Over the last two weeks we've shifted our development focus onto our first major post-EA update: the Modular Missile Update. We're not ready to show any progress publicly yet, but keep your eyes peeled for an upcoming devlog once we reach a good state. While most resources are focused into that update, we still have allocated time to continue fixing bugs and making minor feature additions.
The majority of the changes in this patch are bug fixes, but we've also made a few balance changes based on player feedback. These balance changes are focused on beefing up cannons so that they sit happily in their intended niche instead of being beaten by railguns in situations where cannons should be the obvious weapon of choice. In order to improve cannon performance, we've increase some durabilities, muzzle velocities, and ranges, and tuned a few other values. Railguns have also received an increased penalty to their overpen damage, to further discourage using them as an all-around weapon instead of the fire support system they're intended to be.
Additionally, a minor feature change that also serves to balance the ELINT rework from the last patch means that Fire Control radars are now visible to passive sensors. This will make it so players can no longer toggle their radar on, acquire a lock with a Bullseye, and toggle search radar off again in order to remain hidden. However, because FC radars are directional, the range at which you can detect them varies depending on where the dish is pointing.
The full patch notes are below:
Changes/Features:
- Fire control radars now appear on ELINT, with detection range varying based on where the dish is pointing.
- Input text boxes are now automatically focused when opening them, so you can start typing immediately.
- Component Damage Resistance has been renamed to Damage Threshold, to reduce confusion with Hull DR.
- Continuous-fire ballistic weapons (e.g. Defender PDT) now show rate of fire in stats.
- If the selected fleet uses mods, it's point cost will now be re-validated when mods are loaded in the lobby.
Balance:
- Swapped the HP values of the Mk66/Mk68 and Mk81/Mk82 so cannons are more durable.
- Increased muzzle velocity of 450mm shells to 750m/s (from 700m/s).
- Increased range of 450mm shells to 11.25km (from 9.8km).
- Increased per-ray damage of 250mm RPF to 16 (from 13).
- Increased range of 120mm shells to 7.2km (from 6.4km).
- Decreased reload time of Mk62 to 12.5s (from 15s).
- Decreased overpen damage of 300mm rail slugs to be 15% (from 30%) of full damage.
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a rare condition related to expired Callout (e.g. MOV, ATK, etc) markers causing sensor tracks to not accept multiple missile shots being queued.
- Fixed an exploit where a fleet file could be edited between when it was selected and validated, and the game was started.
- Fixed visual tracks on the selected ship being overridden by ELINT tracks from other ships.
- Fixed ranges being incorrect on Callout markers, and ranges not appearing on Capture Point markers.
- Disabled and destroyed radars can no longer be jammed, and ships in a jamming area but with radar off will no longer generate false tracks.
- Fixed fire control radars not being affected by stat modifiers.
- Fixed missile maneuvering thruster particles being visible when outside visual range.
- Adjusted starter fleet loadouts back down to 3000 points after Adaptive Radar Receiver cost increase.