Hello! This patch was mainly for fixing bugs, but there's a few notable new features.
"Build Speed" lowers with the HP of strategic targets
This one was a suggestion that I think was pretty good. A base goes from 100% effectiveness to 0% effectiveness when it's destroyed, with nothing in between. This kind of binary state of a base made it feel like you weren't doing anything when you damaged a base, and further discouraged players from damaging a base if it was a target of opportunity. As before, a base has its critical structures restored when captured.
This goes both ways! Preventing your own bases from being damaged will make them harder to capture by virtue of being able to replace units quicker.
Visual refresh on smoke plumes in the battlefield
Another important change is the visual language for the smoke plumes. The original fire/smoke plume from damaged vehicles was a holdover from when much less of them were around. However, with the new and much more numerous vehicles, this old effect was causing huge smokestacks all over the map, often over inconsequential wreckages. Spammed like that, the effect lost its significance.
Now, big fire/smoke plume are reserved for damaged bases. It's a visual cue that a base is safer to attack, tells you exactly where the base is without needing any UI elements, and can't be confused for vehicles. Skirmishes between vehicles will still create smoke/fire, but it's more "smoldering field of wreckage" than "oil fire".
Changelog
New Features:
- When structures are near destruction, they sometimes get set on fire
- When a vehicle is destroyed, it enters a critical state before being fully destroyed
- How long the vehicle is in the critical state depends on how much damage was done to it
- After a vehicle has been critical for a short time, it will explode into a semi-permanent wreck
Improvements:
- Strategic Target critical damage affects production rate of new groups down to a minimum of 10%
- Vehicles have a new set of smaller fire/smoke effects when destroyed
- GAU-12 fire sound (also used by Shilka and M163) has a more seamless loop
- Shilka empty shells now in world space (won't turn with the turret)
- Added chihirobelmo credit to the credits.txt for the smart scaling algorithm
- Vehicles will defend closer to base radius (should prevent vehicles from driving to random beaches)
Bugfixes:
- Many changes to FMOD audio stealing logic to prevent audio overlap and cutting out
- Firing sound no longer persists after a Shilka stopped firing
- Fixed bug where there was exactly a 1% chance that a vehicle could fail to spawn a wreck effect and NRE
- Multi-barreled guns no longer create multiple unused audio sources
- Friendly AV8Bs no longer error and get their logic stuck when encountering a Shilka
- Running ther weapons camera on a munition which self-destructs no longer creates an error