January Update

After a long wait of just 4 weeks, I present to you the January update! I am very excited about this update as it brings several really big changes to the game!

No Mans Pass

It’s not a trick, it’s finally here. No Man’s Pass returns, with newly created level art, but the same great layout! In this new level you will find a large variety of hostile terrain, from sharp cliffs, narrow passages, and hidden caves. This large sized map is playable in both siege and arena mode!

Skynet AI Evolution

The AI has been learning. It has been watching you play, analyzing what you do, and making notes on how you win. It has evolved, and this is just the beginning.

The Skynet AI system has been officially activated. AI build are now dynamically created through a learning interface the references ALL builds being used within the MAV system. The Skynet system will then update it’s self and continue to monitor performance. These updates happen continuously, without the release of new builds or hotfixes.

It has already created several evolution of new MAV’s and these will be seeded into the system as a baseline for all clients. Once you launch the game, your AI will start to evolve and learn and adapt, taking into account your play and the MAV user base data as a whole. Because of this, the AI you encounter can be unique to you and your experience!

The Great Balance Update

So many changes. There are very few areas that did not get balance adjustments, so I will start by covering what did NOT change.

AUX systems did not see any changes. These have been fairly well balanced so far. The only change that slightly falls into this realm is that repair sheds do 350 damage when destroyed. This is a LOT of damage, but it’s confined to just the area on the inside of the shed. This will discourage players from camping inside of sheds while enemies are around. Remember, this is 350 damage to EVERY part, not total damage. It can be quite devastating.

The small spacers have stayed the same. The larger CAL and YAK line of spacers received updates.

Generators stayed fairly the same, only receiving changes to armor levels. The smallest generator, the SENR-X225 lost a small amount of weight as well.

Hex based weapons stayed nearly the same with the exceptions of Shotguns and Cannons getting armor increases, along with all VLAD weapons getting 100 armor. Shotguns also received a small damage increase. Hex based sniper rifles received an average range increase of 400 meters and an average ammo increase of 12 rounds.

Those are the only changes that I can easily summarize here. Soon, I will have a source of all the changes in an easy to read format, unless the community beats me to it 😉

Other Updates

That is not all the changes! There have been some additional teaks that affect systems through out the game.

The ‘impact force’ system has been changed. This is the system that affects causes the MAV torso to twist when hit. The direct counter to this system is a legs ‘Aim Stability’ stat. The impact force used to only affect a MAV if the cockpit part was hit directly. The lead to an unintentional advantage to hiding a cockpit behind other parts. Now, any part hit will trigger the impact force. In addition to this, there is additional forces applied based on the distance from the torso pivot added or removed from the total impact force. This removes the advantage of hiding your cockpit and provides better hit feedback for both the shooter and the one being shot.

Due to the above change, area damage weapons that also apply impact forces have been switched to a ‘pool’ based system. An area damage weapon will try to apply the most impact force possible to each part hit, accounting for distance falloff. It will never apply more impact force than stated in the stats though. Below is an example of the change:

Old System Impact force = 500 Parts hit = 3 Force done = [500], [500], [500] 1500 total impact force

New System Impact force = 500 Parts hit = 3 Force done = [500], [0], [0] 500 total impact force

As I detailed in another blog post, area damage weapons do not do direct damage any more. A part with 100 armor is 100% immune to area damage, even if it’s a direct hit. The only exception to this is the screamer rocket. To account for this, the screamer rockets area of effect has been reduced from 15 meters to 5 meters. This is to help promote the screamer as a direct hit weapon and not the carpet bomb weapon it currently is.

Siege bases have been changed to have -100 armor. This means they will take DOUBLE damage from splash based weapons. This does not put them quite back to parity with how they operated before, so the total health of the siege bases has been increased from 15,000 to 21,000. Damage states for the bases are triggered at 75% health, 50% health, and 33% health.

AI MAVs can now use VLAD and other short range weapons. They are not super users, but if you see an AI charging you with 8 VLAD HD’s, you might want to take notice.

AI MAV’s also now take effort to not shoot team mates. They are not perfect, as the just make guesses and do not trace the shot exactly, but it has cut down on the amount of friendly fire.

That’s all for this week! 🙂