The beta of version 9.2 is now available. As always, you can opt into the beta by right-clicking on "Airships: Conquer the Skies" in your Steam library, selecting "Properties", then "Betas", and selecting "beta -" from the drop down.
In this beta, there are no translations available other than English and the new monster nests lack splash art. Apart from that it's pretty much complete. So if you try it out, please do report any issues you find, including:
- Crashes
- Balance problems
- Things that are hard to understand
- Bad GUI
- Weird AI behaviour
- Things you just plain dislike and would like to be different
So what's new in 9.2? I'm going to do a properly detailed post with pictures and bestiary entries when it comes out of beta, but here is a short version:
- Rifles, Gatling Guns, Flak Cannons, Grapeshot Cannons and Flamethrowers can now shoot at boarders and other small units. This should serve to make boarding less overpowered.
- Added: Air Hussars, small one-person airships launched from a Hussar Bay. They're strong against light- to mid armoured ships that lack anti-unit weapons (see above) but are very vulnerable to anti-unit weapons and planes.
- Added: Triplanes, fast-moving heavier than air flying machines. Strong against light-armoured ships, and a bit better at dodging anti-unit weapons.
- Added: Biplanes, light planes that move very fast and are excellent at shooting down other small units like Air Hussars, Triplanes or boarders. Quite hard to hit, but their guns are pretty harmless against decent armour.
- Added: Air Dragoons, boarding troops equipped with a Suspendium-based float harness. Unlike Marines and Grenadiers, no careful positioning is needed to board enemy ships, as they can just fly over, but they're fairly expensive for their boarding strength.
- Added: Giant Bees! Huge Floathives full of delicious Floathoney, defended by swarms of bees that will go into your ship and sting your crew to death.
- Added: Clockwork Wasps! Kind of like giant bees, but mechanical.
- Massive performance improvements for boarding troops.
- Boarding troops should no longer get stuck, unable to navigate to an entry hatch on a ship. They might still end up marooned on a floating rock or the ground with no path to their target.
- Updated audio system with proper sound loops. Part of an ongoing process to improve the SFX quality in the game.