• Added two new bonuses for coats of arms: The crossed swords are close combat specialists, increasing sawblade and flamethrower damage by 40%. The vol are aerial aces, increasing the fire rate of airplanes by 40%.
  
• Reduced marine fire rate by 25% for balancing purposes.
  
• Fixed a bug where ships with sails would constantly emit sail sounds.
  
• The AI again no longer builds ships it cannot afford to maintain.
  
• Added modding utilities for converting between the game's internal GUG format used for saves and a (more) human-readable JSON format. You can activate them by enabling "modding tools" in the settings.
  
• Added a setting for enabling in-game cheats.

The cheats allow you to get free money, get all techs, instantly complete ship construction, prevent the AI from attacking you, destroy ships in combat, restock your resources in combat, and switch which empire you control.



They're of course only available in single-player and disable achievements. If you have suggestions for additional ones, let me know.

Why did I add cheats? Well, uh, people are cheating anyway using cheat engine and causing weird bug reports that I then have to spend time investigating. So I'd much rather give you a clean way to cheat. Plus I firmly believe that you should be able to do whatever you like with software that's on your computer. It's your computer, and I'm not a cop.

But please don't use Cheat Engine in multiplayer. It desyncs the game and then I have to spend time and energy going over the desync report. Time I could spend making cool stuff for Airships, or napping.

• Can no longer get multiple spy actions for the price of one by clicking really fast. (Thanks to Towarish Broven for reporting that one!)
  
• The AI should now build a more diverse set of ships.
  
• Slightly improved performance in multiplayer battles.
  
• Modding: Line numbers in JSON errors are now correct.
  
• Fixed fleet list GUI glitch.

Since some players are having difficulties with conquest mode, here's a simple way to win it. This is not an especially exciting way to win, but it's simple: no research, ship design, building defenses, espionage, etc.

Start with a small map on very easy mode. Save up money to build two HMS Unmatched, which are a default ship design.

Using the two HMS Unmatched and whatever ship you started with, start attacking towns, which are the ones with the small icons.

Your fleet should be big enough to induce them to just surrender. If not, retreat and build another HMS Unmatched.



Pillage each town you conquer and use the money to build more HMS Unmatcheds to grow your fleet. Conquer all the towns like that.

By the end of this process, you should have about a dozen Unmatcheds. You can now start conquering the cities. They won't surrender, but you should now have massively superior firepower. In combat, tell your ships to move close to the enemy ships and buildings and then just wait for them to be destroyed.



Whenever you conquer a city, pillage it, but wait until the pillaging is complete before moving your fleet to the next city, so it can restock its ammunition.

Keep doing that until you've conquered all cities and won.

Now you can go for a higher difficulty level and start looking into using your ships more effectively and creating better ship designs.

• Robot tentacles now longer drop grabbed crew when losing power.
  
• Setting a name prefix for your ship no longer desyncs the game.

More to come.

This is a quick update that fixes some potential sources of multiplayer desyncs and adds more logging to catch any remaining problems. Happy playing!

After a bunch of beta testing, it's time to release the new networking code for everyone. There are still rare desyncs, but the game is able to recover from them, and I hope to hunt down the last few issues soon.

• Much faster loading and saving
  
• Preview info of saved games
  
• Much faster checking of Steam subscriptions on startup
  
• Smoother, more resilient multiplayer
  
• The ability to load modded ships when you're missing some required mods
  
• Mechanical tentacles
  
• Mostly up to date translations

Modder note: The game now also checksums the files in data/lang, so if you changed them, it will complain that the game data is wrong. This is to prevent desyncs from happening where two players' games end up naming things differently.

I've been working on improving the game's networking and save/load functions, and it's now time for a last open beta to make sure it all works before it gets officially released. So if you're interested, switch to the "mp_beta" branch to experience:

• Much faster loading and saving
  
• Preview infos of saved games
  
• Much faster checking of Steam subscriptions on startup
  
• Smoother, more resilent multiplayer
  
• The ability to load modded ships when you're missing some required mods
  
• Mechanical tentacles
  
• Bugs, potentially

If you try it out, please document and tell me about any problems you run into! Don't assume that I already know a problem exists. You can contact me here, or on the Steam forums, or on Discord, or via email to zarkonnen@gmail.com .

To switch to the beta, right-click on the game in your Steam library, choose "Properties", then select the "Betas" tab from the window that appears, and finally "mp_beta" from the drop-down in that tab.

• Fixed performance problems with grenadiers and other boarders.
• Saw blades and other ammoless weapons once again will fire at harmless targets if they have nothing better to do.
• Temporarily disabled multiplayer chat overlay, as it was causing lag spikes. It will be fixed and re-enabled soon.
• Fixed crash caused by ships producing less than 0.5 command points.
• Fixed rare crash in file screen.
• Fixed weird behaviour in file screen when you hit enter with nothing selected.
• Limited number of particles in a combat to 4000. This can be changed by editing launch_settings.json.
• You can now deactivate the enemy combat AI entirely, useful for testing purposes.
• Cow-catcher ram is now called wurm-catcher ram, as there are no cows in the game's setting.
• Instead of tips you now sometimes get in-universe ads in the world generation screen.
• Modding: Ability to hook charges/tinctures/layouts into existing heraldic styles. See Modding Notes.txt in the game data folder for details.

Well, looks like you all really enjoyed this years April Fools for Airships, which introduced a set of in-game ads for a variety of strange and frightening products and services. While April 1 has passed, by popular request, the ads will resurface occasionally in loading screens.

If you missed them, here's all the ads, plus some commentary:



These were a real product in late 19th century America. I changed frighteningly little in this ad from the original. Given the way they're advertised, you'd expect them to contain cocaine or amphetamine, but it was actually worse: they contained strychnine - hence the line about rat poisons at the bottom. I also drew the third face in the picture to show signs of risus sardonicus, also know as rictus grin, which is a symptom of strychnine poisoning.

So why would you put strychnine into these pills? My guess is that as a nerve poison, a small dose would make you tense up in a way that might be mistaken for increased vigor.



"Make easy money at home" scams have a long history extending to today. Of course, no one actually wants those geckos you're breeding, and the FAQ I wrote suggests that the real business model is selling overpriced anti-gecko tincture to the marks.



A silly pun. The three monks have beards that look like monk's beard - barbe di frate, a type of vegetable. I always get confused and call it frate di barbe instead - monk of the beard.



Floatmead is full of Suspendium and hence provides unique challenges in drinking. The contraption here is basically an upside-down Belgian beer glass holder.



These are partially a reference to Triscuits, a long-running brand of biscuit with an unclear etymology. Likely they were named Triscuits because they were baked with elec*tri*city. But "biscuit" really means "twice baked", so it should be "thrice baked", which they aren't. Anyway, Heptascuits *have* been baked seven times, rendering them akin to some new kind of metamorphic rock with infinite shelf life and zero edibility. Which brings us to the other reference, ship's biscuits or hardtack, which were the standard ship's ration during the age of sail, and only slightly more edible. Remember: if the biscuit floats, it's safe to eat. If it sings, it's not.



In our world, "moon hoax" refers to the conspiracy theory that people never actually landed on the moon. In the world of Airships, there are three moons, and no one claims to have visited them. But they're central to the dominant religion of the world, so this "moon hoax" book is really an attempt by cultists to recruit new members. There's a long tradition of cults and other fringe organisations operating their own tiny publishers to create materials and sometimes act as fronts.



Mushroom Wine from the Unterzee! This is a reference to the Fallen London universe, and Sunless Sea in particular. I'm really pleased with how the drawing of the mushrooms turned out.



This is a reference to that infamous scene in A Clockwork Orange. See "Burgess" and "Alexander Lane".



Of course I had to include a dubious "tonic". There were a lot of those in the 19th century, and some of them are in fact still around. Their ingredients ranged from harmless plant extracts to highly dubious substances, including, again, strychnine. The joke - yes, this is where I explain all the jokes - is that it's deliberately left unclear what the relationship of spiders to this tonic actually is. For spiders, against spiders, made with spiders, who knows? The offset of the color and the black is intentional, of course, meant to evoke shoddy printing.

Finally, if you look at the detail on the bottle, the ingredients include:

• Pennyroyal - a toxic flower traditionally used as an abortion-inducing tea.
  
• Castoreum - beaver scent gland extract used in perfumes, and as a food additive in the 19th century.
  
• Parsley - a common and pretty harmless herb. It might help with digestive issues.
  
• Certain Essential Saltes of Animals - a reference to HP Lovecraft's The Case of Charles Dexter Ward.

The Six Day Stilt is a location in Caves of Qud, another favourite game of mine.



Moustache tonics are a real thing. Here's one with Suspendium in, allowing for truly improbable arrangements of facial hair.



The shape of the landship is based on a giant mining truck. Note also the suggestion of two watchful eyes in the trees.



Another product that is far less altered from its original than you'd expect or hope. Wine fortified with cocaine was a real thing, and yes, there really was a brand that claimed to be endorsed by the pope.



The world of Airships lacks cows, so they have to make do with Corned Wurm, made from giant angry lizards.



Also available in a substitute version. Please don't ask what it contains, you would not like the answer.

Finally, here's a list of ideas that I didn't get around to, because I didn't have the time, or I didn't know how to draw them:

• Hiddelsten's Vibrating Underwear
  
• Mr Stockton's Safe Aerial Descent Device
  
• The Todestrieb Institute recommends that men, women, and children of all ages smoke thrice daily to calm the lungs, clear out harmful Suspendium dust, and prevent disease from taking hold. (I nixed this one because I didn't want to make the lives of recovering smokers any harder.)
  
• Try Floatcheese from Floatgoats!
  
• The Floating Fireplace: Spreads Light and Warmth throughout the House
  
• Mizzenmast's Candied Jellies
  
• Athory's Blood Purifier Engine

Q Why?
A To create new revenue streams and maximise shareholder value by exploiting existing IP.

Q I don’t see any ads.
A The ads become available at the start of April in your local time zone, and require the game language to be set to English, French, German, or Russian. Also, make sure that you are not in a beta branch on Steam.

Q I do see ads and I wish I didn’t.
A If you really must drive me to ruin with your unwillingness to see ads in a game you already paid money for, go into Settings & Info in the main menu to turn them off.

Q I’m not entirely clear on how to purchase the advertised items.
A You may request a detailed catalogue of items by sending two Gug Shillings or other coins of equivalent value to 11 Uncouth Road, New Glottenbourg.

Q Is spider tonic made out of spiders? Is it to prevent spiders? Is it for spiders???
A What ridiculous questions. Everyone knows what spider tonic is.

Q Are Ambition Pills safe to take?
A We have heard no complaints.

Q How do I drink floatmead?
A Bow your head and then carefully invert the flagon to let the mead float upwards into your mouth. Swallow carefully.

Q Help! I have bred too many geckos! They’re in the walls! They’re everywhere!
A Send a letter to 11c Goat Lane, Cogburgh. Enclose 3 florins to receive our highly efficaceous anti-gecko tincture.

Q I have attempted to eat a Heptascuit.
A Send a letter to 11d Goat Lane, Cogburgh, enclosing your teeth.