G’day Forts fans! This one year anniversary update looks small compared to the last one, but packs a punch. Read on.

We have addressed some of the pressing balance issues. The cannon has received a buff to its splash damage, and the swarm missiles which dominated the recent tournament are now more costly to build and fire. Eagle Eye receives some love in the form of quick build snipers and more damaging explosive rounds. Upgraded mines produce more metal and turbines are cheaper to upgrade. Check out the full list below, and practice up if you’re participating in the upcoming tournament.

In addition the networking has had some optimision, by packing commands together. This reduces the number of messages sent, and total bandwidth used. The game will also have a short time window to queue commands, smoothing the simulation on poor connections.

A bug which the AI was exploiting to build structure while short of resources has also been fixed. Thanks to Romerolagus for reporting that one.

Build 2018-04-20a Changelist

Add: reset nickname button in lobby search
Balance: reduce Eagle Eye sniper build times by 50%
Balance: increase Eagle Eye explosive round damage (+20%) and radius (+12%)
Balance: reduce 20mm fire energy cost from 2500 to 2000
Balance: increase minigun damage multiplier vs rockets/shotguns from 1.6x to 3x
Balance: increase cannon splash damage (+33%) and splash radius (+15%)
Balance: increase upgraded mine metal income from 5 to 6, energy consumption from -7 to -10
Balance: reduce upgraded turbine metal cost from 200 to 100
Balance: swarm build cost increased from 400 to 500
Balance: swarm fire cost increased from 1000 to 1800 energy
Balance: increase anti-air machine gun accuracy (reduced std dev from 8 to 7)
Balance: reduce sandbags hitpoints from 300 to 250
Optimise: Buffer commands into one at the host, flushed by tick message
Optimise: piggy back time sync message on ping message
Fix: extrusions sometimes don’t turn out correctly on poor network connections
Fix: simulation can stutter on poor network connections
Fix: ping is sent as a reliable message, causing blowouts during congestion
Fix: affordability of a brand new strut is not tested for, allowing AI to build when it is short of resources
Fix: crash when AI activates their commander then accesses the current script state in the same update
Fix: crash when structures fall outside of the map
Fix: crash when dereferencing expired sorted effect
Fix: human assist AI unnecessarily tracks player created nodes
Fix: Error messages don’t remain red in console
Fix: World::ActivateCommander can execute and crash without commanders being enabled
Fix: Firebird not making flaming mortars when active
Fix: missiles targeted by auto air-defences while they are still reaching the attack phase
Fix: mod subscribe & download flow issues
Fix: minigun, shotgun and rocket do not make the correct upgrade sound
Fix: FormatChatString displays garbage characters in a replay when player was in the lobby

Thanks for playing Forts!

Cheers,
EWG