Greetings Cygnus Community!

Cygnus Racing League has been out in the gaming-verse for a little over 3 weeks now, and you all have provided some incredible feedback. The advice, support, and help that you have given us has shaped CRL’s first major update that arrives tomorrow, 4/30! After multiple internal and external playtests, we took some major steps to improving and refining current gameplay mechanics, as well adding many QOL features to help create a much more streamlined and accessible game experience. Here are the features of the new update!

• NEW CONTENT:
  • Special Abilities have arrived!
  • Lavish Esquire: (Powerdash) Consumes 30 energy for a quick burst of speed forward, 10 Second Cooldown
  • Fate 5000: (Tempt Fate) Uses random ability from current list of abilities available, Cooldown dependent on ability used
  • ForcePoint Legion: (He’s good to me dead) For each kill Legion generates a bounty crate worth 5 points, max of 20 crates (Placeholder disruptor beam until implemented soon!)
  • Lavish Count: (Tractor beam) Fires beam that pulls a ship towards you and holds ship for 3 seconds, 15 second cooldown
  • NexusLift Goliath: (Contraband Smuggler) Converts contraband cargo into 25% heals to health, 15 second cooldown
  • NexusLift Mammoth: (Fortify) Reroutes ship energy to form 100 hitpoint barrier for 10 seconds, 20 second cooldown

• New Items!
  • Machine Gun: Short (35 meters manual, 25 meters auto-aim), Automatic, High Damage Weapon (70 hp/s manual, 40 hp/s auto-aim)
  • Laser Cannon: Medium/Long Range (80 meters manual, 50 meters auto-aim), single-fire 1 second cooldown for 1 second burst, Medium Damage (60 hp/s manual, 35 hp/s auto-aim)
  • Repair: item that allows repair to full health, 60 second cooldown

• New gameplay mechanics!
  
  • Players can now drive reverse and complete laps

• QUALITY OF LIFE ADDITIONS:
  • Single Player has been overhauled so that changes are now parallel with Multiplayer additions, update, and gameplay
  • 8 of the 10 tracks (exceptions for Netsorelia and Tranth {Redesign in progress}) have been widened up to double track size to help players stay on track
  • Toggle aim was added, with players given the option of auto-aim or manual aim modes to assist players who were struggling with combat. Manual aim modes will create more damage, while auto-aim will do less damage but assist with aim to keep balance with skilled players
  • Visual indicators were added to show players checkpoints for lap completion, lap markers, special abilities in use, and a trophy overlay for the top 3 positions (gold trophy indicator for 1st place, silver trophy for 2nd place, and bronze for 3rd place)
  • Exploit for lap completions has been altered with physics barriers and extra lap checkpoints being added to deter players from extreme track corner cutting
  • HUD additions for items menu, weapon switching, aim mode, and special ability selection

We sought to tackle the issues that were most prevalent in the community with this update. Many of you felt the combat system in its current state was too difficult. Paired with the difficulty of staying on track, the game was inaccessible for many new players. With this feedback in mind, we did our best to redesign difficult corners, increase the track widths, and added combat features to make ease of gameplay far more accessible for a wider range of skill levels. Alongside these changes we brought many new additions to the game, and will be bringing even more in the coming weeks such as new tracks, on track items, upgrades, boost gates, and new ships. We are so grateful for the feedback we have been given so far, and we hope that with more feedback and help from our community that we can continue to refine, polish, and create content that all of our players can enjoy to the fullest! We hope you all are as excited as we are to play these new features, and we look forward to seeing you all out on track!