Here's a bit of a pre-xmas sneak peek on the progress of the new terrain engine. We're still heavily working on it, but the difference is already very notable. What do you think? Let us know in the comments below!

So, Intrusion 2.0 has been out for a little more than a week now and we’re happy to see the pew-pew it generates on the beta islands. Like every complex system it’s not perfect, so we’re performing small modifications based on your feedback over the coming weeks. We also intend to give both attackers and defenders a few additional strategic tools and features - more on this in a separate blog post soon.

Meanwhile, we’re working on the foundations of the player-built structures system, but we don’t want to leave you without new features and content for the rest of the year, so let’s have a look what we have in store for you in December.

The Scarab

I know most of you are waiting for this, so I won’t tease you any longer. As announced in our last newsletter, a new freighter-type robot is about to make its entry into the world of Nia. Its name is Scarab, and it’s the first member of a new robot class we call gliders.

The common feature of gliders is that they are hovering above the ground, which means they have excellent slope capabilities, and resistance against demobilization. They are also relatively big, which in turn means they make excellent targets too... We have plans for heavy and light glider classes, both in combat and industrial roles as well.

Scarab concept art
Scarab - work in progress model

The Scarab specifically is a heavy industrial glider, designed to transport huge amounts of cargo, a whopping 720 units. The bad news is that in order to keep it levitating, it has to have a pretty thin framework and light armoring, so it will be quite vulnerable. It does have 2 universal chassis slots that you can fill with medium weapons too, but heavy escorts are recommended. For support modules you’ll have 4 head slots and 1 leg slot to play with.

As for required extensions, you will need some higher levels in Advanced robot control and Industrial robot control, as well as the new Glider control extension, specific to the new class.

While we plan to have an Mk2 version of it, like for all robots in the game, that one will be only introduced a bit later.

Syndicate Supplies

Have you ever wanted to do a suitable assignment but got turned off by the reward bullets that you don’t use anyway? I know I did.

At first we wanted to give you an option to select your reward items before you accept the assignment, but that felt kinda limiting as well. So we decided to give you complete freedom by adding some universal faction tokens as assignment rewards, which you can exchange for things you really need.

The place where you can do the exchange will be a new base facility called Syndicate Supplies (formerly known as EC-shop). At the start it will offer the well-known advanced ammo types (which have become a bit of a rarity by now) for assignment tokens, but later on we will also include many more items purchasable for Energy Credits (yeah it’s coming a long way), or a combination of currencies. Just to be absolutely clear, this is not a microtransaction store, it uses new ingame currencies which you can gather by various activities.

New robot animations

You saw what we did to the Arkhe, now our animators are close to wrapping up the next bigger package. The 3 light combat robots and the 3 light EW-robots will get the same treatment soon, and will be sporting much better looking walking and running animations.

Beginner assignment improvements

During the past months we have replaced all level 1-2-3 assignments with better and more interesting ones, but before we move on to level 4 and up, we have to take a step back and have a look at the start of the game.

While the general feedback on the 10-part tutorial assignment line has been mostly positive, it is starting to get a bit outdated. The plan is to split it into two branches, one combat and one industrial-oriented, and include some newly introduced objectives, like artifact scanning, distress beacons and manufacturing. Players will be able to complete both branches, one with a combat light bot reward at the end, and the other with an industrial one. Our intention is to give everyone the opportunity to decide which path they want to take (it can be both too!), and to show them all the activities they can do in the game.

We’re also revamping the level 0 assignments; we know they are a pretty bad grind between the end of the tutorial and the start of the level 1 assignments. They will also make sure that you have some more interesting objectives to do than killing drones over and over, if you accidentally lose your first tutorial light bot and have only an Arkhe available.

DEV Alf is also brewing some NPC spawn balancing changes and some new modules and new weapon ammo types using cycle time modification, but the details still a bit hazy, so more on those a bit later :)

Christmas is coming too, so we plan to have some smaller PvE events, and we're starting to pick up some strange artifact signals again, too. Nothing fancy though, we know most of you have better things to do at that time than sitting in front of a computer. Or do you?

Anyways, questions and comments are more than welcome, as always!

The time has arrived to wrap up the final phase of the anniversary events, and our final step is to perform some sort of prize ceremony, for the lack of a better method, here on this blog. (We'll see if we can work on this somewhere down the line and add fireworks, ribbons and glow for the next occasion; right now you have to make do with overwrought verbal gymnastics and crude image manipulations.)

It has been an extraordinary weekend for us, seeing both the Agents in the audience and in the arena completely tuned to the same frequency and enjoying it as much as we enjoyed donning the visibility vests while rounding up the teams, conducting the matches as the officials, and pushing out the Zamboni afterwards to clear the arena of leftover robot parts. The great atmosphere certainly underlined our trust in the community Perpetuum has built around itself, it has been a great inspiration for us, and we're certainly gonna do this once again.

The execution of the tournament by was no means flawless, and I'd like to observe some things that we need to think about later: First off, the upper rim of the arena was way too popular, because it consisted of one single ring without any interruptions. We duly noted this and while we don't want to discourage long-range fighting, the amount of constant merry-go-rounding eventually just became silly after a while, and we'll certainly take steps against this next time. Another thing that gave us a bit of a headache was the obviously hasty decision of allowing matches to be decided with a coin-flip. This turned out to be a bad idea and we'll make sure to granulate the rules more specifically next time, perhaps including things like damage dealt or shots fired. (Again, these are just conclusions, not plans. We'll see.)

That all said, let's start the ceremony with a few people who we need to thank.

The "Jackie Stewart"-award for the commentary booth

The tournament certainly wouldn't have been as enjoyable as it was for people outside the arena if it wasn't for the amazing (and I mean that to the fullest extent) insights to the people who did the commentary with Mancs and Calvin on the stream: a big thank you go out to Lemon, Gremrod and GLiMPSE who attended our little livestream as guests, performed interviews and generally made the video stream entertaining even for people who weren't as savvy about the game as most of us. Their reward for their time and unwavering enthusiasm shall be a custom label on the forums reminding everyone that these people mean business.

The "Baby's First PVP" award for the best newcomer group

We'd like to take time to provide some kudos to the only corporation in the tournament who, despite being a fairly new PVE formation, decided to not only give the whole thing a shot but also managed to advance to the second round of the tournament, so a big hand goes to Rue Tang Clan for proving that even low EP players with enough dedication, creativity, a good understanding of game mechanics can match up any other group. They will receive what they probably need the most after the tourney: a round of reimbursements for their robots lost during those two matches.

The combined "Dale Earnhardt Jr."-award for most left turn laps around the arena and the "Garden Rake"-award for least rules observed

To commemorate the special moment of seeing four completely masked Troiars running full speed around the top rim of the arena for 30 minutes in hopes to avoid any sort of firefight and getting through the round via the coin flip, but ultimately realizing that they forgot to fill out the point cap and will be eliminated regardless, we'd like to present Infinity with a special Perpetuum 500 lightweight frame to aid them in their future efforts of legging it from firefights. This is also in honor of what we perceived to be the biggest surprise in tournament, eliminating M2S in the first round.

The "COME AT ME BRO"-award for most spectacular tanking

This one goes to a moment in a match we all found incredibly entertaining: We'd like to hand out our only individual award to Tux from 62nd, who successfully held his ground as a single robot for about 20 minutes after his team was destroyed early by Remedy, eating ridiculous amount of damage and EW like a boss. His reward will be, appropriately, a unique The Wall-brand shield hardener, to help him become comfortably numb.

...and now without further ado, let's hear it for the winners:

  • On runner-up place: Remedy Inc.
  • On third place: Crimson Imperium Reborn
  • On second place: Immortal Legacy

And finally, the winner of the first anniversary Perpetuum Tournament is:

With a nail-biting finale, CHAOS has shown us amazing proficiency, tactics and discipline as they marched through the rounds with their impenetrable Tyrannos squad, and they're well deserving to the champion title, and by proxy the free entry to the next tournament as reigning champion. The top three teams are already in the process of receiving their rewards (see details here), and all other participating teams will also receive a complimentary goodie package, so hopefully we can wrap all this up within a few days.

Once again, a big big honest Thank You to all the groups who have stepped up to participate, the players spectating in the audience, all the players who in the meantime roamed the fields in search for treasure, and all those who watched the weekend unfold on the video stream. (If you missed it, check the video archive here.)

We had a great time - hope to see even more of you in the next event!