Version 8.2 brings a large number of fixes, improvements, and balance changes. As such, I'm once again doing a beta for a few days, so you can try out the update and report any immediate problems. If you're up for it, you can opt into the Beta branch on Steam to get it. Let me know about any and all problems you encounter.
The biggest changes are a new Japanese translation provided by players, a 2x larger combat map, smarter AI in strategic mode, and a new weapon, the aerial torpedo.
New features
- Japanese translation!
- Aerial torpedoes: devastating but slow-moving and with a limited field of fire and a minimum range.
- Ship paint that adapts to the coat of arms of the ship's owner.
- Hold fire command.
- Explosion damage overlay in ship editor.
- Doubled the width of the combat map and increased ships' service ceiling by a third.
- Can drag the right mouse button to pick up multiple modules in the editor.
- The strategic AI now aborts attacks and reinforces its cities when needed. If an attack on a city fails, it will build up its fleet, so the next attack will be stronger.
- Can place multiple ships of the same type in one go during combat setup.
- Can now press X to flip the selected module.
- File screen now remembers your filter and sort settings and indicates when items have been filtered out.
- Quarter-speed option for combat.
- Weapon targeting no longer picks target tiles that are too well-armoured to damage.
- Ships try harder to target enemies that are close enough to hit.
- Can choose higher cost limits for multiplayer combat
- though note this may do bad things to performance.
- Can now mod the music used by the game.
- Airships now automatically specify what mods they use in their description.
- You can now add tags to mods and ships in Steam.
Balance
- Cities in strategic mode generally have a bit more money, leading to bigger ships faster.
- You can no longer go into debt in strategic mode, but you can't move fleets while you have no money, and you are more susceptible to enemy spy actions.
- Buildings are now 20% cheaper to build and 30% cheaper to maintain.
- Increased deck gun reload from 1.8 seconds to 2.4 seconds, and increased accuracy by 20%.
- Increased dorsal turret and ventral turret accuracy by 20%.
- Increased saw blade fire arc from 60 degrees to 160 degrees, and decreased cost fromn $80 to $50.
- Increased gatling gun reload from 96 ms to 125 ms.
- Increased heavy cannon damage from 120 piercing to 150 piercing and reload from 7 seconds to 8 seconds.
- Increased suspendium cannon damage from 55 piercing to 75 piercing, reload from 3.5 seconds to 4 seconds, and accuracy by 20%.
- Increased brick wall damage absorption from 0 piercing, 0 blast to 2 piercing, 1 blast.
- Increased stone wall damage absorption from 1 piercing, 1 blast to 3 piercing, 2 blast.
- Increased massive stone wall damage absorption from 2 piercing, 2 blast to 4 piercing, 4 blast.
- Decreased cannon fire arc from 90 degrees to 70 degrees, and increased accuracy by 20%.
- Increased rocket fire arc from 180 degrees to 210 degrees, and increased accuracy by 30%.
- Increased rifle reload from 1 second to 1.3 seconds.
- Increased guard HP from 6 to 7 and damage range from 1-7 to 2-8, and increased number of guards from a guard barracks from 3 to 4.
Fixes
- Combat performance improvements.
- Landships no longer randomly stop moving because they're afraid they'd collide with their own feet.
- Refitting a ship now centers on it properly.
- The AI in conquest mode now actually has affinities for different styles of ship.
- Scrolling no longer causes random clicks in Linux.
- Fixed a bug where the info panel in the ships screen would report the wrong price.
- Fixed world generation crash.
- Fixed a crash caused by modding crew members.
- Correct bonuses now applied when loading a ship into the editor.
Cosmetic
- Prettier, tidier maps.
- Prettier, tidier fleet list.
- Fixed blurry rendering of legs and tracks in the load/save ship screen.
- Fixed secret police text overlapping with bonus text in strategic screen.
- Crew walking on top of a ship no longer flicker.
- Legs are now split into ones in front of and behind the ship, and rendered accordingly.
- Better-looking explosions for exploding weapons.
- Shots can now be animated, and are lit using the lighting engine like everything else.