AotR 2.7.2 Update Released! news

Awakening of the Rebellion 2.7.2 Update

Welcome back to another update to Awakening of the Rebellion! The time has come again to roll out another update for the mod. The team has been working hard on this update for the last half year. This time around the update is very much targeted to a couple of specific items. Initially we had wanted a very small update, but as always ambitions grew and the list of things we wanted to improve increased.

The major themes with this update is polish, updates to the Black Sun, and a long requested introduction of both a new GC and an overhauled space skirmish mode. Among these pillars, we also have a bunch of other minor adjustments and some new features which you can read about in the release notes that comes with the mod.

Black Sun gets some lovin’

Before I dive into the Black Sun changes, I want to give a shoutout to one of our newest team members Coryak.In the span of one update, Coryak has gone from a mod contractor to a full on mod developer. He has helped out with all sorts of various projects within this update, and it would take me forever to list them all.

The one main thing I would like to spotlight that was spearheaded by Coryak is the Black Sun’s overhauled corruption system. All of the corruption missions have been reorganized and rebalanced, and some have been given a whole new purpose all together. A bunch of new mercenaries, heroes, and corruption rewards have been added to the system. The entire system now has a thought out progression system, mission requirements, and each corruption option naturally unlocks the more lucrative ones. You will need to strategize on which planets to corrupt, which to take over, and how best to optimize your galaxy sprawling criminal underworld.

The Black Sun have also gained a very powerful ally, Mandalore. While not being their own faction, Mandalorian forces will prove to be aligned with the Black Sun’s operations much more than any other faction. Mandalore has been given a new roster of space units and a rework of some old classics. Sadly, it seems that the mandalorians have all lost the whereabouts of all their known infamous seafood lookalike ships.

Spit and Polish

One of the main things we ended up focusing on this update is refining the existing experience. Many units, both space and ground, have been given visual overhauls along with overhauling their gameplay role. Balance has been taken very seriously, with many of our fantastic and dedicated nerds… I mean testers... taking to multiplayer to test units against each other. Each unit was pitted up against similar units of its class to figure out how well each unit performs. While balancing units with stats is helpful, it doesn’t really give you an accurate representation of what the units actually behave like until you put them up against each other. So many variables exist outside of weapons and health such as movement speed, distribution of weapons, range, and so much more. It really all comes together only once you have them in game. We also have had a lot of new community voice overs find their way into the mod, so be on the lookout for those.

Putting the Intelligence back in AI

As with every update, we somehow end up focusing on making the AI better. It seems we really just can’t stop ourselves. Each update that we release we end up noticing some behavior in our enemy opponent that we are not satisfied with. We then end up falling down the rabbit hole of just redoing the entire system. At this point I think this is the 4th? iteration of this AI and Maxim and I have become slightly more insane. We have redone the AI’s galactic purchasing behavior of both structures and units, and we can proudly say that this time around the AI does not get any units for free. But don’t let that fool you into thinking this AI is a pushover. Far from. Both the galactic and space combat attacking behavior have been finely tuned, bugs squashed, and ready to show you the full power of skynet.

The space combat ai has been completely rewritten, and some ground combat behavior has been touched in the process. A bigger update for ground is in the works for the future where the AI will be given similar treatment to space, but for now it has been cleaned out of behavior that we saw as detrimental. Space AI will now pick important global attack targets that they strive for as a whole for the whole battle. That target may be an important enemy ship or space structure. It will also take into account units that have a low health to finish them off, or other variables such as if the unit is a hero. Once the overall AI has a couple of goals to fall back on, smaller more targeted scripts will then be chosen to perform unique behaviors such as bombing runs or flanks. The biggest problem with EaW’s vanilla AI system is that once all the scripts would finish or fail, they had no macro goals to fall back on, and units ended up in a completely unorganized state picking targets at random. With proper macro goals for the AI to fall back on, we can keep the AI moving towards a goal that is a lot more human like in its decision making.

The future is not certain

Our next main focus is dialing down the AI for normal difficulties to be more welcoming for newer players. We have long heard feedback that the mod is simply too hard to get into because of how aggressive the AI is, making it hard to learn the mod. (Did I mention we have in depth tutorial campaigns for each faction that teach you the mod specific mechanics so that you don’t have to face the aggressive ai while learning the game? Maxim would like you to know that since he spent so long on them. Please play them for the love of god.) However, we do understand that some people would like a more sandbox experience to either try new strategies or goof around in, so we will be looking into dialing it down a tad on the lowest difficulty. We want to gauge the performance of this AI at all difficulties without any hard coded debuffs for lower difficulties to see where it stands before we give the lower difficulties any nerfs.

Space Squirmish

We also now have a brand new space skirmish experience. New buildable structures, unit roster, and skirmish control. Skirmish control is a new mode (also developed by Coryak) that takes inspiration from the ground skirmish mode, which requires you to capture reinforcement points so that you can bring down units. On each map there’s a set of undestroyable points that you need to take over in order to be able to hyperspace ships in. So while destroying the enemy starbase is still the goal, you will need to divert some resources to making sure you have map control. Otherwise you will be forced to spawn your units at your home base. Also did we mention that space skirmish is now tested for multiplayer? Better start getting your skills in order if you want to face down mano a mano.

A new (random) conquest

Last but not least, we have put a very requested feature into the game. With this update we are debuting the Random Galactic Conquest. Combining the request for a single planet start and non standard starting positions, you can now play in a non-story and non-canon driven campaign that will be a fresh experience every time. I teamed up with the guiding help of evilbobthebob from the Phoenix Rising mod (who has also helped us a lot on the AI as well) in order to bring this experience to life.

This new galactic conquest offering is something I have wanted to be in AotR for a long time. By cleaning up our codebase and standardizing most systems, we are now able to make galactic conquests a lot easier and quicker. Random GC is the first one in the new set of GCs planned. It pits you against the other main factions, minor factions, and the local pirate defense forces. On each start of the campaign, you and your enemies will receive two planets (one if they are a minor faction) placed randomly somewhere in the galaxy. All the other planets will then be filled with random local pirate forces that act as blockers between you and your intended destinations. Included with this GC are the staples of AotR, such as hero rescue and the random mission system. This GC can let you craft your own story of your fledgling faction from its humble beginnings and offers a truly unique and replayable sandbox experience every time you launch a campaign.

If you would like to have more consistent updates about the mod or wish to interact/play with us and other AotR fans, please visit our discord at Discord.gg Also, be on the lookout on my personal Youtube channel for a new collaborative let’s play series dedicated to the new mod version featuring other SMG members as guests.

We hope you enjoyed reading this update and hope you enjoy playing the next iteration of AotR. Now with this update over, we can start working on this ground combat rework we have been promising and definitely, definitely not reworking the AI for the 5th time. As always, warmest regards from the team at SMG!