Balancing and bug fixing patch news

Hello dear community,

again we would like to thank everyone for the amazing feedback we recived after the launch of the Steam Workshop!
The team enjoyed many matches with lots of people from around the world up until now and is very happy to see so many people online who are playing our mod.
We have created a first balancing and bug fixing patch based on your feedback and things that we have noticed during our online sessions.

This patch adds several balancing changes to skirmish. Overall, the Tau'ri are now less overpowered. Fighters and bombers have significantly decreased build costs and construction times making them much more viable. Additonally, the game has been polished and many aspects, such as new build animations for all satellites, have been reworked.

It is available for both the steam workshop and the launcher version of our mod.

Please find the detailed release notes below:

Art

Models:
- Updated space turret build pad so it doesn't need custom shaders
- Updated the Goa'uld jamming satellite model
- Added new build animations for all skirmish satellites

Icons:
- Added general satellite radar icon name for all satellites
- Added new icon for the Kamikaze Dart
- Upgrade icon for charging Goauld planetary staff cannon in space skirmish updated
- Various minor icon updates

Code

General:
- Fighter rebalance: Signifcantly changed the build costs and construction times for all fighters. Fighter and bomber rushes are a thing now if you have no Corvettes to counter!
- Removed chat, groups and unused buttons from MP lobby and redesigned layout to fit the background better
- Increased the stregth of all ground to space weapons
- Removed 'Spotted' SFX from faction files
- Fixed incorrect category mask of several space units
- Removed Stealth reveal capabilties of some dummy spawn objects that should not possess them
- Various code updates, fixes, and tweaks

Ancients/Asurans:
- Adjusted tactical health of the Aurora class to prevent simultaneous hardpoint blow-up

Goa'uld:
- Changed HP string names of all Goa'uld heavy staff weapons turrets (space buildings only)
- Added shields to the Goa'uld Alkesh increasing its survivability
- The Alkesh will now shoot visible bombs
- Slightly increased the shield strength of the System Flagship
- Increased the damage of the Super Hatak
- Increased the shield strength of Anubis and slightly increased his damage and HP health of shield, engines and his special weapon
- Fixed an incorrect speech sound for Osiris

Tau'ri:
- Increased the build time of Mitchell and SG-1
- Increased the production cost of the Tau'ri X-303 and the BC-304 in multiplayer
- Set Base_Income_Value from 350 to 35 and Income_Additive_Value from 250 to 25 of Tau'ri skirmish starbase lvl 2
- Fixed incorrect Targeting_Max_Attack_Distance of the Korolev and the Daedalus
- Completely re-wrote the script for SG-1's hijacking ability fixing all of the abilities' remaining issues. You can also clearly select a traget now
- Fixed an issue with the B-302 where the wrong ability icon was displayed in the tooltip

Traveler:
- Traveler Frigates now have less shields and hull points and do slightly less damage
- Fixed incorrect good/bad against description for the Traveler Frigate

Wraith:
- Removed the negative side effects of Todd's power to weapons ability and changed the icon accordingly
- Disabled autofire for the Wraith Scout's beacon ability
- Increased health of the Hive's forward hardpoints
- Slightly increased health of the Wraith Cruiser's frontal HP
- Added Wraith Dart engine sound to (heavy) Dart and Bomber and the Exp. Dart
- Added new fire sound for the Kamikaze Dart ability of the Battlecruiser
- Removed the pop cap of the Kamikaze Dart
- Rewrote the Kamikaze ability of the Dart so it can be targeted. Comes with improved visuals since the Darts now actually impact on the target
- Increased the firing arc of some of the Hive's weapons
- Reduced the tactical health from 1200 to 800 and healing rate from 50 to 35 of the Wraith Repaire Satellite

Sound:
- Added sounds with applied filter for the Apollo
- Added Wraith Dart and Puddlejumper engine sound

Text:
- Adjusted encyclopedia class strings for satellites to better clarify their role
- Updated various texts to fit gameplay changes
- Fixed several spelling mistakes
- Minor adjustments

If you have the Steam version of Star Wars Empire at War but didn't download our mod yet...it's available here: Ow.ly

On top of the above changes several more tweaks have been added to our open beta with is exclusivly available via our launcher.

Models:
- Replaced the existing Beliskner model in the Pegasus Prelude missions with a new unique model of the Vanir Beliskner

Code

Ancients/Asurans:
- Adjusted tactical health of the Dreadnought and the Aurora class to prevent simultaneous hardpoint blow-up

Wraith:
- Fixed non-working autoheal ability of the Wraith PP Queen
- Fixed German speech sounds of the Queen in English version
- Removed the negative side effects of Todd's (and the Queen's) power to weapons ability and changed the icon accordingly

Pegasus Prelude:
- Adjusted difficulty of the PP W Orakis mission
- Added new info text that triggers if the player doesn't conquer the Asteroid Field after a certain amount of time

Besides game related changes we also updated our launcher. It is now able to handle the steam workshop version of our mod.
You can find the changelog below:

- Added serveral new functions to account for the Steam update, such as IsSteamWorkshopVersion
- Added new path retreival functions to account for the Steam Workshop and the stable / open beta installation difference
- Replaced nearly all existing paths with the new functions so the workshop would work
- The launcher does no longer copy our shaders to the default shader directory if the stable steam version is used
- Added new hash value for the updated EaW and FoC directories of Steam
- Fixed in issue with the hash calculation for vanilla EaW's data folder not working correctly
- Updated the red color change for custom mod paths to allow for full paths
- For the stable Steam version, the launcher will no longer attempt to download the mod and instead open the workshop page inside the Steam client
- If the launcher detects unclean EaW or FoC installations it will start an internal Steam process to validate the game files
- Added ModHelper.DeleteShaders() as a function for future use as other mods reported that they had trouble with our shaders causing ships to appear green
- Added new info to update window on how to subscribe to the mod
- When the launcher checks for updates it will also check if the old stable version has been installed to Steam. If yes, the user will be prompted to let it be deleted and install the workshop version instead.
- The launcher will now also install the Workshop mod for first-time installers
- Updated French and Czech translation

This update will be automatically available via the launcher.
For everyone who has not downloaded the launcher yet...it is available for download here: Mediafire.com

However we have not been the only ones working hard to improve your gaming experience! The amazing people at Petroglyph have teasered some of the fixes they are planning for the next patch which should be released soon.
You can find their notes below:

• (FIXED): Missing V-Wing icons
• (FIXED): Missing Pirate faction icon
• (FIXED): Crusader Corvette using wrong damage type
• (FIXED): Out of Sync for destroying Hutt Asteroid Base
• (FIXED): Many different mods report that all the graphics and text are green when they start them up.
• (FIXED): Multiplayer game screen does not show if a mod is running for matching (Implementing CRC check on game data to fix this)
• (FIXED): Password system for multiplayer games is ignored
• (FIXED): Mirror Matches such as Empire vs Empire do not work in Forces of Corruption, instead it gives the "There must be at least one player for each side" error.
• (FIXED): Some mods changed up XML and art files directly when installed
• (FIXED): Seems to be a region lock in place for multiplayer matching; numerous reports of players unable to see each other because they are in different countries.
• (FIXED): Game instant kicks when a hosted game is full rather than saying "game is full". – Will not show "full" games in lobby list.
• Map Editor broken by patch – WE WILL RELEASE INFORMATION AS A WORKAROUND FOR NOW.
• (FIXED): Perception Functions were not being loaded out of MOD paths.

Source: Steamcommunity.com

Last but not least everyone interested to have a few matches with the team or to chat with us is still happily invited to our Discord: Discord.gg

Yours,