Update 29

Hey there AFF Community!

Update 29 is live!

Yes, it’s finally here! It wasn’t an April Fools joke at all, despite the timing! Here’s what’s new:

Majuro

Brand new map for the Territories gamemode, set on a beautiful, tropical atoll and focused on fast-paced infantry and light-vehicles combat. But remember, mind the gap!

Controller support

Previously only the space part of the game was controllable with a gamepad, and not very well either. We’ve made the entire flow of the game support controller inputs, a word of warning though: this isn’t a typical console user experience, in the menus you’ll basically have to use the controller sticks to steer the mouse cursor. It works well enough to make AFF playable on a couch and unfortunately we can’t do much more about it - the middleware AFF’s user interface was made in is long gone and doesn’t support assigning controller actions to UI elements easily.

Performance, AI and gameplay

A lot of systems and gameplay elements have been tweaked to not only run faster (both in terms of CPU- and GPU-performance, we’ve even gone as far as recompiling the engine with more modern tools) but also work better with bots. They should be even more aware of their surroundings and work more coherently in squads, both in space and on the ground.

There’s also a lot, and I mean a lot, of balance and general quality of life improvements across the entire game - in the UI, in the gunplay, in how the capital ship combat is presented. As usual we’re striving for the most fair and fun experience so let us know if something feels out of whack. Full changelog can be found below.

Achievements

We added 100+ achievements to the game, some more obvious, some pretty tough to find. We know a lot of you like to hunt these down and it encourages some variation in playstyles so have at it!

What's going on then?

There is so many changes spanning such a long period of development in this update that something's gotta break, there's no way around it. So firstly there will likely be a hotfix of some sort coming in the nearest future with whatever needs smoothing out.

Now, the elephant in the launch bay - what the heck happened, why such a long pause in updates? Truth is, most of us just weren’t able to dedicate hours to AFF in these tumultuous times so what you’re seeing in this update is the total sum of us touching it up on and off for the last two years.

We haven’t gone anywhere though, the team is still here and we figured it’d be unfair to leave the game in limbo like that. Keep in mind that AFF, as cliche as it sounds, is first and foremost a labour of love, love for games, for scifi, for giant exploding spaceships, so we'll always come back to it in one form or another. But the main point is - we’re here to wrap this party up now.

So now officially: Update 30 is going to be the 1.0 version of AFF, the end of Early Access.

Will it be completely bug-free and jank-free? Probably not. A lot of the tools AFF was made with got old and deprecated and it makes it hard to implement changes to the game. We’re bringing back the tutorial section of the game though, for better on-boarding of new players, some more general fixes and tweaks, perhaps even a couple content surprises too.

There's even more we'd like to talk about to our Community, as well as some additional announcements coming real soon, so come hang out with us on our Discord!

Changelog:

Ships:
• The explosion effects of capital ships should be far less likely to persist after death
• Fixed various effects leaking from one capship interior to another
• Fixed issues with stations being destroyable unintentionally (damage bleeding over from shooting components) - Most notably Ixion station
• Fixed Ixion stations components being misconfigured
• When a capship enters red-alert, it should now make sure to kill the ships shields and engines to make it clearer that it’s dead in the water
• Fixed misconfigured Griphon consoles
• Fixed Chons plasma using the wrong weapon
• Fixed map-specific instructions not reliably applying to shields and engines of capships
• Fixed a number of capship-destruction interior effects not playing properly, missing or otherwise
• Dropships now have hyperjump effects in interiors like all the other capships
• Potentially fixed capships not reliably triggering their exterior blowing-up effects
• Spectating someone, or spectating in, a capship that is blowing up should move spectators to a new target
• Capship weapons should now display a ( ) indicator for where the closest weapon are to the aimpoint for better feedback
• Tweaked seat-interactions on most ships to be more friendly to use
• Interior windows should be better about emulating the outside level
• Potentially fixed the visually seated infantry in capship turrets being unreliable. It should now properly show up and be damageable, etc. Additionally, weapon attachments should no longer be visible unintentionally
• Reworked Anubis and Huginns death effects from firing immediately, to being a gradual collapse that follows the actual functional destruction timer
• Fixed capship death effects being very jittery at timesBots:
• Reduced chance of bots picking “best ship for order”, since it resulted in far too little variation, which in turn resulted in them performing poorly overall in combat
• Bots will now generally try to pick a warp-in point closest to their assigned objective
• Bots will try to wait for squadmates respawning before using fighters, so they will have a bigger chance of entering space in squads for better combat-effectiveness
• Bots should be better about spreading out after planting a hackspike, rather than effectively sitting in the same spot
• Bots should be less hesitant to plant hackspikes
• Bots should be better about responding to objectives under attack
• Bots should no longer stick around in dropships if there’s nothing to board, after they have made their dropship ready for next boarding-action
• Fixed issues with bots thinking they fired their MW when they haven't (Making them fixating at a wrong point, not letting them swap, etc)
• Bots will be more aware that they have scored a kill, and not focus on the dead body at rank 2 and above
• Fixed an issue causing bots that have been revived to always be stuck to looking in the same direction
• Bots should be better about repair objectives; especially when attacking them
• Bots should be better about determining who’s actually attacking an objective
• Milnet will now also consider boarding action for defend-objectives (applies to some maps like Ixion Territories, Kerrat)
• Milnet should be better about making sure about panic-objectives being relevant and reachable
• Fixed a number of issues with Kerrat’s phase 2 objective-type
• Bots should be better about not respawning unless they have to
• Bots should be better about utilizing capship weapons, rather than doing very short bursts
• Bots should change their mind about their pathing less on ground, hopefully leading to less cases of them being indecisive and running back and forth in the same area for a while
• Bots might decide to try to bail from a ship blowing up, instead of sitting in the seat accepting their faith. Additionally taught bots that entering a seat while the ship is blowing up is a bit silly
• Vehicle AI are now allowed to target and shoot neutral things if ordered to. They should additionally prioritize their ordered target over whatever else they’d be shooting at
• Potentially improved bot ability to pathfind in space - especially for capships.
• Bots should no longer try to swap weapons when they start sprinting, unless they are not engaged and not currently reloading. Additionally they will not do so instantly if they have recently been engaged
• Bots should be better about swapping weapons on ground and space in general
• Bots rank 3 and above might be more likely to use AV weapons against clustered enemies
• Potentially fixed an issue sometimes causing bots following another to end up with an invalid move-to location, causing unnecessary respawns
• Bots should be more decisive in which ship they wish to bring into space
• Potentially fixed an issue that would cause bots to remain in a capships interior after being booted out of a seat
• Bot-vehicle-loadouts should now strive to use all the slots (Previously, especially on capships, a number would never be attempted populated)
• Bots will be more likely to use nades against squads
• Bots will have a slightly larger desired range for using deployables
• Tweaked how bot-shared-squad-vision works further; Will care less if they have recently fired at something
• Taught bots how to deal with being tasked to attack objective-less destroyables, and added task-descriptions to it (used to be just “freelance”)
• Fixed some issues with how bots determine whether they can hit a destroyable, and expanded on their checks, so they don’t need to see its centerpoints
• Potentially improved bots ability to recover vehicles when they get confused pathing
• Milnet’s logic has been refactored, and should hopefully be considerably more performant. It was causing small lag spikes when running
• Optimized bots logic for throwing stuff
• Optimized vechwepAI a bit
• Bots will linger looking in the direction of their last target a bit, to de-cheese effectiveness of popping in/out of cover
• Tweaks to how bots determine who to attack. They will generally prioritize their current target higher, but will also consider their weapons effectiveness more
• Optimized bots sight-checks somewhat
• More tweaks to bots spaceship flying/pathing, most notably should help them in small spaces
• Tweaked how bots approach ship-interfaces (like weapons, shields, etc). They can now be tasked to repair them, or will repair them if they run past them. If tasked, they might also go deal with others in that capship. Additionally taught them how to deal with the task as a whole better
• A number of tweaks to when bots desire to sprint or crouch. It will be a lot more dependent on their weapon, and general circumstances. Should make for a more dynamic experience, and better utilization of their weapons, as well as making them more aware of their helmet mods. Bots rank 5 will additionally be less predictable with these choices. They should also be more aware of not to sprint if it impacts their ability to shoot
• Bots will be smarter about using the MNL
• Bots rank 4,5 can now use underslung rockets against enemy pawns, and will generally be smarter about using it
• General tweaks to when bots thinks its ideal to use weapons based on ranges
• Tweaks to bots firemode-choices
• Fixed bots effectively being incapable of using the GU34 at times
• Tweaked how bots reacts to smoke. The higher their rank, the more they should be able to recognize “transparent areas” of the smoke. Additionally higher ranked bots will keep firing at you, although with a sizeable aim-penalty, if you are dancing around the smoke (takes a bit before they fully forget about you)
• Tweaked automatic gun AI on vehicles a bit; Should be better at using charge-up weapons, and will generally keep their target. Additionally fixed some issues where it could end up without targets, despite having some.
• Bots should generally be less snappier with their movements
• Bots reloading might try to find a safe-ish spot
• Added a penalty to bots for how quickly they realize they have something to shoot, if they were told about you, rather than saw you directly
• Bots should be more conscious about colliding with something in vehicles (And try to recover)
• More bot vehicle-pathing tweaks
• Bots might try to drive a vehicle owned by another bot out of the way if it is obstructing an objective
• Bots should now be more aware of vehicles when it comes to pathing
• Fixed some issues with when bots want to enter or leave vehicles. They should now additionally be more aware of vehicles left because it got stuck
• Bots should respond more to underslung flamers
• Tweaked bots desirability towards weapons; If they have recently been hit, they will not prioritize deployable or grenades, and should prioritize their current weapon more
• Bots will remember who hurt them last, and prioritize them slightly higher. This persists through death for rank 3-5 bots
• Bots might use sensorballs in decoy mode
• Improved bots ability to aim with vehicle-weapons
• Rank 4,5 bots will be better at aiming weapons that might not be ideal against their target
• Bots might react to proximity nades, spring nades and detpacks. Their chance depends on skill and whether they have a helmetsensor
• Bots might react to decoys
• Bots in space using charge-up weapons should be more aware of how they work, and be less likely to turn away from their target while using them
• Bots flying might decide to roll and otherwise do small evasive moves
• More flying Bots stuck-behavior tweaks
• A lot of tweaks to flying bots combat behavior; Including added two new types of attack-move. They should overall be far more competent foes, be better about using boost, facing their enemies, acquiring enemies, etc, and ideally more reactive
• Bots in gunships should prioritize fighting other gunships higher (for air-superiority first), and vehicles second
• Some flying-pathfinding fixes for bots; They should also far more rarely decide to ram terrain
• Higher level bots have gained various improvements over lower in spacecombat, such as taking hints from their squad for enemies
• Bots should laser-focus a bit less on destroyable-objectives
• Bots will have some awareness of landed projectiles that might hurt them, like MNL/Nades/bomblets
• Some performance improvement to some of the bots general taskingsWeapons and vehicles:
• Fixed various desync issue with reloading guns in multiplayer
• Rebalanced vulcans on TI/Griphon/Khamun/Huginn; More shots till overheating, longer cooldown. Intent is encouraging maxing out their heat and swapping to another weapon
• Fixed RID always unintentionally granting 50% charge for the next shot. It should now only give back 50% charge when fired with more than 70% charge
• Added a slight grace-period to RID where you can release the trigger without firing immediately after a shot
• Reduced base-damage of the RID, but increased anti-vehicle modifier. Less infantry damage, same vehicle damage
• Fixed an issue where the RID’s laser would stick around for a while during reloading
• RID should now properly show its final shot client-side
• RID should now properly play the firing-animation again
• MNL should now show its final shot properly (if using charge-up) client-side
• Burst-fire weapons should now more reliably fire their last shots client-side
• Underbarrel shotgun can now shoot twice per reload. How? Space magic!
• Underbarrel flamer is no longer affected by burst-firemodes on the main weapon. Additionally fixed it unintentionally having gotten a second “magazine” to reload from
• Fixed dropped weapons not having their scopes properly applied to them
• Fixed dropped weapons having wrong ammo-count when picked up in MP
• Fixed exploit of dropping a weapon in a different firemode resulting in the picked up version having full ammo
• Mines should now be more reactive to mechs
• Infantry should no longer slowly push mines through geometry by trampling over them
• Mines should no longer inflict damage if they blow up because their associated vehicle was destroyed (to put them on-par with detpacks as intended)
• Mines should no longer randomly explode in multiplayer (they would look exploded, but still exist visually and functionally)
• Dramatically decreased fire-rate of all capship weapons, except Rail and Rockets. Rail damage is dramatically reduced. The intention is to make the fights slightly longer, while still roughly keeping the current feeling
• Rebalanced gunship’s rockets and bomblets to do less damage against infantry, but the same amount against vehicles. Intention is to still have them be viable, and reward skill, but hopefully reduce the feeling of getting completely obliterated by a gunship. Additionally increased direct-hit damage of bomblets
• Mechs should no longer always have a rocket launcher on their right arm if left blank in loadout
• Slightly lowered AoE area for EVR’s heavy shot, and slightly decreased base-damage for the light shot
• Increased the lifespan of underslung rockets. They will now be more likely to reach their targets
• Decreased base-amount of mines spawned by 1
• Corrosive effect provides +20% damage taken against armour from all sources while active
• Decreased the explosion-trigger-radius on c90 shots from 300 to 200
• Detpacks should now end up with the detonator when the last have been thrown in multiplayer to match singleplayer behaviour
• Detpacks and nades have had some animation and visibility issues fixed when swapping/throwing/interrupting while held
• Detpacks should be more sensibly go to detonator, even if you have mixed the firemode-variants thrown
• Fixed a number of inconsistencies with DK31; Should also better support underslung, and fixed it not working with the underbarrel shotty at all
• Decals forming from shooting at surfaces will not be added too close to an existing from the same shot (shooting through multiple objects that are very close together)
• Slightly increased accuracy for hipfire/sighted EVP
• Slightly increased accuracy of sighted SM54Quality-of-life:
• Fixed profiles tab showing scores instead of profiles when outside games
• Spectators are now allowed to view stats and profiles in games
• In briefing rooms: Declining ready should now work as intended. Additionally, players leaving the game should no longer hold up game-starts
• Fixed the vote-menu in singleplayer not accepting clicks early on
• Main menu, faction selection and a few more now support keyboard inputs to go between the options and select.
• Tacmap:
  - should now be better about using keybinds instead of hardcoded keys
  - Location arrows, and spawn arrows are now hidden if there’s nothing to cycle to (For a more obvious UI)
  - Redeploying should no longer immediately re-open the tacmap
  - Zooming out in a capship interior will gradually change the color of the map to the owning team, and transition to the main-space map, centered on the vehicle
  - You can now double-click a spawn, or warp-in point to use it directly
  - The “controls” button will now flash until clicked for the first time, to draw attention to how to use the tacmap
• Improved priority of hackspikes over picking up weapons
• Fixed being able to multi-vote on end-map screen
• Equipment stats screen should now more accurately reflect the actual properties of the guns and ships, especially on capital ship and gunship weaponry
• Added specific icon for capship co-pilot seat to differentiate from the driver-spot
• Disabled seats in capships should no longer show up or be usable
• Multiwrench should no longer look like they are repairing internal ship consoles that are completely destroyed (unrepairable)
• Implemented C and V menus for spectators; C lists all ULA, V lists all AIA. It lists the most relevant-to-the-match spectator targets. capships > vehicles > fighters > infantry, to quickly jump around. These lists ignore deployed turrets, and driverless vehicles.
• Fixed prestige not actually counting if done during briefings
• Added task descriptions for being ordered to attack un-piloted vehicles
• YTS terries should now properly be listed as Territories in chat
• Rebinding “tab” should function properly. Additionally fixed an issue where trying to rebind “tab” to something would always fail.
• Rebinding esc should now immediately take effect
• Fixed some rebinding not being re-bound with all the same functionality
• Added hint on how to open the new Achievement Menu (Default P)
• Added functionality to mirror a loadout in a bit roundabout way because with Scaleform being dead we can’t really modify the UI much; Clicking copy, and prefacing the name with the opposite team (for an AIA loadout, calling it “ULA somename”) or prefacing it with the keyword “mirror” will attempt to make a version of that loadout on the opposite team. Swapping weapons to corresponding variants. This should work for both infantry and vehicles.
• Added functionality to make random loadouts. Clicking new loadout, and prefacing the name with “random” or “bot” will generate a random loadout, somewhat appropriate for your current rank
• Added functionality to copy loadouts. Using the hotkeys “Ctrl + C” will copy it into your clipboard; You can share this with others as you please. Using the hotkeys “Ctrl + V” will attempt to paste the contents of your clipboards. If it recognizes a valid loadout, iit will attempt to paste it, giving you a prompt to (re)name it
• Added functionality to copy appearances externally. Using the copy button or “Ctrl + C” will place it in your clipboard. You can similarly import appearances using “Ctrl + V” from your clipboard
• On the long-description of equipment, it will now state the faction-opposite variant for convenience and greater transparency
• Added functionality to the scoreboard - if you have your own squad selected, the move button will now allow you to step up / step down as squadleader, assuming this action is valid (you can’t step down if there’s noone to replace you, you can’t step up if the SL is a human)
• Added variations to “Move to squad” to better explain why you can or can’t move (already on squad, currently commanding, pick a team first)
• Added variations to mutiny button to better explain why you can or can’t mutiny (pick a team first, wait for match to start, match ended)
• Added variations to defect button to better explain why you can or can’t change team (select team first, match ended)
• Changing squads will now select the new squad in the UI
• Opening scoreboard will now select yourself from the get go (to easier find you, your squad, and better expose the options you have available on the scoreboard)
• Scoreboard should now keep the last-clicked squad selected, even when the score of that squad changes (would previously keep the selection, so if you selected squad#3, and that squad got higher points to becoming #2, you would have the new #3 selected. This should limit misclicks and be more consistent with the player-list behavior)
• Being tasked to attack or follow something, and that something dying, will now change the task-description to “freelance”
• Hitting an unimportant destroyable with an AV weapon will now produce hitmarkers
• Friendly destroyables will now draw the friendly-marker (like hackspikes on your team, stuff you are tasked to defend, etc)
• Updated the spectating-info box: Will now reflect your actual keybinds, will provide considerably more information, and is updated to reflect the changes to how the spectating works
• Clicking “,” in spectating-mode should now cycle the mode as expected (Was not working on ground vehicles)
• Fixed a number of issues that would not tell you about who killed you
• Added config InventoryAlwaysVisible. Will change behaviour of how the inventory-bar is visible. 0 = current behaviour (visible only for a little after changing weapons) 1 = always visible. Can be toggled with console command “ToggleHUDWeaponsAlwaysVisible”
• Added config bForceDefaultsDoesntAffectSelf. If true, will show camo on own weapons, vehicles and pawns for yourself, while you have default camo enabled. Can be toggled with console command “ToggleDefaultCamoAffectsPlayer”
• Receiving a new order should make the order-description flash and notify you of such, to make it more obvious
• Fixed cursor-coloring for enemy/friend persisting through respawns
• Swapping weapons should now be hidden during times where the pawn isn’t relevant, such as picking loadouts, launching a fighter, in menus etc
• Potentially fixed late-joiners ending up with weird camera-angles (on some maps under the ground), until picking a team
• The glowey-outline-hint when hovering a destructible objective should now play when it is your currently-assigned objective aswell
• Hackspikes should no longer remain tagged after the spike have been destroyed
• Capture objectives should give better messaging-feedback, telling you if you are gaining/loosing/stalemating the objective
• Fixed some destroyable’s tacmap visuals being wrong
• Added basic reconnect feature to main menu (Hold CTRL to force it back to quickplay)
• Fixed the knife causing lagspikes in loadout menu
• All weapons that have more than one firemode can now be assigned which to use by default (For instance, underslung rockets if equipped), or set to remember the last one you picked for this weapon for this loadout for the current session
• Slightly buffed medium missiles
• Nerfed medium and heavy plasma space damage
• Slightly nerfed rails damage
• Heavy missiles are now a lot scarier; Dramatically buffed their damage (pair of two are fairly easy to shoot down. Now actually different (better?) than medium variant)General fixes and optimization:
• Precached even more stuff for less physics-shape-caching-spikes during play
• Fixed last-man-standing-phase on a lot of maps not working as intended (messaging, actually triggering, etc)
• Implemented achievements, and corresponding ingame-window where you can view progress (default P)
• Wiped the legacy VOIP implementation more. It was intended to be fully disabled many patches ago. The current version of “send to all, but don’t tell who’s speaking” isn’t favorable to anyone
• LZ’s will be assigned a slight penalty for next capture, that decays the longer it has been vacant. Intention is to make it more viable to blow up droppod-spawns, rather than having them almost immediately get re-captured
• Vehicle shields might provide better feedback for re-activating and fully going down
• Fixed LZ turrets not rotating in multiplayer
• Taking out-of-bounds damage should be more impactful against vehicles
• Shield regen is more affected by damage in general (Small-arms fire having some contribution)
• The effect on the screen for taking damage should take more into account than just the strength of the shot. Instead it should be better about informing you of “dangerous damage”. Additionally fixed burning not triggering it at all
• Fixed kill-credit on vehicle not actually assigning the credit to the last-hit, but rather the hit-before-last
• Fixed weapon-attachments unintentionally being visible when driving a vehicle
• Fixed changing seats in MP detaching the driver from the actual vehicle
• Turtles passenger turret should now again be configurable in loadouts
• Fixed all Javert loadouts being invalid
• Fixed Rakshasa and Scimitar not getting default torps
• Added console command “SetLoadoutSorting”. Sets the loadout sorting you wish to use (Previously only accessible by manually changing config files). See auto-complete for possible variants
• Added console command “FixupLoadouts”. Will try to fix any broken loadouts you have. Primarily relevant for older players who have been around since before the fighter-weapon rework. It is expected to have it return 13 fails due to default loadouts for opposite factions. It is recommended to backup <gamefolder>/AFFGame/config/AFFLoadout.ini before running it.
• Fixed some issues relating to keeping a client-side reference to your old pawn when changing teams (should make for a better experience when changing teams during multiplayer matches)
• Changed how respawning works. It should now queue everyone desiring, and pop them as the last one has fully spawned. Should prevent lagspikes from respawning without any noticeable differences.
• Infantry running one-shot protection have had the FX for blocking the damage fixed, so it no longer shows bleeding, and the FX for “breaking the protection” have been made slightly bigger
• Moved some console commands onto the cheatmanager that wasn’t supposed to be usable on servers
• Fixed cascaded shadows misbehaving on some maps in DX11Maps;
• Ascella
  - Fixed hilltop bunker in Phase 2 not being properly reachable by bots
• Poranti
  - Fixed various issues in the hangar bay Phase 3/Phase 4 area; You should no longer be able to enter ships from underneath (or having that prompt conflict with planting a hackspike); Additionally fixed some collision issues in that area
• Kerrat
  - Fixed various issues with pathing and second phase
  - The pilot seat of Huginn should now be disabled during Phase 1 to avoid confusion
• Huginn interior
  - Fixed some snagging issues with ramps around the hangar area
  - Bots should no longer consider destroyed debris as pathable (getting them stuck)
  - Swapped Ranger’s power coupling colour to blue and added them for the Huginn.
• Dragoon interior
  - Removed some unused FX pieces and put the viewport back in place where it belongs.
• Khamun interior
  - Fixed an issue causing certain effects (like underslung flamer) to not behave properly
• Irega
  - Added missing mesh in Phase 1 staircase
  - Fixed some z-fighting and clipping near Phase 1 right AIA spawn
  - Fixed some weird collisions
  - Bit of a cosmetic cleanup, like a staircase sticking through a wall
  - Phase 3 area: Cleaned up some floating stuff
• Eye of God
  - Fixed some issues with the hangars, where you could hide inside the meshes unintentionally
• Errah:
  - Tweaked pathfinding a lot. Bots should be better at using the full map, notably the bridge in Phase 1
  - Fixed some issues where bots would try to path through fences in Phase 1, Phase 2
• Briefing Rooms
  - Slight performance tweaks
• Lukather
  - Fixed spots of missing collision
• Errah
  - Fixed some walls in Phase 3 structures lacking collision
• Lacroix:
  - Fixed some geometry you could unintentionally penetrate
• Ixion
  - Fixed some missing collision on interior hangar pieces

Onwards and upwards!