Release 14

New features for the friends list, new visuals for The Cycle, quality of life improvements and balancing. Release 14 is here Prospectors! As usual these notes are subject to change until the patch goes live!

INTERNAL FRIENDS LIST
We have updated the features of your friends list Prospectors!

What we have added:


 * Being able to add friends in the station via searching by user name
 * Being able to accept/decline friend invites in station
 * Being able to invite players to squads directly from Friends List!
 * Being able to receive notifications when a friend becomes online
 * Being able to see which friends in your friends list you’re in a squad with


 * In the Launch screen the PLAY button now shows a tool tip when matchmaking isn’t possible because team mates are still in a match (just like in the End of Match Screen)
 * Known issue: Tutorial game modes aren’t reachable while waiting for team mates, we intend to improve that soon

STORY MISSIONS & SEASON PASS

 * Mission Selection
 * We updated the text to clearly state Map and Contract requirements for missions to start in match.
 * It is now possible to reach Season Pass levels higher than 100 (infinite, or rather: can you find out our new limit?).
 * All season pass levels above level 100 do currently not contain any rewards and are mainly meant as an indicator of how much effort you put into the current season.
 * We enabled the popup of reaching a new Season Pass level also for levels that don’t give rewards to give the nice feeling of progressing towards the next reward levels!

THE CYCLE ADJUSTMENTS
DEVNOTE: ''The main feedback was that the lighting at the beginning of the storm was too reddish and too dark in the end. In general it was perceived as not readable enough.''

''The big challenge for us was to work on the feedback but still maintain a storm that looks dangerous. The big change that we made makes sure that the lighting in general should be brighter (no more super dark spots) and the ‘nice’ lighting scheme persists much longer before it gets darker. We would urge you to pay attention to the changes that we made throughout all storm phases and give us feedback.''  File:Release_14-1.gif File:Release_14-2.gif File:Release_14-3.gif

PLAYER & KIT ADJUSTMENTS
Shield With the exploration of slow health regeneration that longer fights can chip away your health we re-introduced the separate delay and regeneration of health and shield.

Dragonfly Flightsuit

 * Mods
 * Aim to Hover Now depletes fuel slowly over time.
 * Fuel depletion is 15% of original depletion speed.

Weapons
We changed the radial damage on mods. We used to take the value from the weapons direct damage. This meant the higher direct damage or when dealing critical hits the explosive damage would scale in addition.

Therefore we now set them as their own radial damage base values.

In R13 we upped the projectile speeds. In our game this would mean near hit-scan with our engagement distance. For this release we revert back projectile speeds with a small buff in comparison to R12 for the snipers.

Our game is currently fast paced with short ranged engagements, Projectiles help sell the impact; however this also means it’s hard to hit shots we try to achieve a good balance here.

Hammer

 * Mods
 * Explosive Rounds
 * From 50% of the direct damage to 40 radial damage
 * Direct damage dealt from 64% to 50%

Asp Flechette Gun

 * Reverted the projectile speed from 350 to 100 m/s

KOR-47

 * Mods
 * Explosive Rounds
 * From 40% of the direct damage to 18 radial damage
 * Direct damage dealt from 85% to 50%

Advocate

 * Mods
 * Explosive Rounds
 * From 40% of the direct damage to 20 radial damage
 * Direct damage dealt from 85% to 50%

Manticore

 * Reverted the projectile speed from 350 to 150 m/

KBR Longshot
QuickFix: There was an issue with the Longshot that allowed certain players to move the cross hair of screen and aim the weapon in an unwanted direction. Therefore we made changes to the weapons recoil compensation and removed some the recoil attributes of a few mods.
 * Decreased the projectile speed from 600 to 360 m/s
 * Mods
 * Hollow-Point Rounds
 * Removed recoil attributes
 * Rapid Cartridge Feeder
 * Removed recoil attributes
 * Explosive Rounds
 * From 40% of the direct damage to 60 radial damage
 * Direct damage dealt from 80% to 50%

C-32 Bolt Action

 * Decreased the projectile speed from 650 to 380 m/s

Kinetic Arbiter

 * Decreased the projectile speed from 700 to 330 m/s

KARMA-1

 * Decreased the projectile speed from 350 to 300 m/s
 * Mods
 * The Splinter
 * Changes the projectile speed from 50% to 70%
 * From 60% of the direct damage to 300 radial damage

AI ADJUSTMENTS

 * The Co-Bot HP has been re-balanced to give them more of a mini-boss feel
 * White – 300 > 250
 * Yellow – 500 > 750
 * Red – 750 > 1200
 * The Skulker DMG has been reduced to 125

CONTRACT ADJUSTMENTS

 * Damage needed to drop zeal has been upped again to 350
 * Mineral locations in both maps have received a tuning pass to spawn only easy and medium minerals at match start

Laser Drill

 * Initial Delay on Laser Drill has been reduced from 150 seconds to 120 seconds.
 * Mobs from Laser Drill give less credits than other mobs.
 * Players who stick to Laser Drill will have less of a credit advantage than they had in R13.

MISC
Field of View – targeting / aiming


 * Adjusted targeting FOV implementation to use relative FOV values instead of fixed FOV values, to ensure player FOV setting has an effect on targeting as well.
 * All scopes with the same multiplier (e.g 2x, 4x, etc) now actually use the same FOV values

Mouse Sensitivity Improvements


 * Removed internal sensitivity normalization to allow for easier sensitivity comparison to other Unreal Engine 4 games
 * Sensitivity value can now be typed into the text box and decimals are now supported.
 * Added sensitivity sliders for each scope type
 * Fixed an issue with FOV based sensitivity scaling being applied twice
 * Added a  setting to toggle Mouse Smoothing
 * Added a setting to toggle FOV Scaling

Multi Threaded Rendering Setting


 * Added a setting to toggle multi threaded rendering
 * Multi threaded rendering is now enabled by default
 * This should improve performance for most players, while it could cause lower FPS on low end hardware.
 * If you experience performance dips, please disable the setting!

Sound Improvements


 * Manticore
 * Phasic Lancer
 * New male prospector VO

Ping System Improvements


 * We have been working on a ping system that allows you to identify things.  Pressing V on another prospector will trigger “Prospector Nearby” and on a mineral as “Let’s do this mineral”.  We will be expanding this system in later releases.
 * “Thanks” option is now in the comwheel.  You can now send some love or be snarky to your pact mates.

KNOWN ISSUES

 * Some of the friends list localization can go out of the text box.
 * Sniper Scopes can have some issues, we are going to fix this in the next release.
 * When you open the shop too 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.
 * Healing Aura first upgrade doesn’t work as intended.
 * ZEUS and KARLA can have issues with visuals in 3rd person.
 * 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.

Please remember:

Even though we are now in Early Access and Season Two has started, the game is still in development. This means that bugs and crashes are to be expected.

If you find any issues during your session, please don’t hesitate to report it using the bug reporter tool in-game.

Please also keep in mind that queue times, especially late in the night might be longer than expected due to lower player count around these times.

We hope you have fun during your time on Fortuna III and look forward to reading your feedback!