In this update, Ranger graduates to the main roster, and we introduce three new components: the ping wheel system, the medal system, two reworked keystones, and map collision refinements.
⚙️ General
Vehicles
Ranger graduates to the main roster!
It brings with it three new components it can unlock:
Redirector Gear: Increases Hull Rotation Speed by 10%. Effect doubles while you are reloading.
Overflow Shunt: Increases your damage by 1% per 10 Energy you’re holding
Cascade Gate: Using an ability while above 50 Energy increases your energy generation by 35% for 15 seconds
It can now be used in ranked play (and tournaments)
It can now level up to 30 and unlock mastery titles
Ping Wheel
Players now have a Ping Wheel to better communicate with teammates during battle:
There are 8 unique pings available to players, broken into context sensitive sets of four options
The ping wheel is accessible by holding down the T key, the middle mouse button, or left bumper on gamepad
Each ping displays an icon and light column on a specific point in the world or attached to a specific player
Most pings will display for all other teammates and spectators during battle (some, like “help” and “thanks” will only show for the player sending and the other player receiving the ping)
When aimed at terrain, players can ping “aim here,” “going here,” “caution here,” and “help me”
When aimed at a teammate, players can ping “advance,” “retreat,” “assist,” and “thanks”
Tapping the ping key or button will still ping as before:
When aimed at an ally, an “assist” ping will be sent to that player (the target player will see a ping on the ally who sent the ping)
When aimed at an enemy, a “target this enemy” ping will be sent (the enemy and enemy team will not see the ping)
When aimed at terrain, a basic ping will be sent to that location
Medals
You can now receive medals for matches with exceptional performance
You earn a medal when you get 6000 XP or more in a match
These medals are tracked for each tank and are shown on your tank grid and in the tank-specific details page
The medals will upgrade in color on the tank grid when you accumulate enough of them to cross specific thresholds
Components
Energy Vent now also increases Max Reverse Speed in addition to Max Speed and Hull Rotation Speed.
Three new components added with Ranger (see the above note on its graduation)
UI
Squad member in-game healthbars have a different color to differentiate them from other players on your team
While in Sniper mode, when aiming at a module, the text in the top right will now update to show what module is being aimed at, instead of just saying module
Ammunition
All shell trails' visual duration increased by 20%
Spotting Shells:
Targets that have been pinged (but not spotted) are now correctly shown the ping that notifies about detection
Spotting shells now have 40% lower Shell Damage and Shell Velocity
Vehicle Driving Physics
While at speed, vehicles should now have more lateral grip than previously
This means you should encounter less sliding when turning at medium-to-high speeds
Extreme cases should still experience sliding--for instance, if you land perpendicular to your direction of motion after going off a Ranger ramp, you’ll still slide.
This is intended to allow faster vehicles to more effectively use their top speed in more cases
Performance
Performance has been significantly improved when aiming through multiple bushes in sniper mode
Cosmetics
Ranger has a new skin: Ollie
New charms have been added:
Ranger Charm
Fortis Charm
Misc
The Alpha Program tank requirement is increased from 10 to 14 tanks unlocked
Phrases where we previously used “Hull Traverse” and “Turret Traverse” have been replaced by the clearer “Hull Rotation” and “Turret Rotation”
Energy capture zone now displays an updated energy icon to match the UI
Added new cooldown prediction system reducing the impact of latency on reload/swap and intra-clip times
Updated Steam SDK to latest
Alpha Tanks now have placeholder VO lines (from yours truly) to communicate ping information
🗺️ Maps
General
Collision across all maps has been improved
This has been a wide effort to dial in collision to match visual models while keeping the game highly performant. If you find areas where collision is still off compared to the visual model, please let us know.
Fields
The field energy zone has been moved ever so slightly north to get it more centered on its hill
Divide
A rock has been strategically placed near the exit path from the north side base to intercept early game cross-map shots
Scorch
The crevice below the lava crack on the east side has been widened. Instead of getting you stuck, drops into the crack are now lethal.
Prototype: Expanse
Pulled from the custom game map pool while we start work on the art for it
🛞 Tanks
Alecto
Shell swap time reduced to 2.5 seconds to match its reload time
Arbalest
Shell Fabrication keystone reworked:
Siege Amplification: Siege damage amplification increases by 5% each time you penetrate a Siege shot
Deadeye
Elevate will now stop midair if the turret will bump into an object instead of clipping through
If Deadeye is flipped mid ability, the ability is canceled
Increased the difficulty rating from 3 to 4
Fortis
Mine Heal Keystone reworked:
Mine Spread: Increases your Hull Rotation Speed by 60% while deploying mines
Allied shots can no longer impact with mines
Ikarus
We’ve introduced a suite of changes intended to make Ikarus more reliable to play as, and play against. A few goals for these changes were:
Limit the power of repeated strafing runs in one flight to allow for reasonable counterplay on the receiving end
Limit the amount of verticality the vehicle can attain, which made it easy to enter enemy gun elevation blind spots
Singular strafing runs should still exist and be viable
Make evasive maneuvers while flying more effective for dodging shots
Reduce the power of the vehicle’s damage in medium length engagements where you would get multiple reloads
Increase the power of the flight ability as a repositioning and straggler hunting tool
Design Note: We hope that these changes allow an Ikarus player to feel powerful when shifting in and out of flight form more commonly, while limiting the previous high-altitude dive bomb cases where Ikarus felt noninteractive.
The changes are:
Altered flight parameters:
Reduced base thrust duration from 4.5 to 3.0
Increased turn speed during thrust mode by 20%
Lowered drag in glide mode. (This is now be equivalent to the glide tuning the vehicle was at for the 7/30 patch)
Additional flight effects:
Removed the improved base accuracy Ikarus would get in flight form
While flying, rapid turning (either pitch or yaw) will now apply noticeable dispersion penalty
While flying, aim speed is increased by 20%
Design Note: Functionally, these changes mean you will now need to keep your nose pointed at your target for a bit to have reasonable accuracy in flight. We expect this should keep more horizontal strafing runs effective, while making more vertical up-and-down dive bombs more difficult.
Upon landing, the vehicle’s current Spotted Time is reduced drastically.
Design Note: This is intended to allow the vehicle to more safely land in more spots, increasing the flexibility of the flight.
Gun windup time reduced from 3s to 2s when transforming back from flight form
Base reload increased from 7s to 8s
Tech Tree:
The Hull Rotation Speed tech node has been replaced with one that heals Ikarus for 20/40/60 when transforming back out of flight form
Reload Speed tech node effect reduced from 0.75s/1.5s to 0.375s/0.75s
The ability icon has been updated
Phantom
Fixed a bug where Phantom would exit precision aim when turning while stationary
Added more tolerance to Phantom auto turn. This should reduce cases where the reticle gets stuck. This does not resolve all cases of this, but should make the experience generally better than before.
Ranger
Cleaned up some unexpected bounce areas when viewing the armor from the side
Reduced side armor from 30mm to 28mm
Reduced flat front plate armor from 55mm to 52mm
Fixed a bug where Ranger's ramps sometimes lost their boost power for the rest of the match
Fuse
Updated the description to include mention of Glom missiles detonating other glom missiles on contact
Lowered dispersion induced by firing a Glom by 20%
Fixed a number of issues with glom missile behavior.
Gloms should no longer get stuck in the air or bounce off of enemies
Helio’s lower plate will no longer eat shells targeted at gloms
Gloms should generally be more performant
Destroying a glom will “popcorn” nearby gloms
Glom death VFX should not fail to play in some cases
Glom missile flight should be smoother
Firing a Glom should no longer trigger a friendly glom stuck to your own vehicle
🦟 Bug Fixes
Reticle dispersion interpolation has been tuned to more closely match server values. This was introduced last patch, but the interpolation was slightly slow and could make reticle aim time and bloom appear delayed or slower than they actually are.
Fixed the secondary description for spotting assist energy tech nodes to say they provide 3% of the spotting value as energy rather than 2%
Fixed an issue in replays where whiz-by shell audio would continue to play for a few seconds after impacting a target
Fixed a bug where destructible walls would sometimes play their crumble effect after they were already broken
Fixed a bug where spectator free camera speed values were not assigned until speed was changed once
Fixed a bug with the Deadeye Elevate ability where the camera and aim location were offset to the side when on a slope
Fixed a bug where speed buff and speed debuff visual effects could apply more than once to a vehicle, resulting in persistent speed lines
The game no longer visually allows damage and capture point reduction after the game is over
Alpha Tank levels are no longer considered for ranked eligibility because they’re not usable in ranked
It is no longer possible to auto-lock allies unless your ability allows it, such as Valor heal shots
Fixed an issue where you could sometimes empty your clip in an auto-loader and not be able to fire unless you reloaded again
Energy shells now work properly when the target is destroyed by the shot
Fixed a bug where your selected game mode could switch back to Standard when someone left your squad
Fixed a bug where your clan’s member list could be out of date and not reflect the latest changes
Reload, swap, and intra-clip timers now show up consistently in the HUD
Fixed a bug where the loadout screen could stay open when the final lobby countdown timer starts
Fixed a rare case where the ready button in the lobby would not function
Fixed a bug where claiming multiple games could get stuck
Updated the home screen Discord link
The spawn wall should now always properly show up on your client
Removed redundant FOV LOD scaling on the landscape, which could cause visuals and collision on lower settings to be heavily out of sync
Fixed an issue with lag compensation hit notifications that could sometimes prevent VFX from properly displaying or cause issues with mines and Fuse gloms
Display resolutions now properly preserve across restarts. Note: there was always a bug where we were saving the wrong display index, so when you start the game, it may load on a different monitor if you have more than one display. This happened because we were not properly restoring the saved index, which was also being saved incorrectly.
Fixed the commander ability icon occasionally starting greyed out at the beginning of a match, even when the ability was ready to use
Fixed team kill totals on the end-of-game scoreboard undercounting scores from players who disconnected before the match ended
Fixed fall damage numbers displaying the enemy module icon left over from the last time you hit an enemy module
Fixed Fortis mines sometimes showing in enemy colors after you were killed and started spectating
Fixed certain bird bushes sometimes not spawning bird visuals