A Path Beyond APB 3.2.3.0 Changelog

[Pushwall]

 Red Alert: A Path Beyond Update 

 

General

• Fixed a bug with tracking weapons that caused the tracking to frequently fail. To further accommodate the tracking fix, a bunch of tracking and formerly-tracking weapons have been amended; see below.
• If you are equipped with a tracking weapon and aim at a vehicle, you will get a lockon marker showing you what part of the vehicle the rocket will try to home in on.
• You can no longer access purchase terminals through walls.
• Scrolling your mousewheel down during gameplay no longer causes the sidebar to be scrolled down 1 unit next time you enter a purchase terminal. This should solve all your quick-buying troubles.
• Turn-restricted turrets (like the Heavy Tank's) will no longer get "stuck" aiming in a particular direction if you rotate the camera to the other direction through the space that they can't aim at.
• First-person infantry camera now has 75 FOV instead of 90. Weapon positions may look a little different as a result.
• First-person hand models of Tanya, Flamethrower and Shock Trooper are now more accurate to the clothes they wear. So flamer/shocky no longer have thief-size gloves and Tanya no longer wears flesh fatigues when using two-handed weapons.
• M60 now has animated recoil in first person.
• Fast infantry now properly do the walk animation when holding spacebar.
• Ranger no longer has side cameras.
• Ore Trucks have a visible Technician in the driver seat again, and unlike the last time they existed, they don't cause the truck to take extra damage or be damageable by teammates.
• Fixed smoothing on the Heavy Tank's fuel barrels.
• Kill icon font should now work properly on all systems.

 

Infantry

 Grenadier

• Returned to having armour and 50 health (results in less survivability against fire, electricity, heavy projectiles, machineguns and the Remington, but better survivability against all other small arms and explosive splash damage)
• Grenades now bounce if they hit anything less than 10 metres away from the user that isn't an enemy unit, similar to how they worked in Beta. This can save you from a lot of accidental self-harm if you're trying to throw grenades from behind cover, though it makes it even more difficult to use grenades for point-blank self-defense (but you should be using the pistol for that anyway).

 Flamethrower

• Health up (50 -> 60)
• Limited-ammo flamethrowers (DM maps etc) have more ammo (5 -> 8 )

 Spy/Thief

• Silenced Beretta damage up (10 -> 12.5)

 Shotgunners

• Damage to infantry slightly improved all around (Remington: 20.625 -> 22.5 vs armoured, 27.5 -> 30 vs unarmoured, or +9.1% damage in total. TOZ: 24.375 -> 26.25 vs armoured, 65 -> 70 vs unarmoured, or +7.7% damage in total)

 Rocket Soldiers

• M72 LAW now has homing (as it did in Beta). If you don't want to use homing because of cover around you or your target that might get in the way, it still has non-homing missiles on right click.
• M72 LAW projectile velocity down (100 -> 75m/s)
• Redeye/Strela now have homing (as they did in earlier versions).
• Redeye/Strela projectile velocity down (400 -> 150m/s)
• Redeye/Strela damage down (110 -> 90 Redeye, 80 -> 70 Strela)
• Redeye/Strela damage multiplier to Yaks raised (0.625 -> 0.75)
• Redeye/Strela range down (170 -> 160m)
• No longer have pistols.
• LAW/RPG splash damage increased (17.5 -> 22.5)

 

Vehicles

Naval vessels

• Rebalanced health, resistances and anti-infantry power. Basically, boats are tougher against most things - mainly in ship vs ship combat - but don't decimate shoreline rocket soldiers quite so hard.

Healths:

• Gunboat health up (300 -> 400)
• Destroyer health up (450 -> 600)
• Attack Sub health up (300 -> 400)
• Missile Sub health up (225 -> 300)
• LST health up (400 -> 500)

Armour multipliers:

• "Longbow" up (0.8 -> 0.9); 15.6% downgrade (needs 1 more hit to kill all naval units). Damage drops by 75% against submerged subs instead of 87.5%.
• "Destroyer" (dest+missub) up (0.45 -> 0.5 vs health, 0.225 -> 0.3 vs armour); 10% downgrade.
• "Artillery" (arty+v2) up (0.9 -> 1 direct, 0 -> 0.5 splash); 2.8% downgrade for V2, 1.8% upgrade for Artillery
• "AntiAircraft" (redeye+strela) up (0.625 -> 0.8 vs health, 0.5 -> 0.8 vs armour); taking the redeye/strela base damage tweaks into account, this is a 11.6% downgrade for Redeye and 5.5% downgrade for Strela.
• "Grenade" up (0.4 -> 0.6 vs armour, unchanged vs health); 1.6% downgrade
• "Fire" (flamer+tower) up (0.5 -> 0.75 vs armour, unchanged vs health); 3.6% downgrade
• "Hind" up (0.3 -> 0.375); 6.25% downgrade
• "AntiSub" (depth charge) up vs submerged subs only (1 -> 1.25); 6.25% downgrade
• "BulletAT" (APC) up (0.5 -> 1 vs health, unchanged vs armour); zero change in effectiveness vs boats, but 60% upgrade vs LSTs
• "BulletAP" (captain+ranger) up (0.375 -> 0.5 vs health, unchanged vs armour); 16.7% downgrade vs boats, 6.7% upgrade vs LSTs
• "Electric" and "ElectricTrooper" (shock+TT+coil) up (1 -> 1.25); 6.25% downgrade
• "C4" down (1.2 -> 1 normally, 1.2 -> 10 vs submerged). Engineer C4 now does 500 damage and thus does not one-shot anything except LSTs or submerged subs; Tanya C4 still one-shots everything except destroyers.
• Every other weapon, due to not having an adjusted multiplier vs the raised HP of naval units, is effectively downgraded 20% vs LSTs and 25% vs combat vessels.

Splash damage vs infantry:

• Attack Sub down (60 -> 45)
• Destroyer down (30 -> 25)
• Missile Sub down (25 -> 20)

 

 Destroyer/Missile Sub

• Projectile velocity down (200 -> 100m/s)
• No longer has a 25% damage bonus against aircraft (it shouldn't need it now that it can reliably hit them with homing)
• Range down 10m.

 Phase Tank

• Projectile velocity down (100 -> 50m/s)

 Longbow

• Projectile velocity down (200 -> 100m/s)

 Mammoth Tank

• Tusk missiles projectile velocity down (200 -> 50m/s)
• Tusk missiles damage down (70 -> 60)
• Tracking weapons (and targeting of bots/base defenses) now attempt to hit around the top of the main chassis, instead of the very lowest point on the vehicle (which sometimes caused them to hit the ground instead).
• Suspension should no longer freak out and get you stuck when going off cliffs.

 Light Tank

• Max speed down (14 -> 13.5m/s)

 Ranger

• Max speed up (17.1 -> 18.7m/s)
• Turn rate down 20%
• Takes longer to reach its 3rd gear, so it is slower when accelerating from a full stop or coming out of a tight turn.

 Chinook

• Speed up (20 -> 24m/s)
• Turn rate up 35%
• Health down (300 -> 225)

 Yak

• Rearming rate halved (gains 5 bullets per tick instead of 10)
• Damage to aircraft up (1.4 -> 1.5)
• Minimum speed limit is now enforced 2 seconds after cruising mode begins, instead of being enforced instantly. Since acceleration gets enforced before the speed limit, you should no longer have to worry about the possibility of dying during takeoff unless you ACTUALLY crash into something.
• Minimum speed limit when cruising up from 20m/s to 30m/s. The delayed enforcement of this limit provides FAR more than enough time to get up to speed on an "imperfect" takeoff, so don't worry about that; this stricter speed limit just means you're more likely to die if you crash into the side of a hill/mountain while flying.
• Death explosion deals 300 AntiAircraft damage within 20 metres. Not a perfect fix for the "Yak crashes harmlessly into Longbow" problem, since it doesn't always explode in midair and doesn't kill Longbows that are in fresh condition (so as to discourage spam suiciding a $800 unit into a $1200 unit), but it's a stopgap until we can get a proper solution.

 

Buildings

 Airfield

• Removed the invisible ramp from the end of the runway. This was originally there for the old flight system to give people time to ascend so they don't immediately crash into the ground, but it's been rendered obsolete by the new auto-switching control scheme, and it was also complicating matters for people who tried to land on the end of the runway.
• Planes parked on the runway when the building is destroyed are no longer able to rearm/repair/sell in mid-flight.

 Barracks

• Is no longer weaker on infantry-only maps.

 Naval factories

• Naval units now create instantly, which should hopefully prevent boats from getting stuck in each other

 

Bots

• Ants no longer bunnyhop.
• Vision cone of human bots is now only 150 degrees (was 270 so they could see mostly behind themselves)
• Increased weapon inaccuracy.
• Can't refill in combat anymore.

 

Maps

Canyon River

• Raised terrain around Soviet service depot so you shouldn't get stuck on it anymore.

Hostile Waters

• Gem Silo income down to 2.
• Neutral Ore Silos now give an instant boost of 100 credits to the first team to capture them, jump-starting your economy a bit so you should still be able to start buying boats at around the same time as before.
• Tech Level raised to 5 - can now buy Tanya and Volkov.

Metro

• Manhole covers no longer render on top of phase tanks.
• Fixed a spot where you could jump out of the map.

Rock Trap

• Back in the game!
• Level geometry is scaled up x2, except for the cave behind the waterfall.
• Domination points no longer exist.
• Both teams now have a Barracks and Ore Silo; the Soviet base is where the northeast control point used to be, and the Allied base is where the southwest control point used to be. Like with Fissure, the silo is out of reach of repair tools, but unlike Fissure, it is positioned in such a way that it is easy to defend.
• The area previously occupied by the southeast control point is now a depot containing very frequently respawning crates containing weapons, C4 (this is normal C4 so it should only be placed on the barracks), max health boosts, radar invisibility, and extra money for your team. These crates will not give character changes, so there are no consequences to snatching up all the crates you can get.
• Added some extra tunnels to the map; two for each Barracks leading out of the basement, and one in the middle connecting the riverside to the western cliffs. These are more spacious than the tunnels seen on other maps, hopefully providing better infantry combat; other maps with tunnels may receive this treatment in the future.
• Added "Ammo Clip" (from Renegade) to the jukebox.
• You can no longer jump off the cliffs overlooking the rivers on the north/west sides of the map.
• Now supports bots.

Siege

• Terrain lighting levels are more in line with Canyon River's.
• Shortened range of cannons from 350m to 240m; base-facing cannons can no longer hit the entire base - just the frontal defenses, frontal SD, and a minor main building (Soviet CY/Allied Dome).
• Added a crag in front of the Allied Barracks to protect it from the Allied-side cannon, so that both base-facing cannons have a roughly equal set of buildings to hit.
• Moved the pillbox at the Allied side entrance slightly forward.

[blurb]Bugfixes abounds in this APB update! Homing weapons, Heavy Tank turrets, boats milling around the Naval Yard, and quick-buyers all breathe a collective sigh of relief. Oh, and there's some balance too. Be sure to check out the full changelog![/blurb]

 

[thumb]thumb_apb.9.png[/thumb]

[OrangeP47]

45 minutes ago, Pushwall said:

Ants no longer bunnyhop.

That's almost worth not fixing just for the comedic value

[Raap]

52 minutes ago, Pushwall said:

Hostile Waters

• Gem Silo income down to 2.

 

So uh... It's an Ore Silo now? 

Edited July 22, 2018 by Raap

[Pushwall]

1 minute ago, Raap said:

So uh... It's an Ore Silo now? 

Yeah, like I said, I didn't want the asset to go to waste even if I tweaked the economy. It still has the raised HP.

I could do something more with it down the line, like start out with 4/s and then degrade to 3/2/1 over the course of the match. But I didn't want to take any longer on this patch

[Raap]

Just now, Pushwall said:

Yeah, like I said, I didn't want the asset to go to waste even if I tweaked the economy.

I could do something more with it down the line, like start out with 4/s and then degrade to 3/2/1 over the course of the match. But I didn't want to take any longer on this patch

It should still have more health at least, right? But yeah, thing to remember is why I made it in the first place; The economy was too slow, and in the event your team slacked on iceberg duty, the old Ore Silo wasn't enough income to actually make your team able to... play the match. Of course since then, naval units had a small cost reduction, but nonetheless the old economic problem might resurface with this. Might want to keep an eye on the first few matches.

[Trollek]

1 hour ago, Pushwall said:

Redeye/Strela range down (170 -> 160m) 

and

1 hour ago, Pushwall said:

• Gunboat health up (300 -> 400)
• Destroyer health up (450 -> 600) 

Means, that destroyers can easily outrange RPG troopers with Strela shooting from SubPen?

Rip Soviets on Coastal Influence ;)

[Pushwall]

13 minutes ago, Trollek said:

and

Means, that destroyers can easily outrange RPG troopers with Strela shooting from SubPen?

Rip Soviets on Coastal Influence

Not with

1 hour ago, Pushwall said:

 Destroyer/Missile Sub

• Range down 10m.

[thumb]thumb_apb.9.png[/thumb]

Also Redeye/Strela got their damage boosted here, so their viability vs boats hasn't been hurt nearly as much as a bunch of other units have. The health boost was more for dealing with things that aren't supposed to be engaging boats, making the question of "should I use RPG or Strela vs boats" less of a question, and making boat vs boat combat less rocket-tag-esque.

[ganein14]

Here's to hoping that we'll eventually see first person reload animations 

[Raptor29aa]

Two questions and a comment

A) is currency a crate reward on rocktrap?

B) will the chinook be joining hostile waters?

Lastly thumbs up for naval health up, this means Naval combat between boat and sub lasts more than 5-10 seconds

[Pushwall]

4 minutes ago, Raptor29aa said:

A) is currency a crate reward on rocktrap?

Yeah, crates have a chance of giving 100 team credits.

4 minutes ago, Raptor29aa said:

B) will the chinook be joining hostile waters?

I tested around with it a bit and the way the base islands are laid out, as @Raap warned in his thread, is a bit too exploitable for chinooks to be fair. So I'm trying T5 infantry instead.

[Coolrock]

I’m curious to see the changes to the Rocket Soldier in-game later when I get home. Naval units as well.

[Pushwall]

1 hour ago, ganein14 said:

Here's to hoping that we'll eventually see first person reload animations 

I only wish; recoil is as simple as it gets, and yet it took quite a while to get it to work - we lack sources for all the weapon animations, so I had to use an importer which screws up the positioning and basically forces you to start from square one, and a lot of the FP weapons don't have the properly separated segments for reloads (like magazines being a separate mesh from the gun to allow them to be individually manipulated) and often trying to fix that causes other animated parts of the weapon to break (this is why the lunar uber captains don't have eyes on their gun in first person).

[thedisclaimitory]

wow I never expected a patch or update if you will but good work

[TK-421]

9 hours ago, Pushwall said:

 Rocket Soldiers

• M72 LAW now has homing (as it did in Beta). If you don't want to use homing because of cover around you or your target that might get in the way, it still has non-homing missiles on right click.
• M72 LAW projectile velocity down (100 -> 75m/s)
• Redeye/Strela now have homing (as they did in earlier versions).
• Redeye/Strela projectile velocity down (400 -> 150m/s)
• Redeye/Strela damage down (110 -> 90 Redeye, 80 -> 70 Strela)
• Redeye/Strela damage multiplier to Yaks raised (0.625 -> 0.75)
• Redeye/Strela range down (170 -> 160m)
• No longer have pistols.
• LAW/RPG splash damage increased (17.5 -> 22.5)

 

Homing LAW and RPG-7?

Mind as well give them BGM-71 TOW and 9K11 Fagot instead. (No I'm not serious)

Edited July 22, 2018 by TK-421

[Pushwall]

3 hours ago, TK-421 said:

Homing LAW and RPG-7?

Mind as well give them BGM-71 TOW and 9K11 Fagot instead. (No I'm not serious)

Never said the RPG-7 was homing. Besides, if we ever get a new weapon model for the rocket soldier, it most likely will be something that can track, so this is a good opportunity to test how well that'd work.

[Mihaita12004]

And, you also forgot something, have you fixed the lag when i enter this game?

[NodGuy]

Awesome! Thank you everyone for the work you're doing on this game. I only wish I wasn't at work and playing this instead earlier when a bunch of people were on.

[KevinLancaster]

4 hours ago, Pushwall said:

Never said the RPG-7 was homing. Besides, if we ever get a new weapon model for the rocket soldier, it most likely will be something that can track, so this is a good opportunity to test how well that'd work.

If the RPG Soldier wasn't improved, was taking away his pistol just part of a general adjustment of the class?

[Raap]

I think the RPG/Rocket dude needs his pistol back, I found combat to be very "tedious" trying to get direct hits with a slow moving projectile while dancing like a madman between reloads to literally try and dodge bullets. The splash damage just isn't good damage for killing anyone except for trying to finish of a low health runner.

Just my 2c.

[Pushwall]

1 hour ago, Raap said:

I think the RPG/Rocket dude needs his pistol back, I found combat to be very "tedious" trying to get direct hits with a slow moving projectile while dancing like a madman between reloads to literally try and dodge bullets. The splash damage just isn't good damage for killing anyone except for trying to finish of a low health runner.

Just my 2c.

But he's not supposed to be an anti-infantry unit. If he gets his pistol back, maybe I need to re-buff the formely nerfed small arms vs vechs (especially if Allies lose the Grenadier) so that we don't keep seeing allied armies that consist almost entirely of rocket soldiers because adding anti-infantry to an anti-tank/air/naval unit makes it anti-everything?

[Raap]

I get your concern. Something just doesn't feel right in the unit gameplay right now, to me.

[OWA]

On 7/22/2018 at 2:18 PM, Pushwall said:

• Fixed smoothing on the Heavy Tank's fuel barrels.

Today is a glorious day comrades!

[Coolrock]

I don’t know why everyone wants pistols on every unit now. I guess this still falls back on the difference between RTS and FPS. Just seems odd since units that already play a big role in team engagement suddenly have them. Rocket Soldiers should be protected by other team members while they deal with armor units. The Medic should be focused on healing, the Mechanic should be repairing vehicles, etc. 

[Raap]

How I approach everything (not just APB design) is that everything should be judged by its own merits. If something isn't fun or incomplete without something separately, then in my opinion something is wrong. Obviously nothing is ever truly so black/white, but it is just my personal outlook on anything gaming related.

I also do not believe in locking yourself into corners because of arbitrary reasoning. It is why I never really understood the "RAlism" concept, because from my point of view the focus should just be about making a game as enjoyable as possible; Everything else is irrelevant.

As for intentionally making units have shortcomings to encourage team play, to me this forced teamplay isn't going to make for a more enjoyable game, and instead, become a more frustrating experience to the average player. It's a long topic to get into, but I am not a developer for this game, and it is also way too hot in my country right now for me to delve deep into my thoughts on the matter, so I'll have to cut back and say I simply judge everything on its own merits - as this is what most typical players do.

Edited July 24, 2018 by Raap

[Coolrock]

3 hours ago, Raap said:

We both have different views, and there's nothing wrong with that.

Throwing around ideas is better than nothing being said at all 

[Cat]

12 hours ago, Coolrock said:

I don’t know why everyone wants pistols on every unit now. I guess this still falls back on the difference between RTS and FPS. Just seems odd since units that already play a big role in team engagement suddenly have them. Rocket Soldiers should be protected by other team members while they deal with armor units. The Medic should be focused on healing, the Mechanic should be repairing vehicles, etc. 

Rocket soldiers and medics still need protection from other units even if they have pistols! I dont see why a character shouldn't have pistols as sidearm.

[Coolrock]

47 minutes ago, Cat said:

This is where I give the generic reply from 2006.

”Because it wasn’t in Red Alert.”

I know the views have changed a lot, but I’ll always be that person that wants the game as close as possible to the original, while doing only what is needed to help transition it to a FPS. That’s just my view personal view. 

[Cat]

3 hours ago, Coolrock said:

?

I  dislike multi-role units too (even cringe that all units in RA3 have abilities) but making the game exactly like Red Alert wouldn't be fun, that's why the med/light tank price got changed, destroyers being worse submarine killers than gunboats, spies got pistols, grenadiers got a  different role, etc. Things were changed to adjust to the FPS environment and balance underused units from the RTS. I'm still in favor of the units having the same weakness like their RTS counterparts but at least give the non-combat classes a pistol for light personal protection so at least there's a bit of variety for them and make it more fun. 

[Raptor29aa]

The Rocket Solder does a lot of damage vs infantry if he can get a lucky torso shot. Unfortunately most give up and try to hit the person’s feet, but this isn’t Halo the splash damage isn’t that good.

So feeling depressed that 400$ went down the tube by a 0$ infantry said person will post on the forums in hope of a more user friendly pistol being added to make the 400$ worth it.

Edited July 24, 2018 by Raptor29aa

[OrangeP47]

Put me in the camp of a rifle infantry SHOULD be able to beat a rocket infantry.  Money isn't the only metric.  Different units have different roles, and it has nothing to do with hoping your team picks up the slack (though a well oiled team is certainly rewarding).  If you're a rocket infantry, part of the risk of buying one is being on the lookout for anti-infantry units.