G’day Forts Fans! This week we’re comin’ atcha with a host of fixes and, more importantly, balance changes. We’ve been hearing your calls about the new weapons which came online with the Tons of Guns update and have made the below changes. There are quite a few improvements to the zero gravity mod that we are excited about too.

Chinese, Japanese and Korean players will be happy to know that text input and lobby name display has been fixed. We’ve also better organised the lobby selection screen. Lobbies made in the same language as you will appear at the top with a speech bubble icon, to help you select low-ping hosts.

Weapon Balance

20mm Cannon – Overpowered. Makes shield almost obsolete.

• Increase build cost (500/3500 -> 650/4500, cannon is 900/6000 and does less total damage)
  
• Slight increase to fire cost (30/2000 -> 40/2500)
  
• Slight increase to reload period (25 -> 26 – same as cannon)
  
• Sandbags take little damage from 20mm rounds (20% of normal damage)
  
• Shields reflect 20mm rounds
  
• Firebeam stops 20mm rounds instantly
  

Rocket – Overpowered (especially with Hurricane’s rapid fire)

• Increase reload period (10 -> 12)
  
• Reduce Hurricane’s effect on Rockets (5 -> 8 )
  
• Reduce damage Rocket has on shield
  

Shotgun – Overpowered (especially with Eagle Eyes explosive rounds]

• Reduce health to one sniper shot (140 -> 130)
  
• Reduce potency of explosive rounds on Shotgun
  
• Slight increase in reload period (6 -> 9, minigun is 6, heavy mortar is 9)
  

Firebeam – Underpowered

• Slight bump to direct damage (100 -> 130, same as sniper)
  
• Reduce reload period (18 -> 14, laser is 26)
  
• Reduce fire cost (2000 -> 1500)
  

Swarm – Underpowered

• Add 3 projectiles to swarm
  

EMP – Put focus back on disabling things

• EMP does not destroy shield if it is hit, just disables with damage
  
• Increase AOE against swarms and warheads
  

• Double the extra damage sniper explosive rounds do
  

Zero Gravity Mod

• Mortars can slope
  
• Increase device placement slope
  
• Reduce mortar speed to 40% of normal
  
• Reduce drag by 50%
  
• Add: allow weapons to face backwards by blocking with structure
  
• Fix: can’t fire weapons at some angles
  
• Remove: disable screen/cursor restore on group restore
  

Build 2017-11-18a

Add: sort/highlight lobbies with matching language to the top
Add: allow pasting of Windows clipboard into console and edit boxes
Add: columns to lobby select and replay screen
Add: 1v1, 2v2, 3v3, 4v4, Skirmish, Symmetrical, Asymmetrical, and Zero Gravity map tags added
Add: tech tab to classic mode
Add: key to cycle technology tab (C)
– Cycle weapon moved to V
– Re-assign mirror terrain vertically from V to Shift + V
– Re-assign aim down from V to Shift + F
Add: Make a chance that EMP struck missiles will reset their target to the current position

Optimise: Don’t attempt to call nested ApplyMod calls for mods that have no mods folder

Fix: IME text input for Chinese, Japanese, Korean, etc. only produces question marks
Fix: IME enabled during gameplay when text input not expected
Fix: Chinese characters don’t show up in lobby select screen
Fix: apostrophe + s added to lobby names in non-English languages
Fix: Team and All not translated on command prompt in Multiplayer
Fix: door closes on Firebeam and other weapons when deselecting
Fix: cursor unresponsive for some users
Fix: splash damage is being applied twice to all structure
Fix: reflected projectiles can sometimes pass through solid struts
Fix: downloading stats sometimes shows errors and blocks intro movie
Fix: panning the screen causes drift when vsync is off
Fix: aiming arc fill glitchy when weapon upside-down
Fix: missiles hit by EMP do not have their guidance properly disabled
Fix: crash calling ApplyMod when loading and modding effects (experimental)
Fix: can’t connect rope to ground behind Team 1 fort in Ledge Grab
Fix: tab order on main menu wrong

Remove: left click on strut on a material picks a material (replace with option)
Remove: right click on strut picks material
Remove: expire effect from flaming projectiles
Remove: prevent all weapons from flipping to avoid desyncs

Build 2017-11-21a (hotfix)

Add: clients can request mods to be added or removed
Fix: inverted swarms don’t have extra projectiles
Fix: commander descriptions missing
Fix: rapid fire not applied properly to Eagle Eye
Fix: weapons can be reloaded by deleting then undo delete
Fix: missiles fire when deselecting a group
Fix: missile device type dropped on deselection when keep device selection is on
Fix: crash when painting target for remote client and upgrading a device at the same time
Fix: remote clients will send open door messages for autofiring missiles
Fix: resend game config before starting game to ensure clients are in sync
Fix: EMP disabling missile guidance not effective when not circling
Fix: crash when beam destroys projectile and its splash damage destroys a strut the beam is also intersecting
Fix: desyncs when clients drop out during loading TDM (use client state at start of loading)
Fix: show Windows cursor in crash handler
Fix: reflecting projectiles sometimes leak through the strut
Fix: crash in Sandbox when stream completes and critical sections not initialised
Fix: crash when flipping normals of a block with no nodes
Fix: terrain block can have zero nodes (now deletes block)
Fix: unicode characters without visual representation are blank (now ?)
Fix: lobby icons all show ‘classic’ for ‘ToG’ games
Fix: crash when creating error message for a map folder name that already exists

Known issues:

Snipers sometimes leave their doors open after painting targets for missiles

Thanks for playing Forts!

Cheers,
EWG