Hey there AFF Community!

A quick patch today to squash some remaining bugs as we inch towards the 1.0 release. For safety and convenience we decided to put these smaller fixes out now, so that everyone who might come onboard during the incoming sale has a smoother experience with the game:

Less derpy turrets, less in-your-face-grenade-duplication, less jank around prestige and achievements, fixes to map visuals and collision




We will follow this up with a release of the tutorial section of the game, which required some bigger changes and needs at least a couple more weeks of internal QA.

And after that, well, the main event - the end of Early Access. Very likely with some new content, although we’re still finalizing the list of what will actually go into the 1.0 version and what might be introduced afterwards. Watch this space to know more!

As usual - for feedback, or just a lovely chat with the devs, hop on our Discord server!

Onwards and upwards!


Hotfix changelog:

• Fixed deployable turrets (MG/flame/plasma) being nearly unresponsive, flipping between targets and rarely deciding to actually fire at one
  
• Fixed nearly-overcooked grenades exploding in your face twice
  
• Fixed the USN briefingroom spawn point rotation - would start players looking at a corner of a wall instead of into the briefingroom
  
• Prestige and player stats check (cmd/cmb/sup) on main menu launch and after prestiging on the loadout screen (would only happen on map-end before)
  
• A more telling message for when you have multiple camos pending for prestiging
  
• Prestiging now correctly saves the resulting stat levels (seemingly did not happen if done without completing a match afterwars, crashing, doing it from the main menu etc.)
  
• Fixed some boarding tubes having incorrect material and lighting
  
• Using incendiary/shock/corrosive ammo in vehicle weapons will now also correctly count towards related achievements
  
• Rerouted how awarding kills for destroying boardingpoints is done
  
• Fixed a number of cases where explosives wouldn't attribute hits to the owner
  
• Fixed some logspam and glitches when trying to swap weapons
  
• Changed the Headcount achievement to be 100 headshots, at 200+ meters range (down from 200 at 250+)
  
• Fixed the B2 point spawn on Lukather
  
• Miscellaneous collision fixes across maps, especially around droppods

Hey there AFF Community!

While we’re wrapping things up for the tutorial and the upcoming 1.0 release, here’s a smaller patch to mend some of the issues left over from the previous update:


A few of the 100+ achievements introduced in Update 29 didn’t quite register correctly and needed some touching up. But more importantly, a pesky bug creeped in alongside the achievements which made the game not read player stats (levels) correctly from Steam every other match. That should be fixed now.




Passenger seats in vehicles and secondary turrets in spaceships had problems with their controls freezing completely, that’s no longer the case. Furthermore a number of UI issues and oddities got smoothed out along the way.




Both the recently-released Majuro map and the older levels received a number of fixes to weird collision and visual glitches.



As usual - for feedback, or just a lovely chat with the devs, hop on our Discord server!

Onwards and upwards!


Hotfix changelog:

• Fixed player stats not getting read properly from Steam on dedicated servers (and even less so on listen servers)
  
• Fixed achievements not always gettings their status properly read from/written to Steam
  
• Fixed a thread synchronization crash on quitting a listen server with additional players
  
• Fixed a rare crash on match end due to out-of-state timer function not existing
  
• Fixed the use key ("F”) interfering with password dialog confirmation
  
• Fixed passenger seats not being able to move the camera at all when using mouse instead of a controller
  
• Fixed a few shader compilation oddities in DX11 mode
  
• Fixed some instances of the death-screen sometimes showing negative values for player stats
  
• Fixed some instances of map-specific achievements not registering on clients
  
• Enlarged the deployed dropship collision so frogs can’t jump over it no more
  
• Random player loadouts should now respect budgets (Note: in “unranked” games, it should respect the custom rank value set)
  
• Achievements preview menu (“P”) can no longer be opened while in the loadout menu, config menu or server browser. It is additionally blocked from opening while chat is open so that it doesn’t interfere with other inputs
  
• Touched up a bunch of UI buttons and their controller-specific bindings to make them more responsive and intuitive
  
• Fixed the wonky Majuro tracks and seawalls collision
  
• Fixed a bunch of collision issues around Majuro's bunkers and stations
  
• Removed some floaty rocks on Majuro
  
• Fixed some artifacts in Majuro’s shadows
  
• Added a piece of an artificial platform to get over some annoying terrain collision on Ascella
  
• Fixed AI pathing out of the Stage 2 spawns on Lukather
  
• Fixed the tiny pool of water on Errah having a broken material in DX11 mode
  
• Fixed stairs collision on Fortress

Hey there AFF Community!


Yes, it’s finally here! It wasn’t an April Fools joke at all, despite the timing! Here’s what’s new:


Brand new map for the Territories gamemode, set on a beautiful, tropical atoll and focused on fast-paced infantry and light-vehicles combat. But remember, mind the gap!










Previously only the space part of the game was controllable with a gamepad, and not very well either. We’ve made the entire flow of the game support controller inputs, a word of warning though: this isn’t a typical console user experience, in the menus you’ll basically have to use the controller sticks to steer the mouse cursor. It works well enough to make AFF playable on a couch and unfortunately we can’t do much more about it - the middleware AFF’s user interface was made in is long gone and doesn’t support assigning controller actions to UI elements easily.




A lot of systems and gameplay elements have been tweaked to not only run faster (both in terms of CPU- and GPU-performance, we’ve even gone as far as recompiling the engine with more modern tools) but also work better with bots. They should be even more aware of their surroundings and work more coherently in squads, both in space and on the ground.


There’s also a lot, and I mean a lot, of balance and general quality of life improvements across the entire game - in the UI, in the gunplay, in how the capital ship combat is presented. As usual we’re striving for the most fair and fun experience so let us know if something feels out of whack. Full changelog can be found below.




We added 100+ achievements to the game, some more obvious, some pretty tough to find. We know a lot of you like to hunt these down and it encourages some variation in playstyles so have at it!




There is so many changes spanning such a long period of development in this update that something's gotta break, there's no way around it. So firstly there will likely be a hotfix of some sort coming in the nearest future with whatever needs smoothing out.

Now, the elephant in the launch bay - what the heck happened, why such a long pause in updates? Truth is, most of us just weren’t able to dedicate hours to AFF in these tumultuous times so what you’re seeing in this update is the total sum of us touching it up on and off for the last two years.

We haven’t gone anywhere though, the team is still here and we figured it’d be unfair to leave the game in limbo like that. Keep in mind that AFF, as cliche as it sounds, is first and foremost a labour of love, love for games, for scifi, for giant exploding spaceships, so we'll always come back to it in one form or another. But the main point is - we’re here to wrap this party up now.

So now officially: Update 30 is going to be the 1.0 version of AFF, the end of Early Access.

Will it be completely bug-free and jank-free? Probably not. A lot of the tools AFF was made with got old and deprecated and it makes it hard to implement changes to the game. We’re bringing back the tutorial section of the game though, for better on-boarding of new players, some more general fixes and tweaks, perhaps even a couple content surprises too.

There's even more we'd like to talk about to our Community, as well as some additional announcements coming real soon, so come hang out with us on our Discord!


Changelog:

Ships:
• The explosion effects of capital ships should be far less likely to persist after death
  
• Fixed various effects leaking from one capship interior to another
  
• Fixed issues with stations being destroyable unintentionally (damage bleeding over from shooting components) - Most notably Ixion station
  
• Fixed Ixion stations components being misconfigured
  
• When a capship enters red-alert, it should now make sure to kill the ships shields and engines to make it clearer that it’s dead in the water
  
• Fixed misconfigured Griphon consoles
  
• Fixed Chons plasma using the wrong weapon
  
• Fixed map-specific instructions not reliably applying to shields and engines of capships
  
• Fixed a number of capship-destruction interior effects not playing properly, missing or otherwise
  
• Dropships now have hyperjump effects in interiors like all the other capships
  
• Potentially fixed capships not reliably triggering their exterior blowing-up effects
  
• Spectating someone, or spectating in, a capship that is blowing up should move spectators to a new target
  
• Capship weapons should now display a ( ) indicator for where the closest weapon are to the aimpoint for better feedback
  
• Tweaked seat-interactions on most ships to be more friendly to use
  
• Interior windows should be better about emulating the outside level
  
• Potentially fixed the visually seated infantry in capship turrets being unreliable. It should now properly show up and be damageable, etc. Additionally, weapon attachments should no longer be visible unintentionally
  
• Reworked Anubis and Huginns death effects from firing immediately, to being a gradual collapse that follows the actual functional destruction timer
  
• Fixed capship death effects being very jittery at times
  
  Bots:
  
• Reduced chance of bots picking “best ship for order”, since it resulted in far too little variation, which in turn resulted in them performing poorly overall in combat
  
• Bots will now generally try to pick a warp-in point closest to their assigned objective
  
• Bots will try to wait for squadmates respawning before using fighters, so they will have a bigger chance of entering space in squads for better combat-effectiveness
  
• Bots should be better about spreading out after planting a hackspike, rather than effectively sitting in the same spot
  
• Bots should be less hesitant to plant hackspikes
  
• Bots should be better about responding to objectives under attack
  
• Bots should no longer stick around in dropships if there’s nothing to board, after they have made their dropship ready for next boarding-action
  
• Fixed issues with bots thinking they fired their MW when they haven't (Making them fixating at a wrong point, not letting them swap, etc)
  
• Bots will be more aware that they have scored a kill, and not focus on the dead body at rank 2 and above
  
• Fixed an issue causing bots that have been revived to always be stuck to looking in the same direction
  
• Bots should be better about repair objectives; especially when attacking them
  
• Bots should be better about determining who’s actually attacking an objective
  
• Milnet will now also consider boarding action for defend-objectives (applies to some maps like Ixion Territories, Kerrat)
  
• Milnet should be better about making sure about panic-objectives being relevant and reachable
  
• Fixed a number of issues with Kerrat’s phase 2 objective-type
  
• Bots should be better about not respawning unless they have to
  
• Bots should be better about utilizing capship weapons, rather than doing very short bursts
  
• Bots should change their mind about their pathing less on ground, hopefully leading to less cases of them being indecisive and running back and forth in the same area for a while
  
• Bots might decide to try to bail from a ship blowing up, instead of sitting in the seat accepting their faith. Additionally taught bots that entering a seat while the ship is blowing up is a bit silly
  
• Vehicle AI are now allowed to target and shoot neutral things if ordered to. They should additionally prioritize their ordered target over whatever else they’d be shooting at
  
• Potentially improved bot ability to pathfind in space - especially for capships.
  
• Bots should no longer try to swap weapons when they start sprinting, unless they are not engaged and not currently reloading. Additionally they will not do so instantly if they have recently been engaged
  
• Bots should be better about swapping weapons on ground and space in general
  
• Bots rank 3 and above might be more likely to use AV weapons against clustered enemies
  
• Potentially fixed an issue sometimes causing bots following another to end up with an invalid move-to location, causing unnecessary respawns
  
• Bots should be more decisive in which ship they wish to bring into space
  
• Potentially fixed an issue that would cause bots to remain in a capships interior after being booted out of a seat
  
• Bot-vehicle-loadouts should now strive to use all the slots (Previously, especially on capships, a number would never be attempted populated)
  
• Bots will be more likely to use nades against squads
  
• Bots will have a slightly larger desired range for using deployables
  
• Tweaked how bot-shared-squad-vision works further; Will care less if they have recently fired at something
  
• Taught bots how to deal with being tasked to attack objective-less destroyables, and added task-descriptions to it (used to be just “freelance”)
  
• Fixed some issues with how bots determine whether they can hit a destroyable, and expanded on their checks, so they don’t need to see its centerpoints
  
• Potentially improved bots ability to recover vehicles when they get confused pathing
  
• Milnet’s logic has been refactored, and should hopefully be considerably more performant. It was causing small lag spikes when running
  
• Optimized bots logic for throwing stuff
  
• Optimized vechwepAI a bit
  
• Bots will linger looking in the direction of their last target a bit, to de-cheese effectiveness of popping in/out of cover
  
• Tweaks to how bots determine who to attack. They will generally prioritize their current target higher, but will also consider their weapons effectiveness more
  
• Optimized bots sight-checks somewhat
  
• More tweaks to bots spaceship flying/pathing, most notably should help them in small spaces
  
• Tweaked how bots approach ship-interfaces (like weapons, shields, etc). They can now be tasked to repair them, or will repair them if they run past them. If tasked, they might also go deal with others in that capship. Additionally taught them how to deal with the task as a whole better
  
• A number of tweaks to when bots desire to sprint or crouch. It will be a lot more dependent on their weapon, and general circumstances. Should make for a more dynamic experience, and better utilization of their weapons, as well as making them more aware of their helmet mods. Bots rank 5 will additionally be less predictable with these choices. They should also be more aware of not to sprint if it impacts their ability to shoot
  
• Bots will be smarter about using the MNL
  
• Bots rank 4,5 can now use underslung rockets against enemy pawns, and will generally be smarter about using it
  
• General tweaks to when bots thinks its ideal to use weapons based on ranges
  
• Tweaks to bots firemode-choices
  
• Fixed bots effectively being incapable of using the GU34 at times
  
• Tweaked how bots reacts to smoke. The higher their rank, the more they should be able to recognize “transparent areas” of the smoke. Additionally higher ranked bots will keep firing at you, although with a sizeable aim-penalty, if you are dancing around the smoke (takes a bit before they fully forget about you)
  
• Tweaked automatic gun AI on vehicles a bit; Should be better at using charge-up weapons, and will generally keep their target. Additionally fixed some issues where it could end up without targets, despite having some.
  
• Bots should generally be less snappier with their movements
  
• Bots reloading might try to find a safe-ish spot
  
• Added a penalty to bots for how quickly they realize they have something to shoot, if they were told about you, rather than saw you directly
  
• Bots should be more conscious about colliding with something in vehicles (And try to recover)
  
• More bot vehicle-pathing tweaks
  
• Bots might try to drive a vehicle owned by another bot out of the way if it is obstructing an objective
  
• Bots should now be more aware of vehicles when it comes to pathing
  
• Fixed some issues with when bots want to enter or leave vehicles. They should now additionally be more aware of vehicles left because it got stuck
  
• Bots should respond more to underslung flamers
  
• Tweaked bots desirability towards weapons; If they have recently been hit, they will not prioritize deployable or grenades, and should prioritize their current weapon more
  
• Bots will remember who hurt them last, and prioritize them slightly higher. This persists through death for rank 3-5 bots
  
• Bots might use sensorballs in decoy mode
  
• Improved bots ability to aim with vehicle-weapons
  
• Rank 4,5 bots will be better at aiming weapons that might not be ideal against their target
  
• Bots might react to proximity nades, spring nades and detpacks. Their chance depends on skill and whether they have a helmetsensor
  
• Bots might react to decoys
  
• Bots in space using charge-up weapons should be more aware of how they work, and be less likely to turn away from their target while using them
  
• Bots flying might decide to roll and otherwise do small evasive moves
  
• More flying Bots stuck-behavior tweaks
  
• A lot of tweaks to flying bots combat behavior; Including added two new types of attack-move. They should overall be far more competent foes, be better about using boost, facing their enemies, acquiring enemies, etc, and ideally more reactive
  
• Bots in gunships should prioritize fighting other gunships higher (for air-superiority first), and vehicles second
  
• Some flying-pathfinding fixes for bots; They should also far more rarely decide to ram terrain
  
• Higher level bots have gained various improvements over lower in spacecombat, such as taking hints from their squad for enemies
  
• Bots should laser-focus a bit less on destroyable-objectives
  
• Bots will have some awareness of landed projectiles that might hurt them, like MNL/Nades/bomblets
  
• Some performance improvement to some of the bots general taskings
  
  Weapons and vehicles:
  
• Fixed various desync issue with reloading guns in multiplayer
  
• Rebalanced vulcans on TI/Griphon/Khamun/Huginn; More shots till overheating, longer cooldown. Intent is encouraging maxing out their heat and swapping to another weapon
  
• Fixed RID always unintentionally granting 50% charge for the next shot. It should now only give back 50% charge when fired with more than 70% charge
  
• Added a slight grace-period to RID where you can release the trigger without firing immediately after a shot
  
• Reduced base-damage of the RID, but increased anti-vehicle modifier. Less infantry damage, same vehicle damage
  
• Fixed an issue where the RID’s laser would stick around for a while during reloading
  
• RID should now properly show its final shot client-side
  
• RID should now properly play the firing-animation again
  
• MNL should now show its final shot properly (if using charge-up) client-side
  
• Burst-fire weapons should now more reliably fire their last shots client-side
  
• Underbarrel shotgun can now shoot twice per reload. How? Space magic!
  
• Underbarrel flamer is no longer affected by burst-firemodes on the main weapon. Additionally fixed it unintentionally having gotten a second “magazine” to reload from
  
• Fixed dropped weapons not having their scopes properly applied to them
  
• Fixed dropped weapons having wrong ammo-count when picked up in MP
  
• Fixed exploit of dropping a weapon in a different firemode resulting in the picked up version having full ammo
  
• Mines should now be more reactive to mechs
  
• Infantry should no longer slowly push mines through geometry by trampling over them
  
• Mines should no longer inflict damage if they blow up because their associated vehicle was destroyed (to put them on-par with detpacks as intended)
  
• Mines should no longer randomly explode in multiplayer (they would look exploded, but still exist visually and functionally)
  
• Dramatically decreased fire-rate of all capship weapons, except Rail and Rockets. Rail damage is dramatically reduced. The intention is to make the fights slightly longer, while still roughly keeping the current feeling
  
• Rebalanced gunship’s rockets and bomblets to do less damage against infantry, but the same amount against vehicles. Intention is to still have them be viable, and reward skill, but hopefully reduce the feeling of getting completely obliterated by a gunship. Additionally increased direct-hit damage of bomblets
  
• Mechs should no longer always have a rocket launcher on their right arm if left blank in loadout
  
• Slightly lowered AoE area for EVR’s heavy shot, and slightly decreased base-damage for the light shot
  
• Increased the lifespan of underslung rockets. They will now be more likely to reach their targets
  
• Decreased base-amount of mines spawned by 1
  
• Corrosive effect provides +20% damage taken against armour from all sources while active
  
• Decreased the explosion-trigger-radius on c90 shots from 300 to 200
  
• Detpacks should now end up with the detonator when the last have been thrown in multiplayer to match singleplayer behaviour
  
• Detpacks and nades have had some animation and visibility issues fixed when swapping/throwing/interrupting while held
  
• Detpacks should be more sensibly go to detonator, even if you have mixed the firemode-variants thrown
  
• Fixed a number of inconsistencies with DK31; Should also better support underslung, and fixed it not working with the underbarrel shotty at all
  
• Decals forming from shooting at surfaces will not be added too close to an existing from the same shot (shooting through multiple objects that are very close together)
  
• Slightly increased accuracy for hipfire/sighted EVP
  
• Slightly increased accuracy of sighted SM54
  
  Quality-of-life:
  
• Fixed profiles tab showing scores instead of profiles when outside games
  
• Spectators are now allowed to view stats and profiles in games
  
• In briefing rooms: Declining ready should now work as intended. Additionally, players leaving the game should no longer hold up game-starts
  
• Fixed the vote-menu in singleplayer not accepting clicks early on
  
• Main menu, faction selection and a few more now support keyboard inputs to go between the options and select.
  
• Tacmap:
  - should now be better about using keybinds instead of hardcoded keys
  - Location arrows, and spawn arrows are now hidden if there’s nothing to cycle to (For a more obvious UI)
  - Redeploying should no longer immediately re-open the tacmap
  - Zooming out in a capship interior will gradually change the color of the map to the owning team, and transition to the main-space map, centered on the vehicle
  - You can now double-click a spawn, or warp-in point to use it directly
  - The “controls” button will now flash until clicked for the first time, to draw attention to how to use the tacmap
  
• Improved priority of hackspikes over picking up weapons
  
• Fixed being able to multi-vote on end-map screen
  
• Equipment stats screen should now more accurately reflect the actual properties of the guns and ships, especially on capital ship and gunship weaponry
  
• Added specific icon for capship co-pilot seat to differentiate from the driver-spot
  
• Disabled seats in capships should no longer show up or be usable
  
• Multiwrench should no longer look like they are repairing internal ship consoles that are completely destroyed (unrepairable)
  
• Implemented C and V menus for spectators; C lists all ULA, V lists all AIA. It lists the most relevant-to-the-match spectator targets. capships > vehicles > fighters > infantry, to quickly jump around. These lists ignore deployed turrets, and driverless vehicles.
  
• Fixed prestige not actually counting if done during briefings
  
• Added task descriptions for being ordered to attack un-piloted vehicles
  
• YTS terries should now properly be listed as Territories in chat
  
• Rebinding “tab” should function properly. Additionally fixed an issue where trying to rebind “tab” to something would always fail.
  
• Rebinding esc should now immediately take effect
  
• Fixed some rebinding not being re-bound with all the same functionality
  
• Added hint on how to open the new Achievement Menu (Default P)
  
• Added functionality to mirror a loadout in a bit roundabout way because with Scaleform being dead we can’t really modify the UI much; Clicking copy, and prefacing the name with the opposite team (for an AIA loadout, calling it “ULA somename”) or prefacing it with the keyword “mirror” will attempt to make a version of that loadout on the opposite team. Swapping weapons to corresponding variants. This should work for both infantry and vehicles.
  
• Added functionality to make random loadouts. Clicking new loadout, and prefacing the name with “random” or “bot” will generate a random loadout, somewhat appropriate for your current rank
  
• Added functionality to copy loadouts. Using the hotkeys “Ctrl + C” will copy it into your clipboard; You can share this with others as you please. Using the hotkeys “Ctrl + V” will attempt to paste the contents of your clipboards. If it recognizes a valid loadout, iit will attempt to paste it, giving you a prompt to (re)name it
  
• Added functionality to copy appearances externally. Using the copy button or “Ctrl + C” will place it in your clipboard. You can similarly import appearances using “Ctrl + V” from your clipboard
  
• On the long-description of equipment, it will now state the faction-opposite variant for convenience and greater transparency
  
• Added functionality to the scoreboard - if you have your own squad selected, the move button will now allow you to step up / step down as squadleader, assuming this action is valid (you can’t step down if there’s noone to replace you, you can’t step up if the SL is a human)
  
• Added variations to “Move to squad” to better explain why you can or can’t move (already on squad, currently commanding, pick a team first)
  
• Added variations to mutiny button to better explain why you can or can’t mutiny (pick a team first, wait for match to start, match ended)
  
• Added variations to defect button to better explain why you can or can’t change team (select team first, match ended)
  
• Changing squads will now select the new squad in the UI
  
• Opening scoreboard will now select yourself from the get go (to easier find you, your squad, and better expose the options you have available on the scoreboard)
  
• Scoreboard should now keep the last-clicked squad selected, even when the score of that squad changes (would previously keep the selection, so if you selected squad#3, and that squad got higher points to becoming #2, you would have the new #3 selected. This should limit misclicks and be more consistent with the player-list behavior)
  
• Being tasked to attack or follow something, and that something dying, will now change the task-description to “freelance”
  
• Hitting an unimportant destroyable with an AV weapon will now produce hitmarkers
  
• Friendly destroyables will now draw the friendly-marker (like hackspikes on your team, stuff you are tasked to defend, etc)
  
• Updated the spectating-info box: Will now reflect your actual keybinds, will provide considerably more information, and is updated to reflect the changes to how the spectating works
  
• Clicking “,” in spectating-mode should now cycle the mode as expected (Was not working on ground vehicles)
  
• Fixed a number of issues that would not tell you about who killed you
  
• Added config InventoryAlwaysVisible. Will change behaviour of how the inventory-bar is visible. 0 = current behaviour (visible only for a little after changing weapons) 1 = always visible. Can be toggled with console command “ToggleHUDWeaponsAlwaysVisible”
  
• Added config bForceDefaultsDoesntAffectSelf. If true, will show camo on own weapons, vehicles and pawns for yourself, while you have default camo enabled. Can be toggled with console command “ToggleDefaultCamoAffectsPlayer”
  
• Receiving a new order should make the order-description flash and notify you of such, to make it more obvious
  
• Fixed cursor-coloring for enemy/friend persisting through respawns
  
• Swapping weapons should now be hidden during times where the pawn isn’t relevant, such as picking loadouts, launching a fighter, in menus etc
  
• Potentially fixed late-joiners ending up with weird camera-angles (on some maps under the ground), until picking a team
  
• The glowey-outline-hint when hovering a destructible objective should now play when it is your currently-assigned objective aswell
  
• Hackspikes should no longer remain tagged after the spike have been destroyed
  
• Capture objectives should give better messaging-feedback, telling you if you are gaining/loosing/stalemating the objective
  
• Fixed some destroyable’s tacmap visuals being wrong
  
• Added basic reconnect feature to main menu (Hold CTRL to force it back to quickplay)
  
• Fixed the knife causing lagspikes in loadout menu
  
• All weapons that have more than one firemode can now be assigned which to use by default (For instance, underslung rockets if equipped), or set to remember the last one you picked for this weapon for this loadout for the current session
  
• Slightly buffed medium missiles
  
• Nerfed medium and heavy plasma space damage
  
• Slightly nerfed rails damage
  
• Heavy missiles are now a lot scarier; Dramatically buffed their damage (pair of two are fairly easy to shoot down. Now actually different (better?) than medium variant)
  
  General fixes and optimization:
  
• Precached even more stuff for less physics-shape-caching-spikes during play
  
• Fixed last-man-standing-phase on a lot of maps not working as intended (messaging, actually triggering, etc)
  
• Implemented achievements, and corresponding ingame-window where you can view progress (default P)
  
• Wiped the legacy VOIP implementation more. It was intended to be fully disabled many patches ago. The current version of “send to all, but don’t tell who’s speaking” isn’t favorable to anyone
  
• LZ’s will be assigned a slight penalty for next capture, that decays the longer it has been vacant. Intention is to make it more viable to blow up droppod-spawns, rather than having them almost immediately get re-captured
  
• Vehicle shields might provide better feedback for re-activating and fully going down
  
• Fixed LZ turrets not rotating in multiplayer
  
• Taking out-of-bounds damage should be more impactful against vehicles
  
• Shield regen is more affected by damage in general (Small-arms fire having some contribution)
  
• The effect on the screen for taking damage should take more into account than just the strength of the shot. Instead it should be better about informing you of “dangerous damage”. Additionally fixed burning not triggering it at all
  
• Fixed kill-credit on vehicle not actually assigning the credit to the last-hit, but rather the hit-before-last
  
• Fixed weapon-attachments unintentionally being visible when driving a vehicle
  
• Fixed changing seats in MP detaching the driver from the actual vehicle
  
• Turtles passenger turret should now again be configurable in loadouts
  
• Fixed all Javert loadouts being invalid
  
• Fixed Rakshasa and Scimitar not getting default torps
  
• Added console command “SetLoadoutSorting”. Sets the loadout sorting you wish to use (Previously only accessible by manually changing config files). See auto-complete for possible variants
  
• Added console command “FixupLoadouts”. Will try to fix any broken loadouts you have. Primarily relevant for older players who have been around since before the fighter-weapon rework. It is expected to have it return 13 fails due to default loadouts for opposite factions. It is recommended to backup <gamefolder>/AFFGame/config/AFFLoadout.ini before running it.
  
• Fixed some issues relating to keeping a client-side reference to your old pawn when changing teams (should make for a better experience when changing teams during multiplayer matches)
  
• Changed how respawning works. It should now queue everyone desiring, and pop them as the last one has fully spawned. Should prevent lagspikes from respawning without any noticeable differences.
  
• Infantry running one-shot protection have had the FX for blocking the damage fixed, so it no longer shows bleeding, and the FX for “breaking the protection” have been made slightly bigger
  
• Moved some console commands onto the cheatmanager that wasn’t supposed to be usable on servers
  
• Fixed cascaded shadows misbehaving on some maps in DX11
  
  Maps;
  
• Ascella
  - Fixed hilltop bunker in Phase 2 not being properly reachable by bots
  
• Poranti
  - Fixed various issues in the hangar bay Phase 3/Phase 4 area; You should no longer be able to enter ships from underneath (or having that prompt conflict with planting a hackspike); Additionally fixed some collision issues in that area
  
• Kerrat
  - Fixed various issues with pathing and second phase
  - The pilot seat of Huginn should now be disabled during Phase 1 to avoid confusion
  
• Huginn interior
  - Fixed some snagging issues with ramps around the hangar area
  - Bots should no longer consider destroyed debris as pathable (getting them stuck)
  - Swapped Ranger’s power coupling colour to blue and added them for the Huginn.
  
• Dragoon interior
  - Removed some unused FX pieces and put the viewport back in place where it belongs.
  
• Khamun interior
  - Fixed an issue causing certain effects (like underslung flamer) to not behave properly
  
• Irega
  - Added missing mesh in Phase 1 staircase
  - Fixed some z-fighting and clipping near Phase 1 right AIA spawn
  - Fixed some weird collisions
  - Bit of a cosmetic cleanup, like a staircase sticking through a wall
  - Phase 3 area: Cleaned up some floating stuff
  
• Eye of God
  - Fixed some issues with the hangars, where you could hide inside the meshes unintentionally
  
• Errah:
  - Tweaked pathfinding a lot. Bots should be better at using the full map, notably the bridge in Phase 1
  - Fixed some issues where bots would try to path through fences in Phase 1, Phase 2
  
• Briefing Rooms
  - Slight performance tweaks
  
• Lukather
  - Fixed spots of missing collision
  
• Errah
  - Fixed some walls in Phase 3 structures lacking collision
  
• Lacroix:
  - Fixed some geometry you could unintentionally penetrate
  
• Ixion
  - Fixed some missing collision on interior hangar pieces

Onwards and upwards!

Hey there AFF Community!

The day after tomorrow, Update 29 will be upon us as a tiny bit late Easter present!

Slightly uneasy to come back to you like that, after another few months of having to postpone this massive update… BUT. It is finally packaged and ready to go! We appreciate your patience with us very much. We are just doing some cleanup on the official servers - so expect some temporary server outages - we haven’t updated them in two years, it’s a miracle they’re still up and running.


Happy Easter or whichever seasonal holiday you may be celebrating!

And as always, come hang out with us on our Discord.

Onwards and upwards!

Hey there AFF Community!

It might be a tiny bit unexpected after this prolonged period of silence but AFF is still very much being updated!

In fact, there is a massive update on the way that not only fixes a lot of bugs but also:

• Reworks a number of systems, making the gameplay smoother
  
• Makes the AI even smarter so that the game forever remains enjoyable with or without human players
  
• Adds a big, beautiful, new map, Majuro. Here's a small teaser:

It doesn't end there either. AFF is still being developed for fun and giggles so it's not exactly possible to set any deadlines in stone but here's the rough plan for the nearest future:

• This big update comes out in the next 2-4 weeks, we're already wrapping things up. Likely followed by a small hotfix or two if something falls over after it goes public.
  
• Another update in the next couple months, including an in-game tutorial to finalize the scope of the game we initially planned and to ease the onboarding for new players a bit. Plus a few completely new pieces of content too, which are already being made but which we'll keep as a surprise for now.
  
• After that tutorial update we hit the big red "1.0" button. AFF comes out of Early Access. Is it going to be absolutely bug-free at that point? Unlikely. Is it going to look more modern than it does now? Definitely not. It's still, however, going to be a fully-fledged combined-arms sci-fi shooter with an insane amount of content enjoyable both in single- and multi-player.
  
• And then? Do we ride off into the sunset? If you hang out with us on our Discord you're likely aware that the whole AFF team (and the Community!) still sticks together for the sheer joy of playing and making video games so that's not going to change anytime soon. We'll likely still update AFF here and there post-release - but more importantly all the long years doing other more-or-less gamedev-related jobs professionally enable us to potentially do something new and shiny... Watch this space, it will get exciting!

By the way. the Summer Sale is still going on so it's a pretty good time to grab AFF at 50% off if any of your mates haven't yet. No worries though, we'll try to organize some discounts around the updates as well.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/367270

Onwards and upwards!

Hey there AFF Community!

Predictably the massive update came with some new bugs so here’s a patch to squash those. The game should be more stable online, Ascella doesn’t outright crash anymore, the objectives on Kerrat work properly again.

A whole slew of things have been rebalanced as well, especially in terms of capital ships - we obviously fixed the insane fire rate on their railguns but we’re also trying something different regarding their missiles. To give them a unique spot in the balance between spinal cannons and other turrets, the big capital-ship-grade rockets will now bypass enemy capitals’ shields - they’ll fly straight through them, just like fighters do. We’re curious to see how that’ll change the approach to capital ship combat at various ranges now.

We also felt a bit bad about releasing only a bunch of fixes and balance changes, so we threw some new features in:



All guns sporting an underbarrel hardpoint can now be equipped with a shotgun attachment. It works the same as the other fire-able attachments, can be toggled to by switching firemodes and provides some extra emergency oomph (at the cost of a pretty hefty reload time) when your assault rifle suddenly becomes inadequate in an extremely-close-range fight inside an enemy ship.





The AFF characters might come off as super serious gruff space marines under those suits but even they must sometimes communicate by means other than tactical gestures and screaming “argh my leg my leg”. So we gave them a set of more casual gestures the player can perform using the V key.




And as usual - for feedback, or just a lovely chat with the devs, contact us here on the Steam forums or directly through our Discord!

Onwards and upwards!


Full hotfix changelog:

• Added an underbarrel shotgun option to all underbarrel-capable weapons
  
• Fixed non-carrier capships having finite mines
  
• Fixed an issue with Huginn’s railguns having essentially infinite rate of fire
  
• Quality of life changes to capship railguns; The trigger can be held to continue firing, rather than having to click each time
  
• Added secondary firemode to capship railguns - cycle. Cycles through the guns, and consumes partial charge with each shot. Inspired by the unintended Huginn rails
  
• Reduced range of Ranger’s railguns
  
• Increased range of Ranger’s ion cannon
  
• Changed Khamun’s plasma guns from medium to heavy and decreased their range
  
• Increased range of Khamun’s ion cannons
  
• Decreased damage of heavy plasma guns in general
  
• Decreased range of Chons’ plasma
  
• Increased damage and slightly increased firerate of Heimdall's rockets
  
• Fixed capship railguns’ visuals not reliably being played in multiplayer
  
• Capital ship railguns now work based on ammunition - Ranger got a magsize of 10, Huginn of 40, both with a 10s reload-time. Intention is to make room for other weapons in the player’s rotation
  
• Heavy plasma weapons will generate slightly more heat
  
• Tweaked RID. It can now continue firing once it has fired a shot. The next shot will start at 50% charge. It didn’t quite feel competitive enough to the MLI, and was near-impossible to kill aircraft with. Additionally, increased ammo by 1 (from 3 to 4), and slightly reduced per-shot damage
  
• Clicking a weapon that’s completely out of ammo will play a dryfire sound for better feedback
  
• Capship-fired missiles can now bypass capship shields. The intention is to make them more viable at contesting sub-systems, and give them more of a defined role
  
• Potentially made mech-RID and space-rails more synced with the charge-bar
  
• Added emotes. As infantry, they are tied to your V menu. Purely for fun.
  
• Repaired repair objectives not being repairable (Kerrat Phase 1)
  
• Bots should be more clever about repairing and responding to threats while doing so
  
• Bots should be more likely to actually deploy medkits/ammokits again
  
• Fixed an issue causing bots to practically get stuck reloading
  
• Fixed an issue with damaging a not-fully-repaired objective not updating the progress of it
  
• Fixed some issues with getting out of vehicles
  
• Fixed an issue with locally hosted games, restricting team choice to ULA
  
• Territories UI timers should be more accurate to real-time (generally shows a higher number)
  
• Bots should be quicker to realize a hackspike have been planted
  
• Mannable turrets on maps should no longer be enterable through geometry
  
• Potentially resolved an issue with Tis not getting proper interiors
  
• Potentially fixed free-look being sticky in multiplayer
  
• Resolved a bunch of crashes when server-travelling to a new map
  
• Bots should be more aggro when defending a destroyable objective overall, notably in space
  
• Defending bots should be slightly less doomstack-ey, and slightly more energetic
  
• Rank 4+ Attacking bots will focus slightly less on where the last target was
  
• Potentially resolved issues where bots would effectively be stuck looking in a direction
  
• Clicking MMB in spectating mode should toggle nameplates
  
• Clicking R while in spectator-freeroam-mode, and looking at a valid target should make it your spectating target, as if you had cycled to it normally
  
• Fixed an issue where you would get re-targeted to someone once they respawn, despite having entered free-roam-spectator
  
• Fixed entering spectator-free-roam while in temporary free-roam (waiting for your target to respawn) not clearing your target
  
• Messages for “dropship launched”, “<> has been boarded”, “(objective) completed” should now all mention the team for spectators
  
• Direct-IP field on server-browser field now properly supports select, cut, copy, paste as well as a port number being appended to the IP (like 1.1.1.1:1111). Additionally supports pasting AFFLinks in their entirety.
  
• Briefing Rooms:
  - Guards in briefing rooms should also relax a little in multiplayer, rather than holding their breath
  - Adjusted “step away from door” message to maybe be a little more logical
  
• Errah:
  - Slightly increased the initial defender-setup time, so the first two objectives should be more contested
  
• Meudeverre:
  - Upped health on Phase 2 objectives
  - Added a ramp at one of the walkways where you could stub your toe
  
• Irega:
  - Fixed some stairs snagging players
  - Enabled missing collision on staircase leading to Phase 3
  - Fixed bots not navigating most of the Phase 3 staircases
  
• Irega territories:
  - Fixed an issue allowing players to enter the opposite teams spawn
  - Fixed some stairs snagging players
  
• Poranti:
  - Fixed an issue causing the match to potentially end immediately
  
• Anubis interior:
  - Fixed some floating weapons in armory
  - Changed the size of how far one of the screens for exterior view would be active, on the screen near one of the objectives in Kerrat territories. During fighting, it would often be turned on/off as you moved around, causing small performance hiccups
  
• Tannhauser:
  - Fixed missing collision on the trolleys
  - Fixed some lighting issues
  
• Lukather:
  - Fixed some lighting issues
  
• Ascella:
  - Fixed an issue causing the map to crash
  - Fixed an issue causing eager-people to be stuck in the introduction camera
  
• Mirnoide:
  - Bots should be more conscious about lava being harmful to their skin
  
• USN hangars:
  - Fixed dropships not rendering properly when taking off

It’s been a while, hasn’t it?

You’re all probably wondering what happened, what caused this almost-2-years-long hiatus in AFF’s updates. Truth be told, there’s no single reason - some team-members got more busy at day-jobs, some switched jobs, some got covid troubles, some moved away from AFF to other projects, stuff happens.

However, it doesn’t mean there hasn’t been any progress made. Despite not being able to afford the concentrated effort of releasing an actual update, we very much kept working on the game itself (shout-outs to Exa, who largely led the development for those past months/years). And thus here we are with a changelog that spans something like 16 pages and extends or polishes pretty much every system there is in AFF. Highlights can be found underneath.


We’ve changed how capital ships’ turrets are controlled and behave, to make the capship gameplay more engaging and simply give the captain more to do - while still maintaining the importance of the crew maintaining the systems inside the ships. The primary turrets are now under the captain’s direct control, with several of them linked together. All the secondary turrets are now tied to a single gunner seat, which also has access to missiles on most ships, to enable engagement at various ranges for all players manning the ships. The gunner’s view is also not tied to any specific turret anymore, but rather the ship itself for a better overview of the situation. All the turrets, and that also applies to those on ground vehicles, should now have more sensible constraints and rotate in more predictable fashion too.





AFF’s bots were already very versatile but we’ve continued to make further improvements to their behaviour. Their pathing across all the maps should be more consistent now and their piloting skills less erratic. They will also react in more player-like ways to getting shot at and prioritize deployables, reviving and other non-combat actions more effectively. Equally numerous tweaks have been made to the team-wide MILNET AI for more sensible order issuing and better utilization of commander powers, especially in space.





We polished a number of visual and functional details around boarding - the boarding pods should now look more sensible and consistent between sitting on a dropship and being attached to a target ship. The bots should now also be less confused by both the boarding operation and piloting the dropships, resulting in less failed attempts. We also fixed a number of desyncs between the server and the clients regarding boarding - the pods should now be less likely to drift off the target ship visually and even less likely to dump the boarding party out into the void.





We still consider the DX11 renderer an experimental feature but that’s mostly due to the old UI glitching out a bit in that mode. Gameplay-wise it should be the better-looking and faster option already, with several new performance improvements introduced in this update. Many of those are not only specific to the DX11 mode though - the game should perform better now in general, both in terms of GPU and CPU load. We fixed a whole bunch of oddities happening with guns, ships and deployables in multiplayer too. If you guys and girls encounter any further performance issues give us a shout through our Discord.





A lot of the cameras when viewing infantry, vehicles and other objects in the spectator mode (and while waiting for respawn) have been improved. We also reworked the controls for those, with mouse-buttons now more intuitively switching between spectating targets, being able to hotkey locations or players to quickly return to for video recordings etc. Spectators can now also use a basic version of the scoreboard to view some information about players and a lot of the UI pieces around spectating, waiting for respawn, killcams and so on have been polished.





Practically all the maps have been tweaked and improved in some way - graphical oddities and annoying collision getting fixed, AI paths getting redone, lighting and meshes being optimized, more cover and flanking paths added.




There are many more changes accrued over all this time, map-related or otherwise. Everything’s listed in detail in the changelog linked below. More importantly though, we still have a myriad of other things in our backlog, at various stages of completion. At the moment we’re trying to figure out how to prioritize these and what should be our course of action regarding AFF’s future in general. We’d very much like to invite all of you to discuss that with us on our Discord.

Onwards and upwards!

FULL CHANGELOG (which is, after all this time, like 16 pages long and doesn't nearly fit into a Steam post)

Hey there AFF Community!

We’ve prepared another small patch to tie up loose ends for this update.

Changelog:

• Khamun: Tweaked some of the turret seats, so using them will make the operator look correct in the spaceship’s interior
  
• Exiting turret seats inside ships should now work more reliably and place the players in more sensible locations
  
• More RID balance - damage split 50/50 into separate “slug” and “shockwave” passes in order to de-power near misses and allow some passthrough on shield and infantry with infiltrator spec. Slightly reduced charge-time.
  
• Fixed Poranti’s exterior windows not behaving as expected and resolved an issue that would end the match immediately
  
• Tweaked mechs some more:
  - Improved their driving-collision, so it should no longer be possible to get them into unintended spots
  - Tweaked their animation system some more; Their turning-in-place didn’t look quite right among other issues
  
• Resolved a hitch with the HUD markers for vehicles
  
• The minimal damage field should now show the correct values again on the loadout screen
  
• Fixed Yin Tao Shan’s Phase 3 objective not showing up properly as a main objective on the HUD
  
• Mirnoide:
  - Resolved some lighting issues
  - Hackspikes should now be properly placed again
  
• Resolved an issue with hack-objectives not showing the proper UI information in online games
  
• Resolved an issue that allowed hack-spikes to be placed during OOB stage-change

For feedback, or just a lovely chat with the devs, post on AFF's Steam forums or contact us directly through our Discord!

Onwards and upwards!

Hey there AFF Community!

Here’s a quick patch to address some of the issues from the last update and to release a few more fixes that didn’t quite make it in before.

Changelog:

• Tweaked nightvision a bit, including its activation sound
  
• Allowed the minimum match time slider in the custom game menu to go as low as 5 minutes. Someone requested that and there’s no reason we shouldn’t offer it.
  
• Soldiers can now be properly ran over and die from extreme fall damage regardless of suit specs
  
• Mounted turrets now unable to turn if they are disabled by hacking - since turning is effectively their driving
  
• Infiltrator spec now shows the sensor ranges of enemy proximity-activated explosives (mines, detpacks, spring nades) instead of making the player not activate those explosives at all.
• Lowered the frequency with which corrosion mines add a stack of corrosion from .3s to .5s and reduced amount of corrosion applied each time
  
• Nerfed mine count on larger vehicles and reload time of mines all round (9-15s)
  
• Tweaked bots’ weapon-switching behaviour so they commit to using deployables, grenades and mines better now
  
• Corrected the math behind penetration values displayed in the loadout screen
  
• Loadout stats for the GU and the L9r now list "max penetration" value (full charge) for consistency
  
• Ammo packs, medkits, detpacks, sensor, spring, gyro and regular grenades should now have proper descriptions in the loadout
  
• Mines, grenades and their payloads should now show something akin to proper stats in the loadout menu
  
• Halved the damage on the frag payload for mines. Ooops.
  
• Fixed a bug with elemental mines, where the first would get 1 instance of a payload, the second would get 2 instances, third would get 3 (which instead of triggering the effect once per payload per mine, would then do it up to 3x per payload per mine resulting in utter destruction of everything ever)
  
• Optimized and tweaked lock-on logic again and fixed some instances of it targeting friendly/neutral targets
  
• Undid some failed attempts at adjusting boarding pod offsets
  
• Disabled the third cockpit mod for Gheist (both mechs have 2 now)
  
• Fortress Territories updates:
  - Fixed a number of holes in the tower meshes and general collision/visibility issues
  - Terraformed a bit near the satellite dish
  - Tweaked position of team-blocking volumes for the LZs, so you can't cheekily jump on top of them and get inside the pods
  
• Across most ship and station interiors:
  - Breaching tubes should now have more smooth and reliable collision
  - Patched up some holes in the breaching tubes, tweaked collision where you could partially hide in meshes and cheese the people coming out the tube
  - Re-routed some of the scripting for the breaching tubes sequences so that they don’t block or kill you when they shouldn’t
  - Added some missing screens and tweaked the lighting around the breaching tubes and boarding pods
  
• Irega updates:
  - Fixed vents pointed out by the community and a lot of other miscellaneous collision issues nearby (and politely asked a few stupid blocking volumes to go away)
  - In the Incursion variant, fixed right-side Phase 3 LZ being unintentionally out-of-bounds
  - Fixed a place where the bots were apparently getting stuck near the docks
  
• Ixion interior: sped up the dropship landing sequences a bit, fixed the huge borked piece of collision that’d make deployables and bodies have a really bad time
  
• Lukather: removed collision on majority of splines (all but the pipes) - lots of them being used for decoration resulted in tons of unwanted collision
  
• Commander shields are now cleared on match end to not interfere with the end-game cinematics and stuff
  
• Fixed the hack objectives in Yin Tao Shan, tweaked collision
  
• Fixed some more pathing, collision and straight-up holes in the walls inside the Huginn
  
• Fixed Poranti’s space AI pathing, replaced Phase 2’s spawn with a drop pod, optimized the lighting, added a dropdown hole to the objective in Phase 1
  
• Fixed some incorrect scripting in Kerrat Territories, likely explaining the odd reported "AIA won, despite ULA actually won" situation
  
• Fixed objectives not being properly marked as “under attack” with a hackspike present
  
• Fixed some instances of bots not wanting to board a station with multiple dropships despite multiple access points being available
  
• Fixed seated turret operators and pilots inside capships being non-corporeal - should be possible to tag and shoot them now
  
• Fixed spring nades desyncing their explosion effect between server and clients
  
• Performance improvements to bots driving vehicles
  
• Fixed rearming-through-warping-out nuking server performance
  
• Fixed some instances of the commander-ability-spawned shield domes being invisible
  
• Fixed sensor grenades not showing team-specific trail colours
  
• Fixed the “Hack” commander ability not changing shield team allegiance properly if executed by the MILNET AI
  
• Fixed hacked turrets not getting correctly removed from the parent weapon's deployed list
  
• Fixed some space fighter camera angles that got weird in the last update
  
• Fixed some instances of the tagged target always showing “out of range”
  
• Fixed some instances of warp points not showing up properly for late-joiners

For feedback, or just a lovely chat with the devs, post on AFF's Steam forums or contact us directly through our Discord!

Onwards and upwards!

Hey there AFF Community!

New update is here, with a lot of tweaks, fixes and new mechanics. As we mentioned last time, we continue to polish the game to a state in which we can start promoting it. We can already say the next update will contain the long awaited tutorial, as well as more optimization and quality-of-life changes. That’s not all, though - we have a couple cool things to announce before that next update so watch this space in the coming weeks.

In the meantime though, AFF is still on sale for a couple more days! Tell your friends and family there’s an awesome space shooter out there to get at 40% off:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/367270

As for the contents of this update:


To give the commanders more of an active role other than issuing orders we’ve added the first batch of commander abilities. When used intelligently they are a very effective way to support your team. They will likely be tied into meta-game mechanics in the long run - for now, they are available to the attacker team’s commander in Incursion and to both teams in Territories. They will come online after a set amount of time into the match and then work on a cooldown basis.
Of course, as with anything in AFF, if the commander role is not taken by a player the MILNET AI will be able to make use of these abilities as well:

Area Hack ability - Order your faction’s local MILNET AI to focus on hacking enemy gear. Any enemy vehicle caught within the radius of the hack will be temporarily disabled and any deployable turret will change its allegiance to your team.
Area Scan ability - Focus your faction’s fleet sensors to temporarily reveal every enemy in the target location (on ground, in open space, in a particular ship or station). Will even highlight enemies usually hidden by infiltrator suit mods.
Area Shield ability - Project a shield covering a large area, similar to deployable turret shields but much more potent and without the singular vulnerable central point, to protect your fellow soldiers from enemy gunfire.




We’ve done a lot of incremental improvements to space combat mechanics. Thanks to netcode upgrades the fighters should now be more pleasant to pilot and be more reliable in terms of steering online. We have also corrected a bunch of long-standing issues with the lead indicator and target-leading-related mechanics. Dogfighting should be much more enjoyable now, especially in multiplayer matches.
Ground vehicles have received plenty of attention as well, with their physics and handling tweaked to be less prone to snagging on level geometry. In addition, the mechs should now be able to strafe in a less dubious manner and be less prone to lock you inside when you’re trying to escape. We’ve also re-enabled vehicles taking damage from collisions which, thanks to the physics tweaks, should be less of an annoyance and more of a genuine gameplay feature now.




We’ve finally formalized the feature of bullets penetrating enemy infantry. Simply put, it means that guns with high penetration capability (taking ammo types into account, of course) will now be able to punch through enemies, even multiple ones. This is governed by the same rules as wall penetration - subsequent hits will deal less and less damage. The likelihood of going through depends on a few additional factors - the type of suit the enemy is wearing, whether the shot is the final blow and the location of the hit - heads are squisher, although we’re avoiding any kind of complex penetration calculations, often found in mil-sims, here - hitting a hand in front of a head will still count as a hand hit.




A big part of our continuing efforts to push the game towards full release goes into improving the maps. Over the past weeks we’ve done a tremendous amount of polish to all aspects of maps - collision, pathing, decoration placement.




Included with this update are a number of changes to weapons across the board. Whilst these are detailed in full within the changelog some key changes to note are a reduction in recoil for all infantry weapons, reduction in flinch from being hit and quite a radical redesign of the RID to mitigate the need for locking on to name a few.



Full changelog:

• Formalized pawn penetration - you can now shoot through multiple players reliably. The amount depends on the type of gun, ammo, where you shoot (head is squishier) and the type of suit.
  
• Added Commander abilities for the incursion attacker team, or both teams in territories.
  Area Hack: Disables vehicles caught in the radius, and turns all deployed turrets to the user’s faction. 240s of cooldown. Targets in the area get a 6s warning.
  Area Scan: Reveals the whole tacmap-location it is used on for 12s. Including infiltrators. 180s cooldown.
  Area Shield: Will spawn a shield on the location that functions like a shield from a deployable, but more health, and without originating from a device. 300s cooldown.
  
• Slightly improved loading times of all maps
  
• Reduced flinching while sighted slightly
  
• Reduced recoil from all handheld weapons by 20%
  
• Charged GU34 shots "cost" slightly less charge now
  
• Being hit on the underbarrel shield should no longer trigger flinching
  
• Increased damage of the RID and MLI primaries
  
• Vehicle cockpit mods rework:
  - Turtle: 50% armor regeneration increase while not accelerating (no active inputs) and 50% reduced momentum and viewshakes
  - Scout: Reveal enemies for team based on proximity, 50% reduced boost-consumption
  - Infiltrator: Invisible to enemy sensors and proximity explosives, covered in ablative armour (no damage bleedthrough to health on armour depletion)
  
• Radical RID rework:
  - No longer requires a target
  - Once fully charged, will always fire
  - Only primary firemode
  - Stopping charging will drop the progress to none
  - Charging it will dramatically decrease your movement speed
  - Slow chargeup in exchange for massive damage
  - Will now display a warning to everyone in the expected splash area, once the RID is 50% charged
  
• Mines:
  - Will now have a visual trigger-radius
  - Increased the number of mines deployed per use
  - Tweaked fire rate and deployment spread
  - Improved their tracking. They are now considerably harder to outrun.
  
• Experimentally changed dodging from the semi-reliable double-tapping to replacing jump (spacebar by default); Jumping forwards will still be a normal jump, but otherwise it will dodge in the direction you are moving. Dodge can no longer be used mid-air.
  
• Dodge nerfed a bit, so sprint is still preferable
  
• Taught bots how to use dodge. Run for the hills.
  
• Interacting with the UI, such as tweaking loadouts, should contribute to not marking you inactive in online games)
  
• Knifes will now show their chargeup animation for others properly (so you can see if someone is running with a charged knife)
  
• Fixed the knife not always playing its attack animations for others when spammed
  
• Fixed not being able to hit anything in fighters, especially online - improved the lag compensation in space and the way it interacts with space weapons and the lead indicator. Fixed a bunch of oddities with the lead indicator in general, improved lead calculations to include angular velocity to an extent.
  
• Lead indicator will no longer be visible if the target is an objective without something to shoot or if the target is out of range
  
• Grenades will now convey that they are being cooked in 3rd person
  
• Throwing grenades will look less janky for others
  
• Overcooking a grenade will now display a specific animation in response to the detonation
  
• Weapons will now properly play overheating anims and effects for others
  
• Putting a weapon away while it was overheating would occasionally leave an awkward effect on the ground. Should now properly restart the effects again when re-equipped, if it is still overheated.
  
• Slightly reduced damage taken from the bleedout timer; bleeding out takes roughly the same time as it did before the last update (note that corrosion lowers this, since less initial healthpool, but the rate of bleeding out is slower, as before)
  
• Fixed an issue with reviving pawns affected by corrosion - more than one stack of corrosion would lead to them being impossible to revive. Corrosion will also no longer interfere with the time needed to revive someone, it will take the same time to revive regardless of the amount of corrosion.
  
• Replaced the flashlight with an experimental nightvision mode. Maybe there to stay, maybe not, we’ll see.
  
• Reduced armor gained from heavy plate suit mods from 40 to 30
  
• Reduced armor lost from speed suit mods from 40 to 30
  
• Reduced base-armor for heavies from 180 to 160
  
• Reduced movement speed of lights and heavies slightly
  
• While having the support spec equipped, the multiwrench will now enable you to repair yourself by assisting another player regardless of that player being hurt.
  
• Reduced the magsize of rockets on gunships
  
• Experimental tweak to mech cameras to make them centered on the models, to bring them in line with all the other vehicles. Should also make determining whether a weapon will be blocked by level geometry easier.
  
• Better animation blending and a bunch of fixes on the mechs, as an effort towards making them less janky visually when strafing or transitioning from strafes:
  - Fixed very small steps not producing sound
  - Fixed last step not producing sound
  - Fixed velius backwards-running not producing sounds when expected, but rather when it felt like it
  - Fixed issue where crouch wouldn’t consistently happen, or be broken unintentionally
  - Crouching now reduces the sound of the footsteps produced by 20%
  - Updated physics a bit; Now possible to run between the legs and not be pancaked, but the legs should now properly pancake you.
  - Fixed both mechs having spectator camera awkwardly placed at their feets
  - Fixed mechs often failing to find a place to let you exit
  - Fixed mechs occasionally struggling to jump (common occurrence on Lukather)
  
• Reworked vehicle shields versus some types of damage: EMP (not bullets), colliding with another vehicle or level geometry, environmental fire, flamer (underslung and turret), knives and multiwrench now ignore shields and deal damage directly to the vehicle
  
• Weapons with a laser pointer (like the RID) should now look more accurate for other players
  
• Removed multiwrench purge mod. Clearing status effects is now again built into the multiwrench by default.
  
• Increased firerate of TA by 15% in exchange for 15% less damage-per-shot
  
• Dropped weapons:
  - Fixed MW not being dropped when exchanged for something else, and not being eligible to be dropped on death
  - Fixed dropped weapons not being thrown in the direction looked but rather always in some arbitrary direction
  - Fixed dropped weapons being randomly placed on the ground; They should now land where it would make sense compared to where they were tossed from with a tiny bit of randomness
  - Fixed prompt “Switch to” (If you have another weapon type equipped, like a knife and what you want to pick up is a primary) not working. It will now swap to that weapon.
  
• Fixed running-and-gunning not properly lowering weapons while in the “no weapons” areas of the briefing rooms
  
• Fixed fighters ion weaponry dealing more damage than intended against capships
  
• Fixed ion and RID vehicle weapons not having any chargeup sound or FX
  
• Underbarrel shields will no longer show up as a firemode on the loadout page for stats
  
• Fixed overheat-progress not showing up properly in multiplayer if triggered from being on fire
  
• Fixed wrong UI weapon image for the C90
  
• Using an underslung with the GU34 should no longer attempt to charge the weapon (When the underslung is current firemode)
  
• Improved accuracy of locking on to targets and keeping the lock
  
• Increased lock-on target priority for destroyables and tagged targets
  
• Re-added the “out of range” text under the tagbox. If you have a lock-on weapon out and your target has active countermeasures enabled it will now display “ECM active”
  
• Fixed some lighter lock-on missiles thinking it had considerably larger range than it actually had, fixing some incorrect “out-of-range” markers
  
• Standardised timers for respawn waves; Should be more reliable with giving you the proper time it will take before being able to respawn.
  
• Updated medal names from “CMB” to “CBT” for consistency
  
• Detpacks, mines and spring nades will now display their trigger-radius visually to the team who placed them
  
• Vehicle point-defense will no longer target mines, nades, sensors or detpacks, and will only shoot projectiles heading towards the owner
  
• Found and resolved another instance of the freelook key persisting when tabbing
  
• Added a hint displayed during briefing-time describing directional damage on vehicles
  
• Fixed typo in acid damage contextual hint
  
• Added contextual hint for when entering a dropship without a droppod; Informs you to go rearm
  
• Added config setting “TerritoriesStartingTicketsMultiplier” to servers for scaling territories timers; Default is current, but can be used to make the territories timer longer or shorter. Format is 100 = 1.0x based on the incursion timer.
  
• Fixed a general problem with boardingpoints being destroyed not triggering all events correctly, often leading to odd issues like meshes or turrets being left behind etc.
  
• Fixed boarding points glitching out for late-joiners (Would render the Ixion territories station unboardable among other issues)
  
• When using z-zoom on tacmap (holding spacebar while zooming), the amount zoomed on the z-axis will now be variable to your zoom level
  
• Improved general performance on maps using any sort of damaging volumes
  
• Bots displaced from driving (by a player taking the wheel) will now respawn when necessary, rather than hang around doing nothing
  
• Improved air/space bot pathing
  
• Interaction description for enterable turrets on capital ships will now display the turrets name, when available, to give you a better idea of what you are entering, and making it easier to use the correct interaction if there are multiple turrets nearby
  
• The visuals for “you can board this” will no longer show up if the point you are trying to board is already boarded
  
• Cricket and Dragoon breach tubes should now properly look attached to the ships/stations. If they don’t, please report individual cases on a per-map basis
  
• Made fighter spawners visible inside enemy carriers - as long as you are allowed to use a fighter, it will mark it on your HUD, such as when your task is in space while you are on a hostile carrier, or if the station is blowing up
  
• Fixed hackspikes being occasionally invisible
  
• Added a distinct material for AIA-placed hackspikes
  
• Bots should totem less when defending an objective
  
• Bots will now spread-out to defend a hackspike as soon as one is planting, rather than stack up and wait for a full plant. The planter will also move about more while planting naturally
  
• Bots will be more willing to flank objectives
  
• Objectives will now again remain on the top-right once they are completed, rather than disappearing
  
• Fortress’ Phase 2’s third objective will now be visible again before being activate
  
• Fixed repair-objectives not being taggable
  
• Refined messages from planting a hackspike; The planter will now get a “You are planting the spike” message while others will get “Spike is being planted”. Should make it clearer if you are planting it, or it is being done by someone else standing right next to you
  
• Fixed an issue with the vehicle deployment timer, where it would force you to sit through a new timer, despite being allowed to respawn already
  
• Redeploying to accept a vehicle drop will now grant a free respawn, so you won’t have to sit in the timer, if you accept it quickly after deploying
  
• Reduced the active-time for the AIA point defense and flares
  
• Fixed issue where shields being down would interfere with capitalship point defense
  
• Point defense now works on a cumulative damage-per-projectile basis again; Can be overwhelmed by swarms
  
• Vehicles will no longer show up on tacmap if they are not spotted
  
• Tweaked the vehicle cameras’ distance changes based on speed
  
• Tweaked Sturm’s handling to be more flexible
  
• Recessed the physical representation of the wheels on Hare and Silverback a fair bit; Makes them a bit more reactive to terrain, and should prevent them from glitching out when driving near the sides of objects.
  
• Hare and Silverback collision and mass tweaks
  
• Locust will now change its shieldsize when deployed, to properly accommodate the model; There should no longer be parts of the hitbox that bypassses the shield
  
• Upscaled Dhaka’s shields to properly fit the barrels, tweaked driving and collision some
  
• Upgraded the torque on Basta some, to make it a bit more agile. Tweaks to driving and collision as well.
  
• Partisan got its wheels and steering tweaked to snag and glitch less. Hopefully. Who knows with the Partisan.
  
• Vehicle shield-regen delays have been adjusted; Should take longer to restart
  
• Vehicles can now be affected by elementals regardless of their shield status if shot underneath the shield - previously it would block any elemental effect from triggering, as long as the shields were up. Shooting the shield directly will still prevent the elemental effect.
  
• Fixed Javert’s passenger ion turrets being wobbly; Fixed two of the passenger turrets not being enter-able in one of the Javert variants
  
• Fixed characters in capital ship seats not being properly replicated to clients - they should now do the proper animations for everyone
  
• Fixed Anubis and Huginn having trouble accelerating from a complete standstill
  
• Improved what “rear” is on some vehicles (for when to deal additional directional damage)
  
• Upped delay for in-map mounted turrets; They will now respawn in 1m 30s, rather than 30s
  
• Fixed warping in/out after initial warp not doing the proper effects
  
• Vehicles will again be affected by collision damage from hitting other vehicles or level geometry at speed
  
• Fixed the preview not working as intended in the loadout
  
• Fixed some issues with warnings not being displayed as intended when picking loadout in a vehicle drop
  
• When driving a vehicle, opening up the loadout to change will now start on the vehicle, to easier make adjustments you think of for next time you use the vehicle.
  
• Moved torpedo slot before mine slot on bombers; Order should now match the other fighters (primary, (primary), lockon/missile, mines)
  
• Inverted order of the primaries on the mechs; 1 should now correspond to the left weapon, and 2 to the right, as would be expected
  
• Tweaked behaviour of unique mods; Should no longer be possible to glitch-double-equip them
  
• Changing faction on the loadout screen will now attempt to pick the opposite factions variant; For instance if on Turtle’s loadout page, and changing the faction to AIA, it should display the Basta’s loadout page
  
• Improved the collision shapes of all consoles across the maps
  
• New model variant for the Cricket breaching pod in space - fixes issues with not being able to shoot AIA breach pods attached to ships/stations by aiming at the actual thing.
  
• Fixed issue with all the AIA ground LZs using a Cricket: The front would have weird meshes around the turret, and you could see the turret floating from the inside. They were also using wrong materials.
  
• Tweaked and assigned even more physical materials on many objects across all maps
  
• Spline meshes (pipes, cables, ducts) now have collision. Will make a lot of pipes that were previously shoot-through and pass-through properly solid.
  
• Adjusted the friction property of ice. Deployables and ragdolls should no longer slide nearly as much on icy surfaces.
  
• Tweaked the launch and restocking animations for the fighters and dropships in the generic faction hangars
  
• Tweaked the boardingpoints in most carriers. They should now all properly let bots path, while remaining solid when no pod is attached, and properly be deadly when destroyed.
  
• It should no longer be possible to consistently go out-of-bounds inside the main rock of Anaster
  
• Tweaked a lot of collision in the Khamun interior; Should address a lot of the spots where you can hide in geom, and hopefully make it a little nicer to navigate
  
  
• Anubis interior:
  - Fixed a number of holes that would lead out-of-bounds, meshes you could hide in and places you could actively get stuck in
  - Tweaked the dropships; They now look slightly more natural
  - Tweaked the blockers in the hangar area to be more flexible to move around
  - Resolved an issue where bots would struggle pathing through the center of the ship
  
  
• Ranger interior:
  - Tweaked the boardingpoints same as in the rest of the carriers
  - Tweaked collision in the launch bay, it should now be friendlier to navigate
  
  
• Huginn interior:
  - Lots of miscellaneous collision tweaks
  - Tweaked the blockers in the hangar area to be more flexible to move around
  - Resolved some holes in the roof
  - Tweaked some meshes that were clipping through walls
  - Fixed being able to hide in the damaged-state meshes in the hangar bay
  
  
• Ascella updates:
  - Fixed in-menu description and thumbnail picture
  - Fixed the end-match message to point at the correct winning team
  - Tweaked a lot of collision
  - Mounted a floating screen near the central Phase 2 objective
  - Fixed area behind the central Phase 2 objective not being solid
  - Fixed some z-fighting in the central Phase 2 building
  - Areas near Phase 1 objectives atop of the cliffs are now correctly marked as out-of-bounds
  - Added a few ramps to highlight some less obvious paths in Phase 1 and Phase 2
  - Fixed one pool of the freezing liquid not dealing damage as intended
  - One of the pools leading out-of-bounds was not out-of-bounds - should now reliably stop you from going there
  - Fixed a spot on the bridge going over a pool where you would be affected by the freezing liquid
  - Grounded some floating objects
  - Fixed some issues in the Phase 2’s cliffside building
  - Fixed bots being unable to path down to the Cricket Phase 3 objective from the ULA spawn via one of the roads
  - Added glass to the few windows lacking it for consistency
  - Tweaked the look of the glass windows
  - Tweaked the intro to be smoother
  - Added some décor to the Phase 1 and 2 AIA spawns
  
  
• Poranti updates:
  - Potentially fixed Poranti crashing after finishing a map and loading into the next online
  - Replaced a lot of ULA tech with AIA tech where appropriate
  - Hopefully resolved a rare issue where completing objectives a bit out-of-order would cause issues
  - Added some objective-protection when they are inactive
  - Resolved the bots being unwilling to board Phase 4
  - Added an out-of-bounds volume covering Phase 2
  - Phase 1’s turret will now start in the close camera mode
  - ULA droppods should now be properly protected
  - Khamun should now be required to progress to Phase 4
  - Increased the healthpool of Phase 1 objectives
  
  
• Mirnoide updates:
  - Moved some killvolumes that had gotten a little overly excited about the ULA breachpoint in the lavadome station
  - Added fighter restocking animations to both biodomes
  - Removed some restrictions from bot pathing, and fixed an issue where they weren’t reliably able to get out of one of the boarding tubes
  - Tweaked some collision and improved performance
  - Moved some trees down to be properly grounded, fixed the “pump” mesh being very visually blurred depending on distance, fixed some glass, added some water sounds, fixed some water visuals and the river magically eating bullets in the desert dome station.
  
  
• Yin Tao Shan updates:
  - Fixed improper collision on a destroyable on the road: The collision would persist after the destroyable was destroyed
  - In incursion, moved Phase 2’s out-of-bounds volume back a bit, so the “most obvious path” from the ULA vehicle-dropping is no longer blocked and makes the secondary AIA spawn inside the play-area
  - General collision and z-fighting tweaks on rocks, trees etc.
  - Replaced AIA tech with ULA in the ULA spawn-huts
  - Adjusted the Phase 3 out-of-bounds volume, so that the left-side ULA LZ is in-bounds as intended
  
  
• ULA briefingroom:
  - Fixed missing collision on the “quarters” door
  - There are no longer floating lights in the briefing-area
  - Fixed a few ways to get out of bounds
  - Added a killvolume underneath, to prevent anyone from being stuck, should they get out of bounds
  - Tweaked collision on armory-area; There is no longer an arbitrary invisible roof that you’d hit your head on
  - Fixed being able to get yourself stuck near the weapon-racks
  - Added more weapons to the rack, so there’s a few duplicates to pick from
  - Fixed multiple objects visibly culling in and out when moving through the briefing area. All meshes should now be properly visible as intended
  - Added some red/black/green screens slightly out of bounds; Use the “ghost” consolecommand and fly to the right of the spawn; Should allow those interested to get screenshots that are easier to cut out
  
  
• AIA briefingroom:
  - Fixed some floating and semi-see-through objects in the kitchen area
  - Fixed the roof not being solid; Could be used to climb out of the area
  - Added a killvolume underneath, to prevent anyone from being stuck, should they get out of bounds
  - Added some red/black/green screens slightly out of bounds; Use the “ghost” consolecommand and fly to the right of the spawn; Should allow those interested to get screenshots that are easier to cut out
  
  
• Lacroix updates:
  - Added fighter-restocking and takeoff animations as was done to the ULA hangar previously.
  - Adjusted a lot of collision and fixed some z-fighting
  - Fixed some places you could get out-of-bounds
  - Properly grounded all cover
  - Fixed an area that had gotten a placeholder texture assigned
  - Inner ULA spawn and AIA LZs should now be properly protected
  - Added some effects, and revised collision, around the middle objective; Should now be more flexible to fight around
  
  
• Meudeverre updates:
  - Fixed ugly skybox scaling
  - Tweaked a lot of internal collision on cover, walkways, etc.
  - Added restocking and takeoff animations to fighters
  - Protected ULA LZs
  - Fixed destroyables leaving behind collision after they were destroyed
  - Reduced the healthpool of Phase 2 objectives
  
  
• Ixion updates:
  - Fixed some parts being see-through and partially fly-through in the inner parts of the station
  - Fixed some tubes not being fully connected, but vaguely hanging in space
  - Fixed some weirdness with the stations turrets
  - All LZs should now be properly protected and functional
  - Added an out-of-bounds volume covering Phase 3
  - Trash in the bins is now visible from all angles
  - Tweaked a lot of collision; Greatly reduced places you can cheesily hide or get stuck in, or fall out of bounds
  - Added some meshes around the interior to finish up areas that looked barren
  - Properly grounded meshes, and made sure any destroyables wouldn’t leave floating meshes or bad collision
  
  
• Delta updates:
  - Slightly increased the time it takes for the water to turn your screen black, to feel a bit more natural, and tweaked when it affects you, to match with the visual water better
  - Fixed some cases of z-fighting
  - The medbay in one of the AIA huts should now look like it belongs
  - Replaced AIA tech with ULA variants inside ULA spawnhuts
  - Widened all bridges, to make it easier to drive vehicles over
  
  
• Tannhauser updates:
  - Fixed a lot of cover not being rendered from a distance
  - The LZs should now be properly shielded and protected
  - Fixed missing collision on some consoles
  - Tweaked the doors: They should now be easier to deal with while opening, and to walk past
  - Added blocking volumes to the caps of the fans under the platform; Would allow players to move gunships in them, or jump into them, despite being visually obstructed by the fans
  
  
• Kerrat Territories updates:
  - Tweaked previous fix intended to stop the capital ships from drifting and desyncing boardingpoints; The capital ships would unintentionally become fly-through at times
  
  
• Lukather Territories updates:
  - Updated the tram in the Territories variant as was previously done to the incursion variant
  - Replaced AIA tech with ULA in the ULA spawnhut
  - Added some supporting meshes to the “hotel towers”, so they aren’t awkwardly semi-transparant from the air
  - Tweaked collision on the parking lot and terminals
  - Fixed some of the windows on the main towers somehow not blocking vehicles or sucking them in
  - Fixed the initial landed dropship being visible as a glitch for a second during the intro
  
  
• Fortress updates:
  - Slightly moved ULA LZs so they are properly grounded
  - Moved right-side Silverback and Basta vehicle drop spots back a bit, to give the defenders a better chance of making use of them during Phase 2
  - Removed some weird blocking volumes from Phase 3 area
  - Another pass of terraforming to blend everything better
  - Added sandbags to second level of Phase 2 towers to make them more relevant
  - Turrets in Phase 2 towers will now start you in zoomed-in view to make them more usable
  - A bunch of collision tweaks, most notably on rocks and railings
  - Fixed spots in some of the towers, walls and spawn areas where you could shoot and see through the floors to the level below
  - Slightly recessed Phase 2’s mounted turrets, so they actually fit on their platforms
  - Added some blockers between the towers and the wall itself, since some players managed to get themself stuck in the gap
  - Replaced AIA tech with ULA in the ULA spawn
  
  
• Igneous updates:
  - Added two ending cinematics which will play depending on who wins
  - Fixed some collision
  - Fixed some pathing, where bots would struggle with using the scaffolding towers to ascend and descend and get stuck under the Phase 1 platform
  - Added a bit of cover to the overpass coming from ULA Phase 3 spawn; It should be more doable for attackers to contest a sniper-nest there
  
  
• Irega updates:
  - A lot of miscellaneous collision improvements and tweaks
  - Fixed some spots in the trash heap where you could get stuck or get out of bounds
  - Properly protected the spawns in the Incursion variant
  - In the Incursion variant, adjusted the Phase 3 out-of-bounds volume, so that the left-side ULA LZ is in-bounds as intended

For feedback, or just a lovely chat with the devs, post on AFF's Steam forums or contact us directly through our Discord!

Onwards and upwards!