New
- Steam Workshop creator revenue sharing option
- Steam Workshop decal items integrated:
-- Bake-kujira
-- Proud Eagle
-- X Cannons
- Steam Workshop costume items integrated:
-- Casanova's Maschera (Goggles, M)
-- Wooden Moustache (Goggles, M & F)
-- Carnival Tricorne (Hat, M)
-- Tall Helmet (Hat, M)
-- Top Player Hat (Hat, M)
-- The Winged Panama (Hat, M & F)
-- Pirate Bicorn (Hat, M)
- Game Grumps voice packs:
In addition to RubberNinja’s voice sets, we’ll now have voices of Commander Holly and Egoraptor. All proceeds from the voice sets will go to the charities of their choices!
- Ability to password practice lobbies.
- Made the 'Enter' key attempt to join at password screen
- If captain chooses a spawn point, the crew can see it.
- Switch labels between 'Ready'/'Not ready' on the Ready button (depending on the status)
- Improved spotting efficacy, particularly around cloud edges
- Improved effects for component destruction: audio is more distinct, new visuals
- Added effects to engines indicating an active pilot skill
- List other players' outfits when checking out him / her (avatar preview screen)
- Stamina:
All stamina effects are only active when the stamina key (default: left shift) is being held down and stamina gauge has not been depleted. All effects will stop when the key is released or stamina gauge is depleted. When stamina is active, it will deplete the stamina gauge. Stamina gauge will refill over time. Gunners will get a small bonus refill if they destroy components while Engineers will get a small bonus refill if they rebuild components. Everyone on the ship will get a bonus refill when their ship gets a kill.
-- Pilot: +125% ship thrust , -20% longitudinal drag, +150% climb force, +150% descent force, -20% vertical drag, +15% angular drag.
-- Gunner: -25% reload time, +30% rotation speed, +20 degrees yaw arcs (not percent!), +40% pitch arcs
-- Engineer: +85% movement speed and jump height
-- Commentary: The impetus behind Stamina was to offer additional choices, and we done that by further distinguishing each role’s responsibility with unique abilities. Not only will this introduce new crew loadouts but also new skill loadouts too. A Pilot may use Stamina in conjunction with similar skills to increase their effectiveness or choose to carry a different set of tools to grant additional tactical options during a match. The Gunner will need to decide when to use Stamina, either during a reload to speed up reload times or when shooting a gun to augment firing arcs and rotation speed. For an Engineer, getting to crucial components in the nick of time can now be augmented by improved movement speed.
- Gunner HUD improvements
- Added "title" icons (both unlocked and unknown) and quest icons pertaining to underdog achievements [Details on “underdog achievements” below]
- “None” icon for decals, figureheads, themes
Changes
- Disable popup entirely in match, but add chat line indicating that an invitation was received so players can check tray if desired
- Move Steam overlay notifications' place to upper right corner
- Practice gets combat music
- Match options now saved for the session
- Friend count cap at 1000 (does not affect friend count of current friend list)
- Match system changes:
-- Rematch cap removed. Rematch vote now a distinct step of end-match, and rematch can occur with 60% majority in a given match
-- Underdog: In the cases of pre-match team balance and win rate probability disparity exceeding a threshold, the underdog team will receive a label and can earn achievements and titles for playing the match. The loss count in Progress would be forgiven, but of course player rating would be updated.
-- In Custom Game, if concurrent players not in matches drop below 40, the match list will now show all available matches.
-- Crew slot now can only be crew and not pilot
-- Custom Game match list logic improvement to improve balance
-- Crew forms of multiple ships now has the option to split up without redoing crewform in the event that they waited too long
-- Solo queuing novice players will not be placed as captain in normal matches
-- Player post match return to single ship instead of team in crew form and automatically requeued
Balance
- Flare Gun
-- Arming range of 200m, flare will not light until after 200m to reduce chance of lighting a cloud in front of your own ship and revealing yourself
-- Fire stack application moved from AoE to Direct to ensure that Flare can still apply fire stacks at any range.
- Flamethrower
-- Changed hit logic: will not completely penetrate ship and will instead stop when the center of its sphere collider hits the target ship.
-- Anything within the sphere collider’s radius will have the chance of fire stacks being applied. Increased fire stack chance to 22% (from 18%).
-- Commentary: The Engineer repair game comes down to time to complete action and number of actions that need attention at any given moment. Previously, the Flamethrower would penetrate the entire ship and potentially set all components on fire. For experienced players, this was not an issue due to expert use of Chemical Spray. However, for the less experienced this created an extremely debilitating state of play (even causing us to remove Flamethrower from Novice) in both psychological and systemic ways—too many actions needing attention and too many things taking damage over time. Now that the Flamethrower will not penetrate, this will decrease the number of things needing attention and hopefully give Engineers some room to breathe. Coupled with an improvement to the Extinguisher, reactive play should be more manageable. With Engineer Stamina in mind, Flamethrower now places more stacks of fire on components. This places emphasis on the time aspect of the Engineer game where Engineer Stamina can be used in.
- Extinguisher
-- Increased fire resistance time to 4s (from 3s)
-- Decreased repair cooldown time to 2s (from 3s)
-- Developer Commentary: mentioned above
- Heavy Carronade
-- Increased jitter to 6 degrees (from 4)
-- Pitch arcs reduced to -20 to 10 (from -30 to 15)
-- Reload time increased to 7.5s (from 5.5)
-- Range reduced to 400m (from 425m)
-- Direct damage increased to 17.5 (from 17)
-- AoE damage reduced to 10 (from 18)
-- Commentary: In short, the HC was low risk and high reward. It was clear that it needed some tweaking. Pitch arcs and reload time were adjusted with new Gunner Stamina in mind. When using Gunner Stamina, the values revert back to their previous values (or very close to). The effective range decrease will introduce additional risk but provide the same reward of 2 vanilla shots to kill the balloon. The AoE shatter damage decrease addresses another complaint that the weapon is effective at not only balloon lockdown but also component lockdown. For example, if the target ship’s engines are destroyed then there is no means for them to escape. This is problematic since the chance for the target ship to recover from a balloon lock is slimmer if engines or weapons are destroyed as well.
- Carronade
-- Direct damage reduced to 6 (from 8 )
-- The adjustment to direct flechette damage now means that more than one clip is required to destroy a balloon. Compared to HC, the Carronade is slower at destroying balloons but is still quite effective against mechanical components and since it has more shots per clip than the HC, Carronade can actually destroy more components per clip compared to HC. Despite requiring a reload to destroy the balloon, don’t forget that there is Gunner Stamina that can augment this in addition to the fact that Carronade is a Light weapon (more slot spaces). With the distinctions between HC and Carronade, each weapon should have clearer advantages over the other.
- Heavy Clip
-- Reduced jitter reduction to -70% (from -100%)
-- Commentary: In hindsight, -100% jitter likely wasn’t the optimal choice as it collapses several decision spaces. In light of the Carronades, it meant that any adjustment to their jitter wouldn’t matter since Heavy Clip would remove all of it. Keep in mind that Heavy Clip, even with -70% jitter, is extremely powerful. In the case of the HC, the new jitter of 6 would be reduced to 1.8 degrees with new Heavy Clip. Even with a 1.8 degree jitter, the HC will be able to get most of its shot onto a balloon at 400m. For other weapons like Gatling, Light Flak, and Hwacha, their jitters are extremely small to begin with so even with new Heavy Clip you’ll be seeing new jitter values in the range of 0.375 to 1.2 degrees. The Hwacha can still take out a swath of components at 400m+ range.
- Hwacha
-- Reduced jitter to 4 degrees (from 6)
-- Developer Commentary: related to Heavy Clip change
- Reload Mechanic
-- When a new ammo is being reloaded into a gun, you can step off the gun and the gun will continue reloading the ammo that you intended to put in. You no longer have to be at the gun for the last second of the reload to load a different ammo type. Like before, you will still be able to change which ammo you’d like to reload up until the very last second without forcing another reload. This means any player can run to every gun on a ship and load a new ammo type into each gun without having to sit there for the reload cycle.
- Wilson's Notes and Evadne’s Reports default unlocked and have no XP reward
- Sequenced class achievements XP rewards restructured to reward less at the beginning and more at the end. The total XP rewarded for completing an entire sequence is roughly the same as before (give or take a hundred due to rounding error).
-- Commentary: We’ve received several reports that new players are completing Novice too quickly. After diving into the statistics into where new players are getting their XP from, we confirmed that the bulk of the XP was from various achievements. Some were from the notes, which are very easy to unlock. We’ve unlocked all of those since they’re useful information to have from the beginning, but we’ve also removed their XP rewards. Furthermore, players were getting the lower sequence class achievements fairly quickly as well. We’ve re-tuned the XP curve on achievements to an exponential curve rather than linear. Previously, XP rewarded = sequence * 1000. In other words, Sequence 1 rewarded 1000 XP and Sequence 2 rewarded 2000 XP. This is a lot for lower level players. This change will not affect the XP you’ve already accumulated but will affect all future achievements you unlock. Hopefully this will be sufficient to prevent players from leaving Novice too soon.
- Moved in game manual to web for ease of maintenance and update
- Class selection in character customization UI no longer changes your currently selected class.
- Store title and description revisions
- Timestamp for notifications
Fixes
- Fixed Linux crashbug during dye application
- Fixed rare white smear on map when spectating
- Burning balloon now shows triple flame icon at 8 stacks and single flame icon otherwise (consistent with other components)
- Restored missing flames to the Minotaur
- Fixed floating tools on Galleon
- Fixed prev/next page buttons have no button style in the new UI
- Fixed delay in "invalid hit" sound (larger than latency)
- Fixed map and description brackets intersecting
- Fixed missing textures on both side gun platforms of the Goldfish
- Fixed objects flashing on screen while leaving guns/ladders/helms with certain tools in hand
- Fixed bug that would allow equipping duplicate tools/ammos
- Fixed speaker icon not scrolling with player name in social tab
- Fixed dummy shots when quickly exiting the Minotaur
- Fixed window remaining always on top when switching from full screen
- Can no longer interact with components behind you in 3rd person
- Fixed wind at low altitude on Canyon Ambush (2v2 & 3v3)
- Fixed vertically mispositioned button labels
- Loading screen and map descriptions now show correct (13) point reward for ship kills
- Spectators now get audio and visual effects for firing carronades
- Silhouette of a lighthouse is no longer visible through clouds on Northern Fjords (2v2 & 3v3)
- Fixed a bug that could cause novice captains to get the wrong loadout in a non-novice match if the selected ship was not unlocked
- Fixed UI bug that could cause a renamed player’s name to float across other UI
- Fixed missing UI click sounds
- Added missing units for arming time on Wilson notes and tooltips
- Fixed play button getting disabled in crew formation screen
- Fixed a bug where repair tools didn't properly give off the success and fail sounds at the correct time.
- Fixed flickering map objects on Canyon Ambush (2v2 & 3v3)
- Match list no longer shows novice matches to players who can’t join them
- You are no longer kicked from your crew when game finishes while you are AFK
- Spectator "Dutch angle" control now resets when exiting free-fly mode for any other UI state
- Fixed reward UI not showing correct icons for unclaimed items
- Fixed long email addresses overflowing registration text box
- Fixed many cases of “rubberbanding” mid-jump
- Fixed many cases of getting stuck when moving along railings, walls, obstacles, etc
- Fixed client and server character controller disagreeing when jumping above ladders
- Fixed fade out when jumping down to the bottom side guns on Junker and Mobula
- Fixed a few bugs with Engineer Tutorial
