The day is finally here Marauders!
Thanks for hanging in there with us whilst we deal with some major restructuring. This required us to re-organise how we deliver updates in the future… but the good news is Guilds 1.0 is finally here! The first of many updates to establish a new social system built around competing player created pirate factions! aka guilds. If you are not aware we refined this feature with the help of the players using our new P.T.E. branch and via our Discord feedback and bug report channel. Make sure to look out for announcements regarding more P.T.Es in the future. That being said, let's crack straight into the patch notes!
WARNING! This update requires a full progress wipe
Side note:- The colonist head cosmetic, body cosmetic and the Pilot voice pack (previously twitch drops) will be available to claim through the gift tab for the first two weeks only, so make sure to grab it while you can!
GUILDS
We consider this a first pass on this game changing feature. You can create a guild if you have the requirements: be level 10 and have 100k credits. Players can join guilds for free at any level. Guild Captains (the creator) can provide a name, and select which guild patch design they want. Patches are visible in the main menu on banners and on the player themselves on certain parts of cosmetics and gear for all guild members.
You will also have access to a guild chat, guild trader and of course, the hideout (of which some of these features are tied to progression when extracting with an enemy guild’s patch).
You will have a “Freebooter” status if you are not from a guild or have mixed guild members within your crew. This means you will not bring in a lootable guild patch and any enemy guild patches extracted will be void. Each patch is worth 1 point for your guild. Raider mode currently assigns the “Freebooter” status. Put simply, if you want to build XP towards progressing your guild, make sure you are in a guild and that all members of your current crew are in the same guild when going into a match!
GUILD HIDEOUT
You and your guild members will have unlimited access to your private base: “The Guild Hideout”. This is tied to the progression of your guild and more areas will unlock as you progress to a higher level. Through the guild tab in the main menu, you can choose which region you wish to launch or join. Once inside you can use the firing range, drink from the bar or most importantly; practice with your teammates in the killhouse!
Planet Killer Base
A brand new raid location has been added! This nuclear weapons facility can not only build warheads but it can also launch them from orbit, turning any planet to glass. However, they are extremely vulnerable to pirate attacks including this one. You will discover the United Allies have lost control and raiders have broken loose.
This is a ship docking only station, which has defensive turrets protecting it, so be careful when navigating your ship past its defenses. Notable landmarks include a railway system, industrial workshops and of course…. a nuclear missile launcher!
Main Menu UI Rework
We have reworked a good chunk of the main menu UI to incorporate the new mechanics that are coming with this Guilds update. Some of the notable larger changes include:
- Reorganising things to help make the menu more unified and flow better
- Implementing the new UI for the Guilds and friends systems
- Changing the way you crew up to be more simple and require less going into and out of menus
- Adding crew text chat
- Expanding the shopkeeper UI so you can now access multiple shops
You will see the UI still has placeholder and work in progress elements in places. We want to make sure we get the flow and feel right first and then we will phase out the placeholders over future updates. We are looking forward to getting these changes into your hands and hearing your thoughts to help us feel out any pain points, issues and help make it all around more sturdy.
Trader Rework
Faction traders are no longer on rotation and are always available. However the C.E., U.A. and K.A. traders require your faction XP to be level 1, in order to access. The Pirate faction is unlocked from the start and has a 40% reduction in cost. The guild trader is unlocked whilst you are part of a guild.
Available items in these shops have been re-shuffled with certain items removed, this is not final but each faction trader will have their inventory belonging to a theme, such as Captain Wolff (C.E.) being high damage and armor, Major Rosie (U.A.) being medical and military supplies and Overlord (K.A.) being special weapons.
XP Revisited
Issues became clear during that first Public Test Environment that the XP requirements per level were definitely not as intended and were in fact “broken”. This resulted in very small differences between the early levels and flatter amounts later on, when they were supposed to be exponential.
We addressed this problem and tested out the changes in our second PTE and things were feeling much better. To prevent it feeling like we just increased the amount of XP needed we wanted to make sure the player has several methods to gain XP to compensate. For example: You can now gain XP from completing trades (with certain ones having extremely high XP amounts). Done a huge rebalancing for certain NPC kills (Like the Warden giving over 1000 XP) and larger gains from completing missions in the Zero to Hero campaign.
We hope this results in a more consistent experience with opportunities for exciting revelations!
New Weapon: The Grease Gun
A submachine gun chambered in .45 that deals higher damage than its other SMG counterparts and has a tighter hip firing spread however it does suffer from a slower fire rate so make sure you have the drop on someone before “letting it rip”. This weapon can be found in most locations including its stock and suppressor however and is standard issue among U.A. Marines.
Raid Attachments
14 additional attachments have been added, alongside a large rebalance to the amount of attachments that can be found in raid. We also added a new feature! Adding and removing attachments while in-raid. This allows you to put on and take off attachments while the weapon is equipped in your hands. This can give a breath of fresh air to looting and allows you to improve your weapon during the process of a raid.
Shotgun BUFF
We wanted to put these weapons into the Meta to see how it lands. Currently they all deal the same amount of damage (firing 12 pellets) but only vary in spread. We personally really enjoy their new power (especially against low tier armored targets). Let us know what you think! This also gives us a perfect chance to introduce you to the new Heavy liberator, which can be found in vaults.
A.I. Adjustments
NPCs have been a topic of discussion since the very beginning! We wanted to implement some changes that prevented them from being so aggressive and highly sensitive (sight and sound) which would allow them to have a wider range of behavior. This may result in them seeming “unaware” sometimes but it allows for them to patrol, camp and even loot! Rather than them constantly charging targets. This will still happen, but at least not all instances.
Internally this has led to interesting new playstyles like sneaking up behind them and even following NPCs to nearby loot stashes. We will continue to monitor the situation as we know they can just seem clueless at times but we are excited for what this change brings!
Raider Mode V2.0
The new map Planet Killer Base and Terraformer are replacing the Mining Frigate and Merchant Ship as the new Raider Mode maps in rotation. This mode now has an increased player count (from 6 to 8) and has NPCs added. This edit is to provide players with a larger playspace and opportunity to “win big” by going for NPCs kits.
Lets breakdown the patch notes in full, we have a lot to go through!
- WIPE (All progress is reset)
- New Planet Killer Map
- Guild Hideout Map
- Raider mode maps rotation to now use The Planet Killer and Terraformer Map
- NPCs added to Raider Mode
- New Zero to Hero main menu character, known as Greybeard
- You can now design your own guild patch (if you are in a guild and its creator) with 36 badge designs with 48 colour options to choose from
- Guild patches now show on Raider, Nomad and Outlaw body cosmetics
- Guild patches now show on most armour pieces
- Guild banners in the main menu (dynamically changes based on guild patch)
- New unlockable cosmetics: Bandit head and body
- Piles of loot within the Guild Hideout are free to use (infinite items, cannot be taken out the map)
- Central Empire Chest Plate Rig
- Guild Beret (has a patch)
- Guild Helmet (has a patch)
- Heavy Liberator (shielded)
- Silver bullion (high value item)
- Grease Gun, Suppressor and Stock attachments
- Klobb Drum Mag recipe blueprint
- M45K Drum Mag recipe blueprint
- Mat49 Suppressor recipe blueprint
- Mat49 Extended Magazine recipe blueprint
- Item "ale" for the guild map beer tap
- Blue Pirate Helmet variant for the guild hideout map (to help distinguish teams)
- Industrial toolbox lootables added in-raid
- Hanging pressure suit lootables added in-raid
- Large locker lootables (armour only) added in-raid
- Klobb now has a suppressor (+2 damage), extended mag (30 round capacity) and drum mag (42 round capacity)
- Mat49 now has a suppressor (+2 damage), extended mag (45 round capacity) and wooden stock (reduced horizontal and vertical recoil)
- M45k now has a suppressor (+2 damage), drum mag (52 round capacity) and compensator (reduced horizontal recoil)
- Johnson now has a compensator (reduced horizontal recoil and +1 damage) and a extended mag (20 round capacity)
- Trenchgun now has a drum mag (12 shell capacity)
- Starter Basic supply drop (low tier weapons and armour) 3x3.
- Options menu has a Social tab where you can set preferences for the social stuff e.g. Allow Friend Requests, Chat Settings etc
- Navy Outpost raid area updated - added pods and signage etc
- Spaceport raid area art tweaks
- If you are in a guild, you can now see your guild patch on your main menu character
- If you are in a guild, you can now see your guild patch on your characters shoulders in-raid
- Graybeard is now the Pirate faction trader. Calico is now the Guild trader
- Shopkeepers are now hidden in the shadows if you are not the correct faction level to use them
- Enhanced the in-ship console CRT screens
- Asteroid Mine raid area improvements and additional areas added
- Guide has been updated
- Edited head cosmetics so theres less clipping across all helmets and berets
- Hunter Head cosmetic proportions improved
- Balanced the brightness of warbond and ammo icons
- New icons for certain magazines and weapon stock items, brighter icons were rebalanced, certain icons are less noisy and are no longer too sharp
- Bank Notes now have a unique pick up mesh
- The exit jump gate now spawns after 5 minutes (down from 10 minutes)
- Bandit head and body can now be unlocked
- Multiple shopkeepers each selling items of a different theme
- You can now vault 40% further from the railing
- Trader items have now been changed to fit their new themes:
- Pirate (affordable starter kits)
- Central Empire (armour and power)
- Kingdom Alliance (special ops)
- United Allies (supplies)
- Light Bag is now a level 1 recipe and requires an additional leather strip
- The Sack Bag has been removed from crafting (since it's now in the Pirate trader level 0)
- M50 Suppressor removed from shop but has been added to the U.A supply Crate loot pool (also still remains in the vault)
- M1 Flak Vest has had around a 30% reduction in cost
- Briefcase has less valuables however maps have a overall increase in valuable lootables to compensate
- Vault red crate lootable now only has weapons with attachments
- Green military crate now only has weapons (no armour)
- Locker lootable now has armour only
- Uzi and its attachments have around a 30% reduction in cost
- PPSh is now craftable instead of the MP40
- Hunting Knife is reduced by around 50% in cost
- Market trade for M5 helmet is now a Light Bag instead of a Sack Bag
- New weapon loot table for green container and red container (vault)
- New armour and helmet loot table for locker container (varied durability and common armour) and new large locker container (full durability and rare armour)
- MAC10 and the M50 have been replaced with the Mat49 and M1 Para within the Prisoner NPC loot pool
- Klobb is now a .32 acp weapon
- You can now craft .32 acp instead of 9mm at early levels
- Klobb attachments such as the suppressor and extended mag are now craftable instead of Sten attachments
- Klobb durability is now 75 (up from 40)
- M45k fire rate increased from 400 to 500
- All shotguns now fire 12 projectiles/pellets (increase from around 8) and all do 16 damage per pellet (up from around 14). Shotguns now only vary in terms of ammo capacity and spread. However, the spread has been decreased across the board (around 30%, terminator being the smallest and the sawed off being the largest still)
- Scrappable objects now produce 20% less items
- M16 no longer has different firing modes and is now burst only. However it has now a 12.5% reduction in recoil
- MAC10 no longer has different firing modes and is now an automatic weapon only
- Recipe blueprints can now spawn in red vault weapon containers/lootables and with full durability
- Attachments can now spawn "loose" in green weapon containers/lootables
- Container overhaul: all maps now have a considerable increase in the amount of lootables across the entire playspace. The intention is to have vaults remain the hotspot for valuable loot however we see its best to reward the player for also exploring the map, this is also to help newer players discover loot more naturally
- M45k, MAT49, PPSh, Klobb, Sten, Uzi and the new Grease Gun now spawn on loose pistol/grenade spawner locations
- Bandages now heal around 20 (up from around 12) over 4 seconds
- Pirate bandages now heal around 25 (up from around 15) over 4 seconds
- Small First Aid Kits now heal around 45 (up from around 35)
- Pirate First Aid Kits now heal around 55 (up from around 40)
- Large First Aid now heals 10 pain and around 80 health over 8 seconds
- Players now start with 1 "Basic Supply Drop" which can contain a variation of low tier weapons and armour. Players also start with 32 acp ammo instead of 9 mm since that is the new ammo type for the Klobb. Starter Sack Bags have been replaced by Light Bags and there is also been an increase in ammo for both types
- XP amount per level is the correct exponential value, we have rebalanced elements across the board, there are now much greater rewards for killing bosses/special NPCs. Player XP rewards for Zero To Hero missions is also a lot greater. We have also introduced player XP rewards from trades and added new trades that give extremely large XP rewards for the later levels (between 1000 and 3000 XP in some cases)
- Bleeding has been reduced from 3 damage tick per tick down to 2 damage per tick for all SMGs and pistols also the chance of a bleed has been reduced from 20% to 10%. Rifles are still 3 damage per tick however their chance of bleed is down to 5%. Dart weapons remain the higher value of 3 damage per tick and around a 30% chance. Shotguns remain a 10% chance of bleed with a 3 damage per tick
- M16 miner NPC now has a SVT40 rifle
- Stamina recharge is now at its fastest when not holding a weapon (similar to previous recharge rates when holding a weapon), knives and grenades are 5% slower, pistols are 10%, shotguns are 15% and rifles are 20%
- Players now start with Mat49s instead of MP40s
- Players start with Hunting Knives that give a higher chance of junk to help with the first Zero To Hero mission
- Players start with Brodie Helmets instead of Civilian Helmets
- Small Container now unlocks at level 4 for crafting (down from 8)
- Players now start with additional Mat49 wooden stocks and a Small Container
- Faction XP takes 50% less XP overall for all factions to get to level 10
- Certain faction raid missions (especially longer hold position/guard ones) give around 200% more xp
- End match, raider mode no longer gives XP based on the length of time you were in a match, this was a bug, now only from kills
- Npcs now have a wider range for the maximum and minimum respawn time (extra 100 seconds) to prevent instances of them immediately respawning
- NPCs are now better at prioritizing targets that are closer (if they move or make noise)
- NPCs, especially ones equipped with a pistol, shout less when in combat (they still will shout if they see a target before they engage)
- NPCs now have shorter vision, a realistic sight cone (around 90 degrees forward) and less powerful hearing so they can patrol, loot and hide until they have a closer/definitive target (more natural)
- Player's footsteps A.I triggers have been rebalanced for NPCs so you can "sneak up" on them/get closer if you are stalking them or sneak away without alerting them
- When shots land near NPCs they will look around and have better vision to find targets
- Pistol NPCs no longer headshot targets by accident when aiming for their shoulder and the target is in ADS (head is covering the intended shoulder target)
- NPCs now spend around 30 seconds looking for a lost target (down from around 90 seconds)
- NPCs will look at the player when shouting (rather than afterwards)
- NPCs "shout" less when charging the player
- Big UI rework of the main menu to incorporate the new mechanics, be more unified and help create a better flow
- New Guild menus under the “SOCIAL” core main menu tab
- My stats menu has moved. Now you get to it in the main menu by clicking your Steam profile icon in the top left
- You can now click the “Profile” button on other players to see info about them
- You can now switch between multiple shopkeepers in the Trader menu
- Bandit cosmetics added to the appearance menu
- Implemented a new more visual way of displaying weapon ammo on your HUD. We wanted it to feel more diegetic and analogue
- HUD ammo counter for the flamethrower, fire extinguisher and blow torch is now a bar that goes down
- HUD turret ammo UI was tweaked to have a more visual analoge feel (images instead of simply numbers)
- New UI for the terminals in game e.g. airlock, ship engines etc
- Now showing less info on each item to try and reduce noise. However, if you hover over items it will show all the info like it used to. Items equipped to your characters slots e.g. helmet, weapons armour etc will continue to show info all the time
- Weapon items will now show a little gold “A” if they have any attachments on to make it easier to quick read if they do/don’t
- If you have a weapon equipped in-raid you can now use the right-click menu to remove the attachement (The weapon must be in your hand/equipped to do this)
- When looking at items in-raid, there is now a black backgrounf behind the text to help make words easier to read
- Removed the vessle: part of the HUD intro (bottom left), to make it quicker and cleaner
- Main menu now has control prompts at the bottom, which switch out depending on what part of the menu you are on
- Buttons have a new style to help make it more clear whats a button
- Weapon bench weapons attachment icons now show if a weapon can have attachments and also shows if you have attachments equipped
- Tweaked the look and placement of some of the HUD bottom right elements (healing/bleeding, ammo count, firemode type etc)
- Added “Drop Here To Scrap”, to the crafting menu to try to help make it more understandable
- Removed the right-click menu remove all attachments option as it was causing issues
- Tweaks to the end screen menu to make it more relevant to the game mode you just played. E.g. standard mode to raider mode. We also added a small section at the bottom which shows how many guild badges from other guilds you extracted with
- The in-game are you sure you want to exit menu now shows relevant info based on what mode you are in, Standard, Raider or Guild area. Telling you how to safely extract
- A new Social tab in the Options menu contains settings relating to: friend requests, chat, being searched for etc
- Updated the look of Ship Storage UI in-raid inventory (Had older UI look so unified it with current look)
- Misc tweaks across the entire UI
- Grenade pins physics now turns on at the start of equipping a grenade so you get that jiggle, jiggle while equipping
- Tweaked some anim tech stuff relating to switching weapons, to make the transition look a bit smoother particularly from third person
- BAR equip animation is shorter (It no longer has a bolt pull)
- Tweaked playrate of the BAR rifle walk and sprint anim to better fit character movement
- BAR rifle has a new main menu holding weapon animation
- Bren has a new main menu holding weapon animation
- America female voice added
- New shooting sounds for the PPSh-41
- New reload weapon handling sounds for the PPSh-41
- New shoot sound for the Uzi
- New reload gun handling sounds for the Uzi
- New shoot sound for the Thompson
- New reload gun handling sounds for the Thompson
- Updated the shooting sound for the Light Turret (Rustbuckets default turret)
- Tweaked the generic suppressed shoot sound (temp tweak will come back later when get chance to do proper gun sound pass)
- New HUD sounds when you first spawn into a match
- New in-game open close exit menu sounds
- Added sounds to when popup notifications appear in the in-game UI
- Updated sounds for the airlock terminals
- Updated sounds for doing and completing missions in-raid
- New radar ping sound effect when the ship HUD UI changes for when able to breach or interact with salvage
- Improved Fire Grenade pin pull sound and added more variations of it
- More variations added for the Fire Grenade throw sound
- Tweaked the sound that plays when a Sticky Grenade sticks to something. Also added more versions of the sound for variety
- Updated grenade pin pull sound on the Sticky Grenade
- Tweaks and more variety added to the Sticky Grenade explode and the Impact Grenade explode
- Added a voice effort sound to throwing grenades which is based of the voice set you have selected
- Grenade distance sounds are now mono for better spatialisation
- New sounds for equipping grenades
- Debris sounds based on material type added to explosions for grenades, explodable barrels and gas cans
- New inventory pick up put down sounds for the grenades
- Scrap bomb throw now has foley and effort sounds in it
- Improved sounds on the vertical opening door in the mine
- Improved doors sound blocking and timing of the blocking changing
- While sprinting we now play quiet clothing moving foley sounds
- Updated the ADS clothing foley sounds to be more subtle and have more variety
- Vaulting now has some subtle clothing foley sounds
- New crouch to stand and stand to crouch foley sounds
- Added subtle clothing foley sound when you reach out to interact with things and when you reach out to pick stuff up
- Stepping up onto ledges now has a small amount of clothing foley sound (2 set, fast and normal speed versions)
- Added clothing foley sounds to heavy lands and light lands
- Small clothing foley sound added when you start a jump
- Small foley sound when the player opens and closes their inventory while in match (not hearable by other players)
- Sounds added to the hanging meat and punchbag when you knock into them
- Unhooked and deleted sounds from the player / bots that were no longer used
- All pistol skelmeshes now have LODs
- Cleaning and optimising out menus (removing older systems while implementing the newer UI)
- Optimisations added to the hanging meat
- Optimised the player character skeletal meshes in the main menu
- Reduce the amount of lights generated by the Fire Bomb
- Optimisation to Navy Outpost, now has less expensive VFX/Particles and lights that cast shadows
- Optimised airlock dust particles to run 75% faster
- Weapon pick up meshes now all have LODs
- Optimised fire textures
- Optimised reflection cube maps that were unnecessarily large
- All raid location levels have had their texture streaming built to help improve GPU performance
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- Fixed misc crashes (client and server)
- Fixed an issue which caused problems with XP required for the next level
- Fixed stamina recharge being slower when not holding a weapon
- Fixes added to grenades to prevent them sometimes going invisible when thrown
- Fixed a bug where you could hear the impact grenade fuze sound from really far away, making it hard to tell where it was
- Fixed a bug where the grenade fuze hiss would continue to play after the explosion
- Fixed a bug where if you click while throwing a grenade or AP mine it would play a trigger pulled sound
- Fixed items missing pick up / put down sounds
- Fixed a bug where some doors would stop blocking sounds occlusion all together after they were used once
- Fixes added to the scrap bomb damage system so it should produce more consistent results
- Fixed a bug where the guide menu in-game would not load data correctly when first opening, leaving you with a bunch of default values
- Fixed bug where the end screen would show MG42 instead of Heavy MG42 if killed by heavy one
- Fixes added to help stop shooting audio cutting off when mag dumping large mag sizes
- Fixed truck engine spot ambience flipping between ears when you are close to it
- Fix so hand now doesn't reach out for drop pod extracts in raids, interfering with the full body using animation
- Fixed bug where the wrong attach and detatch sounds were getting played on a bunch of the new attachments
- Heavy Liberator now has stats
- Fixed a bug with melee weapon animation sets where if you ADS while moving it could switch to a gun holding pose
- Fixed misc spelling mistakes
- Certain 2x1 magazine items were horizontal rather than vertical, this is now fixed
- Required item/ingredients for crafting recipes no longer have sqaushed icons (for example Toolkit and Fuel)
- Weapon icons now have the correct brightness (matching other icon types)
- Fixed a bug where if you draw a Luger while it was empty the weapon toggle wouldn’t look correct until after the equip anim had finished
- Fixed the hover over other players to see their name in the main menu not working anymore
- Fixes added for an issue that would effect stacks of starting ammo and bandages after one raid
- NPCs will spend less time looking through the floor when search for loot
- Fixed an iso container in the merchant ship which caused the players weapon to be blocked
We hope you enjoy this update and as always if you encounter any issues/bugs or have any suggestions, please let us know in Discord. We always appreciate any feedback and reporting issues helps us find and fix them!
Dash or Die, Marauders!
The SIG team
