Now that the new map is mostly functional for landships, they are receiving an alternate form of propulsion: wheels. Wheels are far smaller than their alternative in legs and can be easily boxed up within an armored hull. Unlike legs, wheels lack any built in stabilization assistance, so be careful about rolling your vehicle in a normal turn.
Six of the old islands arrive on the new map this update including cauldron, spine, anvil, spears, lookout and the weather station. Most of these islands are equipped with redeploy points. Remember that contracts are not yet handing out targets based on your ship class so choose wisely in coastal regions.
Finally, easy, medium and hard difficulties have been added to the game. Difficulty only affects the cost of ships so ship cost doubles on hard and ship cost is never subtracted from your stockpile on easy. Easy has been made the default.
This change is occurring to help get new players to build things other than free ships while they progress. New players will often build a custom inferior starter ship and never use anything else for fear of losing resources. By sticking to a weak ships these players waste more time on slow and failed runs than they ever would occasionally losing resources on a powerful non-free ship.
Added new difficulty options including easy, medium, and hard. Easy difficulty eliminates ship resource costs and hard difficulty multiplies costs by 2. The default is easy.
Added ship wheels.
Minor Features
Added setting descriptions to the settings menu in the hangar.
Increased the size of the compass and added degree markings.
Moved the challenge popups to the right center of the screen.
Bug Fixes
Fixed pure landships being unselectable on the new map.
Fixed some presents on the new map breaking activation when activated.
Fixed a bug where movement could occur in the hangar while the steam overlay is open or persist after closing it.
Airmen 1.17.11: New Map Preview Server
The new map is officially live and playable on the NA1 server. While the new map is officially playable, keep in mind it is still a work in progress. Many features of the old archipelago have not been reimplemented yet and much of what is available isn't finished. The goal of the new map server is to test the redeployment system and see what effects the high map density and landships have on the game.
If you decide to start an expedition on the new map keep in mind some of the key differences:
You can redeploy, extract, and accept contracts from all the redeployment sites across the map.
There are no jet streams but contracts will always give targets within 3000 meters.
There isn't much to do for watercraft with the current lack of small islands so stick to landships and airships.
The new map is now available on the official server NA1. Joining a server through the hangar's expedition button will never connect to this server due to potential instability.
Added a coastal region and mountain pass region to the new map.
Minor Features
Temporarily disabled siege mode and player forts on the new map since it doesn't support them yet.
Ships with any amount of legs will qualify as landships in addition to their normal class.
Added a 5 minute cooldown to redeploying.
Added 3 installations to the new map.
Shortened the synthesizer time to 10 minutes on the new map.
Bug Fixes
Fixed the beam mounted bone cannon's placement issues in sandbox.
Fixed harpoons not grabbing the terrain of the new map.
Fixed rescue and captures on the new map becoming uncompletable after the target ship spawns.
Fixed some redeploy points not using a unique contract set.
Airmen 1.17.10: New Map Preview 8
Two more new regions arrive this update including a large stone pillar region and a volcanic plateau. There is undeveloped space remaining for about two new regions and once filled, the new map will be made available on a single server. Keep in mind that despite being available on an official server, the new map will not be any less of a work-in-progress.
This update also retires the original carbine model. The new model attempts to follow the original's overall design while leaving behind the original's blocky and sharp-edges-only look. The light carbine and ornate carbine have also been updated and more closely retain their original look.
Fixed smuggling contracts breaking your ability to accept new contracts after taking 4.
Fixed clouds showing their low and high quality versions at the same time in some cells of the new map.
Airmen 1.17.9: New Map Preview 7
Another new map preview, another 2 new regions. The central bay is finished off with a stretch of coastal cliffs and a rivery region fills out the rest of the peninsula. As the final regions appear on the map over the next few weeks, keep in mind that most of regions are being added at a low level of detail so a playable map can be available as soon as possible. Expect additional detail passes in the future.
The design of the new map will undeniably change the effectiveness of all kinds of ships. Heavy ships in particular will gain a large amount of relative mobility due to redeployment and the lack of jet streams increasing the value of mag drives. The current archipelago uses plentiful jet streams to give the faster lighter ships discretion when picking battles. They can always quickly hop into a stream, get out of range and enter a second to escape a heavier attacker. Some stealthy balance changes are arriving this update to prepare for the new environment.
The first change aims to address the most deadly weapon choice available: large adjustable weapon arrays. The power of these weapons climbs quickly with number placed because overlapping fields of fire drastically improve a ship's ability to pulverize important parts. This same relationship leaves low counts very ineffective since their individual inaccuracy means you won't consistently hit an important part with one weapon. The spread of all captain-aimed weapons will now scale with the amount of firepower from captain-aimed weapons on the ship to counteract this relationship. Captain-aimed weapons will now fire perfectly accurate in small firepower amounts and gain double spread in the biggest possible firepower amounts. This change should be a big power increase for both light adjustable weapon ships and mixed weapon platform ships.
While the accuracy scaling change tries to level the playing field, the second stealthy change just lowers the damage of weapons on heavy ships. A ship's raw combat power scales quadratically with firepower thanks to increased weapons offering both extra damage and a bigger HP pool for those weapons. This quadratic scaling is being chipped away with a ship-wide weapon damage reduction scaling from no reduction at 20k firepower to 25% reduction at 30k firepower. The goal of this change is not to unseat heavy ships as the biggest damage dealers but to flatten the curve and make them less in the lead.
Captain aimable weapons are more accurate on lighter ships and less accurate on heavier ships. A spread multiplier scales linearly from 0 to 2.25 from 3k to 30k of captain aimable firepower. Weapons affected by this change are labeled in their part description.
Player heavy ships deal reduced damage with all weapons. Damage multiplier scales linearly from 100% damage at 20k firepower to 75% damage at 30k firepower.
Further optimizations to memory usage on the new map at a small performance cost in tree heavy areas.
Bug Fixes
Fixed the altitude maintainer not applying maximum vertical thrust control for heavy ships.
Fixed projectile explosions not orienting to match their projectile.
Airmen 1.17.8: New Map Preview 6
The march towards the new map continues adding a final desert region with large flat spaces and scattered brush and a hilly grass region with alien structures. Some new memory optimization processes are also starting up to ensure the map can reach stability at the same time as playability.
If you are a regular explorer of the new map, you may have noticed the shrinking amount of unfinished space on the largest of the islands. Once this island is complete, there will be sufficient space available to run expeditions using the new deployment system and a single server will host the new map. The old map will be retired after the new one comes close to parity in terms of available activities.
Among all the regions of the new map, so far only one is designed in favor of watercraft. Other regions lack watercraft deploy points and are largely inaccessible to the vehicle type. Unfortunately, there really is no such thing as a good region that can accommodate the types of land and water vehicles players build. Instead of butchering every region with enormous rivers and shear coastal cliffs, the northern space of the new map will feature a more compact arrangement of the some of the old map's islands. All of the old islands will be updated to use the new deployment system on the new map.
Added a dusty island region with Castle Orenvaald to the new map.
Added a grassy cliff region with alien structures to the new map.
Minor Features
Improved performance on the new map by situationally disabling NPC airmen.
Some assets on the new map will be loaded as-needed rather than all-a-once to reduced memory usage.
Sunk the islands in the north of the new map.
Bug Fixes
Fixed ground forts/outposts in installations spawning above the ground.
Fixed not being able to drop off rescues at forts on the new map.
Airmen 1.17.7: New Map Preview 5
The new map gains two new regions this update including a sloping forest and rocky basin. The forest region is currently falling behind desired performance benchmarks and some major optimizations have been made that will later be applied to other regions but it may need to be reworked if future improvements are not enough.
The current detail density of the new map as a whole is also pushing the stability of the new map over the edge. Over the next few updates some big unnoticeable changes will be made to make sure the new map doesn't cause frequent crashes.
Added unique headers and descriptions for the redeploy and contract menus.
Added an extraction option to redeploy points.
Filled a mountain with lava.
Airmen 1.17.6: New Map Preview 4
The new map gains a dusty canyon region and the bare-bones implementation of the new redeployment system this update. As mentioned in a previous new map preview, all delivery points across the new map feature a pair of NPC airmen with a sample of contracts and redeployment options.
The new redeployment system allows you to extract your ship and replace it with a new one in a region chosen at the time of redeployment. Combined with increased map density, the redeployment system should massively reduce travel times and keep expeditions moving even faster than they could with jet streams. Redeployment also gives captains the ability to restore destroyed ship parts or even a completely destroyed ship without leaving the server as long as they can reach a location to redeploy.
While the amount of playable space has grown significantly over 4 new map updates, it is still not ready for availability on public servers. Without jet streams and some vehicle's requirement for land, a serious amount of map is required before safe spawn points can be guaranteed. Once the mountainous island is entirely at the same level of detail as the desert island, the map should be ready for an official server.
Added redeploy points across the new map. Activate the table at any henge or sewer entrance to extract your ship and build a new one at the chosen destination.
Added contract providers alongside all redeploy points on the new map. Each contract provider specializes in one random contract type and carries two others at reduced frequency.
Minor Features
Added a large new water filled canyon region to the new map.
Improved the altitude maintainer to only function when no vertical controls are input by the ship's pilot.
Bug Fixes
Fixed the altitude maintainer always going down if multiple are activated at once.
Airmen 1.17.5: New Map Preview 3
Three new land regions appear on the new map this week: a barren desert loaded with synthesizers, a grassy plain with patches of trees, and a rocky overlook spotted with buttes. These regions have less detail to them than the original two for now in an effort to quickly scale up the amount of playable space.
If you spend some time exploring the new map you may notice a lonely airman hanging out at one of the many henges. In the future, these henges will function not only as delivery drop off points, but mini contract hubs, expedition starting points, and extraction points. The new map should make it far simpler to always be traveling towards the next thing to do instead of splitting your time with a return journey.
Additionally the henges will serve as the base points for the upcoming redeployment system. Even if the new map is denser than the old one it doesn't change fact that exciting things can be happening on the other side of it. Installations, for example, are only in one place. Land vehicles would be at the mercy of chance hoping one spawns nearby. You will be able to end your expedition from any redployment point and immediately start a new one after selecting a new region to spawn in.
Major Features
Added three new regions to the new map.
Minor Features
Added the smuggler's den as a spawn point and extraction providing fort to the new map.
Walker legs will invert ascend/descend controls for back legs when a tilt module is enabled.
Bug Fixes
Fixed sideways rudders applying no force.
Fixed player names sometimes appearing blank.
Airmen Update 1.17.4: New Map Preview 2
Progress continues on Airmen's new map adding a new region and further developing the tools used to make further regions. You can preview the new region the same as the first in sandbox by typing "/sandboxmap 1" in chat in hangar and then entering sandbox. Sandbox will randomly choose between the original spawn point or a new one in the new region.
As promised you can also start an expedition on the new map; however, due to the likely instability and incompleteness of the new map, it will not yet be hosted on official servers. You can enable the new map by typing "/map 1" in chat in your solo expedition lobby. You can disable the new map and return to the original map in solo expedition by typing "/map 0" in chat in your solo expedition lobby.
Notably, the new region features Tower Reckongale uncharacteristically close to the first region's Tsuchev Ruins. Due to the inherently limited speed of land vehicles and the detail achievable in a land heavy map, the density of the map is increasing. The archipelago constantly required long distance travel so jet streams and mag drives were used to effectively reduce the distance by increasing speed 3 to 4 fold. The new map will simply compress the distances so all vehicle types can spend the same time traveling.
1.17.4
Major Features
Added another new region to the new map preview.
The new map preview is now available for solo expeditions. The new map preview can be enabled by typing "/map 1" in chat while in the expedition lobby. The original map can be renabled by typing "/map 0" in chat while in the expedition lobby.
Minor Features
Steam profiles can now be accessed by right clicking the player on the scoreboard.
Improved the distant cloud shader to better impersonate normal clouds.
Landships can now be loaded into sandbox and an expedition configured to use the new map.
Bug Fixes
Fixed loading tips always being the same.
Fixed ship class in the save selector being inaccurate for some hybrid and incomplete ships.
Airmen 1.17.3: New Map Preview
The first work-in-progress preview of the new map along with some minor features and fixes is now available. The new map preview can be accessed by typing /sandboxmap 1 in the chat while in hangar and then entering sandbox. The new map still requires a massive amount of work before it is complete so for now you can explore one of its small regions.
Most of the new map is completely barren and undetailed but you can explore the whole thing to get an idea of the general shape. Over the next few updates new regions will be carved out of the unused space and existing regions will be refined so don't consider anything finished.
The new map preview wasn't quite ready for expedition so for now it is sandbox only. An expedition compatible version should be ready by next week's update. If you are finished exploring the new map preview you can toggle it off using /sandboxmap 0 in the hangar chat.
1.17.3
Major Features
Added a togglable preview of the new work-in-progress map in sandbox. The preview can be toggled on by typing "/sandboxmap 1" in the hangar chat and entering sandbox. "/sandboxmap 0" will disable the preview.
Minor Features
Added a sandbox spawn point for ships that are not airships or watercraft.
Increase gatling cannon armor penetration from 5 to 10.
Added a fade from black when entering sandbox
Bug Fixes
Reduced ground alignment force of ship legs so they can turn better and wiggle less violently on uneven terrain.
Fixed rudders consuming pressure when not in use.
Fixed certain walkers refunding the wrong resources on ship extraction.
