Hey there AFF Community!
First hotfix for 1.0 is out! A whirlwind of fixes, tweaks, map improvements and balance changes, all in response to Your awesome feedback! It's been an amazing week!
The servers haven’t exactly gone up in flames after release either but you’ve undoubtedly noticed we keep most of them capped to 32 players - that’s largely because the networking layer started hammering their CPUs after so many new people showed up and we can’t exactly get a building full of NASA supercomputers. We have however identified all the bottlenecks and we’re working on optimising the servers, so expect them to start coming back to full 64 players capacity over the coming weeks.
Balance
Sonic Knife
The knife everyone’s been talking about will likely be receiving another, more nuanced pass soon, possibly with updated animations, but to address current issues quickly we nerfed the slash attack rate by about 22% and reduced the damage by close to 25%. The reason the attack times were originally changed was to address some animation quirks of the knife, but that wound up having unforeseen consequences. We don’t like seeing matches turn into a blender of knives and neither does the Community, but we also don’t want to hurt genuine skill expression, so to incentivise a more deliberate usage of the knife we also increased the charged secondary attack damage.
GU-34 Gauss Rifle
One of our veterans brought up a major discrepancy with time to kill with the GU-34. Its TTK, even when tapfiring as it is designed to do, was roughly 30-40% longer than other heavy weapons like the DK31 and the EVR. We buffed its effective range and damage, which should help it compete with other weapons in its range brackets. This simple change simultaneously makes tap fire more effective and makes the weapon less hamstrung when the EMP proc is applied to it.
SGZ Special 4-Gauge Shotgun
The SGZ Special is a really fun weapon to use but its efficacy in close quarters is hampered by its long reload time, meaning it’s often easier to just switch to another weapon instead of reloading, especially if the double barrel blast doesn’t get the first target. We’ve decreased the reload time by around 20%, so where you’re vulnerable while reloading is less of a drawback for this weapon while engaged in combat.
Gunships
They are generally considered one of the more oppressive vehicles in the game by the Community. We’ve reduced their regen rates and increased their regen delays to make deterrents more effective without harming direct survivability. We will be looking at gunship and infantry interplay closely over time.
Vehicle Shields
The shields, and vehicles as a whole, are purposefully resistant to small-arms fire. The shields did exhibit behaviour of being practically impervious to this damage source, so we have guaranteed that sustained fire is no longer completely useless, but can very ineffectively chip away at a vehicle, or at least act as support for others with anti-vehicle weapons. Previous behaviour had shields immediately regenerate once broken, while the new iteration forces them down for at least 3 seconds regardless of source.
Server browser
With the greatly increased number of servers popping up, both official and player-hosted, the in-game server browser started taking a good while to refresh. We’ve updated it to be way more responsive and not wait on every server’s ping response before updating the list.
Profanity filter
Exceptionally naughty server names should be gone now, as well as the profanities in the in-game chat. Let’s keep it civil.
More stability fixes
We’ve been hard at work all week hunting down some rare client-side crashes too - at least a couple of them - on reconnecting and refreshing the server browser as well as traveling to another map - have been squashed.
Watch this space for more stuff in the coming days, as always come talk to us on Discord and have a lovely weekend!
Onwards and upwards!
Changelog:
Fixes:
Fixed a number of garbage-collector-related and online-connectivity-related crashes
Hackspikes can now be damaged by the multiwrench
Vehicles (except mechs) can no longer plant hackspikes
Fixed some instances of the Last Man Standing condition happening unintentionally in Space Incursion maps, leaving no spawn points available to use immediately after match start
Server Browser optimized to handle many, many servers
We have added a profanity and slur filter for both in-game text chat and server names
Several Dropship animation desync instances were resolved
Trying to bind “Enter” as a key no longer removes it as a confirmkey (would remove the ability to use it to send chat for instance). If the key was already changed, you must bind "Enter" to something and back again
Quality of life:
Changed Commander Vote text to clarify that it’s Opt-In
Milnet will assist with providing orders for Commanders with a CMD rank of 5 or less if they have not issued orders after 5 minutes of not ordering commands. There is a hint to indicate this as well.
Bots
Fixed an issue in bot memory that wasn't making them stick to priority as intended and not considering some targets
Allowed bot memory to redo priority if the new target would double the current priority
Bot memory no longer cares about current enemy priority if it is none
Reduced sight-delay by .2s if we were hit by them
Holding short-range weapons like knives or the multiwrench no longer forces bots to ignore the target if outside its current range
Bots should not consider squadhints for the duration of their weapon fire, rather than just relative to its start (punishing longer-firing weapons)
Bumped current weapon rating if it is currently firing to discourage them from swapping too frequently, especially if they are in the middle of using it
Bots should be more likely to fully deploy a deployable
Bots planting, or part of planting, a hackspike will no longer hesitate after it gets planted with reacting
Bots should generally be better at spreading out at objectives
Maps:
Errah:
Large line-of-sight blocker added to protect ULA drop pod from defenders
Increased the drop height for several vehicle droppers and modified the rotation angle to avoid clipping through terrain
Irega:
Fixed missing collision boxes on bridges and ramps behind Objective Delta in Cargotown
Added collision to techjunk near Sleazy Street and opened up fences for extra paths for both variants
Irega Territories - prevented sniping via turret against the droppod
Lukather (both variants) - added line-of-sight blocker to reduce ease of hackspike sniping from the ATC tower
Tannhauser:
Relocated Velius drop points for defenders to safer locations
Added vehicle blocking volume around Objective Delta hackspike and its tunnels
Added/relocated LoS blocker to better protect AIA lower deck drop pod
Added LoS interruptors to address anti hackspike RID cheese against Objective Charlie from ULA spawn
Prevented bots from walking off along a very long strut and getting lost
Cleaned up bot pathing in Phase 2 near Obj. Golf
Darsalaam - fixed area naming
Delta Territories - added collision to baseplate object near extraction laser
Fortress - fixed floating flares
Majuro:
Added missing blocking volumes around generators near Obj. Foxtrot near AIA spawn
Fixed snag near Obj. Golf inside bunkers near ULA spawn
Mirnoide - obscured space park terrain
Fighter Bases now should have the correct animations for the dropship
Minor collision fix in the Khamun engine room