Go forth my minions...
We have an exciting new feature this patch: Auto-Build. After watching many new players having too much fun blowing things up and sitting at Credit cap, we felt they would benefit from having Units automatically spawn from the Fortress with the Capture order. The way it works is if you have 10,000 more credits than the most expensive unit in your loadout, the same system that the AI uses will build things and send them out.
Moving units will get the Capture order, while turret-type units will automatically spawn on any free Sockets. Specialized units/gear will not be built at all. If you happen to be near an Outpost, Auto-built units will be presented to you so there is the option to place them yourself. If you move too far away, it will continue spawning them from the Fortress as it was planning to.
This option can be disabled in Settings.
He who controls the spice, controls the universe!
We removed Overtime damage a while back because we felt it was a bandaid to try and end games that went on too long. We wanted to be forced to focus on why games were going on that long and fix it, and we've had a lot of great feedback and been making balance changes in that direction.
Still, we've noticed that it's possible to have situations where one team becomes very entrenched at their Fortress which makes it hard to end the games. Since these cases don't present the defender any real chance to win, but they can drag the games on, it's not a great state to be in.
This leads us to Domination Damage. If one team holds all Outposts on the map, it will trigger a 30 second countdown until the enemy team's Fortress will start to take damage. But there's a catch! A team being Dominated will have their income doubled to give them a fighting chance for a comeback.
More Matchmaking choices, finally!
With the healthy number of players plus the new queue system we're finally going to open up more choices for Matchmaking. Now you can select the exact number of players you want in the game for Coop, PvP, and Survival.
Updates:
- New Auto-Build feature (can be disabled in Game Settings)
- Domination Damage: holding all Outposts on the map will do direct damage to the enemy Fortress
- Enabled more Matchmaking Options (1v1, 2v2, or 3v3)
- Individual Unit Upkeep values: indicated by number of blocks on the ingame UI
- Dots shown on ground indicating how many units are carried and exactly where they will be dropped
- Camera will offset in direction of shooting (can be disabled in Video Settings)
- New "Window Size" video resolution, highly recommended for best visuals
- Improvements to visual quality when non-fullscreen window is resized
- Change font from Roboto to Exo 2 to try and find something that works better for lower resolutions (might keep trying new fonts)
- Changes to a number of Challenges to make them better at teaching new players how to play
- New (non-Achievement) Quest for Diamond VIPs: collect your DVIP Club Card for monthly perks
- Damage number color now indicates how much damage is being done after the Armor calculation (Yellow < 40%, Orange 40-80%, Red 80-100%)
- Healing numbers now sink instead of float (potentially helping with red-green colorblindness)
- Reworked Secure Outpost behavior to make it more consistent
- Updated Natasha art
- Updated Erik art
- Updated Samson art
- Updated Kira art
- Tweaked Raven art
- Simplified Shop landing page for new players to explain Silver VIP benefits
Bug Fixes:
- fix of Armor values not working on Outposts
- fix bug where carry weights were not set properly for AirMech classes
- multiple Tech Pods will no longer build if you repeat build a super unit
- fixed an uncommon crash when changing video quality settings
- can no longer rez flying uints
Balance Changes:
- increase HP of Infantry when occupying Outposts
- increase DPS of AirMechs on ground vs other AirMechs by approx 10%
Known Issues:
- because of changes in the Queue, all Matchmaking games show as 1 star Elo games in the watch tab
- 3 player Coop doesn't work right, instead puts you in 2 player