Release 13

Release 13 finally arrives Prospectors! A new weapon, the internal friends list and a lot of additions and changes are included in this packed release. Continue reading to find out what we have in store for you.

NEW STARTER WEAPON – AR-55 ASSAULT RIFLE
Our starter lineup of guns was in need of something new and we decided to bolster the lineup with the AR-55.

This is a brand new phase AR weapon you can take creatures and other prospectors down with. Every Prospector has access to it from the start and it costs 500 credits in a match. Take a look at some of the great styles and the basic stats below.

AR-55 Phase Autorifle


 * Direct Damage 48
 * Magazine 28 rounds
 * Weakspot multiplier 1.5
 * Fall off 40-80 meters
 * 54% of damage at max range
 * Refire time 0.14

INTERNAL FRIEND LIST
We have added an internal friends list! Now you can manage your friends directly from the game! With the next update of this feature you will be able add friends in the game directly.


 * Add your friends easily to your squad!
 * See in your Internal Friends List who is in your squad!
 * Check what your friends are up to!
 * You’ll see a status next to your friends “in a match / in a squad / in Station” so you can know who’s available to play!
 * You can find the friends list at the top left of you screen. Just click it and the more detailed view will appear!

PLAYER & KIT ADJUSTMENTS
There has been changes made in regards to our basic movement. This includes the audio and animation but also other aspects like Field of View. Therefore we removed the FOV increase from sprinting and kept it for sliding. Walking, running, falling, shooting, jumping have all received some fit and finish polish to give you a better sense of weight. This is mostly visible in animations, sound effects, camera adjustments through the various basic movements. We have changed the fast regeneration rate from health to shields and made the regeneration delay consistent between the two. With a slow regeneration rate for health this means that it’s important to keep up your shields in a fight. Losing your shields means you’ll be vulnerable and can’t easily recover without tools or a longer period of cover. We also reduced the Kit Level requirements by roughly 10%.
 * PLAYER
 * KITS
 * Shield Adjusted regeneration rate from 50 to 120 per second Delay before regeneration start changed from 6 to 7 seconds
 * Health Adjusted regeneration rate from 120 to 25 per second Delay before regeneration start changed from 8 to 7 seconds
 * Boxer Warsuit
 * Charge punch
 * Radial Damage bonus to AI decreased from 100% to 50%
 * Boxer level 5 should now add damage correctly. Additionally the damage values were changed from 25% per level to 25 damage on level 3 and 5. Level description will be updated in next release.
 * Damage increase on kills kit mod description was changed by removing the reference to ability cool down reduction which it did not give.

WEAPON & ABILITY ADJUSTMENTS
Where RL12 had a massive new recoil implementation this did not come without bugs, issues or imperfections. We appreciate all the feedback so far and hope we can strive for a better gun play experience with this new system. Overall values of recoil had been lowered for this release and we will keep an eye out for feedback on the different weapon handling. Also slow tapping or burst fire should now give a better experience with smoother recoil compensation. Some combinations of mods might still have unintended effects which is why there’s still a lot of stat changes happening on this front.
 * Weapons
 * K-28
 * Increased direct damage from 40 to 43
 * Increased the fall off damage from 20% to 40% at max range
 * Scarab
 * Increased direct damage from 35 to 38
 * Increased the fall off damage from 15 to 40% at max rang
 * Hammer
 * Mods
 * Explosive Rounds
 * The recoil increase is removed from 50%
 * Power Chamber
 * The recoil increase is removed from 30%
 * Ionized Chamber
 * Decreased the fall off damage from 100% to 80%
 * The Hammer mod Power chamber now mentions that it improves damage instead of range.
 * Bulldog
 * Increased direct damage from 30 to 35
 * Mods
 * Slug Rounds
 * Radial Damage bonus to AI removed, was 100%
 * C-32
 * Increased direct damage from 224 to 250
 * Increased the projectile speed from 330 to 650 m/s
 * KBR-Longshot
 * Increased the projectile speed from 300 to 600 m/s
 * Karma-1
 * Increased the projectile speed from 280 to 350 m/s
 * Mods
 * The Splinter
 * Changes the projectile speed from 80% to 50%
 * Advocate
 * Mods
 * Long Barrel
 * Lowered the movement bonus from 15% to 2.5%
 * Short Barrel
 * Lowered the movement penalty from 15% to 2.5%
 * Kinetic Arbiter
 * Increased direct damage from 330 to 345
 * Increased the projectile speed from 300 to 700 m/s
 * Lacerator
 * Mods
 * Automatic Slicer
 * The recoil increase is removed from 15%
 * Kor-47
 * Mods
 * EM Charged Rounds
 * Damage dealt to players from 15% to 5%
 * Damage dealt penalty to AI from 25% to 10%
 * Long Barrel
 * Lowered the movement bonus from 15% to 2.5%
 * Manticore
 * Increased the projectile speed from 150 to 350 m/s
 * Mods
 * Bundle ejector
 * Overall damage dealt lowered from 70% to 60%
 * The spread of the projectiles is widened
 * Missile Flechettes
 * Now adds a flat 28 radial damage instead of a multiplier.
 * Phasic Lancer
 * Mods
 * Single Shot Chamber
 * The recoil is increased from 10% to 100%
 * Burst Increase
 * Rate of fire penalty was removed from 15%
 * Damage lowered from 95% to 80%
 * Increases the recoil by 50%
 * ASP Flechette
 * Increased the projectile speed from 100 to 350 m/s
 * Mods
 * Bundle Ejector
 * The spread of the projectiles is widened
 * Voltaic Brute
 * Reduced direct damage from 49 to 42
 * Refire changed from 0.113 to 0.104 increasing it’s fire rate.
 * Karla
 * Radial Damage bonus to AI removed. Was 50%
 * Detonator
 * Radial Damage bonus to AI removed. Was 50%
 * Guarantee
 * The description and icon of the ICA guarantee mod light container. Now refers to that it will improve reload speed.


 * ABILITIES
 * Shock Grenade
 * Radial Damage bonus to AI decreased from 75% to 25%
 * Warp Bomb
 * Radial Damage bonus to AI removed. Was 50%

AI ADJUSTMENTS

 * New Skulker Sniper AI It’s new and improved.  Our goal in its design was to clearly showcase intentions through clearer animations and distinct SFX.  So you know it’s on the battlefield and ready to attack.  We want to give you the tools needed to evaluate your situation and make decisions on whether to engage or disengage.
 * Damage got decreased to 275
 * AI Improvements We’ve taken a pass at a variety of tuning topics surrounding AI.  We have re-balanced their health a bit to better align them with their roles.  The squatter is cannon fodder: fast but easy to kill where the hurler is very slow/sturdy and has higher health.  We’ve also done the following:
 * Reduced the proximity that random mobs spawn from the player for better performance due to less spawns
 * Lowered Hunt creatures HP bonus so they’re not as hard to kill
 * Balance pass on our shot accuracy on AI


 * Desaturation on monster death Monsters now desaturate on death to make expired AI discernible from the enemies you’re fighting.
 * Mixed Difficulty Spawn compositions Spawns can now show up with mixed difficulty levels.  Stormy and Thunderous enemies could show up in harder minerals before the correct phase to create more of a challenge.

CONTRACT ADJUSTMENTS

 * Uplink scoring increase from Release 12 to work better with match timer (Players can score once more off uplink within a match)
 * Letium Gas scoring has been increased by roughly 15% in Squad Mode
 * Nest credits have been increased from 50 to 100 in Match Phase 2 and from 100 to 150 in Match Phase 3
 * Central Station scoring in Duo has been adjusted to allow for 3 ticks within one activation, but VP have been reduced from 40 to 30 per tick
 * Red Zeal VP on evac have been increased from 30 to 40 VP
 * Upped damage needed to drop zeal to 320 to account for new damage from AI tuning

MISC

 * Grass VFX The naturalistic world that makes up the surface of Fortuna 3 is beautiful.  And we wanted to push that subject even further.  Plants, foliage, grass will now react to your movement, enemies, projectiles.  So stop and smell the flowers, so to speak.  We just hope you don’t get foamed in the process.


 * New Gun SFX and sound improvements We have been hard at work cranking out new weapon sounds and have quite a few updates. We also added sounds to the virtual training area to fill the space better.


 * Karma
 * Scrapper
 * Lacerator
 * Guarantee
 * Voltaic Brute
 * Bulldog
 * Shattergun
 * Kinetic Arbiter

If you want to listen to some of the changes, TC_C-Man got you covered!


 * FPS Counter We have implemented a simple FPS counter.
 * Co-Bot color change We adjusted one of the Co-Bot colors to make so it stands out more from the environment.
 * Prospector Rescue Independent Story Missions added! Rescue the foamed prospectors around Crescent Falls
 * Energy Turret (Unlocks in Story Missions) Now only targets PVE and not players. You can now have 3 Energy Turrets and 2 regular Heavy Turrets at once in the match.
 * Virtual Training Added some weapons and abilities in AI heavy contracts
 * Fortuna Pass Timer is back You are able to see the end of Season 2 – again! Unfortunately the timer has a small visual error, but that is only for the seconds.

SHOP

 * New Shop Content – Splashy Drop Pod & Shadow Wanderer Outfit
 * Arrive in style to your next adventure on Fortuna III with the new Color Splash Drop Pod! It will be available as a weekly item in the shop the day Release 13 Launches! The following week, starting with the 29.4, we will have a new Outfit available, the Shadow Wanderer!
 * You can purchase the Drop Pod for 600 Aurum


 * The Shadow Wanderer outfit will be available for 1000 Aurum.
 * Themed after the first explorers of Vastos, the first progenitor seeded planet humanity settled on. The “Shadow Wanderers” were tasked with exploring the planet’s vast cave systems and “pacifying” the planet’s dirtbeast population.
 * IMPORTANT: Due to an error on our side, some of the Shadow Wanderer set items (Boots & Gloves) were available for equipping prior to release 13. This was not intentional and happened as a bug. Unfortunately some Prospectors had access to these items and they just appeared in their inventories.
 * With release 13, you will still have any items from the set equipped until you unequip them or reset your Archetype – from then on, they can only be equipped when you purchase the outfit. We apologize for the error, the inconvenience and thank you for understanding how we handle this!

BUG FIXES

 * We made sure changing Texture Quality setting affects the amount of GPU memory used.
 * We fixed two instances of GPU crashes.
 * We disabled GPU crash debugging by default to avoid potential performance degradation.
 * We implemented better tracking of the crashes that occur.
 * The “Moonwalking” bug should be fixed.

KNOWN ISSUES

 * The daily / weekly challenges might have some issues when we go live, you will maybe more challenges than usual. The progression still works.
 * When you open the shop to fast after the game starts the currency values have not been properly loaded yet and will not show up.
 * You might experience crashes, please send us your crash report
 * Emotes don’t make sounds.
 * Gorgon stops firing at random intervals when shoot button is held.
 * MK2 weapons are still called MK2 and this will be fixed in a future release.
 * Healing Aura first upgrade doesn’t work as intended.
 * ZEUS and KARLA can have issues with visuals in 3rd person.
 * K28 sound is ducked or not present.
 * If your name contains special characters it is not shown properly.
 * Items still lose their upgrades when dropped, we’re working to remedy this in the future!
 * When you die in a duo or squad match your team rank will not change until all of the players have either escaped or get foamed. We know that this can cause some confusion but the rank is shown at the end of the match will be the correct one.
 * If you are using a controller, please note: There is no full controller support, yet.
 * There are still some items that hover in the air while on a Laser Drill.
 * Destroyed Rides might have collision issues and or weird texture behavior.
 * If a lobby gets completely wiped the result screen might show wrong placements.
 * There are locations where Drop Pods might hover in the air.
 * Some of the Paladin Icons and items have minor display issues when equipped in the station.
 * Laser Drill still can have some texture issues.
 * Sometimes the boxes of your Ride can hover in the air.