A new aero, upgrades, aeropedia, and a serious easing of the game’s difficulty curve are in this update. Switching to the Rewired input system means a LOT more out-of-the-box support for flight sticks, and more in-depth control rebinding options. This is the last major version until Beta!
NEW STUFF:
- ORCA Heavy Interceptor
- Aeropedia: Permanently records the number of kills for each enemy and the number of times you've been killed by them. It currently doesn't record all variants (ex: FALKE-VETs count as FALKEs): this is a work in progress.
- Aero Upgrades: You can now upgrade aeros like you do weapons. The stat progrssions are all very early and need testing and feedback. Payload and Avionics do not change, because then when you lose your upgrades you might have an invalid loadout that won't fit on the un-upgraded version of the same aero.
- Vertical splitscreen option: currently the GUI doesn't adapt well to it, so it's highly recommended that you play in windowed mode and strech the window so that the whole in-flight HUD is visible. This should not be a problem if you're stretching the screen across two monitors with a shared desktop.
- New bombsight: it's rendered in world space, so it is much more intuitive to use and gives you a more accurate idea of where your bombs might fall (there's a to-do item to make it recalibrate based on the predicted target altitude, right now it is still calibrated for sea level)
- Land sites will now spawn companion buildings in adjacent hexes
- Throttle changes near 50% throttle are faster for better game feel
- "Knife Fight" achievement: kill an air enemy at range 50 or closer
CHANGES:
- Changed to the Rewired input library. This means a lot more native support for flight sticks (http://guavaman.com/projects/rewired/docs/SupportedControllers.html) the rebind menu should be a bit friendlier.
- Difficulty curve has been significantly eased
- The total number of aeros spawned at the beginning of an island in later islands has been reduced (though they are still often vets / aces)
- Ground defense count grows much more gradually than before
- AI aggro range reduced (they will always aggro if you shoot at them, though)
- Asset Bundle mods no longer need to be called "test", in fact they should have unique names
- Barracks HP 500->1000, large hangar 1000->500
FIXES:
- Asset Bundle mods should get loaded in free flight
- Dodge tutorial can now be completed (In Alpha 28 it can be completed if you use roll (left or right arrow keys) but NOT if you use yaw (A or D on the keyboard))
- Custom missions use the new terrain system
- Completing co-op missions returns you to the carrier instead of immediately starting a new mission
- When player 1 dies in co-op mode it no longer resets all your progress (it only does so if both players die)