Hey Pilots!
One week has passed since Heliborne has been officially released. And it’s been a really good time for the game: a lot of players having fun 24/7, dozens of new Heliborne streamers on Twitch and YouTube, media coverage worldwide. This is so great and exciting, especially for such a small team and project as ours!
Even more exciting is how fast our community is growing. You guys are awesome! It’s a pleasure to see how active and dedicated you are. We’ve received tons of good ideas and advice how to make Heliborne great again. Will be done!
Heliborne community has also started to work on Heliborne wiki — feel free to use and expand it, any help is highly appreciated!
Meanwhile, Team JetCat has been working hard all the week to deliver you the first post-release update. In this update we have addressed the most pressing issues and also added new features:
- first batch of netcode improvements to provide better network synchronization;
- updated mechanics for AA missiles and flares;
- several new types of door gunners;
- mortar teams will now give a reward to players who deploy them.
The next update will be more focused on new content.
And the last thing for today. You probably remember how the Mighty Jingles helped us on the release? We decided to give him something special in return. Greet a new British camouflage for UH-1D with a logo of the overlord! It’s added into the progression as an additional camouflage which means everyone can get it. More neat stuff for the Jingles subscribers is coming, stay tuned!
Update 0.87 changelog:
- An interval between in-game background music tracks has been shortened.
- New RPG/SMAW smoke trails.
- The 'death cam' will show enemy helicopter more accurately.
- First stage of Steam friends integration. Battles with your friends in them are now the highest ones in the battle list, your friends' names are green in-game now, also now you can check steam profiles of players from your last battle in Steam - View - Players.
- Filters of a battle list will be active in-between the battles, battles are now showing sides correctly.
- Cabin gunner in Mi-8MTV and Mi-8TV has been relegated to door gunners.
- New door gunners: AGS-17 (grenade launcher) and NSV Utes (12,7mm) for Mi-8MTV, NSV Utes for Ka-27, paired M-60 for UH-1D.
- Door gunners with M60 have been added to UH-1B.
- Flares, if they blind a missile, will deflect a missile way farther (50 meters instead of 10) in direction of deployed flares.
- Slight change to Flare chance to blind missiles on long distances
- Air-to-air missile (R-60&AIM-9) mechanics have been changed: flare will be able to blind a missile only from medium range (about 500 meters), they won't misguide missiles from long range. AA missile itself, when blinded from long range (more than 400 meters), will not go off the course but will significantly lose maneuverability (4 times). It allows pilots to dodge a missile with active maneuver. When blinded from less than 400 meters, a missile will follow flares as before.
- AA missiles (R60&AIM-9) now have bigger range and can be guided with maximum zoom.
- Double spotting reward bug is fixed.
- New ATGM launch sound
- New helicopter crash sound
- 1 second delay between ATGM launches
- 3rd and 4th gen ATGM maneuverability after 2 sec of flight is reduced
- Marker appearance mechanics are changed: markers will appear on a visibility range, hovering helis will be more visible now.
- Infantry resupply mechanics are now changed: soldier will be occupying all free seats (they didn't use seats of deployed special troops before), double limit for special troops is removed.
- MANPADs on 1st&2nd gens now have less fatal and slower missile. 3rd&4th gens are unchanged
- Explosion calculations for AA and MANPAD missiles has been changed: max damage is the same, but will be decreasing to the border of explosion less than before.
- Now successful mortars strikes will give an award to the transport heli pilot who deployed them.
- Reward for destroying enemy mortars and special badge for destroying mortars in one battle.
- Fixed bug with some Throttle devices in advanced control. Now collective won't jump to 0 when throttle is moved into minimum position.
- Various small bugfixing
- First batch of netcode improvements, should be less network synchronization issues.
- ATGM netcode fixes, which should reduce the number of false hits.
- EU-2 and US CENTRAL servers have been removed from servers list. Two others that has been left, more powerful ones, are located at the same data-centers.
- The Mighty Jingles camouflage has been added to UH-1D.