This update has been heavily focused on improving both friendly and enemy AI. The entire AI handler has been rewritten from the ground up with various improvements to behavior.
New Features / Content
- New AI behaviour 'hit and run' added for some enemies.
- Sparrow, Falcon, Eagle, Firefly and Scarab enemies now use hit and run AI.
- New AI behaviour 'flank' added for some enemies.
- Hawk, Osprey, Arrow, Crab and Louse enemies now use flanking AI.
- New AI behaviour 'long range' added for some enemies.
- Merlin, Rapier and Mantis enemies now use long range AI.
- AI ships now use boosts to more effectively close long distances.
- AI ships fleeing / evading will now use boosts to move more quickly.
- AI ships will now strafe to dodge when you point weapons in their direction.
- Cargo ships at intercept encounters now flee as soon as they are engaged.
- Inactive enemies in sandbox now works correctly for drones and turrets.
- Repair beams now passthrough any ship they cannot repair.
- Sandbox now allows selection of different AI behaviours for custom enemies.
Balance Changes
⦁ Damage / Hull / Shield of enemies is now derived from the ship class not some secondary value.
Quality of Life / Accessibility
- Removed the wrecks from the tutorial as some players found their presence confusing.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed issue where AI would not activate laser weapons.
- Parts now stay selected when hitting back with controller in ship design.
- Fixed issue where sector gateway in sector 2 would be disabled.
- Fixed direction of entry / exit of sector gateways.
- Fixed exiting through wrong gateway when jumping between sectors.
- Grapples now detach if the attached ship becomes invisible.
- Increased physics hit stack size to avoid index errors when lots of objects are active.
- Fixed frame rate drop when a menu ship spawns in the background.
- Fixed frame rate drop when loading new sounds.
- Fleet ships around mothership will no longer wander too far away.
- Fixed display issues where sensor arrows would not scale with camera zoom.