Game Version 3801 (16th of March, 2024)

The first development iteration of 2024 is here!

There’s a lot of goodies in this iteration. Most notably this developers iteration is also soaked with various balance changes. From 2024 and onwards we no longer have separate development and balance patches.

The in-game changelog will no longer include all the details of the changes. You can find the complete changelog on Github. You can use the button in the bottom-left corner of this dialog to immediately jump to details of the changes of the selected game version.

With gratitude to all those who took the time to contribute,

Jip

One does wonder - how did we jump from game version 3780 to 3801? The answer is simple - we did a whoopsie and pushed game version 3800 instead of 3780 to the FAF Develop game type. Now, it won’t update the game type unless the game version is equal or more than 3800. As game version 3800 is already occupied we now have game version 3801.

Bug Fixes

  • (#5897) Fix wrecks that sink to end up below the terrain.

  • (#5896) Fix Corona and Swiftwind being unable to hit landed air units.

  • (#5888) Prevent the player from gaining veterancy by killing allied units.

  • (#5880) Fix strategic missile launchers losing progress when adjacency changes.

  • (#5878) Fix the Volcano being able to redirect strategic missiles.

  • (#5879) Fix various air units when landed being impossible to hit with non-splash weaponry.

  • (#5931) Fix the bug related to capture time and costs for factories that are building units.

    The unit they were constructing would inflate the capture time and cost of the factory itself.

  • (#5958, #5979) Fix projectiles of the Fatboy and SACUs with their respective range upgrades running out of lifetime before impact.

  • (#5945) Fix the Seraphim Tech 3 Submarine Hunter not being recognized in a formation

  • (#5941, #5972, #5959) Fix collision shapes of various units

    This reduces the chance that beam weapons miss.

  • (203f8c9) Fix the game producing invalid JSON that is used by achievements

Balance

  • (#5898) Rework projectile counts on torpedo bombers.

    The projectile count was excessive and a large quantity of torpedo bombers could consume a significant chunk of the available budget for the simulation. At the same time we increase the projectile count of the Solace to make it less susceptible by torpedo defenses.

    • Solace (XAA0306): increase salvo size from 4 to 5 but keep the same total damage output
    • Skimmer (UAA0204): reduce salvo size from 5 to 4
    • Stork (UEA0204): reduce salvo size from 5 to 4
    • Cormorant (URA0204): reduce salvo size from 5 to 4
    • Uosioz (XSA0204): reduce salvo size from 5 to 2

    Note that the projectile of the Uosioz splits upon impacting the water and therefore the actual projectile count is 6.

    Additionally, the Solace’s MaxRadius and MuzzleSalvoDelay are reduced to decrease the likelihood of it dropping its torpedoes over terrain. Its RateOfFire and BreakOffDistance stats are increased to prevent it from sometimes failing to drop its payload, or dropping it on top of or behind ships. Effective DPS stays roughly the same.

    • Solace (XAA0306): reduce its range from 32 to 26; reduce its MuzzleSalvoDelay from 0.4 to 0.2; increase it’s BreakOffDistance from 42 to 44; decrease its reload time from 12.5 down to 10 seconds.

  • (#5910) Adjust the pathfinding behavior of the Blaze

    The main weapon is now a turret like the majority of the units. As a result the weapon no longer negatively influences the pathfinding behavior of the unit. To compensate the hitpoints of the Blaze is reduced from 1100 to 1000.

  • (#5884) The Chrono Dampener enhancement can now fire while being underwater

  • (#5916, #5979, #5978) Improve the targeting behavior of the Ythotha and the Fatboy

    Both units will better align to targets to maximize the use of their weaponry.

  • (#5764, #5954, #5963) Change the reverse behavior of a wide range of units

    In an attempt to improve the general pathfinding of the game, a lot more units can move now move backwards for small distances.

    In addition to gaining the ability to move backwards, the Seraphim Tech 2 Sonar gets its TurnRate stat tripled from 20 to 60 (Tech 3 Sonars have 100), and its movement speed increased by 12%, as it was very sluggish to use.

  • (#5944) Increase the maintenance cost of Cybran Superiority Fighters

    Costs are increased from 25 to 30 to align with the cost increase of the previous balance patch.

  • (#5947) Unfinished structures and experimentals no longer create a wreck

Features

  • (#5475, #5907, #5904, #5900) Variable teleport duration and costs.

    Teleport duration and energy costs now increase as you’re trying to jump further. The minimum is a duration of 15 seconds at a cost of 5.000 energy per second. The maximum is a duration of 50 seconds at a cost of 50.000 energy per second. The maximum can only be reached on maps of size 40x40 or larger.

    This is implemented as an alternative to a maximum teleport range. This implementation still allows people to jump as far as they wish but they’re naturally constrained by their own economy.

    The expected costs of the teleport are displayed next to the cursor when you’re trying to issue a teleport order. This uses the distance from the world position of the cursor to the unit. When you hold shift it instead uses the distance from the world position of the cursor to the last move and/or teleport order of the unit.

  • (#5860) Further improve the context-based templates feature.

    You can now cycle through templates of a given context in the following order:

    • (1) The build context.
    • (2) The build order the cursor is hovering over.
    • (3) The unit the cursor is hovering over.
    • (4) The deposit the cursor is hovering over.
    • (5) The layer (land/water) the cursor is hovering over.

    The templates you are cycling through are now preserved until you exit command mode. That means once you enter command mode by cycling you keep on cycling through the same templates.

  • (#5846, #5915) Further improvements to the behavior of tactical missiles.

    A single (non-aeon) tactical missile defense can now protect itself against a missile with 2 hit points again. In general Aeon, UEF and Cybran missiles have a reduced velocity. The Seraphim missiles still have the same velocity, but decrease in velocity as they get closer to the target.

  • (#5923) Add the ability to load into transports by right clicking the transport button.

    This triggers the same behavior as the ‘Load into transports’ hotkey.

Graphics

  • (#5887, #5914, #5892, #5890, #5953) Significant improvements to the graphics of the various UEF units.

    With thanks to Ajamajan the Mongoose, Frigate and Destroyer finally received the attention that they need. The quality of the textures of the first level of detail (LOD0) have improved significantly and the units are now visually on-par with the rest of the UEF arsenal.

  • (#5911) Improve the effects surrounding Seraphim torpedo’s.

    The split effect is now applied when Seraphim torpedo’s split.

    Seraphim stationary torpedo defenses now drop their torpedo’s into the water instead of them flying across the water surface.

  • (#5970, #5960) Update the impact effects of various tactical missiles.

    All significant tactical missiles now have separate faction-specific effects from insignificant tactical missiles. This makes it easier to understand the origin of the tactical missile. Significant tactical missiles also have a larger strategic icon (4 pixels instead of 1 or 2). The Billy has a new, unique strategic icon.

AI

  • (#5866) Fix submarines surfacing when leaving the factory.

  • (#5872) Improve the behavior surrounding AI rating.

    They are now taking into account when computing the game quality.

  • (#5861) Reduce the overhead of various navigational functions.

  • (#5863) Add an alternative, more detailed version of computing valid nearby positions.

Other Changes

  • (#5865, #5929, #5934, #5938, #5936, #5937, #5935, #5928, #5930,

  • #5942, #5966, #5968, #5969, #5965, #5967, #5964) Update the categories of various units.

    These are used by key bindings and the UI to understand what the units are capable of.

  • (#5870, #5858, #5881) Improve the descriptions of a wide range of units.

  • (#5939) Improve the naming scheme of all UEF drones and update their descriptions and Tech levels.

  • (#5873) Reduce the lifetime of scorchmarks created by forest fires.

    They would previously last between 300 to 90.000 seconds. They now last between 60 to 120 seconds.

  • (#5864) Fix the pin feature of the minimap not being stored in the preference file.

  • (#5875) The upgraded kennel can now be drag-build when spawning it in via the cheat menu.

  • (#5921) Align the target priorities of the Continental with other similar weapons.

  • (#5871) Fix a framerate drop when selecting units.

    This was most notable for players with many user-made build templates. All the user-made build templates would be deep copied for each new selection. The average user-made build template easily has a footprint of several kilobytes in memory. With all the user-made build templates combined it could rack up to a megabyte worth of copied memory.

    The solution was to cache the templates so that they are only allocated once.

  • (#5852) The first decimal place of damage values are now visible in unit tooltips.

  • (#5849) Small tweaks to the Salvation to match the (visual) properties of other artillery.

  • (#5943) The Novax Satalite System is no longer disabled when air is restricted.

    The Novax Satalite System can be restricted separately.

  • (#5980) Reduce the logging of enabled UI mods.

    Especially UI mods with (large) changelogs would cause (a large) stutter in the first two seconds of the game.

  • (#5845) Improve the testing suite to check for (in)valid rate of fire values.

    This is to guarantee that when the rate of fire values are tweaked that they always represent the actual value that the game will use.

Contributors

With thanks to the following people who contributed through coding:

  • Basilisk3
  • Clyfordv (clyf)
  • Jip
  • lL1l1
  • Relent0r
  • apollodeathstar
  • Rowey

With thanks to the following people who contributed through binary patches:

  • Hdt80bro
  • Kionx
  • RutreD

With thanks to the following individuals who contributed through model, texture, and effect changes:

  • Ajamajan

And, last but certainly not least - with thanks to those that took part in constructive discussions:

  • ZLO
  • Farms
  • Sladow