Hey all, I'm back with a huge digest of everything added in the previous week's worth of patches that were not large enough to make their own articles, but as with a fleet, strength in numbers, so here's everything that has been added to Dread Admiral!
Dread Admiral comes out Sept. 3!
Wishlist now!
Features
Critical Hits & Veterancy
Critical Hits and Unit Veterancy
Metamap
Metamap now has help topics/help menu
Gun Forts
Gun Forts have been made buildable. (Note: Your opponents will also now build them!)
Demo Perks
Rotated some Demo Perks to be less focused on economy. Removed Fortifier, Austerity Measures. Added Double DDs and Aerophobia. -> Existing Campaigns/loadouts will be unaffected until you update them.
AI Admirals
AI admirals (missions with a Flagship opponent) now favor specific perks, flagship loadouts
Advanced Shipyard
Added Advanced Shipyard. Requires no building slot, available at City Size 25. Battleships and Carriers (CV) (and all super ships) now require Advanced Shipyard. This will combine nicely with buildings coming to the full version to help give a bit more agency/choice in the mid game; and gives an invisible buff to the smaller ships.
Skirmish
Added Victory Point toggle to Skirmishes, allowing you to play without the secondary win condition
Added AI Strategy dropdown to Skirmishes. These are also now randomly applied during the campaign.
Surrender button is now enabled.
HUD
Abilities in the HUD Description now have a popup that gives a short description about the ability
Balance
General
Active Builder nerfed from 10% to 6% (Examples: Refineries cost 28 instead of 27, Downtowns 42 instead of 40)
Easy Campaign now gives +2 turns per map
Normal Campaign now gives +1 turn per map
Anti-Snowball bonus reduced for Easy/Normal by 20%/10% respectively (multiplicative)
Easy will now have a 50% chance of no modifier for M2. (Note: in the real campaign, all non-admiral missions are chance-based.)
AI decision variance for Normal increased from (.9, 1.1) to (.85,1.15) (affects how optimal its move/combat decisions are)
Hard AI gets a bonus Perk
Maps should now generate the appropriate number of cities much more frequently.
Fixed a bug that seemed to reduce all enemy movement by 1.
Made various adjustments that should result in Normal and Easy being mildly easier
Gun Forts
Gun Forts now require 5 pop to build
Gun Fort HP reduced from 20 to 17
Gun Forts now have a bonus to Crit Chance.
Forts & Cities
Forts and Cities can now receive some crit types
AI Economy
Trimmed AI starting money for all difficulties by 5-10
AI starting city sizes reduced for all difficulties by 5-10%
AI is less likely to have a Downtown early game (helps the player gain bonus turns via VP more often.)
Status Effects
Weapons-Damaged and On-Fire status effects now each significantly reduce Flak Chance for that unit. These stack with each other. -> Note: It does not reduce the number of 'dice rolls', it reduces their success rate
Engine Damaged status gives a bonus to enemies' crit chance vs that unit.
Hospital and Flight Deck pop requirements reduced back from 20 pop to 15
Fire & Crits
Targets who are On Fire will receive 10% more Crits -> E.g. if you would've had a 10% chance to cause a crit, it will now be an 11% chance. For those checking this in-game, it will look as though you have a reduced chance because you can no longer set the target on fire.
AI XP
Fixed a bug where XP was not applied to AI units. They will now start with some amount of XP on their fleet, especially the Demo admiral's fleet.
Transports
Added Self-Repair to Transport (should be low impact, but means that it can largely avoid engine damage.)
Carriers
Carriers of all kinds can now receive "Weapons Damaged" crits, reducing their flak output. (This means that your overall chance to land a crit versus a carrier is now higher than it was, which is to say, Carriers have received a very mild nerf.)
AI
Submarines
AI subs should not place themselves under your depth charges.
AI subs revealed by sonar will no longer go invisible during a siege.
Possible fix for Subs snaring planes
AI have reduced preferences for subs when the player has escorts
Targeting & Strategy
AI will probably target Flagship more often (internal value is being adjusted for Veterancy)
AI now prefers to Blockade ports more strongly than it did
Gun Fort Logic
Fixed a bug regarding how AI processed 'Goals' relating to Gun Forts
Optimizations
High-impact optimization regarding how hexes are enumerated for things like Plane Range, Movement Range, and similar
Optimization regarding how hex outlines are calculated
Added an up to 50% optimization in building campaign maps
AI movement phases should be calculated faster
UI / HUD
Added Critical Damage to HUD Description
Several city button arrow images fixed
Added Contrast, Saturation, and Brightness sliders to in-game Options
City's Quick View panel now shows non-Housing upgrades
Objective panel updated more frequently
Options panel will now block input to things behind it
Fixed a visual bug where an opponent gaining Veterancy while Hidden or in Fog would hijack the camera to show the vet panel.
Fixed a ui bug regarding the Money reward
Fixed some minor UI bugs regarding text
UI Backgrounds have film grain effects. You are officially immersed.
Pillboxes and Perks that affect City damage now display icons when they are altering damage.
Fixed bug where Options were automatically opened with the Escape panel, obscuring the Escape panel
Visuals
Big vs small flak mildly differentiated visually
Cannon-fire should be more evenly distributed across the hull, especially for things like Gun Forts
Flagship should be more centered on hex
Fixed a bug with the Protect City warning. It will now say the City Name.
Negative values should no longer display for Sieges, Invasions, or similar.
Audio
Improved Fort Gun SFX
Added a bunch of new Chirps
Chirp panel now has a bit of whirring/static sounds as it turns on/off
New Chirps regarding attacking neutrals
Campaign
Dramatically decreased chance of failing to drop Flagship Upgrades. Rewards should be consistent as long as there is something that is allowed to drop. -> Note that some rewards are not allowed to drop in the demo because they are gated by in-game achievements (such as Cruise Missiles requiring [REDACTED] from [REDACTED] or [REDACTED].) -> Note that in the real game, Perks will also be acquired in the same way, with some starting in the drop pool, and others being added to it, such as [REDACTED] being added after you defeat [REDACTED]
Added several mission names. Can address a rare bug where a Campaign Map fails to spawn.
Bug Fixes
General
Fixed a bug where the Distress Call modifier could be skipped, resulting in no modifier.
Fixed a bug that caused all movement for a given AI fleet to be skipped
Fixed a bug that would cause the Raze City button to disappear permanently from all cities
Fixed a Scrollwheel issue
Fixed: Advanced Shipyard missing from City build options
Fixed an issue with Advanced Shipyard not unlocking Carriers/Battleships
Fixed a bug where killing a unit with Skirmish Weapons didn't give proper XP
(Probably?) Fixed an intermittent issue where Planes, when returning from a patrol, would fail to land
Fixed an intermittent issue where the Black Fleet refused to spawn
Fixed an intermittent issue where Interceptors could 'miss' their patrol target and get stuck
Possible fix for rare bug where a hang could occur at the start of a map due to a bad starting location. Better logging added to identify it in the future.
Possible fix for intermittent interceptor bug (fly to the wrong place and fail to fight a patrol)
Fixed a bug where Double DDs would spawn in Quick Battle instead of in Skirmish
Possible fix for rare bug where two ships could stack on a hex due to a queued move
(Another) Possible fix for the intermittent 'failure to land' bug.
Buildings & Cities
Cities should more frequently have nearby open spaces (for Gun Forts)
AA is now destroyed if a city is brought to 0 (this is both logical due to placement, and fixes a display bug)
Various building names fixed/homogenized.
Plane Safety
Implemented a safety function for planes that get stuck in an animation
Still adjusting plane-landing safety measures.
Combat & Units
Fixed a bug that would add the HP of a target as XP to CVLs, CVs, and FLGs, resulting in greatly exaggerated XP gain
Increased speed at which a FLG can level (due to the above)
Can no longer select Forts via a selection box if there are other units (this prevents movement bugs.)
Enemy units will no longer spawn directly on top of your units in Mission 1. Design Note: this is explicitly allowed for the Black Fleet and [REDACTED]'s fleet to prevent exploits.
Gun Forts now place themselves on the closest available hex to the center of the map, which should (usually) be the preferred hex.
Gun Forts that fail to place will now alert the user and refund the fort. (This should never occur?)
Plane max speed increased (mostly affects long-range distances)
Patrols will visually catch up to their targets sooner
Increased accel/deceleration/top speed of planes.
Fixed an exception in Command AI checking growth buildings
Invasions/Crit repairs should no longer interrupt each other
Help / Documentation
Added 9 more help topics regarding Crits, Veterancy, and Phases
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As always, I appreciate all your feedback, and if you have any additional bug reports or Demo feedback!
I am always available to talk on our Community Discord Server!
Thank you for reading, and catch you in the next one!