We’d like to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year full of awesome games!
Of course the Holiday Season wouldn’t be complete without The Winter Sale. You can grab AFF at %40 off until the 2nd of January:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/367270
For the Christmas period the characters and vehicles in the game will also wear their best festive outfits, just like last year. More importantly though, here’s what’s coming next year:
Plans for 2020
If you’ve been watching some of our previous news pieces, or are in our Discord, you might’ve spotted hints about upcoming full release.
Indeed, we’d like to bring AFF to version “1.0” within the first half of 2020. Or rather, to stay safe with our estimates considering our tiny budget, around the middle of 2020. What does it mean for the game exactly then?
Nothing overly dramatic. We never considered Early Access an excuse to neglect the game’s shortcomings. AFF has changed a lot over the years but it was a functional game practically from the very beginning.
So the transition from EA to a fully released state is rather arbitrary in this case. What it means primarily is: upon full release AFF will be actively advertised instead of staying under the radar, and will seek to acquire a bigger playerbase.
Development-wise, everything remains on course. Up until the release we’ll focus on adding the (extensive!) tutorials, improvements to the recently added features (like the new renderer) and optimization, continue making the game more user-friendly so it makes the best possible impression. However, our team always works on many things in parallel so expect other content too, those are just the main things we absolutely need to get done for version 1.0. We’ve updated the roadmap accordingly.
Once again, best Holiday wishes to all of you and thanks for sticking with us, tolerating our slow development pace and letting us share this dream of a game with you.
Onwards and upwards!
Tweaks and fixes and Discord
Hey there AFF Community!
Here’s a new update with a bunch of much-needed bugfixes and adjustments, plus some convenience features:
Discord integration
We’ve added Discord’s Rich Presence features into the game. You can now see what faction, map and server your Discord friends are playing on and join them or invite them to join you. We will definitely tweak this some more in the future but, since the majority of our Community is present in the AFF Discord server, this should already make organizing games more convenient.
Fixes, balance and quality-of-life changes
A few rather critical issues crept into the game with the last update and hotfix so here we are getting rid of those. We’ve also made the elemental effects (incendiary, corrosion, EMP) more consistent and rebalanced certain weapons and items, again - for example decoy grenades should be more useful now and the RID less unpredictable in terms of locking onto targets. Ordering earned vehicles will now drop them in a more predictable spots now as well, resulting in less instances of those poor LAVs being stuck on roofs.
Full changelog:
Discord Rich Presence implemented, displays basic game session information and enables joining players in an online match
Shielded vehicles no longer allow elemental effects to be triggered on them
Capship point-defence should now work similar to the point-defence drone
Vehicle drops have received some improvements - vehicles should now land in more predictable locations and not get stuck on level geometry as much
Reduced the hitpoints of capital ships’ subsystems by 30% (shields, point-defence, engines etc.)
Infantry and vehicles are now blocked from regenerating anything, be it shields or armour, if on fire
Vehicles are now blocked from regenerating shield if affected by EMP
Standardized how elemental effects are handled for mines, detpacks, underslung rockets and grenades
RID heavy rework: - Lockon will no longer break when firing the weapon, allowing for consecutive shots faster - Lockon and charge is now properly separated; mods should now function properly - It’s now harder to maintain a lockon - Reduced delay between firing a shot, and being able to charge the next - Base lockon time have been upped to 2s (perfect lock-time), chargetime is 1.5s - Should no longer drop charge when zooming
Bots should no longer try to swap weapons when they are incapacitated
Tweaked how bots handle their new firing-rate behaviours - should be more aggressive when in close proximity again
AI turrets should now prioritize bombers a bit less obsessively
Bots are now able to callout “in position” for move-to orders too
Bots will no longer callout “under fire” if they are shooting at a destroyable objective and not really in danger
Vehicles are now immune to their own splash-damage unless friendly-fire is enabled
Underslung flamers have experimentally received a tweak to how they deal damage: rather than only hitting what you are pointing directly at, it will now apply it to all targets in a cone shape, originating from the weapon
Added fake callouts “Regroup on me”, “Move to” and “Need a medic” to decoy grenades, as alternatives that can trigger to gunfire
Decoy grenades gunfire is now repeating a little to better simulate actual gunfire
Fixed AIA-specific gun sounds for decoy grenade
Detpacks, mines and spring grenades will no longer deal damage if detonated from their owner dying
Spring grenades and gyronades are now named n8s and n8g, with the base grenade being called n8d. Should make it easier to determine what you are using in-world
SAR have gotten a larger magazine - 90 up from 66; takes more shots to overheat - 40 up from 25, but takes longer to reload
Increased the number of carried sensor grenades from 2 to 3
TT4 firerate increased, and damage reduced, by roughly 15%; overheats at 80 rounds, up from 60
Removed reload mods from the P8 and Partisan/Dhaka tank turrets
MGA magsize reduced to 160, down from 300
Removed collision on the “projector” on Khamun’s bridge - should no longer soak bullets
Fixed Poranti sometimes causing clients in multiplayer to crash after finishing the match
Fixed lock-on issue introduced in last hotfix - locking onto targets should again work reliably and properly show associated visuals
Fixed corrosion not being applied correctly to vehicles from mines/detpacks/grenades/underslung and certain cases where incendiary effect wouldn’t be triggered either.
Fixed in-world painvolumes (areas inflicting environmental damage) not affecting vehicles and standardized elemental effects on those
Fixed turret AI not always being properly disabled when affected by EMP
Mines should no longer collide with the driver/passengers of the vehicle they originated from
Fixed radial damage not reaching destroyables through team-blocking volumes (droppods for example)
Fixed ship debris in outro scenes of several space maps jittering all over place
Removed some legacy Steam VoIP functionality in preparation for custom VoIP library
For feedback, or just a lovely chat with the devs, post on AFF's Steam forums or contact us directly through our Discord!
Onwards and upwards!
Update 25 hotfix #1
Hey there AFF Community!
The obligatory hotfix for the latest update is here. Turns out DX11 is actually way more stable than we expected but instead we’ve introduced a couple nasty gameplay-related crashes. This patch addresses those, fixes a few other minor issues and introduces further balance changes and improvements.
Poranti objectives
Some of the objectives in the new map, Poranti, have proven to be exceedingly hard to complete in public matches. We took that feedback into account, removed an objective from the first and second phase, as well as changed the balance of power when it comes to capital ships.
DX11 performance
With the experimental DX11 mode we’ve definitely succeeded in offloading more processing work from the CPU to the GPU. Unfortunately on older PCs the performance of that mode turned out to be suboptimal to say the least. We’ve polished the new renderer some more and this patch should improve that situation quite a bit.
AI improvements
The bots are now smarter about using deployable gadgets (turrets especially) and not unloading magazines needlessly at distant targets. We’ve also optimized their target detection and line-of-sight checks quite a bit to lower the performance hit a map full of bots incurs.
Landing Zone cheese
We’ve noticed there’s a chance of getting stuck under the droppods descending at the Landing Zone objectives. Maybe even a few nasty tricks players could use to interfere with enemy landing zones. Now the game will make sure nobody tries to stick anything under, or phase into, the landing dropship.
Full changelog:
Fixed a crash where the intro matinee in Igneous would end with the game falling over due to a missing prefab asset
Fixed an infinite recursion crash (mostly occurring on Poranti) where if a shield touched a kill volume, the shield would be restarted and destroyed over and over again
Poranti updates: - Fixed some holes in geometry - Updated culling/LOD settings on some objects - Removed an objective from first and second phase - Improved collision and AI paths - Fixed droppod shields having wrong health values - Replaced Chons with Javert for Phase 3
Fixed lack of spawnpoint-protection-shields for rear AIA spawn in Irega Incursion
Fixed a blocked entrance to one of the tunnels in Lukather
Fixed Fortress’ Phase 3’s secondary objective (the sensor station) not colliding with vehicles
Landing Zone droppods should now deal properly with stuff parked underneath when they land: - For vehicles and enemy players: destroy them - For friendly players: move them to a valid spawn location - Same behaviour occurs should any enemy player end up inside an area (spawnpoint toggled with map phases for example) that becomes a safe zone for the other team.
Fixed sensor grenades not showing selected firemode, but rather always “sensor”
Fixed detail mode on a bench in the AIA briefing room (was invisible on lower settings)
Fixed slightly unreliable EMP effect on modded knife’s charged mode
Standardized infantry EMP effect duration
Increased cycle rate of the point-defense drone a bit (more chances for detecting targets and shooting them down)
Fixed RID not properly dropping lock after gaining it and afterwards losing it entirely
Fixed locks not always being lost if lockon is lost (would resume to 100%, even if expired)
Placing deployables is no longer affected by EMP or on-fire effects (can now be placed regardless of these)
RID will now lose its charge, if hit by EMP, as intended
Reduced partisan reload time a bit to compensate for its previously reduced damage (now reloads in 4.25 seconds)
Gunships spawn in “normal” flight mode instead of ”newtonian” as default again
Gunships maximum regeneration delay upped to 15s instead of 10s, as intended
Bots are encouraged, depending on their AI rating, to pop deployables and mines when ordered with capturing an objective, defending an objective or holding a location
Optimized AI line-of-sight checks
Bots are now more restrained in their firing against distant targets, if their chance of hitting them is low; Less fruitless mag-dumping.
Fixed bots not considering changing vehicle weapons, if the current is reloading (they should now be less bound to sitting through a reload cycle, since the vehicle weapons reload even when put away)
Fixed a case of reloading visually triggering despite the weapon being out of ammo
Fixed an issue with reloading not properly behaving when the weapon is inactive (mostly affecting bots)
Fixed the “out of bounds” messages persisting through respawn
Optimized a few buffer operations in DX11 mode
Removed an ancient “screendoor effect” on mesh culling, was causing major performance hits especially on DX11
For feedback, or just a lovely chat with the devs, post on AFF's Steam forums or contact us directly through our Discord!
For the duration of the Halloween sale you can get AFF at 40% off. Business as usual. Now for the exciting stuff:
New map - Poranti
A brand new Incursion map consisting of 4 diverse phases to shake things up. ULA is on the offensive again and required to destroy a heavily fortified asteroid-mining installation from the inside. Then the action moves out into space and concludes with a battle for a second asteroid base.
The map features a lot of close-quarters combat within a network of intricate corridors and lots of flanking route. Dogfighting in space can prove challenging here as well - watch out for all those spacerocks!
Countermeasures, knives and shields
This update brings a lot of balance changes, reworked mechanics and interesting additions. Knives now feature elemental mods so you can not only roast your enemies but also electrify or corrode their armour. Nasty.
Vehicle shield mechanics have been completely reworked - they’re now an extra passive, recharging layer over the armour and only apply to ships and the AIA hovertanks, putting it closer to the AFF lore. Generally vehicle drivers should be less penalised when catching minor stray fire now and be able to recover more quickly from engagements - but at the same time the shield will be much more of a timing act instead of a “press to stop all damage” button. To synergize with this we reworked and added the other vehicle countermeasures back into the game.
We’ve also rebalanced a lot of guns, ships and vehicles, reworked lock-on mechanics to be more skill-based, brought the EMP status to be more in line with the rest of the elemental effects and more. Full, lengthy, changelog below.
Experimental DX11 mode
After months of hard work we finally have our new DX11-based renderer fully functional. We’re not setting it to be the default mode for the game yet, we’d like to do some public testing first. You can opt into using it by either selecting “Experimental DX11 mode” when launching the game from Steam or by adding “-dx11” argument to your shortcut.
What does it mean that it’s experimental? Will it explode? Probably not. Will there be bugs and glitches? Definitely! The plan is to make it the default mode when it proves to be acceptably stable.
Why are we doing this, though? What’s the advantage of DX11? There will be a small performance improvement across the board from it. It should also help with some instances of abnormally low framerates on AMD hardware. More importantly though, it makes improving the looks of the game so much easier. We’re working on a bunch of graphical features that’ll make AFF look more like a proper modern game. For now the DX11 renderer will closely mirror the looks of the old renderer - we have however already improved the quality of a bunch of post-processing effects, made lighting and shadows more crisp and added a multisampling anti-aliasing option (MSAA) - it’s faster and looks much better and stable than post-process AA we had before.
Do give the DX11 mode a spin, let us know how it works for you and have a lovely, spooky long weekend everyone!
Full changelog:
Poranti is now released! The map consists of 4 phases; First two fighting for the first asteroid station’s destruction, then a space section, and finally a battle for the second asteroid’s destruction.
Knife now has the option for elemental mods
Vehicle mines are now lobbed in the direction of the crosshairs, rather than placed behind the vehicle. Hold to throw further - will show a charge bar.
Lock-on will now be penalized for not hovering the target. The closer to the target, the less penalty. Perfectly aiming at the target for the duration should be equal to the loadout stat. Over a ~3s base, the penalty will roughly amount to another 1.5 seconds lockon time (for a total of about 4.5s). Maximum penalty that can be achieved by any weapon is 1.7s
Improved performance about showing spawnpoints on HUD a lot
Vehicle shields significantly weaker but with fast and constant (unless damaged) regeneration. They reactivate once regenerated at least 10% of their healthpool
Removed shields from all ground-vehicles, except hover-vechs (Basta, Dhaka). Gunships are ships so they have shields too.
Vehicle shields are now only visible when damaged or on resurrect (since shields are now always-on, this is to make them less noticeable when they’re not relevant)
Added shield amp body-slot mod for shielded vecs (+500 shield, - 500 armour, -20% boost regen)
Reimplemented flares and point defense drone as faction-specific countermeasures (note, countermeasures is still a separate loadout slot): - Flares are for ULA, and work against MLI rockets, but not C30i (homing missiles) - PD drones are for AIA, and work against C30i, but not RID (dumbfire and homing)
Capital ships point defense is now an active in line with other vehicle countermeasures (capital ships have passive shields, but the point defense is activatable in intervals)
Made damage interrupt scale by damage taken and stacks (longer recovery time from heavier damage). Maximum recovery time is 10s for infantry, 15s for everything else. (This is how long it takes for shields/armour to start regenerating)
Armour and health damage interrupt both shield and armour regeneration (shield damage only interrupts shield regeneration)
Added regeneration delay text to health module (How long till the armor/shield starts regenerating again)
Removed hidden EMP integrity, and streamlined it to behave like the other elemental effects
EMP duration can now be extended by re-triggering the effect
Suit insulation mods now only reduce the duration of elemental effects (by 25% each), rather than reducing the chance for an elemental to trigger
Elemental effects are now pseudo-random for a more reliable distribution of triggering. The chance have been bumped up to roughly ~15%. Intention is, that together with the insulation mods, the effects of elemental ammo should be more reliable.
The duration of elemental effects is determined by how difficult it was to obtain; ie. they last considerably longer on a capship than on a fighter, since it on average takes a lot more shots to trigger on it. The duration spans between 6 and 60 seconds.
Healing should now correctly remove EMP as intended
Fixed EMP not preventing infantry from swapping weapons
GU-34 now accepts magazine mods
Ion beams should now show the correct loadout stat for range
Detpacks should now properly behave with ammo mods, rather than having them subtract from your amount available
Shotgun pellets should now have more sensible spread behaviours
Tweaks to how the UDP handles and feels
Multiwrench should no longer be so inconsistent sound-wise for impacts
Mods for Chons’ H-Ion should no longer be available as intended (None of them are affecting the weapon)
Helmet armour buff increased to 20%
Dhaka projectiles damage increased from 340 to 400, but reduced splash radius slightly
Partisan projectiles damage reduced from 800 to 600
Added feedback sounds to trying to use countermeasures (Z) - success + failure
Holding shift should now re-engage boosting in vehicles, once about half of the boosting have replenished
Reworked global homing missile behaviour
Visiting TacMap while incapacitated should no longer reset 3rdp view
Fixed various oddities and optimized functionality underlying a lot of ‘can X see Y’ checks
Territories maps now factors in a vehicle bleed rate approximation when calculating match duration vs obj income rate. Should generally result in shorter vehicle-territories matches
Units will now have a small indicational arrow on top or below on minimap, indicating if they are above or below you.
Clientside tagging should be more reliable in identifying enemy players
Extended the radius for visual identification (friend/foe)
Spaceships FOV have been increased some again (FOR THE SPEEEEEEEEED)
Boosted volume of your own footsteps
Improved Katana’s and Salamander’s turn speed
Further improved AI’s weapon selection and firemode selection logic
Bots should no longer use underslung without meaning to (should, amongst other things, fix bots vaguely flaming towards their distant target)
Bots are now discouraged from using multiwrench against hostile destroyables and infantry
Slightly increased range at which bots will prefer the underslung flamethrower
Fortress updates: - Destroyables should no longer be sparkling as if they were destroyed, before being destroyed on Fortress - Added additional capture objective to Phase 3
Yin Tao Shan updates: - Phase 1 building got a secondary way upstairs - Phase 1 building objective was moved - Various cover tweaks - Added roofing over Point C in Phase 2 of Incursion - Mirrored structure over from Incursion variant to the Territories variant for consistency - Last AIA spawn have been moved back a significant distance
Tannhauser updates: - Grates should now be more consistent with other fences for bullet penetration - Fixed droppods lighting - Fixed second stage droppods objectives being called B1, rather than B1 and B2
Delta updates: - Added central structure to bring some CQC combat to the most central point in Delta (objective E) - Modified top-right ULA spawn location to reduce travel time biases towards middle of the playable area - Added a smattering of structures/tents and cover on the barren top right ULA side of the map to help against snipers - Added some barrel-rails going from the central structure outwards on the map to bring more coherency - Few tweaks around to add more verticality to the map - Added more lights throughout - Experimentally added a plateau structure under parts of the pump objective; Intended to improve the tank experience around here
Small cover tweaks to Errah and Igneous
Lukather territories have received a layout rework - now consists of 7 objectives
Fixed some collisions in Ixion station and Lukather
Added flavortext on phase-changes to Kerrat incursion (should help with understanding the map)
Ixion Station’s fighters should no longer behave oddly
Disabled the secondary defender spawn in Igneous P1 (Tower spawn, closest to objectives)
Various corrections to map descriptions for consistency
Weapon platforms used in various space-maps have regained a missing weapon
Optimized warp tunnel effect a bit
Properly zeroed the MLI scope
Removed inaccuracy from MLI shots when zoomed (secondary firemode should be slightly more viable again)
Slightly increased RIDs inaccuracy when zoomed
RID recovers aim slightly slower
Reduced RID damage by 15%
Destroyables should generally be more consistent with their healthpools
Fixed breachtube animation and network synchronization on Huginn and Ranger
Various fixes and improvements to breachtubes’ collisions and behaviour
Bots should now be able to rearm dropships at battleships again
Bots should no longer get confused about weapon ranges when swapping to/from capships
Fixed bots clumping up on the same spot after planting a hackspike
Fixed spawnpoints unintentionally removing corrosion for everyone map-wide
Fixed land-maps minimap carrying over incorrect scaling after being in flight-mode
Jitters from vehicle nose/weapon aim cursor should mostly be corrected
Fixed being unable to tag enemy carriers (when they are marked as objectives) if the driver wasn’t spotted for team
Fixed boarding related interaction prompts showing when taking control of a ship that existed prior to joining the server.
Fixed some collision holes in Ranger
Confirm/broadcast/command now only allowed if either no menu is open or the TacMap is open (and not allowed when picking a warp-exit)
Fixed AIA bombers’ plasma icon
Fixed slow MILNET initialisation on map-start
Enemy destroyables’ elemental effects from bullet impacts should now be governed by the same chances and rules as for infantry
Fixed lockon weapons starting the lockon cycle despite needing a reload
Going to loadouts and/or spawning a vehicle should now properly work with infantry camo (ie. use the proper one, rather than setting you to default)
Fixed some desyncs with swapping and reloading weapons clientside where sometimes the visual would be wrong, or the swap would be swapped back (on higher latency)
Fixed some desyncs with not starting to reload when swapping away from a vehicle weapon that is supposed to reload while inactive
Fixed issue where fighterbases would plant fighters at roughly the same spot when exiting warp. This could cause fighters to collide with eachother, or spawn inside a capship
Potentially fixed issue where warp-screen could partially persist once level is loaded
Spaceships should now properly remove corrosion when restocking
Fixed corrosion mines
Fixed deployable shields not reactivating after being downed
Fixed visual effect not matching the actual radius of corrosive effects - radius decreased to match visual
Losing and regaining focus to game will now disable free-looking (should deal with the residual freelook that often happen when alt-tabbing)
In some cases, “attacking objective X” (capturing) would be visible despite the client not contributing to progress. Should be more accurate now.
Fixed shotgun visual effects having wrong direction client-side
For feedback, or just a lovely chat with the devs, post on AFF's Steam forums or contact us directly through our Discord!
Onwards and upwards!
Apollo event ends, small patch drops
Hey there AFF Community!
We are back with a small update, as well as bringing our Apollo event to an end. We’re happy to say that as a community we managed to launch the Saturn V 325 times! We saw you all having fun with the event and you guys and girls can definitely expect more events like that in the future.
With the new experience gathered from running the event we’re now back to work on new content and updates. Stay tuned!
Changelog:
Apollo anniversary event comes to a close
Removed camo colour saturation clamp, decreased base and stripe max brightness some more
Moved Fortress Phase 1 objective
Shifted the hangar cover around inside Meudeverre’s Aquila 9 station
Changed Errah Phase 1 objective to be a bit easier to capture
Pressing Esc while customizing the appearance of weapon/armor/vehicle should now properly take you back to loadout, rather than closing the window
More reliable Partisan boost
Healing should no longer strip health over your corroded limit
Multiwrench leech effect can’t drive your armour beyond corroded limit
Reviving should not restore health beyond corroded limit
Spawn points will now remove corroded status from infantry (works just like resupplying at a spawn point)
Reduced capship weapon ranges 25%
ULA droppod shields should now have consistent size and shape across maps
For feedback, or just a lovely chat with the devs, post on AFF's Steam forums or contact us directly through our Discord!
Onwards and upwards!
Apollo duct tape
Hey there AFF Community!
We’ve just released a small patch to address a few issues you guys and girls mentioned during the Apollo anniversary event. Huge thanks to everyone who participated thus far, hope you’re all having a great time!
The in-game event will be online at least a few days more, regardless of the Steam Sale, so there’s still plenty of time to launch some rockets!
Scaled down subsystem icons displayed on capital ships
Fixed resupplying a spaceship not updating the HUD data (health) when viewed by other players
Fixed some issues with hidden objectives status not replicating correctly to clients
Fixed out-of-battlefield areas going haywire
Fixed ammo capacity mods adding 2 nades instead of 1 per mod
Added some collision around the rockets/gantries
Fixed issues with Lukather's objectives resetting
Updated hints for EMP, acid and incendiary to match mechanical changes
Optimized bullet decals on glass surfaces to get rid of nasty performance spikes on some maps
For feedback, or just a lovely chat with the devs, post on AFF's Steam forums or contact us directly through our Discord!
Onwards and upwards!
Update 24 - Apollo 11 Anniversary
Hey there AFF Community!
This time we have something special for you. As usual the update comes with significant changes and improvements but we’re also running an awesome event in the game to coincide with Steam’s Space Exploration Sale!
Apollo 11 Moon landing anniversary event
It’s the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing and we think this awesome feat of human ingenuity needs to be remembered and celebrated. So, not to spoil too much, on some maps in the game you will now find a certain Apollo-related objective. Completing it will earn you a tiny unique unlock in the game, as well as a callout in our official Discord server. Watch out though - the objective can be contributed to by both teams at once and only those present in the objective area upon completion will be rewarded! So make sure to keep your opposition at bay… or perhaps convince them to a temporary truce and celebrate the wonders of space exploration together in peace?
Oh yeah, and on this occasion AFF is 40% off again:
As a side note, of course we’re running this event mostly for the fun of playing together with the AFF Community and because we love space and astrophysics and engineering and creating cool things in games. But it’s also a great opportunity for us to establish a framework for running unique events like this in the future, and perhaps integrating them with some upcoming meta-game mechanics.
Elemental ammo rework
The special ammunition types are an integral part of the AFF combat design but they’re also something we constantly try to make more interesting, fair and thematically consistent. We’ve made some significant changes to how they work again and we think this strikes the best balance so far - as always though, we’d very much like your feedback on this topic:
Incendiary:
Still deals damage over time
Still overheats relevant weaponry
No longer overheats the GU34
Interrupts vehicle armour regeneration
Acid:
Increases damage from radial explosions
Increases likelihood of other elemental effects triggering on affected target by 20%
Permanently reduces the amount of health and armor that can be regenerated/healed to MaximumHitpoints*0.9^AcidProcCount (1 acid proc = 90% max health, 3 = ~70%, 6 = ~50%, 9 = ~40%, 12 = ~30% (etc)). Note that the effect does not diminish your health on its own. Only the maximum you can heal/regenerate/repair back up to.
EMP:
Infantry servo-motors cease to function and they are unable to sprint
Vehicles boost-charge gets depleted and they are unable to boost
Hampers chargeup-weapons (RID, GU34, LSP altfire, L9R etc.) - if the gun is able to fire with zero charge, it is still functional, otherwise it is rendered inoperable
Vehicles turret AI will cease to function during the effect (players can still use the turrets but they will not fire automatically)
Blocks regeneration of shields and disables any currently active shield (including the deployable shield turrets when the effect triggers on them)
EMP and plasma ammunition no longer deal bonus damage against shields and shields have been re-balanced with this in mind
Grenades, shields and defense
We’ve made some changes to the overall balance of defense-vs-offense in the previous update but we feel like the gameplay still gets somewhat stagnant around chokepoints. There’s a lot of strong defensive tools in AFF, while breaking through a wall of shields and turrets sometimes seems impossible. Therefore we’re trying something a tiny bit controversial this time: hand-thrown projectiles, like grenades, will pass right through shields. This is coincidentally more consistent with the AFF lore where the shields wouldn’t stop something with such a low velocity - but more importantly it should help offset the balance and make the game more fair towards the attacking teams. Let’s see how it works out.
Optimization and tweaks
We’re also introducing some general performance improvements this time and will continue to do so over the next few updates, to get the game into a state where performance doesn’t vary so drastically between players, especially with weaker CPUs.
Surprisingly many of the recurring performance hits come from the UI but as we are resolving those we’ve also made some tweaks to make the UI more consistent (for example hack objectives (hackspikes) will now follow the display logic of every other objective type: color - who controls it; progress - how your team is doing with it. Therefore now it will count down for defenders and count up for attackers like every other objective)
Anyway, we hope you all enjoy this little event we prepared - it's going to be up for the duration of the Space Exploration Sale and a few days after that. See you on the servers!
Full changelog:
Apollo 11 Moon landing anniversary event
Elemental ammo types reworked to be more interesting and consistent
Added visual indicator for corrosion status to armor/health bar on the HUD
Fighters and dropships are now able to warp-out by just establishing a line-of-sight to the rearm beacons without having to traipse all the way back
Hand-thrown grenades, detpacks, sensorballs and vehicle mines will now pass through shields without detonating, unless it's the spawnpoint protection shields; shields also transparent to radial EMP (EMP grenades) and multiwrench regardless of team; note shields still block explosion damage (frag, AV weapons etc.) and MNL grenades will still detonate on contact
Re-balanced underbarrel and deployed shields to be much weaker but regenerate much faster; ensured underbarrel and deployed shields shut down and don't regenerate while the owner (gun, turret) is under the effects of an EMP
Vehicle shields (including droppods, boarding pods etc.) have been re-balanced as well
Reduced grenade ammo count to 2
Suit ammo mods now apply to grenades/detpacks/sensorballs, +1 for each mod slotted
Increased FOV a cheeky 15% when in a spaceship for improved speed/scale perception
Reduced all fighter weapon ranges by 25% apart from bombers' torpedoes/railguns/plasma
Buffed missile tracking a bit
Gunships and spaceships now have 100% more linear acceleration and 50% more angular acceleration for improved responsiveness
Changed the amount of points needed to unlock vehicles: In Incursion the defenders will now need double the current points; In Territories the unlock score has been reduced to 0.7 the current
AI fighters will close the gap to target a bit less aggressively now and break off before hitting the target more sensibly
In-game server browser will now highlight the official servers with a unique icon
More and better formatted contextual hints, now with icons too
Added functionality to the contextual hint box: When a mutiny vote is ongoing, you can press F1/F2 to vote yes/no. If you press the same key as you’ve already voted, it will hide the box.
Spawnpoint-related sensors/scramblers should now work properly in ship interiors - the range of these is now 30m
Improvements to how the minimap displays icons and various special objects like the currently tagged target
Made the TacMap auto-opening, and also automatic spawnpoint selection when the map is opened, more intuitive
TacMap can now also be opened with spacebar when the prompt for respawning is showing
On TacMap when viewing a spawnpoint, the corresponding objective is now hidden to declutter the UI. Additionally, the spawn will now display the hitpoints of whatever it is connected to (droppod for example)
TacMap now allows for tagging (highlighting with the "G" key) of anything player-controlled, as well as objectives. This selection carries over to normal HUD
On TacMap, you can now use NumPad+ and NumPad- to zoom in and out
On TacMap holding shift (spring key) while clicking on a command-group, or a squad-mate, will now add it to your current selection
TacMap's deploy button will now correctly show a "Waiting for introduction" message while the map intro is playing
Greatly optimized the performance hits caused by the HUD in certain situations
Optimized ion beam impact effects
Changed how the briefing room easter-egg (shhhh) works to avoid some performance hits
Significant optimizations to spaceship physics and AI weapon control algorithms
Hackspikes will now follow the display logic of every other objective type: Color = who controls it. Progress = how your team is doing with it.
Camouflage now have a max amount of saturation and brightness, to make it fit into the world better
Blocked some interaction prompts showing up while spectating
Sensor nades should no longer detect both teams
Sensor loss/recovery should be more consistent, and less prone to abuse from leaning in and out of cover
Hack-spike objectives should now trigger overtime correctly
Fixed the underslung flamer retaining the main firemode's charge on GU34 and chargeup disabled explicitly on all weapons when switched to the flamer firemode
Fixed boarding/rearming point icons showing up in hyperspace
Fixed dropship boarding/rearming hints to point at the closest option
Fixed boarding pods not showing up as available resupply points when low on ammo
Fixed MILNET not issuing tasks during the last-man-standing phase(no deploy points left for the team)
Fixed contextual hints auto-closing first time the TacMap auto-opens
Fixed out-of-bounds areas not catching vehicles properly and the messages for leaving the battlefield getting overridden by other messages
Fixed spawnpoints showing a deploy icon rather than an ammo resupply icon when running around low on ammo
Fixed tagged target pointer direction
Fixed an issue where attackers on an Incursion map had a short window where they could respawn, before the spawn-delay kicked in
Fixed fighter fins not extending correctly when exiting a dock after resupplying or when viewed in specator mode
Fixed server playercounts going haywire on certain sequences of switching between teams/specating. Fixed bots trying to spawn and delete themselves over and over when that happened.
Controller-specific controls should no longer be displayed on various interaction prompts unless an actual controller is connected
Contextual hints can now be properly toggled in the settings menu
ULA bots will no longer attempt to rearm dropships at Ixion station
Radio callouts should no longer be cutoff untimely
Tweaked broadcast radio to be slightly cleaner and simpler
For feedback, or just a lovely chat with the devs, post on AFF's Steam forums or contact us directly through our Discord!
Onwards and upwards!
Update 23 is live!
Hey there AFF Community!
Once more we’re back with a big update. Lots of changes shaking the balance of the game up but that’s not all. It’s no secret that AFF has been in development for quite a while and one of the most common complaints we get is that one has to lead the shots to hit anything online. That’s not how modern games handle things. So this time we’re introducing:
Lag compensation
Hit detection for both hitscan and projectile weapons will now be adjusted server-side to correlate with what the shooting player perceived on their end. This practically eliminates the need to lead your targets online, at least to some server-configurable amount of lag (we’ve set it to compensate a maximum of 300 milliseconds of lag for now). Because the mechanism is completely server-side it’s also not prone to client hacking.
This weapon-fire lag compensation is not the end of our work in that area though. Next on our list is making all the player-input-related actions, like weapon-switching, be less affected by latency.
Spotting rework
We’ve made significant changes to how spotting works and is presented in the game. Friendly combatants will be shown on the HUD more-or-less the same as they were before - in proximity or in line-of-sight or when in the same squad, with the added benefit of the team callouts (when someone needs health/ammo/revive) being more visible now.
More importantly though, enemies will no longer produce a constant onslaught of question-marks on the HUD. Instead, they will be identified briefly when firing a not-silenced weapon or constantly when in line-of-sight to you or your teammates. Sensors should be more straight-forward and understandable too now - when an enemy is in range of a helmet sensor or a sensor grenade, she/he will be highlighted on the HUD. It can be countered by wearing a scrambler suit mod. Plus, all friendly spawnpoints work as scramblers now and all enemy spawnpoints work as sensors.
Wave respawns
Respawns will now occur in waves synchronized across the whole team, to improve the pacing of the match and encourage players to coordinate their attacks instead of trickling in on the objectives one by one. It may sound like a big departure from the previous system of static respawn delays but effectively the change is almost unnoticeable to an individual player - the respawn counter will just appear slightly shorter or longer - while at the same time being greatly beneficial to how objective assaults play out.
Local stats storage
So far all the player stats - like ranks and therefore available loadout points - were stored on Steam’s servers. Any connection loss resulted in stats temporarily reading as 0, inconveniencing the player. Now the stats are also stored locally so any kind of connection outage will not prevent the player from fully utilizing the ranks she/he has accrued.
For now the local storage is read-only so we can test its functionality in public. Player ranks will only be uploaded to Steam’s servers if the player regains connection within the same game session (before exiting the game). If the system doesn’t blow up, we’ll unlock the ability to play offline for an extended period and then seamlessly push the locally stored stats to the online storage too.
Contextual hints
As a step towards making AFF more approachable we’ve implemented a system of hints popping up on screen when their context is relevant. They explain various game mechanics and give basic advice on how to use different features. Each will show up once and they can be disabled in options.
Of course last time we’ve mentioned even more updates but it seems we just can’t get another patch out quicker than in two months. So let’s just assume the next big update will come in ~2 months and if it comes out earlier it’ll be a pleasant surprise ;)
Oh, also coincidentally there's a sale going on now, grab AFF at 40% off!
Respawns will now happen in soft-waves, so you shouldn't end up respawning solo as much anymore
If a bot dies while their squadleader is dead, they will wait to respawn alongside the squadleader
If AI were last tasked to follow their squadleader before (s)he was killed, or while (s)he is dead, the order will now be re-applied once the squadleader respawns if it makes sense
Bots will now crouch more sensibly when defending a spot for a while
Bots following a player will now try not to get in the way of the player’s gunfire a bit better, especially when the player is in a turret
AI should now be able to properly dock with any friendly station/ship to reach their target
Improved flying and dogfighting trajectories for fighters and capital ships
Bots will now always sprint if following someone driving a vehicle
Cheapest vehicles in Territories (corvettes, Hare and Silverback) will no longer incur a score penalty for the team when lost
Improved hip-fire spread recovery rate on the GU34 and the FKR
Corrected fighters’ and some land vehicles’ fire-rate and accuracy to be as expected
Homing missiles will now follow a direct path to the target instead of predicting and often oversteering
Flamethrowers and napalm droplets from incendiary nades exploding mid-air now pass through shields
Underbarrel flamethrower damage increased by 15%
Heavy and shotgun incendiary rounds now properly damage destroyables (droppods, console etc.) as intended
Tweaked how much destroy objectives’ health scales with playercounts, fixed inconsistencies in hackspike hitpoints across the maps
Khamun’s bridge spawnpoint moved, plus various improvements to interior collision
Fortress updates:
- Improvements to AI pathing, both on foot and in vehicles
- The spawn-protection should now properly trigger on/off on stage progressions
- A lot of collision improvements (rocks, consoles, buildings, machinery near Objective B)
- All the small wall segments have been made more accessible, and have received strategic sandbags to make them less tedious to utilize
- Various small fortifications have been added near Phase 3 AIA spawn
- Right wall section have gotten more cover and a tower leading up to it, to make it play a bigger part in Phase 3
- Many objects have changed color to fit AIA imagery better, ULA-looking tech was also purged from the facility
Disabled the up-righting flip on gunships - they can be rolled while piloting anyway
Implemented AFK management behaviour for servers. Default behaviour is display a warning to a player after 60 seconds of inactivity, which also makes the player auto-vote for votes. After 90s the player will be moved to spectators.
Kick reasons should now be properly displayed on client
Wheeled vehicles should no longer occasionally make the “tyre squeal” sound when standing still
Added vehicle spotting callout - on the TacMap, you can click a vehicle to call them out for your team. Your squad will always get these messages. Nearby teammates will as well.
Squad callouts now sound slightly more radio-like. Same effect is applied when piloting a ship
Killcam should be more reliable now
Spawnpoints and warp-beacons now turn red in the UI if there are more hostiles than friendlies near them. Their name will get (CAUTION) appended as well. This is to help you know if you are spawning into danger or not.
If low on ammunition, friendly spawnpoints will now show up on the HUD as resupply points
Added a warning for leaving online matches before finished, notifying you that your stats may not be saved if something goes wrong
Toggle HUD (bound to F5 by default), is now a three-way function: first it hides the HUD, then it hides hands/gun, and then it restores both. When in a vehicle, the step of hiding the gun is skipped.
Lean left/right can now be used to rotate the tacmap left/right. If sprint key is held as modifier, it will rotate up/down instead.
All the comm-role-style wheels (command, vehicle, broadcast and confirm) can now be used while the TacMap is open in the command mode. Tapping any of the comm-rose keys will toggle between command and redeploy modes of the TacMap
On TacMap, the button to swap between command and redeploy modes will also change colour when you are able to respawn like the deploy button does when it’s visible
TacMap will only auto-open after the intro scene of the map. After this, a prompt will appear when you are ready to respawn
Accepting vehicle drop reward is now possible from the B-menu when dead but able to respawn already
Flashlight will no longer light own weapon/hands
AI should no longer get stuck on an order, if their squadleader was human but became a bot (due to the player changing squads/becoming commander/stepping down/ leaving the game)
Re-enabled correct delay before an LZ becomes available for re-capture. Should now have a 180s delay before becoming available again in Territories
Fixed a crash caused by AI trying to navigate while thinking they have negative radius. That diet must’ve been super-effective.
Fixed performance hitches caused by bots trying really hard to respawn during the briefing phase
Fixed vehicles glitching out at droppod locations before the droppod appears
Fixed an issue with long briefings sometimes throwing the AI commander initially off
Fixed an issue where weapons might end up mis-positioned after a bobbing animation plays
Fixed underslung shield incorrectly resetting its regeneration delay every time the weapon returns to the default state - i.e. after firing, after reload etc.
Fixed an issue where friendlies could trigger “under attack” status on destroy objectives by shooting them
Fixed icons on command-wheel not properly showing the weight of each squadleader
Fixed respawning not resetting currently tagged target correctly
For feedback, or just a lovely chat with the devs, post on AFF's Steam forums or contact us directly through our Discord!
Onwards and upwards!
Update 22 hotfix #3
Hey there AFF Community!
Turns out one more intermediate patch is very much in order. With the previous update for the first time in AFF history we’ve introduced a major crash to the game. Not a terrible statistic perhaps but we’re truly sorry nonetheless, was a nasty memory-management/packaging bug and took us a good chunk of Easter to fix. Should be taken care of now and we’re throwing in a bunch of other improvements and tweaks to the game too.
Changelog:
Fixed a crash affecting both servers and client, primarily on the space maps but really whenever something referenced one of the game’s internal packages
Fixed various issues with LZs not behaving properly in territories
Fixed damage scaling being incorrectly applied to fighters, dropships and deployables
Fixed issue with command callouts (such as 'move to this position') not playing the associated sound cue properly
Fixed display issue with phase x of y being zero-indexed on the faction selection screen
Destroyable objects (droppods, consoles) tweaked to be slightly more resistant vs bullets (but not vs AV weaponry) and have a little less total health
Added config for disabling bot callouts entirely from chat (see AFFComms.ini if you really want to, will be exposed in the menus later on)
Increased railbarrel mod’s penalty to accuracy
Fortress updates:
- Added more cover near AIA spawn and additional pathway into the Objective B warehouse
- Rearranged cover near the warehouse to force ULA players on “the wall” to expose themselves more to fire to be able to shoot at Objective B
- Added more cover near ULA spawn
Tannhauser updates:
- Raised out-of-bounds volume further
- Fixed missing collision on rings around the rail launcher, capacitor rings, lift trolley and improved collision on some ramps
Fixed various collision issues near ULA spawn in Yin Tao Shan Territories
Fixed rooftop ramp collision near Objective C in Irega Incursion
Fixed missing collision on tyres and rocks in Igneous
For feedback, or just a lovely chat with the devs, post on AFF's Steam forums or contact us directly through our Discord!
Onwards and upwards!
Update 22 hotfix #2 AKA we should really number those things more sensibly
Hey there AFF Community!
We’ve just released a few more tweaks to the last update.
Changelog:
Fixed misbehaving packages causing server crashes
Fixed issue where non-existent chatbox would capture player input
Fixed issues with weapon lock getting lost very easily, especially on infantry guns (RID, MLI), and improved the prioritization of lock targets
Fixed Anaster's skybox
Temporarily removed some of the extended parts of the AIA briefingroom but fixed a bunch of collision issues and added grenade and deployable pickups across both briefingrooms
Tweaked RID and MLI lock times to be shorter, lowered RID damage slightly
Corrected a couple of pathing- and collision-related issues in Ixion
Improved and optimized the netcode behind comms (text and audio callouts)
Improved prioritization of callout audio, plus squad callouts should be always heard regardless of distance
Increased underbarrel shield regeneration delays
Increased heavy plasma projectile velocity, walked back capital ship railgun damage buff a bit
Capital ships and vehicle now generally more sturdy against rail, heavy plasma and explosion damage
Added “player left the game” messages to the chat
Removed extra brackets from vehicle drop HUD prompt
Unfudged a couple of damage multipliers applied to vehicles
Tweaked the smaller variants of capital ship ions, to have proper DPS in the new balance of things
For feedback, or just a lovely chat with the devs, post on AFF's Steam forums or contact us directly through our Discord!
