Today we have retired the September 2016 build of the original (non-Strike) AirMech. We had left that build up while we worked to get AirMech Wastelands ready for release, as there were some game modes and features only available pre-Strike.

Now that AirMech Wastelands is available for all VIPs, we need to disable that build so we can continue adding new features to AirMech Strike and AMW.

We were glad to offer support for it for so long, and though it was a pretty neat trick to be able to maintain compatibility between builds for almost a year and a half apart, considering the original intention was just to support a few versions so we would never have to have "downtime" while we patch the game.

The next couple weeks we will be working to stabilize AirMech Strike so it is compatible with AirMech Wastelands and everything plays nice together. When things are nice and solid, we will remove the Early Access state--finally!

Today we have retired the September 2016 build of the original (non-Strike) AirMech. We had left that build up while we worked to get AirMech Wastelands ready for release, as there were some game modes and features only available pre-Strike.

Now that AirMech Wastelands is available for all VIPs, we need to disable that build so we can continue adding new features to AirMech Strike and AMW.

We were glad to offer support for it for so long, and though it was a pretty neat trick to be able to maintain compatibility between builds for almost a year and a half apart, considering the original intention was just to support a few versions so we would never have to have "downtime" while we patch the game.

The next couple weeks we will be working to stabilize AirMech Strike so it is compatible with AirMech Wastelands and everything plays nice together. When things are nice and solid, we will remove the Early Access state--finally!

This is a notice for all Silver VIP players who became VIP before November 1st, and is related to AirMech Wastelands. If you are not VIP, or don't care about AirMech Wastelands, you can skip this update.



Still reading? Then I'm happy to let you know that initial testing is going well with AirMech Wastelands on the test server. You can claim your copy of AirMech Wastelands by going into AirMech Strike, typing "Wastelands" in chat, and click the link. Instructions will walk you through getting access, which will add it to your Steam Library.

Currently no one can buy AirMech Wastelands. It is exclusively for our previous paid supporters to get an early peek, and give us feedback to get AMW ready to connect to the main AirMech server, so all your AMS and AMW data/progress will be pulled from a single account. Earn things in one game, they are there in the other. I think even the hardcore PvP players will still find a few things they want to use AMW to get.

As of this post, AirMech Wastelands connects to a test server, so you do not have your "stuff" yet. Some progression things are wildly unbalanced, resulting in players being able to acquire massive amounts of Kudos and gear--which is fine if it's fun, and if those things won't break the Strike economy. Testing/tuning is going well, and we expect to switch to the "live" server soon.

We probably won't post too much more here on the Strike page about AirMech Wastelands, since most people just want their Strike news here. So make sure to head over to the AirMech Wastelands page for future updates:

http://store.steampowered.com/app/595770/AirMech_Wastelands/

This is a notice for all Silver VIP players who became VIP before November 1st, and is related to AirMech Wastelands. If you are not VIP, or don't care about AirMech Wastelands, you can skip this update.



Still reading? Then I'm happy to let you know that initial testing is going well with AirMech Wastelands on the test server. You can claim your copy of AirMech Wastelands by going into AirMech Strike, typing "Wastelands" in chat, and click the link. Instructions will walk you through getting access, which will add it to your Steam Library.

Currently no one can buy AirMech Wastelands. It is exclusively for our previous paid supporters to get an early peek, and give us feedback to get AMW ready to connect to the main AirMech server, so all your AMS and AMW data/progress will be pulled from a single account. Earn things in one game, they are there in the other. I think even the hardcore PvP players will still find a few things they want to use AMW to get.

As of this post, AirMech Wastelands connects to a test server, so you do not have your "stuff" yet. Some progression things are wildly unbalanced, resulting in players being able to acquire massive amounts of Kudos and gear--which is fine if it's fun, and if those things won't break the Strike economy. Testing/tuning is going well, and we expect to switch to the "live" server soon.

We probably won't post too much more here on the Strike page about AirMech Wastelands, since most people just want their Strike news here. So make sure to head over to the AirMech Wastelands page for future updates:

http://store.steampowered.com/app/595770/AirMech_Wastelands/

Wow, it's been a long time. I've been on a self imposed ban of the community side of things while focusing on Wastelands. Obviously we're way behind what I originally hoped, and that's mostly my fault. We were actually getting ready to start giving people access, but I look at what we had and I had to decide: patch things up and get it out there, or take things to the chopping block and gut/fix/improve things. I started to see so much potential and was excited. I was torn between wanting to share our work with the community and also not wanting to show it, because we needed to break things pretty badly to really take it to the next level.

Obviously, the latter path was chosen. Despite expanding the scope of AirMech Wastelands, we didn't want to give up the idea of having connected accounts. This would lead to more work as the games diverged, but I feel it's worth it. But some things I'm really not sure how they will work, or what could be exploited. Kudos is an actual currency in Wastelands--you use it to buy and sell things in the vendor shops (it's an RPG really), and effectively replaces credits for building things. Imagine you're playing Diablo, and you take your loot back to town and can sell it for Kudos. Diamonds have a use too, and can be earned (but not farmed like crazy). Things that are Diamond only in Strike can be found as drops or unlocked in other ways in Wastelands. As a paid game, this makes sense, but having the accounts connected is equal parts excitement and worry for me.

The way we are going to start testing Wastelands is with a new test server. It's much smaller than the normal AirMech server, but should be fine for this. At Carbon we've been playing on this new server for the past few months mostly. Sometimes we'll check things on the live server, but we default to the test server. We started calling it the PTR server (public test realm) like Blizzard does, though for now there is no choice--the non-dev version of Wastelands for now can only connect to it.

Why? Two reasons--the first one being so we can wipe it fairly often. How often? Between a week and a month, it depends what we are doing. Back to having the connected account with AirMech Strike, it just isn't possible to wipe "just' the Wastelands data. The account really is a single thing that holds all your inventory, stats, unlocks, etc. If someone finds a way to completely break the economy, we need to work that out on the test server. We actually want you to break and exploit things on the test server! The second reason is so we can test starting from scratch, which new future players will experience. Existing players will have tons of stuff, though only some of it can be used--more on the way we gate progress later. I think once you start playing it will also be pretty obvious.

We're reaching out to players based on their status. Starting with Carbon VIPs and working down from there. I don't mean this to play favorites, we just need to get people in one by one at first before we activate the auto-unlocking. Hopefully a week from now we can turn that system on. This also means that the end of the Silver VIP to Wastelands access is nearing. I expect that one week after all Silver VIPs have Wastelands access we will end that. (so 2 weeks from now?)

There is still a LOT to do on Wastelands. But we've tried to focus on the things that are core to the game. Get the core systems in, work on the rule changes. Balance is the "easy" part after that. Fixing graphical issues even comes past that. This is why we will not be selling Wastelands at first. We want to let the AirMech superfans in to help finalize the direction the game takes as it comes into focus. We may even skip Early Access all together--that is a good system if you are looking for a way to make the game "work" for something like F2P, but since Wastelands is a paid game it's completely different. We've invested our own (and your) money into AirMech Strike and Wastelands. Since Wastelands is not F2P, it is something that we are making and finishing according to our vision. We hope you like it, but if it's not the type of game for you then that's also ok. I'm pretty confident existing players will enjoy it, and very sure than between Strike and Wastelands that everyone should be happy.

I mean, as long as you like mechs. :) We'll be seeing more and more of you on the PTR server soon in Wastelands! Remember that any players who previously paid something (anything) in Steam or PC AirMech will get Wastelands for free. You just click the "Wastelands" link from chat inside Strike and it will be automagically added to your Steam account. (we'll post again when it is open to all VIPs)

Wow, it's been a long time. I've been on a self imposed ban of the community side of things while focusing on Wastelands. Obviously we're way behind what I originally hoped, and that's mostly my fault. We were actually getting ready to start giving people access, but I look at what we had and I had to decide: patch things up and get it out there, or take things to the chopping block and gut/fix/improve things. I started to see so much potential and was excited. I was torn between wanting to share our work with the community and also not wanting to show it, because we needed to break things pretty badly to really take it to the next level.

Obviously, the latter path was chosen. Despite expanding the scope of AirMech Wastelands, we didn't want to give up the idea of having connected accounts. This would lead to more work as the games diverged, but I feel it's worth it. But some things I'm really not sure how they will work, or what could be exploited. Kudos is an actual currency in Wastelands--you use it to buy and sell things in the vendor shops (it's an RPG really), and effectively replaces credits for building things. Imagine you're playing Diablo, and you take your loot back to town and can sell it for Kudos. Diamonds have a use too, and can be earned (but not farmed like crazy). Things that are Diamond only in Strike can be found as drops or unlocked in other ways in Wastelands. As a paid game, this makes sense, but having the accounts connected is equal parts excitement and worry for me.

The way we are going to start testing Wastelands is with a new test server. It's much smaller than the normal AirMech server, but should be fine for this. At Carbon we've been playing on this new server for the past few months mostly. Sometimes we'll check things on the live server, but we default to the test server. We started calling it the PTR server (public test realm) like Blizzard does, though for now there is no choice--the non-dev version of Wastelands for now can only connect to it.

Why? Two reasons--the first one being so we can wipe it fairly often. How often? Between a week and a month, it depends what we are doing. Back to having the connected account with AirMech Strike, it just isn't possible to wipe "just' the Wastelands data. The account really is a single thing that holds all your inventory, stats, unlocks, etc. If someone finds a way to completely break the economy, we need to work that out on the test server. We actually want you to break and exploit things on the test server! The second reason is so we can test starting from scratch, which new future players will experience. Existing players will have tons of stuff, though only some of it can be used--more on the way we gate progress later. I think once you start playing it will also be pretty obvious.

We're reaching out to players based on their status. Starting with Carbon VIPs and working down from there. I don't mean this to play favorites, we just need to get people in one by one at first before we activate the auto-unlocking. Hopefully a week from now we can turn that system on. This also means that the end of the Silver VIP to Wastelands access is nearing. I expect that one week after all Silver VIPs have Wastelands access we will end that. (so 2 weeks from now?)

There is still a LOT to do on Wastelands. But we've tried to focus on the things that are core to the game. Get the core systems in, work on the rule changes. Balance is the "easy" part after that. Fixing graphical issues even comes past that. This is why we will not be selling Wastelands at first. We want to let the AirMech superfans in to help finalize the direction the game takes as it comes into focus. We may even skip Early Access all together--that is a good system if you are looking for a way to make the game "work" for something like F2P, but since Wastelands is a paid game it's completely different. We've invested our own (and your) money into AirMech Strike and Wastelands. Since Wastelands is not F2P, it is something that we are making and finishing according to our vision. We hope you like it, but if it's not the type of game for you then that's also ok. I'm pretty confident existing players will enjoy it, and very sure than between Strike and Wastelands that everyone should be happy.

I mean, as long as you like mechs. :) We'll be seeing more and more of you on the PTR server soon in Wastelands! Remember that any players who previously paid something (anything) in Steam or PC AirMech will get Wastelands for free. You just click the "Wastelands" link from chat inside Strike and it will be automagically added to your Steam account. (we'll post again when it is open to all VIPs)

Paste that code into the game Shop and it will unlock the Osprey class if you don't already have it. Most useful for new players, since veterans likely already have it.

The Osprey is almost the opposite of the Warthog: doesn't do a ton of damage, but being able to repair Units can make you incredibly powerful. Combined with the new Follow order, you can effectively push a deadly force and help keep them alive.

Great carry capacity also makes the Osprey a great support AirMech. It plays differently than the other mechs and stands out as the only "healer" class. If you lean more towards playing like an RTS, this could be the AirMech for you.

Unlimited uses of this code all weekend, so please do share to give everyone a chance to try the Osprey!

Paste that code into the game Shop and it will unlock the Osprey class if you don't already have it. Most useful for new players, since veterans likely already have it.

The Osprey is almost the opposite of the Warthog: doesn't do a ton of damage, but being able to repair Units can make you incredibly powerful. Combined with the new Follow order, you can effectively push a deadly force and help keep them alive.

Great carry capacity also makes the Osprey a great support AirMech. It plays differently than the other mechs and stands out as the only "healer" class. If you lean more towards playing like an RTS, this could be the AirMech for you.

Unlimited uses of this code all weekend, so please do share to give everyone a chance to try the Osprey!

Tried the Warthog AirMech yet? Some new players feel it might be too powerful, since it is always on the front lines just melting everything in its path. But all that power is balanced against some drawbacks, such as slower speed, less carry capacity, and a high rate of energy drain for the minigun.

Want to try it out and see how it plays for yourself? For the next 24 hours (check the original time of this post if unsure) this code will unlock the Warthog on your account--permanently. It can be used unlimited times, so share it with your friends who are just starting out, or want a leg up unlocking all the classes:


Codes can be entered in the Shop from the Main Menu. Look for a button in the lower left.

The Warthog definitely is an awesome class and a lot of fun to use, and just like all the AirMechs it has roles it is best at--along with weaknesses. Find the AirMech that fits your playstyle best, and then find a partner to compliment that strategy.

Do you find the Warthog is balanced? Tell us your thoughts after you've had a chance to use it.

Tried the Warthog AirMech yet? Some new players feel it might be too powerful, since it is always on the front lines just melting everything in its path. But all that power is balanced against some drawbacks, such as slower speed, less carry capacity, and a high rate of energy drain for the minigun.

Want to try it out and see how it plays for yourself? For the next 24 hours (check the original time of this post if unsure) this code will unlock the Warthog on your account--permanently. It can be used unlimited times, so share it with your friends who are just starting out, or want a leg up unlocking all the classes:


Codes can be entered in the Shop from the Main Menu. Look for a button in the lower left.

The Warthog definitely is an awesome class and a lot of fun to use, and just like all the AirMechs it has roles it is best at--along with weaknesses. Find the AirMech that fits your playstyle best, and then find a partner to compliment that strategy.

Do you find the Warthog is balanced? Tell us your thoughts after you've had a chance to use it.