We plan to release a major hotfix for the live build later this week!
Due to a significant amount of underlying changes, we have decided to release a beta version in advance for everyone to test and experience.
You can try out this beta by selecting the 'mid-month-beta' branch in the Steam beta participation settings.
Changelog
[Combat]
Adjusted: Explosion damage is now distributed based on the overlapping ratio between the part's volume and the explosion radius. This addresses the long-standing issue where explosion damage was difficult to balance and large-radius HE (High Explosive) shells dealt excessive damage.
Removed: Armor penetration calculation and hit indicators for HE shells. Damage is now exclusively dealt by the explosion sphere itself.
Adjusted: HE shell hit indicators.
Adjusted: The global damage multiplier for naval guns has been tweaked to closely match the performance of version 1.42. This adapts to the new explosion radius damage changes (large-caliber HE shells will be less effective than in older versions).
Added: Multi-barrel AA guns now generate multiple muzzle flash VFX (for performance reasons, the tracer effect for the bullet trajectory remains a single beam).
Adjusted: Improved the horizon (sea-sky line) blending effect, fixing a rendering error on the distant sea surface when the player camera is at high altitudes.
Adjusted: Drastically improved in-game level file transfer speeds. Theoretical sync speeds have seen a massive boost (internal tests showed an increase from 256kb/s to 30mb/s. However, since the test PCs were on the same IP and Steam has LAN optimization, actual real-world performance requires further testing).
Fixed: An issue where the ripple-fire rate of other turrets would decrease when one turret's firing arc was blocked.
[Parts]
Fixed: Corrected the turret pivot point for the early US 203mm turret and provided color separation.
Adjusted: Added color separation for part n627 (French 100mm Jean Bart secondary gun).
Fixed: An English localization typo for the 'British 381mm/42 Mark I (Mark I/N RP 12 Two-gun Turret)'.
Adjusted: Implemented new HP values for vanilla AA guns, naval guns, rangefinders, and radars. These vanilla parts no longer use the old 'Volume x Armor' HP calculation system (with the exception of magazines and hoists).
[Editor]
Added: Custom music data synchronization for multiplayer levels. Custom music is now available in the Operation Editor.
Added: MP3 format support for custom music in the Level Editor.
Added: Independent volume control for custom music in the Level Editor.
Fixed: Custom music volume in the Level Editor not responding in real-time to system volume settings.
[Performance]
MASSIVELY improved loading times in the dockyard!!
Also slightly improved loading times for combat scenes.
Optimized: Reduced initialization time for the Part Inventory UI to speed up dockyard scene loading.
Optimized: Reduced skybox loading time.
Optimized: Optimized localization text initialization time, further improving overall scene loading speeds.