We interrupt your daily flight to bring you a new patch. This Quality-of-Life patch reworks many of the battles across the Campaign to improve the experience. It also rebalances several weapons, enemies, and enemy weapons!

Version 1.4.6 also adds a few new backgrounds to various rooms, in hopes of slightly improving the visuals of the world. Additionally, several new UI elements have been added to give the player useful feedback and information.

Finally, this patch also adds a camera smoothing setting in the Options menu, inside the Interface submenu. This feature should help pilots who have to deal with motion sickness. Do let me know if it helps or not, that way the system can be adjusted accordingly!

Here is a full list of patch notes:

Balance:

• Increased the 23mm Cannon's damage against armor from 15 up to 18.
• Decreased the 23mm Cannon's heat generation from 0.5 down to 0.4.
• Increased the Energy Cannon's damage against shields from 36 up to 40.
• Increased the upgraded Energy Cannon's explosion damage against shields from 24 up to 25.
• Increased the detonation distance of the Flak Shotgun from 100 pixels up to 125.
• Decreased the fire rate of the Railgun Cannon from 120 RPM down to 103 RPM.
• Hyper Capacitor no longer increases damage against ship hulls, only against armor.
• Decreased the fire rate of the upgraded Railgun Cannon from 144 RPM down to 120 RPM.
• Increased the turn speed of enemy Seeker Missiles from (0.5, 1.0, 1.5, 2.0) up to (0.8, 1.2, 1.6, 2.0).
• Titans now stop shooting very briefly after firing 30 bullets in a row.
• Increased the projectile leading accuracy of the Javelin.
• Increased the fire radius of the Javelin from 4 degrees up to 16 degrees.
• Modified the enemy Flak weapons to spread out into a fixed pattern, rather than a random one.
• Modified the collision code of all enemies with boost thrusters to reliably fly through the player.
  • The previous code would sometimes cause the AI get stuck inside the player.
  • Enemies like the Stinger would then deal massive damage while inside the player's hitbox.
  • This new code allows them to properly clip through the player and fly away.
  • This does not affect cases where a Stinger will pin you to a wall, so fly carefully.
  • This also causes ships like the Stinger to slightly spread out while flying.
• Increased the projectile leading accuracy of the Orca.
• Increased the rotation speed of the Hetz from (3.0, 3.5, 4.0, 4.5) up to (3.5, 4.0, 4.5, 5.0).
• Increased the boost rotation speed of the Hetz from (1.0, 1.5, 2.0, 2.5) up to (1.5, 2.0, 2.5, 3.0).
• Decreased the total amount of enemy ships spawned by the Behemoth.
• The Behemoth now has a visual and audio cue when calling reinforcements.
• Set the time required for the Behemoth to call reinforcements at 10 seconds regardless of difficulty.
  • For some reason, the timer was shorter on lower difficulties. I don't know why, but oh well.

Additions:

• Added a new Free Paintjob: Ghastly.
  • You can swap to it in the Shipyard or in the Options menu.

Visuals:

• Added a few new backgrounds to a handful of rooms.
• Added Area indicators whenever you enter a new section of the map.
• Map Icons are no longer tinted.
• Armored Wall generators now have a blinking animation.
• Container interior backgrounds no longer inherit the color of the area.
• Removed a few Foreground Walls in Area 3 of the Campaign.
• Added a few extra doodads to a handful of rooms in the Campaign.
• Machine walls are no longer tinted.

Campaign:

• Modified multiple objective markers across the Campaign.
• Modified enemy spawns on multiple battles across the Campaign.
• Added a new helpful transmission in Chapter 1.
• A door that locked inside the Factory after entering its room now remains open.
• Added a rocket pickup to a specific room in Area 2 to avoid a softlock situation.

Hel's Fighters:

• The Bomber's Bomblets no longer destroy shield walls.
  • This was a feature accidentally left over from early testing.
• Reworked the Stealth Mines.
  • Enemies can no longer collide with them, which destroyed the mine without causing an explosion.
  • They are now deployed active, instead of having a 1 second delay.
  • When an enemy approaches them, they will become armed.
  • After 0.5 seconds, armed Stealth Mines will explode.
  • If there are no enemies nearby, the explosion will be aborted.
• Replaced the Store Landing Pad with a Docking Bay.
  • This means you can now swap ships inside the store!

Training:

• The Training Room no longer resets after exiting.

Options:

• Added a Camera Smoothing setting in the Interface menu.
  • It adjusts how much the camera eases in-and-out of movement.
  • Increase the value to make the camera accelerate slower.
• All keybinds are set by default now. This helps fix a rare crash where a null keybind was detected.

Bugs:

• Fixed a Map Room in Area 2 of the Campaign incorrectly displaying a door as Blocked.
• Fixed various Map Rooms in Area 2 of the Campaign incorrectly displaying doors as Open.
• Fixed a Map Room in Area 4 of the Campaign incorrectly displaying a door as Locked.
• Fixed a bug that caused the Background of the Area 4 hangars to not move correctly.
• Fixed an object in Area 5 of the Campaign not disappearing correctly.
• Fixed the long corridor in the Hel's Fighters map not connecting correctly to the main hub.
• Fixed the broken Capslock key text.
• Fixed Black Screen Transitions briefly locking mouse controls.
• Fixed Upgrade pop-ups briefly locking mouse controls.
• Fixed a minor issue with the Hel's Fighters thousands separator.
• Fixed a bug that prevented the Alliance paintjob from being correctly displayed in the transmission window.

Techical Changes:

• Added a tiny 2-frame cooldown when scrolling through weapons.
  • It should hopefully make swapping weapons with a mouse scroll wheel easier.
  • Button swapping should remain unaffected, as the cooldown is extremely short.
• Updated the Input library to version 6.1.2.
• Moved a piece of equipment in the Campaign so it's not hidden behind the UI.
• Slightly optimized the collision code for enemies.
• Various minor text modifications and typo fixes.
• Removed multiple duplicate map sprites.
• The Behemoth will now automatically destroy any turrets "dying" after its own weakpoint has been destroyed.
  • This should prevent issues where the turrets don't die fast enough, and the game turned them invincible.

Hotfix 1.4.6.1:

Bugs:

• Fixed a crash when trying to navigate the Shop Dock menu after closing the Shop window.
  • This was caused by the Shop window referencing the old Landing Pad menu.
• Fixed the Rebel Ops and Hel's Fighters Help prompt not displaying Gamepad bindings correctly.
• Fixed an error where swapping ships in Hel's Fighters would create duplicate sets of Radars.
  • Luckily the extra Radars would be destroyed when leaving room.

Techical Changes:

•  Added two help text prompts to Hel's Fighters Day 1.

If anyone is met with any sort of weird bug, or simply thinks that the balance changes didn't hit their mark, feel free to leave a comment,  send an email to the support address, or make a post in either of the Steam support threads for MF-01 Aerostrike.

Stay safe pilots!