Pilots.
We’re hours from the conclusion of this operation. You will see your families again soon.
Before then, we have a few surprises planned. Fall in at 9pm UTC to see what I mean, and/or watch the official propaganda broadcast at the same time.
We’ve just released some minor fixes in preparation for today – find the details at the end of this sheet.
In the meantime, let’s look over how far we’ve come during this alpha.
We started with a complete revamp of our Rebel City. Those of you who joined us on this tour may not remember, but it used to look like below, and had no storage building. There was no way to move equipment between your planes!
You can also see the old sprite-based airframes in that shot above. The new meshes have been a massive improvement.
The item system was revamped, with new elemental weapons, affinities and the duck tape system letting us combine several actions into one item and then put that item anywhere on your plane. New actions like bursts, auras, bash, blink, timed buffs and drone printers let us create a huge range of interesting tactical choices for pilots.
Those item changes directly helped us make new aircraft types extremely quickly. We added Duster, Shield Maiden, Merlin and The Engineer in a short space of time, each with unique abilities and strategies, and revamped several of the old classes over the course of the operation.
We added the stats menu, to let you dive deep into the customization of your plane. We continue to make tweaks to upgrades.
We added quickchat, to help communication in the heart of a furball.
New bosses appeared like the Hypnotist and Notra. New dungeons appeared like Big Paw Barracks.
We improved intel infrastructure to the point where we could pinpoint periods of the day where Golden Assault and Merlin parts were more likely to be found. Many Buntings died to bring us that information.
We analysed a tremendous of data from your flight computers, and used that to create a better and stronger experience for pilots. Commendations to the birds who worked hard on compiling that data, as well as implementing those changes. Without them our campaign would be in a much weaker position.
There were also a tremendous amount of bugs, as there ever is with this kind of operation. Your field reports were invaluable in maintaining our momentum. You’ve made this old Captain very proud to serve you.
I don’t know when next I will brief you. But I know today I fly with you. We’re not going home without leaving our mark. Suit up, take off, and show those felines how far we’ve come. Together.
I’ll see you in the skies.
Dismissed.
Changelog:
- Duster trail has a small wind-up, so you can’t spam it
- Added art for turret and strike items
- Merlin’s maneuver is now called Clear, and The Engineer’s is called Blink
- Clear no longer breaks target lock
- Clear no longer collects items (though we loved the spirit)
- Clear is slightly cheaper to trigger
- Destroying an enemy with a turret will now drop loot
- The Walker can reverse into the hangar