Hello Commanders, War never changes. At least that's what they say, yet today we celebrate one year since Planetary Annihilation Inc took over development of this mighty game, and what an exciting year of change it has been. Modernisation of the underlying tech foundation was a big goal for us when we started. We have modernised the entire development toolchain, helping to reduce defects and improve performance. We have also upgraded the Coherent UI framework and eliminated numerous crashes. At this point if your client is crashing you probably need to update your graphics drivers. We are aware of the Linux Mesa issues so please hang tight, were working on it! A huge amount of effort has been put into the server, given that it is responsible for most of the heavy lifting. We have spent a lot of time improving performance, both through changes to the AI and the mechanisms that underpin the simulation. That includes more multi-threading, more optimisation and of course less crashes. You can now get buttery smooth performance on systems and setups that would have been unthinkable a year ago. Aiding this has been the migration to PAnet, our modern backend infrastructure. Better servers mean bigger and better games and a happier community. Single player is still incredibly popular among our community so AI updates have remained a big focus. We keep making it smarter and deadlier, so if you are struggling to win more than before, it's not you its us. Multiplayer is not forgotten either and the ranked queue is feeling more active than ever before, with seasons ensuring everyone gets their chance to shine with map rotation and balance changes keeping it fresh. Add to that a prize pool of US$4,500 per season to keep it competitive. Of course, while it is pleasant to feast on cake and grow fat we cant just rest on our laurels, there is a lot of work we still want to do and a gift we want to give. The Strkyer wasnt quite finished baking in time for the celebration, but well drop it off next time we swing by. The time of the Navalpocalypse is upon us, with ships now enjoying FTL (Faster Than Land) propulsion. The person who came up with this term is very pleased with themselves, dont let it catch on or theyll become insufferable. No longer will your naval games feel like an eternal slog, instead they will be more of an elegant duel with massive guns. There has also been a significant adjustment to the Typhoon to improve its viability and enable Squall swarms to blot out the sun, as the prophecy foretold. Finally, we have made more improvements to the AIs performance so that it will wait patiently and put its hand up, ensuring it is less demanding of your CPUs time. This may be the most significant performance improvement we have made so far in our AI. It has been a great year and we look forward to an even better one to follow. Recap:

• modernised client
• modernised server with more multi-threading and AI improvements
• PAnet migrated from UberNet with modern servers and more regions
• 1v1 ranked seasons with new maps, balance changes and a US$4,500 prize pool every 3 months
• Stryker!

Technical Notes

TITANS Balance Changes

• Narwhal frigate speed increased to 12 from 9
• Orca destroyer speed increased to 12 from 9
• Stingray missile ship speed increased to 11 from 8
• Leviathan battleship speed increased to 11 from 8

• Typhoon drone carrier speed increased to 11 from 8
• Cost decreased to 5,200 from 6,500
• Ammo rate increased to 30 metal per second (20 stored drones then one per second once depleted)
• Initial launch stage decreased to 200 from 500 (shorter launch before turn)
• Now targets sea floor

• Weapons priority changed to torpedoes
• Torpedo rate of fire increased to 0.8 from max 1 (up to 10 low damage torpedoes depending on range to target)

Client Improvements

• --local-server-port to use a different local server port

AI Improvements

• AI now processes path requests over time rather than all at once which should help smooth AI performance
• Multiple small AI performance improvements

AI Fixes

• AI platoons that fail to find a path back to base when disbanding will now try a direct move request as a last resort