BATTALION 1944: Alpha 0.8 – Changelog, Updates, and Big News!

Welcome to the final Alpha in preparation for Closed Beta on January 20th and then finally our release to Steam Early Access on February 1st 2018!

In Alpha 0.8 we see a huge list of changes go in, most of which have come straight from the communities feedback from Alpha 0.7 and previous versions.

Alpha 0.8 will see two sessions both running competitive ‘Wartide’ and the Arcade. Here are the starting times:
Saturday January 13th from 18:00 GMT until early morning
Sunday January 14th from 18:00 GMT until early morning

This will be the absolute final alpha before we hit beta next weekend!

Introduction to Alpha 0.8

Changelist
Fixes & Technical Improvements
+ Jumping/Air Travel networking fix (no more jittering/lagging players in the air)
+ ADS Sprint Cancel fixed
+ Entirely new main menu & menu system
+ Fixed Steam icons in game
+ Constant sound improvements and additions
+ MASSIVE overhaul of main menu’s functionality and visuals
Gameplay Tweaks
+ New Falling/Jumping animation. When jumping, player models are now easier to see/hit.
+ Added penalty for jump / strafe. Upon landing, your velocity will be momentarily reduced. This has been brought inline with Promod.
~ Thompson & MP40 given entirely new damage falloff values
+ STG-44 & BAR given entirely new damage falloff values
+ STG-44 & BAR added more recoil to increase weapon skill requirement
– BAR nerfed & reduced clipsize from 30 to 20.
+ BAR head hitbox multiplier increased, this weapon can now get 1 bullet headshots at range
~ M1 Carbine & Gewehr nerfed to 15 rounds in a clip
– M1 Carbine & Gewehr rate of fire decreased to counter fire macros and given a peak firing rhythm
+ M1 Carbine & Gewehr head hitbox multiplier increased, these weapons can now get 1 bullet headshots at range
– Default Class move speed reduced from fast to regular (including ADS silent walk speed)
+ Trenchgun rechambering speed (between shots) increased by 39%
– Trenchgun clipsize nerfed from 6 to 5
– Reduced Trenchgun camera shake when firing
– Reduced aimpunch
~ Smoke time increased from 11 seconds to 17 seconds
+ Grenades & Smokes save if unused
– Reduced air acceleration by 50% (Not speed or strafe, acceleration)
+ Sprint regeneration method changed and regen time increased slightly. After depleting sprint the first 1 second of non sprint will now give you 1.5 seconds worth of sprint instead of 1. After that every 1 second of rest is regenerates 1 second of sprint. Up until the max sprint time.

Network Jumping & Air Issues
For the dev team, this has always been on our bug list. A competitive game needs to have great net code and our team have been working hard this past month to really iron out the issues with our net code. Many of you won’t have seen the bugs because you didn’t play in the earlier alpha. However, we’ve now managed to make our jump / in-air time nice and smooth with no jittering or bad predictions.
Players also felt that the optimal way to play the game was to jump around corners because it was so hard to hit/track enemy players in the air. We have changed the player animation so that when the player is in the air, they effectively go into ‘gorilla stance’ instead of a slenderman stance. It makes the target much bigger. Couple these fixes with the new loss of momentum when you land and the game should feel much much better and will begin to lend itself to different play styles.

Pathfinder weapons (Thompson / MP40) new ranges
The community has regularly reported since Alpha 0.5 that the Pathfinder’s weapons were too powerful at range and that their TTK (Time to Kill) was way too low. To fix this, we decided not to change their damage value, but rework the falloff on bullet damage. This means now that the SMG is one of the most deadly weapons at short to mid range engagements. However, at long range its now the worst. Previously it’s maximum bullets to kill was 5. Now it is 13, rendering it useless at range. This has also happened to other weapons to balance it out, but the Thompson & MP40 will now be effective only at close to mid range.

Trenchgun rechambering buff
The Trenchgun was voted by the community as the worst gun in the game. So we decided it needed some love. We’ve said since we first showed our shotgun that we want Battalion to be one of the few games where the shotgun has a very valid role. We want it to be another ‘SMG’ option. We didn’t want to give it more damage or guaranteed kills, so if your crosshair doesn’t entirely cover someone, then chances are you’ll only do 90 damage. However now, you can pump the shotgun and get the second round fired just under 40% faster than you could before.
Internally we’ve tested it and we think it’s really well balanced now, we ask you to put a lot of hours into the game before making sweeping guesses here!

The BAR can now land 1 shot headshots
Battalion’s core gameplay as about creating balance through asymmetry. Meaning; we want a fair and balanced fight, but we don’t want the teams to always be equal. We also wanted to allow higher skill players to excel, without damaging the game for players who just want to jump on and frag. For this reason, we felt one of the big differences between Battalion and CS:GO was that the attacking team in CS have the 1 shot weapon advantage (AK47). We also wanted to remove some of the ‘spay and pray’ element from the game and refocus our sights onto rewarding players who practice and show skill.
The BAR now has the ability to land 1 shot headshots. This week we also gave it higher recoil and nerfed its range. Meaning, its max bullets to kill is “5”. This is the same with the STG, except the STG does not have the 1 shot ability. The BAR has been reduced to 20 rounds in a clip.
So far we’ve seen people using it virtually the same as before at short and mid ranges, however at long range, they will begin to tap fire instead.
Please let us know how it plays on the private alpha discord or forum.

Buffing the default classes
It’s been pretty heavily discussed by the community and the devs that, even if it was possible to come back from having no cards in your teams stack. That the M1 Carbine & Gewehr just didn’t feel that good to use. So we decided to make it a seriously skillful weapon, similar to how pistols work in CSGO. The default class weapons can now land 1 shot headshots. Their accuracy from hip fire is remaining the same but their clip size has gone back down to 15.
Arguably one of the biggest changes here is the class move speed. Previously the default class was a fast running and fast ADS weapon. Now, they are set to ‘regular’ and they move at the same speed as a rifleman (Garand/Kar98k).
Our initial worry was that the M1 Carbine & Gewehr would become too powerful, but this simply isn’t true. It’s created an extremely high skill ceiling and the weapon remains usable as a spam class, the difference is; you can comfortably engage enemies and win fights vs any weapon.
Landing headshots is a difficult skill to master and in a game that is considerably faster than CSGO, it will be even harder.
We’re excited to see how the weapon pans out on the weekend. Please let us know after putting a healthy amount of hours into the weapon itself!

Derailed big map changes
We definitely made the right choice to release Derailed to the community early. The testing and knowledge that the community supplies us with has been imperative to improving this map. First of all, we always put ‘A Bombsite’ on the left of the attackers and ‘B Bombsite’ on the right of the attackers. We sometimes get this backwards and on Derailed, the bombsites have now been fixed!
We knew both teams needed more options on B bombsite (cinema). So we decided to work really late to get a lot of big changes into the map. Take a look at the routes on B Bombsite. I now wider and ‘more simple’ mid lane, and finally a new defensive position for rotating B players overlooking part of A Bombsite! We have also moved the Germans spawn slightly further back to make the timings match better in middle and on B Bombsite.
Let us know what you think of these changes! Could Derailed be finished?

New large map ‘Battery’ added the arcade rotation
Battalion is a competitive game, but that doesn’t mean everyone has to be focused on being serious 24/7. We’ve added ‘Battery’ to the arcade map rotation for this alpha. It’s specifically designed for CTF and DOM where attacking and defending simultaneously are key.
It’s a very pretty map and it’s also great fun, let us know how you get on and please, as always with a new map; anticipate bugs.

Shroud’s Signed Silver STG-44
SSSS-44! We’ve been working with ex-CSGO pro and current PUBG streamer Michael “Shroud” Grzesiek to try and build something unique for professional teams and players. We’ve given Shroud 15 skins of his favourite weapon, the STG-44, with his signature in gold on the side. This skin will be one of the most rare in the game and the best part, the developers have no control over the skin itself. If you find yourself picking up a SSSS-44 then you know, it’s come straight from the man himself.
What Shroud plans to do with his skins, we do not know! But if you’re looking to maybe be one of the lucky 15, we suggest getting over to his twitch channel pretty fast! https://www.twitch.tv/shroud

https://youtu.be/zBl7s7QyZ6E

Thanks for reading, if you have any questions feel free to contact our devs on the official discord, Steam Discussions, Reddit, or through Twitter! Our devs are constantly reading all of them!

See you on Saturday!
Bramm
Studio Lead