Version/2.33.x

Home > Patch notes > Version/2.33.x

2.33.5

Release: (2022/01/1)

Bug fixes

• Fixed a bug with artillery feedback only showing once if your shell/missile hit the exact same place.
• Potentially fixed a bug causing walls to be forever stuck in the building carcass state; the wall would be invincible and never removed. This bug was incredibly hard to reproduce but it seemed that the bug was directly tied to the recycle function. Upon further investigation it seems possible that the bug was caused by the recycle function being called at the exact frame that wall is destroyed.
• Modified the physics model of the NF jeep around the front wheels to prevent trees getting stuck between the wheel and the front grill, when this happened it was near impossible to free the jeep.

Script/Game Balance

Research

• Depleted Uranium Rounds
  • Reduced Time from 60 to 45
  • Reduced Cost from 240 to 180
• Improved Flagration Compounds
  • Reduced Time from 60 to 45
  • Reduced Cost from 120 to 90
• Explosive Tipped Bullets
  • Reduced Time from 60 to 45
  • Reduced Cost from 240 to 180
• Biological Projectile
  • Reduced Time from 60 to 45
  • Reduced Cost from 240 to 180
• Upgraded Chassis
  • Reduced Cost from 720 to 600
  • Reduced Time from 240 to 120
• Medium Tank Chassis
  • Increased Cost from 540 to 600
  • Increased Time from 90 to 120
• Artillery Tank Chassis
  • Reduced Cost from 750 to 720
  • Increased Time from 120 to 150
• Advanced Chassis
  • Increased Cost from 720 to 750
  • Reduced Time from 240 to 150
• Heavy Tank Chassis
  • Reduced Cost from 900 to 750

2.33.4

Release: (2021/12/11)

Bug fixes

• Fixed a bug causing the squad leader's aura to not reset if all other members left the squad whilst being in the squad aura radius.
• Fixed a bug causing squad members to receive the squad aura effect even though their squad leader died.
• Fixed some issues with resource points becoming disabled in some situations where the refinery placement failed.
• Fixed a problem causing explosions to sometimes deal damage through building geometry. (Building entities, not the world)

Miscellaneous changes

• Increased the volume of rail cannon's firing sound as it was a more quiet than the others.

Script/Game Balance

Vehicle Weapons

• Upgraded Missile Launcher
  • Changed Projectile Spread from 0.5 to 0.2
• Removed .50cal Heavy Machine Gun (This is the 3-slot version of the weapon, the 2-slot variety still remains.)

Research

Shifted the cost of researching upgraded chassis toward the chassis itself, they're now more similar to other research. Also increased the time needed for each of the sub-researches.

• Changed Vehicle Chassis sub-research (Upgraded & Advanced Chassis) from 5 res/s to 3 res/s
  • Upgraded Chassis
    • Increased Time from 120 to 240
    • Increased Cost from 600 to 720
  • Advanced Chassis
    • Increased Time from 120 to 240
    • Increased Cost from 600 to 720
• Changed Vehicle Chassis research from (Medium, Artillery & Heavy Chassis) 5 res/s to 6 res/s.
  • Medium Tank Chassis
    • Increased Cost from 450 to 540
  • Artillery Tank Chassis
    • Increased Cost from 600 to 720
  • Heavy Tank Chassis
    • Increased Time from 120 to 150
    • Increased Cost from 600 to 900

2.33.3

Release: (2021/11/14)

Bug fixes

• Fixed a bug on Linux servers which caused vehicles to be able to aim beyond the intended cannon pitch angle restrictions. (You could aim down inside your own tank and self-damage the tank)
• Fixed a bug involving tank cannon shells getting stuck floating in the air when colliding with the tank that fired it. Although this doesn't happen often the issue was brought up recently with the above issue on Linux servers.
• Fixed a problem involving map-edge grid textures not displaying correctly on lower texture settings.
• Fixed a bug where unbuilt buildings would flash as the team color instead of it's intended yellow color when damaged.
• Fixed an issue where the emp_resource_point entity was no longer firing it's outputs when intended. (Used by level designers * OnNFBuilt/OnImpBuilt OnEnable/OnDisable are now working as intended)
  • These are often used to control when smoke should appear, so fixing this may help improve FPS in some situations.
• Fixed an bug causing vehicle steering values to change when recustomizing on a repair station.
• Fixed a few issues where Salvo Missiles would not fire their full volley and fixed another issue where they could fire unexpectedly. (For example: When the wrong attack key was pressed.)

Miscellaneous changes

• Projectiles are now excluded from explosion damage hit detection. This is simply to ensure that explosion damage doesn't get lowered/blocked by shells/missiles/grenades.
• Missiles no longer have health; previously missiles could be exploded by taking damage from explosions. Although this might seem like an interesting feature, it has never been the same for cannon shells and it causes some balancing issues.

Script/Game Balance

Vehicle Weapons

• Cannons
  • Reduced Recoil a little bit for High-Explosive and Plasma.
  • Reduced Recoil a lot for Railgun

Vehicle Armors

• Absorbant
  • Increased Health from 67 to 70
• Reactive
  • Increased Health from 130 to 135

2.33.2

Release: (2021/10/17)

Features

• Added resource point icons to the minimap.
  • Resource output for each resource point can be seen on the full-sized map.
  • Resource points on the full-sized map have a color coded glow surrounding them to depict importance.
    • Yellow (Lowest output) -> Green (2nd lowest output) -> Cyan (2nd highest output) -> Fuchsia (Highest output)

Bug fixes

• Fixed some problems with how entities are detected by commands issued using the F-Menu. Including commands bypassing the menu using emp_menu_quickcmd. (Spotting/Squad Targets etc...)
  • The commands now do a line ray cast before doing a box ray cast which should reduce the chance of selecting the wrong entity because the box ray cast was big enough to hit something else than what you were aiming at.
    • Commands detect entities using the following method: Line ray cast -> Box ray cast -> Detect entity origins within 10 pixels of the crosshair, then return the closest entity to the player. Line of sight checks still apply for all methods.
    • emp_menu_quickcmd was using these methods in a different order than using the menu itself, this has been corrected. emp_menu_quickcmd was using the least accurate method first, which is the 10 pixel crosshair detection; often leading to picking a different entity than intended.
• Fixed a bug that caused Steam Enhanced Rich Presence to display incorrectly.
• Fixed scouts not being networked to commanders in command view, rendering them completely invisible. This might have originally been added to side-step issues with commanders being able to target hidden scouts, those issues have also been resolved. Hidden scouts are no longer highlighted in attack selection boxes and targets cannot be issued if the scout is already hidden.
• Fixed an issue preventing the Bio infantry resist from working.
• Fixed two of the broken Chat variables, %_x and %_y. (Used to print the player's co-ordinates to chat.)
• Main menu "Quick Start Guide" button now links to the website version using the Steam overlay instead of using an in-game panel. Some of the links in the local version were broken and the website version is slightly more up to date (although a lot of the information is still outdated).
• Removed default.cfg file and prevented the game from searching for it. This file was being used incorrectly and it would revert some of the settings held in the options menu.
  • The game now has a config_default.cfg file instead which executes on first launch of the game. Preventing the above issue from happening.
  • Added chatcommand_binds.cfg as an alternative to using default.cfg for setting client-side chat commands.
• Updated gameinfo.txt to hopefully fix an issue with the game saving files in the wrong directory. (settings.scr as an example - the file that allows the "Create a Server" dialog settings to function correctly)
• Fixed various potential crashes in server vehicle code.
• Fixed a bug causing some movement keys getting stuck down when transitioning from driving to command view.
• Fixed a bug where entering the overheated state in vehicles would still remove 1 tick of heat dissipation.
• Fixed a potential bug where the damage to heat attribute on vehicle armor could remove some of the vehicle's heat before the overheated state actually ended.
• Fixed a bug where applying Vehicle Bio Damage over Time (DoT) would always reset/override the previous effect. This was unintentional, the override code was supposed to be checking if the current Bio DoT drain was less than the new one but a typo caused it to fail and always result in an override.
• Fixed a bug where Bio DoT wouldn't deal the expected amount of damage ticks. (Both Player and Vehicle Bio DoT.)
• Fixed some issues preventing Steam achievements from being awarded.
• Removed some code which was redirecting friendly fire damage applied to the tank directly to the passenger that inflicted it, regardless of falloff or line of sight.
  • For example: If a player was in the second seat of an APC and their own mine was detonated by an enemy next to the APC - they would be given the same amount of damage as the APC regardless of their distance/being blocked by the APC's model geometry.

Miscellaneous changes

• Controls menu has been updated.
  • Updated the layout and formatting for each category.
  • Removed old key binds that no longer worked.
  • Updated default key assignments, adding assignments where no default was already set.
• Updated the Game's Steamworks SDK version from v1.34 (28th July 2015) to the latest version which is v1.52 (14th September 2021).
  • Some of the Steamworks API calls we use stopped working recently, after updating to the latest SDK version they seem to be fixed. (The game's XP feature was no longer being awarded.)
• Rail cannon has a new firing sound.
• A general optimization pass was conducted on the code base. Small optimizations have been made to client and server, some potential crashes have been fixed.

Script/Game Balance

General

• Increased all building (excluding wall/turrets) resistance to Rifleman's Sticky grenades 0.77 -> 0.828 (Dmg 40 -> 30)
• Added a new script variable to control cannon recoil, previously it was using the damage value to scale the recoil. This change just allows us more control when balancing certain weapons. (All of the recoil values have been defaulted to the original values so there is currently no balance changes. This is for future use.)
• Angle Modifier armor attribute now has a 5 degree offset before the reduction kicks in. It was near impossible to land hits parallel to the surface normal angle that would result in dealing full damage.
  • The new angle range is from 5 - 50 degrees of being parallel, ranging from least to most reduction. Anything over 50 degrees would be full damage reduction depending on the armor's script value. (Angles ranges were previously 0 - 45 degrees, meaning damage was pretty much always reduced.)
• Neutral turning on vehicles is now restricted to the engine's output, meaning you can no longer turn on the spot if the engine can't drive while overheated. This is a change that will have to be play tested in order to see if it fits. Vehicles are supposed to be in a vulnerable state when overheated, simply being able to just rotate while in this state defeats the purpose of both sticky stuns and overheat. (Currently only the vehicles with tracks use Neutral turning.)
• Reduced the amount of screen shake that is applied to players from Biological damage over time by 75%. The screen will now have a very slight green overlay effect to indicate damage was taken from a Bio effect.

Vehicle Weapons

• Biological Machine Gun
  • Changed Biological Interval to 0.5, damage per second and duration remain the same.
• Biological Missile Launcher
  • Changed Player Biological Damage from 4 to 3

Vehicle Engines

• Bio Diesel (All chassis types)
  • Changed Heat Stall Penalty from 0.75 to 0.5

2.33.1

Release: (2021/09/11)

Features

• Implemented a system that checks which player body parts are blocked by other objects before applying explosion damage.
  • Explosion damage and Bio DoT now scales based on the mass of the objects blocking each body part. (Bio Dot is only changed for explosions, Bio MG is unaffected)
  • Each body part is checked separately and scales the damage for that part depending on the blocking object's mass.
    • This uses the same mass checking system as was previously in the game, only that now each part is checked and scaled separately. Previously there was a single check done using the detection raycast that detected the player being visible to the explosion.
    • For reference the system scales the damage based on objects of 0-350 kg mass. (350+ kg objects will block all of the damage.Player mass is 85kg, turrets are 280kg. This is here just to provide an example.)
    • Note - Body parts are an approximation based on player bounding box size and therefore may not line up exactly where the model's geometry is. (Example below)

Body part	Maximum damage percentage loss	Standing body parts	Crouching body parts	Proning body parts
Chest	40%
Head	20%
Feet	20%
Left Arm	10%
Right Arm	10%

Bug fixes

• Updated the Source Engine SDK Base files to the latest version.
  • Valve's patch notes for the update simply reads - "Numerous security and stability improvements."
• Identified and resolved an issue causing Half-Life 2: Lost Coast content to be missing in the server packages. (Both Windows/Linux)

Maps / Level design

Minor update to emp_canyon

• Fixed Cubemaps not being built when the map was last published.
• All player/vehicle clip brushes have been remade, increasing accuracy in order to prevent players from using exploits to reach the top of the hills.
  • B4 hill is now player/vehicle clipped and has restrictions in place for placing buildings.
• Standardized core entity names to match other official maps.
• Fixed the env_sun entity not displaying because of bad entity settings.

Minor update to emp_coast

• Remade all clip brushes/comm/engy restrict brushes
  • Fixed various exploit spots
• Standardized core entity names with other official maps.

Minor update to emp_mvalley

• Added player/vehicle/comm building clips to the high ground again. After hearing feedback from a lot of players, the majority of people suggested that they preferred the gameplay without high ground being accessible.

Script/Game Balance

Script changes are visible via the empires_scripts repo on our Gitlab. Please follow the link if you would like to check exactly how the script values have changed.

Infantry weapons

• Both shotguns now have a FalloffEnd value of 7500, they were previously mismatched. (Previously BE was 5000, NF was 10000; This was unintentional.)

Vehicle chassis

• Reduced BE AFV Max Weight by 10
• Reduced NF Light Tank Max Weight by 10
• Fixed a few issues with vehicle chassis armor angle values being slightly wrong. (Used for determining which armor side took damage)
  • NF Jeep armor angle values were for the old model, these have been updated to reflect the geometry of the new model.
  • Both command vehicles had non-symmetrical armor angles for the back of the vehicle. Only by a few degrees, however both have been updated to resolve this.

Vehicle engines

• APC Engines' cooling has been reduced by 1.
• Heavy Tank Engines' cooling has been increased by 1.
• Removed researchable Artillery Engines as they served little purpose, standard engine has been adjusted to fit its new purpose and to be more fragile (with penalties).
• Stalling Penalties have been changed to be less impactful for armor hits and more impactful for some hull hits and generally reduced stall on heat threshold penalties.
• Horsepower Health Penalty has been increased slightly.
• Bio Diesel has been tweaked so it's no longer "unstoppable".

Vehicle weapons

• Removed High-Explosive Heavy Machine Gun
• Artillery weapons have been slightly rebalanced.
  • The trajectory of artillery projectiles have been adjusted.
  • Weight, Damage, cycle time and heat have also been adjusted.