What is up Depthians!

We are pleased to kick off the long-awaited diplomacy update to beta! As well as numerous bug fixes, tweaks, and some new features.

Let us try and be diplomatic about this update and start there 😛

When you first set out on your campaign run, and pop into map view you will see a timer.

This timer will be running after each council meeting where you will decide who to go to war with or make peace with for the duration shown in this UI “until the next campaign season starts in X hours”. Each option lists out the changes in the relationship with the factions and all the options will be random each time while keeping in mind that the stronger you get the more factions you will be at war with! In this screenie, we can see that we can have total peace for 2 hours at the cost of 3,752 commodities.

Some options will have rewards like the second example below, we can go to war with the DWG, have peace with all the other factions, and have a sweet little reward in commodities. Commodity rewards/costs are affected by the difficulty level that you select.

You will also see a mini-map showing you the territory where the factions are. In this case, it’s showing us our location in yellow and the DWG territory.
So remember that with more enemies and fewer allies you will get more commodities and with higher difficulties, you will get fewer commodities.

The AI is also undergoing another upgrade too, such that allied factions will be working together and better grouping.

You will also be able to have a secret meeting as your fleets will trigger a ‘secret emergency meeting’ when they stay near allied/neutral resource zones, or inside non-border tiles of neutral factions, for more than 120 seconds. In a ‘secret emergency meeting’, the offended nation and all their allies declare war against the player’s faction.

On to a frequently requested feature is better feet to make mechs without the need for thrusters to assist, and we are happy to say YES! However in this current beta they are still being worked on! So remember Clampy Feet = WIP.

We have also added new features to decorations that allow you to hide the block that the tether is created on. Let’s say you had a fancy pipe decoration, and you also set its color within the decoration UI which is also a new feature. However, it’s being covered by the block that it’s tethered to, as you can see in the first screenie.

Simply click “Hide original mesh” and poof that nasty block that was covering your beautiful spam of decorations is now gone, but not really gone as its collision mesh is still there and will ofc take damage, die, and fall off. We can also turn off that noisy wireframe too which is another sweet addition brought to you by our ever awesome Weng! (but it was all my idea I swear!)

The V menu / Construct information UI has had a few tweaks, and as you can see we can now swap block types. Select which material you want to change from EG Alloys with a specific color or “Any color” which would select all Alloy blocks and change them to all metal if you wish.

Changelog

Additions

AI

Add ‘maximum hull CoM shift before switching side’ parameter for Broadside 2.0 behavior. Useful for spreading damage evenly on both sides of the hull.
Add ‘minimum firepower fraction before switching side’ parameter for Broadside 2.0 behaviour. Useful for vehicles that heavily depend on side weapons.

Armor refit

New tab on the V menu: ‘Armor refit’. Changes all armor blocks from a specific material and color (or any color) to another material and color (or keeps the color)

Blocks

Added 2m,3m and 4m surge protector beams. These have adjusted values for the EMP test mentioned elsewhere in the notes.

Breadboard

Breadboard modules for reading/writing to custom axes added

Campaign

Added a mini-map to the diplomacy screen so you get an idea of where the different factions are before choosing your wars
Fleets are now teleported to the nearest non-hostile territory if the faction they are located in become hostile to the fleet’s owner, after a diplomacy council meeting
Markers on the campaign map to show who you are at war or allied with and where they are based
Player’s fleets now trigger a ‘secret emergency meeting’ when they stay near allied/neutral resource zones, or inside non-border tiles of neutral factions, for more than 120 seconds. In a ‘secret emergency meeting’, the offended nation and all their allies declare war against the player’s faction.

Clamp foot

Added a clampy foot which is an advanced form of the sticky foot

Control

[FTD-679] Add bindings profile which allows changing input bindings on the fly to accommodate different situations with a limited number of available bindings. For example, you may want to have a profile for 3rd person camera where the controller left stick is used for camera movement and another profile for aircraft where the left stick is used for pitch and roll.
[FTD-679] Change key binding system to support analog bindings, multiple bindings per action, and arbitrary key combinations.
[FTD-679] Support for controller input.

Decorations

Display the name of the current mesh in mimic and decoration UI.
Option to hide the mesh of the block that a decoration is tethered to.

Laser warners

‘Apply to all’ button in laser warner UI.

Lua

Added _VERSION global constant to get the Lua language version
Lua commands for reading and writing to custom axes added

Power Priority

Power creators and users are now grouped by name. Each group is collapsed by default to avoid performance issues.

Separator

Added an option to the separator block to not separate unless the blocks it is separating are all repaired. Intended for use with ACBs
Added an option to the separator to, instead of separating any block attached to it, only separate attached blocks that are in front of the separator block. In this mode, the separated vehicle is allowed to be connected to the main vehicle in other places

Steam

Valves got a new option to disable pressure control. Makes the valve ignore breaches and pressure ranges, so one-off open/close commands from ACBs stick

UI

New buttons in V menu: ‘Remove decorations’ and ‘Remove subconstructs’

Changes

ACB

It is now possible to detect an object up to 5000m in front of the ACB [BUGS-3315]

Campaign

AI controlled factions that are allied will now work together to capture board sections from their enemies
AI won’t try to capture board sections that are far away as often
Changed AI intercepting of enemy fleets to have much better grouping and better logic in general
Changed how the AI goes about capturing board sections. It should now group better and not send weak individual vehicles to the player very often
Changed movement of AI fleets to be more smooth when following other fleets
It is now possible to capture board sections that don’t border your own board sections but that do border a board section of an ally. After capturing the board section, it is given to that ally
Limited how much forces the AI will stack to attack a single board section

CJE

Custom jet generator power/thrust up from 0.05 to 0.055

Decorations

Choose the color from a list of previews instead of using a slider.
Improved the mesh search function to be much faster

Ducts

Drag for 1×1, 3×3, 5×5 and 7×7 ducts up from 0.05 (4m wedge equivalent) to 0.4 (1m slope equivalent). They still don’t need clearance

EMP

As a test EMP has been adjusted by adjusting all materials and their values, the main change being HA no longer acts as a giant EMP sink and some materials don’t outright block EMP anymore. Feedback for this should be via the betatest feedback channel in discord. THIS IS JUST A TEST AND CAN BE REVERTED.

Fuel engines

Base power/material up from 500 to 520
Models for fuel parts have changed. Purely a visual change, this fixes issues with the old models and textures.

Loading

Faster loading of details in the blueprint browser.

Missile

Connectors and IIF blocks and ejectors now use the missile controller’s Q menu
Ejector addons and Lua transceivers now use the missile launcher’s Q menu
Missile harpoon and sticky flare attachment is more reliable
Missile winch max power up from 5000 to 24000
Allow selecting nose component on missiles with length of 1 or 2.

Separator

Removed the 2 second delay before a newly placed weapon can fire if the weapon is placed by a separator block
Separators have an 0.1s cooldown between separating and attaching
The separate ACB action has a 1s cooldown

Steam

Steam crank motor default RPM ratio up to 2
Steam stat page tracks steam jet thrust and material use

Visuals

Increase maximum low LOD distance from 1 km to 5 km.

Fixes

BUGS

BUGS-3348 Manoeuvre Hover no longer says ‘strafe is necessary’ when it is already ticked as being present
BUGS-2951 Fixed CRAM packing steps being 1 frame off
BUGS-3082 Updated HESH AP tooltip in the ammo customizer UI
BUGS-3105 Fixed steam valve tooltip reporting 10 pressure when attached to some empty pipe sections
BUGS-3236 Ducts now handle steam pipes the same way they do fuel exhausts
BUGS-3330 Fixed various ACB related bugs with separators
BUGS-3334 Increased separator block vehicle name field length to 100 characters
BUGS-3338 Fixed a problem causing a blank screen on avatar death
BUGS-3340 Fixed steam stat page displaying wrong values if multiple boilers were connected to turbines without pipes
BUGS-3355 Added a failsafe to make sure missiles never get stuck in the gantry at high speeds
BUGS-3356 Valve tooltip pressures improved when turbines are the highest pressure consumers in the pipe network attached to the given valve
BUGS-3358 Fixed a problem with steam valves attached to exhausted pipe sections without a boiler/tank
BUGS-3365 Fixed steam hull pipes acting as 6-way pipes
BUGS-3370 Fixed secondary torpedo propellers without primary propulsion breaking the missile stat page
BUGS-3242 Fixed an exception that could pop up in some situations

Camera

Fixed scroll wheel zoom not working with wireless camera.

Campaign

Fixed a bug where the AI would get stuck trying to do something it couldn’t do
Fixed all AI fleets stacking on top of each other when following a fleet
Fixed some cases where AI fleets would move out before all fleets where grouped up correctly
Fixed some cases where the AI would fail grouping when trying to capture a board section
Fixed some issues with AI trying to move fleets above their maximum altitude
Fixed various small issues with the AI, mostly related to path finding

CRAM

CRAM packers and pellets were set to have 20 detection signatures instead of 3. This is now fixed.

Docking station

Fixed vehicles still being marked as ‘taken’ after the docking station that had taken them has been deleted
The 1m docking station was using the 2m mesh. This is now fixed.

Drag

Fixed asymmetric clearance requirement on 1-4m, front and back wedge structural blocks
Fixed top clearance requirement for 1-4m, front and back wedge structural blocks (they had it set up wrong, leading to inconsistent behavior)

Drills

Resting drill bits no longer cause insane amounts of damage.

Editor

Resource zone starting material now editable in the editor.

Errors

Performance

Much faster loading of vehicle information UI with large vehicles.

Power priority

Fix power priority not getting saved for multipurpose lasers and simple drills.

Separator

Fixed advanced cannon ammo clips not keeping their shells after being separated from or attached to a vehicle
Fixed advanced cannon ammo intakes losing their ammo controller selection after being separated from or attached to a vehicle
Fixed blocks getting back all their hp after being separated from or attached to a vehicle
Fixed CRAM cannons resetting their reloading state after being separated from or attached to a vehicle
Fixed docking stations losing their target when separated from or attached to a vehicle
Fixed laser cavities losing their stored energy after being separated from or attached to a vehicle
Fixed missiles instantly reloading after being separator from or attached to a vehicle
Fixed PACs resetting their reloading state after being separated from or attached to a vehicle
Fixed simple weapons losing their ammo controller selection after being separated from or attached to a vehicle
Fixed simple weapons losing their shells and then instantly reloading after being separated from or attached to a vehicle
Fixed typo in the description and name. Removed 3m separators from build menu for now

Steam

Improved steam distribution for multiple boilers feeding into the same L pistons from both sides
M and L turbines are now functional with only 1 body element (for aesthetics, stats are bad)

Undo/Redo

Undo/redo for decorations placed using prefab.

Visuals

Stop AI path visualization from blocking mouse clicks in inventory.

Weapons

Fix bug that blocks a weapon from firing when it’s set to synchronize with itself.