In this update, we are pleased to present a bunch of AI related improvements which include the ability to choose your squad formation, improvements to AI paths and covering abilities, and the introduction of the long anticipated system of advanced orders for AI!
You’re now also able to lean your gun on a suitable surface, or use gun bipods to increase fire stability. Check out the full changelog for more details!
AI SOLDIERS
- Now you can select variants of movement for the squad formation.
- Formation type tree:
- Close formation - 1.5 meters.
- Standard formation - 5-10 meters.
- Wide formation - 10-20 meters.
- Formations interact correctly with shelters. The wider the formation, the greater the distance at which the AI soldiers will take cover.
- The selection of the formation will be saved even after the death of the squad. The selected formation will remain in effect until the end of the battle or until it is changed by the player.
- Formation type tree:
- AI soldiers now bypass barbed wire in locations. This applies to all barbed wire obstacles, including those built by engineers.
- AI soldiers no longer see through smoke from fire.
- AI soldiers now consider more shelters they can take advantage of.
- AI soldiers now try to go through doors and gates instead of climbing through nearby fences and windows.
- If the commander runs too far from AI soldiers, the soldiers will prioritise catching up with them over shooting at enemies. But in case of high danger they will still engage.
- If the commander lays down, the AI-soldiers that are closest to him will do the same. This helps to keep the squad disguised, and is useful for defense purposes.
- AI soldiers are more responsive now to gunfire sounds, especially in close proximity; they will find the danger faster and attack it.
- AI soldiers now react better and more often to markers made by the player. At the same time, soldiers don’t react to a marker if they hear or see danger nearby.
- AI soldiers now tend to avoid the line of fire of tanks, anti-aircraft and anti-tank guns. Soldiers will attempt to choose their route so that they cannot be seen.
- The reaction of AI soldiers to sudden visible danger has been accelerated. Soldiers will react faster when they see an enemy close to them.
- AI soldiers are now always distributed correctly by capture points and don’t cluster in the centre.
- You can now give a quick order to the AI soldiers to assemble or disassemble a structure.
- AI soldiers now need more time to change position in a vehicle.
- The calculation of the visibility of the shelters has been fixed. AI soldiers will now not sit down in shelters that the enemy is observing. The complete redesign of the shelter system includes:
- No more AI modes (i.e. offensive, defensive), these are basically useless and introduce a lot of chaos in AI behavior. The AI agent now decides for itself whether they should charge or defend.
- AI soldiers choose cover more wisely, only cover that can be used for attacking is chosen.
- AI soldiers now ‘peek’ out of cover to see if there’s an enemy, if the cover is low, they just change their stance, if the cover is high, they strafe out of it
- AI soldiers now properly use cover when attacking, if there is a danger above a specific threshold they run to the closest cover and attack from there.
GAME MECHANICS
- Camera shake response to various events in the game has been added:
- Swinging of the camera when running fast;
- Jolting from falling from a great height;
- Jolting from jumping;
- Camera shake if a tank passes nearby;
- Camera shake from a shell flying by;
- Camera shake from various explosions;
- Shaking when firing a large gun;
- Reaction to hits in melee combat;
- Added small deviation to weapon movement when jumping;
- Added jolt from recoil when firing a stationary machine gun.
- Added redout/blackout effect when the pilot in an aircraft experiences negative or positive G overload.
- Added pilot perks. Important! Perks will not appear with existing pilots, you need to get new ones via the ‘Troops Reinforcement’ menu.
- Increases the value of the endured maximum negative overloads.
- Increases the value of the endured maximum positive overloads.
- Reduces the strength of loss of control after the blackout effect.
- Increase in the range of detection and identification of an airborne object in the direction of one’s sight, and in peripheral vision.
- Wider focused and peripheral vision.
- Faster flight stamina regeneration.
- Basic flight training that increases flight endurance.
- More flight stamina.
- Reduces the effect of head-swinging during sharp maneuvers.
- Wounded enemies can be floored by a single melee hit.
- AI squad soldiers will now be rewarded for their support in destroying any enemy.
- A defending side now scores points for defensive kills near the capture points that are not captured by the enemy in Invasion mode.
- Rewards for capturing points will now be distributed between the squad soldiers depending on their participation in capture.
- The ability to view and edit abilities in the equipment selection window has been removed.
- Now a soldier will climb an obstacle only if standing in front of it, and will not move sideways if the obstacle is to the left or right of the view.
- Automatic opening of windows when running close to a building wall has been fixed.
- The incorrect return of resources from construction, to the engineer, if their building was outside the combat zone, has been fixed.
- The ability to use ammo replenishment points for guns built has been disabled.
- Cannon shots can now concuss soldiers that are too close to the gun barrel.
- The capture time of strategic points in the Invasion mode has been increased.
VEHICLES
- Sparking effect when hitting vehicles has been added. Other hit effects and muzzle flashes have also been reworked.
- Several markers of soldiers in a vehicle crew have been replaced by one general marker of the vehicle, if it is occupied by a crew.
- The effects of burning vehicles have been fixed.
- Soldiers in burning vehicles will now also catch fire and will continue to burn after leaving the vehicle.
- Burning vehicles will now set soldiers on fire who are too close to it instead of dealing direct damage.
- The reward for assisting in a vehicles destruction has been added
- Message when a vehicle needs to be repaired has been added.
WEAPONRY
- It is now possible to increase the stability and accuracy of fire by leaning the gun on a suitable surface such as the edge of a trench or window ledge. Next to a suitable location a special button will appear with a hint to activate the “firing at point blank range” mode.
- The firearms upgrade system has been changed:
- Upgrade system consists of two consistent stages instead of three.
- Order of upgrade effects in the queue has been changed.
- Different weapon classes have their own effects of upgrades.
- Recoil control for the MG 13, MG 34, MG 42 machine guns has been improved.
- Recoil impulse of the ZB-26, DP-27 has been reduced.
- Animation of the magazine reloading has been added for the ZB-26 machine gun when not empty.
- Animation of the magazine reloading has been added for the DP-27 machine gun when not empty.
- Horizontal recoil of the MP 38, MP 40, MP 41 has been increased.
- Recoil control of the PPK-41 has been improved which is connected to the reduced fire rate of the weapon (the length of the receiver allows the bolt to slow down before hitting the buffer and thus reduce the impulse for the fire rate costs).
- Horizontal recoil of the ZB-26 has been increased.
- Temporary model of the Madsen machine gun has been replaced with the ештлщauthentic one.
- Temporary model of the TK 1926 has been replaced with the authentic one.
- Temporary model of the Winchester 1895 has been replaced with the authentic one.
- Temporary model of the Vz. 24 has been replaced with the authentic one.
INTERFACE
- The Colour of markers over soldiers and vehicles have been updated. Now they match colours on the map.
- Current firearm info now hides when the player uses a stationary machine gun.
- Markers are now available in the mortar view.
- Tooltips have been added to the score table in battle.
- Tooltips have been added to the soldier cards in the debriefing.
- Mismatches have been fixed for tooltips in squad cards and in the debriefing.
- Autoscroll has been added to the Academy if the name of a class doesn’t fit in the size of a slot.
- Excessive symbols have been removed from the ends of lines in the debriefing menu.
- New capture progress bar has been added.
- View of a number of weapon parts has been fixed in the inventory window.
- Special icon has been restored for the tooltips of premium soldiers.
- Confirmation window has been added when trying to spend a retraining point.
- View of new items in the inventory has been improved.
GRAPHICS
- The possibility of disabling limb tearing and blood in the game settings has been added.
- Lowered brightness on the specular reflection of propellers.
- Fixed flickering on water reflections.
- Fixed blocky water reflections on distant objects.
- Removed ‘Indoor Reflection Probes’ option from graphics settings. It’s impact on performance was nominal. Now this feature is forcefully enabled.
- Removed ‘Object Tessellation‘ option from graphics settings, as there are no objects that use this feature.
- Changed ‘JPEG Screenshots‘ option to ‘Uncompressed Screenshots‘, and flipped usage of its value. The ingame screenshot capturing tool will now save uncompressed TGA screenshots when the ‘Uncompressed Screenshots‘ feature is enabled, Otherwise they will be JPEG.
- Renamed a number of graphic settings for better clarity:
- Temporal Upsampling Ratio → Temporal Resolution Scale
- Antialiasing Quality → Temporal Antialiasing Quality
- Sky rendering quality → Atmospheric Scattering Quality
- Ground Displacement → Terrain Tessellation Quality
- Dynamic Ground Deformation → Dynamic Terrain Deformations
- High resolution for visual effects → High Resolution Visual Effects
- Rain on screen effects → Raindrops On Screen
- Additionally fixed some mismatching lowercase/uppercase letters in names of graphic options.
- Re-ordered graphics options so thematically related graphics options are more close to each-other.
- Added new ‘High’ Global Illumination Quality option.
- Fixed ghosting on smoke while using high resolution visual effects.
- Fixed pixelated reflections on some glass materials.
- Fix for checkered dynamic lighting in scope when Variable Rate Shading enabled
- Fixed a bug in tank turret view with light flickering
- Fixed an issue that caused ‘Medium’ quality Global Illumination to be used even when other quality options were selected.
- Changed default value of some graphics options, we believe these are a better fit for the majority of our players:
- Global Illumination Quality is now Low by default.
- High Resolution Visual Effects is now disabled by default
- Raindrops On Screen effect is now enabled by default
- Removed Rendering Resolution Scale option from graphic settings. Now ‘Temporal Resolution Scale’ is the supported resolution scaling technique.
SOUND
- Grenade falling on the ground sound has been added.
- Soldiers don’t shout “Hooray” anymore when under shelling.
- Shell pass-by and explosions sounds have become more versatile.
OTHER FIXES AND IMPROVEMENTS
- Temporary invulnerability has been disabled when respawning in a friendly soldier.
- Mortar aiming issue has been solved…
- A bug has been fixed allowing the marking of friendly stationary MGs as the enemy.
- Incorrect display of a vehicle’s crew condition, number and health has been fixed.
- Possibility of purchasing special event items after the event is over, has been added.
- Influence of the battle zone on the respawn position camera has been fixed.
- Door/window opening has been removed when trying to take control of stationary MG’s.
- Sticking in obstacles when controlling a mortar have been fixed.
- A bug has been fixed resulting in switching to the mortar view after ammo resupply.
- A bug has been fixed with the scores for allied kills.
- A bug has been fixed with missed items after Academy training. All items have been found and returned to players.
- Combat experience score after re-joining a battle has been fixed
- A bug has been fixed with scoring kills in defence near non-active capture points.
- Points score for allied respawns has been fixed for engineer rally points.
- A bug has been fixed where allied tanks might sometimes not be displayed on the map.