Helix

Class: Light robot specialized in electronic warfare

"The Helix is a good all-rounder when it comes to electronic warfare. While it may not be the toughest bot around, combining a light chassis with an assault-class undercarriage makes it probably the fastest."

Slots

• Head slots: 3
• Leg slots: 2
• Chassis slots: 3 (2x light turret/misc, 1x light/medium misc)

Bonuses (per extension level)

• 3% increase to EW strength
• 3% reduction to EW modules accumulator usage
• -0.10 to surface hit size
• 1% reduction to firearms cycle time
• +2 to signal masking

Notable stats

• Accumulator: 350 AP @ 120sec recharge
• CPU: 220 TF
• Reactor: 170 RP
• Armor: 725 HP
• Passive resistances: 45 points universally (31%)
• Surface hit size: 3 m
• Locking range: 350 m
• Sensor strength: 110 Hw³
• Signal detection: 75 rF
• Signal masking: 120 rF
• Cargo capacity: 3.75 U
• Slope capability: 56°
• Mass: 6000 kg
• Base speed: 129.6 kph

Syndicate Supplies cost

• 80 TM tokens
• 80 ICS tokens
• 80 ASI tokens
• 800,000 NIC

Callisto

Class: Mech specialized in electronic warfare

"Employing our own technologies and incorporating all the knowledge that we have gained from the Nian factions, the Callisto is an elusive and flexible mech for tackling and shutting down enemy units."

Slots

• Head slots: 4
• Leg slots: 4
• Chassis slots: 3 (3x light/medium turret/misc)

Bonuses (per extension level)

• 3% increase to EW strength
• 3% reduction to EW modules accumulator usage
• -0.10 to surface hit size
• 1% reduction to firearms cycle time
• +2 to signal masking

Notable stats

• Accumulator: 2600 AP @ 360sec recharge
• CPU: 450 TF
• Reactor: 700 RP
• Armor: 1350 HP
• Passive resistances: 45 points universally (31%)
• Surface hit size: 6 m
• Locking range: 400 m
• Sensor strength: 120 Hw³
• Signal detection: 110 rF
• Signal masking: 110 rF
• Cargo capacity: 7.5 U
• Slope capability: 45°
• Mass: 16500 kg
• Base speed: 95.4 kph

Syndicate Supplies cost

• 700 TM tokens
• 700 ICS tokens
• 700 ASI tokens
• 8,000,000 NIC

Legatus

Class: Heavy mech specialized in firearms

"Alluding on its appearance our engineers have nicknamed it "Doc". Aptly so, as the Legatus can administer a swarm of good old glowing hot bullets at a relatively long range for those in need. And that without writing out a prescription."

Slots

• Head slots: 4
• Leg slots: 6
• Chassis slots: 6 (2x light/medium turret, 2x light/medium turret/misc, 2x light/medium turret/misc/industrial)

Bonuses (per extension level)

• 3% increase to firearms optimal range
• 3% increase to firearms damage
• -0.20 to surface hit size
• 1% reduction to firearms cycle time
• +3 to passive resistances
• 9% reduction to NEXUS modules accumulator usage

Notable stats

• Accumulator: 3850 AP @ 720sec recharge
• CPU: 370 TF
• Reactor: 1200 RP
• Armor: 3750 HP
• Passive resistances: 45 points universally (31%)
• Surface hit size: 9 m
• Locking range: 350 m
• Sensor strength: 90 Hw³
• Signal detection: 90 rF
• Signal masking: 90 rF
• Cargo capacity: 12 U
• Slope capability: 45°
• Mass: 34000 kg
• Base speed: 72 kph

Syndicate Supplies cost

• 2,000 TM tokens
• 2,000 ICS tokens
• 2,000 ASI tokens
• 20,000,000 NIC

Metis

Class: Heavy mech specialized in combat support

"Exceptional energy output and defense capabilities - two traits that turn this heavy mech into an indispensable powerhouse on the battlefield. The Metis is the holy grail of remote support, which usually makes it a primary target in the eyes of enemy commanders."

Slots

• Head slots: 6
• Leg slots: 6
• Chassis slots: 6 (2x light/medium industrial, 3x light/medium misc/industrial, 1x light/medium turret/missile/misc)

Bonuses (per extension level)

• 3% reduction to engineering modules cycle time
• 3% increase to armor repair amount
• 3% reduction to accumulator recharge time
• 1% increase to armor hit points
• -0.30 to surface hit size
• 9% reduction to NEXUS modules accumulator usage

Notable stats

• Accumulator: 3800 AP @ 360sec recharge
• CPU: 600 TF
• Reactor: 1200 RP
• Armor: 5500 HP
• Passive resistances: 45 points universally (31%)
• Surface hit size: 13 m
• Locking range: 230 m
• Sensor strength: 100 Hw³
• Signal detection: 70 rF
• Signal masking: 70 rF
• Cargo capacity: 21 U
• Slope capability: 45°
• Mass: 60000 kg
• Base speed: 66.6 kph

Syndicate Supplies cost

• 4,000 TM tokens
• 4,000 ICS tokens
• 4,000 ASI tokens
• 40,000,000 NIC

Balancing changes

Tuning module rebalancing

The last patch introduced diminishing returns when using tuning modules in the form of exponentially increasing accumulator usage. The changes were a bit on the brute force side, so in 3.8.3 we are refining this concept further and create some diversity between tuning module tiers.

There is now an efficiency difference between tiers (efficiency meaning what you get from the module for the accumulator used). T1 and T3/T3- have balanced efficiency, T2/T2+ have higher efficiency (meaning the energy usage penalty is less than the provided bonus), and T4/T4+ have low efficiency (energy penalty is higher than the bonus).

In practice this means that if you want to go for maximum bonuses using multiple high tier tunings, you'll experience exponentially higher accumulator usage with every additional tuning. However, if you are concerned about accumulator stability, you can choose lower tier tunings, which provide lower bonuses, but at much better efficiency, with lower accumulator usage penalties.

ARMOR REPAIR TUNINGS

• The additional remote repair accumulator penalty has been removed, as the armor repair penalty also affects remote repair modules.
• To make things more simple, cycle time modification has been removed (hence all the 1s in the "After" table here) so the new balance is done using only accumulator modification and repair amount modification.

BEFORE

TIER	Acc MOD	Repair MOD	Cycle MOD
T0	1.3	1.1	0.97
T1	1.3	1.3	0.95
T2	1.3	1.3	0.95
T2+	1.3	1.35	0.95
T3-	1.3	1.4	0.92
T3	1.3	1.4	0.92
T4	1.3	1.5	0.9
T4+	1.3	1.55	0.9

AFTER

TIER	Acc MOD	Repair MOD	Cycle MOD	Ratio
T0	1.4	1.1	1	0.79
T1	1.2	1.2	1	1
T2	1.1	1.2	1	1.09
T2+	1.15	1.3	1	1.13
T3-	1.4	1.4	1	1
T3	1.4	1.4	1	1
T4	1.6	1.45	1	0.91
T4+	1.7	1.55	1	0.91

INDUSTRIAL TUNINGS

BEFORE

TIER	Acc MOD	Gather MOD
T0	1.3	1.1
T1	1.3	1.3
T2	1.3	1.3
T2+	1.3	1.35
T3-	1.3	1.4
T3	1.3	1.4
T4	1.3	1.5
T4+	1.3	1.55

AFTER

TIER	Acc MOD	Gather MOD	Ratio
T0	1.4	1.1	0.79
T1	1.2	1.2	1
T2	1.1	1.2	1.09
T2+	1.15	1.3	1.13
T3-	1.4	1.4	1
T3	1.4	1.4	1
T4	1.6	1.45	0.91
T4+	1.7	1.55	0.91

EnWAR TUNINGS

• EnWar tunings did not have a diminishing returns factor so far, quite the contrary actually. The more tunings you used, the better your drainers/neutralizers became. This is turned around with the new values, so efficiency is either balanced (T1/T2), or reduced (T3/T4) the more tunings you equip.
• This is more interesting for neutralizers since the used and neutralized energy amounts are more closer; for T4 medium tunings the turning point in efficiency (when you need to sacrifice more energy than the amount you neutralize) arrives at using 3x tunings. (For those curious, in the case of T4 medium drainers this theoretically happens at 17x tunings.)
• The difference between drained and neutralized energy modification has been removed.

BEFORE

TIER	Acc MOD	Drain MOD	Neut MOD
T1	1.1	1.1	1.2
T2	1.1	1.1	1.2
T3	1.1	1.13	1.23
T4	1.1	1.15	1.25

AFTER

TIER	Acc MOD	Drain MOD	Neut MOD	Ratio
T1	1.1	1.1	1.1	1
T2	1.1	1.1	1.1	1
T3	1.2	1.13	1.13	0.94
T4	1.3	1.15	1.15	0.88

WEAPON TUNINGS

• Creating a difference in accumulator usage modifiers between the weapon types was a bad idea, now all types of weapon tunings use the same values. This retains the specific accumulator usage traits of each weapon and creates the same efficiency reduction curve when using multiple tunings.
• The same tier efficiency ratio differences are used here as for repair and industrial tunings.
• Cycle time modification has been removed here as well, efficiency is controlled by only accumulator usage versus damage modification.

BEFORE (magnetic weapon tunings taken as the example)

TIER	Acc MOD	Damage MOD	Cycle MOD
T0	1.5	1.03	0.97
T1	1.5	1.05	0.95
T2	1.5	1.05	0.95
T2+	1.5	1.055	0.95
T3-	1.5	1.075	0.95
T3	1.5	1.075	0.95
T4	1.5	1.075	0.925
T4+	1.5	1.085	0.925

AFTER (for all wapon types)

TIER	Acc MOD	Damage MOD	Cycle MOD	Ratio
T0	1.4	1.05	1	0.75
T1	1.1	1.1	1	1
T2	1.05	1.1	1	1.05
T2+	1.05	1.2	1	1.14
T3-	1.3	1.3	1	1
T3	1.3	1.3	1	1
T4	1.55	1.4	1	0.9
T4+	1.7	1.5	1	0.88

Medium firearm balancing

Long range firearms (autocannons) were using disproportionally less energy than their short range brothers, so their accumulator usage has been brought in line.

BEFORE (Machine gun vs Autocannon)

MG	Cycle	Accumulator	Damage	DPS	Accu per sec	DPS ratio*	Accu ratio*
T1	4	2	160	40	0.50	1.49	2.00
T2	4	1	160	40	0.25	1.49	2.00
T3	4	2	170	42.5	0.50	1.51	4.00
T4	3	2	135	45	0.67	1.44	2.67

AC	Cycle	Accumulator	Damage	DPS	Accu per sec
T1	8	2	215	26.875	0.25
T2	8	1	215	26.875	0.13
T3	8	1	225	28.125	0.13
T4	8	2	250	31.25	0.25

AFTER (Machine gun vs Autocannon - accumulator usage brought in line, tier cycle times equalized)

MG	Cycle	Accumulator	Damage	DPS	Accu per sec	DPS ratio*	Accu ratio*
T1	4	2	160	40	0.50	1.49	1.45
T2	4	1.5	160	40	0.38	1.49	1.46
T3	4	2	170	42.5	0.50	1.51	1.51
T4	4	2.5	180	45	0.63	1.44	1.43

AC	Cycle	Accumulator	Damage	DPS	Accu per sec
T1	8	2.75	215	26.875	0.34
T2	8	2.05	215	26.875	0.26
T3	8	2.65	225	28.125	0.33
T4	8	3.5	250	31.25	0.44

* DPS and Accumulator ratio is MG/AC
** DPS is calculated with using 1 damage ammos for simplicity's sake and doesn't consider ciritical hits

Weapon hit dispersion balancing

In order to widen the gap between light and medium weapons, the hit dispersion of guns and the explosion size of missiles got increased. This increases survivability of light robots against larger robots (if the latter use medium weapons, which they mostly do).

Weapon	Before	After
Short Laser	8	16
Long Laser	8	18
Short Magnetic	10	18
Long Magnetic	10	20
Short Firearm	12	22
Long Firearm	10	20
Compact Missile	8	14
Ballistic Missile	9	16

NEXUS module specialization

NEXUS modules are being rebalanced to become a specialty for heavy-class robots. This is achieved by drastically increasing the accumulator usage of the modules, and adding a strong accumulator usage reduction bonus to the robots themselves. In practice this means that the following robots will be able to use NEXUS modules efficiently:

• Gropho
• Seth
• Mesmer
• Lithus
• Legatus
• Metis
• Riveler
• Symbiont
• Scarab

NEXUS-related extensions will be reimbursed during the patch in order to let players reconsider their usage.

Other changes

• Increased the missile cycle time bonus of Troiar, Ictus, and Gropho from 1% to 3% per extension level.
• Doubled the mass of light armor plates and tripled the mass of medium armor plates.

Deployment

Patch 3.8.3 including the final wave of Syndicate robots and all the above changes will be deployed next week - the exact day and time will be announced soon.

Cronus

Class: Assault robot specialized in mining and harvesting

"The Cronus is the missing link between the light and mech class Nian industrial robots, suitable for both mining and harvesting duties.

Although it can't really compete with the higher robot classes regarding productivity, its versatility makes it the Swiss Army knife of small-scale industrial operations."

Slots

• Head slots: 3
• Leg slots: 3
• Chassis slots: 4 (2x light industrial, 2x light/medium industrial)

Bonuses (per extension level)

• 3% increase to mined amount
• 3% increase to harvested amount
• 3% reduction to industrial module cycle time
• 3% reduction to accumulator recharge time
• +2 to signal masking

Notable stats

• Accumulator: 1400 AP @ 300sec recharge
• CPU: 220 TF
• Reactor: 310 RP
• Armor: 1000 HP
• Passive resistances: 45 points to kinetic/seismic/thermal (31%), 30 points to chemical (23%)
• Surface hit size: 5 m
• Locking range: 200 m
• Sensor strength: 100 Hw³
• Signal detection: 90 rF
• Signal masking: 105 rF
• Cargo capacity: 12 U
• Slope capability: 51°
• Mass: 15000 kg
• Base speed: 99 kph

Syndicate Supplies cost

• 60 TM tokens
• 60 ICS tokens
• 60 ASI tokens
• 750,000 NIC

Hermes

Class: Assault robot specialized in exploration

"The Nians apparently don't care much for their own history, so there wasn't any specialized robot that we could use as our own to discover underground artifacts.

However, with the use of hybrid technologies we were able to build the Hermes - an assault robot that is not only equipped with accurate and high range underground sensors, but also has ample combat capabilities to defend itself when facing an ambush."

Slots

• Head slots: 3
• Leg slots: 3
• Chassis slots: 4 (2x light turret/misc, 2x light/medium turret/misc/industrial)

Bonuses (per extension level)

• 3% increase to artifact scanning range
• 3% increase to geoscanner accuracy
• 3% increase to firearms damage
• 1% reduction to firearms cycle time
• +2 to signal masking

Notable stats

• Accumulator: 450 AP @ 240sec recharge (updated!)
• CPU: 120 TF
• Reactor: 300 RP
• Armor: 800 HP
• Passive resistances: 45 points to kinetic/seismic/thermal (31%), 30 points to chemical (23%)
• Surface hit size: 4 m (updated!)
• Locking range: 200 m
• Sensor strength: 100 Hw³
• Signal detection: 90 rF
• Signal masking: 100 rF
• Cargo capacity: 16 U
• Slope capability: 56° (the same as light robots)
• Mass: 14000 kg
• Base speed: 108 kph

Syndicate Supplies cost

• 60 TM tokens
• 60 ICS tokens
• 60 ASI tokens
• 750,000 NIC

Balancing changes

• Increased the base speed of the Argano and the Laird (including all variants) from 104.4 kph to 109.8 kph.
• Replaced the artifact scanning range bonus of the Argano with a bonus to signal masking.

Deployment

Patch 3.8.2 including the two new robots and the above mentioned changes will be deployed next week - the exact day and time will be announced soon.

Echelon

Class: Mech specialized in firearms

"The big brother of the Locust in every way, employing the same self-adjusting armor plating technology and stabilized machine guns. Syndicate generals usually like to put the Echelon where it belongs: to the forefront of intense battles."

Slots

• Head slots: 4
• Leg slots: 5
• Chassis slots: 4 (2x light/medium turret, 2x light/medium turret/misc)

Bonuses (per extension level)

• 2% reduction to the hit dispersion of guns
• 3% to firearms damage
• 1% to firearms cycle time
• -0.10 to surface hit size
• 2% to demobilizer resistance

Notable stats

• Accumulator: 1800 AP @ 420sec recharge
• CPU: 250 TF
• Reactor: 900 RP
• Armor: 2900 HP
• Passive resistances: 45 points universally (31%)
• Surface hit size: 7 m
• Locking range: 300 m
• Sensor strength: 130 Hw³
• Signal detection: 130 rF
• Signal masking: 90 rF
• Cargo capacity: 9 U
• Mass: 28000 kg
• Base speed: 90 kph

Syndicate Supplies cost

• 250 TM tokens
• 250 ICS tokens
• 250 ASI tokens
• 4,000,000 NIC

Daidalos

Class: Mech specialized in transportation

"We call it 'the hauler with a punch'. The Daidalos is a curious experiment in our efforts aimed to create a versatile transport robot that's more than just a sitting duck when ambushed.

Capacity-wise it fits right between the assault and heavy mech class transports, and while it's not as tough as the Lithus, when aided by a few combat escorts it is more than capable of helping out with some damage-dealing on its own."

Slots

• Head slots: 3
• Leg slots: 5
• Chassis slots: 4 (2x light/medium turret, 2x light/medium industrial)

Bonuses (per extension level)

• 10% to firearms damage (that's no mistake, it is 10% damage increase per level)
• -0.20 to surface hit size
• 1% to armor hit points
• +3 to passive resistances
• +2 to signal masking

Notable stats

• Accumulator: 1800 AP @ 480sec recharge
• CPU: 220 TF
• Reactor: 500 RP
• Armor: 2000 HP
• Passive resistances: 45 points to kinetic/seismic/thermal (31%), 30 points to chemical (23%)
• Surface hit size: 8 m

• Locking range: 200 m
• Sensor strength: 100 Hw³
• Signal detection: 110 rF
• Signal masking: 100 rF
• Cargo capacity: 160 U
• Mass: 48000 kg
• Base speed: 81 kph

Syndicate Supplies cost

• 350 TM tokens
• 350 ICS tokens
• 350 ASI tokens
• 5,000,000 NIC

Balancing changes

Like in the case of the first wave, robot balance has been reviewed within the currently released class, although this time I felt like a small boost to the Tyrannos was the only change necessary.

The already released Syndicate robots have been also revisited, and based on your feedback and my testing sessions, a few balancing changes have been made.

The list of changes:

• Increased the missile cycle time bonus of the Tyrannos from 1% to 3% per extension level.
• Reduced the base surface hit size of the Vektor from 3 to 2.5.
• Reduced the base surface hit size of the Locust from 4 to 3.5.
• Increased the NIC cost of the Locust from 500,000 to 750,000 (token costs remain unchanged).
• Increased the base mass of the Locust from 11,800 kg to 15,000 kg (which means less speed reduction coming from equipped modules).

Deployment

All this is part of patch 3.8.1, which will be deployed tomorrow, September 23 at 15:00 CEST/servertime (13:00 UTC). Downtime is estimated to last about 1 hour.

Beta 1 reworks

After the rework of Alpha 2 islands, Beta 1s are next in line to receive the teleport and highway network treatment, and of course the new assignments and field terminals. Those of you who follow the relevant testing topic have already seen the new network proposals, and provided some useful feedback too (thanks!).

So here are the before/after maps for Hokkogaros, Domhalarn, and Norhoop. These will soon hit the test server (with a few smaller changes based on your feedback) and be part of our next patch.

Distress beacon changes

In the last patch we have temporarily disabled the deployment of distress beacons, in order to allow us to finally remove some much hated mechanics that have been implemented a long time ago to battle the unwanted tricks players could do with beacons.

Distress beacons will be re-enabled in our upcoming patch, although with some significant changes:

• New teleport anomalies will start spawning on all zones, which are a side effect of enemy teleport activity. You will only be able to deploy distress beacons in the close vicinity of these, which will basically “hijack” enemy teleport jumps and pull them out at your location.
• Once a beacon is activated, the anomaly will despawn and enemy NPCs will start spawning like before. So one anomaly, one beacon.
• Teleport anomalies will have 3 levels, which will limit the type of beacons that you can use with them. Level 1 beacons can be used anywhere, level 2 only on beta and gamma, and level 3 will be gamma only.
• Levels are the equivalent of stripes that we’ve had so far too on the icons. Beacon names and icons have been already updated to be more straightforward, so you don’t have to wonder anymore whether “platoon” or “commando” is the higher one.
• Teleport anomalies will also emit significant interference (on beta and gamma), so it will also affect PvP a bit. They are destroyable though.
• The multiple activators requirement will be removed, all beacons can be activated solo.
• The volume of distress beacons will be reduced from 1 to 0.1 U.

Reworked artifact scanning

Another mechanic that we wanted to give priority to is artifact scanning, mostly due to the relatively high amount of help requests and reports about players getting stuck with it or not really understanding how it worked.

The new artifact scanning breaks away from the triangulation method, and is much more similar to directional geoscanning:

As you can see on the screenshot, the scanner provides a list of the artifacts in range like before, but additionally to the range it also gives you a bearing indicator which will guide you to the scanned location. Note that I wrote “scanned location”, since the results can have a significant deviation, depending on your distance from the actual artifact and the accuracy rating of your equipment.

In practice this mechanic still requires multiple scans to narrow down the exact location (unless the random gods really love you), but it should be much more straightforward and intuitive than the old one.

Both the new distress beacon mechanic and the new artifact scanning method will hit the test server in a few days, so you'll be able to get a feel for them soon.

Terminal facility balancing

This is also coming in our next patch, involving some number juggling around terminal and outpost facility efficiency points. Currently there is not enough difference between Alpha and Beta facilities to warrant serious Beta-based facility usage in light of the much higher risk, so we’d like to balance this out a bit. (relevant forum discussion can be found here)

Here is how the new facility points will look like:

Alpha 1 main terminals:

• All 0 (no change)

Alpha 1 outposts:

• Current: 0 / 50 (higher on selected facilities)
• New: 0 / 25

Alpha 2 main terminals:

• Current: All 50
• New: 25 / 50

Beta main terminals:

• Current: All 50
• New: 50 / 100

Beta outposts:

As you know the facilities here can be manually upgraded 3 times each, using a maximum of 10 points at the highest stability (1 point per 10 stability).

• Currently the levels are: 0 - 50 - 100 - 125
• This would be changed to: 50 - 100 - 125 - 150

(Meaning even if you don't spend any upgrade points, all the outpost facilities are at 50)

We’re also working on a facility downgrade option for Beta outposts, so you won’t have to destabilize your own outpost if you want to change around your facility points.

And last but not least, we’ll boost the relation factor in facility efficiencies. With the rebalanced relation progression in assignments, its current influence feels like not enough gain for all the fuss, so we’ll more or less bring it in line with the facility and extension factors.

Closing

So all the above mentioned stuff is coming in our new patch, which is currently slated for around early/mid October.

I’ll leave you with a picture of our freshly updated internal tool, which we’re using to create robot templates by mixing around their body parts. (You don’t want to know how the old one looked, it didn’t even have a 3D preview.) This is in preparation for the new Syndicate robots mentioned in the roadmap blog, and it really speeds up figuring out the good/useful combinations.

We’d also like to put this this tool into the test client so you can play around with it and show us your ideas, possibly even create a contest around this.

After some public testing, forum feedback, collecting tears, and more number juggling, we now present you the final details.

The main goals of this balancing package are:

• Boost light and assault robots considerably.
• More diverse robot bonuses, but they generally provide less value increase. This also lessens the gap between high-level veteran players and less fortunate newbies.
• Push robots more towards their intended roles.

Colorful spreadsheets coming up.

We're also introducing 3 new extensions under the Robot control category:

• Combat robot specialist - Required extension for all combat robots, and controls the combat role bonuses.
• Industrial robot specialist - Required extension for all industrial robots, and controls the industrial role bonuses.
• Hi-tech robot specialist - Required extension for all Mk2 robots, and controls the special Mk2 bonuses.

The combat and industrial robot specialist extensions are becoming starter extensions, thus every existing character will receive these two on level 1 during the patch.

Additional notes

• The effect of the mass gain of light robots may not be clear for everyone: increased base mass for robots lessens the speed reduction effect of equipped modules.
• We cleaned up some parameters of prototype robots, this means either slight increases or reductions. Compared to normal robots, light/assault prototypes now have +5 CPU/reactor and +10 sensor strength, while mechs/heavy mechs have +10 CPU/reactor/sensor strength.
• Mk2 robots retain their special extra bonuses (so they still have one additional bonus compared to standard bots), but these are now controlled by a new extension.
• The Baphomet loses its lone missile slot, as a consequence we'll remove all modules and ammo from this slot in all existing Baphomets and place them back into the same storage during the patch.
• Although the Waspish gains a second small/medium mixed missile slot to bring it in line with the other two assaults, to make it look badass these have to be on its sides. So instead the top/back slot will lose the medium fitting and as such we'll also remove any equipped module from this slot during the patch.
• Do note that assaults received a considerable reactor boost to make room for those medium modules.

The patch itself will be deployed to the live server today at 14:00 CET/server time. We'll be also performing some server and database maintenance, so the estimated downtime will be about 2 hours.

ps. This isn't the monthly report, that's still coming.

This brings me to the main announcement of this blog. As outlined in the previous status report, once we’re looking at a stable gamma system, we’re ending our Early Access phase on Steam.

Originally the EA phase was meant to be quite short, basically to make sure that our new servers work as they should and our integration with Steam is flawless. But because of the removal/revamp of gamma islands the game has lost a large chunk of its content, we decided to extend EA until it’s finished. Of course we could still wait until we’re done with the mission system revamp, and with new PvE content, and the new engine, and and and… but that would be a vicious cycle and we’d be stuck in there forever. With the new changes of the Steam UI it has also become even less desirable to stay in Early Access for longer than absolutely necessary, simply from a visibility standpoint.

So with that said, we’re officially launching on Steam this Friday, the 17th of October. And as it is the case with all newly launching games, Perpetuum will be -10% off for a week.

Of course this won’t really change much from a development perspective, we’re continuing on the road we have laid out and keep improving the game.

New mineral system

We’re also planning a small patch for this Thursday (version 3.5.2), with a few bug fixes, and something that we wanted to do for a while now. This is a reworked mineral spawning system, which won’t mean too much difference in gameplay at first, but it makes our lives easier and it’s also more optimal for the server and the database.

To get a bit more technical, mineral fields so far have been generated and stored in raw bitmaps, and “fields” as a concept did not actually exist. Minerals in ground tiles had no connection to each other, and we couldn’t tell whether two tiles belonged to the same mineral field or not. This made it practically impossible to create rules and mechanics that would affect a whole mineral field.

With the new system, fields are node-based and are stored hierarchically in the database, which makes it very easy to let a whole field despawn without any residue after a certain time for example.

The system is very different compared to the current one, which will result in all the mineral fields being reset, so please be aware of this.

From a balancing standpoint we’ll also take this opportunity and make the faction-specific mineral difference even more significant, going from a 1:1.5 ratio of non-faction:faction minerals on an island to a 1:2 ratio.

Intrusion and gamma changes

Two relatively small but very significant changes will happen here, based on forum feedback and our observations, which will be deployed in the patch after the next one (3.5.3).

The change related to gamma islands is that we’ll be lifting the limit of 3 terminals per island. We have anticipated this change and mentioned before gammas were opened that we’re playing it safe but this might happen, but now we’re sure it has to go. The remaining terminal-to-terminal range limit and the red no-build areas should be enough to provide a soft limit for the number of terminals on an island.

The change to intrusions will bring an end to the automatic stability increase of beta outposts, and will require the owner corporation to complete their own SAP events as well. This will be the only way to increase the stability of outposts; if an event happens without any interaction then the stability will remain unchanged. Attacking corporations completing SAP events will of course still reduce stability, like they do now. As a result of this change, intrusion events should be more fast-paced and straightforward as defenders won’t have to stand around for two hours waiting for someone to come, but it will also require more effort to keep an outpost stable.

Robot balancing

We’re preparing a larger balancing patch that affects pretty much every robot in the game. The general aim is to boost light and assault class robots, and to stimulate or rather make room for a larger variance in weapon and module choices for all robots.

Listing all the changes specifically would be too much for this blog, but here are the main points:

• Light and assault bots get additional head and/or leg slots.
• They also get a slight CPU and reactor boost...
• ...and a 25% mass increase, so equipped modules don’t affect their speed that much.
• The current faction-specific weapon damage bonus of all combat robots will be changed to a combination of a larger general weapon damage bonus plus a smaller faction-specific weapon damage bonus. This means that your robot will be less “crippled” when using weapons other than its faction-specific ones.
• Weapon-specific bonuses of assaults and mechs will be size-independent, so assaults will receive bonuses for medium weapons, and mechs for light weapons too.
• All robots will receive an extra bonus that is either connected to their intended role or their faction.
• We’d like to emphasize the scout role of light combats, so they receive a detection bonus.
• Combat assaults receive an optimal range bonus in order to take on longer-ranged mechs more easily.
• Light EWs get a small bonus to their faction-specific weapon cycle times to increase their combat capabilities a bit.
• Combat mechs should be as agile as possible on the battlefield, so they receive a bonus to demobilizer resistance.
• EW mechs’ main role is to disrupt from the distance, this means an EW module optimal range bonus for them.
• Combat heavy mechs, being the slow fortresses they are, receive a small survivability boost with the help of armor resistance bonuses.
• Industrial light robots get an accumulator capacity bonus giving them more working stability or even survivability, depending on their loadout.
• Industrial mechs will be pushed more towards a combat support role with remote support module and sensor strength bonuses, while still retaining their primary mining and harvesting bonuses.
• We’re also making indy heavy mechs a bit more sturdy with a bonus to their armor amount.
• It’s not all that bright of course, so don’t be surprised if there will be also nerfs to some robots’ specific bonuses.

Mk2 robots have special bonuses and those will stay as they are, but basically Mk2s (and other special variants like prototypes) will get the same treatment as their normal counterparts.

These can still change as we will still go through all of these modifications again in the coming week. It will also hit the public test server first since we’re of course curious about your feedback too, so we don’t have an exact schedule for this other than “soon”.

Closing

Although this report is mainly about the impending and shortly upcoming changes, don’t forget that the larger updates outlined in the September and May status reports are still in effect. So the next blog post should tell you more about the incoming second stage of our mission system revamp. Or maybe another one inbetween about the teleport and highway network revamp?

Last Thursday we had a successful DEV - Player conference with selected representatives from major corporations, who shared their ideas and concerns on gamma mechanics. (There is a recording available here.) Although some of the issues have been already discussed on the forums before this, establishing the “big picture” with the people who had the most hands on experience with the system itself proved really productive.

This blog is meant to present our proposed solutions to the raised issues, separated into different sections regarding how long it would take to implement them, if you agree with them. So imagine an extra “would” beside all the changes listed here as you are still free to tell us how completely wrong we are, or iterate on the ideas.

Immediate changes (next patch)

Issue: Building on gamma is too expensive, needs to be more accessible.

• Increase the manufacturing unit of construction blocks to 5. This means a manufacturing cycle will produce 5 blocks instead of one, so effectively this will also reduce its individual component cost, and thus, its price.
• Halve the manufacturing time of construction blocks.
• Since they are the most frequently used buildings, reduce the components in energy transmitters and energy backbones to 20% of the current amounts.
• Remove infinite NPC-seeds for building foundations, so players can set their own price.

Issue: Terraforming is too expensive/slow.

• Reduce the price of terraforming charges to 20% of their current value.
• Restore the old terraforming cycle time bonuses to harvesting-specialized robots (5% per controlling extension level - 50% max reduction), by switching back their current defense-related bonuses. Increase the cycle time of terraforming modules by 15% to not make them too fast.

Issue: The risk of losing your whole gamma colony overnight is too high, and other issues connected to MPC defense.

• Make every building able to enter emergency mode, except for command relays and turrets. This narrows down the risk of losing a base to the time frame when the owners are actually able to defend it.
• Implement multi-phase emergency mode for main terminals only: this is somewhat similar to how beta outpost intrusions work. Depending on the technology level of the terminal, it has a counter of 3 to 5 times (for standard, advanced and hi-tech terminals respectively) when it can subsequently enter emergency mode. Every time the terminal goes into emergency mode, this counter decreases, and every time a phase passes without emergency (2 days), the counter increases. Once the counter reaches zero (ie. it enters the last possible emergency phase), the terminal becomes destroyable after the last emergency phase, like it is currently. Thus the worst case scenario (ie. not even one successful defense in between) for a standard main terminal would be 3 times 2 days (plus the set emergency offset time), so around 7-9 days.
• Make newly built main terminals invulnerable for 72 hours, to make starting off on gamma less of a gamble (of course they can’t enter emergency phase either during this time).

Issue: The teleport construction range issue.

• It seems that the consensus is that the increased range is a good idea, so we’ll stick to the 2000m no-build zone around gamma teleports, as that is the safe range where a fully boosted hi-tech turret can’t reach anymore. And we promise to discuss such features with you in the future before announcing them as an immediately incoming change.
• Keep minerals from spawning in the no-build zone.

Issue: Gamma reimbursements required due to changes.

• Reimburse the price difference of all purchased terraform ammo in proportion to the new market price.
• Reimburse the price difference of all purchased construction blocks in proportion to the new market price.

Issue: Not enough to do / not enough rewards on gamma islands.

• Double the number of normal military and industrial roaming NPC spawns on gamma.
• Add an elite NPC into roaming spawns on gamma.
• Remove level 1 artifacts from gamma, keep spawning only level 2 and 3. Make artifacts spawn only on passable terrain.

Issue: Too few NPC spawns in general, with emphasis on starter islands.

• NPCs on Alpha 1 islands will only attack when attacked. This makes it possible to place more fixed spawns without interfering with mining, artifact hunting, transport and travelling. (Of course NPCs popping out of beacons and artifacts are not affected by this rule.)
• Increase all normal (non-starred) distress beacons to 10 waves.

Issue: General changes to minerals.

• Make epriton liquid again.
• Although the cost of noralgis incubators has been already considerably reduced, and the mined amount per cycle has been doubled in the expansion, we plan to increase both the maximum harvesting cycles, and the additional cycles per growth phases in noralgis (exact figures to follow).

Short-term changes (~2 weeks)

Issue: General improvements to gamma.

• Terraform suppression building: slows terraforming in a certain radius for everyone. Owners can easily turn it on and off if they want to make changes to the terrain, but it can slow down offensive terraforming when active.
• MPC Aura buildings: basically a copy of outpost auras. Place down a building and select an aura it should provide for the owner corporation’s members on the island.
• Turret priority setting: set up a priority list for turrets that controls which classes of robots they should attack first.
• Make turrets return fire when attacked, regardless of relation settings.

Issue: Just stuff we've been working on.

• Spark teleport: this has been announced way back, but now I’m happy to tell you that this feature is close to complete. What’s it good for? You can place down teleport targets in any terminal or outpost you are, and you can teleport your spark back to it from any other terminal in the world, for a certain fee. This means that you can’t bring any robots or items with you, it’s only your bare spark. The feature should make market, production, and remote (corporation) storage management much easier and faster.
• Private transport assignments: place items into a secured container that only you can open, set a pickup and a destination terminal, add a reward and a collateral amount, and let other players do the transport for you. This was obviously possible so far too and is nothing new, but creating a framework and adding safety rules to it should make it actually a viable mechanic.

Mid-term changes (~1 month)

Issue: Not enough rewards on gamma / Give more meaning to colixum.

• Completely new tier of modules using colixum.
• New robot variants using current chassis, with colixum-based components. (Manufacturing still possible anywhere for both.)

So again, this is only what we propose. The list doesn’t include bugfixes, as those are obviously things that need to be done and don’t need player feedback. It’s also not meant to be a complete and final solution to all the problems mentioned - there is always room for improvement.

Now it’s your turn to tell us if we missed something important, changes where you would take a different approach, or even if you simply agree with all this. In order to keep the relevant discussion in one place, please post your opinions and ideas in this forum topic. If we reach a general consensus, the changes in the immediate section could be deployed already in the next patch, expected early next week.

The first introduction of walls went not without issues and we have learnt the hard way that too much freedom can be bad. Based on player feedback, the majority of you think there is still too much freedom regarding wall placement.

Initially we didn't want to restrict the building of walls to outpost owners, because we didn't want to shut out the rest of our players from using them. Nevertheless, it seems walls are primarily used for outpost and SAP defense, so we decided to reconsider that stance.

In our next patch (planned for March 9), we will restrict wall placement to a fixed belt area around outposts. It's a belt because the 1000m inner no-build limit from outposts still remains, but there will be an outer limit of 3000m as well. The picture on the right should help you imagine it better. As you can see, some of the teleports' no-build areas also take their share. (Update: the image has been modified to include SAP areas too - thanks for the notice Arga.)

Another change is that only the outpost's owning corporation can build walls, and only around the owned outpost. Of course in case of an ownership change, the old walls won't fall down, but only the new owner will be able to place new ones. Unfortunately this also has a negative effect, namely that allied corporations can't help you placing walls around your outpost until we do a proper alliance feature. (Contrary to popular belief, we didn't abandon or deny an alliance feature at all, we just didn't get around implementing one yet.)

It's important to note that currently deployed walls won't be affected in any way by this, as long as you keep repairing them, they will stay there. However you won't be able to place any new wall units outside of the allowed areas.

And lastly, to steer things back towards the next part of the PBS series: yes, you will be able to build walls around player-built bases as well, but only around a certain "occupation" area of your own buildings.

Commence cheering/grumbling.