Genre: Real Time Strategy (RTS), Strategy, Tactical, Indie
AirMech
It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...
Snow is falling, so it was time to hang the lights up and get ready for Holiday merry making! The lobby has been given a makeover to get ready for our Christmas events. Keep an eye out for us adding more holiday content as we approach the big day!
A really nice fix with some rooms getting stuck with missing players. This gave us quite a headache to try and track down, because we could see players should be matching but would get stuck with players with the wrong state jamming the queue. Things should be running smoothly now, and just ask in chat if you suspect something is stuck.
Due to popular demand, we've made it possible to do 2v3 and 1v3 custom games against bots. You can't do 3v1, this is only for testing to see if you can win against the new awesome bots. It may be possible to 1v3 against the lower level bots (their difficulty is based on the order you unlock them in), but I would be extremely surprised if anyone can win 1v3 against Erik, Goh, and Samson. If you can do it be sure to save the replay, or even better put it on Twitch or YouTube!
Gold VIP changes are upon us! This was discussed a long time ago, and we realize we need to finish it before we leave Early Access. (we have a big checklist of things to do) We are removing the timed/expiring Gold VIP status and simplifying things. This will make it easier to understand, as well as carry over to Wastelands nicer. The "automatic" grant of Silver VIP has always been at $10 USD, and Diamond VIP at $120. We're making Gold VIP now automatic at a total of $50 USD spent over the lifetime of your AirMech account. There are some tweaks to how the bonus rewards stack and that will all be sorted soon, on the generous side.
What about players with a lot of Gold VIP Cubes? Or a lot of Gold VIP time? Most players know about the process to "pull" Gold VIP time off and turn it into Cubes. These cubes were used for various crafting recipes, and they will continue to work for that. And we'll all more that are for Wastelands (mentioning it here since the vast majority of people this applies to also have Wastelands). The Cubes themselves are being renamed to Gold Bars and Gold Coins. There is no conversion process, just their art and names are changing, which makes everything else still work nicely.
General Updates:
add option for uneven teams for custom games (only for humans vs bots)
show Diamond Rolls (and other rolls) when chat is minimized, and making it roll as you click and open it
Helix gets an additional RPG for every point in his primary ability
effects work for Angel Sniper Stasis shot
Gold VIP Cubes changed to Coins and Bars
Christmas and winter lobby themes
Bug Fixes:
fix for rooms with AFK players (actually offline players)
VIP Shop Tickets now function properly
various crash fixes
improve reconnect on Login server restart to reduce chance of dropping
Free Alienware Arrival Pack now available!
We've teamed up with ALIENWARE once again to bring a new bundle of goodies with things for both new and existing players! You can get a key from the Alienware Arena Giveaways site, short link for convenience:
http://airme.ch/AlienwareArrival <-- direct to AirMech Strike giveaway
https://na.alienwarearena.com/ucf/Giveaway
The highlight of this pack is the Exclusive new Alienware Head which is the first one to get some nice new material treatment. It's even animated, and has full teamcolor support.
There's a lot of other good things in the pack too that aren't exclsuive, but are very useful for everyone:
Saucer and Neo AirMech classes unlocked
500 Diamonds - premium currency
2000 Kudos - earned game currency
10 Days of XP and Kudos Boosts (50% increase)
If you do get a code from them (supplies are limited) remember it is NOT a Steam Key, it's an AirMech key that you use inside the game. Click SHOP, then look in the lower left:
And yes, once you have this pack it is applied to your whole AirMech account, so the head and everything else is available to use in AirMech Wastelands if you also own that.
Update #250 - Jumping for Joy!
We've got a large list of changes to bring over from our work on AirMech Wastelands. Many of these changes directly affect gameplay. Some AirMech abilities have been changed to include a charge up mechanic. A charge bar will appear over your mech's HP bar while charging. All AirMechs can now jump up to higher terrain with Spacebar. Press it twice to boost forward for a quick escape!
Unit deployment has been improved with a 'Deploy to Target' mechanic. Set a rally point for newly built units by pressing E. Press once to set the flag on your AirMech, twice to set it on the ground at your AirMech's location, and once more to clear the deploy to target behavior. Units will also deploy from the nearest friendly structure automatically by default. You can hold Ctrl when giving a build order to keep the unit in queue for pickup later. Veterans probably won't like this behavior, so we've added an option in the Gameplay Settings to swap the Ctrl keybind. This will hold all units in queue unless Ctrl is held when issuing build orders.
The new Jump/Boost system is 95% in place, just needs a little more tuning and tweaking, and then we'll balance it for all the classes so each has its own feel. The Boost is activated by doing a double jump in a direction, and it uses some Energy. If you would rather always Boost on jump, there is a game option to make it default that way. We still have a few bugs related to getting up on things that don't make sense, but we're aware of those and will be fixing it. Already it changes combat a ton and has been fun to play around with.
We reworked Chat a couple patches ago and didn't explain in detail how it works. We probably need to add a Chat tutorial! The main thing we set out to solve was accidentally chatting while ingame, which sucked. So we started fixing that and ended up making a lot of small changes. The most important thing to learn about the new chat is the double-Enter action. Tapping Enter twice will minimize or maximize chat. When chat is maximized, you can type and pressing enter keeps your cursor in chat. If chat is minimized, then every time you press enter the chat will get de-focused.
The intended flow is that most of the time when you are playing, chat is minimized, and if you see something you need to respond to, or want to message your teammate, you press Enter, type your message, and press Enter again and you're back playing. When chat has focus, you can use Tab to switch between channels. And just in case you didn't know, you can right-click their name and it will @name them.
General Updates:
improvements to Helix grenade targeting and effects
Carbon color Void mechs are now purple because that's cooler than orange
add game option for how Jump/Boost works
press Spacebar to jump while in ground mode, press again to boost forward at the cost of some fuel
press E to set a rally point on your mech, press again to set it on the terrain, and once more to clear it
updates/rework on mouse aiming
units now deploy automatically at nearest friendly structure, hold Ctrl to store in queue
swap Ctrl key behavior in Settings > Gameplay
max build queue reduced from 8 to 6
replaced Angel's Glide ability with Stasis Shot, which temporarily disables enemies
Helix's ground guns replaced with rockets, hold to charge for more rockets
Helix's missiles replaced with grenades
Bomber's bombs now have a charge, level 4 bombs have napalm!
right
click in ground mode for Warthog's melee
units are highlighted when the mouse cursor is over them
Striker shield absorbs damage at the cost of energy again
Striker sword now drains energy per successful hit
Saucer deathray no longer consumes energy while charging up
updates to Medic Osprey ground mode
updates to some Challenge maps
tweaks to the new player tutorial
pressing Enter now focuses chat, Tab will switch chat channels
added a shortcut to the shop from the lobby
removed unused piercing stat from Whopper
Bug Fixes:
Legacy Build retired
Today we have retired the September 2016 build of the original (non-Strike) AirMech. We had left that build up while we worked to get AirMech Wastelands ready for release, as there were some game modes and features only available pre-Strike.
Now that AirMech Wastelands is available for all VIPs, we need to disable that build so we can continue adding new features to AirMech Strike and AMW.
We were glad to offer support for it for so long, and though it was a pretty neat trick to be able to maintain compatibility between builds for almost a year and a half apart, considering the original intention was just to support a few versions so we would never have to have "downtime" while we patch the game.
The next couple weeks we will be working to stabilize AirMech Strike so it is compatible with AirMech Wastelands and everything plays nice together. When things are nice and solid, we will remove the Early Access state--finally!
AirMech Wastelands available for all VIP levels!
This is a notice for all Silver VIP players who became VIP before November 1st, and is related to AirMech Wastelands. If you are not VIP, or don't care about AirMech Wastelands, you can skip this update.
Still reading? Then I'm happy to let you know that initial testing is going well with AirMech Wastelands on the test server. You can claim your copy of AirMech Wastelands by going into AirMech Strike, typing "Wastelands" in chat, and click the link. Instructions will walk you through getting access, which will add it to your Steam Library.
Currently no one can buy AirMech Wastelands. It is exclusively for our previous paid supporters to get an early peek, and give us feedback to get AMW ready to connect to the main AirMech server, so all your AMS and AMW data/progress will be pulled from a single account. Earn things in one game, they are there in the other. I think even the hardcore PvP players will still find a few things they want to use AMW to get.
As of this post, AirMech Wastelands connects to a test server, so you do not have your "stuff" yet. Some progression things are wildly unbalanced, resulting in players being able to acquire massive amounts of Kudos and gear--which is fine if it's fun, and if those things won't break the Strike economy. Testing/tuning is going well, and we expect to switch to the "live" server soon.
We probably won't post too much more here on the Strike page about AirMech Wastelands, since most people just want their Strike news here. So make sure to head over to the AirMech Wastelands page for future updates:
Wow, it's been a long time. I've been on a self imposed ban of the community side of things while focusing on Wastelands. Obviously we're way behind what I originally hoped, and that's mostly my fault. We were actually getting ready to start giving people access, but I look at what we had and I had to decide: patch things up and get it out there, or take things to the chopping block and gut/fix/improve things. I started to see so much potential and was excited. I was torn between wanting to share our work with the community and also not wanting to show it, because we needed to break things pretty badly to really take it to the next level.
Obviously, the latter path was chosen. Despite expanding the scope of AirMech Wastelands, we didn't want to give up the idea of having connected accounts. This would lead to more work as the games diverged, but I feel it's worth it. But some things I'm really not sure how they will work, or what could be exploited. Kudos is an actual currency in Wastelands--you use it to buy and sell things in the vendor shops (it's an RPG really), and effectively replaces credits for building things. Imagine you're playing Diablo, and you take your loot back to town and can sell it for Kudos. Diamonds have a use too, and can be earned (but not farmed like crazy). Things that are Diamond only in Strike can be found as drops or unlocked in other ways in Wastelands. As a paid game, this makes sense, but having the accounts connected is equal parts excitement and worry for me.
The way we are going to start testing Wastelands is with a new test server. It's much smaller than the normal AirMech server, but should be fine for this. At Carbon we've been playing on this new server for the past few months mostly. Sometimes we'll check things on the live server, but we default to the test server. We started calling it the PTR server (public test realm) like Blizzard does, though for now there is no choice--the non-dev version of Wastelands for now can only connect to it.
Why? Two reasons--the first one being so we can wipe it fairly often. How often? Between a week and a month, it depends what we are doing. Back to having the connected account with AirMech Strike, it just isn't possible to wipe "just' the Wastelands data. The account really is a single thing that holds all your inventory, stats, unlocks, etc. If someone finds a way to completely break the economy, we need to work that out on the test server. We actually want you to break and exploit things on the test server! The second reason is so we can test starting from scratch, which new future players will experience. Existing players will have tons of stuff, though only some of it can be used--more on the way we gate progress later. I think once you start playing it will also be pretty obvious.
We're reaching out to players based on their status. Starting with Carbon VIPs and working down from there. I don't mean this to play favorites, we just need to get people in one by one at first before we activate the auto-unlocking. Hopefully a week from now we can turn that system on. This also means that the end of the Silver VIP to Wastelands access is nearing. I expect that one week after all Silver VIPs have Wastelands access we will end that. (so 2 weeks from now?)
There is still a LOT to do on Wastelands. But we've tried to focus on the things that are core to the game. Get the core systems in, work on the rule changes. Balance is the "easy" part after that. Fixing graphical issues even comes past that. This is why we will not be selling Wastelands at first. We want to let the AirMech superfans in to help finalize the direction the game takes as it comes into focus. We may even skip Early Access all together--that is a good system if you are looking for a way to make the game "work" for something like F2P, but since Wastelands is a paid game it's completely different. We've invested our own (and your) money into AirMech Strike and Wastelands. Since Wastelands is not F2P, it is something that we are making and finishing according to our vision. We hope you like it, but if it's not the type of game for you then that's also ok. I'm pretty confident existing players will enjoy it, and very sure than between Strike and Wastelands that everyone should be happy.
I mean, as long as you like mechs. :) We'll be seeing more and more of you on the PTR server soon in Wastelands! Remember that any players who previously paid something (anything) in Steam or PC AirMech will get Wastelands for free. You just click the "Wastelands" link from chat inside Strike and it will be automagically added to your Steam account. (we'll post again when it is open to all VIPs)
Free Osprey AirMech class unlock code!
4ZMY-YAAC-AA2A-AAA4
Paste that code into the game Shop and it will unlock the Osprey class if you don't already have it. Most useful for new players, since veterans likely already have it.
The Osprey is almost the opposite of the Warthog: doesn't do a ton of damage, but being able to repair Units can make you incredibly powerful. Combined with the new Follow order, you can effectively push a deadly force and help keep them alive.
Great carry capacity also makes the Osprey a great support AirMech. It plays differently than the other mechs and stands out as the only "healer" class. If you lean more towards playing like an RTS, this could be the AirMech for you.
Unlimited uses of this code all weekend, so please do share to give everyone a chance to try the Osprey!
Free Warthog Flash Code!
Tried the Warthog AirMech yet? Some new players feel it might be too powerful, since it is always on the front lines just melting everything in its path. But all that power is balanced against some drawbacks, such as slower speed, less carry capacity, and a high rate of energy drain for the minigun.
Want to try it out and see how it plays for yourself? For the next 24 hours (check the original time of this post if unsure) this code will unlock the Warthog on your account--permanently. It can be used unlimited times, so share it with your friends who are just starting out, or want a leg up unlocking all the classes:
4YL4-4AAB-ADWQ-AAEE
Codes can be entered in the Shop from the Main Menu. Look for a button in the lower left.
The Warthog definitely is an awesome class and a lot of fun to use, and just like all the AirMechs it has roles it is best at--along with weaknesses. Find the AirMech that fits your playstyle best, and then find a partner to compliment that strategy.
Do you find the Warthog is balanced? Tell us your thoughts after you've had a chance to use it.
My Units? Let me tell you about my Units...
New Lobby Unit UI
The temporary UI we had for selecting what units went in your loadouts was pretty bad. Non-standard units were not selectable, which loadout you were editing wasn't clear and many people were having problems with it. We've started in a rework for this and already it is much better. Clicking units will bring up their stats, which is not ideal--we want to have stats displayed for selected units in the same window. You currently have to drag units from the unit panel over to the 3D units in the world. This is not how we intend the final design to work, but it works best that way at this stage. More improvements coming!
Improved Deploy and Unit Control
We have some neat new gameplay features in this patch we are testing. The need to be near an outpost to deploy things started to feel frustrating to us, because we want to get lots of units out and keep the action going and it currently slows you down. So we increased the range for Deploy--to include the entire map! The E key will deploy units from the nearest owned structure. And we added a button near the completed units.
What's this switch on the button? It's very interesting actually...it's a toggle that changes "Deploy and wait at this Outpost" to "Deploy and move to my mech location" (but not follow me). I would definitely call this feature experimental because it feels like a lot of fun to use, but we haven't really considered how it could be used for good or bad in multiplayer. We're looking for feedback from players on this feature. If the community thinks it's good then it stays--tell us what you think!
The sub-orders for Following units are also getting improvements. The "move to where I click" sub-order now has a preview line showing the path units will take to get somewhere. And units should try to stay ahead of your AirMech, so you can push with them a lot easier. These systems are being tweaked as we play with them to try and make the units do what you expect them to.
Wastelands update: soon! I'd say an exact date if I have one. I had to filter out many Wastelands specific changes to isolate the Strike patchnotes! :)
Bugfixes/Changes
Lobby Unit Loadouts rework (still a few bugs, but much better)
Increase Deploy (E) range to infinite
Deploy defaults to nearest Outpost
Toggle button to Deploy and move to mech (experimental)
Testing DX11 support, /dx11 command line option for the brave
Fix BlackOps Angel fire points
Add path line when giving "move to cursor" order
Fix overlayed menu in Spectator mode
Initial Teamcolor selection voting (in progress)
Fixed a bug where non-VIPs had access to Sandbox mode
Known Issues
AirMech Strike #238 Patchnotes: Shop is Back!
This is the 5th update to AirMech Strike since the huge reboot so we wanted to post this to the Steam news channel. Latest Patchnotes are always available ingame, and we'll consolidate them here when there is a good amount of new things or fixes. (scroll to the bottom for a bullet list of noteable changes)
Shop
After the initial work on Matchmaking and Custom rooms, then next most frequently asked for feature was the Shop. When we redid the menus, we figured one of the last things we'd need to add was the Shop. Most units and AirMech skins and customizations can be unlocked from the various setup panels, so you can preview things and then unlock them. We're keeping that in case you want to preview things, but we've also added a more traditional Shop layout to the menus.
Region Selection
Another significant new feature is the ability to include or exclude server regions, in addition to the automatic disabling of ones too far away. We'll automatically set a home region for you and select some of the areas we think will work best, but sometimes players are better at choosing where they play. For now there is a button in the Play menu called "Server Locations" where you can enable or disable regions. Green is on, Gray is off but available to be turned on, and red means it is too far away for automatic matching. Custom games are still possible however.
There have been fixes to the rendering selection to try and keep the new advanced post-process from enabling on lower spec machines including those with integrated graphics like laptops. Plus now when you select a lower than native resolution, the scaling will be smoother and look better. Definitely leave feedback if you are having any graphics problems, and include your settings and hardware if you know it.
Core Gameplay
Having units Follow you is a really cool addition to the game. Additionally, we added a way to tell units in Follow mode to go to a specific location. You'll see 3 options when units are Following--stop where you are, come to me and then stop, or go to where I click. This will also be added to gamepad with a new control mode soon.
If you haven't played AirMech Strike yet, there are many many other changes. Much of it is documented in the new ingame HUD through Tooltips and hotkeys hints (useful to turn those on in Settings). Gameplay is more in line with faster paced classic AirMech, with dynamic build queues that are not fixed to specific outposts.
New to Strike is the option to change out your Units during the game. Along with an increased build queue (8) and new Orders for your units. We're continuing to streamline the gameplay with everything focused on great 2v2 PvP gameplay.
Competitive Play
Season Zero is active and Ranking is live. This is just a test season and it won't last very long, just while we see how it is working and figure out where the tiers will settle.
Overall everyone has been super supportive, helping us identify the most critical things to fix or replace, leading to so many updates over the past week and a half. For players who weren't aware of the changes coming it was a bit confusing, but Wastelands is coming very shortly and with that everything should start to make sense again. We will of course announce it here when Wastelands access is starting to be available. It will be triggered from within AirMech Strike--more info on that soon.
Known Issues
Gamepad support incomplete, but coming
Unit setup in lobby is janky, preferrably setup units in pregame for now (being redone)
Spectator UI has overlayed menu (will be fixed shortly)
Anything missing will be available in Wastelands soon
Bugfixes/Changes
Shop added
Simple tutorial/guided match for first time players (easy to skip)
Server region selection
Reduce Warthog's close range damage bonus
Rendering changes/improvements
Lobby menu restructure (ongoing)
Enter should toggle ingame chat properly
Fixed heads/hats not showing up on Bomber
Following units can be given more specific orders
Fortress income given a balance pass (was too high)
Improve target selection to prefer mechs over outposts
Muting should work better (was not working on names with spaces in them)
Mute players directly from info cards in a match (hover their mech at the top)
Black screen at endgame bug has been fixed
Teamcolor support for DeepSea Osprey
Improve AirMech flying and hover sounds
Improve Rank and XP circle progress at endgame screen
Update spectator UI to use new dynamic minimap (fixes missing minimaps)
Inviting players from their lobby player card should work right now
Fallbacks for various bad lobby states
Hopefully fix "invalid_sku" error condition
Saucer armor increased to 80
Quest updates as makes sense for Strike
Fixed player name not always showing in endgame screen
Can now invite players from Matchmaking menu
Custom rooms can be set to private, not browseable (you need to invite everyone)
Rings around player slots to help visualize size/team in lobby (temp visuals)
Show mailbox if you have a waiting message, even if not VIP
Add "power" button in menus to exit without digging in settings
Testing lighting changes in lobby, player selectable
Fixes to prevent units being dropped in salt piles on Salt
Make AirMechs do more cool stuff when they die in the air
Fix invisible enemies in lobby in Explore
Allow Explore during more states of ready-ness
More AirMech variant sounds added
Graphics option to disable glow effect, should help slower computers with integrated graphics
Change UI selection zones for units in Lobby to be more reliable
Disable gamepad binding to switch to "console" UI since it breaks everything
Adjust camera slightly up for Wreckz
Double-pressing E no longer deploys all pending units
Improved endgame sound effects
Hide game options that don't make sense when Spectating
Potential fix for sometimes getting the main menu while playing a game
New "Follow" Order tells units to follow your AirMech
Auto-repair removed, Repair mode now on Q key
Swap units ingame, Right
click to choose/swap, or Tab and drag
Generators reboot, can heal/fuel mechs on/off Sockets!
Leveler renamed Whoper, increases Upkeep limit
Parts are not used (used in Wastelands instead)
Pilots and Items also not used in Strike
Season 0 started, new Rank Points system
New Lobby design, fully 3D
New Menus, press Esc to toggle in/out
New Ingame HUD
New Storm and Biohazard adapted from player created maps
New Practice mode to battle all classic pilots in order of difficulty
One final thing to note, is that if you are a Silver VIP and did not recieve your Ancient Skull head (seen in the header image of this post) please let us know. We used this to initialy test the qualification for Wastelands access, and it didn't work as expected--but that's a good thing because it helped us fix the system to located these players. If you didn't get one, be sure to let us know either using the ingame bug report or just ask in chat if you see any devs around.
It's a busy week so we're getting right back to work!
