NEW
- Four more wizard spells. Stormheart, Starfall, Miasma and Tidal Bore join the wizard list, each with its own effects and sounds. Their icons are placeholders for now.
- Stormheart puts a storm with a 35 m radius around your ship. After a 1 second warning it strikes for 5 seconds, hitting every enemy in reach for 6 damage every half second (60 over a full cast). When another ship stands in the way, the bolt chains through it; allied ships carry the bolt but are never hurt. 40 second cooldown.
- Starfall calls down a meteor on a spot 20 to 220 m from your ship. You can aim it anywhere on the map, over islands and forts included. About four seconds after you cast, it lands in seven rings, hitting for 90 at the centre and 36 at the edge of its blast, which has a 39 m radius. 35 second cooldown.
- Miasma leaves a poison cloud with a 39.6 m radius on the water. After a 1 second warning it lasts 10 seconds, and enemies inside take faster damage the longer they stay. Overlapping clouds never stack their damage on the same ship. 60 second cooldown.
- Tidal Bore raises a 40 m wide wave that starts 13 m ahead of your bow and rolls 100 m forward at 25 m/s after a 1 second warning. It carries every ship it catches, friend or foe, and strikes each enemy once for 15 damage. Enemies hidden by Ghostwake take the hit but are not carried. 45 second cooldown.
- A new cannon aiming view. Zoom the camera all the way in, then zoom in once more with a fresh push (holding the zoom is not enough) to drop into a low view along one side of your ship: bow, stern, port or starboard, whichever way the camera was facing. Lines on the water show how far that battery's shots reach, with an arc at maximum range, and your own hull shows through as a half-transparent silhouette so you can line up a broadside. The camera stays centred on your ship while you aim, and you leave the view by zooming back out.
NEW SHIP MODELS
Three ships have new hulls, and every ship's sails and rigging were checked against the ship they sit on. These are the looks; the changes you will feel in a fight are under Changes & Balance.
- A new brigantine. A brand-new hull with a finished stern and helm, modelled standing and running rigging (shrouds, ratlines and stays), and a new sail plan: six working sails (fore course, topsail and topgallant, jib, staysail and the gaff-rigged main) and five bonus "Full Canvas" sails that appear at full sail while a Fugitive captain or mate's ability is active: a gaff topsail, two staysails between the masts and a pair of studding sails out over the water. The old textures, the main topsail and the old bonus sails are gone. Its hitbox, speed and handling are unchanged.
- A redesigned galleon. The galleon has a new hull with new textures, and its deck crew now stand in the right places on the new deck. Its square sails and bonus main topgallant hang from their yards, and the upper deck's guns are staggered against the lower deck.
- A new schooner. A new hull, longer and wider than the old one, with a new six-sail set: fore gaff, main gaff and jib, plus bonus fore gaff topsail, main gaff topsail and flying jib. The little inner headsail is gone, so at half sail the schooner now shows both gaff sails, and in reverse it shows the jib. It is a bigger ship in a fight too; see Changes & Balance.
- Kraken attacks fit the new hulls. The Kraken's deck slap, constriction and side whip were refitted so they wrap the galleon, schooner and brigantine without cutting through their hulls or sails. Timing and gameplay are unchanged.
CHANGES & BALANCE
- The schooner is a bigger ship. Its hitbox grew from 16.4 x 3.7 m to 18.3 x 4.5 m, so it is easier to hit and takes more room to thread past islands and other ships. Its guns sit where the new model's guns are: spaced roughly 2.5 to 2.7 m apart instead of 2.2 m, and slightly farther out from the centreline. Draft, speed, turning, health, damage, reload, range and crew are unchanged.
- Gun positions moved on the new hulls. Cannonballs leave from the new models' guns. On the galleon the eight upper-deck guns sit 1.75 m closer to the bow than the lower deck's, so the broadside is staggered. On the brigantine, which keeps its 20.5 x 6.5 m hitbox and 8 guns a side, the guns are respaced evenly, 1.9 m apart, and shots leave about 7 cm farther out from the centreline.
- Tug of War fleet spawner limit is per team. The old limit of three spawners per player is gone. A team can own up to 12 spawners between them, and one captain may own all of them. The "Owned Fleet" tab is now "Team Fleet n/12" and scrolls when the list gets long. The limit of 24 live fleet ships per team is unchanged.
- Siege duty. Up to four AI fleet ships per team at each enemy objective (a flank battery or the fortress) now stay on it once they arrive within 90 units. They keep attacking it until it falls or they are driven off, instead of being pulled away by every passing enemy ship (a ship already in a fight with another ship still finishes that first), and ships that are not on duty still deal with enemy ships first, as before. Fleets that are stopped before they ever reach an objective are not helped by this.
- Treasure galleon swivel guns reach farther. Range is now 34 m, up from 30 m.
- Bomb Ketch mortar. The blast radius is now 33.6 m, down from 39.2 m: the outermost and weakest damage ring has been removed. Damage in the remaining rings is unchanged.
- Chase guns kick and smoke. Firing a bow or stern chaser now puffs muzzle smoke and gives the camera a small kick, much lighter than a broadside's.
- Twin Forts far cays. The two pairs of small cays at the far north and far south ends of the centre line are now one cay each. This closes the narrow gaps that only a sloop or schooner could squeeze through.
- Cheaper big fleet battles. Tug of War matches with large fleets now cost less to run, so they should run more smoothly. AI fleet ships that no camera can see are no longer drawn, crews on distant AI ships only appear when a camera is near, the minimap and the cannon target search do less work every frame, and the host's simulation does less work on loot, ship collisions, coastlines and wind. As part of this, AI fleet ships now check the coast ahead ten times a second instead of every tick, so they may brush a coastline slightly more often than before.
- Several behind-the-scenes improvements: diagnostics from long Tug of War matches now upload reliably, and the project's build tooling and tests were tidied.
FIXES
- Broadside cannon fire is audible again. In 0.12.2 the broadside guns fired silently in every game mode, for the host and for clients. You hear the guns once more.
- Chase guns now play a cannon-fire sound too. They had always fired silently.
- AI fleet ships that had finished their lane used to sail back to the last point of it after every fight. They now keep pressing the enemy defences instead.
- AI fleet ships that sank an enemy used to stop looking for the next one, so opposing fleets could sail straight past each other. They now keep scanning after a kill.
- The shipyard's Buy Ship page no longer rebuilds its 3D ship preview every frame, which was dragging the frame rate down while you browsed. The Caribbean shipyard still shows the turning ship; the Tug of War shop now shows a still picture of the selected ship.
- The Twin Forts gate shoals did not fully seal both coasts. They now run right up to the land on both sides, so deep-draft ships (bomb ketch, frigate, galleon, fourth rate) cannot find a way around them, while sloops, schooners and brigantines still sail over them.
- Fixed odd shading at the corners of sails on most ships; 52 of the game's 95 sail models were corrected.
- Sails and rigging now sit on what holds them up. On the bomb ketch and treasure galleon, canvas that floated a short way off its yard now hangs from it, and the treasure galleon's yards sit on their masts. The treasure galleon's mizzen lateen yard no longer cuts through the crow's nest, and its staysail is attached to its stay.
- Under the hood: the sail and rigging checkers now fail instead of passing when they cannot find a sail's support, and the Kraken fit records and checks were corrected and tightened.