A small set of steam achievements is now available unlocking a never before attainable level of pride and accomplishment. Most of these new achievements cover basic activities in the game and even if you've completed the task before, it will need to be repeated for the achievement. A few of the new achievements are linked to new in-game challenges with cosmetic rewards. While the grueling "Francis Drake" achievement currently has no reward, stay tuned for a small update later this weekend with due compensation.
Other small tweaks come this update reworking the water skipping effect. Previously the player could only skip after being airborne for a short period of time, but now the ability to skip should be immediate if you have the right velocity. Sailicopters are officially grounded this update as the base level thrust from sails is no longer applied when they are vertically oriented.
1.14.13
Major Features
Added 13 new steam achievements.
Minor Features
Added 4 new challenges and cosmetics that correspond to steam achievements.
Sails lose their thrust when they angle up or down.
Sails lose their thrust when submerged.
Reworked water skipping to happen more consistently, perform less bounces, and not "stall out" before falling in.
Bug Fixes
Fixed bouncing off the water for a very long time if you jump from a moving platform.
Fixed antialiasing being off by default.
Airmen 1.14.12: Painted Armor Plates
Painted armor plates arrive allowing you to flash your stripe color on the most protected parts of your ship. Painted plates are separate parts from the original plates so you can mix and match. Unlocking painted plates requires both the Synthesizer Steel quest and Armor Paint Research.
Join us on Discord for public playtests Friday at 12pm ET, Saturday at 3pm ET, and Monday at 7pm ET. 1.14.12
Major Features
Added painted armor plates.
Minor Features
Added rocks to spearhead.
Added a chat message when a player joins your crew.
Added a new A rank hunt ship built by community member sMax.
Added new air outposts to High Tide and Cauldron built by community member Nighthawk.
Reworked installation spawning to choose a random unpopulated island instead of always choosing an island a player has approached.
Bug Fixes
Fixed a hole in the rocks on Horizon.
Fixed remote magnetic weaponry still requiring its prerequisite to research.
Fixed ballasts applying more force when the tilt module is active.
Reworked fort teleportation to improve its reliability.
Fixed chat messages not appearing to alert you your ship is over the max mass when selecting a ship or fort.
Airmen 1.14.11: Anti-Personnel Auto Turret
This week's update introduces the anti-personnel auto turret, a new weapon intended to shift the burden of execution closer to the attackers when it comes to successful boarding. The APAT is an extremely short range (10 meter) auto turret with unrestricted rotation that can only target and damage airmen. The turret does no damage to parts but will kill an airman in about one second. All turrets will remain loyal to the original owner of the ship regardless of who controls it but they can still be stopped with a hold fire command. Boarders are no match for these turrets and will have to move carefully and attack creatively to circumvent them or do their work on unprotected parts of the ship.
The APAT will undoubtedly diminish the effectiveness of boarding only strategies especially on small ships where complete coverage is easy. Large ships will have to be smarter when taking advantage of the APAT focusing on defending critical locations to avoid cutting into their firepower budget as the part itself comes with a 300 firepower cost. Well coordinated crews should be entirely capable of defusing the weak turrets ahead of boarding using precision weapons. Boarding should remain relevant overall and but the highest priority targets will be off limits until some traditional ship-to-ship combat has taken place.
Some other boarding related tweaks have also been added this update. Bonus health on respawn has been increase from 150 to 200 which means you will no longer need to be better than a boarder to win fists vs sword after respawning and should win sword vs sword with 100 hit points to spare. The original owners of a ship will now be able to open its hatches even if control of the ship is lost so they can now be placed without need for a steering wheel on either side.
