Welcome to the 9th dev blog! We hope you are enjoying the new guilds feature and planet killer base.
Firstly, we wanted to take the opportunity to assure our community that we are still investigating the black screen bug but is difficult to reproduce it from our side so please keep sending us clips and an as detailed as possible description in case you run into it, that being said we are deep into the next big update in terms of production, which is named “Retribution” and is roughly scheduled for March/April.
We are aware parts of the community were happy with the 2 week update cadence however this became extremely difficult to maintain (and unfortunately wasn’t as effective as we hoped) but mainly didn’t allow us to make larger content changes and additions which the next update will certainly be! After this next update we will evaluate what sort of schedule we want to deliver but most importantly a updated roadmap since we made great headway already on the current one.
As a side note we loved how the community came together and thoroughly tested the Guild P.T.E. branch with us, this was extremely effective and something we definitely want to do again in the future.
Now let’s get into what’s coming to Marauders….
Rebel Base
This update will contain multiple map additions including the previously teased new U.A. boss location “Fortress”, a giant breachable space turret, however, “Rebel base” as shown above is our largest new dock location to date. This asteroid colony was once a hot destination for trade, now raiders and wannabe pirates live there, protecting a bank full of their ill-gotten loot. We wanted to provide a fresh and unique "street to street" engagement style play-space for Marauders, “Rebel base” is designed like a small town with all the trimmings you’d expect to see. This will also be the next location for raider mode, effectively replacing the terraformer map in the rotation.
S.A.S Elite
Navy outpost will be receiving it’s very own boss, the S.A.S Major, somewhat similar to how the penal colony warden boss functions, there will be a secret task to complete that will enable the engagement but we won’t spoil how it plays out of course…. All we can say is look forward to a tough fight, hot cosmetics to unlock and a new series of weapons to loot.
The S.A.S Major will be utilizing the Sterling MK4 including some interesting variants. It will be the “hardest” hitting 9mm weapon however the smallest variant “MK4 Mini” will be a pistol slot gun rivalling the Klobb in terms of size versus power
The Merchant ship might be receiving a long awaited security boss too…. So watch this space.
Collectables
One of the larger features we are adding is steam inventory items we call “collectables”. We wish to add rare items such as cosmetics that can be found in raid that are automatically unlocked (even after a wipe) when they are added to your steam inventory. We already have dozens of variants ready to go with some of them being planned to be “ultra” rare. We hope the exciting element will be once finding a cosmetic package in raid you will not know which specific cosmetic is inside until you extract, a really intense experience.
Map Extension
Asteroid Mine and Spaceport are going through a “refurbishment”. Whilst we address maps that have airlocks that are too close to each other we thought we would take the opportunity to update the smaller maps so there’s more room to fight in. These images show extensions to asteroid mine and it’s perimeter, this allows more space between airlocks but also exciting new POIs to explore in the map. This is not scheduled for the next update but shouldn't be long afterwards. We are looking to also tweak how airlock selection works to also prevent too much overlap (such as instances where players are entering an airlock that was just used)
Greasy Gun
Some small QoL edits will be happening to the game including the newly added grease gun’s iron sights, we received a lot of feedback that players enjoy the weapon however the cramped rear sight made it harder to see clearly whilst aiming down sights. This has been addressed for the next update, marauders have taken a saw to the top of it and fixed the problem… we hopefully see this weapons becoming a lot stronger in the meta after this implementation.
That wraps up today's dev blog but we do appreciate all the players that came back for the guilds update and we look forward to delivering you an even larger update in the coming weeks. There's lots more to talk about next time including the re-designing of ship combat, audio system changes and even more content so we look forward to speaking with you soon.
Take care Marauders!