to the damage model. All weapons now deal both kinetic (versus hull) and energy (versus shields) damage. Weapons that were previously considered kinetic (ex.: the machine gun) will deal a lot more kinetic than energy damage meaning that kinetics are no longer the most effective way to weaken shields. In the same way, blasters can now damage the target's hull and even finish it off. The weapons stats and DPS were rebalanced so that a mixed composition between kinetics and blasters is viable, versus all-kinetics configurations that
we saw in previous versions of the game (ex.: 4 Halcyons on the interceptor). The most kinetic damage a weapon deals and the less effective it will be against shields, and vice-versa. The extreme example of this is with railguns and plasma cutters, which still have a high DPS assuming you're using them against the right type of target.
- Updated damage model for missile/torpedoes/mines explosions and splash damage: distribution of damage is now proportional to shield percentage (Ex.: at 50% shields, 50% of the total damage will be dealt to the shields and the remaining 50% to the hull)
- Updated ship loadout/info cards to show both kinetic and energy DPS. Revamped a bit the weapons info panel to be less cluttered and only show the significant stats (note: still a WIP, missing a description for each weapon)
- Updated AI to be smarter about weapons selection. They will now properly switch to other weapons when on cooldowns, over-heating, damaged or low on energy; expect the bots to frequently switch between kinetics and energy weapons on offense
- Collisions damage is now purely kinetic and will ignore shields
- Auto-firing AI turrets on capital ships will no longer ignore low-damagable targets if they have no better targets (previously, a kinetic turret wouldn't fire on a target with high shields and a blaster turret wouldn't fire on a target with low shields)
Weapons balance
- Increased precision of all auto-aiming weapons (note: this will make capital ships more dangerous, be careful)
- Updated hardpoint class of some weapons (flaks are now MK4 and can no longer be mounted on MK5s; same for railgun turrets)
- Capital ships can no longer mount normal missile/torpedo launchers (only the array variants)
- Railguns have been rebalanced with a higher firing rate and the ability to hit targets from a higher distance (up to 8 Km) which could give it an edge over standard weapons (which typically have a max range of 4 Km)
- Capital ships MK4 repeater guns/blasters have been improved and should now feel more useful against small targets
- Capital ships MK5 turret guns/blasters were also previously in a bad spot. They now deal significant and almost continuous damage against capital ships
- Fixed gimbal turn speed and radius for Halcyons and Plasma cutters which was set far too high. They are now similar to other gimbaled guns
Ships balance
These changes were done to further refine these ships into their respective roles:
- Removed all MK7 turrets from carrier (carriers are supposed to stay on the defensive side, therefore MK7s are not fitting their role)
- Significantly increased carrier's maneuverability (linear and rotational thrust) and small increase of speed cap (we felt the carrier was dragging the whole fleet behind in terms of movement)
- Removed 8 MK4 turrets from cruiser (we felt it had too good defensive small ships capabilities, which is supposed to be done by destroyers)
- Small updates to default loadouts for capital ships (due to refitting the hardpoint classes of some weapons)
Upgrades
New available upgrades for ship loadouts:
- Shield regen II: Boosts the shield regen rate by +50% at the expense of reducing the shield capacity by -30%. While the shield capacity reduction seems a huge downside, the faster regen might be very interesting especially in combination of the damage model update that will make kinetic weapons far less effective against a quickly recharging shield
- Piercing ammo: Reinforced ammunition for kinetic weapons, negating a certain amount of armor plating points. Has no effect on targets without armor plating (like the interceptor) or shields
- Gyro boost: Boosts gyro thrusters rotational acceleration by +50%. Does not affect maximum turn speed, making turning your ship more reactive, not faster
Flight Model
- Fixed flight model for roll in most control schemes: when going back to idle (you stop rolling the ship), the torque force did not go down to zero as fast as it could, taking slightly too long
- Removed ramp up propulsion factor in the flight model that often acted quirky. Replaced it by a speed cap when flying inside hangars (60 m/s) and garages (20 m/s)
We adjusted rotational thrust on small ships to better match the max rotational speed and feel a bit more responsive. This will mostly affect the roll axis:
- Slight increase (+27%) to Interceptor's roll acceleration and slight decrease (-15%) in max roll speed
- Large increase (+60%) to Bomber's roll acceleration
- Large increase (+50%) to Corvette's roll acceleration
Flight plan
Flight plans are now functional when you're in a squad. The squad leader's flight plan is automatically shared in real-time amongst the squad members. The squad members can still show or edit their local flight plan, by toggling a mode in the right-click context menu on the starmap.
They can toggle back any time this mode to display again the squad leader's flight plan.
HUD / UI / Menus
- Fixed starmap's filter options window which duplicated after toggling an option on/off
- Updated ship info panel (on the left side) in the ship tab menu. We cleaned the panel, split it into two tabs (one for general info, one for detailed stats) and revamped the way the stats show up as a bar (they will now all default to the middle, and show relative increases/decreases bonuses based on ship upgrades). We think this will make it easier to see at a glance what stats are affected by an upgrade
- Chat box now shows up in ship info panel in the bottom-left corner. The chatbox utilized a lot of layout space in all the menu tabs. We're considering removing the chat box from all these menu tabs, and instead replacing it with an icon that can be explicitely opened when you want to chat. This might get implemented in a future patch unless we see feedback that having the chat box opened at all time in all menus is requested from players
- Added options to show FPS, Tricount, Ping, Network stats and Input thrust in general settings
Input / Controls
- Updates to input mapper and key detection: added new options for key combos in key bindings menu
- Fix for square vs circular-shaped joysticks axes
- Fix for paired axes when applying power curve
- Fix for deadzone in square axes corners
- Added a new Legacy control scheme specifically for mouse (was old Direct control scheme for mouse)
- Introduced a new control scheme specifically for Joysticks/Gamepads/HOTAS (was old Direct control scheme for joysticks). The game should automatically upgrade the old "Direct control" into this one when you launch the game with this patch the first time
General / Misc
- Fix for Chinese IMEs (mouse clicks no longer work, Win32 message loop does not receive mouse events anymore)
- Tweaks to default input configuration for XBox controller