Airships: Conquer the Skies — patch notes and updates
Stored observation / content update:
Dated developer announcements recorded from Steam. Open the source for the complete update.
| Update | Date | Excerpt / source |
|---|---|---|
| Version 1.2.12.1 HOTFIX | 2026-05-11 | Fixed a bug that made the game crash from ultimatums. Really sorry about that! It should work again now. |
| Version 1.2.12: Heraldry, Fixes, Modding | 2026-05-10 | New Stuff Four new geometric heraldic charges: Mascle, Rustre, Triangle, and Fret The Fret charge gives you trade income from defensive pacts and alliances. Two new heraldry layouts: Counterchanged per Fess and Counterchanged Quarterly Fixes and Changes The book charge now gives you the technology for universities or one of its prerequisites. Income loss from monster nests is now calculated properly. Slightly improved world map drawing performance Ships properly show resource status icons again. Some German translation fixes Modding Flying CrewTypes now have a dieOnEmptyAmmo boolean flag that lets them self-destruct. ModuleTypes now have a dr |
| Version 1.2.11 | 2026-03-25 | New Stuff You can now paint legs, wheels, tentacles, guided missile launcher domes, and almost all weapon barrels. Four new ship design sets for Worm Cultist empires. New weapon: Bombardment Turret: Rapidly fires heavy bombard shots but with a restricted downwards firing arc. New module: Stilt Legs: Very tall legs. New mechanic: Flammability: Weapons can have an increased chance of setting things on fire when they hit. New mechanic: Sniping: Weapons can have an additional chance to inflict damage on enemy crew if they hit a tile containing crew that has 0 armour left. There is a new wiki, hosted on Miraheze, which should hopefully be free of |
| Version 1.2.10.1 | 2026-02-10 | The inevitable hotfix the day after a major feature release. Fixes a crash caused by a spy action trying to create a new empire. |
| Empire Co-Op & PvP Fest | 2026-02-09 | Airships: Conquer the Skies is part of the PvP Games Fest this week. To celebrate, I've been working on a new feature that uh exactly isn't PvP: a new co-op mode for conquest! In this new mode, Empire Co-op, multiple players can control the same empire. They can all give orders simultaneously, even using direct control mode on different ships during combat. You can set up this mode in the multiplayer lobby by having multiple players join the same empire. And of course there is plenty of PvP to be had: quick matches between airship fleets as well as long strategic campaigns. Head over to the Discord to find like-minded individuals to fight aga |
| Version 1.2.9.6 | 2026-02-06 | Fixed another bug relating to loading ships from mods. Your mod list settings may have changed due to this. |
| Version 1.2.9.4 | 2026-01-31 | After several months of poking away at things, here's a large bugfix update, plus some new features for modders: Changes / Features Unilaterally cancelling receiving tribute now costs you reputation. Per-ship AI control button. Removed Vlambeer Mode in the settings because I needed the vertical space. Fixes Diplomacy desync fix. Fixed tentacle stat display bug. Boarders stay ready in their quarters rather than doubling up as guards. Prettier em dashes, making the game ready for the Exciting AI Future. Slightly faster tentacle performance. Better scroll bar and chat performance. Provoking an age of unrest from the industrial revolution now tri |
| Version 1.2.9.3 | 2025-10-20 | Fixed a major cause of desyncs! Game setup now remembers hero and incident settings. Guardian sprites summoned by heroes now go home again after a while. You no longer get incidents that can spawn heroes when heroes are turned off. Saved games that use Cataclystic Expansion are now loadable. (I made the game ignore the bit of bad data in the expansion that was causing the problem.) Surplus guards now distribute themselves across all modules that need guarding, rather than sitting in their barracks. Increased mechanical tentacle length by 40%. Modding: ground troops set to shoot airships now do so consistently. |
| Version 1.2.9.2 | 2025-10-14 | Axe heraldic charge now works. |
| Version 1.2.9.1 | 2025-10-14 | Crash hotfix patch. |
| Version 1.2.9 - New Heraldry, Boarding & Hero Fixes | 2025-10-13 | Boarding Ongoing boarding combats are now auto-resolved when one side leaves/surrenders a combat. You are warned when you are likely to lose ships this way. Also, Waspkiller Marines have -45% fire rate and the Martial Caste tech now increases Guard HP by 60%. Heroes I fixed a bug where some heroes wouldn't be triggered to appear. So now a bunch of rare heroes should be more frequent, and two will finally turn up at all! So you (accidentally) get two new heroes with this update. Also, Dame Laura now retains her Reconstruction ability after upgrading. New Heraldic Charges Added 11 new heraldic charges: Axe: -30% Airship maintenance, no local de |
| Airships x Forts Bundle! | 2025-09-26 | I am very pleased to announce that the two premier side-view killing machine construction games on Steam have teamed up for a bundle! https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/59685/Forts_x_Airships_Conquer_the_Skies/ The Forts and Airships communities have been sufficiently entwined for years such that there's an entire long-running Forts mod called Fortships: Conquer the Skies. We got to talking via the medium of digital video communications (probably a kind of sorcery created by worm eye cultists) and have agreed to combine forces. |
| Version 1.2.8.2 | 2025-09-05 | Fixed a desync bug. |
| 1.2.8.1 Bugfix | 2025-09-03 | Fixed a crash when looking at the settings tab on a loaded game. |
| Version 1.2.8 | 2025-09-02 | Transferring money in diplomacy now has a stronger effect on the AI, but the AI is much less willing to give you money. When making a diplomatic offer, the AI will check if it's willing to give you some money along with it, and automatically add the money. So you no longer have to edit each diplomatic offer to make sure you get that extra bit of money. If your reputation is very low, the AI is less interested in getting tribute from you, as it doesn't believe you'll honour the deal. The same applies to a lesser degree to trade and research treaties. You can now save medal designs in a persistent medal library: You can now set the map generati |
| Version 1.2.7.9 | 2025-08-20 | Fixed a crash caused by looking at a map overlay from the perspective of an empire that disappears. Added more logging for diagnosing desyncs. |
| Airships: Lost Flotilla Update | 2025-08-14 | I just released a major content update for Airships: Lost Flotilla, the sister game to Conquer the Skies. It's basically all the stuff I wanted to add after releasing the game. Do check it out - it's also 30% off at the moment. https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2858150/view/669466707009470661 |
| Version 1.2.7.8 | 2025-08-11 | AI empires no longer form huge alliance networks on higher difficulty levels. They do still ally, but they don't all clump together. Increased the size of forests on the map to make it look nicer. Various small bug fixes: rare crashes, missing text, and so on. Heroes & Villains: Albert North's sanity decreases less frequently, making it easier to keep him around. Heroes & Villains: Fixed a bug where using both the "Cripple" and the "Disarm" ability on an enemy ship would make your ships unable to target anything on that ship. Instead, if one ability is currently active on an enemy ship, the other one replaces it when it's cast. |
| Outdated Ships Bug Explanation | 2025-05-19 | As requested, here's an in-depth explanation of what caused the AI in Airships: Conquer the Skies to build outdated ships. I've tried my best to keep it relatively non-technical. So in the game, the AI builds airships (and landships and buildings), and it researches technologies. Of course, it should use these new technologies in the construction of better ships. But a lot of the time, this was simply not happening, with the AI still deploying muskets and grenades late into the game. After multiple tries, I finally figured out what was causing this bug, and also why it was so hard to diagnose. First, some context: compared to other real-time |
| Version 1.2.7.7 - AI Bugfix | 2025-05-10 | I think I've finally tracked down and fixed the long-running bug where the AI would fail to upgrade its ships or use new technologies it researched. Many thanks to everyone who sent in example saves. If there's interest, I can also write up an in-depth explanation of what small, stupid thing caused this bug. The AI now updates what ships it builds based on the technologies it has researched. The AI now correctly upgrades ships and buildings. Dead governors no longer stay at their assigned cities, gently decaying. Fixed a missing German translation. Flipped some defensive buildings that were facing the wrong way. Mod loading progress bar is no |