There is no significant evidence of spontaneously combusting turrets which may or may not be linked to…
Patch Notes 0.20.1
Note: This update will reset all existing bindings to default values to avoid conflicts with new generic HOTAS and generic flight pedal default bindings
Overview
Added an overview screen as a place to easily reference control bindings
Artillery and Autocannon weaponry adjusted to provide more distinct differences and use
Improvements to Torpedo Launchers (installation costs, flight specs, damage)
Kherson turrets significantly less likely to spontaneously combust when firing a launcher salvo
Added
Default bindings for generic HOTAS controllers
Default bindings for generic flight pedal controllers
Controller Bindings Overview screen (For a quick glance reminder of controller bindings accessible from the pause menu during mission flights)
Changed
Adjustments to all Artillery and Autocannon variants towards defining distinct useage of these weapons and to Artillery:
Artillery are long range weapons (range increases, while muzzle velocities decrease, as slot sizes go up)
Burst and Standard Autocannons are medium range weapons (range increases, while muzzle velocities decrease, as slot sizes go up)
All Autocannons have a slightly faster muzzle velocity than the equivalent it’s Burst Autocannons
Adjusted maximum projectile range and muzzle velocities to move autocannon use from long range to medium ranged
Torpedo Launcher (Medium):
Fitting Points cost changed to 61 (from 169)
Prestige Points cost changed to 1464 (from 1624)
Adjusted lock range and flight time and flight velocities
Torpedo Launcher (Large):
Fitting Points cost changed to 243 (from 675)
Prestige Points cost changed to 5832 (from 5400)
Adjusted lock range and flight time and flight velocities
Adjusted Explosive damage values
Torpedo Launcher (Extra Large):
Fitting Points cost changed to 648 (from 2250)
Prestige Points cost changed to 15552 (from 18000)
Adjusted lock range and flight time and flight velocities
Adjusted Explosive damage values
The launcher status bar in the flight HUD weapons panel will no longer play out the reloading UI animation when the launcher ammo is 0, instead it will remain as an empty bar
The Save/Load window in the Equipment Loadout Screen:
Window real-a-state has been increased and equipped items are listed with consolidated totals to ensure specification text is fully displayed
Players can now select Save/Load Slots 6-8 when using controller navigation
Controller axis binding for roll is now inverted by default
Fixed
Hard at work Akkadian Technicians have corrected a minor fault with the Kherson’s new forward positioned keel turret mounts. In completely unrelated news, the Kherson’s launchers have been repositioned further forward allowing missiles to reach their intended target that little bit quicker, oh, and-any-keel-mounted-turrets-will-no-longer-spontaneously-combust-when-firing-said-launchers
Several side missions were not using overrides to spawn vessels and instead used the data in the mission file (therefore no random spawns!)
Firing a secondary launcher with multiple salvo’s and then immediately switching to another secondary launcher will pause the firing of the previous launcher
Projectiles were applying the shooters velocity to position offsetting the spawn location from the muzzle (which is no longer needed due to a script execution order change in a 0.19.x change)
Explosive Damage Enhancer Passive Module is not being applied to equipped launcher missile explosion damage
Equipment Loadout Screen now highlights locations (Primary, Secondary, Turrets) and equipped weaponry (primary guns and Turret models) on the vessel when hovering or selecting the relevant equipment slot
Vessel Selection Screen: Vessel loadout specification text for assigned wignmen is not updated when navigating the UI with the directional keys/buttons
Adjusted Turret Hierarchy Order so that turrets listed in the fitting screen in a standard convention
Muzzle Velocity and Max Range stats for projectiles do not display correct adjusted values with the Frictionless Coils Passive Module equipped
Rate of Fire stat for projectiles do not display correct adjusted values with the Magnetic Callibration Passive Module equipped
Using a Controller with a Throttle Axis binding assigned will set the throttle value to 0 while a Flight Group (1,2,3) button binding is held
Help Glyphs are not using a fallback for generic controllers without glyphs, which would instead use the element descriptive name of the controller for the bound action
There is a lot to digest in the patch notes below, so I’ll cover some of the more noteworthy inclusions for update 0.20.0:
Chapter 4 3 new main story missions brings the player to the front lines of the war. Encounter tougher and bigger enemies than before. Chapter 4 side missions up the ante as well, if you want a real challenge then test your mettle with the ‘Ambushed’ side missions.
Corvette Ship Improvements The Akkadian corvettes (Player faction) have been given additional equipment slots, varying by ship across primary, secondary, turrets and passive modules. The Luhansk, Donetsk and Kherson have significant increases in Max Fitting Points to make the most of these.
Akkadian cruiser group flies through the great expanse towards the front lines
A major threat to the cruiser eliminated before it could do any harm
Getting up close and personal with the Auxiliary craft
The fleet emerges from the dark side of a moon
A Sumer Battlecruiser looms over the debris of its latest victim
Optional Player Assists Near-Miss Do you love flying into the enemy head on guns blazing, but hate how the enemy chews you up as much as you do them? Then hate no more, and increase the chances of enemies missing your entirely with the Near-Miss assist.
Find it from the main menu under Options > Game > Near-Miss Spread Angle Increase the slider to make the enemies aim worse or reduce to 0 to turn it off entirely. Velocity changes, and relative speeds are factored into calculation, so you’ll still need to make a few flight adjustments.
Homing Projectiles You position the target in centre, your gimbal guns swivel to line up the perfect shot, squeeze the trigger and… Damn, the target fired its thrusters and adjusted its velocity enough for the projectile barrage to harmlessly pass by!
Feel more like a crack shot pilot at the extremes of your guns max ranges with the Homing Projectiles assist. When enabled any targeted vessel with the guns lined up for the kill will have their projectiles home in on the target. A bit like a heat seeking missile, but for projectiles!
This doesn’t guarantee a 100% chance hit rate, if the projectile travel time is long enough the target has a chance to evade if they put enough thrust into it.
Find it from the main menu under Options ? Game > Homing Projectiles A simple toggle on or off.
Patch Notes 0.20.0 (Merged with 0.19.x Release Candidate Builds) Overview
Chapter 4 added to the story campaign
Increased Prestige rewards for completing main missions
FPS performance improvements
Various additions, gameplay improvements and bug fixes
Added
Chapter 4:
3 Main Missions
New (tougher) Side Mission spawn pools for: Ambush, Ambushed, Seek and Destroy, Convoy Escort/Destroy, Distress Call
Added weighting system to reduce the possibility of the same mission name types being overly repeated in side mission offers.
Allowed Akkadian Combat Pilot Actors to use afterburners (does not apply to other factions as adding this feature dramatically changed the difficulty and timings of a variety of missions)
Collision Avoidance conditions to stop AI Actor Pilots of larger ships evading much smaller ships
Targeted Substructures now have subsystem health and substructure health bars and values displayed in relevant flight HUD sections
Radar detection range can be adjusted on a per structure type basis (used to reduce detection range for specific structures in a Chapter 4 mission)
Improved FPS during explosions (Object Pooling relevant)
A couple of Particle Explosions missing from Object Pooling have now been included
Burst Autogun XXSmall (as a replacement for Sumer fighter craft using the Prologue Autogun XXSmall within the main campaign)
Projectiles being fired against the player (when the player is) will now calculate the chance that the projectile should be a near-miss based on local velocity and distance (All Blaster gun variations are excluded from this check)
Gameplay Assists (Options > Game > Gameplay Assists) for reducing enemy accuracy against the player and improving player accuracy with homing projectile weapons (excluding Blasters)
All small only turret slots on the deck can now fit Medium fittings (in addition to small fittings)
Additional (+1) Small Passive Module slot
Kherson Corvette:
Max fitting points increased to 1542 (from 960)
Secondary weapon slot has been re-positioned to a forward launcher towards making it more useful and in keeping with every other secondary weapon slot on other ships
Adjusted Prestige rewards for completing main missions. Players will now have more Prestige to spend on ships and loadouts. This has been retroactively applied to existing campaigns
Thruster Optimizer Module description has been improved for better clarity
Thruster Tuning Modules description was using the original Thruster Optimizer Module description and has now been corrected to better summarise the modules’ effect
Collision Avoidance checks for AI Actors now exclude distinct debris in the world
Improved FPS performance (linked to Radar system updates)
Sumer Fighters and Gunships have reduced armour and hull points to make them feel much less spongy
Reworked Subsystem damage through projectile penetration of armour layer:
Previously subsystem damage scaled down linearly based on the max armour hitpoints (HP) and current armour HP. If we have two armour quadrants, one with max 500 HP and the other max 1000 HP, they would offer the same level of subsystem protection based on their HP percentage. To make subsystem penetration more consistent a weapon has a defined threshold for how much HP it can ‘pass’ through to achive penetration. The subsystem damage is scaled based on the threshold (passing through more armour HP will reduce the projectile subsystem damage down to 0 when it reaches the penetration threshold). This make positioning and angle of attack more important when wielding penetrating weapons (with the railgun, and lesser the autocannons) for damaging deeply housed subsystems on armoured targets.
Adjusted the main campaign mission progression unlocks due to C01M03 being made available immediately available after C01M02.
Prologue Mission 6 (Based on feedback about objectives around destroying enemy turrets proved too difficult to manage for a tutorial mission – thanks StoneofTriumph):
Swapped out the Choke Blaster for Autogun player primary weapon (due to Choke Blaster limited range)
Disabled the offline repair ability for enemy turrets
Changed Xenia comms dialogue around turret repair
Added Medium Autocannon 8 to the frigates
Chapter 2 Mission 3 (C02M03):
Reinforcing friendly cruiser now spawns as an Akaddian Cruiser (instead of Sumer Cruiser) and given some speed mods to get it into the action quicker
Reduced the reinforcing Akaddian Donetsk corvettes to 3 (from 4) allowing the Akaddian Cruiser more opportunity to get in on the action
Sumer Gunship loadouts’ have been adjusted giving 2 (from 4) gunships bombs to drop (bringing mission balancing back in line with pre 0.19.0 changes)
Chapter 3 Mission 2 (C02M02):
Fixed vessel names for several rebel frigate spawns
Admiral ship cannot be destroyed
Chapter 3 Mission 3 (C03M03):
Adjustments to rebel frigate and tug loadouts to improve their threat
Renamed the station
Civilian frigates now use correct prefab for ship data
Chapter 4 Mission 3 (C04M03):
Moved the starting spawn location of Sumer transports 15000 meters further away from the warp out point to provide the player more breathing room when engaging them (for a whopping extra 60 seconds)
Adjustments to rebel frigate and tug loadouts to improve their threat and challenge during chapter 3 side mission encounters
Combat Pilot AI: Adjusted calculation values for pilots deciding if they should change target to a bigger threat (should stick with designated targets for longer while under fire)
Combat Pilot AI: Logic on afterburn useage has been tuned towards reducing the overshooting targets and inappropriate usage overall
Removed peneration ability from Autogun and it can longer apply damage to covered subsystems
Mini Gun (used by the Sumer Gunship) renamed to Cannon and increased direct damage by 5DPS (30DPS total) and increased subsystem damage by 10DPS (60DPS total)
Player HUD Weapon Panel now counts down number of rounds remaining to be fired from a trigger pull (i.e. Burst Autocannons) on the weapons reload status bar
Updated the equipment text stats format and layout in the fitting screen
Sorting order improvements for inventory items listed in the fitting screen
Reinforced Armor Plating (Small) changes
Type I = Fitting points increase to 18 (from 6)
Type II = Armor HP increase to 3000 (from 2000), Fitting points increase to 84 (from n) and Prestige cost increase to 1120 (from n)
Type III = Armor HP increase to 7000 (from 3000), Fitting points increase to 270 (from n) and Prestige cost increase to 4992 (from n)
Percentage values are now penalized (reduced with multiple modules affecting the same stats) instead of just being a additive flat value
Progression with Equipment Unlock time changes
Artillery Medium X1 TURRET unlocks after completing C02M03
Autocannon/4 X1 (61) unlocks after completing C02M01
Autocannon/4 X2 (62) unlocks after completing C02M01
Autocannon/4 X3 (63) unlocks after completing C02M02
Burst Autocannon/2 X3 (59) unlocks after completing C01M01
Burst Autocannon/2 X3 (60) unlocks after completing C01M01
Explosive Damage Enhancer I unlocks after completing C01M03
Explosive Damage Enhancer II unlocks after completing C02M03
Explosive Damage Enhancer III unlocks after completing C03M03
Fixed
Replaced ship loadout secondary weapon references to old MLRS Launcher to new MLMS Launcher(s).
Skirmish Menu: Players will no longer be able to see or select factions not intended for use by the player
Sumer Light Frigate was incorrectly used as friendly unit in Ambush mission, and has now been replaced with Donetsk Corvette
Burst Autocannon/04 X1-X3 Turret Gun DPS has been increased to expected output values (due to wrong reload time being applied)
Gunship now uses its own unique XS turret
Corrected typos in various mission texts
Explosive Armor Protection III (S) module had a vastly inflated price
Null Reference Exception when a turrets target warps out
Sumer Gunships’ secondary launcher slot size was forgotten and has been restored back to Extra Small
AI Actor will no longer use full throttle when in a sweet spot behind a target
Disabling AI Actor causing Invalid Operation Exception error
Resolved an issue with mission scripting logic for checks on subsystem health when the subsystem is attached to a damageable (and destructible) substructure which would return incorrect values when the substructure is destroyed
Null reference exception when an engine substructures(s) health reaches 0 on the Sumer Cruiser
A wingman with their own wing will not spawn their wing in formation when playing a Skirmish match
Vessel Loadout Screen: Equipped ship weaponry DPS overview list are significantly over inflated for primary weapons
Explosions hitting a dying substructures will continue to feed additional damage through to the main structure
Projectile guns which fire off multiple rounds on a single trigger pull start the reload timer as soon as it starts firing instead of after the last round being shot off (affecting Burst Autocannons and Blasters)
Blaster/4 Primary Gun was using a Medium slot size when it should be Small slot size and has been corrected
Ship overview panel in the fitting screen now shows individual applied stat values and correctly shows applied weapon damage stat values
Stopped the filter being re-applied when equipping an inventory item into a slot in the fitting screen (which would reset the scroll view back to the top each time)
Corrected known typos across several main mission briefings, debriefings, and communication dialogue
Welcome along to the November 2019 Dev Diary for Absolute Territory. In this developer diary I demonstrate the full power of this fully armed and operational— level editor! Most work for the last few months have gone into Conditional Actions allowing the player to create unique and exciting missions in an easy to learn environment.
You can read below for a summary of whats on offer or jump straight to the dev video where I show you how to create your own custom mission.
If you want to read up more on what the level editor has to offer, you can do so on this steam announcement post.
This month has flown by, in part due to a well needed holiday. Now that I’m back, I’ve been continuing work on the Level Editor towards allowing you to create your own missions with a greater range of variety.
In this August 2019 developer diary for Absolute Territory:
I demonstrate the new Navpont System for the Mission Editor. Navpoints break up the Mission into multiple zones for the player to complete a set of objectives as laid out by the designer (you!). If you have ever played the Wing Commander video game series you’ll be familiar with this format.
Based on feedback from the playable Alpha demo it seems players are not making themselves familiar with the abilities of their chosen space superiority fighter. To inform, I go into detail covering the basics and more advanced features that will help players increase their odds of surviving against multiple hostile opponents.
