What is up all you awesome people! It is finally here, the update most of us have been waiting for and talking about: The Laser Rework! And an epically long list of bug fixes, tweaks and other additions to From The Depths. We have also switched up a number of UI elements and many new icons giving From The Depths a fresh look that even the White Flayers were over the moon [strike]and sacrificing mainframes[/strike] with joy!
We do understand that this new look may not be everyones cup of tea and as always, we are here listening (reading) and paying attention to concerns, dislikes and welcome any awesome suggestions you guys have to improve any aspect of From The Depths. Before we continue, we would like to thank you all for your support, suggestions and bug reporting. We have overhauled the lasers which has been discussed since May, so if you missed that you can find it here. If you did miss it and feel like youve missed your chance to voice your ideas on the whole thing, then perhaps you should visit the main forum a little more :) However, as Ive already said we are here, reading and waiting for your feedback.
While our current installed laser systems will show less damage output per shot (DONT PANIC!), lasers are also using less energy per shot, meaning we can trim down our power houses and extend our lasers or install more shields/increase their power. Lasers are also at a fixed 0.05 inaccuracy, and the focusing optics reduce the damage loss over long distances, which is calculated as follows: for every 10m in air 3% /(2+FOCUS_COUNT) and if the laser is passing through water it would be 20x that. The rest of the changes are as follows for all thing's laser related and anti-projectile/missile: APS flak damage increased by 25% CRAM health increased, from 3770 to 8000 at 2000mm (same scaling as before) Missile body component health doubled Missile interceptor damage increased by 25% Focusing and steering optic cost up from 20 to 50 Frequency doubler cost up from 50 to 200 Laser cavity costs down from 40 to 20 materials/cubic meter Laser pump costs up from 20 to 50 materials/cubic meter 1 laser energy is 1 damage for pulsed, 0.5 for continuous 1m/3m laser pump power use decreased from 100/300 to 40/120 1m/3m pump energy/second decreased from 100/300 to 20/60 Cavity energy storage down from 200/800/8000 to 100/400/4000 LAMS node damage penalty removed Max size of optic meshes reduced to 60%, now the entire line is the same size (steering optics now do not form cones) Maximum firing angle is smaller for longer optic lines Steering optics increase maximum firing angle, up to a point where 25% of your optic line is steering. Continuous lasers still do half the raw damage of pulsed, but they have double the AP Laser shields do not directly absorb damage; they reduce laser AP instead. REDUCED_AP = 1 / (2 * SHIELD_STRENGTH), only the strongest shield counts Laser shields now do not use energy, only power A 500mm APS smoke warhead has ~45% density, 200mm 7.5%. Smoke warheads in the same shell use HE's stacking and scaling rules Laser detection and missiles guidance are blocked if they hit enough smokes to reach 25% final reduction Smoke clouds now have a density between 0 and 100%. Lasers hitting them lose that percentage of their damage. Smoke layers are still multiplicative Smoke dispensers have 65% density/layer Effective smoke density is reduced to 75% against wavefront lasers (so 30% instead of 40, for example) Wavefront adjuster slider removed, now it reduces base damage to 50% Wavefront lasers retain 4x the AP after hitting shields compared to a normal one (100% AP against strength 1, 20% AP against strength 10) And if you think that was all we have done in the past two weeks then you should think again! We have created a new block type, The VideoBlock, which gives us a camera feed that can play local videos and YouTube, so you can watch your favourite anime while you traverse the 7 seas "liberating" Neter. You can also use the cameras attached to your turrets to see what they are pointing at and even from drones, which is awesome for recon flyers! I have to say I am in love with this block!! Its EPIC!
APS have some more changes that deserve mentioning here: HE, Frag, EMP and also Flak warheads now have 2AP from 0.1 We also have a configurable ACB controller which can control 12 ACBs, and we can set a mainframes behaviour using ACBs which was a suggestion by you awesome people. Another suggestion was to make the avatar immortal in designer mode, which can be toggled in the "Misc" tab. Among the plethora of other bugfixes that you have all reported, namely missiles were not heading towards the targets due to increasing the max FPS setting, missile tutorial could not be completed has been fixed. Barrels exploding while shooting its own projectile and visual glitches like black wood and railgun parts were not at the correct position / angle. The advanced ammo controller ID was not being displayed has also been resolved, and Spin block torque was causing an issue on a number of constructs has been sorted. We have also resolved the fluctuating battery bug along with, constructs that have been teleporting all over Neter, which has been reported by numerous members of the community. We have done many tweaks and additions from what you awesome people have been telling us, and these can be found further down. Lastly, we come to what is going to be happening at Brillant Skies for the next two weeks. After compiling a list of frequent suggestions and issues some players were having, we shall be working on the following among a number of other issues and additions. One of the most discussed topics on discord is steam balancing. We have read so many awesome ideas and suggestions and the most common is scaling up steam power, leaving small engines as they are but making it far cheaper to run steam as you use larger boilers, sacrificing space for efficiency like turbocharger fuel engines. Another idea has been to make steam engines use less material as they spool up, which would allow more highly efficient slow spooling engines and much less efficient fast spooling engines. We shall have some changes for the next DevTest build, which you can all check out soontm and leave us your feedback here. Please remember to check the other topics in case someone has listed the same thing already, and if so smash that vote button. Some of the suggestions that will be ready for our next DevTest build are: Numerous breadboard updates with requests from the community including more target information, memory component which will store values when the construct its spawn in, logic gates and the most common suggestions is to drag and drop function for components along with dragging components into position instead of constantly snapping to the grid. There has been talk about tank tracks for next DevTest build too! Which is something that is always popping up as a suggestion from our epic tank building community Some other interesting news, Gladyon is fixing bugs fulltime with us and the last time I checked with him, he had squished over two dozen bugs! A little sneak peek much further down the road the campaign will be getting looked into, the garrison areas may be removed and the AI constructs that would be there may be able to roam around dynamically. So that means the AI will also be getting looked into! Tutorials are also listed to be revamped and we should be getting a road map very soon too. I have also been hearing about Ship girls and how much Nick loves them. This creation is by Arkhangelsk, that was posted on our Discord, which I think is awesome!




The full list of patch notes: v2.4.7 [Add] : A configurable ACB controller block has been added, it can control up to 12 ACBs using in-game buttons activated by pressing 'Q' when pointing at them v2.4.7 [Add] : Fortresses can now be controlled using ACBs v2.4.7 [Add] : It is now possible to set a mainframe AI behaviour using an ACB v2.4.7 [Add] : Missile hatches can now be forced open using ACBs v2.4.7 [Add] : Option to make the avatar immortal in singleplayer designer. Option is in the 'Misc' part of the menu v2.4.7 [Add] : Rubber wedges (front and back 1m,2m,3m,4m) are now hand UV mapped rather than be procedurally tri-planar mapped like the rest of the rubber v2.4.7 [Add] : Added a function to the maths evaluator to get the angle between two vectors v2.4.7 [Add] : Multiple expressions separated by commas in the maths evaluator can be used to set different outputs of the component to different values v2.4.7 [Add] : Missile proximity fuse component now has a 'minimum altitude slider' v2.4.7 [Add] : Missiles with a harpoon that are attached to a winch can now pull and be pulled by the vehicle they are attached to. Enabled in the winch UI v2.4.7 [Add] : The the point that TPG or APN wants to aim for is now also displayed if the AI path view is enabled v2.4.7 [Add] : Ability to set tutorial vehicles so that their blocks cannot be accidentally removed by the player. Now used in the first tutorial. v2.4.7 [Add] : Added ability to highlight all sorts of buttons in the tutorials. Used in first tutorial. v2.4.7 [Add] : Buttons (resource view, detection view, objectives, diplomacy) are displayed as required on the Fleet Control, strategic map view and tactical map view. v2.4.7 [Add] : [EXPERIMENTAL] Camera feed is now available v2.4.7 [Add] : A pre-configured video controller block has been added, it can fully control a VideoBlock using in-game buttons activated by pressing 'Q' when pointing at them v2.4.7 [Add] : Local videos can now be played v2.4.7 [Add] : Several channels are now available v2.4.7 [Change] : Choosing the types of AI PIDs you want to use is now done with toggles in the AI menu instead of setting them in the AI PIDs themselves. v2.4.7 [Change] : EMP and Flak warhead bodies now have the same kinetic, AP and speed modifiers as HE and Frag warhead bodies v2.4.7 [Change] : HE, Frag, EMP and Flak heads now have 2 AP instead of 0.1 v2.4.7 [Change] : Aiming cross hair no longer shows up if no weapon slot selected or weapon control disabled v2.4.7 [Change] : The breadboard now uses a new maths evaluator that can use data types other than normal numbers. All available functions can be viewed in the breadboard v2.4.7 [Change] : The supply route UI has been massively improved with a lot of new functionality for easily creating routes. v2.4.7 [Change] : The 'Set to image ratio' button has been replaced by a toggle to lock the ratio of the projection to the ratio of the image v2.4.7 [Change] : APS flak damage increased by 25% v2.4.7 [Change] : CRAM health increased, from 3770 to 8000 at 2000mm (same scaling as before) v2.4.7 [Change] : Missile body component health doubled v2.4.7 [Change] : Missile interceptor damage increased by 25% v2.4.7 [Change] : Focusing and steering optic cost up from 20 to 50 v2.4.7 [Change] : Frequency doubler cost up from 50 to 200 v2.4.7 [Change] : Laser cavity costs down from 40 to 20 materials/cubic meter v2.4.7 [Change] : Laser pump costs up from 20 to 30 materials/cubic meter v2.4.7 [Change] : 1 laser energy is 1 damage for pulsed, 0.5 for continuous v2.4.7 [Change] : 1m/3m laser pump power use decreased from 100/300 to 40/120 v2.4.7 [Change] : 1m/3m pump energy/second decreased from 100/300 to 20/60 v2.4.7 [Change] : Cavity energy storage down from 200/800/8000 to 100/400/4000 v2.4.7 [Change] : LAMS node damage penalty removed v2.4.7 [Change] : All lasers have a fixed inaccuracy of 0.05 v2.4.7 [Change] : Focusing optics reduce damage loss over long distances. Damage loss for every 10m in air: 3% / (2 + FOCUS_COUNT). In water 20x that. v2.4.7 [Change] : Max size of optic meshes reduced to 60%, now the entire line is the same size(steering optics now do not form cones) v2.4.7 [Change] : Maximum firing angle is smaller for linger optic lines v2.4.7 [Change] : Steering optics increase maximum firing angle, up to a point where 25% of your optic line is steering. v2.4.7 [Change] : Continuous lasers still do half the raw damage of pulsed, but they have double the AP v2.4.7 [Change] : Laser shields do not directly absorb damage, they reduce laser AP instead. REDUCED_AP = 1 / (2 * SHIELD_STRENGTH), only the strongest shield counts v2.4.7 [Change] : Laser shields now do not use energy, only power v2.4.7 [Change] : A 500mm APS smoke warhead has ~45% density, 200mm 7.5%. Smoke warheads in the same shell use HE's stacking and scaling rules v2.4.7 [Change] : Laser detection and missiles guidance are blocked if they hit enough smokes to reach 25% final reduction v2.4.7 [Change] : Smoke clouds now have a density between 0 and 100%. Lasers hitting them lose that percentage of their damage. Smoke layers are still multiplicative v2.4.7 [Change] : Smoke dispensers have 65% density/layer v2.4.7 [Change] : Effective smoke density is reduced to 75% against wavefront lasers(so 30% instead of 40, for example) v2.4.7 [Change] : Wavefront adjuster slider removed, now it reduces base damage to 50% v2.4.7 [Change] : Wavefront lasers retain 4x the AP after hitting shields compared to a normal one(100% AP against strength 1, 20% AP against strength 10) v2.4.7 [Change]