NEW MODE

Push deep into enemy lines, supporting 'Nomad' against waves of defenders in the Altus F/X prototype.

In Spearhead, you go up against 29 random enemy formations in succession, before reaching the final encounter with a secret weapon. Using the new upgrade module is essential to keep up against increasingly dangerous waves- you're free to experiment with different perk combinations, powering up any of the Altus and its carrier's attributes, as well as being able to lean on special perk effects, such as the risky CRISIS TRIGGER state. 

There are many encounters new to AWE that can pan out in this mode, mostly from putting assets with minor roles in existing missions into new scenarios.

• Added N-262 ‘Abrax’
  • A lightning quick interceptor, that relentlessly pursues its prey with high velocity laser cannons. An extension of the ‘Asag’ design with an elongated hull, shield generator, and non-detachable wings, the bulkier components are more mostly offset by a stronger engine.
  • It's much faster to accelerate than anything else in game, but loses out on manoeuvrability compared to the N-163.

Visual update

After experimenting with it in a few select scenarios including the screenshot map used for the loading screen, I decided to bring bloom effects into the main game.

To go along with this, I've revised basically all of the game's VFX- afterburners have greater intensity, expressed by brighter colours and opaque 'flames'. Bloom looks fantastic with laser projectiles, and makes the new explosive death animations for capital ships hit even harder. I've avoided using it for a while from disliking seeing it overused in certain games, but I think I've found a really nice balance for it in AWE. Oh, and it's used on a few menu elements too, for some lovely, glowy buttons.

One more thing, I also got around to adding arcing lightning effects for damaged ships, something I've been looking forward to for a while!

(I probably need more time to get screenshots together to properly show off the best of the new graphics)

Asset changes

For Spearhead, there have been a lot of changes to the mechanics, behaviour and aesthetics of existing ships, so this is getting its own section. Individual changes are covered by the bullet points, but I'll sum up some of the broader stuff here.

AI across the board has been improved- even the static assets get a bit of love with range increases, and a significant bug fix. 

For fighters, if you fought Asags in previous versions, you may have noticed a possible tendency for them to start spinning rapidly, seemingly without any intention of taking back control. That's finally fixed now, and their dogfighting abilities have also been improved, so AI fighters are better at keeping up with an experienced player in turns. Additionally, unpredictable motions have been trimmed out of the AI's non evasive state, so they are easier to shoot down in general. 

Capital ships can do more under AI control now, like moving to an objective, and spreading distinct parts of their arsenal to take on different targets. This was important to get down for the Spearhead mode, where capital ships are more involved and I didn't want it to feel as demo-y as the engagement in the ??? scenario.

Mechanics-wise, there are shot velocity increases near across the board, which has become pretty standard procedure for AWE updates at this point...

Still, this time around, I had more time to experiment with higher shot velocities when testing Spearhead's upgrade module and adding the Abrax fighter, which was supposed to have the highest shot velocity in its class. In the end, these are the highest shot velocities AWE has seen in a release, so my mentality's flipped on this issue a fair bit.

It may not have been that noticeable from afar, but in the previous versions, box turrets had some pretty strange visual behaviour! This has been fixed now, and the tower/surface turrets have had slight design changes to make the new barrel movement look better with those designs as well.

Specifics

• Altus F.2
  • Increased laser cannon muzzle velocity from 550->640m/s. Muzzle velocity for the AI variant was previously 300m/s, this now uses the same value.
  • Changed score values from defaults- Alti now score in at 40 per hit, and 350 for all kill types.
  • Added white variant
  • Fixed soft crash when an Altus explodes before the player ejee
    
  • Fixed z-fighting issues with SGP Gunpods
  • Fixed visual issues with shot trails in third person
• Falchion-Class
  • Increased survivability: Shields 800->1400U, Hull 1600->2600U
  • Increased navigation scale from 14-18, smaller AI craft will take greater priority in getting out of a carrier's way now.
  • Added afterburner effect to stern engines (previously only frontal thrusters had this effect)
  • Added explosive destruction sequence
  • Added more polygons to start smoothing out the side engines.
• Excavator B.6
  • Changed score values from defaults- bombers now score in at 40 per hit, 250 for a gun kill and 270 for other kill types
  • Increased AI salvo firing range from 1800->2400m
  • Added white variant
• Sensor Probe
  • Increased AI targeting range to 520m (was a bit above 400m before)
    
  • Added long range variant with 1200m targeting range
• G-110
  • Increased gyro turret muzzle velocity from 200->260m/s
• N-163 ‘Asag’
  • Increased laser cannon muzzle velocity from 400->480m/s
  • Fixed the player N-163 having a lower fire rate than the AI controlled variants. Player variant fires 32% faster now.
    • Notably, this would make it seem like dying increases your fire rate, as after death you would move over to an AI variant with the standard fire rate.
  • Fixed bug causing stabiliser strength to increase when activated subsequently. Manoeuvring should be much less dependent on toggling off the stabiliser and make aiming easier
• Surface turret
  • Fixed barrel rotating independently of turret section
  • Added slit for vertical barrel traversal
  • Increased shot velocity from 400->600m/s for the compact variant, and 800->950m/s for the tower variant
  • Reload time increased from 2->2.5s for the tower variant
• Chandrasekhar
  • Added AI functionality for aiming and operating the chin mounted guns
  • Revised texture and optimized model
• Point defence cannon
  • Fixed several issues with targeting when mounted both on the Falchion-Class and Chandrasekhar
  • The beams deal half damage against shields to be both lore accurate, and weaken them against the player and any other shielded fighters that are taking on capital ships
  • Now reload twice as quickly after interdicting a missile
• Universal / Miscellaneous
  • Changed laser damage formula again- the 1.25x multiplier from overcharge is now applied to the entire base damage value, instead of just half that value (for equivalent 1.125x multiplier)

    
    

    •  In an Altus F/X with a single laser damage upgrade in Spearhead, you can 1 shot a sensor probe with 100% weapon energy or higher.
  •  Afterburner effects now scale with throttle input, and create more light, leading to the return of thrust-dependent cockpit lighting.

Other changes

There are likely many changes that I didn't document and forgot to add to these patch notes, but here's a summary of everything else (mostly bug fixes) that's changed from v0.29:

• Debriefings
  • Fixed debriefing combat log showing death cause as ‘critical reactor overheat’, when something else caused crippling damage before reactor overheating.
  • Fixed combat log referencing collision source as 'Unknown Target' instead of 'an asteroid' etc.
  • Changed combat log point defence death reference from "{Ship} '{Callsign}' destroyed by pointDefence" to "{Ship} '{Callsign}' destroyed by point defence interdiction from Chandraskehar Battlecruiser"
  • Added debriefing to Strike
    
  • Fixed default text in Course 2 debriefing
• Audio
  • Fixed many audio balancing and priority issues, large explosions and shot impacts should stick out more now
  • Fixed music not starting in Sabotage after exiting the hangar
    
  • Fixed shield damage sound playing when taking heat damage
• Fixed text box layout issues in briefings
  
• Fixed speed effects still displaying after death
• Fixed a bug causing shots to exist forever after getting stuck
• Fixed many issues with radar scope displays
• Fixed a bug that could cause death switch to give you a limited spectator view, instead of taking control of an AI craft
• Increased grade requirements for Asag, S Rank requirement increased from 3500->6600. Excavators and Alti score a lot more now, so the default grade requirements are far too low compared to the scores you can easily get in this mission.
• Removed hologram target from Sabotage
  
• Reduced the time any asteroid fragments will remain after being shattered.
  
• Changed default graphics preset from Very Low to Medium
• Main Menu
  • Fixed issues with incorrect button hover behaviour when moving the mouse quickly
  • Added stretch in/out effect to button hover summary text