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Patch 1.14
Greetings Commanders!
Today we reveal the new Outrigger ship the Manticore class heavy cruiser. This appears along with several new missions where you fight the Outriggers in the Alliance campaign. Finally, we have addressed a few minor bugs.
The Manticore
This massive heavy cruiser is constructed at a secret location known only to the Outrigger engineers. Packed with stolen modern weaponry the Manticore is one of the most modern ships on the Frontier.
The primary weapons of the Manticore are twin Coil Cannons. Coil technology was originally developed for the Federation by the Outriggers, and they kept the blueprints of the technology. Coil Cannons are long range, accurate weapons that add extra shield damage. As primary weapons the main guns allow the cruiser to deal heavy damage even through shields.
Located in the center of the chassis is a massive Drive Harpoon. The harpoon is a perfect weapon that compliments the scavenging ways of the Outriggers. It drains the energy from the main engines of its target, reducing its movement to a crawl. This allows the Manticore to stun its prey before moving in for the kill and eventual juicy salvage.
These weapons are backed up by an imposing set of quad Shredder Cannons. This is stolen technology from the Pirate clans, and serves the Manticore well. It provides very high damage at short range for engagements that close in.
All of this weaponry makes the Manticore very capable in duels with other capital ships. What really sets the ship apart, however, is its anti-fighter abilities.
First, it houses a pair of hanger bays. These typically house two Gunship heavy fighter squadrons. However there are rumors that there are Manticore captains that prefer to use lighter Explorer squadrons to better scout out targets to ambush.
Second, it uses a massive battery of eight pulse laser turrets. Pulse laser technology is closely guarded by the Federation and the High Temple on Mars, and how the Outriggers were able to steal this coveted piece of technology is unknown. The turrets allow the Manticore to deal with enemy fighters even if it loses its own squadrons.
All of this makes the Manticore an ideal flagship for an Outrigger fleet. While rare, the few that do exist are very deadly.
New Missions
There are a total of 4 new missions available in the Alliance campaign. All of the missions are optional Bounty missions, but they give the Alliance player more options for the enemies they face.
There is one new mission in Tarsis, two missions in Hadron, and one new mission in Cygnus. Hopefully these missions add a few more choices and a little more variety to this mid game stretch of the campaign.
In addition Outrigger forces (and related rewards) have been increased in missions for both campaigns in Tarsis, Arx, Hadron and Cygnus. The Outriggers are out in force. Beware of the Manticore!
Bug Fixes
Known Issues
We hope you enjoy these updates, and thank you for playing our game!
Patch 1.13
Greetings Commanders!
Today we have a group of balance changes and bug fixes that we wanted to get out right away.
We are working on another content update that will feature additional Outrigger ships and missions. There was not time to fully test the missions for this patch, however, so they will be launched in a future update. Rumors say that a new Outrigger heavy cruiser has been sighted in deep space. You have been warned.
Graphic Enhancements
With this patch we have made several changes to the display of the UI in all of the ship management screens. The UI will appear larger on most resolutions, and should lead to a better experience when playing at a variety of 2k and 4k resolutions.
In addition we made changes that should allow the game to play on most TV monitors the same way it plays on computer monitors.
Balance Changes
Bug Fixes
Known Issues
We are aware and have confirmed that not all of the 58 events are showing up for all players. We are still looking into what is causing this and hope to have a fix soon (tm).
As mentioned at the start, we wanted to rush out the bug fix portion of this patch to make for a better experience for all players. The "second half" of this patch will now be released in patch 1.14, and will include more content featuring the Outriggers in both campaigns.
We hope you enjoy these updates, and thank you for playing our game!
Patch 1.12
Greetings Commanders!
This is a small follow up patch to the release of the new DLC, and only makes three changes:
Known Issues
We are aware and have confirmed that not all of the 58 events are showing up for all players. We are still looking into what is causing this and hope to have a fix soon.
In addition, we continue to look at the difficulty situation at all levels. We are testing some new balance tweaks for Veteran and Beginner difficulty. In addition, in regards to the pirate difficulty in the Alliance campaign, we are looking at making some slight changes, and potentially adding a few new missions where you fight the Outriggers in Hadron.
We don't have a time-line on the next patch, but our hope is to address some of these concerns by the end of the month.
We hope you enjoy these updates, and thank you for playing our game!
Patch 1.11
Greetings Commanders!
This is a small follow up patch to the release of the new DLC, and only makes three changes:
We hope you enjoy these updates, and thank you for playing our game!
Patch 1.10
Greetings Commanders!
We hope everyone is having a great start to the New Year. This week we bring you Steam Achievements and a few bug fixes:
Steam Achievements
At long last the Steam Achievements are live. Many of them you should earn when you load an existing game as most of the achievements the game was already tracking. A few of the achievements will only start tracking from now forward. Good luck out there earning them all.
Bug Fixes
Changed the "Launch" button on the Deployment screen to always work even if something draws over the top of it somehow.
Fixed the backup saves if Autosave is on. The Backup saves were not updating if Autosave was on after you started a new game, leading to a situation where progress could be wiped if you accidentally loaded from them. Going forward the backup saves will track the main save when Autosave is on, so you have four backups of your latest progress.
That's all for now. We are going to keep reading all of your feedback while we work on the upcoming DLC.
Thank you to everyone for playing our game!
Patch 1.0.9
Greetings Commanders!
We hope everyone has been enjoying the start of the holiday season. This week we bring you new items with the power to add new abilities to the ships that equip them and changes to AI carriers. With that said, on to the changes:
Item Abilities
With this patch we roll out our test of a new breed of items. These items add abilities to the ships that equip them rather than adding to any of the ship's stats. We are quite pleased with the initial testing of these items.
Furthermore, we have gotten some feedback that once players get access to carriers there is little point to deploy so called "regular" fighter units. So the new items being introduced all add abilities only to fighter craft. This lets us test the new technology and also helps to differentiate named fighter craft from the generic units that come with carriers.
New Gear
Carriers
We continue to look at the numbers and still think there is work to be done to make the endgame levels more fun. One of the issues with the later levels is that they can play much more slowly.
To address this we have altered all AI controlled carriers. All enemy carriers now only carry 4 fighter squadrons down from 6. While this is a pretty major loss of utility for the carriers, with many enemy carriers in a mission this also speeds up the rounds quite a bit while still giving carriers a unique roll to fill in enemy fleets.
This should make late game missions with carriers both slightly easier and also should make the combats faster.
Balance Tweaks
That's all for now. We are going to keep reading all of your feedback while we work on the upcoming DLC.
Thank you to everyone for playing our game!
Patch 1.0.8
Greetings Commanders!
So it has been a month since our last patch. Part of this was because we wanted to let the numbers settle and see how some of our changes impacted the numbers. Part of that is because we were working behind the scenes on the future of the game, starting with our first DLC, The Crew. This patch brings some changes to resources along with several bug fixes. So, on to the details:
Resource Collection
We received a lot of feedback that the Harvesters were providing too large of a bonus that slowed down the game for many players as the Harvesters plodded around the map. Worse (in our view) players were taking missions with NPC Harvesters at a significantly higher rate than all the other bounty missions. To address this we made several changes.
First off we increased the rewards for ALL bounty missions in the game. These resource rewards take no time to collect and are the fastest way for players to earn resources. Secondly, we reduced the multiplier on all Harvesters from x4 down to x2. On average this change leads to slightly more resources over a campaign than the old system, although it was possible to get more resources under the old system than the new one if you played slowly. Finally we increased the movement speed of both the Queen's Bounty and the Rhondo, so that they can traverse the map more quickly.
Combined with some of the balance tweaks (below) to lower difficulty, this should speed up the pace of the game from the middle through to the end game. Let us know what you think.
Quality of Life Enhancements
We think we have added a cursor lock that will work on most dual monitor setups.
Changed enemy ship death drop chance so that enemy ships that pick up resources should now always drop resources. Now you can recoup some losses to those space thieves.
Bug Fixes
Fixed a bug where the game could crash during combat that involved carriers and their fighters.
Fixed a bug where fighters could deploy on top of each other leading to strange interactions when skills were used.
Balance Tweaks
That's all for now. We are going to keep reading all of your feedback while we work on the upcoming DLC.
Thank you to everyone for playing our game!
Patch 1.0.7
Greetings Commanders! Another active week here at the Studio. This week we bring you an additional item slot along with several balance tweaks, quality of life improvements and bug fixes. With that said, on to the changes:
New Item Slot!
Quality of Life Enhancements
Bug Fixes
Balance Tweaks
That's all for this week. We are hoping to be able to spend some time finally getting those Steam Achievements up and working next week. Once the achievements are done we will look at our roadmap going forward.
Thank you to everyone for playing our game!
Patch 1.0.6
Greetings Commanders!
Another busy week here at the Studio. This week we bring you more improvements to the save system, more memory management, several new bounty missions and a slight re-balance to the two easier difficulty levels. With that said, on to the changes:
Backup Saves
Memory Management
New Missions
Bug Fixes
Balance Tweaks
That's all for this week. We are hoping to be able to spend some time finally getting those Steam Achievements up and working in the next couple of weeks. Once the achievements are done we will look at our roadmap going forward.
Thank you to everyone for playing our game!
Patch 1.0.5
Greetings Commanders!
Today's patch brings a buff to many of the Alliance forces, more memory management optimization and several minor tweaks and bug fixes. We continue to work behind the scenes to make the game as enjoyable as possible for as many people as possible and as many play styles as possible. With that said, on to the changes:
Alliance Campaign Balance
Memory Management
Bug Fixes
Balance Tweaks
Known Issues
That's all for now. We are all caught up on emails from our support box, so we expect the rate of patching to slow down considerably. We want to let this current build be played for a while and analyze the numbers. Any other issues please email support@fwsgame.com
Thank you to everyone for playing our game!
Patch 1.0.4
This patch brings a couple of pretty big changes and a host of minor tweaks and bug fixes. We continue to work behind the scenes to make the game as enjoyable as possible for as many people as possible. With that said, on to the changes:
Manual Saving
Memory Management
New Gear
Bug Fixes
Quality of Life Enhancements
Balance Tweaks
Known Issues
That's all for now. Thank you to everyone for playing our game!
Patch 1.0.3
Today's patch brings more bug fixes, more improvements, and more items for you to collect and use!
New Gear
Bug Fixes
Quality of Life Enhancements
Balance Tweaks
Patch 1.0.2
Greetings Commanders!
We have another patch for you today. This one is mostly quality of life improvements based on some of the initial feedback. Enjoy.
Bug Fixes
Quality of Life Enhancements
Balance Tweaks
Thank you for playing our game!
Patch 1.0.1
Greetings Commanders!
We just set live a patch that fixes a few things we have been made aware of since launch.
Bug Fixes
Tweaks
Thank you for your patience while we tracked these bugs down, and thank you for playing our game!