Hey there AFF Community!

Predictably the massive update came with some new bugs so here’s a patch to squash those. The game should be more stable online, Ascella doesn’t outright crash anymore, the objectives on Kerrat work properly again.

A whole slew of things have been rebalanced as well, especially in terms of capital ships - we obviously fixed the insane fire rate on their railguns but we’re also trying something different regarding their missiles. To give them a unique spot in the balance between spinal cannons and other turrets, the big capital-ship-grade rockets will now bypass enemy capitals’ shields - they’ll fly straight through them, just like fighters do. We’re curious to see how that’ll change the approach to capital ship combat at various ranges now.

We also felt a bit bad about releasing only a bunch of fixes and balance changes, so we threw some new features in:

Underbarrel shotgun attachment

All guns sporting an underbarrel hardpoint can now be equipped with a shotgun attachment. It works the same as the other fire-able attachments, can be toggled to by switching firemodes and provides some extra emergency oomph (at the cost of a pretty hefty reload time) when your assault rifle suddenly becomes inadequate in an extremely-close-range fight inside an enemy ship.

Emote gestures

The AFF characters might come off as super serious gruff space marines under those suits but even they must sometimes communicate by means other than tactical gestures and screaming “argh my leg my leg”. So we gave them a set of more casual gestures the player can perform using the V key.

And as usual - for feedback, or just a lovely chat with the devs, contact us here on the Steam forums or directly through our Discord!

Onwards and upwards!

Full hotfix changelog:

• Added an underbarrel shotgun option to all underbarrel-capable weapons
• Fixed non-carrier capships having finite mines
• Fixed an issue with Huginn’s railguns having essentially infinite rate of fire
• Quality of life changes to capship railguns; The trigger can be held to continue firing, rather than having to click each time
• Added secondary firemode to capship railguns - cycle. Cycles through the guns, and consumes partial charge with each shot. Inspired by the unintended Huginn rails
• Reduced range of Ranger’s railguns
• Increased range of Ranger’s ion cannon
• Changed Khamun’s plasma guns from medium to heavy and decreased their range
• Increased range of Khamun’s ion cannons
• Decreased damage of heavy plasma guns in general
• Decreased range of Chons’ plasma
• Increased damage and slightly increased firerate of Heimdall's rockets
• Fixed capship railguns’ visuals not reliably being played in multiplayer
• Capital ship railguns now work based on ammunition - Ranger got a magsize of 10, Huginn of 40, both with a 10s reload-time. Intention is to make room for other weapons in the player’s rotation
• Heavy plasma weapons will generate slightly more heat
• Tweaked RID. It can now continue firing once it has fired a shot. The next shot will start at 50% charge. It didn’t quite feel competitive enough to the MLI, and was near-impossible to kill aircraft with. Additionally, increased ammo by 1 (from 3 to 4), and slightly reduced per-shot damage
• Clicking a weapon that’s completely out of ammo will play a dryfire sound for better feedback
• Capship-fired missiles can now bypass capship shields. The intention is to make them more viable at contesting sub-systems, and give them more of a defined role
• Potentially made mech-RID and space-rails more synced with the charge-bar
• Added emotes. As infantry, they are tied to your V menu. Purely for fun.
• Repaired repair objectives not being repairable (Kerrat Phase 1)
• Bots should be more clever about repairing and responding to threats while doing so
• Bots should be more likely to actually deploy medkits/ammokits again
• Fixed an issue causing bots to practically get stuck reloading
• Fixed an issue with damaging a not-fully-repaired objective not updating the progress of it
• Fixed some issues with getting out of vehicles
• Fixed an issue with locally hosted games, restricting team choice to ULA
• Territories UI timers should be more accurate to real-time (generally shows a higher number)
• Bots should be quicker to realize a hackspike have been planted
• Mannable turrets on maps should no longer be enterable through geometry
• Potentially resolved an issue with Tis not getting proper interiors
• Potentially fixed free-look being sticky in multiplayer
• Resolved a bunch of crashes when server-travelling to a new map
• Bots should be more aggro when defending a destroyable objective overall, notably in space
• Defending bots should be slightly less doomstack-ey, and slightly more energetic
• Rank 4+ Attacking bots will focus slightly less on where the last target was
• Potentially resolved issues where bots would effectively be stuck looking in a direction
• Clicking MMB in spectating mode should toggle nameplates
• Clicking R while in spectator-freeroam-mode, and looking at a valid target should make it your spectating target, as if you had cycled to it normally
• Fixed an issue where you would get re-targeted to someone once they respawn, despite having entered free-roam-spectator
• Fixed entering spectator-free-roam while in temporary free-roam (waiting for your target to respawn) not clearing your target
• Messages for “dropship launched”, “<> has been boarded”, “(objective) completed” should now all mention the team for spectators
• Direct-IP field on server-browser field now properly supports select, cut, copy, paste as well as a port number being appended to the IP (like 1.1.1.1:1111). Additionally supports pasting AFFLinks in their entirety.
• Briefing Rooms: - Guards in briefing rooms should also relax a little in multiplayer, rather than holding their breath - Adjusted “step away from door” message to maybe be a little more logical
• Errah: - Slightly increased the initial defender-setup time, so the first two objectives should be more contested
• Meudeverre: - Upped health on Phase 2 objectives - Added a ramp at one of the walkways where you could stub your toe
• Irega: - Fixed some stairs snagging players - Enabled missing collision on staircase leading to Phase 3 - Fixed bots not navigating most of the Phase 3 staircases
• Irega territories: - Fixed an issue allowing players to enter the opposite teams spawn - Fixed some stairs snagging players
• Poranti: - Fixed an issue causing the match to potentially end immediately
• Anubis interior: - Fixed some floating weapons in armory - Changed the size of how far one of the screens for exterior view would be active, on the screen near one of the objectives in Kerrat territories. During fighting, it would often be turned on/off as you moved around, causing small performance hiccups
• Tannhauser: - Fixed missing collision on the trolleys - Fixed some lighting issues
• Lukather: - Fixed some lighting issues
• Ascella: - Fixed an issue causing the map to crash - Fixed an issue causing eager-people to be stuck in the introduction camera
• Mirnoide: - Bots should be more conscious about lava being harmful to their skin
• USN hangars: - Fixed dropships not rendering properly when taking off