We're starting 2023 with a new patch, introducing various AI improvements and battle AI budget fixes that should help balancing the battles better, especially when players join a battle late after it has started. Also of note, a few nerfs to AMS systems, which felt pretty overpowered (the introducing of the new chassis system in the previous major patch, meant that corvettes can now fit auto AMS turrets, increasing the laser spam in battles and decreasing the chance for torpedoes to deal damage).
We're also happy to unveil our new planet, Tersac, which will remind you of Cinder in many ways (lava oceans, dark ridged mountains). Note that atmospheric glitches can be visible at low altitudes. Fixing those will require some major update work to our atmospheric scattering shaders during the polish phase. This year we want to ramp up a bit on planet environments production to have more variety during our future release, so new planets should be patched in more regularly.
Coming up next we still have to finish the carrier gameplay revamp, which requires more AI work (especially in terms of cooperation between AI ships). You'll already have a taste of it in this patch, as corvettes now properly form up on allies they want to repair/resupply, and should no longer stick to capital ships like parasites. If you notice any more AI behavior issues, please let us know.
Battle balance
- Revamped battle AI budget allocation: it is now dynamic and better takes into account players at the start of a battle, or joining and changing balance in the middle of a battle. This should result in more balanced battles, especially when players are involved
- Updated AI reinforcement budget system to be more balanced between the two sides until reinforcements get exhausted. In practise, this should make battles feel more "alive" and dynamic than before
- Fixed AI turrets not firing or targetting structures/modules anymore despite them being selected as the primary target (both for AI and player ships) (Note: due to this bug, AI capital ships could not finish off remaining base infrastructure, dragging the end of battles)
- Fixed an issue with the match loop where a reactor or plant core could award match victory points after the battle at this base had already ended
- Increased repair rate of damaged base modules after 5 minutes of not taking any damage (this should allow bases that are no longer under attack to repair faster)
- Exposed reactor or plant cores will take a small (0.1%/s) amount of damage over time to ensure a stuck battle will eventually end (ex.: AI only that have run out of ammo, or are blocked by asteroids) (Note: this continuous damage may increase if victory adds favor the attacker)
- Fixed a rare case of battlescape generation that allowed two bases to get located near each others, messing up the balance of battles happening at those locations
- Reduced HP on Orbital canons and central base's shields as it was draging battles too much to deplete them
AI
- Fixed an AI bug that made corvettes AMS sometimes fire at interceptors when there were no other targets
- Fixed an AI bug that made corvettes only fire one weapon group at once, despite allowing concurrent automatic weapon groups in the previous patch (Note: this will make AI corvettes more deadly overall, as they can now fire both kinetics and blaster turrets at once)
- Corvette AI improvements: avoid bumping into capital ships; avoid cluttering on the same target to repair/resupply; avoid repairing targets that have a repair field themselves (ex.: other corvettes or carrier)
- Corvettes can now actively fly & repair an ally; ships can actively go and fly towards a corvette (or carrier) to repair/resupply themselves..
- Fixed AI not firing at the base's shield from outside when a target is inside the shield, but outside of the firing range (despite the shield itself being within firing range)
- AI ships will try to avoid overheating by temporarily shutting down kinetic weapons when reaching high heat levels
- AI attacking ships will no longer stay away from a base's main defenses when outnumbering those
- AI attacking ships will be more agressive towards finishing off a base despite main defenses being up when the victory odds are favoring the attackers (>60%)
- Orbital-range attacker AIs will now prioritize high-importance defense modules (such as shield gens and plants) over other modules
- Fixed bugs related to AIs flying and crashing into the ground at low altitudes
Gameplay and balance changes
- AMS lasers no longer fire at unactivated missiles/torpedoes
- Reduced AMS laser damage by -25%
- Mass modifiers are now based upon the initial mass of the ship, and not multiplicative when stacking ship upgrades that affect mass Ex.: A ship of mass 500 tons has 2 upgrades that add +10% mass, previously it ended up at 500 * 1.1 * 1.1 = 605t, it will now end at 500 + 500 * 0.1 + 500 * 0.1 = 600t This means that some ships, despite the loadout being unchanged, might end up with a slightly different mass (ex.: carrier's mass in default loadout is lighter, so itsspeed cap was increased by a few m/s)
- Repair fields now repair hardpoints on a target by increasing HP order/priority (small damaged turrets first, then bigger ones next, then MK7+ last)
- Reduced gimbal angle on railgun to 0.25° (down from 0.5°)
- Tweaks to alternative ship's chassis base stats to make them more balanced (and coherent with other loadouts)
- Added an Extra Rockets upgrade
- Missile retargetting upgrade now properly affects the corvette's missile array
- Extra missiles upgrade now properly affects capacity of EMP missile launchers as well as SSM batteries
Warp jam
- Warp jam visual effect is now played over on every affected ship and toned down on the source ship/player
- Engaging warp jam now informs the player on how many enemy targets were affected
- Successfully warped jammed enemies now generate 150 support points per affected target
- A jammed warp drive that the player tries to engage now properly shows a warning on the HUD (with remaining cooldown) instead of nothing
- Increased warp jam's range to 10 Km (up from 5 Km)
Bug fixes
- Tentative fix for "AcquireCredentials" error when connecting to a server from Windows 7 without TLS 1.0 support
- Fixed left/right sound asymmetry when firing weapons (left/right, sometimes weapons on left side could not be heard)
- Fixed a server crash when an administrator manually starts a battle at a neutral base
- Fixed a multithreading server crash bug in the players state manager
- Reduced desync that caused an error correction snapping the cruiser's orientation back by a few degrees when starting to charge the spinal canon (Note: the root problem is not totally fixed, but should be more subtle now)
Misc
- Added a new planet: Tersac, a Cinder-like volanic planet with large lava oceans and dark ridged mountains
- Added officer portraits during incoming HQ transmissions
- Added a transmission notification when orbital canons are destroyed
- Fixed misplaced floating shield generator on Xanthar Stn