Pilots, A significant systems update has been deployed. Until now, your failures have mostly been your own private concern. That arrangement has ended. The Rival Network is now online, connecting Pilots across Vectorfall. Their ships, builds, victories and unfortunate tactical decisions can now leave traces within your sectors. You have also been granted full access to Fleet Hot Swap, allowing you to deploy and switch between multiple ships during active operations. Try to contain your excitement. There is quite a lot to cover.
The Network is active. Vectorfall now features Steam-powered asynchronous multiplayer, allowing other Pilots to influence the challenges appearing throughout your sectors.
Other Pilots' ships, builds, sector records and defeats can now generate encounters within your game.
Collect Network Intel across all four biomes and pin discovered Signals for future runs.
Network Intel can reveal several new encounter types:
Pilot Echoes — Confront echoes of other Pilots and their builds.
Blackboxes — Recover encrypted records left behind by other Pilots.
Extraction Relays — Compete against Network records during extraction.
Vendettas — Hunt particularly dangerous targets. Presumably because regular danger was becoming insufficient.
You may now select another Pilot as an Active Rival.
Once selected, that Rival may invade your regular missions as an optional threat.
Defeat the Rival for additional rewards.
Alternatively, complete your objective while the Rival remains active.
Rivals are hostile to both you and the Sector's forces, occasionally producing the fascinating tactical situation known as everyone shooting everyone.
Network victories award Credits, while certain Echo and Rival encounters allow you to recover a module-base imprint from the opposing Pilot's build.
As always, rewards are only yours once you successfully extract.
Dying while carrying valuable technology remains an inefficient method of inventory management.
A new Player Threat system now evaluates both your combat performance and the strength of your deployed Fleet.
Your Threat changes dynamically based on:
Your strongest ships and equipped builds.
Mission completions.
Enemies defeated.
Damage sustained.
Failed runs.
Every operation now ends with a detailed Threat breakdown showing exactly how your rating changed.
You can compare your performance through Threat Records and progress through Network ranks from Bronze to Apex.
Your Profile now tracks your current rank, Network victories, Rival history and biome accomplishments. Your performance is officially being recorded. No pressure.
Pre-selecting a single ship before deployment is no longer required. You now deploy with access to your Fleet.
Hold F or Left D-Pad to open the Fleet radial selector. This input can be remapped.
Time slows while selecting a ship.
Switch between available Fleet ships at almost any time, subject only to a short cooldown.
Each ship maintains its own:
Hull
Shield
Energy
If your Pulse Interceptor is reduced to 10 Hull and you switch to a fresh Ghost, the Ghost enters combat with its own current Hull, Shield and Energy.
Your damaged Pulse Interceptor is stored exactly as you left it.
Switch back later and, regrettably, the damage will still be there.
Enemy kills award XP specifically to the ship responsible for the kill.
Multiple ships can therefore be individually levelled during the same run.
Your Fleet size, ship levels and equipped modules contribute directly to your base Player Threat.
A larger and more powerful Fleet means a higher Threat rating.
To support Fleet Hot Swap, shared module usage has been disabled.
A module may now be equipped to only one ship at a time.
Equipped modules can be quickly reassigned between ships.
Apparently duplicating advanced military hardware across an entire Fleet because you owned one copy was considered economically questionable. An unfortunate triumph of accounting over convenience.
Health, Shield, Energy and Dash Cooldown HUD elements have been completely redesigned.
The Radar has been removed.
Available Signal Spins will now automatically appear when logging in.
Hazards capable of knocking back Pilots can now also knock back enemies and block projectiles.
Slow Motion no longer activates from critical-hit kills.
It now activates when your Shield is depleted.
Particle effects have been updated across combat to provide greater visual impact.[/*
Numerous ship level bonuses have been increased across the Fleet.
Your ships are stronger. This information has already been forwarded to the Threat calculation system. You are welcome.
Several operational anomalies have also been corrected:
Mouse firing now releases correctly after dashing, missed pointer releases, focus loss, cancellation or application hiding.
Escape and Start/Menu now consistently toggle Pause and Resume.
Abandon confirmation correctly returns to the Pause screen.
Fullscreen tutorial prompts correctly block pausing and accept the gamepad south-face button once.
Deployed Beacons now immediately distract existing and newly spawned Patrols, suppressing player ambushes until the Beacon expires.
Remaining Mission and Merchant Pocket radar displays have been removed.
Merchant instances now render ships using the same equipped-module visuals and thruster systems used during missions and on the Sector Map.