This patch implements a new match progression system to act as tug-of-war, in order to focus players on a specific battle/location instead of spreading out over multiple battlefields. The changes are pretty experimental so might need urgent balance tweaks in a future hotfix or patch.
The way it works is the following: instead of having multiple battles run at the same time, we only allow one single battle ( AI-commanded directed ) at any one time. One team is attacking, the other one defending. If the attacking team wins, the objective gets destroyed and it can attack another objective again. However, if the team loses, then the initiative goes to the defending team, which then gets its turn to go on the offensive.
Our goal with this change is to focus the action on a specific battlefield instead of spreading the playerbase over multiple battles ( so sometimes players didn't even encounter each other due to participating to different battles ). The other goal is to make the battles feel more important - which is why we got ride of the critical vs non-critical battles system: now all battles are critical. Losing a battle as a defender means losing the base, period. As a side consequence, the rules should also be easier to understand, especially for new players. Destroy all enemy bases to win the match, that's it !
Feedback on whether the new system works or not is very much appreciated. This patch also contains a lot of AI tweaks, a new neutral color-theme for the menus/UI, a new panel to compare ships statistics, and as usual plenty of HUD improvements and bug fixes.
Gameplay & AI
- Removed the concept of critical vs non-critical battles. All battles are now critical (the base will get destroyed if the enemy wins the battle) even if it's no longer explicitely said. This should help to reduce the duration of matches, but also feel like each battle has a stronger impact on the match flow
- Removed condition threshold (<20% of enemy's) for match victory versus opposite team's score. It was an obscure rule to speed up the end of a match. Now a match will only end when very single enemy base has been destroyed
- Increased countdown to battle ending from 10s to 2 minutes (battles were ending too quickly with no time to clean leftover ships, and sometimes the same battle restarted at the same location)
- Changed match progression to act as a tug-of-war for battles. Only one battle is active at a time. When a team loses a battle, its opponent gets the initiative for attacking. As a result, the match ping-pongs between teams. However when a team wins an attack battle, it has the opportunity to attack again instantly
- Static defenses on structures are now taken into account when showing a battle's victory odds to the player
- Attacker teams now have a slight advantage in fleet's credits budget compared to the defender team's, to take into account that the defender team's slightly advantaged due to the static defenses/turrets/platforms
- Shields no longer break down when they're depleted. Depleted shields now start recharging instantly. A critical hit has been added for shields being damaged instead (like other ship sub systems). It'll take 30s for shields being repaired
- Energy no longer recharges at the same time as firing weapons in weapons overcharge mode. Weapons overcharge mode felt overpowered compared to the other modes, as if you fired in bursts, your energy was naturally recharging at full rate; so if you alternated between firing bursts, there was little downside to using this overhcharge mode
- Rogue AI/bots will no longer accidentely reinforce/participate in active battles (they were interfering with the score calculations)
- Reduced a little bit the probability of spawning AI capital ships in battles (this should make capital ships more valuable)
- AI can now fire kinetic weapons when their target's shields are low (previously, shields had to fully depleted or damaged for a bot to start using kinetics)
- Fixed too many AI ganging up on a single enemy. The ratio was previously 5:1, but is now limited to 2:1 (in ship's score worth)
- Fixed AI ships getting forcibly killed by the server due to remaining in warp in for more than 2 minutes, which could happen for AI destroyers entering a planetary battle. The limit is now 5 minutes
Asteroid and planetary collisions Fixes
- Fixed a bug which ignored projectile collisions on planetary surfaces (projectiles were passing through)
- Fixed multiple collision issues/bugs with asteroids
- Adjusted asteroid rotation speed (massive asteroids now rotate slower, almost unnoticeable)
- Fixed a major resource leak issue in asteroid fields/rings, which could potentially cause slowdowns over time (collision bodies were not properly destroyed when the ring was unloaded)
- Fixed planetary/atmospheric battles ships that were warping in too fast and colliding/dying on the ground before they could even get into battle
User Interface / Menus
- Implemented new user interface / menus color theme (previously: the UI was using the HUD's color theme, so the colors were messy/all over the place. The new color theme is more neutral to the eye and coherent)
- Added team assets to mission screen's info panel when selecting a battle. The victory odds are still shown as previously, but the panel now also shows the absolute credit's worth of assets owned by each team in the battlefield
- Added new ship description and statistics panel in ship menu screen. This will allow to compare the different ships's statistics together
- Fixed a bug related to textured brushes, which made some images flicker or appear incorrect in the UI (ex.: team selection menu background images were sometimes incorrect for a frame)
- Fixed missing trailings length slider bar in sensors tactical screen
HUD Tweaks and Improvements
- Added new HUD notifications for being repaired/resupplied (or, as a corvette, doing repairs/resupplies), either by an allied ship or in hangars
- Updated spawn marker colors: they're now only blue for hangars that can fit your ship class (otherwise they're now red). This will make it more obvious to new players where they can repair/resupply
- Added new floating text indicators on HUD to notify player of closest hangar or resupply ship (corvette).
- Added a new floating text indicator on HUD to notify player of the the closest heavily damaged ally (so as a corvette player, you know who's in need of repairs)
- Tweaks to HUD warnings/alerts: they're now colored as a function of importance/priority (info alerts are in cyan, normal alerts in orange, critical alerts in red)
- HUD indicator tweaks (they're now more opaque)
- Tweaked selected target's color so that it is more easily visible on the HUD
- Added horizontal alignment to MFDs (ex.: mission MFD is now right-aligned if it's in the top-right corner of the HUD)
- Changed bounty indicator icon
- Added more explicit target-out-of-range alert if manually firing weapons at a far-away target
- Locking targeting circle color is now shows up as green only if the ship's direction is aligned to its velocity. This will help firing missiles/torpedoes at targets within the circle
General bug fixes and Improvements
- Fixed friendly fire warning not showing up when hitting modular structures
- Fixed credits being reset to 0 instead of 50 when the match restarts
Assets and Visuals
- Updated a dozen station modular assets with their upgraded visuals (better geometry, improved materials/colors, added ambient occlusion etc..)
- Added ground (planetary surfaces or asteroids) impact projectile effect
- Updated bobblehead models with new look and textures
- Dust-particles effect now uses a non-uniform, more realistic density model (rings and close to thick atmospheres = higher dust density)
- The dust-particles effect is now affected by the 'effects quality' setting
- Modular structures destruction/explosion effects now fade off over time (previously, the small explosions never stopped and could become annoying)
- Updated spawn/hangar modular markers (also, fixed the ones for ground bases)
- Updates to spawns: dimensions tweaks, added new markers, added some new spawns in ground modules
- Updated destruction materials and added some missing materials ( some modules, like HUBs, did not have destruction materials and did not appear destroyed to the players)
Audio
- Fixed a major bug when initializing the audio device. It defaulted to 5.1 output, even for stereo users. As a result, if you were using a stereo device, sound quality was negatively affected. The game should now properly use your default audio device's setup and most users should notice a sound quality increase (especially if you were playing in stereo or 2.1)
- Added menu option to change the output audio device on the fly (without having to restart the game)
- Audio volume adjustments for rotating turrets, weapons firing sound range, explosions sound range..
- Updated some audio effects after last patch's feedback (new AMSl laser sound effect, improved machine gun sounds, improved some projectile impact sounds)
Misc
- Updated some default game settings (ex.: MFD layouts per ship, increased navigation targets from 30 to 50, .. )
- Updated game's initial settings to better take into account quality level based of CPU speed and GPU video-ram
- Moved default viewpoint in corvette slightly to the left (to be seated)