Attention, pilots - to your stations!
Fleet Battles just received a massive update and we can't wait to see you online to try it out. We've added some new alien ships, a few devastating new weapons, and customization options for your matches. Buckle up - it’s time to fly!
For full details on the updates, view the changelog at the bottom of the post!
Top Changes in Beta 2
New Ships
Greegrox Swarm
They might look squishy, but these space jellyfish are not to be underestimated! Each ship within their swarm represents a single unit of crew that fires an individual microbolt. Did we mention that the swarm can heal itself, too? They must go through a lot of band-aids…
Mu’Kay Grasper
Don’t make them ink! It gets messy. This giant squid-ship can throw down ink blobs that both damages and sucks energy from their enemies. Unlike most other ships, the Mu'Kay don’t use any projectile weaponry - they rely on getting up close and crushing their opponent with their ship’s tentacles.
Lexite Interceptor
Be careful with these guys - they’re hardy! This fast-moving ship has “dual-shot” blasters and an extremely tough-to-penetrate shield. When the shields are engaged, the ship is pretty much invincible - but, it drains energy. You’ll have to time your attacks carefully in order to achieve victory against them.
New Weapon Components
- Heal: Restores lost crew. Does that make them zombies, or..?
- Death Ray: The name explains itself. You probably don’t want to get hit with this one.
- Dual Shot: Fires a fast double shot. Hey, two for the price of one!
- Ink Blob: Drops an inky blob that drains energy and crew. Clean-up on aisle three!
- Shield: Holding down a button makes you invincible... until you run out of energy. Suggestion? Don’t run out of energy.
Custom Matches
First things first: you can now use your own custom ships in multiplayer mode. Woo-hoo! You can also customize your battle experience with the following knobs and dials:
- Enable custom ships in multiplayer
- Create a private, password protected lobby for multiplayer
- Set the arena size
- Adjust the number of asteroids, wormholes, and ion storms
- Adjust the Fleet max size
- Choose from one of three different arena maps
Other Improvements
We’ve made a lot of other tweaks and adjustments to Fleet Battles in order to continue bringing you the best experience! Beta 2 includes things like:
- Pilot Graphics - Many ships now have custom animations for their pilots. More will be coming later!
- High-Resolution UI - Fonts and UI graphics now look better on high res displays.
- Balance Updates - Almost all of the ships and weapons have been updated for a superior experience.
- Improved Performance - Substantial improvements have been made to memory use and visual effect performance.
Haven’t gotten into Fleet Battles yet? Pre-order here to join the beta today!
Official Changelog
Custom Matches
Choose "Custom matches" to enable the following customization options
- Enabled custom ships in multiplayer
- Create a private, password protected lobby for multiplayer
- Set the arena size
- Adjust the number of asteroids, wormholes, and ion storms
- Adjust the Fleet max size
- Choose from three different Arena maps.
- "Invite" friends to join your multiplayer matches
Gameplay
- New ships
- Lexite Interceptor: Dual Shot, Shield
- Mu'Kay Grasper: Harpoon, Ink Blob
- Greegrox Swarm: Microbolt shot, Heal
- New weapon components
- Heal -- restores crew
- Death Ray. The name explains itself
- Dual Shot -- fires a fast double shot
- Ink Blob -- drops an inky blob that drains energy and crew.
- Shield -- hold down to be invincible until you run out of energy
- Note: Harpoon and Microbolt are not available for custom ships.
- Full balance pass on all of the ships and their components
- Custom hull sizes have been modified for better balance.
- Changed the planet in the "Super Melee" map (the original one) to be Mars.
- Updated names of many of the ships and their components.
Graphics / UI
- Many of the ships now have custom animations for their pilots. Animations for additional factions will be added over time. Pilot animations change based on the state of their ship.
- Improved font appearance, especially on higher resolution displays.
- Updated UI to work better at high scaling factor.
- Improved appearance and framing of custom ship thumbnails.
- Adds tooltips to mounts in ship editor.
- Players are now set to "Great" graphics quality settings by default.
- Increased the length of "Ship Design Description" text field.
- Better looking 'Flak Cannon' explosion
- Ship death explosion and Scryve Flak cannons VFX are now less likely to crush your frame rate.
- Significant reduction in memory usage.
- Updated credits with help from the community.
- Updating gradient swatches for Tywom-style ship parts so the parts don't look so dull.
Bugs
- Fix for rogue gravity fields persisting between matches which were causing the universe to collapse to a singularity.
- Fixed a race condition crash in the animation system.
- Fixed a random graphics crash. Die "swap-chain" crash die!! Good. It's dead now.
- Ships with invalid components are now disabled on the fleet picker or crafting screen.
- Killing another player in multiplayer with your secondary weapon no longer has a chance of crashing the game.
- Entering and exiting the ship designer more than 8 times no longer crashes.