Summary
In From the Depths you can build and take first-person command of battleships, planes, submarines, space ships, hot air balloons and more! The game is currently in alpha and contains a wide range of single player content including:- A creative mode allowing you to push your designs to the limit and ensure the total annihilation of your opponents.
- A campaign waged over hundreds of islands against eight unique factions.
- A Story Mode where you can (eventually!) play 15 missions as each of the eight factions - a fantastic mixture of strategy, design and wild battles! Defend your fleet against waves of enemy forces in a series of extremely tough challenges that unlock new components.
Key Features
- Design and build your fleet, fortresses and structures however you want. The alpha currently has over 400 unique components blocks, not including 29 different components for making missiles, torpedoes, depth charges and bombs.
- The sky's the limit, you can equip your vehicle with - cannons, lasers, mines, bombs, missiles, torpedoes, propellers, rudders, jet engines, wings, hydrofoils, hot air balloons, anchors, fire control computers, blueprint spawners, repair bots, air pumps, automated control blocks and many, many more!
- Realistic physics - every block destroyed or added affects the vehicle's functionality, physics and control. Drag, inertia tensors, buoyancy and sealed compartments are all updated based on the design of your vehicle and the damage sustained.
- Be part of a fantastic community (http://www.fromthedepthsgame.com/forum), with new releases made on average once a week. Community organised challenges and blueprint sharing make it an extremely friendly place to hang out!
Customisable Components
The customisable components in From the Depths allow a unique level of engineering customisation:- Design custom missiles, bombs, depth charges and torpedoes by combining various warheads types, fuse types, IR seekers, laser beam riders, laser designators, thrusters, navigation algorithms, fuel pods, sonar seekers, buoyancy compartments and propellers, to deliver a truly bespoke weapon.
- Design custom cannons by combining four different barrel types and lengths with autoloaders, warhead types, ammo boxes and auxiliary components to create everything from AA cannons to howitzers.
- Design custom AI by combing an AI mainframe with 'AI cards' slotted into motherboard blocks. Add radar detection, laser detection and tracking and local weapon controllers to give partial or full control to AI. Create anything from a fully AI controlled aircraft carrier to a battery powered drone.
- Design custom engines using crank shafts, cylinders, carburetors, super chargers, exhausts and fuel injectors. Electric engines, generators and chargers are also available for backup power supplies and drones.
- Similar systems exist for the creation of anti-vehicle and anti-missile lasers, as well as drills that can cut even the largest of battleships in half.
Workshop
We are back with another CLUSTER of bug fixes, tweaks and new features which we hope you will all like :D
A quick note before we get to the goodies. We have turned off Steam cloud sync as it has been causing some upsets and issues, this will remain off for the foreseeable future. :(
To continue with steam but the steamy type.
Gladyon has tweaked up our steam systems so that we can run them more efficiently. We can set the steam pressure to start with when spawning/pulling the construct into play/battle, and we can also set the material burn rate or use the auto-regulate function so that we reach the given pressure. This can be done via the boiler controller UI or ACB. 
We can also use ACBs to check the steam pressure of the closest boiler on the same construct, spin block and piston. Material consumption has also been tweaked such that the consumption is more efficient at low burn rates and less with high burn rates.
Gladyon has also increased the volume that large boilers have to 10% more volume than 9 small, and huge boilers to 20% more volume than 25 small ones.
Steam engines now consume material in out of play while the vehicle is moving using steam jets or steam propellers, however, constructs will not consume material out of play for power generation if there is no turbine or generator.
Next, we have Nicks Cluster missiles, a new feature in From the Depths which I have covered here:
https://youtu.be/LmQtViNwqz0
In that upload, I go through how we create the parent missile that will fire off the child missile and also parent to fire parent+child to fire a child, and we can also use flares with missile interceptors inside them. What I did not cover is that we can have a small missile carrying small missiles or medium carrying medium and large carrying large.
We have three new components, the Cluster container controller, which allows us to set how our missile will behave and fire off any child missile.
The Cluster container extension which gives us length and volume to hold our child missiles and the Cluster ejector which goes on any child missile or parent which is also a child missile eg: L holding M holding S the M missile is the parent and child at the same time in this case. You can find the stats on volume and size at the very bottom of the stats window, in the picture above you can see the stats and this L missile can hold 11m in length and 2.16m cubed volume. We will also see these stats on a missile which has the Container ejector installed, informing us how long in terms of Container extension length we need and volume on the parent missile.
A small example of a large missile that would fire 4 medium missiles which they would then fire off 4 small missiles each.
There will be some tweaks coming to cluster missiles in terms of ammo costs for the extensions etc. We may also have a method to spread out the child missiles from the parent missile in future (like the ejector setup for missiles).
Nick has also started work on the achievements. The first step towards us unlocking achievements is the authoring of constructs and subobjects/prefabs.
As you can see from my most epic life-like sculpture of Beastman our business manager, in the top box we have Name and author. This is where all the details will go in regards to who made this and how many blocks were added by others.
Draba has made a whole lot of changes ranging from ammo use, elevation, range, mat costs and a number of other stats to our simple weapons, you can see the list in the patch log section below.
He has also tweaked up the Signal Jammer and replaced this with a Sensor Scrambler ECM. This will use power and reduce the bearing/range accuracy of enemy sensors, however, the strength falls off with distance 80/67/50/29% at a range of 500/1000/2000/5000m, their strength stacks with each other.
Other changes to detection are: Visible, radar and sonar detection range is reduced to 30% for subconstructs.
Being close to the ground or sea surface decreases the radar detection range. Radar signature change increase from 75% at 0m to 100% at 50m.
Being high above the ground increases the radar detection range. Radar signature change increase from 100% at 50m to 135% at 400m.
Fav pick of pics. These were created and posted by Tourist in our discord channel. Very well made, so much detail has been put into these tanks its unbelievable. Well done!!
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