17 de setembro

Ancient Frontier - Patch 1.14

Greetings Commanders!

Today we reveal the new Outrigger ship the Manticore class heavy cruiser. This appears along with several new missions where you fight the Outriggers in the Alliance campaign. Finally, we have addressed a few minor bugs.

The Manticore

This massive heavy cruiser is constructed at a secret location known only to the Outrigger engineers. Packed with stolen modern weaponry the Manticore is one of the most modern ships on the Frontier.



The primary weapons of the Manticore are twin Coil Cannons. Coil technology was originally developed for the Federation by the Outriggers, and they kept the blueprints of the technology. Coil Cannons are long range, accurate weapons that add extra shield damage. As primary weapons the main guns allow the cruiser to deal heavy damage even through shields.

Located in the center of the chassis is a massive Drive Harpoon. The harpoon is a perfect weapon that compliments the scavenging ways of the Outriggers. It drains the energy from the main engines of its target, reducing its movement to a crawl. This allows the Manticore to stun its prey before moving in for the kill and eventual juicy salvage.

These weapons are backed up by an imposing set of quad Shredder Cannons. This is stolen technology from the Pirate clans, and serves the Manticore well. It provides very high damage at short range for engagements that close in.

All of this weaponry makes the Manticore very capable in duels with other capital ships. What really sets the ship apart, however, is its anti-fighter abilities.

First, it houses a pair of hanger bays. These typically house two Gunship heavy fighter squadrons. However there are rumors that there are Manticore captains that prefer to use lighter Explorer squadrons to better scout out targets to ambush.

Second, it uses a massive battery of eight pulse laser turrets. Pulse laser technology is closely guarded by the Federation and the High Temple on Mars, and how the Outriggers were able to steal this coveted piece of technology is unknown. The turrets allow the Manticore to deal with enemy fighters even if it loses its own squadrons.

All of this makes the Manticore an ideal flagship for an Outrigger fleet. While rare, the few that do exist are very deadly.

New Missions

There are a total of 4 new missions available in the Alliance campaign. All of the missions are optional Bounty missions, but they give the Alliance player more options for the enemies they face.

There is one new mission in Tarsis, two missions in Hadron, and one new mission in Cygnus. Hopefully these missions add a few more choices and a little more variety to this mid game stretch of the campaign.

In addition Outrigger forces (and related rewards) have been increased in missions for both campaigns in Tarsis, Arx, Hadron and Cygnus. The Outriggers are out in force. Beware of the Manticore!

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a bug (again!) where the tutorial would crash upon beating the second mission.
  
• Fixed a bug where collecting items was not registering in a Federation story mission in the Externus sector.

Known Issues

We are aware and have confirmed that not all of the 58 events are showing up for all players. We are still looking into what is causing this and hope to have a fix soon (tm).


We hope you enjoy these updates, and thank you for playing our game!

6 de agosto

Ancient Frontier - Patch 1.13

Greetings Commanders!

Today we have a group of balance changes and bug fixes that we wanted to get out right away.

We are working on another content update that will feature additional Outrigger ships and missions. There was not time to fully test the missions for this patch, however, so they will be launched in a future update. Rumors say that a new Outrigger heavy cruiser has been sighted in deep space. You have been warned.

Graphic Enhancements

With this patch we have made several changes to the display of the UI in all of the ship management screens. The UI will appear larger on most resolutions, and should lead to a better experience when playing at a variety of 2k and 4k resolutions.

In addition we made changes that should allow the game to play on most TV monitors the same way it plays on computer monitors.

Balance Changes

• Reduced the difficulty of most pirate missions in the Alliance campaign.
  
• Changed how resource collection is tracked so that only the specific resource needed for the mission counts for completion. In the past it was possible for a player to get in a no-win scenario if the AI picked up too many resources. However, a long time ago we made a change where resources picked up by the AI ships counted toward quest completion. With that change, we can again revert resource collection objectives to only count specific resources.
  
• Changed the AI to care more about its own life when attacking. There should be less suicide runs now.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a bug where if you saved the game on the Market, and then tried to start a new game the game could crash.
  
• Fixed a bug where clicking on hexes 5 or 6 spaces away from your ship would not register unless you moved the camera.
  
• Improved a bug where the AI could attack you from very far away. This should happen much more rarely than it already did.
  
• Fixed the "skip turn" bug that could sometimes appear. Note: This is the fourth time we have attempted to address this bug. This time around we made some very drastic changes behind the scenes to stop it from happening. As there is no dependable way to reproduce the bug, we are sort of shooting in the dark, but we are feeling good about this attempt. If you continue to see this bug please let us know.

Known Issues
We are aware and have confirmed that not all of the 58 events are showing up for all players. We are still looking into what is causing this and hope to have a fix soon (tm).

As mentioned at the start, we wanted to rush out the bug fix portion of this patch to make for a better experience for all players. The "second half" of this patch will now be released in patch 1.14, and will include more content featuring the Outriggers in both campaigns.

We hope you enjoy these updates, and thank you for playing our game!