2.4.7.16

What is up all you awesome people! It is finally here, the update most of us have been waiting for and talking about: The Laser Rework! And an epically long list of bug fixes, tweaks and other additions to From The Depths. We have also switched up a number of UI elements and many new icons giving From The Depths a fresh look that even the White Flayers were over the moon and sacrificing mainframes with joy! 

We do understand that this new look may not be everyone’s cup of tea and as always, we are here listening (reading) and paying attention to concerns, dislikes and welcome any awesome suggestions you guys have to improve any aspect of From The Depths. 
Before we continue, we would like to thank you all for your support, suggestions and bug reporting. 
We have overhauled the lasers which has been discussed since May, so if you missed that you can find it here. If you did miss it and feel like you’ve missed your chance to voice your ideas on the whole thing, then perhaps you should visit the main forum a little more 😀
However, as I’ve already said we are here, reading and waiting for your feedback. 

While our current installed laser systems will show less damage output per shot (DON’T PANIC!), lasers are also using less energy per shot, meaning we can trim down our powerhouses and extend our lasers or install more shields/increase their power. Lasers are also at a fixed 0.05° inaccuracy, and the focusing optics reduce the damage loss over long distances, which is calculated as follows: for every 10m in air 3% /(2+FOCUS_COUNT) and if the laser is passing through water it would be 20x that. The rest of the changes are as follows for all thing’s laser-related and anti-projectile/missile:
⦁    APS flak damage increased by 25% 
⦁    CRAM health increased, from 3770 to 8000 at 2000mm (same scaling as before) 
⦁    Missile body component health doubled 
⦁    Missile interceptor damage increased by 25% 
⦁    Focusing and steering optic cost up from 20 to 50 
⦁    Frequency doubler cost up from 50 to 200 
⦁    Laser cavity costs down from 40 to 20 materials/cubic meter 
⦁    Laser pump costs up from 20 to 50 materials/cubic meter 
⦁    1 laser energy is 1 damage for pulsed, 0.5 for continuous 
⦁    1m/3m laser pump power use decreased from 100/300 to 40/120 
⦁    1m/3m pump energy/second decreased from 100/300 to 20/60 
⦁    Cavity energy storage down from 200/800/8000 to 100/400/4000 
⦁    LAMS node damage penalty removed 
⦁    Max size of optic meshes reduced to 60%, now the entire line is the same size (steering optics now do not form cones) 
⦁    Maximum firing angle is smaller for longer optic lines 
⦁    Steering optics increase maximum firing angle, up to a point where 25% of your optic line is steering. 
⦁    Continuous lasers still do half the raw damage of pulsed, but they have double the AP 
⦁    Laser shields do not directly absorb damage; they reduce laser AP instead. REDUCED_AP = 1 / (2 * SHIELD_STRENGTH), only the strongest shield counts 
⦁    Laser shields now do not use energy, only power 
⦁    A 500mm APS smoke warhead has ~45% density, 200mm 7.5%. Smoke warheads in the same shell use HE’s stacking and scaling rules 
⦁    Laser detection and missiles guidance are blocked if they hit enough smokes to reach 25% final reduction 
⦁    Smoke clouds now have a density between 0 and 100%. Lasers hitting them lose that percentage of their damage. Smoke layers are still multiplicative 
⦁    Smoke dispensers have 65% density/layer 
⦁    Effective smoke density is reduced to 75% against wavefront lasers (so 30% instead of 40, for example) 
⦁    Wavefront adjuster slider removed, now it reduces base damage to 50% 
⦁    Wavefront lasers retain 4x the AP after hitting shields compared to a normal one (100% AP against strength 1, 20% AP against strength 10) 

And if you think that was all we have done in the past two weeks then you should think again! We have created a new block type, The VideoBlock, which gives us a camera feed that can play local videos and YouTube, so you can watch your favourite anime while you traverse the 7 seas “liberating” Neter. You can also use the cameras attached to your turrets to see what they are pointing at and even from drones, which is awesome for recon flyers! I have to say I am in love with this block!! It’s EPIC!.

APS have some more changes that deserve mentioning here: HE, Frag, EMP and also Flak warheads now have 2AP from 0.1 
We also have a configurable ACB controller which can control 12 ACBs, and we can set a mainframe’s behaviour using ACBs which was a suggestion by you awesome people. Another suggestion was to make the avatar immortal in designer mode, which can be toggled in the “Misc” tab. 
Among the plethora of other bugfixes that you have all reported, namely missiles were not heading towards the targets due to increasing the max FPS setting, missile tutorial could not be completed has been fixed.  
Barrels exploding while shooting its own projectile and visual glitches like black wood and railgun parts were not at the correct position/angle. 
The advanced ammo controller ID was not being displayed has also been resolved, and Spin block torque was causing an issue on a number of constructs has been sorted. 
We have also resolved the fluctuating battery bug along with, constructs that have been teleporting all over Neter, which has been reported by numerous members of the community. 

We have done many tweaks and additions from what you awesome people have been telling us, and these can be found further down. 

Lastly, we come to what is going to be happening at Brillant Skies for the next two weeks. After compiling a list of frequent suggestions and issues some players were having, we shall be working on the following among a number of other issues and additions.  
One of the most discussed topics on discord is steam balancing. We have read so many awesome ideas and suggestions and the most common is scaling up steam power, leaving small engines as they are but making it far cheaper to run steam as you use larger boilers, sacrificing space for efficiency like turbocharger fuel engines. Another idea has been to make steam engines use less material as they spool up, which would allow more highly efficient slow spooling engines and much less efficient fast spooling engines. We shall have some changes for the next DevTest build, which you can all check out soon and leave us your feedback here. Please remember to check the other topics in case someone has listed the same thing already, and if so smash that vote button. 
Some of the suggestions that will be ready for our next DevTest build are: 

• Numerous breadboard updates with requests from the community including more target information, memory component which will store values when the construct its spawn in, logic gates and the most common suggestions are to drag and drop function for components along with dragging components into position instead of constantly snapping to the grid.
  

There has been talk about tank tracks for next DevTest build too! Which is something that is always popping up as a suggestion from our epic tank building community 😀

Some other interesting news, Gladyon is fixing bugs fulltime with us 😀
and the last time I checked with him, he had squished over two dozen bugs!  
A little sneak peek much further down the road the campaign will be getting looked into, the garrison areas may be removed and the AI constructs that would be there may be able to roam around dynamically. So that means the AI will also be getting looked into!  🙂

 Tutorials are also listed to be revamped and we should be getting a road map very soon too.  
I have also been hearing about Ship girls and how much Nick loves them. 
This creation is by Arkhangelsk, that was posted on our Discord, which I think is awesome! 

The full list of patch notes:

v2.4.7 [Add] <ACB>: A configurable ACB controller block has been added, it can control up to 12 ACBs using in-game buttons activated by pressing ‘Q’ when pointing at them
v2.4.7 [Add] <ACB>: Fortresses can now be controlled using ACBs
v2.4.7 [Add] <ACB>: It is now possible to set a mainframe AI behaviour using an ACB
v2.4.7 [Add] <ACB>: Missile hatches can now be forced open using ACBs
v2.4.7 [Add] <Avatar>: Option to make the avatar immortal in singleplayer designer. Option is in the ‘Misc’ part of the menu
v2.4.7 [Add] <Blocks>: Rubber wedges (front and back 1m,2m,3m,4m) are now hand UV mapped rather than be procedurally tri-planar mapped like the rest of the rubber
v2.4.7 [Add] <Breadboard>: Added a function to the maths evaluator to get the angle between two vectors
v2.4.7 [Add] <Breadboard>: Multiple expressions separated by commas in the maths evaluator can be used to set different outputs of the component to different values
v2.4.7 [Add] <Missiles>: Missile proximity fuse component now has a ‘minimum altitude slider’
v2.4.7 [Add] <Missiles>: Missiles with a harpoon that are attached to a winch can now pull and be pulled by the vehicle they are attached to. Enabled in the winch UI
v2.4.7 [Add] <Missiles>: The the point that TPG or APN wants to aim for is now also displayed if the AI path view is enabled
v2.4.7 [Add] <Tutorials>: Ability to set tutorial vehicles so that their blocks cannot be accidentally removed by the player. Now used in the first tutorial.
v2.4.7 [Add] <Tutorials>: Added ability to highlight all sorts of buttons in the tutorials. Used in first tutorial.
v2.4.7 [Add] <UI>: Buttons (resource view, detection view, objectives, diplomacy) are displayed as required on the Fleet Control, strategic map view and tactical map view.
v2.4.7 [Add] <VideoBlock>: [EXPERIMENTAL] Camera feed is now available
v2.4.7 [Add] <VideoBlock>: A pre-configured video controller block has been added, it can fully control a VideoBlock using in-game buttons activated by pressing ‘Q’ when pointing at them
v2.4.7 [Add] <VideoBlock>: Local videos can now be played
v2.4.7 [Add] <VideoBlock>: Several channels are now available
v2.4.7 [Change] <AI>: Choosing the types of AI PIDs you want to use is now done with toggles in the AI menu instead of setting them in the AI PIDs themselves.
v2.4.7 [Change] <APS>: EMP and Flak warhead bodies now have the same kinetic, AP and speed modifiers as HE and Frag warhead bodies
v2.4.7 [Change] <APS>: HE, Frag, EMP and Flak heads now have 2 AP instead of 0.1
v2.4.7 [Change] <Avatar>: Aiming cross hair no longer shows up if no weapon slot selected or weapon control disabled
v2.4.7 [Change] <Breadboard>: The breadboard now uses a new maths evaluator that can use data types other than normal numbers. All available functions can be viewed in the breadboard
v2.4.7 [Change] <Campaign>: The supply route UI has been massively improved with a lot of new functionality for easily creating routes.
v2.4.7 [Change] <HoloBlock>: The ‘Set to image ratio’ button has been replaced by a toggle to lock the ratio of the projection to the ratio of the image
v2.4.7 [Change] <LAMS/projectiles>: APS flak damage increased by 25%
v2.4.7 [Change] <LAMS/projectiles>: CRAM health increased, from 3770 to 8000 at 2000mm (same scaling as before)
v2.4.7 [Change] <LAMS/projectiles>: Missile body component health doubled
v2.4.7 [Change] <LAMS/projectiles>: Missile interceptor damage increased by 25%
v2.4.7 [Change] <Laser costs>: Focusing and steering optic cost up from 20 to 50
v2.4.7 [Change] <Laser costs>: Frequency doubler cost up from 50 to 200
v2.4.7 [Change] <Laser costs>: Laser cavity costs down from 40 to 20 materials/cubic meter
v2.4.7 [Change] <Laser costs>: Laser pump costs up from 20 to 30 materials/cubic meter
v2.4.7 [Change] <Laser energy>: 1 laser energy is 1 damage for pulsed, 0.5 for continuous
v2.4.7 [Change] <Laser energy>: 1m/3m laser pump power use decreased from 100/300 to 40/120
v2.4.7 [Change] <Laser energy>: 1m/3m pump energy/second decreased from 100/300 to 20/60
v2.4.7 [Change] <Laser energy>: Cavity energy storage down from 200/800/8000 to 100/400/4000
v2.4.7 [Change] <Laser energy>: LAMS node damage penalty removed
v2.4.7 [Change] <Laser optics>: All lasers have a fixed inaccuracy of 0.05°
v2.4.7 [Change] <Laser optics>: Focusing optics reduce damage loss over long distances. Damage loss for every 10m in air: 3% / (2 + FOCUS_COUNT). In water 20x that.
v2.4.7 [Change] <Laser optics>: Max size of optic meshes reduced to 60%, now the entire line is the same size(steering optics now do not form cones)
v2.4.7 [Change] <Laser optics>: Maximum firing angle is smaller for linger optic lines
v2.4.7 [Change] <Laser optics>: Steering optics increase maximum firing angle, up to a point where 25% of your optic line is steering.
v2.4.7 [Change] <Laser shields>: Continuous lasers still do half the raw damage of pulsed, but they have double the AP
v2.4.7 [Change] <Laser shields>: Laser shields do not directly absorb damage, they reduce laser AP instead. REDUCED_AP = 1 / (2 * SHIELD_STRENGTH), only the strongest shield counts
v2.4.7 [Change] <Laser shields>: Laser shields now do not use energy, only power
v2.4.7 [Change] <Laser smoke>: A 500mm APS smoke warhead has ~45% density, 200mm 7.5%. Smoke warheads in the same shell use HE’s stacking and scaling rules
v2.4.7 [Change] <Laser smoke>: Laser detection and missiles guidance are blocked if they hit enough smokes to reach 25% final reduction
v2.4.7 [Change] <Laser smoke>: Smoke clouds now have a density between 0 and 100%. Lasers hitting them lose that percentage of their damage. Smoke layers are still multiplicative
v2.4.7 [Change] <Laser smoke>: Smoke dispensers have 65% density/layer
v2.4.7 [Change] <Laser wavefront>: Effective smoke density is reduced to 75% against wavefront lasers(so 30% instead of 40, for example)
v2.4.7 [Change] <Laser wavefront>: Wavefront adjuster slider removed, now it reduces base damage to 50%
v2.4.7 [Change] <Laser wavefront>: Wavefront lasers retain 4x the AP after hitting shields compared to a normal one(100% AP against strength 1, 20% AP against strength 10)
v2.4.7 [Change] <Map>: Improved the distinction between out of play forces, selected forces, flagships and dead blueprints in the the tactical map icons
v2.4.7 [Change] <Memory>: The garbage generated in memory has been divided by approximately 2 while in battle (so, the game should stutter 2 times less often)
v2.4.7 [Change] <Technical>: Starting up the game is now largely multi-threaded and should take up to 20s less
v2.4.7 [Change] <UI>: Added gifs to behaviour, manoeuvre and additional tabs of AI UI to explain what they do
v2.4.7 [Change] <UI>: Changed the behaviour, manoeuvre and additional tabs of the AI UI to be less cluttered
v2.4.7 [Change] <UI>: Many new UI icons
v2.4.7 [Change] <UI>: Removed the UI of the AI PID block. Selecting what kind of PIDs you want is now done in the AI UI, which is also opened when interacting with an AI PID
v2.4.7 [Change] <UI>: Some new icons for the ‘brushes’ in the map editor
v2.4.7 [Change] <UI>: The ‘favourites’ build bar now has some slightly different graphics, and is easier to use
v2.4.7 [Change] <UI>: The give to/take from fleets UI has been updated
v2.4.7 [Change] <UI>: The ‘Tree View’ for loading blueprints has been changed to make it display at any size
v2.4.7 [Fix] <ACB>: The ‘Target’ panel is now updated correctly when using the ‘Paste’ button of the UI instead of using ‘Ctrl+V’ [BUGS-996]
v2.4.7 [Fix] <Appliques>: The health of the applique blocks can now drop under 50%, and they won’t explode anymore [BUGS-1069]
v2.4.7 [Fix] <APS>: [BUGS-1043] Adv Ammo controller once again shows its ID in the tooltip
v2.4.7 [Fix] <Avatar>: Fixed the jump animation of rambot not stopping after leaving a chair
v2.4.7 [Fix] <Blocks>: Reinforced wood and stairs no longer render black
v2.4.7 [Fix] <Blocks>: The moving parts of the blocks now shrink along with the blocks [BUGS-854]
v2.4.7 [Fix] <Blocks>: The ‘Spread to’ feature now copy all the data of the block, not only the data of current UI panel [BUGS-840]
v2.4.7 [Fix] <Blocks>: Wooden wedges 1m, 2m, 3m and 4m now have the correct UV map for their texture.
v2.4.7 [Fix] <Bug>: [Bug]-1056 Misile Testing Range updated into working order.
v2.4.7 [Fix] <Bug>: [Bug]-1065 Typo fixed.
v2.4.7 [Fix] <Build>: The mirror plane marker isn’t shrinked with the blocks anymore [BUGS-916]
v2.4.7 [Fix] <Campaign>: Battle is cancelled if all forces are scrapped during setup phase
v2.4.7 [Fix] <Campaign>: Enemy force boxes that are invisible on the map are now also invisible in HUD and fleet control UI
v2.4.7 [Fix] <Campaign>: Fixed withdrawn forces in a battle still showing up as force boxes
v2.4.7 [Fix] <Campaign>: Improved the fleet movements and ordering- they more closely follow orders when out of play now
v2.4.7 [Fix] <Campaign>: Magic wand in battle setup now has a tooltip explaining it
v2.4.7 [Fix] <Campaign>: Time now returns to 100% when fleet blockade messages are accepted
v2.4.7 [Fix] <Campaign>: You can now give multiple forces who are in patrol mode patrol orders even if they are split over several fleets
v2.4.7 [Fix] <CRAM>: The automatic auto-loader can no longer have 4 connections, and it also visually auto-rotate in order to be correctly placed [BUGS-730]
v2.4.7 [Fix] <Jets>: Custom jet engines now display the correct max fuel usage
v2.4.7 [Fix] <Missiles>: Fixed bug that prevented missiles from turning the direction they wanted to turn [BUGS-1024]
v2.4.7 [Fix] <Missiles>: Re-added the ‘Apply to all’ button to the new missile winch UI [BUGS-1035]
v2.4.7 [Fix] <Modding>: [BUGS-937] meshes provided by mods with no normals will now have normals recalculated. This avoids issues where the block is rendered black.
v2.4.7 [Fix] <Modding>: Fixed the bug where changing the mesh, material etc in a copied mod item also changes it in the pasted mod item [BUGS-1077]
v2.4.7 [Fix] <Multiplayer>: Fixed a number of projectile related bugs in multiplayer
v2.4.7 [Fix] <Multiplayer>: Fixed a serious bug causing clients to often spawn in with just a camera and no avatar
v2.4.7 [Fix] <Multiplayer>: Got ‘attack on eyrie’ mission and ‘tower defence’ missions loading again
v2.4.7 [Fix] <PAC>: Fixed PAC missing some blocks if there are more than 20 in a row [BUGS-925]
v2.4.7 [Fix] <Planet editing>: Planets can now safely change the terrain resolution or terrain section size and planet swapping will work fine.
v2.4.7 [Fix] <Propulsion>: Propulsion controlled by general purpose PIDs or (AI)breadboards now works correctly again [BUGS-1001], [BUGS-995]
v2.4.7 [Fix] <Regressions>: [BUGS – 1005] Issue with map pathfinding fixed- it could hang the campaign
v2.4.7 [Fix] <Regressions>: [BUGS-1004] Fixed a crash caused by warp engines warping from a background thread
v2.4.7 [Fix] <Regressions>: [BUGS-1007] Fixed the rotations of the railgun magnets- which all pointed downwards due to a bug in the last patch.
v2.4.7 [Fix] <Regressions>: [BUGS-1027] Multithreading issues to Helicopter Blade and Helicopter Blade Always Up components now fixed. Large numbers of these components spawned at once would create odd physics before the fix.
v2.4.7 [Fix] <Regressions>: [BUGS-955] All projectiles now advance one iteration immediately after firing to avoid destruction of own barrel (issue caused by multi-threading)
v2.4.7 [Fix] <Regressions>: [BUGS-962] flickering of the vehicle when spawning with  ‘block-by-block’ toggled has been fixed
v2.4.7 [Fix] <Regressions>: [BUGS-965] Turn wheel adv controller options incorrectly configured and caused crash in ConstructInfoUi (V)
v2.4.7 [Fix] <Regressions>: [BUGS-966] fixed an issue in map pathfinding that causes campaigns to hang
v2.4.7 [Fix] <Regressions>: [BUGS-969] Low LOD mode issues with missile ejection fixed
v2.4.7 [Fix] <Regressions>: [BUGS-981] Missile laser once again properly excludes ‘hits’ off it’s own vehicle
v2.4.7 [Fix] <Regressions>: Fixed bugs causing connected blocks to fall off and disconnected blocks to not fall off [BUGS-1078]
v2.4.7 [Fix] <Regressions>: Fixed fortress jitter, ‘next song’ button fixed, map editor UI scaling fixed, fleet/force button panel buttons now the correct size.
v2.4.7 [Fix] <Shells>: Fixed shells missing approximately one block out of 10
v2.4.7 [Fix] <Shells>: Proximity fuse will not damage/destroy the shield projector anymore when hitting a shield [BUGS-461]
v2.4.7 [Fix] <Sound block>: The sound block now works in Multi-Player (it’s also now possible to stop the sound with UI) [BUGS-1045]
v2.4.7 [Fix] <Tutorial>: Hold Q options disabled in tutorials
v2.4.7 [Fix] <Tutorial>: Tutorial display now remains visible while using certain other UIs
v2.4.7 [Fix] <UI>: Fixed terrain view distance being too low in fleet control UI
v2.4.7 [Fix] <UI>: Fleet and force rename popups now respond to escape and enter keys
v2.4.7 [Fix] <UI>: The ‘favourites’ build bar no longer spawns your vehicles directly under the crosshair if there is already a vehicle there- this avoids ‘telefragging’.
v2.4.7 [Fix] <UI>: The headers of the UI panels now perfectly respond to mouse over events
v2.4.7 [Fix] <UI>: The ‘info’ panel on the right hand side (that displays warnings, etc) is now correctly positioned for most use cases in HUD, Fleet Control UI and Map UI.
v2.4.7 [Fix] <UI>: The ‘map teleport’ button now correctly cancels if you right click or re-click the button.
v2.4.7 [Fix] <VideoBlock>: Now works in multiplayer
v2.4.7 [Fix] <VideoBlock>: The camera view shouldn’t make the whole game to flicker [BUGS-1084]