Marauders News

Welcome to another dev blog, this one is a little unique, focusing on research trips our team have completed in recent weeks that have proven more than fruitful. There are some secrets too for upcoming content… so make sure to look for clues!

Before we get started on the gathered research, we have two announcements.

[h2]Marauders Champion Tournament [/h2]

Our Marauders Champion tournament will start in the next few hours. As stated in previous blogs, this player-kill competition is a limited-time event that will normally last for a week. These competitions will usually happen once a month but may occur twice a month. This one will run a little longer - around 2 weeks - and have additional prizes alongside the exclusive nomad blood mask, so make sure to get in the top 100 to earn it.



[h2]Merch Store Updates[/h2]

The second announcement is that our merch store has been updated with two new items! We are extremely proud of our new Champion Space Nebula (tie-dye) ultra premium hoodie. The quality is unparalleled and will work wonders for the upcoming winter season. Our second item is an additional “F1” design, as requested the detail is on the front and displayed on another high-quality Champion product. We hope one of these newly created clothing pieces tickles your fancy.

Hoodie: https://marauders-shop.fourthwall.com/products/marauders-ultra-premium-hoodie


Long sleeve t-shirt: https://marauders-shop.fourthwall.com/products/marauders-premium-f1-long-sleeve-shirt

[h2]Research[/h2]

Now onto the field research. Our team has been exploring the U.K. in search of inspiration and references that can be used for Marauders. Since real-world engineering cannot be beaten for its badass aesthetic and brutal style, our research helps us design new environments, vehicles, and characters. It's no secret our spaceships look like armored tanks with booster engines, but this is mostly intentional!

First up is our trip to the “D-Day Story” in Portsmouth, England. This has a strong history for the World War 2 Allies, as a large number of forces set sail from this location during Operation Overlord to begin taking back France. This Museum is filled with elements to commemorate that day.

They have a fascinating range of equipment, everything from amphibious vehicles to secret documents, but it was great seeing such large landing craft up close, so we can appreciate the detail and effort that went into building them.



It was also a pleasant surprise to see the Denison jacket and paratrooper helmet worn by the British forces. As some of you will notice, we took inspiration from these elements for our very own S.A.S operatives.





Another recognisable item we found is the sea mine (which we retrofitted into a space-variant for Marauders). We noticed some interesting details that could definitely be applied to our version, such as strong central welding. The personnel landing craft behind it provided endless texture inspiration.





They also had the military documents for “Operation Neptune” which contained top-secret orders for the D-Day Normandy landings. It is an amazing piece of history and a great opportunity to analyze these items so we can accurately create our own versions of intel.



These are only a few highlights of what the museum contains so make sure to drop by if you are in the area!

The following week we visited The Tank Museum in Bovington, England. This took us by surprise as the wealth of world war weaponry on display was tremendous. I'm sure the team will agree that this was probably the most impressive collection we have ever seen. We had our work set out for us with over 500 photos taken and 40 minutes of footage, it proved to be more than useful.

You are welcomed by a tank that needs no introduction, the very same Sherman that took the cinema by storm in the movie “Fury.”





The tank is covered in unique and interesting details, they clearly knew how to dress a vehicle to make it special, almost like a character on its own. It gave us a tonne of ideas that we can use to spice up our own vehicles with going forward.





Alongside the tank, they had great pieces of memorabilia of the tank crew from the film, and in real life. We were especially in love with the tanker helmet, a real iconic piece of gear that will definitely be coming to Marauders in some sort of fashion. You may recognise Brad Pitt’s jacket from the film since we took inspiration for our very own U.A. commander concept art in our previous dev blog.



The Museum was filled with light tanks and reconnaissance vehicles, the more interesting ones were the Panzer 1, and the Guy and Daimler armored cars. All the bolts, paint and panels provide great ideas for our dieselpunk aesthetic







They have a wide range of world war nations. The Japanese WW2 tank crew equipment was especially useful for inspiration for a potential new faction coming to the game in the future.



The range of Great War British “Mark” tanks on display was immense and filled with loads of variants, crew uniforms, and fully explorable interiors. A personal favorite was the world's first APC, the “Mark IX”. Once again the details and texture reference was invaluable.









Even though this is just a slither of imagery gathered from our trip, we couldn't recommend it more. Research aside, it was an amazing experience and would rather not show too much so you can see it for yourself! We were fortunate enough to witness their “Tiger Day” event. Please excuse our rough edit but it works great as a tease of what they have to offer. You can watch our footage here:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

So make sure to plan your next excursion to The Tank Museum in Bovington. You won’t regret it!

We hope you enjoyed this sneak peek into early research and development. We may do some more blogs like this in the future. For now, we are heads down building Guilds for our next update, so stay tuned for our progress coming soon.

Dash or Die Marauders

[h2]Welcome, Marauders. [/h2]

This is our final Plunder patch, as we head towards the next phase for Marauders: Guilds.



The next build will require three to four weeks of development, however, that doesn’t make this iteration any less special! We now have over 70 different weapons in the game, a great milestone! The addition of three new grenade types; fire, stick and impact bombs – has helped us achieve this. We will continue to produce and incorporate more weapons for the foreseeable future!

Another important addition is the recipe blueprint, helping players gain more access to Heavy MG42s and Thompsons by providing temporary crafting capabilities – this is a rare item that will make your heart pound!

Let’s get into the patch notes:



[h2]Fire Bomb[/h2]

A napalm filled grenade with a very short fuse (1 second). This device creates a devastating pool of fire that inflicts 6 damage per tick, if you’re unlucky enough to be caught in its wrath. The flames blaze for ~20 seconds, but you can thwart them sooner with a fire extinguisher. This weapon is suitable for temporarily impeding enemy advances and blocking flanking routes. No one likes to be blind sided.

These grenades can be found in the grenade boxes, as well as part of the pistol loot pool.

[h2]Impact Bomb[/h2]

This explosive will ignite as soon as it hits a surface (Marauders included) – dealing a hefty 90 damage with direct impact. However, has a fairly small radius and large fall off, giving it tighter concentrated power. Best to be accurate with your throws and become the victor.

[h2]Sticky Bomb[/h2]

A powerful counter to the heavy shields. This grenade has a strong adhesive; making it stick to most objects, even a Marauder. It deals around 85 damage, with a faster fuse of ~1 second – but boasts a larger radius than the other grenade types, making it useful to flush enemies around the corner.

[h2]Recipe Blueprints[/h2]

A new, very rare item type has been added to depots and hidden stashes. Once this item is in your stash, it temporarily unlocks a crafting recipe. Every craft reduces the item’s durability until it reaches zero. It will then be destroyed and removed from the crafting list automatically.

This can provide the holy grail of crafting options such as the Heavy MG-42, Barrel Bag and Dart Ammo, so make sure to keep an eye out for those depot tokens!

[h2]Ship Interior Expansions[/h2]

As we attempt to improve breaching balance; making it more dynamic and enjoyable – all ships have had their break point increased from 4 to 7 (excluding the Red Baron Strike Frigate).

This includes re-works of the ship interior maps with the Rustbucket and Scout frigate variants; granting them a much larger and vast play space. You will be able to flank from most breach point positions, and the cockpit can now enjoy multiple exits.

• Fire bomb
  
• Sticky bomb
  
• Impact bomb
  
• Grenade Crate/box
  
• Recipe Blueprint items (which can be found in hidden stashes or depots) these unlock recipes, every craft reduces their durability (they are also stackable):
  
• > - Heavy MG-42
  
• > - Heavy Thompson
  
• > - Heavy Shield
  
• > - Dart Ammo
  
• > - Krasa Suppressor
  
• > - Krasa Stock
  
• > - Krasa Mag
  
• > - Barrel Bag
  
• > - Trench Gun
  
• > - 1911 Government.
  
• > - SVT40 Drum Mag
  

• Rustbucket and the Scout Frigate variant interior maps has been increased
  
• Player capital ship now has new breaching areas (much like the stranded capital ship)
  
• Starter frigate interior map update
  
• Interceptor and Heavy frigate interiors now have new breaching areas.
  

• Rucketbucket and scout frigate now have 7 breach locations (up from 4)
  
• Spread no longer gets larger over time again for all weapons (back to Pre-Plunder)
  
• Spread only gets larger when jumping for all weapons.
  
• All interceptor, capital and heavy frigate variants now have 7 breach points (up from 4)
  
• Npc ships (scout and interceptor) now have 2 additional green containers onboard to loot.
  
• New grenades (sticky, impact and incendiary/flame bomb) now spawn on pistol spawner loot pools and inside grenade crates
  
• Recipe blueprint items can now be found in hidden stashes and depot lootables
  
• Long double barrel shotgun and the terminator shotgun now have around a 15% reduction in spread.
  

• Visuals for showing a recipe blueprint in the crafting UI
  
• Switched the order of the videos in the guide, so now the quick how to plays are first as they are more easy to digest
  

• Luger P08 now has 2 reloads one for empty mag and one for loaded mag (bullets remaining in mag on reload)
  
• Luger P08 bullet in mag is now hidden if your mag is empty when you reload
  

• Ambient sound pass on the Terraformer raid area
  
• Sound occlusion improvements to the Terraformer raid area
  

• Reduced the lights that spawn when using the Flamethrower (around 30 down to 3)
  
• LODs added to Luger P08 skel mesh
  
• All flame and fire effects have had their GPU cost reduced
  

• Explosive barrels can now be blow up by flamethrowers
  
• Collision improvements for gold and copper coins to prevent them falling through the floor when dropped. various fixes
  
• You can now pick up items that stack into full inventory rigs
  

Dash or Die, Marauders!

The SIG team

Welcome to our Seventh Dev Blog! Our new development schedule has allowed us to launch our 3rd patch (Plunder 1.2) in the last 6 weeks, and we are seeing amazing results! But full transparency, the Guilds 1.0 update is larger and we anticipate we will need extra time, so after Plunder 1.3 expect a 3 to 4 week gap (rather than 2 weeks). Our goal is to drop Guilds in October!

In terms of the previous patch we have received positive feedback on the hit registration change and internally we are finding a massive improvement, so we hope you agree. We also feel our change to hip firing spread was too much/over-tuned so look forward to more tweaking in the next patch.

You can watch this Dev Blog recording here!



[hr][/hr]

[h2]Gamescom[/h2]

Me and the team have just arrived back from the greatest gaming event in the world… Gamescom! I’d like to thank all the kind fans who came up to us to chat about Marauders, always great to meet the players in the “real world”. One of the other benefits of Gamescom was getting to try a wide range of upcoming games including some new extractions shooters, which is always inspiring. I personally feel this genre is special, and the more games out there, the merrier! - Mac





Meeting the “grandfather” of extraction shooters Nikita and playing his latest outing Arena was a great highlight, I feel its not said enough but me and the team are Escape from Tarkov players, and we wear our inspiration with honour. It was interesting to see their team trying to innovate again inside a genre that's the most competitive market in the world, and I must say it's already feeling great. You’ll be proud… we did well in the 2v2 bracket tournament and got to wear our hard earned “scav” cosplay!





[h2]Elites In-bound[/h2]

Today we will be highlighting the upcoming “Elites” currently in production. Much like the Warden or the Red Baron, “Elites” are bosses that will provide a harder challenge, unique item drops and have unlockable killer cosmetics! First one up is the U.A. Marines Commander, as teased in a previous dev blog! This squad leader takes the fashion of a tank captain managing a massive space turret. This will be the first boss that protects a breach only location with his fellow crew mates.



The Commander has a unique head and body cosmetic to unlock and wields the versatile Mini-14. This new rifle is a semi automatic 5.56, lightweight but punchy death machine. His crew wields the M3A1 “grease gun”, an infamous weapon chambered in .45 ACP. This sub gun will handle and feel like a big brother of the Mat 49 but fire a little slower and hit a lot harder…



This United allies commander is held up inside a heavy armoured multi-turret space tower nicknamed “Fortress” which, as previously mentioned, can only be accessed via breaching. It’s a multi story death trap filled with heavy artillery and weaponry. Marauders will be breaching at the bottom floor and have to reach the top to fight the boss. It won’t be an easy task, and we are very interested to see who will be up for the challenge!









The Kingdom Alliance also has a new Elite in development. This one takes a form of a ship boss, much like the Red Baron, however this elite team will have no individual in charge. Collectively they act as a dangerous threat, with gunners and pilots on board coordinating to take out enemy factions.





Their Ship is also unique, being the first frigate to have 3 operating turrets, 2 dual auto cannons, and a torpedo bay (which can be found on the underside/belly.) This ship is heavily inspired by the Dambuster bombers from World War 2. The following concepts are early but show you the direction we are headed.

[h2]Breach Point[/h2]

In our continued efforts to have breaching become more fun and dynamic, we are increasing the amount of points a breacher can enter for all ship interiors. The first ship to receive this change will obviously be the Rustbucket and Scout Frigate interior, since this is the most ‘cramped’. It will need to receive the most drastic changes to accommodate for the extra breaching space. As you can see in the before and after images. it adds a good amount of floor space.



[h2]Any last words?[/h2]

We will have more information to share on Guilds in the next dev blog, and once again, the extra time we are taking to deliver this feature will be valuable. The team doesn’t want it to feel like a “stuck on” feature, but something that players can get deep into without being too restrictive. The Guild 1.0 update will be a big one, with the delivery of the new Planet Killer map as part of it. The Guild feature itself will be expanded on with 2 to 3 consecutive updates following the initial implementation, so that it can grow to meet the high expectations we have set for ourselves with Guilds. That being said, we can’t wait to get it in your hands.

We hope you enjoyed this Dev Blog, and we hope to see you very soon for another patch!

Dash or Die, Marauders!

- The SIG Team

[h2]Welcome, Marauders.[/h2]

First of all, we would like to thank all of you that we got to meet at Gamescom! It was a blast chatting with you all as we wandered the convention floor. We’ve got more coming on our experience at Gamescom in our Dev Blog next week, so keep an eye out for that. We even got to meet the godfather of the Extraction genre, Nikita himself!

We are back in action with another update for Plunder! We’ve got new weapons, new Raid missions and more to talk about, so let’s look at the highlights.





[h3]Long Double Barrel Shotgun[/h3]

We’ve added a Long Double Barrel shotgun with excellent stopping power, but be careful of what engagement you get into with only 2 rounds loaded…

[h3]Custom Mat 49[/h3]

The Marauders have fabricated their own variant of the Mat 49, built specifically for tight spots, with a snub nose barrel, burst-fire firing mode and rechambered in the .45 ammo type!

[h3]In-raid missions Changes[/h3]

With this update we have made in-raid missions more forgiving. Before, if you died you wouldn't get any rewards for in-raid missions you had completed. Now any missions you complete, you will get the money and Faction XP reward even if you die before extraction.

[h3]Hit Reg Fixes[/h3]

We have been delving deeper into the hit reg issues and made more adjustments that we hope will improve conditions once again.
This includes re-implementation of “temporal” client to server side hits with a simpler but faster NPC leeway system. We have also added additional safety checks if a headshot was processed correctly.

[hr][/hr]

[h3]Patch notes in full[/h3]

• Raid missions; Confirm Kill (Navy Outpost), Death's Door (Colony Cruiser) , Film Review (Merchant Ship), Lost and Found (Navy Outpost) , Traitor Call (Merchant Ship) and Food Run (Merchant Ship).
  
• New Scrappable items: Diesel Drill, Work Apron, Silver Tankard, Gold Candelabra, Copper Horn and Portable Radio (spawns in common loot pool).
  
• New weapon: Long Double Barrel (replaces the trench gun for S.A.S operatives)
  
• New weapon: Custom Mat 49 (replaces the craftable mat49) which is a .45 ammo type burst weapon.
  
• Colony Cruiser now has a chance to spawn trench gun U.A. marines.
  

• Sawed off shotgun model has been improved.
  
• Jumping animations have been exaggerated on all weapons.
  

• If you die while in-raid you now still get the Cash and Faction XP rewards for the missions you have completed. Previously, you had to escape to get this reward.
  
• All weapons now have hip firing spread increasing over time/per shot again, however the initial spread has been reduced by around 20% for all weapons.
  
• Jumping makes the weapon spread multiply by over 100%.
  

• In the end death screen the report button will only show if you were killed by a player.
  

• New reload animation for the DP28.
  
• New main menu animation for the DP28.
  
• Updated DP28 equip animation.
  
• Miscellaneous tweaks to the DP28 core animation set.
  
• Bullet now shows in the DP28 mag if you have at least 1 ammo.
  

• New ambient background sound for the Navy Outpost raid area.
  
• Improved the audio occlusion on the Navy Outpost raid area.
  
• New spot ambience sounds in the Navy Outpost raid area.
  
• New sounds for the DP28 reload.
  
• Last shot of DP28 has a extra sound to help you tell it was your last shot.
  
• New pickup put down item sounds added to the new scrappable items.
  

• Various Crash fixes
  
• You can now complete the Hold Depot Zero to Hero mission in the Merchant Ship armoury depot.
  

[hr][/hr]

Next week we will have a special edition of the Marauders Dev Blog, live on a ‘to be announced’ channel on Twitch! So make sure you follow us on Twitter (DO IT) and join the Discord to stay fully up to date on everything Marauders! Also tune in on Friday (Sept 1st) for our next Community Event, being hosted by Ceeg! You won’t want to miss this one! Details in Discord!

Dash or Die, Marauders!

- The SIG team

[h2]Welcome, Marauders[/h2]

And welcome to all the new Space Pirates out there that joined us recently. What a weekend! Roughly 50,000 of you claimed a Drop on Twitch, with over 180 of you streaming Marauders throughout the campaign!

And now it’s time to get stuck into the Patch Notes for Plunder 1.1, hot on the heels of our last update! Oh and before I forget, remember to log in after the update to get in on the action of the Marauder Champion Tournament! It’s time to earn that Blood Nomad mask again!

There is a bunch of new stuff to get through, so on to the Patch Notes!

[h3]Known issues:[/h3]

• We are tracking an issue with EXISTING Meds from players stashes showing incorrect stack values. This issue seems to be resolving over time but we are watching closely!
  

[h3]TIMER REDUCTIONS[/h3]
We have been monitoring time spent in raids and the average time taken to extract. So we wanted to rebalance timers to get to a happier median. This includes reducing the time before the space gate appears, increasing the match length in Raider mode and decreasing the Raider mode cooldown.

[h3]Breach or Bust[/h3]
We’ve also tweaked how breaching damage works so there's a much smaller penalty to breaching a ship that is completely stationary. This way our new mechanics, like the different pods types can still be valid, and we can reduce some frustrations with these features. Once again, we will continue to monitor the statistics and make improvements in the future if need be!

[h3]De Lisle Improvements[/h3]

• New attachment - extended mag
  
• New Animations
  
• New sounds
  

[h3]Stacking Meds[/h3]

• Medical items can now be stacked! Here are the first items to receive this treatment:
  
• Bandage
  
• Small First Aid kit
  
• Large Water bottle
  

[h3]Scrappable Items[/h3]
We’ve added more items into the game, largely to take out with the purpose of scrapping for crafting purposes! These items are going to net you TONS of new resources! We also added some interesting new craft recipes! You can now CRAFT a toolkit if you have all the bits!

[h3]Hit Reg Fixes[/h3]
We found and fixed a couple of hit registration issues where the server and client were not lining up correctly, especially with certain animations like leaning and shooting. This is a step forward and we will continue to investigate it, however you should see some improvements with hits being more consistent server side, especially headshots.

• Certain medical and food items can now stack, bandage, small first aid and large water bottle
  
• Pirate Bandage and Pirate First Aid are now craftable instead of standard bandage and Small First Aid Kit. These are around 10% to 25% stronger for healing and have higher stacking amounts.
  
• Scrappable items have been added to the common, industrial and toolkit loot pools, these items give a bigger range of scrapping items; Wrench, Hammer, Flat Head, Work Belt, Table Fan, Bottle Caps, Work Gloves and Diesel Engine.
  
• A Nuclear material Market Trade has been added.
  
• De Lisle 20 round extended magazine can spawn in the Vault loot pool
  
• You no longer take breaching damage when the ship is not piloted/idle (however the 10% falling damage remains).
  

• Damage screen effects now fade in and out nicely instead of being instant
  
• Extended mag now shows up on the De Lisle pickup when you drop your gun
  
• Railings (on the stairs) on the Scout and Rustbucket Frigate have been removed to prevent vaulting issues.
  

• Gate spawn timer has been reduced from 15 minutes to 10 minutes
  
• Raider mode now has a 10 minute 30 second match length (up from 9 minutes 30 seconds).
  
• Raider mode cooldown has been reduced by a minute.
  
• Full Panzer Rig has been moved from the supply drops into the Gold Bullion trade (C.E. passcode method remains the same).
  
• Mineral Mania trade now requires 3 Nickel Ore instead of 1.
  
• You can now learn to craft toolkits (using some of the new scrapable items).
  
• Nuclear Material has been removed from the crate container and now has a higher 30% chance of spawning (loose) within all depots.
  
• You now take around 35 damage (down from 50) when breaching (this excludes falling damage) a moving ship.
  
• The standard breaching pod now has 75 health (down from 100).
  
• Slight increase to the crafting cost of the Pirate Bandage and Pirate First Aid.
  
• De Lisle has an increased chance of causing bleeding, around 35%.
  

• Improved network replication for certain NPC animations so there's less discrepancy with the client (this is to help with hit registration of headshots).
  

• New separate FPS limit for the main menu and in-game under the video settings in the options menu.
  
• Main menu tournament UI fades out nicely now if you have it open when you get sent to a match.
  

• New De Lisle shoot animation
  
• New De Lisle ADS shoot animation
  
• New De Lisle reload animation
  
• De Lisle walk animation play rate tweaked to better match actual move speed
  
• De Lisle now has a bullet in the mag that hides if you have 0 ammo
  
• Krasa has a new quicker equip animation
  
• Krasa walk animation play rate tweaked to better match actual move speed
  
• New Krasa reload animations
  
• Krasa mag now shows no bullet in the mag if you have 0 ammo
  
• Small camera shake added to Krasa reload animation (when player hand hits the mag)
  

• Each item now has a discard sound that feels more relevant to the item
  
• New background ambience for the Merchant Ship raid area
  
• More ambient sounds added to Merchant Ship raid area
  
• Improved audio occlusion on the Merchant Ship raid area
  
• New weapon firing sound for the De Lisle
  
• New sounds for the De Lisle bolt moving in the shoot animations
  
• New sounds for the De Lisle reload
  
• New sounds for the Krasa reload
  
• Tweaked timing of the airlock door closing sounds so it's in sync with the animation
  
• Reduced volume of voice lines
  
• Now your voice when dying from lack of oxygen is based on the voice pack you have equipped e.g. German Male, French Female etc
  

• Updated and fixes for Polish localisation
  
• Updated and fixes for Turkish localisation
  

• Intro video has been set back to the 70 years video and had its volume reduced.
  
  FOR 70 YEARS

• Fixes for some network hit registration related issues
  
• Fixes for crashes
  
• Fixes for exploits
  
• Prison guards now wear the correct cosmetic
  
• Fixed skinning issue with the airlock door
  

And that's it for today’s Patch Notes. Join us in Discord - discord.gg/marauders to stay tuned in to any upcoming Community Events (ahem… HINT)!

Dash or Die, Marauders!

- The SIG Team