This update is all about aesthetics. Ships in the game, being made of blocks, have always looked very, uh, blocky. Numerous mods have been made to address this, but mods are limited in what they can do.
The main technical change this update introduces is pixel-perfect collision for modules. This means that you can have complex, rounded shapes that collide correctly, rather than having weird non-collisions or collisions at a distance.
To take advantage of this, beyond adding pixel-perfect collision to rams and turrets, I've added a whole bunch of slopes and curves to shape your ships. These slopes and curves can also be armoured like normal modules.
In addition, there are figureheads:
Lanterns:
More sails:
There's also two new weapon modules, muskets and heavy turrets:
The appearance of many weapon barrels has also been updated to be more distinctive:
But wait, that's not all! There's flags and pennants that move based on wind and ship movement:
Oh, and around 50 new decal items, such as new gold leaf:
And "greebles", small textural details like tanks and panels:
The aim of all of this is to enable ships to have all kinds of distinctive looks, such as the following three:
Age of Sail
Battleship
Mad Max
Beyond all these new things, there are of course also some bug fixes and balance adjustments:
- All shots now do at least one point of damage, which means you no longer get into a situation where your weapons mysteriously don't fire.
- Module adjacency bonuses have been significantly decreased, to prevent penalising ships that aren't just flying bricks.
- Fleshcrackers now have a maintenance cost, preventing mad scientist nests from spawning an infinite number of them.
- Crew can no longer avoid being hurt by boarders by hiding behind the corpses of their fallen comrades. This should resolve problems with boarding stalemates.
- Fixed animation logic for bees, wasps and air dragoons - boarding flyers.
- Flamethrowers have a wider firing arc.
- Gatling guns' shots now wander rather than spraying around wildly.
- Increased armour HP by 50%.
- Doubled Air Hussar reload time.
- Spider legs now have a lot of propulsion power.
- Increased Suspendium Dust Tank HP.
- Fixed a mission editor crash.
What's next? More work on multiplayer conquest...
Edit Just released v9.8.0.1 which fixes a crash happening to people with no custom coat of arms set.