Update 19 is live!

AI upgrade

Bots are getting a whole bunch of combat-focused upgrades and changes. Obviously we keep improving them all the time and will do so for a while - in this patch they should be noticeably more snappy and understand various combat situations better, both in space and on the ground.

Loadout stats display

Statistics for all loadouts items are now fully implemented, with a handy comparison system showing the difference between currently equipped and selected item.

Instant play

An immediately obvious change in this patch is the rearranged main menu. We altered it a bit to be more understandable but we’d also like to use this opportunity to run a bit of an experiment: Over the entire Early Access period we’ve been hearing how new players get to the server browser, see more-or-less empty game and just not join anything because of that. So the less players on the server, the less players on a server. A bit of a vicious circle there. At the same time we know that those times when people start joining a server it just snowballs into a populated one. So let’s try something out: we added an “instant play” button to the main menu that’ll just connect the player to the most suitable server instantly. We’ll monitor what impact that functionality has on players actually joining matches.

Full changelog:

• Reorganized the main menu, with a new experimental “instant play” function

• Loadout stats now fully implemented

• AI more responsive in combat now - fixed some issues with target acquisition and prioritization, weapon mode switching, reloading and crouching conditions

• AI reviving more robust

• Stopped AI from using the multiwrench on enemies when it’d be much more optimal to just shoot

• Bots use land vehicles’ shields more effectively now

• Bots now slightly less inhumanly-precise with sniper rifles

• Fixed stalls in space AI pathing under some circumstances

• Fixed AI sometimes flying out of the space maps’ bounds

• AI should no longer wait to fully charge L9R and MNL when in close-quarters combat

• Fixed AI-driven capital ships being able to occasionally use disabled warp-in points

• Fixed AI pathing on some doorways in Irega and on the Huginn’s bridge

• Added AIA win cinematic to Irega

• AddedLukather adjustments- Added more cover on the approach from the car park - No more snagging on invisible wall above the airport building - Relocated Territories LZ capture point slightly towards the AIA side - Added a vehicle-blocking volume to the top of the ATC tower

• Fixed missing collision around breachpoints inside the Khamun

• Hangar location (when pointing a player to an objective that requires launching from the carrier) now precisely pointing to a fighter-launching console

• Exiting a gunship now requires the button to be held for half a second - less accidental splats.

• Stealing a fighter from an enemy carrier’s bay will now spawn the ship with your own last-used loadout for that ship type

• Added an alert when the enemy owns all the Territories points

• Dropship arrival sequence, when making a comeback from a wipe-out phase, no longer wastes the remaining match time

• A bunch of HUD improvements in preparation for hints and tutorial elements

• Incursion timer suspension message now matches the actual gameplay conditions (last 60s of phase)

• Suppressed a few unwanted match status messages popping up during briefing

• Optimised animated elements and meshes in the briefingroom

• Fighter controls a bit less wobbly now, especially online

• Upgraded usage of playername with an additional squad prefix (B2 etc.) and future support for a clan/outfit prefix

• Bots within ~10m now respond to a 'get in my vehicle' callout from the callouts menu (“B” by default). Similarly they respond to a new 'get out' callout. Load up your APC, airdrop a bot from your Sturm, all’s fair in love and space.

• Mag-size and ammo storage mods now correctly working with vehicle weapons where applicable, mag-size weapon mod’s reload penalty matches the description of 5%

• RID primary charge time increased 0.5s

• Chons’ ion cannon range doubled, same as Anubis' now

• Removed spread penalty on unholster speed mod

• Reduced medium capital ships’ vulcan turrets’ spread

• Amended Dhaka’s turret to full-auto rather than burst so u can keep a barrel back by tapping instead of holding fire

• Buffed bomber RID/plasma weapons firing intervals significantly to provide 75/85% of torpedo DPS, projectile impact damage remains the same

• Partisan and mounted turrets now given proximity-detonation shells similar to the C30i

• Deployable turrets’ health increased 50%

• Reduced gunship rocket-pod range to match primary weapons’ ranges, removed a mod slot from all gunship secondaries, reduced the range-reducing weapon body slot mod penalties to 5% from 7%

• Boarding approach now immediately interpolated, without the physics-driven initial phase that often left the dropship missing entirely

• Dropships now have 25% less boost duration, 20% more HP

• Successfully latching a dropship onto a target ship now awards 50 support XP

• Post-death forced detpack detonations now deal 20% of normal damage instead of 50%

• Much less aggressive steering reduction versus speed/boost on Hare, Silverback and Turtle

• EMP no longer disables firemode switching

• Armour regeneration disabling feat moved back to EMP from acid

• Minor infantry weapon tweaks - with two notable changes being knife primary slash getting a significant increase in firerate and damage and L9R charge time getting almost halved to correlate with max-damage firerate of the P8 rifle

• Small fixes and optimizations in spaceship physics calculations

• Fixed some inconsistencies in damage type multipliers, mainly increasing anti-vehicle damage of lower caliber guns and shield damage of higher caliber guns and also applying some missing armour damage penalties on the higher cal guns' elemental ammos

• Fixed underbarrel shield’s health display on clients

• Fixed flame turret rotation speed limit

• Fixed some math in recoil multipliers from weapon mods

• Fixed some issues with landing zone recapturability delay

• Fixed post-match mapvote displaying weird numbers of votes

• Fixed getting stuck in the vehicle deploy sequence

• Fixed some inaccuracy calculations while aiming-down-sights

• Fixed numerical accuracy issue in HUD speed and distance formatting

• Fixed vehicles falling reeeaaally slooowly due to some mis-configuration

• Fixed a few issues with disappearing and re-appearing vehicle drop offers

• Fixed vehicle drop offers being incorrectly available during the wipe-out phase

Huge thanks to everybody who joined us in the game during the sale! We absolutely adore playing with our Community! For feedback, or just a lovely chat with the devs, post on AFF's Steam forums or contact us directly through our Discord! Onwards and upwards!