Hello everyone!

Today we’ve released our first big update since the launch of The Splintered Sea expansion.
In this update we’ve added 5 additional levels to the Splintered Sea’s campaign, rebalanced some of the existing levels and implemented general improvements & fixes based on your feedback!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2165710/Besiege_The_Splintered_Sea/

The campaign’s levels have been rearranged to incorporate the new levels and account for adjustments made to existing ones. We did this to ensure a steady ramping up of difficulty and an understandable narrative for your progression through it.
Please note that if you've edited your completed_levels.txt file in the past, the new levels may show as completed already.

The Sunken Stronghold

First in the lineup of new campaign levels is The Sunken Stronghold, a dilapidated underwater fortress, used by the Offlanders to protect a strange new mineral they’ve been trying to extract from the nearby rockface.

Stormrunner’s Grave

The Stormrunner, once the pride of the Offlander fleet, now lays at the bottom of the sea, along with its precious cargo. With such a prize carried in her hull, you can be sure someone will come to recover it sooner or later. Perhaps something can be done about that…

Ironweave Passage

The Ironweave Passage is a defensive fortification, designed to prevent uninvited guests from traveling deeper into the Offlander’s territory. A sequence of huge, powerful metal gates can be closed to keep their enemies out, but maybe you can squeeze through in time.

Razortooth Cave (Updated)

A mysterious and shiny golden egg has found its way into Razortooth Cave. Rather an odd place for such an object, surely there’s somewhere better for it... The Razortooths won’t mind if you move it, right?

Feeding Frenzy

Razortooths are among the most common predators in the seas of Autilis, tending to live & hunt in small groups (or “shivers), with their innate pack-like behavior & hierarchy generally preventing the formation of larger groups. In rare cases however, much greater quantities of Razortooths can join together, if their pack leader is strong enough to keep them all in check.

The Devouring Pit

At the bottom of the sea there is a pit filled with darkness, caged off with giant iron bars, and there resides an ancient horror none are known to have survived. Turn back now, or join the countless souls it has devoured…

Our goal with this update was not only to increase the amount of levels for the Splintered Sea Campaign, but also to offer greater challenges for you to overcome and new gameplay experiences that water makes possible. We hope you feel we’ve accomplished this goal and, as always, we look forward to hearing about your experiences and seeing the new content you produce! 🙂

Cheers everyone,
Von

Besiege & The Splintered Sea will be joining a host of other great simulation games in the Steam Simfest sale, starting later today and running through to the 29th of July!

Changelog Version 1.56:

Block changes
Aquatic Screw:
- now has a top speed dictated by the angular velocity to emulate the ideal rotation speed for the pitch of the blades
- speed slider max value has increased from 2 to 3
- "Mirrored" toggle added to select the chirality of the screw
Harpoon Launcher:
- Fixed unproportional forces between launcher and harpoon
- Reel in behaviour has been slightly tweaked
- Harpoons now don't break non physics objects in the user made levels and level editor
- Fixed Harpoon sometimes being able to be stuck when trying to retract
Rudder:
- Now works as a control surface or aileron in air
- Rudder now has proper health
Paddle:
- paddle push force now is proportional to how intact it is
Sail:
- fixed a collision issue on the sail
- Sail now has proper health
Source Cube:
- newly spawned source cubes (i.e. not loaded from old saves) will be solved as accurately as wheels, to stop the behaviour where placing a wheel on a machine will feel different than without it
Spring:
- fixed a modded interaction issue when the dimensions were scaled down to near zero in certain axes
Sensors:
- fixed immense lag when tall terrain and water could be seen
- fixed sensor's detecting floor when ignoring static
Flying Block:
- The flying screw now is less effective under water
Water Cannon:
- Now updates force particles during the physics ticks as well, so the forces applied from water cannons should be more consistent at all time scales and framerates
Misc:
- slightly updating how blood and damage looks on blocks

UI & Controls
Camera:
- Added option for follow machine orientation camera (similar to our console implementation)
- Fixed an issue with centering camera on the machine
- Various small camera fixes
Options Menu:
- Default controls for blocks now is in the controls section to be rebound. (The tooltips won't reflect this change atm)
Main UI:
- Fixed bottom bar on the UI looking weird when people do not own The Splintered Sea

Levels
The Sunken Stronghold: NEW
Stormrunner's Grave: NEW
Ironweave Passage: NEW
Feeding Frenzy: NEW
The Devouring Pit: NEW
Razortooth Cave:
- Made sharks harder to kill
- Replaced chest with faberge egg treasure
- Increased distance to goal
- Added shark eggs as obstacles
- Added more sharks
Seafarer's Haven:
- Added Rock Ball
- Added Ship wreck
- Fixed rendering order of the large fire and smoke on the beacons
Saltrock Fortress:
- Using the correct ambience and music

AI
Sharks:
- Sharks now take reduced damage from blunt impacts
- Sharks can now break free from being grabbed
- Sharks now make decision based on head position rather than center position
- Sharks now have swimming sfx

Misc
- made attacks properly evaluate certain armor blocks in the way, that would otherwise have been ignored
- Sharp vs blunt damage differences now properly interact with the AI
- Harpoons now deal reduced damage on impact with AI

Bug Fixes
Drasckar's Bastille now no longer has a motor force on the cog wheel
Drasckar's Bastille now has gravity applied to the metal grate
Fixed an NRE happening on middle mouse click
Fixing scaling on some zoom dependent objects
Fixed various blocks not responding correctly with their water interactions if zero-g was toggled
Fixed an issue with water zones in the level editor when multiple were loaded directly on top of eachother
Fixing length detector drawing out rope correctly
Multithreaded our water aerodynamic drag comparisons to improve fps a little bit for large machines
Fixed wrongly being able to use the block searching hotkeys even in simulation or as a spectator
Made it so only the machine entering sim is in zero gravity during the sim change
Fixed when loading level editor levels with water the rendering on the water surface would mess up if shadows were disabled
Fixed an issue in zone 12 where something was automatically breaking
Fixed structures like the airships not being able to be weakened by burning
Fixed an issue with DLC enabling and disabling that would cause errors in multiplayer e.g.
Attempted a fix for NREs caused by mods being processed like having unique controls, but returning null controls
Attempted a fix for achievement syncing during startup and shutdown of Besiege where it'd fail to compare the proper progress between local and online
Attempted a fix for macos when underwater explosions are triggered because the metal renderer can't handle either rendering them correctly nor throwing a normal error
Fixing ripples on water sometimes rendering weird because they weren't spawning within the correct water height.

-Made the new sail collider changes backwards compatible so it wont break older machines
-Fix for The Devouring Pit not being counted
-Razortooth Cave is now completable