What is up Depthians! Exciting news – the long-awaited fire update has arrived in the stable branch! Now, alongside flamers, incendiary options for CRAM, APS, missiles, and even lasers are at your disposal.
As we dive into this blazing update, let's extend a warm welcome to four talented programmers joining our team! And before we ignite into showcasing the new features, we must express our deepest gratitude to our player base and the special community that supports us. We extend heartfelt thanks to Kap, also known as neekap, for crafting stunning new load screens, and to JustAWrench, Kev1n, Hawkins656, ApertureGaming and Lathland for presenting some epic clips that captures some fiery battles. We recognize the considerable effort involved in setting up these clips in-game, capturing angles, scenes, and the meticulous editing process. Rorsten will also be streaming at 2pm-5:30pm EDT to showcase and answer any questions about fire mechanics. Link to Rorstens Twitch https://www.twitch.tv/rorstenvt
On to this hot fiery update! Fires inflict continuous damage and often pack more raw power than high-explosive rounds. They prove particularly effective against fast-moving targets above water, although their efficiency diminishes underwater. Additionally, fires weaken enemy armor, making them ripe for subsequent assaults.
You can now monitor fire activity on your or your enemy's vessel by pressing "V" while targeting and accessing the Fires tab, which displays active fires, remaining fuel, and oxidizer levels.
Utilize the debug fire tool by pressing "Z," selecting "debug fire," and then choosing a slot in your tool belt (Designer mode).
For convenience, customize the fire debug tool settings by selecting it in your tool belt and pressing the right mouse button to access further adjustments.
Flamers, being cost-effective and compact, lack effective countermeasures. However, their short range and gradual damage via fire ignition are notable drawbacks.
Furthermore, lasers now possess the ability to ignite blocks, and fire size adjustment is achievable with the Superheating Module. CRAMS now have Incendiary pellets, APS has been given Incendiary head and body modules, Missiles have also been given Incendiary modules. All except lasers can have incendiary and oxidizer adjusted.
Stay vigilant and adapt your strategies to harness the power of this fiery update!
Changelog
Fires
Added fires. A fire is a group of cells that take damage over time. Cells below the waterline are extinguished
Fire damage taken reduces the armor value of blocks, to a minimum of 1. X% total health taken as fire damage = (1-X)% armor left
Fires spread when they destroy blocks, or if they have lots of fuel relative to their size
Fires have 3 properties: fuel, intensity and oxidizer
Fuel determines how much total damage a fire can do. The baseline is 1 fuel = 1 damage
Intensity determines how much fuel/s a fire uses for every burning cell, and reduces the damage reduction of fire resistant materials. Fuel used/sec/burning cell is 1.5 * INTENSITY
Oxidizer doubles the armor reduction effect of fires (50% fire damage taken reduces every block to 1 armor), and makes it possible for them to burn under water
At 20 intensity 1 oxidizer is used for every 4 fuel over water, 1 oxidizer for every 2 fuel below water. Every 10 intensity increase also increases oxidizer use by 1/3 of the base
Blocks have 2 new properties: fire resistance and flammability
A fire with intensity below the block's fire resistance does reduced damage to that block. Damage multiplier: (INTENSITY - RESISTANCE * 0.15) / (RESISTANCE * 0.85), 0-1 range.
Blocks with flammability above 0 add fuel to the fire for every unit of fuel used. Intensity of the fuel added is the block's fire resistance
Wood has 10 resist and 80% flammability, 1 cell taking damage from a 100 fuel, 50 intensity fire: 25+60=85 fuel left, new total intensity is ~21.76
Blocks generally have 10-60 fire resist, and 0-80% flammability
High speed fans the flames, increasing fire damage done/fuel
Big fires choke themselves out, reducing damage done/fuel. Reduction starts at 5000 total burning cells on a vehicle, minimum efficiency is 30% of the original.
Added incendiary bodies to APS and missiles and incendiary pellets to CRAM. Their intensity range is 20-40, and they can also pack oxidizer
APS and missile impacts ignite a fire around the explosion point
Fires have an IR signature, a function of total fuel and intensity. IR guidance and AI hot point targeting can target individual fires
A burning block colliding with another construct spreads the fire to it
Added a tab to the V menu showing all the active fires on that vehicle/structure
Added a designer-only character item for igniting fires
Destroying fuel tanks ignites fires, fuel of the fire depends on the fuel level of the vehicle. Intensity is 20
Destroying steam boilers and controllers creates fires, and weaker explosions. Intensity is 20, fuel is a function of the steam in the boiler chain
Flamers
New weapon system: flamers
Flamers use fuel, and ignite fires at short range. Cheap and compact for the firepower
Flame speed is ~300 m/s, maximum range is ~400m
2 main block variants, both 1x1x4m beams: connection point in the back with +-35° azi and elevation range, connection point at the bottom with 360° azi and -10° to 89° elevation range
Pipes connect the main blocks to tanks
3 tank types: fuel, oxidizer and catalyst. They increase fuel/oxidizer throughput and intensity
Intensity without catalyst tanks is 20. 2:1 fuel:catalyst tank ratio is 30 intensity, 1:2 is 50, ...
2 tank sizes: 1x1x1 and 1x3x3. Smaller tanks are more compact and more expensive for the firepower
Tanks can be chained, they can only connect to tanks of the same size and type
Destroying flamer tanks ignites fires
Tank lines have to be pressurized by adding compressors to their end
Compressors use power, and have a variable power use
Flamer pressure is the weighted average of the pressure of individual tank lines. Lower pressure means slightly lower range
Lasers
Lasers have intensity instead of AP, and they are mitigated by fire resistance instead of armor. Damage multiplier is RESIST / INTENSITY, capped at 1
Lasers ignite fires when they destroy blocks. Fuel of the fire is determined by flammability of the blocks destroyed, intensity by fire resistance
Laser base damage is reduced to 50%, and smoke/shield reduction is much weaker
Laser damage counts as fire damage, also reduces armor of the blocks damaged
Laser fires don't add any oxidizer
New laser component: superheating modulator. Can be placed on combiners, reduces base damage to a minimum of 75% and increases fuel of fires ignited to a maximum of 250%
Short range combiner ranges from 100-500 to 150-600
Misc
Wood base health up from 180 to 200
Impact damage gets the same boost as explosions under water
Local weapon controllers now have an alternate mode, they can control weapons up to 4 cells away in 2 directions
Steam pipe durability increased
Propeller hub overlay is only displayed in build mode
Increased particle cannon damage output by ~4.2%
Added target prioritisation options for plasma and flamer firepower
APS projectiles have 20% more health
APS flak damage reduced by ~11%
APS flak warhead renamed to munition defense warhead, flak damage to anti-munition damage
Missile interceptors do 20% reduced damage to projectiles under water
Maximum turbocharger power/fuel bonus up by ~11%
Limited maximum ring shield destruction energy to EFFECTIVE_AREA * 3000 (intensity is unchanged, 6)
Alpha 4.0.3.1
What is up Depthians!
A couple of changes and fixes for the current Alpha branch.
Changelog
Changes
AI
Added target prioritisation options for plasma and flamer firepower
Fire
Oxidizer-efficiency at 40 intensity compared to 20 down from 66% to 50%
Projectiles with 20->40 fire intensity get 20->0% extra fuel and oxidizer. Fire damage modifier back to (INTENSITY - RESISTANCE * 0.15) / (RESISTANCE * 0.85)
Fixes
APS
Added incendiary parameters in the shell customizer for incendiary head
CRAM
Fixed incendiary pellets not contributing to shell health and kinetic damage
Fire
Fixed (mainly small) fires possible not spreading to the parent construct if they kill the subconstruct's root block
Fixed a problem causing fires to spread back from subconstructs to possibly far away parts(around 0,0,0) of the parent
Flamer
Fixed flamer main blocks causing problems when the vehicle is destroyed
Tank connection markers correctly show which direction they can send and receive connections from
Alpha 4.0.2 Update
What is up Depthians! We are pleased to introduce Incendiary pellets for CRAMs, as well as a number of changes and fixes.
Added incendiary pellets to CRAMs. Intensity and oxidizer content can be changed in the cannon's Q menu
Removed minimum caliber needed for incendiary bodies. Turns out igniting fires is fast even at RPMs in the 1000s
Added incendiary head to APS shells
AI hot point targeting can target fires (could already do it in previous versions, was missing from the changelog)
Small flamer tanks only get 75% fuel/catalyst/oxidizer for every material spent compared to large
Cargo container health from 8100 to 15000, armor from 7 to 5, flammability from 60 to 200%, fire resistance from 10 to 20
Improved performance for igniting fires
Made projectiles with a strong incendiary component much more consistent in finding blocks that are close enough to ignite
Various tooltip/UI fixes
Alpha 4.0.1 Update
What is up Depthians!
We hope you are all enjoying the new fire mechanics and incendiary rounds/modules.
If you do not know how to access the Alpha branch:
Right click From the Depths in your library list of games. Properties > Betas tab, look at the Betas participation menu and select alpha_test - alpha_test
Fire changes
Fire burn rate increased from 1 fuel/intensity to 1.5. Fires do damage faster
Fires spread when they have 10000 FUEL:CELL_COUNT ratio, instead of 7500. Fires are more localized
Fires need ~11% more fuel*intensity to be considered 1 firepower. This means APS and missile damage is increased
Block fire damage modifier is (INTENSITY - RESISTANCE * 0.1) / (RESISTANCE * 0.9). Was 0.15 and 0.85, low intensity fires are relatively stronger
Heavy armor fire resistance up from 50 to 60
Fixed non-heavy APS barrels having 10% flammability, down to 0%
Non-armored laser optic fire resistance down from 60 to 40
Fire efficiency reduction starts at 5000 total cells being on fire, and reaches 30% slower
Flamer changes
Added idle azimuth/elevation options for flamers
Increased flamer fuel and oxidizer output by 25%
Increased max rotation speed of flamer main parts from 60°/s to 75°/s
Removed steam connection for flamer tanks. Boilers are too compact for steam connections to be interesting without making flamer steam use too high, compressors are buffed instead
Flamer compressor power use depends on the amount of tanks they are connected to and the target range set for the flamer
S compressors only have 75% the power-efficiency of L ones
Compressor cost reduced to 50%
Flamer power use is generally low, extremely low when set to lower ranges(<300m range is mostly possible for visuals)
Other changes
Reduced minimum diameter needed for incendiary bodies from 195mm to 100mm
APS projectiles have 20% more health
Increased particle cannon damage output by ~4.2%
Flamer fixes
Fixed not being able to remove flamer main blocks when connection highlights are on
Fixed flamers possibly getting blocked by ground if the bottom of the jet touches it, instead of the top
Fixed a problem possibly making flamer hits very close to the ground not registering
Flamers now won't fire and display a warning when they have no fuel tanks
Fixed flamer particle effects flickering when fired from high speed vehicles
Fixed flamers not adding oxidizer when hitting targets beyond very short range
Other fixes
Fixed APS incendiary body tooltip not mentioning minimum diameter needed
Fixed EMP resistance on scented candles
Alpha Flamer Update 4.0
What is up Depthians! This update brings fires and incendiary weapons to From the Depths!
If you do not know how to access the Alpha branch: Right click From the Depths in your library list of games. Properties > Betas tab, look at the Betas participation menu and select alpha_test - alpha_test
Fires
Fires do damage over time and generally have more raw damage than HE. They are very strong against high speed vehicles outside water. Can still work, but are less efficient against strong materials and under water. Beyond doing damage fires also soften enemies up for other weapons: they reduce the armor of the blocks they damage. 2 small, but important balance changes worth noting: - to compensate for being very flammable wood got a small health boost - incendiary weapons are relatively weak against subs, so the underwater HE damage boost now also applies to all thump damage. More options for submarine hunting!
Added fires. A fire is a group of cells that take damage over time. Cells below the waterline are extinguished
Fire damage taken reduces the armor value of blocks, to a minimum of 1. X% total health taken as fire damage = (1-X)% armor left
Fires spread when they destroy blocks, or if they have lots of fuel relative to their size
Fires have 3 properties: fuel, intensity and oxidizer
Fuel determines how much total damage a fire can do. The baseline is 1 fuel = 1 damage
Intensity determines how much fuel/s a fire uses for every burning cell, and reduces the damage reduction of fire resistant materials
Oxidizer doubles the armor reduction effect of fires (50% fire damage taken reduces every block to 1 armor), and makes it possible for them to burn under water
At 20 intensity 1 oxidizer is used for every 4 fuel over water, 1 oxidizer for every 2 fuel below water. Every 10 intensity increase also increases oxidizer use by 1/3 of the base
Blocks have 2 new properties: fire resistance and flammability
A fire with intensity below the block's fire resistance does reduced damage to that block. Damage multiplier: (INTENSITY - RESISTANCE * 0.15) / (RESISTANCE * 0.85), 0-1 range.
Blocks with flammability above 0 add fuel to the fire for every unit of fuel used. Intensity of the fuel added is the block's fire resistance
Wood has 10 resist and 80% flammability, 1 cell taking damage from a 100 fuel, 50 intensity fire: 50+40=90 fuel left, new total intensity is ~32.22
Blocks generally have 10-60 fire resist, and 0-80% flammability
High speed fans the flames, increasing fire damage done/fuel
Big fires choke themselves out, reducing damage done/fuel. Reduction starts at 3000 total burning cells on a vehicle, minimum efficiency is 30% of the original.
Added incendiary bodies to APS and missiles. Their intensity range is 20-40, and they can also pack oxidizer
APS and missile impacts ignite a fire around the explosion point
Destroying fuel tanks ignites fires, fuel of the fire depends on the fuel level of the vehicle. Intensity is 20
Fires have an IR signature, a function of total fuel and intensity. IR guidance can lock onto individual fires
A burning block colliding with another construct spreads the fire to it
Added a tab to the V menu showing all the active fires on that vehicle/structure
Added a designer-only character item for igniting fires
Wood base health up from 180 to 200
Impact damage gets the same boost as explosions under water
Flamers
Flamers are very cheap, compact weapons and there is no active defense that works against them. Their main downsides are the short range and damage being done over time through the fires they ignite.
New weapon system: flamers
Flamers use fuel, and ignite fires at short range. Cheap and compact for the firepower
Flame speed is ~300 m/s, maximum range is ~400m
2 main block variants, both 1x1x4m beams: connection point in the back with +-35° azi and elevation range, connection point at the bottom with 360° azi and -10° to 89° elevation range
Pipes connect the main blocks to tanks
3 tank types: fuel, oxidizer and catalyst. They increase fuel/oxidizer throughput and intensity
Intensity without catalyst tanks is 20. 2:1 fuel:catalyst tank ratio is 30 intensity, 1:2 is 50, ...
2 tank sizes: 1x1x1 and 1x3x3. Smaller tanks are more compact and more expensive for the firepower
Tanks can be chained, they can only connect to tanks of the same size and type
Destroying flamer tanks ignites fires
Tank lines can be pressurized by adding compressors or steam pipe connections to their end
Compressors use power, and have a fixed throughput. Compressors can maintain lower pressure in long tank lines
Flamer pressure is the weighted average of the pressure of individual tank lines. Lower pressure means slightly lower range
Lasers
Fires were a good opportunity to spice lasers up: they now ignite fires on destroying flammable blocks! They also reduce armor on doing damage and instead of armor the fire resistance stats protects against them. Raw laser damage was cut in half to compensate, and smoke reduction is much weaker now. Overall lasers are weaker against most unprotected targets and do better against smoke. LAMS damage output is unaffected, damage against projectiles is the same as in older versions.
Lasers have intensity instead of AP, and they are mitigated by fire resistance instead of armor. Damage multiplier is RESIST / INTENSITY, capped at 1
Lasers ignite fires when they destroy blocks. Fuel of the fire is determined by flammability of the blocks destroyed, intensity by fire resistance
Laser base damage is reduced to 50%, and smoke/shield reduction is much weaker
Laser damage counts as fire damage, also reduces armor of the blocks damaged
Laser fires don't add any oxidizer
Short range combiner ranges from 100-500 to 150-600
Other changes
Local weapon controllers now have an alternate mode, they can control weapons up to 4 cells away in 2 directions
Steam pipe durability increased
Propeller hub overlay is only displayed in build mode
Hotfix
Candles are no longer EMP proof. Delay pulse fixed for when the second option in the dropdown is selected.
3.9.2 Update April Fools
What is up Depthians!
:candle: Update Alert: Introducing Lightning Hood Larry's Latest Creation - The Scented Candle! Hold onto your hats, adventurers! Lightning Hood Larry, famed inventor and fashionista extraordinaire, has unleashed his latest marvel upon Neter: the Scented Candle! Be prepared to embark on an olfactory journey like never before, as this revolutionary creation promises to tantalize your senses with delightful aromas. But beware - rumors swirl that these candles may have a trick or two up their sleeves... or wicks. For just 5 Neterbucks, you can bask in the glow of science and style, courtesy of Lightning Hood Larry. It's a deal too good to pass up!
There will be more hot stuff on the way...
Changelog
Additions
Candles
Added a range of beautiful smelling candles to the game to decorate your priceless wooden ships with.
Changes
Nuke
Added a new nuke effect to replace the old missing one.
Fixes
Breadboards
Delay pulse now activates and does a full countdown even if a 1 is no longer present but has been triggered once.
3.9.1 Hotfix
We've had to remove the video recording feature for Linux users as this isn't supported on Linux and was preventing an options menu from appearing. Sorry folks.
Two small additions: ACB controllers can now be read by Breadboard Getters. So button presses can execute breadboard functions. ACBs now have a readable variable to let the breadboard know if it's condition is met or not.
3.8.5 Hotfixes and material replacer addition
Fixes:
Tracers - Accounted for the addition of the new 3rd parameter in builtin shell designs. Accounted for legacy tracers being loaded in the new builds. (Tracers should now not default to 0.1 length.)
Smoke generator - Steam effect now correctly uses drag, gravity etc.
Additions:
Decorations/Mimics - Added the ability to swap decorations to different materials, and added an emissive-only material. (These materials will have better names in a future release.)
Stable 3.8.5 released
Hi everyone!
Following the Christmas update and some confusion regarding turrets and collisions Nick has spent a bit of time working on them. We are sorry this bug persisted and crept into builds as it did. A contractor and long time player was working on a bug relating to spinblocks and he disappeared, we've waited on him returning to fix things but he hasn't appeared back. We hope he is okay. This has resulted in Nick picking up the work and having to make the changes he did, though he has went further and improved subobject collision checking after reverting the changes in the previous patch. Here is a list of changes and clarifications in the recent update that I hope clears things up.
1. This only affects level 1 turrets, spinblocks and pistons. Once you go further than that you can clip as you always have so no this doesn't affect spin clipping. That is exactly as it always was.
2. As per the image below, if you are on a block causing a problem the green ring will show the radius of the check and the red part will show where the issue lies. If you need to check a subobject for collisions you can also use the tools in the shift + e advanced build tools menu and the debugger there for recording collisions.
3. As per the image below, slopes are now checked for more precisely. So instead of them being classed as a full block they are checked as they look. Some blocks such as intakes also have relaxed rules to allow turrets to turn as they did. It could be we've missed something with this so if you think another block needs this treatment please post in alphatest channel in the discord.
4. This also means you can now armour up your turret wells with slopes where they couldn't have went previously.
5. If you exploited the origin point of beams in order to place longer blocks where they shouldn't have been then you'll need to fix those. You can no longer exploit origin points.
Additions
APS Visible tracer - length multiplier now editable. Smoke generator - Added steam particle effect as an option.
Changes
Walkers - Stability will go no lower than 0.8 when a clamping foot is clamped. APS Ammo intake feeder - This is now fully modelled as an appropriately sized (small/simple) mesh for the purpose of the new turret rotation calculations.
Fixes
[Regression 3.8.3] Fixed an issue with 2 axis turret where the elevation axis would not move if the azimuth axis was not also moving. Pistons - Piston collision check for slopes / corners / plates added, as per turrets and spinners. Pistons - Piston collision checks now cached for performance improvement. Turrets/Spinners - Slight performance improvement when rechecking collision checks after sustaining/repairing damage.
[Neter] Excruciator (WF): Entirely overhauled; a high-speed battleship armed with multiple railguns to live up to its name. Godly difficulty, adventure difficulty 60 Spectre (SS): Duplicated text removed from lore. Damacy (GT): Replaced missing block and fixed material allocation. Glaukos (GT): Fixed random out-of-place blocks, added ball turret mounts to S missile turrets, smoothed some of the structure, painted "The One" deco block. Corsair (DWG): Updated propeller logic to lessen chances of pitching and flipping. Lamprey (GT): Deco fix for rail magnets. Parallax (SD): Remade and reintroduced; a fast spacecraft which delivers two huge missiles at larger targets, uses a weak laser to swat smaller targets. Medium difficulty, adventure difficulty 50. Carnage (SD): Aesthetic improvements, including gimbal thrusters.
[AotE] Sentinel (OW): Fixed turret rotation, internally overhauled, AI tweaks, and rear was redesigned. Longhorn (OW): Re-enabled spawning in adventure. This was intended sooner and was missed.) Overseer (OW): Overhauled and reintroduced to the active roster. Does it fire a massive cannon shell, or is it a missile? You decide!
[Glao] Obsidian (OFD): New plane which replaces the Bomber; a compact plane with a wavy movement pattern with missile arrays and an underslung turreted cannon. Quartz (OFD): New thrustercraft; similar in appearance to the Emerald, but goes all in on a powerful frontal plasma cannon. Conqueror (GI): New thrustercraft; a cannon-focused brute that outlasts foes with its heavy frontal armor and delivers a kinetic barrage in return. Gladiator (GI): New thrustercraft; similar in appearance to the Conqueror but sacrifices some of its cannon power for missile arrays.
Fixed turret rotation issues introduced from recent patch for the following designs: Longhorn (OW, AotE) Lucerne (OW, AotE) Chorus (WF) Longinus (WF) Purifier (WF) Redeemer (WF) Retaliator (WF) Slasher (WF) Thrasher (WF) Angstrom (LH) Atriedes (SE, AotE) Scarab (SE, AotE)
