Balance Patch - 0.5.3.1:251006-0019

Hello Spacers,

Tonight we are releasing a balance patch for a few issues that have been long-identified. We've been working on an important minor update since June, which has ended up taking much longer than I had initially anticipated. Though the work is still not done (but we're approaching the finish line), I don't want to make you wait any longer for these balance changes. I apologize that it has taken so long to get these changes out to you.

The Pike

By far the biggest point of complaint in the game's balance is the Pike scout craft, specifically its EO Targeting Ball. We've made a bunch of changes to the Pike, most importantly around the EO Targeting Ball by making it's track accuracy identical to the visual tracks ships receive when in visual range and also requiring completed intelligence on the target for a visual to be shown.

The Moorline

The Moorline lineship has received some nerfs to its capacity as a container missile platform. The Container Bank Launchers have been made more fragile, befitting a backline ship, and we've also shuffled some of the hull's default 6 missile channels into the container banks themselves so that salvo capacity can be degraded as banks are destroyed. The R-2 Piranha Rocket has also had additional cost given to it when used as a submunition in containers.

The Marauder

The Marauder lineship has had two C1 mounts removed from each hull core variant. These additional mounts were added during the Carriers Update development. Other mounts added from this update remain on the hull.

The SDM-2

The ability to carry the SDM-2 has been removed from both the Claymore and Sturgeon bombers so they can no longer be used as effectively for ASF roles.

AMM Doctrine Improvements

The missile editor now has a new defensive doctrine setup matrix, allowing you to configure your AMMs on a per-threat and per-size basis. This allows you to build an AMM which will fire a salvo size of 1 at a S2 conventional missile and a salvo size of 3 at a S3 hybrid missile.

Unity Security Patch

On Friday afternoon we also released an emergency patch of our underlying Unity Engine version, and we have seen a few negative side effects of that such as some UI lines failing to draw correctly. All of the reported bugs following the version switch have been fixed in this patch, but please continue to report any others, thank you.

See you in the Battlespace,

- The NEBULOUS Team

Changes/Features:

- Increased Pike EO Targeting Ball positional error to 20 meters (was 5) and velocity error to 10m/s/s (was 0.05), identical to visual tracks provided by ships normally.

- Pike EO Targeting Ball will now only reveal full visual of the target when intel identity is fully resolved.

- Pike EO Targeting Ball now does intel work on the currently targeted track.

- Increased Pike radar signature size.

- Increased Pike Illuminator Pod cone to 3 degrees (was 1).

- Decreased spacecraft group Radar EMCON signature modifier to -5% (was -25%).

- Changed SDM-2 missile type from 'Missile' to 'Boosted Missile'.

- Added 'S2/Boosted Missile' tag to VLS-2, SALS-2, TALS-2, and MLS-2 launchers.

- Added 'S2/Boosted Missile' tag to Tanto S2 Bay and Barracuda S2 Underwing Pylons.

- Increased SDM-2 warhead weight to 1.25 (was 0.75).

- Increased Mk610 Beam Turret DT to 40 (was 30).

- Removed two C1 mounts from each Marauder LN core segment.

- Decreased Container Bank Launcher HP to 200 (was 500), increased point cost to 25 (was 5), and increased rare debuff chance to 35% (was 15%).

- Decreased Moorline CLN hull-missilechannels intrinsic modifier to +1 (was +5).

- Added hull-missilechannels +1 modifier to Container Bank Launcher.

- Increased R-2 Piranha Rocket submunition cost multiplier to 1.5x (was 1x).

- Added a slight black outline to chat messages to help with visibility on bright maps.

- Added updated versions of all ship HUD silhouettes, scaled by hull size so frigates aren't the same size as battleships.

- Click detection size is still uniform across all icons.

- Added game settings option to disable icon scaling.

- Deployment placement arrows now show ship silhouettes.

- Lobby votes started by a player who leaves the lobby will now automatically be cancelled.

- Spacecraft groups that take more than 1.5x the expected amount of time to RTB because they are stuck on terrain, or any other reason, will now teleport back to their carrier.

- Added lead indicator when firing on a track.

- Added PD Doctrine modes to missile editor.

- UNIFORM mode has uniform salvo settings for all selected threat types.

- MATRIX mode has a matrix of salvo sizes for each threat type and size combination.

- Replaced PD missile reattack setting with Cooperative Defense settings.

Bug Fixes:

- Fixed battle report formatting getting messed up when switching from a view with no scroll bar to one with a scroll bar.

- Fixed ships in the ship list not having their formation lines updated correctly when exiting a formation.

- Fixed ships not firing AMMs at z-prio targets if there were no AMMs with matching doctrine.

- Fixed a bug in the round robbin sensor context processing which could lead to time overruns and severely impact performance.

- Fixed missing UI lines.

- Fixed errors from Graphics.CopyTexture during startup on lower graphics settings.