We interrupt your daily flight to bring you a new patch. It adds the first part of a new game mode, Hel's Fighters. In this mode, you take part of arena combats, where Champions battle for fame, glory, and a nice sum of money.

Additionally, you can purchase various ships and upgrades to use. This part includes the first 4 days of Hel's Fighters, and is available to play in the Demo. You can find Hel's Fighters in the Main Menu, right under Rebel Ops.

Other additions include two new paintjobs. One is the Iron Pekin, a reward for the Rubber Ducks community after succeeding in the Rubber Ducks Challenge 3 event held in May. The second new paintjob is called Alliance, the most colorfully varied paintjob in the game to date.

Moving on, you can now freely swap between Gamepad and Mouse & Keyboard controls. Just use whichever you want, and the game will automatically adjust itself. No more need to plug and unplug your controller.

Finally, a lot of small but significant changes and improvements have been made. An attempt is being made to fix PS controllers not being properly detected by the game. A slippery bug with Transmissions was fixed. And you can now adjust the size of enemy combat dialogue.

Here is a full list of patch notes:

Additions:

• Added a new gamemode: Hel's Fighters
  • You'll be part of an arena battle show, where Champions fight for fame, glory, and money!
  • It can be accessed from the Main Menu, right under Rebel Ops.
  • This mode is a work-in-progress. Further features and content will be added later.

Visuals:

• Modified the writing of Notification Windows in Spanish to fit gamepad button names.
• The selected Aerostrike paintjob will be displayed during Transmissions in the Campaign.
• Transmission windows now have a semi-transparent background.
• Containers now have a brighter-colored entrance.

Campaign:

• Adjusted the size of the surface corridor room in Area 1 to prevent visual glitches with the background.

Rebel Ops:

• Updated the map key to not label the player's ship as an Aerostrike.
• Added broken-through decoration walls to a room in the Mines.
• You can now change difficulty mid-mission.
  • Same rules apply as the Campaign, Challenges are awarded based off the lowest difficulty you played on.

Story:

• Clicking on a text entry button a second time skips the "writing" animation.

Shipyard:

• Clicking on a text entry button a second time skips the "writing" animation.
• Added a new free paintjob: Iron Pekin.
• Added a new free paintjob: Alliance.
  • You may find them in the Free Paint Job section of the Aerostrike's Shipyard submenu.

Challenge:

• Updated the description of the Taxonomist challenge.
  • Now it specifies you need to destroy at least 30 different ships.
  • This was done in anticipation of Hel's Fighters adding a handful of new ships.

Options:

• Added a Dialogue setting to increase the font size of the enemy dialogue text.
• Combined the Volume and Audio menus into a single Audio menu.
  • Inside the Audio menu, you can find two submenus: Volume, and Ambience and Menu.
• Saving option setting changes now displays a text confirmation above the save button.
• You can now scroll option settings by using left and right input keys and buttons.
• Added the ability to scroll backwards through option settings by using right-click, or using left input keys and buttons.

Bugs:

• Fixed Aria's map button hotkey reminder indicating the wrong value for gamepads.
• Fixed mouse controls sometimes being locked off during Transmissions.
• Attempt to fix a bug that prevented PS4 and PS5 controllers from being detected.

Techical Changes:

• Updated the Forward Shield description to include that you cannot use weapons while it's active.
• Trying to swap weapons with only one weapon in your inventory now displays the weapon in the UI.
• Locking the mouse to the game window now only takes effect during active gameplay.
  • The mouse will remain unlocked while browsing menus or when the game is paused.
• Removed Rubber Ducks Challenge 3 assets to free up space.
• Updated the Input library to version 5.6.1.
• Modified the input device code to allow for hotswapping between gamepad and keyboard & mouse controls.
  • Now instead of having to plug/unplug a gamepad, you can simply use your prefered input device and the game will swap automatically.

How to update the game manually:

1. Download the new version.
2. Delete the old game folder. Aerostrike's save files are stored in a separate folder, so it is safe to delete the old game files.
3. Create a new Aerostrike folder.
4. Extract the game files inside the new folder.

If anyone is met with any sort of weird bug, or simply thinks that the Brawler's Underdog bonus is not good enough, feel free to leave a comment,  send an email to the support address, or contact me via twitter.