After long time, here is a 0.80 update to the game It contains a lot of new things, that I have been working on through the years. And I hope to do some more updates in near future again

And you are always welcomed on our discord

Latest download link: FW3 0.76

Unpack and run via FW3launcher.exe (will update game to latest version)

Most important updates :

• new ships : Challenger, Cheyenne, Norway and others – see “ship changes” below for more details
• new damage textures on – Cheyenne, Excelsior, Nebula, Sovereign, JH BB, Galor, Neghvar
• ENGINES – operational/inertial stress of FTL engines – jumping into FTL puts small stress on FTL engines, flying in FTL further increases the stress. When stress reaches maximum operational level, no FTL flight or jump is possible until the stress level drops below operational level.
  • Also, entering FTL creates large inertial stress which decreases over time of FTL flight. When dropping out of FTL, the remaining inertial stress is applied. The longer the ship flies, the less intertial stress is applied to engines.
  • In other words – the engines face heavy stress when entering FTL and dropping out of FTL in short timeframe. This prevents abuse of repeated short FTL jumps
• AREA CONTROL MAP – map for 2 human player teams, nebulae and asteroid fields, each team has a starbase, dock, stock of defense turrets and sensor platforms, that can be tractored to positions on the map
  • dozen of control points on map, control point generates victory points when controlled
  • to control a point – ship must deploy a boarding party (be on the point with lowered shields for 10s), after that, the point has a short 20s immunity period, where the owner can not change
  • game end after defined time (e.g. 20 minutes) – whoever has the most victory points wins
• MOUSE SELECTION – (experimental – activate by button on F5) – ships can be selected by mouse click or mouse drag and right click gives them guard order on defined place (IMPORTANT – player still needs to be a flagship of fleet)

Other interesting changes

• MOUSE CONTROL – left click on a ship – target it (left click outside of any ship – fire)
• TRACTOR – tractor now prevents enemy ships from entering FTL warp
• RADAR – radar scale can be toggled using key 0
• MAP – last known position of ships shown on strategic map (key 9); holding ALT toggles additional info
• ORDERS – cloaking ON/OFF
• HUD – ships info list (key 7) is scrollable by mouse wheel
• SUBSYSTEMS – option to target subsystems by keys 1-8 from temporary onscreen list, after U is pressed
• DUAL MONITOR – support for dual monitors or wide screens – the right side of screen can show strategic map (key shift+9) or ships overview (key shift+7)
  • dual.monitor.support=true
  • dual.monitor.x.resolution=1600
• HD RES SUPPORT – some limited support for large resolutions (HD, 4k) – configurable :
  • hud.resize=2
  • font.ingame.size=26
• WORMHOLES – can be added to maps/scenarios (one can be tested on weapons test site scenario)
  • wormholes can have multiple terminii (exits). The ship transits to a terminus, that is closest to its heading
• VARIANTS – ships with variants are indicated in lobby by enlarging their button when mouse cursor is above them
• NEBULAE – particle effects for red nebula

Minor changes and fixes

• MAP – objects symbols made larger on strategic map
• MAP – neutral objects rendered grey in schematic map mode
• MAP – red nebula disengages warp
• MAP – in map contrast mode (key 4) neutral objects keep their color (mostly for nebulae)
• BUG – detailed target info not visible when target is not revealed
• HUD – when disabled (F2), mission goals are not rendered
• HUD – advanced HUD (key 8) is default to mode 1 (instead of 0)
• HUD – advanced target info (key 6) – speed and sensor profile removed; replaced by fleet and orders; ships of the same fleet as player are marked with *
• HUD – on holding ALT, you can display additional ships info
• STRATEGIC MAP – ship movement vectors shown when advanced HUD > 0 is used (key 8)
• STRATEGIC MAP – cross warp visibility – even when moving in warp, other ships outside warp are visible and when not moving in warp, ships in warp are visible. Unlike in normal view.
• STRATEGIC MAP – scaling of ships and movement vectors according to zoom
• STRATEGIC MAP – visual ping on new sensor contacts
• readme – updated
• ORDERS – only ships assigned to a fleet follow orders for that fleet
• ENGINES – <structuralHitPoints> can be defined
• MODS screen – fixed bug of mod buttons positioning with three mods
• TARGET – fix for a bug where ships stopped looking for new targets after 100 attempts
• ORDERS – object without engines do not appear in strategic view for sending orders (F5)
• AI – energy levels management for – normal/cloaked/retreat
• ORDERS – REPAIR – ships stay in dock to repair also armor and subsystems, not only hull
• DYNAMIC BACKGROUND – tileResizeRatio for higher resolutions
• DYNAMIC ZOOM – max zoom limit increased
• SHIELDS – better ratio for immediate capacity by energy allocation
• SCENARIO – test scenario ds9.xml removed
• SCENARIO – starting locations of teams configurable teamAPositionX teamAPositionY teamBPositionX teamBPositionY

Ship changes

Federation

• Challenger new
• Cheyenne new
• Freedom new
• Springfield new
• Norway new
• Constellation higher warp engines HP
• Steamrunner changed date
• Sabre update
• Nova update
• New Orleans update
• Luna update
• photon turrets new
• starbase+ variant with weapons

Klingon

• starbase new
• dock new
• turrets new
• ktinga wireframe

Cardasia

• transport new

Romulans

• Scimitar changed torpedo firing from voley to single + wireframe

Common

• nebulae update
• planets update

Recently we tried playing FW3 in multiplayer again with some friends If you would like to join us sometime, just stop by on our discord 

Don’t mind the Czech language there, we speak English as well

Recently I realized, that the Discord invite expired, so here is an updated one

Final War 3 Discord

In last few months I got used to using Discord as a platform for chat about many topics. I think it might be a good idea to create a FW3 Discord server to talk about any topic related to the game (in addition to existing IRC channel and phpBB forum)

So I invite you to join : Final War 3 Discord

I added a new scenario – Fleet operations. Here you would have to make use of the strategical panel (F5) and fleet orders (follow, engage, repair etc.) You have three strategical targets to destroy in this mission and you have to control your fleet in order to succeed.

I was also given permission by artist https://www.deviantart.com/unusualsuspex/ to use his artwork ingame, so I was able to add some more stations and more will follow. With more and more stations, I decided to move Federation stations to separate faction “Federation base operations”. So that the stations are not mixed with regular starships, as they will mostly be used just in scenarios.

Then I also polished a bit the old Klingon HUD and I set it as default for Klingon ships. But don’t worry, if you won’t like it, you can still override the HUD setting for all ships in options.

v0.79

• HUD – klingon HUD
• HUD – override in OPTIONS (you can select HUD to be used independent on ship settings)
• few additional stations (Federation base operations), Danube runabout, Constellation class
• AI TARGETING – ships reconsider targets, when more enemies appear in short time (prevents focusing on first seen ship for extended period of time)
• SENSORS – all ships are no longer revealed when winning scenario
• SENSORS – update visibility immediately after adding ship – prevents them being revealed for a brief moment

I added random tilled backgrounds which will be randomly chosen in roughly 30% of the battles. Other major change is related to scenarios – there is now “version 2″ which allows parallel goals definition and activation/deactivation of defined goals on success or fail. This will allow much more complex scenarios.

v0.78

• DYNAMIC BACKGROUND – random dynamic tiled background
• DYNAMIC BACKGROUND – scenario definition – tiledBackground attribute of scenario element in XML; if missing (default) -> no tile. Can be overriden by empty attribute -> random tile, or specific image path
• TRACTOR – allied ships can be tractored in warp if the distance to the ship is small
• minor chnges and fixes – when firing single shots, ship will iterate the used weapons. So it will not fire from one weapon four rounds in a row, but rather once from four weapons one after another; render symbols only if not nebula or planet (fixes the off-center render bug)) ; larger distances shown in “km”;
• SCENARIO – support for large images; empty battery does not prevent lowering shields for repairs;
• COLLISION EFFECTS – added RepairArmor, RechargeShields, AmbientDamageSizeRelative
• SCENARIO – version 2 – parallel goals, lists of goals to activate or deactivate on success or fail, detail description of goal, hidden flag
• STRATEGIC MAP – available on key 9
• PROJECTILE WEAPONS – lifeSpan for projectiles is 1/4 higher than value used for checking range. Therefor projectiles will fly 1/4 further. Thus preventing tactic with running ship firing backwards. Now the ship is either out of range, or the pursuing ship projectiles will hit as well

18.11.2018 v0.77

Some small changes – it is now possible to issue REPAIR order. In case, that a shipyards with repair ability is on the map, the ordered ships will head towards it and return once repaired. This can be particulary useful in battles like “Sector” with the Borg cube In addition, ships with FOLLOW order now travel in formation.

v0.77

• FLEET CONTROL – repair order
• FLEET CONTROL – follow – ships fly in formation

Patch with several big changes – Lukas, who is helping me with the game for a long time, prepared tutorial scenario, which will help new players to learn the game :-).

Secondly I prepared a “fleet control panel” accessible via F5, where you can have limited control over allied ships. But first you need to take command of the fleet by pressing the “flagship” button. Then you can give orders to hold, engage, follow, guard or retreat. More orders will follow later.

Lastly – it is now possible to modify subsystems for ships in scenario. 

I also prepared new link for download, so that new players do not have to download version 0.64 and then a lot of patches.

v0.76

• Tutorial scenario
• FLEET CONTROL PANEL – F5
• possibility to take control of allied ship and give them orders – FOLLOW, GUARD, HOLD, ENGAGE, RETREAT
• SCENARIO – possibility to modifyObjectSystem by <modifyObjectSystem name=”inactive Borg sphere” type=”weapons” group=”1″ id=”3″ state=”30″ disableRepairs=”true”/>

Today just a data patch (so no changes in code). I added some ships, some variants of ships, some new textures – see patchnotes.
BTW As a lot of players might not be aware – some ships have variants. If you hold CTRL when clicking on a ship in lobby, you will enter a submenu and you can choose among variants of the ship class.
But most importantly new scenario – one of the most hectic battles in Federation history, which was never shown on screen

v0.75

• Data changes only
• new San Francisco scenario
• COST rebalancing – Defiant, Miranda, JH fighter increased by 10%; B’Rel, Hideki decreased by 10%
• TEXTURE changes – B’Rel, Warbird (+ enlarged), Galaxy, Vor’Cha
• NEW SHIPS – Keldon variants, Centaur

v0.74
I realized on of previous AI adjustments made Nemesis scenario unplayable, because allied ships did not react properly when Scimitar is briefly visible. And thus spent most of the time spread thin across large area and not fighting.

I am now also experimenting with different beam visual effects, so I replaced some of the textures and made some beams wider. Particulary polaron beam looks better I think.

In scenario it is now possible to destroy a ship (hull=0) and give orders to ships.

v0.73

• Better repair rates for smaller ships.
• Percentage values on HUD.
• IRC chat reachable from lobby.
• Message in a bottle scenario