A Path Beyond APB 3.1.6.0 Changelog

[Pushwall]

 Red Alert: A Path Beyond Update 

General

• Script zone checks are now only run server-side, this will improve client performance.
• Reduced particle count, size and lifetime of a wide array of particle effects in the game (mostly explosions, smoke and fire). Again this will improve performance.
• Fixed exhaust sound for normal rockets being louder than even V2/Arty projectiles (now only audible from up to 50m away instead of 200m)
• A little experiment to switch up sub searching. Water is now 95% opaque instead of 99%, but it blocks target acquisition - you can't get a target box on something on the other side of a water surface, just like in Beta. So subs are a fair bit easier to spot by eye close up (though not so much from a distance since the bubble emitter is gone), but you can't just detect one by flailing your mouse until a target box shows up anymore. This also has the neat little effect that bullets/rockets going through water will actually splash at the water surface now instead of the floor. However, it also causes tracking weapons to randomly go berserk when trying to track through water, but that's really only an issue for Longbows hitting submerged subs - phases are almost never close enough to submerged subs to hit them, and dest rockets don't damage them anyway. To compensate for this inconvenience, Longbow damage to submerged subs has doubled. The water opacity and permeability settings aren't on the non-naval maps yet until it tests well and even then only when I have more pressing reasons to update every other map (probably at the same time as whatever ends being done about rooftop access - don't worry, it's not getting removed, you've made your point )
• On the flip side, water is now completely opaque from below due to a bunch of awkward overlaps with particle effects/windows. Subs should still have a fairly easy time seeing boats from below though due to the water wakes and the submerged hull (which subs CAN get targeting on).

 

Vehicles

 Supply Truck

• Max speed up (~13.5 -> ~15.3m/s), a ~14% increase
• Can't dodge FTs/Turrets anymore.

 LST

• Price down (700 -> 500)
• Health down (450 -> 400)
• Reworked physics a bit, should be less vulnerable to getting stuck on beaches.

 Submarines

• Attack Sub torpedo's trail spawns particles at a faster rate, so it's easier to determine how to lead but also easier for Allies to notice you when you're firing.
• Removed rotor bubbles, so submerged subs are harder for Allies to spot at a distance.
• Reduced physical collision radius.
• Due to the water permeability change, Missile Sub's missiles now fire straight and it now needs to bring its launchers above sea level before firing, or else the missiles will spaz out.

 Yak

• Made physical collision box more lenient (used to be 66% as wide as its wings, now it's only 33%, or about as far as the landing gear). In addition to making it harder to clip trees/other Yaks and less obnoxious for infantry getting in, 2 Yaks can now be landed at the Airfield without creating a Mexican standoff where neither of them can build up speed for takeoff without crashing into the other one.
• Now floats downwards 1m while putting away its landing gear, so that the plane's in-flight position reflects its physical collision box more accurately (since moving THAT instead during the animation would cause issues). In addition to making it easier to tell how close you are to the ground, this also puts its gun 1m closer to the ground compared to its collision box, making it slightly easier to hit things without crashing into cover.
• Made speed thresholds for stall/damage more lenient again (20m stall/25m damage -> 15m stall/20m damage)
• Now has a heli-esque fuselage pitch effect when flying, and the inherent pitching from the flying animation is reduced to compensate. This makes it harder to attack things that are at ground level if you deliberately stop accelerating, ensuring that the more lenient stall speed is not too abusable for combat - it's there to make communication easier and make it harder to crash accidentally.
• Deceleration when not holding W is slower thanks to reduced mass (however mass can't be reduced much further than it already is without glitches)
• This mass reduction has also effectively improved its acceleration again, however its max speed is now lower to compensate (~49m/s -> ~45m/s)
• Horizontal aiming cone increased (40 -> 60 degrees)
• Splash damage (anti-infantry) up (9 -> 10)
• Splash radius up (10 -> 12)
• Direct hit damage multiplier to infantry down (1 -> 0.5), a 50% decrease
• Damage multiplier to Mammoth armour back down (0.4 -> 0.3), a 25% decrease
• Range down (130 -> 115m)
• Shots now use the same terrain effects as dragonsbreath, so they will not kick up enough dirt/sparks to hinder performance.
• Health down (400 -> 300)
• Now has a unique armour class that takes reduced damage from various sources:
• Redeye/AA Guns (1x -> 0.5x)
• LAW (1x -> 0.75x)
• APCs (0.875x -> 0.625x)
• Rangers/Captains (0.5x -> 0.4x)
• Artillery/V2 (1.2x -> 0.8x)
• With the health reduction, this means Yaks are killed by Redeyes/AAs 33% slower, APCs 5% slower and Artilleries 11% slower, but 6% faster by Rangers/Captains and 33% faster by almost everything else (Rifle/Sergeant/Grenadier/LT) as the problem before was that Yaks were completely useless if Redeyes were on the field, but completely unstoppable if they weren't.
• TL;DR Yak is now much easier to use (both control-wise and hurting infantry reliably) but has less raw power in fringe cases, and is less hard-countered but more soft-countered.

 

Buildings

 Airfield

• Added a small invisible ramp on each end of the landing strip, which will cause Yaks to automatically pull up slightly at the end, making it more clear when you should start manually ascending.

 

Maps

RA_GuardDuty

• Removed the tree cluster directly in front of the Airfield to give scrambling Yaks more time to ascend.
• Allied infantry bots no longer randomly commit suicide while on the move (they kept trying to path to the Airfield MCT and failing). However they won't try to infiltrate the Airfield anymore.
• The riverside hills are reshaped to be less accessible, harder for enemy infantry to retreat from, and force artillery/V2 to expose themselves more when attacking from them.

RA_Under

• Fixed Attack Sub being stuck in its spawn point.

 

More tweaks to naval, as well as the long-awaited rerelease of Hostile Waters, are coming soon![blurb]Performance improvements and experimental Yak/naval tweaks abounds in this new APB update![/blurb]

 

[Mojoman]

2 hours ago, Pushwall said:

 Submarines

 

 

• Due to the water permeability change, Missile Sub's missiles now fire straight and it now needs to bring its launchers above sea level before firing, or else the missiles will spaz out.

[blurb]Performance improvements and experimental Yak/naval tweaks abounds in this new APB update![/blurb]

 

 

[Pushwall]

1 hour ago, Mojoman said:

It's not an intended realism/unrealism change or anything, it's a consequence of how permeable mesh logic works in the engine. If the launchers are below sea level it sees the water as a "wall" and thus missiles try to seek into the wall, but can't hit it since it's not solid so the missiles loop around constantly trying to hit it until they explode.

Anyone who was around in Beta or Reborn may remember similar things with bushes, except due to their awkward shape they'd make it hard to fire any weapon through them and not just tracking ones, plus surfacing fully is not quite as difficult as making sure that there's no bushes between you and your target.

[KevinLancaster]

Allied Ore Truck pathing on Guard Duty seems to have been broken.

[Pushwall]

Fucking hell it just does not want to stay consistent. It worked 100% in testing.

[Pushwall]

3.1.6.1: Guard Duty's allied OT works again. I guess somehow the new cliffs which it never even interacted with previously and didn't in the broken version either were giving it ideas. #JustLevelEditThings

[Raap]

You have no idea how long it took me to get the Ore Trucks to path from the bases all the way into the mine caves on Siege, without getting stuck or without driving too close to the walls to get stuck against player controlled trucks.

Edit: also yaks siege when.

Edited February 8, 2018 by Raap

[Pushwall]

2 hours ago, Raap said:

Edit: also yaks siege when.

That was going to be one of my next projects. I kinda want a MiG model before I go adding airfields to higher-tech maps but Siege needs some shaking up anyway, I'll probably open up the rear of the castle as a ground attack route, the map is kinda out of rotation right now because people still don't like it.

[Raap]

Seems my maps often get the dump! That's the risk for trying to stray from the core gameplay formula, I suppose.

[Mojoman]

11 hours ago, Raap said:

Seems my maps often get the dump! That's the risk for trying to stray from the core gameplay formula, I suppose.

The attempts are appreciated though! Sometimes it just doesn't click with people unfortunately.

[Pushwall]

On 2/8/2018 at 4:30 AM, Pushwall said:

3.1.6.1: Guard Duty's allied OT works again. I guess somehow the new cliffs which it never even interacted with previously and didn't in the broken version either were giving it ideas. #JustLevelEditThings

Not even kidding, I just had to export the map again because of a change to the airfield, and somehow it got stuck on the trees again.  I guess this is going to be another one of those eternal problems I have to check for every time the map receives the slightest change.

[Pushwall]

3.1.6 is now "complete" with the revival of the two Raapmaps with the 3.1.6.2 update!

General

• Fire/electric weapons no longer cause decals on MCTs so that won't be a performance issue anymore.

Captain

• M60/PKM spread while jogging increased (1.25 -> 1.5)
• M60/PKM spread while jumping increased (4 -> 4.5)

Yak

• Damage multiplier to base defenses down (0.3 -> 0.25)
• Damage multiplier to Cannons down (0.3 -> 0.1875)
• Gun now takes a little bit of time to "rotate" sideways so you can't spray bullets everywhere in a single salvo.
• Receives full damage from Rocket warhead again.
• Reduce ascent/descent speed slightly so it can't hover like it could after the recent update.
• Speed thresholds are slightly harsher again but not as much as originally (15 -> 17.5m/s for crashing, 20 -> 22.5m/s for damage).
• Wheels don't grip the runway as harshly as before, so it'll be able to acquire more speed.
• Checks for slowness are now more frequent (0.4 seconds instead of 0.5).
• Now receives full damage from AA Guns again (but not other AA weapons)

Airfield

• Safety zone now deals damage of a unique warhead so it doesn't repair helis.
• Safety zone is now about 2/3rds as high as the control tower's second floor instead of about as high to reduce Harriering and because the reduced collision reduces the need for doing U-turns on the runway.

RA_HostileWaters

• Advanced naval structure health down (750 -> 500)
• Advanced naval structures now take half as much damage from Longbows.
• Advanced naval structures are auto-repaired 2x as fast by Construction Yard.
• Advanced Sub Pen entrance is now less precarious for infantry to walk into.
• Base layout/geometry adjusted to make the main base less vulnerable. Natural ridges on the Allied side and indestructible walls on the Soviet side reduce the area in which LSTs can land effectively and the amount of buildings that Destroyers/Missile Subs can hit.
• Ore Silo in base replaced by Gem Silo, which has 25% more health and contains all of the base's income (4/sec).
• Added faint water caustics effect around shorelines.
• Added some new snowy plants around the base islands.
• Added some extra landing points on the icebergs.
• Added a lot of additional infantry cover to the icebergs.
• Crates on icebergs now only contain small arms, flamethrowers and minor money gain/loss - no more heavy anti-ship weapons.

RA_Siege

• Added Airfield.
• Added altitude level warning zone for planes.
• Moved Soviet cluster of refill pads over to the Refinery side and opened the wall there.
• Soviet landing pads don't jut out of the base so much.
• Spread out the silos a bit.
• Removed Soviet Flame Tower.
• Cannon now reloads a little faster (5 -> 4.5 seconds)
• Cannon now takes a little longer to ready up when entering (2 -> 3 seconds)

[Raap]

It is satisfying to see that finally after all these years, Siege finally got the airplanes it was designed for.  

[Einstein]

On 2/7/2018 at 3:46 PM, Pushwall said:

just like in Beta

Whats this? Voe will be pleased