A new tank enters the Alpha Program; Ikarus, Vanguard and Rook get some big updates; new tank mastery titles have been added; and a host of balance changes and bug fixes are in.
⚙️ General
Vehicles
New alpha tank added: Seeker
Description: Hunter-killer light tank armed with an accurate gun. Capable of extremely fast top speed, but has slow acceleration. Useful for tracking and quickly hunting hidden enemies.
Ability: Launch a tracking snitch droid that flies at and pings the closest unspotted enemy within 400m. Loiters at its initial location if no enemies are found.
Clans
You can now see three options of open clans you can quick-join and you can cycle the options to look for different clans to join
Clan leaders can now generate a new clan code to disable the previous one
Chat improvements:
Messages from the same author are now grouped together when received in quick succession
Common emoji short codes (like 🤣 for example) are now automatically replaced with the appropriate emoji when sending a message
Chat log is now separated by date
Clan rewards are now split out by claim
Ammunition
Siphon Shells
Base heal increased to 20 from 15
Components
Drift Sparker
The effect now requires you to continue your movement through the drift to get the speed buff on release (it won't happen if your drift becomes a stop)
The effect now increases max speed by 15% instead of 12kph
Design Note: Since the speed effect doesn’t trigger on stopped drifts anymore, the secondary confirmation audio cue that would play when you’ve held spacebar long enough has been removed. This was initially added when Drift Sparker required holding hoverdrift for 2+ seconds and it would now be inaccurate in cases where you come to a full stop.
Propagation Drive
Updated the tooltip to clarify that it also heals you for the same amount it increases your Max Health by
Quick Slot
Effect increased to 15% from 10%
UI
Equipped cosmetics will now show on your tanks in the pre-match tank selection screen
You can now jump to the next or previous tank in the Tanks detail screen, allowing for much easier comparison between tanks without needing to back-out of the detail screen
The auto-lock aim indicator now scales a bit smaller at far distances
The description for the Alpha Program has been updated to clarify that it gives access to Alpha Tanks while they are in the Alpha Program
Progression
Echo Scans have been renamed to Rushed Scans
XP requirement is now 50k from 500k
SLVR rewards have been reduced back to previous values
Salutes have been added back to the list of potential rewards
Anyone that had more than 50k XP progress on their Echo Scan when the patch landed has gotten a random charm drop as compensation for the reset
Design Note: Echo Scans were meant to be an end-of-track consolation reward that can still have a small chance of giving you something meaningful. The move to 10x the requirements and rewards was an attempt to make the scan more interesting when it unlocked, but ultimately we realized this was exacerbating a busted expectation. We’re renaming the scan type to Rushed Scans to try to set a better expectation and setting them back to 50k XP.
Replays
You can now select how many replays are saved in the settings, including unlimited
Performance
The HUD is more performant across all quality presets and resolutions
Improved server performance around vision system queries
Improved performance of armor queries when projectiles hit vehicles or the player's reticle was over a vehicle
Improved overall performance across all maps by reducing the vistas to no longer have shadows and collision
Improved sniper mode rendering performance by making some bush optimizations and no longer showing the transparent bushes for trees and bushes in the vistas
Cosmetics
New tank skins have been added:
Arbalest's Zero
Maul's Reentry
Atlas' Kingmaker
Kestrel's Venom
Misc
Tanks now leave tread trails on the ground in the areas they drive on
Pools of water now ripple and react to being driven through
Added server-side lag compensation for projectile weapons, improving hit registration under latency by evaluating shots against the historical positions of vehicles and obstacles when fired
Improved game server performance when loading from the lobby to the game
Hardened the backend services connection and properly communicate to the client when they get disconnected and are attempting to re-connect
Improved mature language filtering to not have as many false positives for both in-game names and clan names
High DPI Mode is now enabled by default allowing higher screen resolution options to be selected from the in-game settings
Changed the naming schema of the displays in the settings to be more in line with OS naming schemas
Steam errors now properly display in the client if Steam is having issues and preventing login
Improved overall bandwidth usage of the game
Reduced the amount of logging on the client to be less spammy
Hardened Matchmaking flow where you could get an error while going into a match which would cause a black screen to be shown
Added new Frame Pacing options to Graphics settings, including support for NVIDIA Reflex and AMD Anti-Lag. These can reduce input latency (the delay between pressing a button or moving the mouse and seeing it on screen), making aiming, camera movement, and vehicle controls feel more responsive, especially when the GPU is under heavy load.
🗺️ Maps
Sandbox
Updated the art visuals
Prototype: Expanse
Adjusted the area around the two center tunnels
There is now a large rectangular block spanning across the tunnels
The visuals for this are very placeholder, but the intention is to block off some of the sightlines between the east and west parts of the map
The tunnels now have scattered rocks inside them that can act as cover
The hills and bushes on the west side of the map have been adjusted slightly to better complement the now more closed off tunnel section
Prototype: Dunes
Fixed an issue that could let players Blink outside of the map
Added a map ceiling so players cannot fly out of the map
Fixed an issue that prevented Alecto Blinks, Tempest Recalls, and Ark Bushes on some parts of the map
🛞 Tanks
Atlas
Tertiary Shell tech node increased to 2 from 1
Deadeye
Updated side armor to be slightly stronger, allowing for some situational bounces on flat ground and some (unreliable) side scraping
Updated turret armor to be more intuitive to the visuals
The steeply-angled turret sides are no longer an overmatch for most vehicles
The mantlet plate of the vehicle is now thin
Design Note: While this will increase the power somewhat against low-pen vehicles, this is intended to be more of a “feel” change than a power one--aiming at an enemy Deadeye turret should now always be center-mass, and should be more in line with what you’d expect looking at the geometry of the vehicle. The armor is still not intended to be reliable, but may get some sporadic bounces here and there.
Fortis
Mines now provide module assists
Ikarus
Ability cost reduced to 25 from 30
Base Flight Form thrust time increased to 4.5 seconds from 3.5 seconds
The Extended Thrust keystone now increases thrust time by 30% from 60%
The Stealth Flight keystone now also reduces time spotted by 2 seconds
Hard Surface Speed tech node replaced with a node that reduces time spotted
Flight physics changes:
Glide physics altered such that turning "over the wing" no longer maintains excess kinetic energy
Glide phase turning is more reliably quick, and should cause slippage/stalling less often. This allows for tighter and more agile turns.
Glide phase drag reduced, so the vehicle keeps more forward speed in the air.
Design Note: These changes are aimed at making Ikarus more effective and versatile, particularly stock and regardless of which keystone it uses. The flight changes should allow Ikarus players to more reliably accomplish their initial goal, such as a strafing run or spotting enemies w/ stealth flight, and then have enough kinetic energy leftover to get to a safe landing spot (or another strafing run if you want to push your luck).
Ranger
Updated model, textures, and animations
Increased size of its track sprockets, thus increasing trackable area on the side of the vehicle
Cleaned up some thicknesses on very-angled plates to prevent some unreadable/unexpected bounces from the side, and thus making shooting the sides of the vehicle more reliable
Rook
Rook’s armor now has yellow intermediate zones. This means that in areas where the shooter’s penetration is within 10% of the armor thickness, they have a 50%/50% chance of penetrating.
Overall armor values have been adjusted slightly thicker to incorporate this change, particularly the armor on the gun mantlet and the central upper glacis
Tricera
Updated color and textures
Turret Traverse speed reduced to 24 from 28
Reload Time increased to 11 seconds from 10 seconds
Lingering Mist keystone effect reduced to 2 seconds from 2.5 seconds
Smoke Wall VFX now more closely contour to the shape of the terrain they’re over. The visual is still temporary and in progress.
Vanguard / Fuse
Vanguard has been renamed to Fuse
Apologies for the name change, we know this is always annoying and it takes a bit to adjust. Future Alpha Tanks that get added (like Seeker) will have their final names on entry to avoid this.
Max Speed reduced to 62kph from 65kph
Camouflage increased to 45% from 42%
Missiles now slightly knock back targets on impact
Missiles can now trigger other missiles on impact
Firing a missile no longer locks out the gun for 3s on impact and now causes a significant amount of dispersion instead
🪰 Bug Fixes
Fixed a bug with Atlas' corpse where it would do weird things when pushed
Fix a bug that caused shooting while using Maul’s Ram ability to not grant energy
Fixed Ranger Regenerative Suspension energy gain to account for global energy gain modifiers
Fixed cases where elevation / depression limit indicators did not update correctly or were placed in the wrong place on the screen. Also added some interpolation to these to prevent jumping.
Fixed slight camera drift when entering and exiting sniper camera caused by calculating the new aim point pitch and yaw from the turret center immediately, instead of calculating yaw first, finding the new muzzle location, and then finding pitch
Rocks on Expanse no longer provide a warp tunnel for Alecto to teleport into
Tank Deployment Roster screen will now move more smoothly, especially when scrolling through with arrow keys or using a gamepad
Unlocking a new tank will no longer show a brief visual glitch before the 3D garage set dressing finishes loading in
Fixed an issue where unlocking a new tank would stop handling gamepad input until the screen was dismissed with mouse or keyboard input
Fixed multiple cases where a button in the UI would not be the correct color
Fixed an issue where a loadout slot could not be renamed if the player was pulled into a match while renaming a loadout slot
Tank unlock SLVR price is now correctly updated after claiming battle XP
Fixed a case where clicking ‘NEXT’ before an XP progress bar finishes animating could leave future XP progress bars in the post-match screen stuck in a filled state
Summary progress bar for each tank in the Tanks tab now accurately reflects the current mastery progress of that tank
Squad code will now remain hidden between matches if hidden by the player (even when streamer mode is off)
Fixed a server crash when projectiles would hit a vehicle and the owner of the projectile was dead
Fixed vehicle unlock animation not showing when using pilot boosters
Fixed a bug with Weakness Analyzer that caused it to sometimes not register on module hits at close range
Fixed an issue where using the siege/healer shot at the same time as firing your normal weapon would cause an unnecessary reload
Mature Language filter settings is now properly honored across the game
Fixed an issue where the armor viewer would not properly consider rounding
Fixed an issue where the “Ready” text would not properly show after reloading
Fixed cases where Squads could get stuck as “IN GAME” if one of the Squad members didn’t properly connect to the lobby
Clan errors now show more meaningful errors
Fixed several issues where Windows Audio Defaults would clash with previously cached audio devices in the settings menu thus causing the audio to go to the wrong device
Fixed several issues with the spawn barrier showing up improperly as a dome or totally broken on lower quality settings
Improved GDPR flow to now not look so sketch when you got an email with your data
Fixed a case where the same results screen would be presented again when re-joining a custom game lobby
Fixed an issue that caused spotting notifications to sometimes animate from 0 degrees instead of the correct direction
Fixed an issue with late deaths not showing up properly in End-Of-Game stats and Match-End scoreboard
Fixed an issue where a deployed drone would stick around forever after its owner died
Fixed an issue where when hit by Arbalest ability and you had a charged ability as either Arbalest or Valor it would still show you as having a valid ability shell even though your ability module was hit
Fixed an issue where sometimes the turret rotation sound would loop forever in sniper mode
Fixed an issue where sometimes an empty shell or component slot in a loadout would cause it not to be able to be saved
Fixed an issue where sometimes titles would not properly show for all players in a lobby
Fixed Siphon Shells not granting health with a killing shot
Fixed Vanguard missile occasionally not attaching to an enemy when aiming at the very edges of the enemy armor