New Version in 15 minutes!

[Kazaa]

It's not in the patch notes, bloody 'ell!

[Lazerr]

no plane i assume, just new strat system basically.. and bombers landing successfully.

[Wmaker]

Great job again HTC!

Fixed some prop efficiency errors on numerous planes that gave too much thrust below best climb speed at high altitudes.

I really really would like to see a complete listing of these planes!

[pervert]

It's not in the patch notes, bloody 'ell!

theres about 15 of us on here at the moment I'd say its the best fun I've EVER had in here 

[5PointOh]

Lowered the fire rate of automatic 5" and 88mm anti-aircraft guns

[Lazerr]

  changed p38... weeeee

[Saurdaukar]

Version 2.17 has been released.  Please see our home page for download links.  If you use a Max Texture Size setting of 1024, please remember to download the hi-res texture pack or you will see a decrease in texture quality.

This version changes how the strat system works.  The current zone system has been replaced with a more straight forward system where strat targets are clustered in a city and the effects of damaging strat objects inflicts global damage on a country rather than being localized to a zone.  The cities are large, covering around 8 square miles. They consist of the various types of factory complexes, an industrial city center which serves as the function as the city strat, and a surrounding residential area that is not bombable and has no strat value.  Cities are heavily defended with numerous flak towers and guns.

Large maps start with their city closer to the front.  If one of the surrounding airfields around the city is captured, the city will be evacuated to the rear.  You can see which airfields will trigger an evacuation by selecting zones after right clicking on the clipboard map.  Any damage already inflicted on strat objects will stay with the city when it is moved but the damage timer will reset thereby extending the down time.  The airfields surrounding the rear city location are uncapturable.  Small maps only use 1 city per country and do not use the evacuation mechanism.

Other Changes
======================

Landing successful bombing sorties now generate an arena message.

Changed attack sortie options on some planes.

Added a center drop tank option on the P-47M.

Fixed a damage bug on the P-47M that made some fires not destroy the plane.

P-47M fuel loadout now correctly corresponds to the loadout percentages.

P-47M speed and climb charts now show up in game.

Lightened 109 cockpit interior textures.

Fixed a bug that caused outer wing damage on the typhoon to have little effect.

Fixed an LoD issue on the barn/silo terrain object.

Added a CM command to gives the ability to ground a player without kicking them out of the arena.

Increased the distance of how close CV groups can be brought to land.

When dragging CV waypoints with your mouse, it now does a "too close to land" check as soon as you move the waypoint rather than waiting until you hit the submit button.

Added a CM setting for radar to only be visible in the tower and not in flight.

Fixed a bug with icons reflecting on the water.

Fuel leaks now stop trailing vapor when the fuel tank is empty.

The static and low speed thrust (<100mph) of the P-38L was lower than it was supposed to be.  It's now the same as the P-38J.

B-26 wing marking no longer stays after the wing is destroyed.

Fixed some prop efficiency errors on numerous planes that gave too much thrust below best climb speed at high altitudes.

Fixed an issue on the P-47s drop tanks that caused them to disappear when viewed from a distance.

Fixed a bug in the long distance P-47 shapes.

Fixed a bug on the 109E that cuased wing damage to display incorrectly.

Fixed a collide bug on one particular tree object.

Fixed a bug that caused gunners to sometimes not get exited correctly when the pilot died or bailed.

Fixed a bug that caused some bridges to not display correctly.

Performed some data structure optimizations on the shapes of the P-47's, 109's, P51's, La's, I16, 262, and F4U's.

Lowered the fire rate of automatic 5" and 88mm anti-aircraft guns.

Fixed a bugs that caused tracers to disappear in your gunsight when jumping between planes in a bomber formation.

Ta-152 muzzle flash now stops firing on the correct damage gun.

Fixed a bug in numerous terrains that caused coastal gun batteries to be extremely easy to kill.

Changed how the film viewer exports to AVI.  The screen now goes black while this process happens.

Fixed a bug in a train bridge that sometimes caused vehicles to fall through it.

Well done HTC.  If I'd have known TOD was what was standing in the way of updates *this* frequently, I'd have campaigned for its axing months ago.  

[Reschke]

Hmmm no download posted on HTC site since it screwed up my installation and didn't work as it was supposed to...I keep getting dumped back to the log in screen after the terrain tries to download...over and over...guess I will wait on the full version and install it again.

[Saxman]

Increased the distance of how close CV groups can be brought to land.

Wooo!

Do we have a fix on what the distance is now?

[Lusche]

The airfields surrounding the rear city location are uncapturable.  Small maps only use 1 city per country and do not use the evacuation mechanism

So any attack on a strat target on a small map will most likely be countered by swarms of Me 163s...

[Saurdaukar]

So any attack on a strat target on a small map will most likely be countered by swarms of Me 163s...

I would hope that HTC would be able to foresee that and make the appropriate adjustments.

If not, I'd like to make a formal request for that aforementioned adjustment, whatever it may be, to be included in the next patch.

The new strat system has some huge potential, methinks, but I would be considerably less interested in playing Star Wars (read: 163 swarms) on each occasion.

Either way, cant wait to try it out tonight.

[Krusty]

163s will still be limited to HQs, I'd wager. I'm thinking the strat will be far enough away that most 163s can't be much of a nuisance.

[waystin2]

Great list of fixes and changes HTC!  I am so looking forward to getting home and logging in!

[Lusche]

163s will still be limited to HQs, I'd wager. I'm thinking the strat will be far enough away that most 163s can't be much of a nuisance.

Baltic is up in Blue. The strat cluster is exactly on old HQ position.



Me 163 field is A55.

[Lazerr]

yup.. 163s wont hurt ya till you push the city group wayy back.  It will move as you take bases close to the strat system.

On a large map that is..