Major Update 02: The Perilous Bounty (Version Number "Early Access 0.5.9688")

[Gary]

We have released a Major Update, called " The Perilous Bounty ".

This pulls together all of the new content and systems we had released in the Beta Branch since our previous Major Update.

Important!

Before we look at the latest changes, some important house-keeping: Because we’ve had to change the world to accommodate these new systems, your saves from previous versions will not work with this latest update.

If you are mid-playthrough on the previous version and wish to continue it, then you may switch over to this older version of the game via the Beta Branches system:

1. Go to your Steam Library
   
2. Right-click on Abandon Ship and select "Properties"
   
3. Go to the tab marked "Betas"
   
4. In the drop-down box, select the one called "0.5.8433 – Treasure from the Deep Version"
   
5. Wait for the game to finish updating, you should see the branch name listed after the game name.

If you’re up-to-date on the Beta Branch (i.e you already have the items listed below) then your saves will be unaffected.

The Perilous Bounty

You can read a post that describes all of the main new features here:

https://steamcommunity.com/games/551860/announcements/detail/1691552256164152883

This includes the following:
• Sea Forts
  
• Wanted Levels
  
• Trade Routes
  
• Floating Outposts
  
• New Weapons and Upgrades
  
• Expanded Crew Sizes & Unique Skills
  
• Autofire and Improved Targeting Visualisation
  
• Iron Captain Mode
  
• Key Bindings Menu
  
• Passage of Time System
  
• Kraken Chase Improvements & Battle Aggro

There have been a whole host of other fixes and improvements, and the list below covers everything else:

Balancing

• The way the AI scale in difficulty no longer has anything to do with your ship class
  
• The difficulty will only increase if the player changes maps. This, combined with the above change should remove / greatly reduce the feeling of “I got a new ship, and so did the AI”.
  
• Reduced hull damage from Ship Smasher, as this was overly powerful
  
• Rebalanced section damage caused by weapons so it feels less attritional
  
• Fires and Hull Cracks are more likely to appear when firing weapons that cause them.
  
• Fires and Hull Cracks will be less dangerous on Easy Mode and more dangerous on Hard Mode.
  
• Lifeboat Mode: Having zero morale and being rescued with crew no longer triggers a mutiny

Miscellaneous Kraken

• Setup Kraken so that it was a different Damage Type from ships, meaning weapons that previously did little damage to it (Section Damager, Acid Bomb) now do correct levels of damage.
  
• Kraken Deep Dive: This was too slow and ineffective, so made it faster to appear with a shorter warning for bracing, and quicker to move into a follow-up attack.
  
• Kraken Slam attack now causes ship section damage.
  
• Cut Kraken Tentacles now play a blood visual effect.

AI

• The AI are now more aggressive.
  
• AI crew will now man extra cannons if there is nothing else to do.
  
• If wanting to repair a section, the AI will try to man something in the section rather than directly repair it (making them more efficient).
  
• Fixed AI system attempting to use destroyed Haliphron as potential worker resources.

Visuals

• Sea Arena Main Ocean Overlay is now pushed up the screen 80 units to maximise its screen coverage (rather than have a third of it behind the camera). Sea Arena will also update its position, greatly reducing the times you can see beyond it.
  
• Tidal Waves crest visual effect extended all the way along the top, and extended the Wave Impact trigger boxes to cover the whole tidal wave. Previously there were situations you could get in where no splashes or wave crest would be visible.
  
• Prevented waves from popping off when they reached the end of the overlay, they now lerp to nothing.
  
• In Combat, the Temperate Day Clear Fog was way too bright, so added a special toned down version.
  
• Fixed Haliphron torpedo dive swim vfx not being removed at the end of the swim
  
• Sea Arena lightning now faces the Camera, preventing you seeing it side-on.
  
• Ship models on Quest Events now have a random rotation.
  
• Kraken Sea, Devourer and Ice Sheet maps no longer have ambient fish or birds
  
• Hooked up Monologue Text Images 1, 2 & 3 – this is the start of our ongoing efforts to replace the black backgrounds around narrative text boxes with images like we have in the monologues.

Bugs

• Fixed the “black screen” and “crew disappearing” bugs caused by crew being deleted when jumping to an enemy ship when the battle was exited.
  
• Fixed issue with crew movement and "Bring About" where they would leap insane distances.
  
• Fixed an issue where events could spawn in the same place where you interact with a port, triggering both at the same time.
  
• Fixed Repair skill not applying correctly.
  
• In Crew Management, we’ve fixed the crew bio not updating the name if the player renamed that crew-member.
  
• Fixed characters bouncing between squares when in combat in certain situations.
  
• Selling cannons individually or the whole battery in one go, now gains the player the same amount of gold.
  
• Man O War now correctly displays the maximum 6 cannon pips in the shop.
  
• Added a "wait for 1 frame" node before a manual save to prevent a blocker from happening in a specific situation.
  
• Fixed a blocker if you loaded directly into a “New Quest” node and immediately quit out.
  
• Fixed the Captain not being able to earn any Leader Skill XP.
  
• Lifeboat Mode: Could be blocked by an event that required you to have supplies to continue (now event will not trigger if you don't have enough supplies).
  
• Disappearing Lifeboat: If the player wins a battle but then their ship sinks and they abandon ship on the lifeboat, after the battle a new lifeboat is now spawned on the player ship
  
• Fixed a specific island being able to block an exit gate.
  
• Fixed stutter on older PCs when loading the shipwright menu.
  
• Numerous text fixes.

Quality of Life Improvements

• Monologues and single-choice event message boxes can be continued by pressing the main "Enter" key. Escape can now be used to close the Settings UI and "Cancel" Confirmation boxes.
  
• Crew commands can now be given when hovering over their widgets in the bottom left (e.g. making it easier to heal when the surgeon is selected, or stabilise someone who has been incapacitated)
  
• Shop UI – If you try to drag something in the shop, it’ll display a red X over any slot where it cannot be placed.
  
• Player can collect Flotsam while being chased
  
• When buying a new ship, the crew attempt to position themselves on the new ship manning the same sort of thing they were on the old ship.

Miscellaneous Polish and Improvements

• There is a new music track in the game, which can be heard in Sub-Tropical areas. For those that own the Abandon Ship Soundtrack, you'll have already heard this.
  
• Overboard crew are no longer instantly killed when you perform a “Bring About”. Their "swept away" timer pauses and crew cannot be knocked overboard. We also pause the timer during a Tidal Wave (i.e. a situation where the player was helpless to save the drowning crew).
  
• Tooltips now appear when you hover over a Haliphron.
  
• Reduction in crew standing in the same space to improve readability when boarding.
  
• Ship Generation will not generate ships with cannons that have min/max ranges that conflict – i.e. it wouldn’t make sense to have a ship with Catapults and Double-Shot on the same side.
  
• Renamed Magistrate to Explorers Guild to make way for a new Magistrate menu for paying off Wanted Levels.
  
• Moved Fast Travel option out of the Tavern Shop and into the Shipwright Shop so that we have enough room for the new shops in that section of port.
  
• Implemented tooltips for the Map Frame, Gates, Water Bridge and Void to narratively explain these elements.
  
• GUI sound when purchasing certain types of items from the shop.
  
• Added new newsletter names, removed hard bounces and unsubscribed names.

This is another step along our Early Access voyage, and we will of course continue to expand the game with fun systems and new content. Thank-you for your support and feedback, it is greatly appreciated.

If you are interested in knowing what the current focus for the dev-team is (new region!), visit this sub-forum:

Latest Dev-Team Focus

For the longer term plans, visit this sub-forum:

Early Access Roadmaps