- Version 1.2.15.1 - 21 September 2026
Nest of Bees now does blast instead of piercing damage, as intended.
- Version 1.2.15 - 21 September 2026
Features New weapon: the Nest of Bees, a rocket arrow launcher. Three new AI fleets. In the open ship screen, you can now search module filters by name. Wasps and bees now sometimes survive the module they're in being destroyed. So do waspkiller marines, but they still can't fly, so... Can zoom out further, and the maximum zoom-out limit now understands about widescreen. Old-style visual variants for dust tanks. Nests of Bees in action Bug Fixes Searching for replays by name now works. Bombers now actually hit their targets when flying to the right. Coats of arms with a Counterchanged per Fess layout are now rendered correctly everywhere. Fixed a versioning error that led to multiplayer desyncs. Fewer desyncs! Maybe, one day, no desyncs? We can only hope and pray to the moons. Ships where all the boarders are dead should no longer end up on the boarders' side when leaving combat. Improv…
- Version 1.2.14.1 - 15 August 2026
Fixed a crash when playing conquest multiplayer via LAN.
- Water! - 27 July 2026
Experienced players of the game will know that when you intercept an enemy fleet above water, a strange thing happens: an island suddenly appears underneath the warring airships during combat mode. Well, no more! I have finally added bodies of water to Airships combat. Now, to be very clear, this is just water, it's not sea-going ships, and there's no plan to add sea-going ships. So what does this mean? Intercepts above water now happen in an ocean combat map, where there's no land at all. Airships are not built to be watertight at all, so modules that go below water become disabled and lose resources. You can see which modules are disabled by submersion by the little water drop icon shown in the top left. Crew also can't swim, so any crew that are in completely submerged tiles begin drowning and will die after a few seconds. Same goes for boarders that fall into the water. Apart from o…
- Version 1.2.13.1 - Hotfix - 16 July 2026
Fixed a crash bug in LAN conquest games introduced in the last version. Sorry about that.
- Version 1.2.13 - 13 July 2026
Changes, New Features and Balancing Newly started or resumed multiplayer conquest games are now paused so you can have a look around before time starts ticking. Option to allow multiplayer conquest to be paused by any one player. Sponson clip increased from 1 to 2, and light sponson clip from 3 to 4. Fixes AI should no longer repeatedly build and scrap universities. Fixed yet another pathing issue on Arch Linux. Advice for modders and fleet creators: only use letters A-Z, a-z, 0-9, -, and _ in ship names to be safe. Background landscape in monster nests now always matches foreground landscape. Fixed layout of multiple exclusive technologies in zoomed-out research screen. Peace movement event in H&V now goes away if the war ends. Fixed missing cultist sniper message. Fixed German text layout issues. New charges like triangle now display correctly in the decals list in the ship editor. Mo…
- Version 1.2.12.1 HOTFIX - 11 May 2026
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 - 10 May 2026
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 drawExternalsBelowEverything boolean flag to draw their external appearances first, below everything else. If you have modding tools enabled, choices in incidents now have tooltips that explain why they are disabled. See also the new wiki for document…
- Version 1.2.11 - 25 March 2026
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 ads and spam. Do have a look at it and contribute. It also has new lore snippets! Fixes AI no longer places ships out of the reserve on top of existing ships. Some crash and performance fixes. Boarders now less likely to get stuck on narrow bits of…
- Version 1.2.10.1 - 10 February 2026
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 - 9 February 2026
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 against.
- Version 1.2.9.6 - 6 February 2026
Fixed another bug relating to loading ships from mods. Your mod list settings may have changed due to this.
- Version 1.2.9.4 - 31 January 2026
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 triggers the OutrageOverFlowException achievement. Better tech screen layouting. No longer showing that background parchment with the spider on when you're in arachnophobia mode. No longer showing pointless AI control button during replays. Medals for…
- Version 1.2.9.3 - 20 October 2025
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 - 14 October 2025
Axe heraldic charge now works.
- Version 1.2.9.1 - 14 October 2025
Crash hotfix patch.
- Version 1.2.9 - New Heraldry, Boarding & Hero Fixes - 13 October 2025
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 defence budget Bridge: +80% Resupply speed Castle: -20% Building cost, double local defence budget Effigy: Quadruple chance for enemy ships to catch fire Grappling Hook: +60% Grenadier HP, grenadier tech Hammer: +75% Steel armour HP Heart: -15 Unrest…
- Airships x Forts Bundle! - 26 September 2025
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 - 5 September 2025
Fixed a desync bug.
- 1.2.8.1 Bugfix - 3 September 2025
Fixed a crash when looking at the settings tab on a loaded game.
