Patch and Updates Notes

[INovaeFlavien]

Patch 0.9.5.0 (Thursday 5 January 2023)

We’re starting 2023 with a new patch, introducing various AI improvements and battle AI budget fixes that should help balancing the battles better, especially when players join a battle late after it has started. Also of note, a few nerfs to AMS systems, which felt pretty overpowered (the introducing of the new chassis system in the previous major patch, meant that corvettes can now fit auto AMS turrets, increasing the laser spam in battles and decreasing the chance for torpedoes to deal damage).

We’re also happy to unveil our new planet, Tersac, which will remind you of Cinder in many ways (lava oceans, dark ridged mountains). Note that atmospheric glitches can be visible at low altitudes. Fixing those will require some major update work to our atmospheric scattering shaders during the polish phase. This year we want to ramp up a bit on planet environments production to have more variety during our future release, so new planets should be patched in more regularly.

Coming up next we still have to finish the carrier gameplay revamp, which requires more AI work (especially in terms of cooperation between AI ships). You’ll already have a taste of it in this patch, as corvettes now properly form up on allies they want to repair/resupply, and should no longer stick to capital ships like parasites. If you notice any more AI behavior issues, please let us know.

Battle balance

• Revamped battle AI budget allocation: it is now dynamic and better takes into account players at the start of a battle, or joining and changing balance in the middle of a battle. This should result in more balanced battles, especially when players are involved
• Updated AI reinforcement budget system to be more balanced between the two sides until reinforcements get exhausted. In practise, this should make battles feel more “alive” and dynamic than before
• Fixed AI turrets not firing or targetting structures/modules anymore despite them being selected as the primary target (both for AI and player ships) (Note: due to this bug, AI capital ships could not finish off remaining base infrastructure, dragging the end of battles)
• Fixed an issue with the match loop where a reactor or plant core could award match victory points after the battle at this base had already ended
• Increased repair rate of damaged base modules after 5 minutes of not taking any damage (this should allow bases that are no longer under attack to repair faster)
• Exposed reactor or plant cores will take a small (0.1%/s) amount of damage over time to ensure a stuck battle will eventually end (ex.: AI only that have run out of ammo, or are blocked by asteroids) (Note: this continuous damage may increase if victory adds favor the attacker)
• Fixed a rare case of battlescape generation that allowed two bases to get located near each others, messing up the balance of battles happening at those locations
• Reduced HP on Orbital canons and central base’s shields as it was draging battles too much to deplete them

AI

• Fixed an AI bug that made corvettes AMS sometimes fire at interceptors when there were no other targets
• Fixed an AI bug that made corvettes only fire one weapon group at once, despite allowing concurrent automatic weapon groups in the previous patch (Note: this will make AI corvettes more deadly overall, as they can now fire both kinetics and blaster turrets at once)
• Corvette AI improvements: avoid bumping into capital ships; avoid cluttering on the same target to repair/resupply; avoid repairing targets that have a repair field themselves (ex.: other corvettes or carrier)
• Corvettes can now actively fly & repair an ally; ships can actively go and fly towards a corvette (or carrier) to repair/resupply themselves…
• Fixed AI not firing at the base’s shield from outside when a target is inside the shield, but outside of the firing range (despite the shield itself being within firing range)
• AI ships will try to avoid overheating by temporarily shutting down kinetic weapons when reaching high heat levels
• AI attacking ships will no longer stay away from a base’s main defenses when outnumbering those
• AI attacking ships will be more agressive towards finishing off a base despite main defenses being up when the victory odds are favoring the attackers (>60%)
• Orbital-range attacker AIs will now prioritize high-importance defense modules (such as shield gens and plants) over other modules
• Fixed bugs related to AIs flying and crashing into the ground at low altitudes

Gameplay and balance changes

• AMS lasers no longer fire at unactivated missiles/torpedoes
• Reduced AMS laser damage by -25%
• Mass modifiers are now based upon the initial mass of the ship, and not multiplicative when stacking ship upgrades that affect mass
  Ex.: A ship of mass 500 tons has 2 upgrades that add +10% mass, previously it ended up at 500 * 1.1 * 1.1 = 605t, it will now end at 500 + 500 * 0.1 + 500 * 0.1 = 600t
  This means that some ships, despite the loadout being unchanged, might end up with a slightly different mass (ex.: carrier’s mass in default loadout is lighter, so itsspeed cap was increased by a few m/s)
• Repair fields now repair hardpoints on a target by increasing HP order/priority (small damaged turrets first, then bigger ones next, then MK7+ last)
• Reduced gimbal angle on railgun to 0.25° (down from 0.5°)
• Tweaks to alternative ship’s chassis base stats to make them more balanced (and coherent with other loadouts)
• Added an Extra Rockets upgrade
• Missile retargetting upgrade now properly affects the corvette’s missile array
• Extra missiles upgrade now properly affects capacity of EMP missile launchers as well as SSM batteries

Warp jam

• Warp jam visual effect is now played over on every affected ship and toned down on the source ship/player
• Engaging warp jam now informs the player on how many enemy targets were affected
• Successfully warped jammed enemies now generate 150 support points per affected target
• A jammed warp drive that the player tries to engage now properly shows a warning on the HUD (with remaining cooldown) instead of nothing
• Increased warp jam’s range to 10 Km (up from 5 Km)

Bug fixes

• Tentative fix for “AcquireCredentials” error when connecting to a server from Windows 7 without TLS 1.0 support
• Fixed left/right sound asymmetry when firing weapons (left/right, sometimes weapons on left side could not be heard)
• Fixed a server crash when an administrator manually starts a battle at a neutral base
• Fixed a multithreading server crash bug in the players state manager
• Reduced desync that caused an error correction snapping the cruiser’s orientation back by a few degrees when starting to charge the spinal canon (Note: the root problem is not totally fixed, but should be more subtle now)

Misc

• Added a new planet: Tersac, a Cinder-like volanic planet with large lava oceans and dark ridged mountains
• Added officer portraits during incoming HQ transmissions
• Added a transmission notification when orbital canons are destroyed
• Fixed misplaced floating shield generator on Xanthar Stn

[INovaeFlavien]

Beta-branch - Patch 0.9.6.0 (Saturday 7th January 2023)

For a few weeks we’ll be running out an experimental version of the game on the Beta branch on Steam to test some community-suggested drastic gameplay and flight model changes (to test this version, right-click on Battlescape in your Steam’s library, go in Properties -> Betas and select the Beta branch).

The outcome of those tests may or never get applied to the live version of the game. As we’re getting closer to the entering the polish phase, this will be the last opportunity to do drastic changes to the game in terms of gameplay settings and balance.

For this reason, experimental changes will only be considered candidates to apply to the public branch if they bring enough value (in terms of fun) to the game, as they will likely upset the balance in many subtle and not-so-subtle ways and cause more work for us to fix.

This is why community feedback is very important: we need to know which changes move the game in the better direction and which ones do not. Please let us know on Discord or the forums which changes you like, or even suggest more changes to test.

To start with this week’s changes (Note: more are coming later):

Interceptor

• longitudinal linear thrust massively increased by +200% (x3)
• horizontal linear thrust increased by +75%
• vertical linear thrust increased by +200%
• speed cap increased by +50%
• rotational thrust increased by +50% (pitch, yaw)
• removed turbo boost initial jolt
• turbo boost provides a constant +50% thrust bonus (significant nerf, down from +250%)

These changes increase the interceptor’s maneuverability significantly and allow it to reach high speeds very quickly during normal flight, at the expense of boosting which is no longer a hard requirement to change course.

We are primarily looking for feedback in terms of the flight model, especially in interceptor vs interceptor dogfights. Those flight model changes may affect the game balance, especially the weapons, but we’re not trying to address those just yet.

Bomber

• longitudinal linear thrust massively increased +100% (x2)
• horizontal linear thrust increased by +100%
• vertical linear thrust increased by +116%
• speed cap increased by +35%
• rotational thrust increased by +25% (pitch, yaw)
• removed turbo boost initial jolt
• turbo boost provides a constant +75% thrust bonus (significant nerf, down from +150%)
• increased turbo energy cost per second by +25%

Corvette

• longitudinal linear thrust massively increased by +66%
• horizontal linear thrust increased by +66%
• vertical linear thrust increased by +40%
• speed cap increased by +20%
• rotational thrust increased by +40% (pitch) and +40% (yaw))
• swapped rotation speed cap between pitch and yaw (the ship will now turn faster on yaw than pitch)
• removed turbo boost initial jolt
• Note that turbo boost thrust bonus remains unchanged (+100%)
• increased turbo energy cost per second by +50%

Other

• removed GyroBoost upgrade on all ships (it would be redundant with the rotational thrust increase changes)
• removed formation modes on enemies
• increased AI aiming precision on small ships (small ships being more mobile, they also need to be more dangerous for the game to not get more boring)

[INovaeFlavien]

Patch 0.9.6.4 (Thursday 16th March 2023)

As you may have noticed, for the past 3 months we’ve been experimenting with a bunch of major gameplay/balance-related changes on the PTR (beta branch) test server. We focused on improving the feeling of flying with small ships, making them more nimble as many players were hoping for. The interceptor in particular has received a massive linear thrust buff. As a result of small ships (interceptor, bomber and the corvette to some extent) being more maneuverable, we significantly nerfed the turbo boost on all these ships and removed the “jolt” boost. We also introduced asymmetrical thrust to add depth to the flight model and removed the ability to form up on an enemy. A simplified damage model was introduced for propulsion (losing thrust as your ship gets more damaged) and we improved various issues related to the spinal cruiser’s canon.

However, all these changes might have introduced some new balance issues, especially in relation to weapons (some of them might need an accuracy boost to better track the more nimble ships now). As usual, any feedback on these changes is appreciated so do not hesitate to let us know on the forums or comments. As for the next step in development we are looking at a patch in 1-2 months for the first iteration on the carrier gameplay changes and, hopefully, a new planet/moon. Once this is done, we’ll probably consider the core gameplay near completion and move to finalizing the rest of the game/content.

Interceptor

• longitudinal linear forward thrust massively increased by +100% (x2)
• longitudinal linear reverse thrust is now asymmetrical (-40% of forward thrust)
• horizontal linear thrust increased by +20% (still symmetrical)
• vertical linear upwards thrust increased by +100%
• vertical linear downwards thrust is now asymmetrical (-30% of upwards thrust)
• speed cap increased by +20%
• rotational thrust increased by +50% (pitch, yaw)
• removed turbo boost initial jolt
• turbo boost provides a constant +50% thrust bonus (significant nerf, down from +250%)

Bomber

• longitudinal linear forward thrust massively increased +90%
• longitudinal linear reverse thrust is now asymmetrical (-25% of forward thrust)
• horizontal linear thrust increased by +60%
• vertical linear upwards thrust increased by +120%
• vertical linear downwards thrust is now asymmetrical (-25% of upwards thrust)
• speed cap increased by +10%
• rotational thrust increased by +25% (pitch, yaw)
• removed turbo boost initial jolt
• turbo boost provides a constant +75% thrust bonus (significant nerf, down from +150%)
• increased turbo energy cost per second by +25%

Corvette

• longitudinal linear foward thrust massively increased by +70%
• longitudinal linear reverse thrust is now asymmetrical (-10% of forward thrust)
• horizontal linear thrust increased by +60%
• vertical linear upwards thrust increased by +40%
• vertical linear downwards thrust is now asymmetrical (-15% of upwards thrust)
• rotational thrust increased by +40% (pitch) and +40% (yaw))
• swapped rotation speed cap between pitch and yaw (the ship will now turn faster on yaw than pitch)
• removed turbo boost initial jolt
• Note that turbo boost thrust bonus remains unchanged (+100%)
• increased turbo energy cost per second by +50%

Gameplay

• it is no longer possible to get in flight formation with an enemy
• it is now possible to accelerate over the combat speed with flight auto-assist (previously holding forward was capped to max combat speed)
• implemented a simplified propulsion damage model based on HP damage (-25% thrust between 15% and 30% HP and -50% thrust below 15% HP)
• removed ability to share credits or ship points between players
• removed GyroBoost upgrade on all ships (it would be redundant with the rotational thrust increase changes)
• removed speed cap option

Spinal cruiser’s canon

• added auto-zoom to spinal canon’s charge
• added 3 seconds of warmup to charge sequence (not affected by propulsion dampening)
• spinal canon’s charge sequence is now exclusive to other weapons firing
• increased damage by +25% (25K damage per shot)
• improvements for network jittering when firing the spinal cruiser’s canon
• added a charging progress bar on HUD when firing the spinal cruiser’s canon
• fixed being able to charge the spinal cruiser’s canon in invalid match state (starting/ending match)

General Balance changes

• reduced torpedoes max locking range to 50 Km (down from 100 Km)
• increased base defense’s MK10 Orbital Canon aiming precision and range (to 150 Km, now equal to the spinal cruiser canon’s)
• interceptor’s shield regeneration rate decreased by -20% (to 1 SP/sec from 1.25 SP/sec)
• increased corvette’s heat capacity by +16% (to 350 from 300 heat points)
• decreased Phalanx/CIWS heat generation per shot to 3 (from 4 heat points)
• increased min warp entry speed (~66% of combat speed on all ships)
• added a per-ship warp speed coefficient to better tune warp speeds per ship
• loss of propulsion while warming warp now also applies to longitudinal accelerations

HUD / Controls

• reduced depth scaling for HUD indicators, to make markers scale more naturally with depth. Also applied depth scaling to selected target’s marker. Increased transparency over distance to make distant targets more easily noticeable
• camera zoom is now applied to third-person camera modes too
• weapons aiming direction dots are now smoothed before and not after projection on HUD, which should remove the “latency” in their movements when moving the virtual head around (or with TrackIR)
• added thrust buff/debuff change below throttle indicator on HUD (ex.: loss of thrust when damaged, or thrust increase when boosting)
• renamed some MFDs to be more clear (ex.: EW is now Ship Systems, Chat is now Comms; System is now Notifications)
• increased HUD’s default number of navigation and combat targets since small ship indicators are now smaller on screen at a distance

AI

• increased AI aiming precision on small ships (small ships being more mobile, they also need to be more dangerous for the game to not get more boring)
• AI capital ships are now allowed to fly 15% below the max base defense’s range

Other

• experimental network change to improve stability of players input queue
• added ship debris/wreckage for all small ships as well as cruiser (Note: all ships should have their unique destruction/debris now except the carrier)
• added smoke trail behind ship debris

[INovaeFlavien]

Patch 0.9.7.0 ( Thursday June 1st 2023 )

Hey everybody,

We are introducing a new patch today to improve game systems related to our future carrier update. Radial menus have received a polish pass, with a new design and description details, and should now properly reflect the state of each sub system or weapon (like cooldowns). Abilities have been reworked and integrated to the loadout/weapons MFD and can now be used with their group number keys instead of their own dedicated keys. This allowed us to clean some obsolete keybinds and introduce a few new ones for targetting primary or secondary mission objectives, or auto-targetting sub-systems on the target (this should massively improve the value of interceptors vs capital ships).

We’ve also been experimenting with voice-overs for incoming transmissions and computer alerts. They are currently disabled by default, so if you want to give them a try, make sure to turn the options on in the audio settings. Some of the abilities have been tweaked or reworked to make use of the new ability system.

Coming next, we’ll probably release another intermediary patch by the end of June with tweaks and improvements (mostly ability-related) before the main carrier update (likely in July). After that we’ll pretty much be done with core gameplay and move on to the rewards system (medals, achievements, skins, cross-server persistency etc…).

We aren’t sure yet how the single player mission editor, tutorials or modding will fit in terms of development priorities, but they’ll probably keep us busy at least until the end of the year. After that we’ll have to do a final polish/optimizations pass and we should be good to go for the release. It’s been long coming (better late than never) but it seems like we’re finally seeing some light at the end of the tunnel. We appreciate your patience and support in that adventure.

-Flavien Brebion

Radial menus / Controls

• New visual design
• Info details displayed at center of the wheel
• State are better displayed, including cooldown/requirements notifications, associated hotkey etc…
• Radial menus can now be opened/closed by tapping a key and clicking on one of many items (holding and selecting an item is still possible though)
• When hovering over a weapon group on the weapons radial menu, the corresponding group is now highlighted in the loadout/weapons MFD
• Added a new targetting radial menu (accessible through holding T, G or H keys). Mostly convenience for people that do not want to learn all hotkeys (or on gamepads with limited buttons)
• Added a new targetting keybind: auto-target best sub-system/hardpoint on target (will automatically choose a hardpoint to destroy, and switch to the next one upon destroyed). Default hotkey: Y
• Added a new targetting event: target closest primary objective. Default hotkey: U
• Added a new targetting event: target closest secondary objective. Default hotkey: I
• Removed hotkeys from unused targetting modes: cycle through previous/next targets (default hotkeys on Y and U, now been replaced by the new targetting events)
• Removed hotkey to deploy a mine (default: M)
• Added a dedicated overcharge radial menu (default: holding B)
• Added a dedicated formations radial menu (default: holding N)

Abilities / Upgrades

• Abilities are now bound to weapon groups and will be accessible through the 1-9 keys like weapons. Their state is also displayed in the loadout/weapons MFD as well as the weapons radial menu (default: RMB)
• Ship/loadout menu now displays the ability type in the preview card (if any)
• Removed targetting assist upgrade (Note: you can still toggle the assist option in the gameplay settings)
• Fixed repairing hardpoints on an ally using a repair-field, not providing repair notifications or rewards
• Revamped Stealth upgrade to be a toggle (now depleting energy over time)
• Fixed being able to engage Stealth while in warp
• Stealth no longer gets disengaged while turbo boosting
• Warp jam no longer affects allies in standard (Note: removed Warp Jammer II upgrade as that’s what it provided)
• Warp jam now costs 150 energy points for every use
• Introduced a new warp jam boost upgrade that increases the jam duration (at the cost of a small range reduction)
• Introduced a new energy regen rate upgrade that increases the regen rate at the cost of max energy (Note: not available on bombers and cruisers, and incompabile with the capacitors upgrades)
• Improved reliability (mobility + slight hitpoints buff) of proximity mines (this should make them more of a threat)
• Improved AI usage of mines (they will no longer waste mines at large distances, or if the enemy isn’t a cap ship, and increase the mines drop frequency when fighting against a nearby capital ship target)
• Increased mines launch speed, so that they get away from the source ship more quickly before they’re fully activated
• Unactivated mines without a target no longer get shot at by turrets

Voice-overs (experimental)

• Added a male and female officer voice over for HQ transmissions (Note: some of the female transmissions are not complete yet, so it is possible that not all transmissions will have a proper voice over)
• Added a synthetic female computer voice for alerts and warnings
• Both of those options are turned off by default. We need to evaluate if they’re too spammy and cause audio fatigue before we promote them to be the standard. Feedback here is appreciated
• If you want to give them a try, turn the settings on in the audio menu
• Renormalized audio volume (Note: this will reset the volume settings other than general volume)

General Balance changes

• Hardpoints now have a min repair time of 3 minutes

HUD / Menus

• Added an option in controls settings to toggle the keyboard helper screen on first deploy
• Fix for extended MFD title name
• Empty MFD pages no longer show their title on the HUD (exemple: an empty squad will no longer show “squad” floating on top of the MFD on the HUD)
• Fixed formatting of text in loadout/weapons MFD (not properly aligned to bottom MFDs, and could not fit 10 groups before)
• Removed beeping sound when lock is sub-optimal
• Locking HUD’s circle now gets bigger as target is aligned and differencial velocity is minimized (note: the logic also got swapped, previously the circle was getting bigger when the aim was inaccurate)
• Fixed guided weapons (missiles/torps/mines) indicators not properly highlighted on HUD when they’re targetting the player (their color/brightness should’ve been increased)
• Improved reactivity of “incoming” missile alert: there was up to 1/4th of a second of network delay for the alert to trigger after a guided weapon got activated/detected. There is no delay anymore
• New notification added to depleting ammo on a weapon (+chaffs, mines etc…)
• Tweaks to alerts/warnings priorities
• Volume levels are now locked behind a “customize” checkbox in the audio settings (the goal here is to have players avoid touching them by accident unless they really want to)
• Tweaks to HUD color themes
• Updated help screen (F9)

Bug fixes

• Fixed crash bug when loading old/obsolete input profile XML files (Note: this could have affected old returning players)
• Fixed a bug that caused the locking HUD to disappear while the ship is being repaired/resupplied by an ally
• Fixed guided weapons triggering “incoming” beeping alert despite not being detected by the player target (note: the alert text did not show up, but the alert beeping sound did, which wasn’t coherent)
• Fixed incorrect welcome transmission being sent when selecting Scoria instead of Havok upon first joining a match

[INovaeFlavien]

Patch 0.9.8.0 ( Wednesday 28th of June 2023 )

This patch is focusing on stability (3 client crashes were fixed), an upgrade to the mission system and many AI improvements. The mission system now supports side missions, and to “validate” its implementation, we are first testing it with two kind of side missions: bounty hunting and nemesis NPCs.

Bounty hunting already existed in the game previously, but was sort of hidden to new players as it didn’t have proper exposure to the missions list. The new system shows up to 5 bounties, and prioritizes the ones matching the selected player’s ship class. Bounties are fully optional, but provide a small credits bonus if you successfully accomplish them. It is now possible to place a bounty on to an enemy player in the leaderboard menu (right-click on an enemy name and select the bounty you want to place on him). Only one bounty can be placed on each enemy at a time.

Nemesis missions are a variant of the bounty system. Every few hour or so, a powerful AI/bot is deployed to hunt the player. This “elite” AI has a higher skill level, is more precise and will exclusively focus on the player until he dies. Killing the nemesis provides a nice credits reward, but if you die to it it will stop hunting you and focus back on the rest of the battlefield.

In the future, we’d like to experiment with this new side missions system and react dynamically to various events on the battlefield to provide more focused directions to the (new) players. Examples: a mission to destroy an enemy spinal cruiser’s canon; a mission to launch a torpedo on an isolate capship that has no AMS, etc…

Note that side missions are optional, so you can fully ignore them and continue to participate to the battle as normal. They only serve as to provide more objectives and small rewards to the players that want to get involved with them.

This patch also includes a long list of AI fixes and improvements. Some of these can affect the balance of battles (offense vs defense power) quite a bit, so it may require further iterations or a hotfix if we get feedback that a side gets reliably favored in battles versus the other side.

Also please note that the voice-overs (computer and transmission voices), as well as showing the max amount of HUD targets during combat, are now enabled by default.

-Flavien Brebion

Missions system

• Added support for Bounty hunt missions
• It is now possible to place bounties on other players (Note: right-click on the leaderboard on an enemy player and select the bounty to place)
• Added support for Nemesis missions (Note: requires rank 3, and fairly rare, to not be too distracting. If players like them, we might increase their frequency in the future)
• Updated missions menu with updated descriptions and details panel (for new missions too)

AI

• tweaked aiming precision, improved dodge boosting, improved energy management
• Fixed a small bug related to AI targetting priorities based upon rank differences
• Fix for AI spinal cruisers not firing their spinal canons
• Improved pathing and nagivation to attack fixed objectives (this should make the AI’s capships more easily attack static objectives and finish battles instead of getting frozen in space)
• Improved capship’s pathing around base shields
• Improved players targetting priority, now better taking the rank difference into account, and giving more challenge (higher ranked AIs) to higher-ranked players. Overall, players should find the AIs to be more proactive at attacking them
• Improved warping AIs to avoid bumping or dying into obstacles as they slow down
• Improved turbo boosting behavior of AIs
• Increased turn rate of interceptor and bomber’s AIs, so that they can track fast-moving targets more easily

HUD / Menus / Controls

• Fixed transmission popup being incorrected centered on star map in certain screen resolutions
• Fixed behavior of cycling groups, it is now skipping abilities and only works on manual weapons
• Fixed tooltips twitching by a few pixels when touching the edges of the screen

Bug fixes

• Fixed a client crash related to empty weapon groups displayed on HUD, which then caused a crash while in spectator mode
• Fixed a client freeze when trying to cycle weapon groups with an empty loadout
• Fixed a rare crash related to some space stations spawning too many asteroids around them, exceeding the client’s capacity

Misc

• Added support to loading FMOD assets by guid in audio config file
• Player max credits are now capped to 100K
• The game now defaults to showing max (200) combat targets
• The game now defaults to voice-overs enabled
• Tweaked gravity attenuation formula, as it was too weak around the gas giant
• Reduced gas giant’s mass
• Added 2 station battles in low orbit of the gas giant
• Small reduction (-15%) of hitpoints on station’s large shield generators

[INovaeFlavien]

Patch 0.9.9.0 ( Friday 29th September 2023 )

The carrier gameplay patch is now available! The carrier needed some love for a long time and was usually considered the most boring ship to fly in game (it had the lowest mobility due to being a mobile fortress, so its gameplay was more situational). We’re introducing AI squads management to its
gameplay like in a simplified RTS game. We wanted to stay away from too much micromanagement so you cannot assign orders to individual ships, only to squads as a whole.

Orders include attacking, escorting, search & destroy and of course (un)deployment and are available in the new orders radial menu (default key: O). A hangar MFD was added to the HUD when flying the carrier, showing the state of ships in every squad. In hangar mode, the 1-9 keys can be used to individually (de)select active squads, while F5 allows to switch the interactive MFD (loadout or hangar). Alternatively, it is possible to switch between MFD modes in the weapons radial menu too (default: RMB).

Also note that a spectator mode is available through the orders radial menu. This allows to quickly observe the battle from a squad’s ship’s perspective. On escort/protection orders, the AI flies into simplified conic-shaped formations until an enemy enters its attack range. Search & destroy allows
ships to select a target individually. Squad ships will always prioritize defending themselves when attacked and may ignore the assigned order temporarily. The only exception to this rule is the emergency docking mode, which forces all squads to come back to the carrier and undeploy as quickly as possible.

The carrier update also comes with a bunch of new upgrades, most of which are dedicated to the carrier gameplay (see the list in the patch notes).

As AI behavior is becoming pretty complex, we have no doubt there will be bugs and strange occasional behaviors. Do not hesitate to report them on the forums so that we can investigate the conditions in which they happen.

While the focus of this patch was the carrier gameplay, it also includes an upgrade to the Interceptor asset (texture optimizations and new skins). As we’re entering the last quarter of the year, we’re entering the final development phase before our full release. We still have a lot of work to do but in terms of gameplay, the carrier was the last major feature that was remaining to be implemented. We now consider the game to be more or less gameplay feature complete and will start to focus on to polishing the experience, introducing tutorials/training, cosmetic content and the offline sandbox mode.

-Flavien Brebion

Carrier gameplay

• Introduced the concept of Carry Points (CP) in the carrier hangar. The default budget is 30 CP
• In the ship loadout menu, added a hangar management tab to the ship panel
• In this hangar management tab, you can see the current amount of CP used by all ships in the hangar, and the max amount
• Use appropriate buttons to create new squads or delete existing ones. A new squad is initially empty. Click the “add ships” button to open the ships loadout selection panel. Only standard ship loadouts (not user-customized ones) are available
• Each loadout has a different cost (typically: 1 CP for interceptors, 3 CP for bombers and 5 CP for corvettes). Select the loadouts you’re interested in to add them to the selected squad
• In the squad panel, it is also possible to click the up/down icons to add or remove ships of the same loadout, without having to open the loadout panel manually every time
• Note that default loadouts names are displayed in green
• There is a limit of up to 4 carriers in play per faction, so not all players may be able to fly one at any time
• Each squad can have up to 6 ships, and there may be up to 9 squads in the hangar. While this may allow up to 54 ship slots, keep in mind that you’ll be limited by the max CP budget sooner
• Some upgrades may increase or decrease the CP budget
• A new hangar MFD is available on the carrier HUD. Each line shows one squad, starting with its ID number (corresponding to the selection key 1-9) and the current order’s target name. Then comes the status for each of the 6 ships slots (the ship icon shows the ship type, the coloring the health status. A red cross is displayed
  if the ship has been destroyed. Finally, on the right side of the line, an icon shows the order type
• When the hangar MFD is interactive (use F5 to switch between the hangar MFD and the loadout MFD), the 1-9 number keys can be used to individually (de)select squads
• Press O to open the orders radial menu. One or many squads must have been selected. Then select one of the orders to assign to the squad(s). Some order types (attack, protect) will use the current carrier’s target to assign as the squad’s
• Alternatively, it is possible to use the loadout radial menu insteead of using F5 and O. A new entry is available in the loadout radial menu, to toggle the MFD modes. The orders radial menu will contextually open instead of the loadout’s if the hangar MFD is selected
• It is not possible to (un)deploy squads while in warp
• It is possible to replace destroyed ships while repairing the carrier in an allied base’s docking bay (this is also partially possible in game via the salvage upgrade)
• Docked ships that are damaged but not destroyed will repair automatically over time
• Squad’s ships that are under escort/protection orders will fly in conic shape formation next to their allied target
• Damage kills, assist and stats from a squad ship gets credited to the carrier owner
• While this is currently not implemented yet, we have plans to make squads, orders and targets selection available through contextual menus in the tactical screen in the future

General AI tweaks

• Fixed AI ships occasionally firing random shots on allies they’re escorting (ex.: corvettes on ships they’re trying to repair)
• Bomber AI from carrier squads are more agressive than normal bomber bots

General gameplay changes

• The ship points distribution curve is now inverse exponential instead of being linear
• Our design goal here was to make it faster to accumulate SP if you’re low on SP and want to reach the more expensive ships more quickly, but also to help new players struggling with burning their SP on small ships too frequently
• Under the old distribution model, players received a constant +30 SP every minute
• Under the new distribution model, players receive a variable amount of SP every minute. This amount is high (up to +60 SP) when the total amount of SP assets is low. This amount is about identical to the old number (+30 SP) when the total SP is around the 1000. This amount goes lower than 30
  the higher you go. The minimum amount of SP received is 10.
• Under the new model, it takes as much time as before to reach a carrier’s cost (2500 SP) from scratch (about 84 mins). It is slightly faster to reach a cruiser’s. It is 10 minutes faster to replenish a destroyer’s (20 mins instead of 30 mins). It is a few minutes faster for the smaller ships.
• One key difference is that the new model uses the total amount of SP assets owned, which is the sum of the SP account and the SP value of the currently flown ship. This should make it impossible to abuse the system by refunding the ship after profiting from a low SP account to earn SP at a faster rate

New upgrades

• New upgrade: Detonate (all ships): provides an active ability to instantly detonate all activated MTBs (missiles, torpedoes, bombs, mines) currently in flight.
• New upgrade: Launch tubes (carrier): doubles the rate at which ships get deployed, by using the launch tubes system at the sides of the carrier instead of the main hangar. The repair crew and heavy repair field’s effectiveness (optionally used) are reduced by 10%
• New uptrade: Repair rate (carrier): doubles the repair rate of damaged ships docked in your hangar. Does not replenish destroyed ships (you need to fly back to an allied space station’s docks for that). The repair crew and heavy repair field’s effectiveness (optionally used) are reduced by 10%
• New upgrade: Hangar capacity (carrier): increases by 50% your hangar carry points (CP) capacity. The repair crew and heavy repair field’s effectiveness (optionally used) are reduced by 25%
• New upgrade: Veteran pilots (carrier): increases the military rank from AI ship squads deployed by the carrier. They originally range from level 1 (RCT) to 10 (MPO) and are deployed with a random rank in that range. This upgrade increases the minimum range to 5 (PO3), making the AI more experienced and agressive
• New upgrade: Salvage parts (carrier): recycles 3 wrecked ships of the same class from your hangar into one brand new ship, once per minute. The recycled ship has half hitpoints. The remaining wrecks become unsalvagable. Due to storing extra salvage parts, your hangar capacity is reduced by 15%
• Note: all new carrier upgrades require a fairly high military rank (13+)

Bug fixes

• Fixed abilities that do not consume any type of ammo
• Fixed a rare client crash related to projectiles multithreading
• Fixed a rare client crash bug that happened when a missile would lose its target the same time it got destroyed

UI / Menus changes

• Tweaked the HUD’s central information (speed bar, status, target info) max separation to the left/right so that it can’t overlap with center left and center right MFD
• Fixed a bug which caused damaged guided weapons (missiles/torps/mines) to be displayed with the “damaged” status below their HUD indicator. This now only applies to ships

Misc

• Updated interceptor asset: optimized UV coordinates and improved the texture/material. It should react better under various lighting conditions, and look less clean than before
• 7 interceptor skins are now experimentally available (use “/SetSkin SkinName” in the chat box with SkinName being one of the following: InterceptorScoria, InterceptorHavoc, InterceptorFire, InterceptorBee, InterceptorGold, InterceptorIndustrial or InterceptorMilitary
• Added 2 new external camera views (F2) to the interceptor
• Reduced volume of rotating turret loop sfx

[INovaeFlavien]

Patch 0.9.10.2 ( Monday 18th December 2023 )

Greetings everyone. In this update (most likely the last one of the year) we’re bringing you the next iteration and improvements to the carrier gameplay. The behavior of the squads under orders was changed to be more reactive and consistent (for example, ships in escort mode shouldn’t fly dozens of Km away from the carrier anymore).

We revamped ramming damage as well as griefing which were often a source of frustration for new players. We started some preparations for our future modding support plan and replaced old placeholder weapons meshes with new, unique ones. A quality-of-life pass was applied to the UI, including a speaker icon for voice chat or an automatic radar/tactical view zoom-out at high velocities.

Starting from january we will focus our efforts on the major remaining missing features such as tutorials, the single-player sandbox mode or the private/dedicated servers hosting. These may take a few months of development (probably at least until Q2 2024) during which regular patches will be lightweight (bug or balance fixes, but no new major feature). After that we’ll start our final polish pass and prepare marketing for our 1.0 launch around (estimated) Autumn 2024.

Happy winter holidays,

-Flavien Brebion

Carrier gameplay

• Carrier ship points (SP) cost now has a base cost with an empty hangar (1800 SP), and a cost per hangar’s carry point (CP) (+15 SP/CP). An empty or default (unupgraded hangar) carrier now costs less SP to deploy (previously the cost was set to a fixed 2500 SP)
• Rebalanced AI budget reinforcement waves during battles to better take into account carrier hangar costs and to be more stable (the value no longer fluctuates based on deployed/undeployed ships)
• Fixed some carrier hangar loadout changes lost when switching menus
• Carrier squad rewards (xp, credits & damage stats from kills/assists) reduced to 25% for the carrier owner (previously, the carrier owner received full rewards for its squad kills/assists)
• Carrier orders should now be more reactive to squads when changing targets
• Carrier squads now retreat (warp out) after about 30s once the carrier has died/undeployed. This addresses the problem of players deploying their ships, then undeploying the carrier, and repeating the operation to spawn an infinite amount of ships
• Carrier squads in escort mode should now be less agressive and stay within a 10 Km defensive range of the carrier (or of the protected ship)
• Carrier squads on orders to attack a target (ship or base structure) that gets destroyed should now return to the carrier instead of switching to search & destroy
• Corvettes in carrier squads should now prioritize repairing/rearming ships in their squads, and then ships in other squads, over “foreign” ships not belonging to the carrier at all
• More tweaks to obstacle avoidance AI, as capships like the carrier sometimes had a massive (30 km+) avoidance range causing allied fleets to fall apart
• Carriers can no longer replenish their lost hangar ships at the base under attack during a battle (they can still replenish their ships at another allied base though)
• Removed 8 MK4 turrets from carrier hardpoint layouts (now that the carrier can manage squads, we want it to be more vulnerable to small enemy ship assaults and to use its squads more actively to protect itself)

General gameplay

• Revamped collision/ramming damage to punish more severly the rammer. Damage is now capped, so a smaller ship at insane ram speeds (many km/s) cannot destroy a bigger ship anymore (ex.: destroyer vs cruiser)
• Fixed a bug with collision damage that was incorrectly calculated for a warping rammer, due to warp interruption cancelling out the contact speed before damage was calculated

A minority of players sometime do griefing for fun. We obviously want to discourage this behavior, so we’re increasing the penatly for the griefer while refunding his victim

• Griefing now refunds ship points (SP) to the dead player
• The griefing count no longer fully resets after a match restarts (previously, griefing was forgotten after every match, it will now stay persistent accross matches, but decrease slowly over time)
  (As a reminder: after a grief count of 3, a player gets auto-kicked from the match, then auto-banned if he continues griefing)
• Added a more explicit griefing automatic warning notification

Modding

We do not have any plans to support modding before our 1.0 release, however in this update we made some preparations for future modding (mostly code architecture changes). We’ve added support for a C# .NetCore plugin system as well as a C# SDK. In the future we plan on supporting config files (XML) modding, assets modding (through our engine editor/cooker) and audio modding (already partially supported with FMOD).

Both the client and the server can be modded and we’d like the mod system to automatically download missing client mods when connecting to a modded server. This is a lot of work so keep in mind that the extent of our modding support will largely depend on the success and popularity of the game after our 1.0 launch.

Misc Bug fixes

• Fixed warp-in AI bots slowdown failing in atmosphere of gas giant, causing capital ships to fall to their death shortly after being spawned

UI / HUD / Menus

• Added a dedicated UI sound effects volume slider (this can be useful when recording a video)
• Leaderboard now displays the ship class icon for every player (if spawned)
• Fixed death/skull icon being displayed for the player on the starmap despite being well alive
• Tactical screen and radars now automatically zoom out in warp or at high speeds (> 1 km/s)
• Added a speaker icon to VOIP (squad menu and squad MFD)
• Player VOIP chat volume is now independent of global volume (if global volume is set to zero and voice chat isn’t, you can still hear people talking in squads)
• Cleaned squad MFD (removed player role and rank icons)
• Replaced all isometric ship class icons in menus with top-down ones (more coherent and easier for new players to recognize the ship’s shapes?)
• Fixed “ammo” instead of “energy” warning flashing on active low-energy weapons stats on HUD
• Minor fixes to default MFD layouts for some ships
• Added a credits page (Note: backers list is a huuuge vertical flat list and needs to be adapted to multiple columns at some point)

Misc

• Fixed server shutdown notification popup not showing up
• Added proper unique meshes and materials for all weapons in game
• Removed launchers placeholders
• Added skin-specific paint colors to weapons materials
• Russian localization update thanks to whirsil

[INovaeFlavien]

Patch 0.10.0.1 ( Thursday 24th of June 2024 )

Hey everyone, time for another update and a major patch. As we mentionned a few months ago, we entered a relatively uneventful phase of development for Battlescape, focusing our efforts on polishing the experience, especially for new players.

We’re happy to report that we’ve made significant progress on that front, with the first implementation of our custom internal scripting system which allowed us to build the first tutorials. Basic Flight, Basic Combat and Advanced Flight are now available in the Training menu (we got ride of the old & mostly outdated Youtube links, finally !). Each training mission ends with a trial, a small challenge for players to test their skills on (the flight tutorials have racing courses in an asteroid field, while the combat tutorial a small wave defense against some Interceptor drones). The pacing is relatively slow but each training mission sets up all the concepts needed to understand 6DOF space combat mechanics. We intend to add more tutorials in the coming months prior to the 1.0 release.

We’re also happy to release a new ship in this patch: a Support-class frigate that can repair and rearm capital ships. Support ships are considered capital ships, slightly smaller than Destroyers but more industrial. Some of you may notice that we’ve recycled the Hauler, which was an NPC-only ship from a few years ago when the game had a factory/resource system. They’re now player flyable. Supports have a very asymmetrical design: weak hull but very strong regenerative shields, making them hard to
pick up by interceptors. They have light MK4 defenses, mostly on the upside, with an almost empty belly. Their movement lies between the Corvette and the Destroyer as you’d expect. They are equipped in standard with auto-aiming, manual-firing repair/rearm beams as nearby support (up to 3 km) and repair/rearm guided drones for long range. They can repair/rearm a capital ship, even a cruiser, to 100% in a minute or two, so they can be pretty powerful in the right hands to help the capital fleet survive longer.

This patch also includes a number of new weapons & upgrades. Worth mentionning, an Active Shield ability for the Interceptor allows players to recharge their shield to 100% instantly at will… but the shield decays instead of recharging over time ! Needless to say, finding the right timing to use it will require experience, but may be powerful. Note that AI/bots can now spawn with randomized loadouts and also use those abilities (Stealth bots may surprise you out of nowhere occasionally !)

Speaking of AI, this patch introduces major AI changes in terms of Battle flow & Strategies. The AI commander should now be smarter and battles more balanced. Stategies involve being more or less agressive and adapting the reinforcement wave’s composition to the dynamics of the battle. Pathfinding was improved especially around structures or asteroids, which should prevent some unfortunate… accidents from our automated friends. There are still some known issues with the AI (especially related to Spinal cruiser’s AI having difficulties aiming at long distance) which we’ll try to address in the next patches.

Coming next, we’ll be working on the Sandbox mode and various UI “quality of life” improvements such as Weapons management. We still have some content to add (new planet environments, weapons & upgrades) but this Summer we’ll focus most of our efforts on the next big visual polish phase, including some new new special effects (atmospheric re-entry, warp jam…) and the missing tutorials. Stay tuned and as usual, do not hesitate to provide us with your feedback on the forums. Have fun,

-Flavien Brebion

Training Tutorials

• Added Basic Flight Training (basic controls & navigating around an asteroid field, using boost, tactical view, etc…)
• Added Basic Combat Training (targetting, weapon types, switching weapon groups, fighting drones, using missiles & chaffs and dogfighting in 5 waves of increasing difficulty)
• Added Advanced Flight Training (flying without flight assist)
• Removed old Youtube tutorial links
• More tutorials to come later this year (ex.: Warp Navigation, Starmap, Advanced Combat, Flying capital ships…)

New Ship: the Supply

• A small capital-ship class/Frigate Support ship that can repair/resupply bigger Capital ships (yes, even including the Carrier)
• Has limited Hitpoints (weak Hull) but has the stronger Shield Regeneration rate in the game, making it very hard to be damaged by Interceptors
• Has chaffs, but is weak to Torpedo’s splash damage
• Asymmetrical Hardpoints design: all MK4 defense hardpoints are situated on its top, leaving the underside exposed
• Has medium mobility, between a Corvette and a Destroyer
• Doesn’t have boost
• Has manual repair and rearm beams in standard. 3 Km range that can repair/rearm a capital ship in a few minutes. Can also almost instantly repair/rearm smaller ships as well, provided they’re in this range. The beams are single target (unlike the passive Corvette’s repair/resupply field aura)
• For long-range repair/rearm, uses guided drones that have mobility and range equivalent to those of a torpedo. Can repair 8K HP instantly as the drone hits the allied target

New weapons

MK5 Trigun Turret:

• Fires a small burst of 3 shots in a conic shape dealing a good amount of damage
• Has a limited forward-facing 180 deg firing arc

MK6 Flakball:

• Fires 20 flak projectiles at once over a huge area (1+ km)
• Low firing rate (every 5 seconds)
• Its low precision makes it bad against isolated small ships, okay against a clump of ships in a small zone, and good against bigger targets like corvettes or destroyers
• Can also be used as a last resort solution to hit incoming torpedoes/mines
• Almost feels like a low-range brawling weapon against capital ships (ex.: Destroyer vs Destroyer)

Note:

• Removed MK3 Repair and Rearm beams from the Corvette. Medic Corvette is no longer a standard loadout
• Added MK5 Repair and Rearm beams for the Support
• Added Repair and Rearm drones (they act like guided weapons, except they work on allies instead) for the Support
• Added the ability to repair weapons on static base defenses with the repair beam

New upgrades

Active Shield:

• Transforms the passive shield to a manual, active ability. Shield points decay over time by -20%/s but activating the ability instantly recharges the shield to 100%
• Ability’s cooldown is 5s
• Energy cost: 60
• Designed to be a high skill, high reward upgrade, forcing you to pay attention to who’s firing at you at every moment and requiring a lot of attention. In exchange you can recharge the shield very often
• Only available on the Interceptor and Bomber

CIWS Cooling:

• The cooling system on CIWS Turrets (Phalanx MK4) is upgraded which allows them to fire as a continous stream instead of bursts. The firing rate is reduced by -50% and the max range by -20%
• Note: the heat generated per projectile decreases significantly (-40%) however the fact that this weapon now fires continuously means that it still generates a huge amount of heat

Overflak:

• Doubles the splash radius of Flak canons and increases the range by 20%. The projectile speed is reduced by -20% and the ammo cost increases by 1

Spinal Cooldown:

• increases the fire rate of the Spinal canon at the cost of DPS and range, making it an anti-capital ship weapon instead of a long-range artillery weapon

Firewall:

• passive upgrade that prevents enemies from seeing your hull and shield status when targetting you. Mostly used in PvP - does not really affect bots in any capacity

Analysis Computer:

• passive upgrade that allows to see enemy target stats when they’re protected by a Firewall
• also gives extra info on allied ships (Energy and Ammo supply status)

General Gameplay changes

• Rebalanced the cost of certain upgrades (credits) in relation to their required rank
• Tweaked credits & rank requirement for some advanced weapons
• Fixed (removed) credits penalty and warning when carrier squads accidentally cause griefing on other allied ships
• Reduced a bit the base frequency of apparition of nemesis
• All weapons now firing in a circular arc shape (previously it was in a square shape)
• Projectile hits on a sub-targetted hardpoint/weapon will now also damage the hull of the target-
• Powering off a ship now increases the damaged system’s (ex.: Flight assist, Radar, Sensors, Engine…) self repair rate by +30%
• Improved precision of missile launch aiming system (instead of snapping the reticle on the target when there is no interception solution, an estimated firing solution is now computed, providing a better aim reticle)
• Battlescape generator now allows more land battles around sunsets

Weapons & Upgrades Balance tweaks

Repair Crew:

• Increased repair crew max repair cap to 33% of max HP (from 25%) so that it can repair higher than the propulsion damage debuff (set to -25% thrust below 30% of max HP)

Plasma cutter:

• Increased firing precision (spread reduced by -33%)

Decoy missile launcher:

• Decoy missile launchers are now available on the bomber
• The decoy missile now has the lifetime of a real torpedo (60s up from 10s)
• The decoy missile now has less HP (75 HP down from 150 HP)
• The decoy missile now has the emission range of a torpedo (25 km up from 10 km)
• The decoy missile now deals a bit of damage (50) when hitting a target (from 1)
• There are now 8 decoy missiles per launcher (up from 5)
  Our goal here was to make the decoy missiles a soak up a little bit of damage from AMS defenses, giving a higher chance for torpedoes to hit their targets

MK4 Flak Turret:

Flaks were reworked to deal more reliable damage and not just act as an area detractor

• Flaks now fire at a slower rate (2/s instead of 5/s) but with twice the amount of projectiles before the cooldown starts
• This means that instead of firing a whole bunch of flaks in quick succession, the flak turret now spreads firing flaks over a longer period of time
• Increased turret rotation speed to 80°/s (from 40°/s) to more easily track quick nearby targets
• Increased firing precision (spread reduced by almost -50%)
• Increased ammo capacity to 1500 (from 1000)
• Slightly reduced damage per projectile (kinetics by -20% and energy by -25%)
• Increased splash radius to 200m (from 150m)
• Decreased heat generation when firing by -50%
• Introduced a minimum detonation range of 1.5 km. Flak projectiles cannot detonate at a lower range for safety reasons. Direct-hit damage is still dealt at a 50% rate. This was meant to introduce a short-range weakness to the weapon

MK4 Railgun Turret:

The railgun turret was rebalanced to deal more damage per projectile, but at a lower firing rate, resulting in the same overall DPS. Projectiles are faster and precision was increased, making it easier to reach longer-range targets

• Reduced firing rate by -50% and burst count from 4 to 3
• Firing cooldown increased to 2.25s (from 0.85s)
• Kinetic damage increased to 16 (from 6) and energy damage to 3 (from 1)
• Increased firing precision (spread reduced by -33%)
• Increased projectile speed to 3 km/s (from 2.5 km/s) and reduced projectile lifetime to 2.67s (from 3.20s). As a result, the range remains unchanged (8 km)
• Decreased heat generation when firing by -33%
• Decreased max ammo capacity to 2000 (from 2500) and increased ammo cost to 3 (from 2). Slightly reduced energy cost to 4 (from 5). Due to the lower firing rate and increased cooldown, this nerf still results in being able to use this weapon almost twice longer before it runs out of ammo

MK4 Phalanx Turret:

• Slightly nerfed kinetic damage per projectile to 8 (from 10) while increasing burst count to 10 (from 8), resulting in a similar DPS
• Slightly increased firing precision (spread reduced by -25%)
• Increased max ammo capacity to 3000 (from 2000), allowing the Phalanx to fire for a longer time before depleting ammo

MK5 Gun Turret:

• Reduced heat generation when firing by -33%

Missile Retargetting:

• The missile retargetting upgrade now also applies to torpedoes and SSM battery (note: despite the description saying so, this upgrade didn’t apply to torpedoes before…)
• Fixed guided weapons that keep their spinning momentum after losing their target, causing random re-acquisitions of new targets with the smart retargetting upgrade

Defense towers on bases:

• reduced MK7 defense towers DPS to match those of normal MK7s
• new MK9 Space canons replace the small defense platforms floating away from space stations. They now act as long-range artillery against space fleets composed of spinal cruisers, up to 150 Km range. They have similar stats to their ground equivalents (MK10 Orbital canons)

MK7 Heracles:

• Reduced firing arc from 50° to 40°
• Reduced kinetic damage by -33% and energy damage by -6%

MK7 Thunderbolt:

• Reduced firing arc from 50° to 40°
• Reduced kinetic damage by -50% and energy damage by -36%
  Both Heracles & Thunderbolt were far more powerful than the MK7 Titan canons. The limited firing arc was supposed to be the main tradeoff, but in practise doesn’t seem to be that limiting. So here we’re nerfing the damage and add a bit more constraint on the firing arc.
  Those canons should still feel good alternatives compared to Titans, without being a must anymore.

HUD / UI / Menus

• New main menu entries for Challenges, Workship or Join a game (currently placeholders)
• Added a slider for HUD color saturation in the general settings (Note: will default to 50%, so new players won’t get an over-saturated HUD)
• Exiting or pressing escape on the options menu now resets the settings to their previous state (like the cancel button does)
• Ships displayed in the deploy panel or in the loadout screen now get sorted by ascending SP
• Player’s XP info is now displayed as a progression percentage instead of the flat number (those numbers still appear in the tooltip though)
• Changes to loadouts are now automatically saved on disk for custom loadouts. The undo system now works from the previous checkpoint in memory (which can be updated with the save icon in the loadout management panel)
• Updated the notification/popup panel (match start/end, battle start/end, ranking up etc…). It now displays in game menus as well
• A “!NEW!” notification is displayed in the loadout panel for newly available weapons/upgrades after ranking up
• Transmissions now wait until the audio voice has finished speaking if the audio was longer than the text… (might be useful for localization in other languages)
• Added a new icon for manual-fire auto-aim weapons in the loadout/weapons MFD
• Removed opaque black panel backgrounds in options menu
• Added fallback to other fonts when a glyph does not exist in a specific font
• Repair/rearm impacts no longer cause the reddening of the screen sides as if taking damage
• When selecting a hardpoint, the HUD’s target info now displays “destroyed” when that hardpoint is under non-repairable cooldown, and “damaged” later when it can be repaired
• Fixed display units for rearm beam/drone in weapons info details panel (was showing “DPS” when they’re not dealing damage, but repairing/rearming…)
• Weapons with a large cooldown between shots now show their actual hit damage, instead of the DPS, on the ship loadout weapons info panel
• Visual improvements to the objectives MFD (checkbox, color pulsation, target icons)
• Added more zoom levels to the tactical view
• Added randomization of splash screens when loading a game
• Waypoints now blink when they’re obstructed
• Supply ships can now see an indicator under the nearest ally with low supply

Controls

• Cleaned up the display names of keybindings (they will be more explicit, and better match the actual symbol on the keyboard)
• The selection cursor is now visible on screen center at all times when using head tracking
• Revamped nearby threat (‘G’ key) prioritization, should now behave much better and more often target enemies closer to you in your class range
• Fixed an auto-turn bug in the capships control scheme that made the ship continue rotating in the wrong direction after manually overriding its orientation
• Fixed capital ship automatic alignment mode not working when rotation assist is turned off
• Fixed a small bug that prevented allied support ships to be selected via the “nearest support” key when they were further than 30 km away

Bug fixes

• Tweaked carrier spawn position in docking bay to avoid collisions with station when spawning
• Fixed stereo sound imbalance on x4 firing weapons sounds on small ship configurations
• Fixed a bug that caused out-of-ammo hybrid weapons to drain energy very quickly when firing, despite not generating a shot
• Fixed weapons overcharge mode not affecting the burst cooldown between salvos of multiple shots (this will affect the most weapons that fire a lot of shots at once with long cooldowns, such as the shredder, flaks, mk6/mk7+ etc… )
• Fixed a rare client crash that can occur when a planet gets destroyed right after being created, causing a memory corruption leak in the atmosphere rendering pipe
• Fixed a client crash happening when a carrier loadout references a ship loadout file that doesn’t exist anymore
• Fixed a turret targetting bug that prioritized the out-of-view primary selected target over secondary in-view target candidates
• Fixed flooding of log files with warning notifications from server
• Fixed a bug that caused the background scene to not be properly displayed on the main menu after an error popup has occured
• Client no longer crashes when trying to spawn with an actor that has no hardpoint, engine or propulsion component…
• Fixed a bug that caused the “undo” icon to be available on an old, custom loadout despite doing no change to it
• Fixed warp jam effect position not properly centered around warp interdiction towers on bases
• Fixed a bug that didn’t apply some changed graphics settings until the next restart
• Fixed warp jam crash & jam duration incorrectly applied
• Fixed a bug that prevented manual firing on manual-firing, auto-aiming turrets on the corvette when there is no selected target
• Fixed a bug that prevented critical ship systems to get repaired over time when they’re being repaired/resupplied by a beam or a drone
• Fixed a couple of small tooltips bugs
• Fixed “out of ammo” alert sometimes incorrectly popping up when firing missiles
• Fixed a bug that prevented the main menu from showing up after you changed a graphics option and had the “this operation requires a restart” dialog popped up
• Potential fix for a bug that caused the camera cockpit view mode to be stuck enabled after alt-tabbing while joining a game

AI

• Fixed chaffs sometimes being fired by AI right after it gets spawned (this was particularly noticeable when deploying AI carrier squads)
• AIs now have a chance to get a randomized loadout and abilities (including active shields or stealth) when they spawn
• Massive improvements to 3D pathfinding of AI bots around base structures or asteroids
• Bots now have new tactics (ex.: Bombing Run for bombers or Spinal cruisers)
• Space Assault was revamped: the assault fleet is now further away (120-150 Km range), forcing the defenders to go on a counter outside the safety of station shields all while defending the station structures from small ships. This change should make space battles feel more dynamic,
  with both sides switching from attack to defense depending on the progression of the battle
• Improved AI commander’s Battle strategies in Assault mode, which should bring more stability in the balance of battles
• Improved reinforcements waves during battles: the AI commander will now try to adapt the fleet composition dynamically to match the chosen strategy’s

Visual / Sound Improvements

• Implemented new shield mesh enveloppe effect around capital ships (previously, the shield impacts used a flat cross-quad particle effect, which looked bad when it was too big)
• Fixed slight blurriness in UI shader. Text should be a bit sharper than before
• Added lateral inertia camera movements to cockpit view (+ sliders in the graphics settings)
• Added cockpit stress (shaking) when speeding in normal flight
• Improvements to visibility/size of space dust effect, to have a better sense of flying speed
• Visual improvements to the tactical view (new shader “holographic” effect, background less dark etc…)
• Smog (battle smoke) effect tweaks (density, culling, lighting…)
• Increased lights intensities for bigger weapon projectiles and muzzle effects
• Reduced a little bit the visual size of the projectiles for the biggest weapons (MK6, MK7s & variants)
• Reduced opacity of bubble shields around bases by -80%
• Reduced opacity of spawn markers holograms by -75%
• Base “bubble” shields are now powered off by default until a battle starts around them
• Scaled repair/rearm beam’s impact effects to avoid blinding the player under a flood of visual effects
• Replaced repair beam sound fx (new welding sound)
• Added sound effects when clicking buttons or tabs in the UI
• Improved ship’s ambient sounds (side thrusters, idle ambiance, speeding)
• Added or replaced many Weapons sound effects (machine guns, shredder, halcyon, many turrets, mine explosion…)

Misc

• Optimized Carrier collisions
• Exceptions occuring while loading an XML config file are now better reported and show the error’s location
• Improved error messages presented to the user in case of network or authentication issues
• Added a /EditPath mode for recording cinematic cameras when editing a mission script

[INovaeFlavien]

Patch 0.10.1.0 ( 1st of July 2024 )

Gameplay Tweaks

• Increased by +33% the AI SP budget for space battles, to make them have more ships
• Increased the turn rate of the repair/rearm beams from 30°/s to 60°/s
• Increased firing rate of MK9 Defense Space Canons, to make them more of a threat to incoming enemy capital ships
• Slightly decreased spread (= increased precision) and increased negative horizon firing angle of the MK9 Space Canons

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an authentication bug with the I-Novae Launcher that prevented from connecting to online Multiplayer
• Fixed a rare client crash bug that happened when you selected a proximity mine as a target right after it got spawned
• Fixed gigantic repair beam impact effect when hitting a station/structure
• Fixed a bug that incorrectly offset projectile impacts when hitting the corvette
• Fixed a bug that inflated by dozen of times the amount of support points generated by the repair/rearm beams/drones on the Supply ship
• Fixed a bug with proximity mines that didn’t cause any splash damage from their explosion after their lifetime expires

Tutorials/Scripts

• Added the ability to skip transmissions dialogues
• Mission runtime cinematic bug fixes (special effects like explosions did not appear during cinematics)

[INovaeFlavien]

Patch 0.10.2.1 ( 1st of November 2024 )

In this patch we’re introducing the first version of the offline Sandbox mode. It allows players to configure a single battle, a series of battles or an entire match (assuming you’d want to spend an entire day to play it) and select a battlescape environment (small, medium and large).

The match is hosted on your local server, and in time we are hoping to extend it to local coop or dedicated hosting. By changing options it is possible, for example, to play a single battle in a large environment (randomizing where the battle takes place), and that battle will take place around a space station on defense. It is also possible to play around with the various ship classes that the AI is allowed to spawn during these battle(s). More options as well as gameplay modifiers (ex.: all enemies are elites, all weapons are unlocked from start, etc…) will come in a future iteration.

We’re also doing a lot of tweaks to the Support ship’s gameplay & balance. We’re introducing the concept of Resource crates, which the Support ship must collect on a regular basis to replenish its Resource points, which are consumed by the repair/rearm lasers. Picking up resource crates also
replenishes a certain amount of repair/rearm drones, which come in a more limited amount than before. Their effect is now applied over time instead of being instant. We also reduced the Support ship’s shield generation rate and amount of countermeasures (chaffs) to make it weaker to enemy small ships.

We are hoping that those changes will make the Support’s gameplay more dynamic and less abusable than before, while preserving all its potential for saving friendly capital ships in battles.

An EMP torpedo has been added to the game and we’ve revamped all the warp effects (charging, field and exit) and got rid of the previous “tunnel” effect.

In the next major patch (ETA: winter holiday) we are planning to introduce the weapons loadout/groups management screen, iterate on the sandbox mode (more options and gameplay tweaks) and focus on our next visual polish pass. This will include decals, new planet environments, an update to the gas giant’s visuals and some more UI polish, before focusing next year on our 1.0 release.

-Flavien Brebion

Offline Sandbox mode

• The sandbox mode is now availabe to play from the main root menu
• Note 1: The sandbox mode runs a server locally which may affect performance, especially in massive battles
• 3 game modes are available: single battle, multi battles and full match
• single battle is pretty straightforward: you play a single battle, and whoever wins the battle (offense or defense) wins the ‘match’
• multi battles plays a maximum of 3 battles, switching between offense and defense. Each battle is worth one victory point. The first team to 3 VP wins the match. It is a limited part of the full assault mode
• full match plays the full assault loop over an entire battlescape, from 8 to 32 battles
• the environment can be selected, from small (8 bases) to medium (16 bases) to large (32 bases). The selected game mode will play a randomized subset of all potential bases
• it is possible to enter a “seed” number for the generated battlescape. The same seed will generate the same battlescape (planets, moons and bases) every time. If you encounter any bug/issue related to the battlescape or bases layout you can communicate the seed to us to help us debug it
• various options are available: selecting the faction/team, the starting side (offense vs defense), the type of battles (space and/or land bases), and which ship classes the AI can spawn during the battles
• Note 2: trying to play a battle with Carriers only, or Support ships only, may not work as intended. Carriers are by design limited in amount by the AI, and Support ships do not have their AI implemented yet, so will not spawn
• Note 3: while it is possible to try playing a massive battle with Interceptors only, the local server’s load may result in unpredictable performance. Disabling certain ship classes may result in some battles being unbalanced, or difficult to complete objectives (but, well, that’s kind of the purpose of a sandbox mode, to play with various things, I suppose… but just be warned…)
• we have plans to add more options and gameplay “modifiers” to the sandbox in the next iteration

Support ship changes

Our feedback and internal tests clearly show that the Support ship, which we introduced right before summer, was easily abusable (infinite repairs/resupplies, or Supports repairing each others…). Its gameplay was also very passive, following the capital ships fleet. In this patch we’re trying to make
its gameplay more dynamic and require more effort from the Support player.

The Support ships now carry a limited amount of “Resource points” (displayed on the bottom-left central part of the HUD, right below countermeasures) which the repair/rearm lasers consume over time. The amount of repair/rearm drones was also drastically limited. All of those can be replenished by collecting “Resource crates” from the battlefield. Those crates spawn from destroyed capital ships (allies or enemies). This will force the Support ship to move away from the fleet and introduce some danger from times to times.

• Added resource points (used to repair/rearm targets). They can be replenished via dropped resource creates from destroyed capital ships during battles (or on an allied base’s docking bay as usual)
• Resource crates are automatically collected by the Support ship on nearby (< 1Km) range like a tractor beam
• Repair/rearm drones now apply their effects over a duration of 15s (instead of instantly before)
• The “select nearest support” key (default: alt+H or menu entry in the Targetting radial menu) can now also select the nearest resource crate if flying on the Support ship
• Increased acceleration and speed of repair/rearm drones so that they can reach a far-away target a bit faster
• Decreased Support ship’s shield regen rate by -25%
• Decreased Support ship’s chaffs to 5 (from 25)
• Decreased Support ship’s drone reserve to 8 (from 15), but increased the firing rate to 10s (from 30s)

Gameplay/Balance tweaks

• Warping-out speed is now capped to combat speed cap (ships will no longer retain their warp-entry speeds at exit). The target speed is set to the minimum warp entry’s speed
• Added EMP torpedo launcher on the bomber and on the cruiser. EMP torpedoes deal 50% more damage compared to normal torpedoes, but their damage is pure energy and will only affect the target’s shield
• It is no longer possible to fire a missile/torpedo on a friendly target with safety lock enabled (same for repair/rearm drones on enemies)
• Decoy missiles now have a reduced firing rate (1 decoy per 10s instead of 2s), generate less heat, and have a max lock distance reduced to 25 km (from 50 km)

HUD/UI/Menus

• Ships that have a resupply ability can now see any friendly target’s ammo ratio on their HUD target info by default
• Leaderboard panel now defaults to “Match Only” instead of showing “All” players
• Fixed hangar MFD being available on ships without a hangar and defaulting weapons groups to hangar mode
• Added an error notification message when trying to select an invalid squad group in hangar mode
• Switching audio devices now gets instantly applied (previously, you had to press the “apply” button to hear the change)
• HUD “Blood” effect on screen sides no longer shows up when HUD is turned off (F3)

Generic Bug Fixes

• Fixed a bug that allowed a Support ship player to target itself through the tactical map, to launch a drone to repair/resupply itself
• Fixed a bug that prevented the Support ship’s MFD layouts from being loaded from/saved to/reset in the general options menu
• Fixed a rare multithreading crash bug when switching audio devices

Misc

• Added new warp charge, field and exit effects. Removed the old purple “tunnel” warp effect
• Added extra log file errors when failing to open or create a local DB when launching the tutorials

[INovaeFlavien]

Patch 0.10.3.0 ( 6 February 2025 )

Greetings Everyone and happy 2025 ! We’re starting this year with a new patch, featuring the new weapons presets controls. We added a free flight mode to the sandbox mode, and gameplay modifiers that can impact the game’s challenge or rewards. Some of the modifiers can be used by new players to playtest various features by temporarily unlocking all upgrades/weapons, or enabling the “ghost mode” which prevents enemy ships from targetting you. Other gameplay modifiers can modify the stats of all ships (including yours) like adjusting the damage scale, projectile speeds or shield levels.

The weapons presets allow players to customize groups of weapons groups, named presets, in the ship loadout panel. In this new tab, you’ll see a grid. The columns present presets, with a matching number at the top, and rows for weapons groups/abilities. The weapon or ability can be added or removed to the preset by clicking on the state at the grid intersection. For capital ship weapons, it is possible to click multiple times on the state to cycle through the various firing modes. The presets can then be invoked in game through a new radial menu (not: no default bound key, so if you’re interested in this feature you’ll have to bind a custom key) or directly through RightAlt + #preset ID. Note that can also assign custom names to each preset. And to anticipate the question that a lot of people will surely ask: no, presets do not allow you to mix weapons groups of different types on small ships. Those still use the exclusive groups system. However, we changed the corvette to no longer have exclusive groups for manual firing modes, as automatic firing modes were allowed concurrently already.

The new ship loadout tab also displays ammo statistics, so that you can more clearly see how payload upgrades affect your ammo.

The EMP torpedo was reworked, and we’ve introduced a new dedicated kinetic torpedo. The standard torpedo is now an hybrid type, dealing slightly less damage. The specialized variants deal a lot more damage, but only on targets with the specific weakness (ex.: Kinetic torpedoes will deal very little shield damage, and EMP torpedoes will deal very little hull damage, whereas the standard torpedo can deal significant damage to both). A new EMP Field ability is now available for the Destroyer, with two variants: one focused on high-risk high-reward heavy energy damage, the other dealing a lot less damage but in a larger range can be used as defense against smaller ships or even incoming missiles/torpedoes.

We’re still working on the polish pass (with no ETA for when the next patch will be) and will soon start on our next important phase: a huge backend/database rework, which will finally allow us to support accounts persistency accross servers and prepare the infrastructure for the game’s official release.

-Flavien Brebion

Offline Sandbox mode

• Added Free Flight game mode to the sandbox
• The sandbox environment’s seed is now restricted to a 7-digits number

Added 12 gameplay modifiers to the sandbox mode:

• ghost mode makes enemy ships ignore you if you do not aggress them, reducing the risks of dying on the battlefield (note: you can still get killed by accidental splash damage or if you attack enemies…)
• elite mode increases the rank of all ships, making them more accurate and smarter
• SP rate modifies the speed at which you accumulate ship points
• hardcore mode increases your rewards, but you instantly lose the match if you die or suicide
• SP start at zero or maxed
• unlock all weapons or upgrades, allowing new players to test weapons or upgrades temporarily
• multi battles: allows a defense battle to happen at the same time than an attack battle
• damage scaling
• projectile speed scaling
• shields scaling

We’ll add more modifiers at a later stage, but feel free to suggest ideas if you think you got an interesting one, thank you.

Weapons Presets

• Added weapons presets, which can be customized in the ship loadout tab
• Added a radial menu for weapons presets (note: no default key bound). Presets can be invoked directly by default with the RightAlt + #preset ID key.
• Added the ability to rename weapons presets (by clicking on the preset ID at the top of the grid). Those will show up in the presets radial menu
• Added payload (ammo) info in the loadout tab (Note: only shows the maximum ammo capacity, not the current ammo if you’re spawned in game)

Gameplay/Balance tweaks

• Corvette weapons are no longer exclusive in manual firing modes (the automatic firing modes were already non-exclusive, so we wanted to unify that behavior and be coherent)
• Default cruiser no longer has torpedo launchers (we felt torpedoes on the cruiser were in an odd spot and were better staying dedicated to the bomber)
• Added EMP Field ability for the Destroyer. Two variants exist (EMP Field I and EMP Field II). The first one deals heavy energy damage in a 2.5 Km range, while the second ability deals medium energy damage in a 5.0 Km range. Only one of those abilities can be mounted at once
• Missiles/Torpdoes/Mines can now have their thrust & targetting disabled by critical hits
• Decreased extra missiles upgrade mass from +70% to +40%
• Increased extra torpedoes upgrade mass from +150% to +250%
• Reworked EMP torpedoes and added Kinetic torpedoes. Those are specialized variants of the standard torpedoes. They use a new damage model, where energy damage deals damage to the shield (as usual) but kinetic damage is weighted by the shield ratio to damage the hull. For example, a 1000 kDmg + 8000 eDmg EMP torpedo hitting a ship at 50% shield will deal 4000 shield damage and 1000 * 50% = 500 hull damage
• Reduced standard torpedoes damage from 6000 to 5000. They still deal hybrid damage (ex.: if the hit ship has 50% shield, the torpedo will deal 2500 shield damage and 2500 hull damage). This means that EMP and Kinetic torpedoes can deal up to 60% more damage than standard torpedoes if their target has the right weakness (low on shield for kinetic torpedoes, and high on shield for EMP torpedoes)
• Splash damage (= shockwave effects) no longer cause accidental griefing of nearby allies
• Fixed a bug that causes high-velocity targets to go through expanding explosions/shockwaves without taking any damage

HUD/UI/Menus

• Text edits now properly scroll horizontally in the sub-window if the text length is too long to fit

Generic Bug Fixes

• Fixed controller independent deadzones on non-paired X/Y axis (Note: X/Y axis were all paired even if the events were unrelated, like roll+accelerate. Now the game should automatically pair deadzones only for pitch/yaw/roll axes)
• Fix for infinite light (sun) flickering when there are other bright point lights in the scene
• Fixed XInput controller arrow button being detected as an axis when used in combo of another axis on an axis keybind (the arrow button should be a key modifier, not an axis itself)
• Fixed new shield impact effects sometimes not displaying properly on the player’s own ship
• Fixed dependency of basic combat tutorial on advanced flight that was supposed to be optional

[INovaeFlavien]

Hotfix 0.10.3.1 ( 7th of February 2025 )

• Fixed shield bases not working anymore, blocking match loop progression
• Fixed a small bug with EMP damage generated from the new EMP field shockwave

[INovaeFlavien]

Patch 0.10.4.0 ( 6th of April 2025 )

Hey everyone, this is an intermediate patch focusing on polishing and smaller improvements. The sandbox mode got a couple of fixes & new gameplay mods, and three new Gas giant planets with new visuals were added to the game (at the moment, the medium-size solar system only uses one of them at once, but we’re working on a full solar system that makes use of multiple gas giants & moons).

It is now possible to create new custom input profiles (wihtout having to copy files in your documents folder manually !) or to assign a specific input profile to certain ship classes only. We also have a bunch of bug fixes, menu/UI improvements and addressing some issues with attacking bases outside of the match loop.

Meanwhile, we’re working on the next set of tutorials and the backend/infrastructure rework.

-Flavien Brebion

Offline Sandbox mode

• Fixed unlocked weapons and upgrades in sandbox mode that were still checking the player’s rank requirement
• Replaced variable sandbox gameplay mods by a slider instead of a bunch of check boxes, to simplify the UI
• Added a heat slider and a battle size (=amounts of ships per battle) slider for the sandbox mode

General Improvements

• Improvements to gas giant’s visuals: new cloud noise, curls, hurricanes, more variety, etc… Three new gas giants were added (Althea, Silenus and Eole)
• Input profile can now be customized per ship class. This means that you can use a certain profile (Keyboard & mouse) on certain ships and another one (ex.: a Joystick) on other classes. The switching of profiles happens automatically on-the-fly as you switch ship classes
• You can now toggle head tracking per ship class as well (Note: untested yet)
• Added a button to create a new input profile (from an existing one) in the keybindings menu
• Added a button to delete a custom profile in the keybindings menu

Gameplay/Balance Tweaks

• Revamped sun’s radiation damage: more warning time when approaching the sun from a distance, but more agressive damage before reaching its surface. This should prevent ships (even capital ships) from entering the sun’s surface before dying, while giving plenty of warning time to smaller ships to turn back as they approach the sun
• Base shields now power up when there’s at least 500 SP worth of nearby enemy ships (previously: it required 3 ships, independently of their class)
• Fixed an issue where the core reactors of a base could be destroyed even if no battle was happening (the reactor now takes no damage and a warning is issued)
• Off-battle defense reinforcements will now be more reactive, and spawn ships more quickly as an attacker comes near a base

UI/Menus Tweaks

• Fixed issues with the hierarchical display of some planets/moons in the starmap list. Sometimes some planets/moons/bases were not correctly linked to their logical parent
• Small visual improvements to showing planet names and orbits on the starmap. The names should now properly appear on top of everything else
• Added a “reset grid orientation” option to the right-click context menu of an entry in the starmap
• Mission menu now dynamically changes the campaign name to match the closest planet’s (before: it was always “Rethe Prime Campaign”)
• Default starmap view when there are multiple planets is now top-down

Generic Bug Fixes

• Fixed a small potential server crash bug with EMP shockwaves
• Fixed a small transparency issue with the “skip” text on transmissions dialog
• Fixed a bug in the basic combat tutorial that made the instructor attack the target drones in stead of the player
• Fixed asteroids often being spawned with the same orientation in an asteroid ring, resulting in an unnatural look
• Fixed massive framerate issues when rendering HUD’s warp tunnel while the target was very far away ( millions of Km )
• Fixed an issue with smaller, very far away planets that could potentially get streamed in by the client when approaching them, causing a freeze for many seconds. They should now be properly pre-loaded
• Gas giants quality is now dependent on the “planets quality” graphical setting (previously, it was using the generic “texture quality”)
• Fixed a glitch with the rendering order of asteroid rings around a gas giant planet

Misc

• Added community Spanish translation (thanks to SrDarki !)
• Tweaked tutorials descriptions & tags

[INovaeFlavien]

Patch 0.10.5.4 ( 26th of June 2025 )

Hello everyone. In this patch we are introducing a new tutorial (Warp & Navigation) and revamped two major features. One major flaw of the game was that battles often became stale passed a certain point, when reinforcements dried out. In this patch, we’ve modified the reinforcements mechanics so that ships never fully run out. The ‘final wave’ now repeats every 3 minutes and guarantees that a minimum amount of small ships (interceptors, bombers and corvettes) regularly join the battle.

This makes it easier for the AI to finish battles on its own, and provides more targets or assistance to the players. As a result, this change has modified the delicate balance between attackers and defenders, so we might need to do further adjustments at a later stage. Let us know in the comments if you feel this is a step in the right direction and if the battles are indeed more interesting in their later stage.

Another major change was the addition of a new atmospheric flight model. Keep in mind that our ships have no wings (by conscious design) therefore flying in an atmosphere is mostly driven by drag and friction. The idea here is that you’ll more easily take damage at higher speeds, potentially lose control if you fly and try to turn too fast, and burn your shield. It’ll be very difficult to rotate your ship around (especially in the horizontal direction, aka. yaw, but easier if you roll & pitch). However, one advantage you’ll get is that friction will slow down your ship much more rapidly, allowing some sharper corners to change course at a much faster rate than before. Overall, our goal here is to provide more differences between space and atmospheric flight. Note that the AI hasn’t fully adapted to these changes, and may struggle to turn in atmospheres in some cases.

We’ve added a new re-entry effect (when your ship causes friction with the atmosphere), fixed various assets and bugs as usual. In our next patch we’ll continue the polish pass and iterate on the AI commander and bots behaviors and balance.

-Flavien Brebion

Tutorials

• New Warp & Navigation tutorial is now available. It will teach the player how to deploy a ship, navigate and warp around a planetary system. It ends with a little bit of gameplay challenge with the instructor and the player responding to a strange distress call…
• All tutorials are now unlocked and available to play in any order
• Tweaks to existing tutorials: fixed incorrect hangar hologram color during Basic Flight take-off cinematic, switched team to Scoria to reflect the lore, changed instructor’s portrait…
• Note: we’re not happy with the quality of the instructor’s voice over. We’ll probably update it to a newer one when we’re closer to the 1.0 release

Battle Reinforcements & AI

• Reinforcement waves never run out. A minimum final wave of about 4000 SP’s worth of small ships (~15-20 ships) gets deployed every 3 minutes. Capital ships are excluded. This prevents battles from becoming stale and taking forever to end, and provides more targets to players towards the end of a battle.
• Changed attack fleet momentum win/lose condition: ‘momentum’ was a concept too complex for players to really understand, and took too many variables into account. This has been simplified to the attacking fleet capital’s power. It now only counts destroyers, cruisers and carriers. Wiping out the attacker’s capital’s fleet is now the objective of the defenders to win the battle, which is clearer. Attacker’s objectives are unchanged (they still need to destroy the station’s reactor or land base’s power plants). Players are only taken into account in the attacker’s fleet objective within 5 minutes of the battle start (if they join later, they can still play, but won’t affect the objective bar)
• Tweaks to the AI commander’s tactics and reinforcement ship’s ratios
• Added a minimum cooldown timer to AI commander’s switching tactics. Previously, an AI commander could switch back & forth almost instantly between tactics, which resulted in confusion for the bots…
• AI bombers can now spawn kinetic and energy torpedo loadouts

Atmospheric Flight Model

• Revamped atmospheric flight model: drag now more significantly affects ships, and prevents them from turning horizontally (yaw) at higher speeds. They also receive more damage (shield first) due to friction at high speeds. Drag increases by 2x when shields are down, and decreases by -50% in warp. Aerodynamic profile (angle to the wind flow, causing more or less area exposure) is taken into account in the friction calculations. Also keep in mind that air density varies on different planets, and is much stronger at lower altitudes (<5 Km) than at higher altitudes (>20 Km)
• Added atmospheric Re-entry effect to all ships
• Added a Planetary Free Flight script to the Workshop (players can directly deploy any ship in an atmosphere to fly around)
• Friction damage on the bubble carrier now affects shields before hull
• Added Aerodynamic Coating upgrade (reduces drag in atmospheres by -30%, available on small ships)

UI/Menus Fixes

• Fixed match countdown popup staying opened on the main menu screen after a match has ended
• Fixed battle report not showing after the final battle of a match, before the match ends
• Fixed FPS & Stats on top-left corner sometimes showing as white boxes instead of text
• Increased max navigation and combat HUD target indicators from 200 to 500 (in the options menu → Gameplay → HUD tab settings)

Generic Bug Fixes

• Fixed server freeze due to certain parameters in battlescape generation being too much constrained
• Fixed a bug that caused the set heading to be retained after dying & respawning with the capital ship control scheme
• Fixed a bug with respawning in a hangar on a planet that caused the ship to randomly move instead of staying properly aligned with the pad

Misc

• Updated Interceptor asset missing skin on lower LOD levels (resulted in popping between LOD levels with different skins)
• Reduced warp charge effect’s brightness to avoid darkening the rest of the screen

[INovaeFlavien]

Patch 0.10.6.2 ( 13th of November 2025 )

Greetings everyone, Flavien here for a new major patch. Before I get into the patch details, a word about the state of the project. As you’ve noticed, development and community engagement has slowed down and it’s been a while since the last patch. A significant amount of work has gone into tutorials, polishing the experience and finishing the implementation of the last features.

We are entering the final phase and expect to shift our focus to the 1.0 release launch early next year, which will include marketing (new trailer production) and development work on achievements/rewards/marketplace. As such there are no significantly ‘exciting’ gameplay changes or features scheduled for a while. The good news is that we should only be a few months away from the release now and we’re seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.

Now for this patch, the main improvement is related to AI: bots have learned how to cooperate with each other, fly in formations and escort allied targets! This is true for smaller ships, so you’ll frequently see a small squad of interceptors escorting bombers, while bombers focus on their bombing runs. This is true as well for capital ships: destroyers will escort cruisers or carriers and stay clustered together whenever they can. They will automatically escort and help players as well when the conditions are met.

The AI’s escort behavior can either engage threats attacking their ally, or engage the escort’s own target if within range (which means you may see interceptors escorting bombers, start to engage the bomber’s capital target when they get closer to it, distracting incoming fire from the bomber’s). All of these new behaviors are automatic so a player doesn’t need to notice or interact with anything for it to happen naturally.

A word of caution: as ships, especial capital ships, tend to cluster in small fleets, you may get punished and die even faster now if you’re found out of position alone against a bunch of grouped enemies. Remember to frequently open your tactical map (default key: tilde) and stay aware of your surroundings at all times.

The patch also includes a new tutorial to introduce Capital ship’s Basic Flight and control to new players. Carriers can no longer be deployed at a base under attack, and the balance of AMS lasers, mines and heavy missiles was tweaked according to the new conditions (clustering of capital ships). Battles now have a chance to spawn multiple split fleets instead of only one big fleet versus one big fleet, which should bring more variety and tactics to every battle. And be careful: bombers AIs have learned to use decoys as well… so they’re a lot more effective against capital ships now.

We also optimized the local server’s AI multithreading code, which should bring up to 30% performance. If you played the Sandbox mode in solo and suffered from random jittering of all ships during battles, this may benefit you and (hopefully) make the game playable.

A final word: we’ve scheduled a Community event next Saturday (15 November), so if you want to participate, make sure to check the event on Steam:

Infinity: Battlescape - DevUpdate & Event | "AI Improvments & Balance...

-Flavien Brebion

New tutorial

• Added Capital ships Basic Flight tutorial
• You play as a Destroyer around Glimmerfall and go on a mission to deliver supplies and crew to a bunch of outposts
• No combat in this tutorial yet, the next and final tutorial will focus on capital ships weapons

Carriers

• Carriers can no longer be deployed on bases under attack. If you want to join a base under attack in defense, you’ll have to spawn a carrier elsewhere and travel manually
• Carriers now only refund ship points (SP) for undeployed squad ships (if a ship is currently deployed or destroyed and the carrier undeploys, it won’t count in the SP refund count)

Battles & AI

• Implemented AI escorting system: AI ships will now form up on each others, escort, attack threats around the ship they’re escorting, or even go on attack on their escort’s target if within range

• Capital ships will now try to stay in fleet formation together

• AI can escort players on their own

• AI can now boost to align its velocity to an escorted ally

• Added Decoy Bomber AI loadout

• Added Decoy missile launchers to EMP and Kinetic Bomber AIs

• AI Bombers can now use decoy missiles in their bombing runs

• Fixed a bug that prevented AI Bombers from performing bombing runs when equipped with EMP torpedoes

• Fixed a bug that sometimes caused AI Bombers to die to their own torpedo when they accidentely launched a torpedo while performing a U-turn

• Fixed a bug that sometimes caused small ships to hug bigger ones. They should now properly keep a minimum seperation distance

• Destroyer AI now launchs a proximity mine based on proximity of nearby enemy caps, and not just their target’s distance anymore (previously, a destroyer could target an enemy that is 50 Km away and not deploy mines due to a closer enemy)

• Removed player’s AI targetting prioritization when he’s at a high rank (felt unfair, like all bots were ganging up on the player)

• There is now a 50% chance that battles spawn split fleets in attack or defense, instead of 1 big fleet vs 1 big fleet in every battle (up to 4 sub fleets in the initial wave at the start of the battle)

Gameplay tweaks and balance

• Reduced Corvette’s field missiles/torpedoes resupply times by -25% to -30% (this should allow bombers to replenish a bit faster)
• The Destroyer’s proximity mines now automatically lock on the target if it’s an enemy capital ship within range (previously: the mine randomly acquired a nearby enemy capship instead the destroyer’s target)
• Reduced drag coefficients for all ships so that they can fly faster in atmospheres
• Reduced AMS Laser range from 8 Km to 7 Km, as capital ships tend to cluster more frequently now
• Incrreased Destroyer’s default proximity mines from 6 to 8
• Reduced hitpoints on mines by about -25%
• Increased Heavy Missile’s linear thrust by +50% to make them more mobile
• Increased Heavy Missile’s damage by +50% (from 500 to 750 kinetic damage)

UI/Menus Fixes

• Fixed sub-targetting HUD indicator colors on enemy ships (was displayed as red no matter what the state of the hardpoint was)
• Damaged hardpoints are now permanentely displayed as red icons on your capital ship (previously, you had to hold left-alt to highlight the hardpoints status)

Generic Improvements and fixes

• Server AI is now fully multi-threaded (~+30% performance gains on heavy battles) which should help networking jittering in solo sandbox mode as well
• Fixed warp interruption due to collisions keeping the warp momentum instead of dropping speed

Misc

• Updated re-entry effect on all ships
• Spanish Localization update thanks to SrDarki (includes a new translated tutorial)

[INovaeFlavien]

Patch 0.10.7.1 ( 24h of November 2025 )

This follow-up patch addresses a number of issues related to the AI’s targetting system and smoothing the overall experience. A major AI targetting bug, causing bots to gang-up on specific targets, has been fixed.

The offense versus defense battles balance has been completely reviewed, thanks to running a larger number of balance simulations over many nights as I was asleep (one of the main issue with battles balance was that it was tweaked based on a small dataset of battles. I’ve recently added new debug features to the server to speed up the simulation and collect results automatically, which allowed the test datasets to grow by more than 10 times).

Spinal cruisers AI was unable to focus on their artillery attacks, while some capital ships got stuck in mini-battles versus interceptors, despite larger targets (other enemy capital ships) being available 100 Km away. A major bug related to bots being stuck at low altitudes around land bases while trying to attack a defense tower was fixed. A number of targetting bugs or priority improvements were made. Overall, the AI should behave much more smoothly now, instead of sometimes getting stuck on various tasks.

The splash damage received by small ships from a massive explosion’s shockwave is now more forgiving (this was one source of frustrating for players when their interceptor instantly died without apparent cause near a capital ship: it got hit by a mine and the splash damage was enough to insta-kill any nearby interceptor, even at a distance of more than 1 km, which was supposed to be the max splash radius).

There are many quality of life improvements as well: warp speed is auto-limited to 5 Km/s around battles (but can still be exceeded manually if needed), double-targetting (pressing T or G twice) on the same target now enables sub-hardpoints auto-selection (handy when trying to harass a capital ship’s turrets). Targetted hardpoints now have an occlusion indicator. The Target info MFD has been improved, and the Systems MFD now lists enemies or allies targetting you, as well as internal malfunctions. A new danger alert has been added, to warn players or nearby mines or torpedoes.

The patch also includes various fixes and small tweaks to some visual effects (for instance, the shield impact effect was missing on the Destroyer and Supply ships) and a new type of light missile, the Seeker Missile, specialized into hunting torpedoes/mines with fantastic mobility and long-ranges, was added.

-Flavien Brebion

AI & Targetting fixes

• Fixed a major targetting bug that caused AI bots to gang-up on some random enemies
• AI spreads its targetting over more targets and focuses less on a single one whenever possible
• Fixed ships not targetting far-away targets (> 200 Km) on the opposite side of a battlefield, despite belonging to the same battle…
• Fixed small ships getting stuck on low-altitude attack runs on static infrastructure
• Fixed roll orientation of small ships on planets: they now try to maintain an horizontal orientation whenever possible
• Fixed spinal cruiser’s AI not focusing on long-range artillery land attack due to getting distracted by canon cooldown, which causes an incorrect out-of-ammo behavior
• Spinal cruisers no longer try to escort other ships: they now dedicated to their long-range attacks
• Spinal cruisers’s canon can now properly target the central base of a land base (previously: it was de-prioritized)
• Reduced capital ship’s AI attacking priorities on small targets: they will no longer get distracted by isolated interceptors despite enemy capital ships being present 100 Km away
• Small ships (ints, bombers) have a small chance of escorting allied capital ships if no enemies are nearby
• EMP and Kinetic AI Bombers now only use 2 missile Decoys (from 4, which was a bit too spammy before)
• Split battles (multiple fleets battling each other) can happen on land base assaults as well (previously: split battles only happened at space station battles)
• Reinforcement waves will no longer spawn at empty spots when a fleet has moved away or got destroyed by the enemy (reinforcing there would be a waste of time)
• Bombers in defense no longer spawn and chill at the central base, and go on counter-attacks in space instead
• Improvements to the wave-reinforcement system: waves now trigger faster when there’s a huge ship imbalance for the losing side
• New iteration of balancing offense and defense in battles around bases
• Tweaked attack priorities of various base modules: ships should now focus a bit more on destroying base defenses/turrets instead of ignoring them until the later stages of a battle

Controls

• Double-targetting (ex.: double-pressing T on a target) now enables sub-target auto-selection mode, which chooses the best hardpoint to target for your ship class
• Formation modes (match speed, fixed, chase…) can now automatically exceed the soft speed cap in order to catch up with the target’s velocity
• Target warp speed is now soft capped to 5 km/s around a battle (making it easier to navigate between locations within a battle)

UI/HUD Improvements

• Added a “Chaff Deployed” notification when deploying chaffs
• Added a danger alarm when deadly threats are close to the player (ex.: mines, torpedoes or a small ship near an enemy cap ship)
• Occluded ship indicators on HUD are now hidden (unless they’re selected)
• Non-priority target indicators on the Ring radar are now half transparent
• The selected target’s indicator now appears on the Ring radar (previously, it was hidden)
• The Ship Systems MFD now lists allied and enemy targets targetting you, as well as malfunctioning internal systems
• Improved target information: when a hardpoint or module is targetted, it no longer hides the target’s hull status. Instead, it now displays the module/hardpoint status below the main target
• The sub-targetted hardpoint indicator now has an obstruction hint when the angle of attack relative to you is incorrect
• Target status info (hull %, shield %, etc…) now uses the same coloring behavior than your own ship’s (orange if below 50%, red if below 25%)

Generic Improvements and fixes

• Revamped damage taken by splash damage of an explosion shockwave: now takes into account the surface area exposed to the splash, so smaller ships take less damage compared to bigger ones (relatively to the core size of the explosion).
  This should avoid insta-kills of interceptors near a mine detonation, which was frustrating for the player. Now you’d need to be much closer to the mine to get insta-killed
• Impact forces are now coherent between direct hits and shockwaves/splash effects
• Fixed direct torpedo/mines hits not generating an impact force
• Re-prioritized the list of broken internal ship systems to repair (for example now anti-gravity is low priority repair, while weapons systems is high priority)
• Reduced size of hitbox for AMS Laser turrets (it was too big and the AMS systems quickly broke by random fire in battle)
• Increased Flak MK6 turret from 300 to 1000 HP.
• Slightly increased the splash damage’ radius on various missiles
• Added a new type of missiles for small ships: the Seeker missile. It has fantastic mobility and initial speed but a low explosive charge, and can easily track torpedoes and mines to provide help to allied fleets. It does little damage to ships

Visual Effects

• Increased duration of smog particles in extreme quality
• Fixed flickering of re-entry effects, as well as transparency rendering order issues (ex.: smog in cockpit)
• Ships displayed in the loadout menu are now powered on
• Fixed shield impact effect missing on Destroyer and Supply ship

[INovaeFlavien]

Patch 0.10.8.0 ( 16 December 2025 )

Hello everyone, happy holidays and best wishes for the New Year! Today I bring you the final patch of 2025. It includes a lot of AI fixes and tweaks (most related to targetting), a new Cruiser Hangar chassis (allowing to deploy up to 8 AI Interceptors from the cruiser), a batch of new upgrades (see the details in the list below) and a ton of small balance tweaks.

We also discovered and fixed some major bugs (the corvette’s repair field could not repair small target’s broken hardpoints, thrust or impact effects were missing on some ships…) and there’s even a new shield ‘Shredding’ effect when receiving massive energy damage. The balance of battles (especially at the beginning) should have improved, but due to the complexity of our battles and AI and all the variations possible, the same battle never happens twice, which makes it really hard to balance in all cases.

If you have feedback on the state of the game or battles’ balance, please let us know in the comments. Have fun,

-Flavien Brebion

AI & Targetting

• Tweaked AI targetting and escorting priorities
• Multiple AI behavior fixes (ex.: bombers were trying to perform bombing runs on small ships as well)
• Fixed AI capital ships trying to align their own velocity on a faster, smaller target (ex.: destroyer targetting an interceptor), causing them to fly away despite trying to hunt it
• Slightly reduced AI bomber decoys/torpedoes spam
• Fixed an AI targetting bug that caused targets to swap between escorting and attacking too quickly-
• Fixed an AI targetting bug that caused an incorrect prioritization of escorting allies
• After an AI carrier squad kills a target under Attack command, they now auto switch to Free targetting instead of Returning to the carrier
• There is now an upper limit to AI carrier squads ganging up against the same target (previously: you could focus 40+ ships on the very same target if you wanted to…)
• Fixed a bug that prevented bounties from properly affecting the prioritization system
• Fixed AI over-prioritizing attacking humans (especially the ones at a high military rank) over other AI ships
• AI ships no longer tries to avoid/free from a bigger threat (ex.: destroyer vs cruiser) when that threat is the current target!
• Fixed a bug that counted parent-less AI carrier squads (after their carrier died) as extra reinforcement budget to the battle
• Rebalanced battles so that Attackers and Dedenders (especially their caps fleet) have a closer budget at the beginning of the battle (previously: Defenders were significantly weaker at the start of the battle, but had more reinforcements later)
• AI Destroyers can now use the EMP Field ability

Carrier & Hangar

• Fixed AI ship loadouts list truncated (some were missing) when editing squads on the carrier hangar menu
• Added loadout tooltips to carrier hangar menu (when you hover a ship loadout, you’ll now have a description, weapons configuration and list of upgrades/abilities installed)
• Hangar MFD is no longer displayed if the hangar is empty or unavailable
• Loadout radial menu “Switch Hangar” entry is no longer available if the hangar is empty or unavailable or missing from the HUD
• Swapped default layout of weapons and radar MFDs for the carrier

Gameplay & Balance

• Reduced kinetic damage of Light Missiles from 150 kDmg to 125 kDmg. A double-hit by light missiles should not kill a full health interceptor anymore
• Reduced Chaffs effective duration from 8s to 6s (note: an Upgrade is now available to increase that back to 9s). The visual effect should now better match the “gameplay” duration as well
• Increased Seeker missile pod’s Hitpoints to 30 (from 20)
• Tweaks to Seeker missile: reduced damage from 40 kDmg to 30 (they still insta-detonate mines and torpedoes, but deal less damage to ships now)
• Increased Seeker missile’s emissions range from 1 Km to 8 Km (they were stealthy before, which was a copy/paste config file error and was never intended)
• Increased Seeker missile’s activation time from 0.25s to 0.75s (they still activate faster than light missiles, but at their launch speed of 1 km/s, this means that the target needs to be at least 750m away otherwise the miss is guaranteed)
• Tweaked energy and heat points on some capital ships. The goal here was to better balance the mechanics of heat and energy costs for default loadouts. Destroyer: +20% Heat Points. Carrier: -16% Energy Points, -37% Energy regen, -16% Heat Points and +20% Heat Decharge.
• Tweaked soft speed cap for all ships (mostly small increases, especially for the capitals)
• Tweaked Heat generation cost for many capital ship turrets

Chassis & Loadouts

• Tweaks to defaut capital ships loadouts: they now have a more balanced mix of kinetic and energy MK4 & MK5 turrets. Note: this might require some players to update their custom presets
• Added a new Hangar chassis and loadout for the Cruiser, including 8 Carry Points (it defaults to 2 squads of 4 interceptors each). Note that only the Veteran Rank upgrade is available to the cruiser (other Hangar upgrades from the carrier are not available). Players cannot spawn at a cruiser. A maximum of 8 cruisers with the Hangar loadout can be spawned at once in game
• Revamped the base mass (empty loadout) of many ships as well as many weapons, to make loadouts more coherent (in terms of mass/speed caps) with each others. For example, the cruiser and carrier previously had the same forward thrust despite having different masses which wasn’t coherent with their size. The balance tweaks are too numerous to list here, but are typically in the 10-15% range (positive or negative) for many loadouts. The speed caps have also been tweaked accordingly. Notable changes: +15% thrust on the Destroyer, +8% thrust on the Cruiser, -4% thrust on the Carrier, +7% speed cap on the Support, -4% speed cap on the Cruiser
• Tweaks to heavy cruiser chassis: it is 5% lighter and now has a +10% HP bonus instead of -10% and +1 armor instead of -1. In exchange, it has now -10% Shield points
• Tweaks to the Credits cost of a few upgrades or weapons

Upgrades

• Added a Chaff Duration upgrade, which increases the duration of chaffs by +50% (from 6s to 9s)
• Added Heat vent ability (available on capital ships): this active ability eject excess heat out of the ship into space at an energy cost and a 30s cooldown
• Added Burst Cooling upgrade (available on capital ships): reduces the burst cooldown between volleys of fire from kinetic turrets (MK4-MK7) by -25%, which results in a higher DPS. This comes at the cost of projectile velocity and range
• Added an Extra Heavy Ammo upgrade, which increases heavy ammo on all MK6-MK7 kinetic turrets by +25% at the cost of a hardpoint mass increase
• Added an Extra Light Ammo upgrade, which increases light ammo on all MK1-MK2 kinetic weapons by +25% at the cost of a hardpoint mass increase
• All upgrades related to Extra Missiles/torpedoes/mines now increase the mass of their hardpoints instead of the ship’s hull (which means that the mass increase scales up or down with the number of weapons actively mounted on those hardpoints instead of having a fixed hull mass cost)
• Light Armor Plating upgrade now provides a +5% Hitpoints bonus
• Heavy Armor Plating upgrade now provides a +10% Hitpoints bonus, a +3 armor bonus (up from +2) and the mass cost has been reduced from -20% to -15%
• AMS Damage upgrade can no longer be stacked 2 times
• Revamped EMP Field I and Emp Field II abilities. The first one has doubled shield harm (from 2000 SP to 4000 SP) but no longer costs energy, and was moved to the Shields upgrade category. The second one was specialized as an area AMS (available on the cruiser as well) that no longer harms shields and only costs energy. It has a good chance of disabling incoming torpedoes/mines at sub 2 Km ranges.
• The Stealth ability now plays a looping sound while activated
• Stealth is no longer interrupted when taking shield damage (only hull damage)

UI & Menus

• Ship loadout menu tweaks: upgrade status text (ex.: “incompatible weapon”) is now displayed before showing the option to Unlock it. Upgrades that are not available yet (higher rank) cannot be selected anymore
• Ship loadout menu no longer lists upgrades applying to weapons that can’t be mounted on the current loadout (ex.: the Support ship doesn’t have missile hardpoints, therefore there’s no point in allowing upgrades like Smart Retargetting or Detonate. Or Extra heavy missiles on a default Interceptor, etc…)
• The ‘incoming missile’ alarm will now trigger before missile activation, giving maybe a second more time to the targetted player to react (not much different for other missile types, but important for Seeker missiles)
• ‘Incoming missile/torp’ Alert now has a higher display priority than the danger alert
• Close Torpedoes/Mines now trigger danger alert for capital ships too
• Fixed a bug that caused abilities to add useless empty slots to the weapons radial menu
• Fixed a bug with events presets: activating abilities in their own preset group caused other weapons group to get deactivated
• New hardpoint mounting/unmounting sound fx in loadout menu
• ‘Ship Systems’ and ‘Loadout’ MFDs now displays the status of toggleable abilities like Stealth
• A broken shield status is now displayed as “N/A” on the HUD
• Broken sensors no long allow the Systems MFD to show the ‘targetted by’ list
• Tweaks to enemy HUD indicator colors (the selected target is now more yellow to be more easily visible in the middle of action)
• Tweaks to the rendering order of radars, to be displayed high-priority targets on top of the normal targets
• Fixed Danger Alert sound effect glitching when near proximity of more than 2 threats

Generic Improvements

• Fixed a bug that caused collision damage on top of normal missile damage when a damage explodes on contact of a ship (this was negligible on other missile types, but on Seeker missiles it was almost half the source of their damage)-
• Missiles/Torpedoes/Mines impacts now cause delayed damage (to better match the shockwave/explosion visual effect)
• Fixed a bug which prevented Corvettes from repairing broken weapons on small ships

Visual Effects

• Fixed missing projectile impact effects / feedback on player’s own ship
• Fixed thrusters visual effect not properly firing on other ships while they’re maneuvering
• Added an EMP shield shredding effect when shields receive heavy damage
• Tweaks to the Re-entry visual effect on all ships
• Soft edges for the ‘Bubble’ shields around bases

[INovaeFlavien]

Hotfix 0.10.8.1 ( 18 December 2025 )

A small patch that contains fixes for the client and server…

UI / Controls

• Fixed ‘ghost’ weapons presets that disabled every group, instead of simply failing
• Fixed multiple bugs related to weapons presets (especially related to editing a preset on the ship already spawned in game)
• Hangar MFD is now automatically added to the HUD when spawning if a hangar is present in the ship but missing on the MFD config
• Reduced third-party missiles/torps targetting priority over nearby ships when targetting the nearest threat (default keybind: G) (sometimes a random missile passed near you when you were hitting G, selecting it instead of a nearby enemy)
• Fixed the target base being selected twice (hence sub-targetting a hardpoint accidentally) upon respawning

A.I.

• Reduced Carrier’s defense/escort range to 8.5 Km (from 10 Km), for a tighter defensive range
• Fixed an AI issue which caused capships to start escorting ships that are very far (> 100 Km) away instead of focusing on nearby threats
• Fixed an AI targetting problem which caused spinal capships focusing on long-range artillery to prevent enough smaller ships from targetting the closer structure
• Tweaked AI targetting priorities to favor targetting nearby threats instead of far-away structures/modules when canons/shields on the base are down
• Final Defender’s reinforcement waves will now contain some capital ships

[INovaeFlavien]

Patch 0.10.9.0 ( 26 February 2026 )

In this patch we’ve revamped the overcharge modes. In past versions we found that players used overcharge modes in a very passive way (typically: weapons overcharge during entire dogfights, and shield or propulsion overcharge to flee). We want to encourage a more skilled-based, active use of overcharge modes, benefiting switching at the right timing during an engagement.

This is why overcharge modes have been redesigned to be high reward / high risk. Abusing an overcharge mode will now result in negative effects (weapons or turbo breaking when overheating, shields shutting down when depleted). Shield overcharge modifies the behavior of the shield to become absolute instead of probabilistic, which guarantees that the hull won’t be damaged until the shield breaks down.

Propulsion overcharge, in addition to providing an acceleration boost, now allows to overboost even when energy is depleted, at the cost of some extra heat generation but the booster will get damaged when overcheating.

Weapons overcharge will cause excess heat which damages all weapons by 25% of their max HP when overheating.

All these changes may need some further balance tweaks, feel free to provide some feedback in the comments.

The other big change in this patch is the introduction of A.I. Support ships. They can now spawn along other capital ships in battles and will actively repair/rearm nearby targets, including players. They also know how to hunt/scavenge resource crates when they run out of resource points. With this, the game’s AI is now feature complete, but there will be more tweaks and improvements to the A.I. in future patches.

The carrier also got its final polish pass (including new geometry tweaks and explosion debris) and we’ve introduced a way to toggle a ‘Stagger’ fire mode for fixed/gimbaled weapons on small ships (this option is available per weapon group in the ship loadout panel). When this mode is enabled, weapons in the same group will stagger firing, increasing the chance to hit a target at the cost of some dps if you miss. It can be useful on slow-firing weapons (test it on the railguns for example). Most energy weapons now default into this new stagger mode.

We should resume visual polish (trailing effects and damage decals, mostly) in the next patch(es) while we still work in our database infrastructure for cosmetics and server cross-play integration in the future.

-Flavien Brebion

Overcharge modes

• Weapons overcharge still provides a +30% firing rate. It now causes +15% excess heat. Turrets now rotate +25% faster. Weapons take 15% max HP damage on overheating. Additional negatives: -25% energy regen and -15% shield regen
• Shield overcharge now provides +50% shield regen rate, and the shield absorbs all hits until it breaks. It takes 30s to auto-repair. The shield no longer has a delay after a hit to trigger the regen. Additional negatives: -25% energy regen, -15% firing rate and -15% thrust
• Engine overcharge still provides a +30%(main)/+50%(laterial) thrust bonus. Turbo boost no longer stops after depleting energy, but instead produces excess heat which damages the turbo when overheating. Warp gets interrupted for 30s after switching to another overcharge mode. Additional negatives: -25% energy regen, -15% firing rate and -15% thrust
• Note that as before, the bonus or negative effects only apply while the overcharge gets actively applied (ex.: you won’t get any negative effect in shield overcharge mode if your shield is at 100% and doesn’t need to regenerate, nor if you don’t fire your weapons in weapons overcharge…)

Gameplay / Balance

• Resupply fields or beams no longer resupply Resource Points or Drones on Support ships (this could be abused with Support ships resupplying each others)
• Added stagger firing modes in ship loadout panel (can be toggled on/off per weapon group)
• Turbo boost can now be critically hit and temporarily shut down
• Decreased Support ship’s Shield points from 14K to 12K SP
• Decreased Support ship’s Shield regen rate from 75 to 50 SP/s
• Increased Repair and Rearm beam’s range from 3 Km to 4 Km

UI / Controls

• HUD now displays extra information about the warp status (cooldown, broken) on the center left
• HUD now displays the energy bar in orange as energy runs out

Bug fixes

• Fixed charged weapons/beams not stopping when running out of ammo (the beam would still be displayed without doing anything which was confusing)
• Fixed 3 rare server crashes
• Fixed a double hardpoint on cruiser hangar loadout

A.I.

• Implemented Support ships AI (they can now repair/rearm allied capital ships, and scavenge resource crates to replenish their resources)
• Added a probability for AI capital ships to escort each others based on the current commander’s strategy (this allows some capital ships to act more independently, especially during All-in attacks)
• Note that AI Support ships may cause battles to last a bit longer due to capital ships staying alive for a longer time. If you notice battles dragging on due to weird AI ships behaviors, please let us know

Misc

• Added new command line arguments to quickly launch a game or avoid preloading, to speed up script development
• Tentative fix for Proton/Linux players trying to launch a local game (tutorials, sandbox…). If you’re playing the game on Proton and were not able to launch the tutorials or a sandbox game before, please let us know if this patch addresses the problem
• Carrier mesh quality updates (launching tubes, geometry…)
• Added carrier explosion debris

[INovaeFlavien]

Patch 0.10.10.0 ( 19th of March 2026 )

This small patch addresses some issues and bugs related to AI balance, Support ships and the recent overcharge modes revamp.

AI

• Increased Support ship’s AI priority to repairs over resupplying
• Support ships that have ran out of resource points (RP) no longer try to repair/resupply allies (potentially blocking other support ships from helping)
• Fixed AI behavior issues with attacker’s capital ships ignoring base objectives and focusing on smaller nearby enemies instead when the battle is almost won
• Final AI reinforcement waves are now limited to a max of 4000 SP and a max wave count of 10. Longer battles should no longer feel like an infinite flood of small ships are always incoming
• More battles balance tweaks between attackers and defenders

Gameplay / Balance

• Repair beam now also repairs the closest weapon hardpoint next to the hit location (you no longer need to exactly target a specific hardpoint to repair hardpoints on a target, although you can still optionally do it)
• Changing overcharge during warp no longer interrupts warp
• Propulsion overcharge warp interruption’s duration is now equal to the time you stayed in propulsion overcharge, up to a maximum of 30s. Cycling overcharge modes quickly no longer causes the 30s warp interruption

UI / Controls

• Fixed Support ships being listed in starmap actors list
• When propulsion is overcharged, the HUD now shows “NA” (not available) instead of the min warp speed
• Supply icon no longer appears on HUD when a Support ship has ran out of resource points (RP)
• Support ships being destroyed no longer causes an obsolete ‘resources lost’ notification to the team

Bug fixes

• Fixed potential server crash when rebooting a match
• Overcharging weapons no longer destroy ability hardpoints when overheating
• Fixed a bug with game launcher’s which prevented online multiplayer authentication

Misc

• Added Support ship’s unique debris
• Fixed Support ship’s skin issues which caused LOD/colors popping with another skin