Release 30

[h2]Fighter Improvements:[/h2]

Fighters weren't quite working the way I was hoping, so I tweaked some behavior values and increased damage for fighters and T5 interceptors.

• Fighters - Tweaked some settings to get them engaging correctly again. Increased damage from 300/350 to 350/450
  
• Interceptor - Increased damage of each missile at Tier 5 from 5000 to 5500.
  

[h2]Rupture Improvement:[/h2]

Due to consistent feedback about Rupture not being anywhere near as good as Purge, and the additional annoyance of heal balls, I have added another benefit to rupture to make it more useful at breaking up heal balls. Healing reduction along with armor debuff should make it easier to take out groups of multiple healers.

• Rupture Beam - Added 15% healing reduction to debuff.
  
• Rupture Ram and Rupture Catalyst - Added 25% healing reduction to debuff.
  

[h2]Onslaught Command Ship Changes:[/h2]

In Onslaught, the command ship has been perceived as weak and could easily be taken out with one or two ships, including corvettes. The command ship as a primary target of this game mode should require more than just one or two ships to come in and destroy so I decided to beef up the damage it deals and added the Rupture debuff to its weapons. This should make it much more difficult for a ship to come in alone to take it out. These values are preliminary and will likely need to be adjusted once we see how it's playing in the live environment. Any feedback is greatly appreciated.

• Added additional command ships for Veteran and Legendary
  
• Increased Recruit damage from 125 at all ranges to 400/200/100 at ranges 0-1200m/1201-2400/2401-7000m.
  
• Increased Veteran Health from 100000 to 250000.
  
• Increased Veteran damage from 125 at all ranges to 700/300/150 at ranges 0-1200m/1201-2400/2401-7000m.
  
• Increased Legendary Health from 100000 to 500000.
  
• Increased Legendary damage from 125 at all ranges to 1000/500/200 at ranges 0-1200m/1201-2400/2401-7000m.
  
• Added Rupture effect to projectiles. Remove all armor buffs. Add -50% armor debuff. Add -25% healing debuff.
  

[h2]Making AI Smarter:[/h2]

A long standing issue with AI filling in matches has been that they don't respond well to player pings. I am slowly adding response behaviors to try and make bots feel more a part of the team. Most AI will respond to attack pings, but the following has been added.

• Light Artillery should now respond to regroup when appropriate and will actively seek out enemy command ships in Onslaught.
  
• Heavy Corvette should now respond to the ‘Need Backup’ command when they are close enough and you have enemies engaging you.
  
• Heavy Dreadnought should now respond to ‘Need Backup’, ‘Follow me’, and ‘Re-Group’ commands. Need backup will cause them to target something close to you or go to your location if it can't find an appropriate target.
  

[h2]Conquest Scoring Update:[/h2]

In Conquest we want to reward holding onto a point more than initial capture, so I decreased the overall points awarded for capture, decreased the points for killing defending team, and decreased points for killing while defending, but kept it higher than the points for taking over. This should incentivize keeping a control point rather than awarding more points for losing it and taking it back.

• Capture a point - from 40 to 50.
  
• Killing enemies near their control point - from 150 to 100.
  
• Capturing a control point currently controlled by the enemy - from 500 to 100.
  
• Killing the enemy while near your control point - from 300 to 200. Ribbon score awarded after 5 captures from 160 to 150.
  

[h2]Leaderboards:[/h2]

Fix on PS4 to be able to view PSN info for players on the leaderboard, this will allow you to make friend requests or report inappropriate names.

[h2]Memory Management on PS4 (The forever war):[/h2]

Due to the game being developed for PC primarily, there wasn't much thought to how it fits in memory on PS4. I am continually tweaking things to get the best memory usage with the greatest visual quality I can squeeze out.

• PS4 - tweaked some settings to help with memory and visual quality.
  

[h2]Ship Appearance:[/h2]

Fixed some Coating icons so the color locations match up with the expected layout. This is an ongoing process and will take some time to get them all fixed.

[h2]Matchmaking Changes:[/h2]

I found an issue with the matchmaking rating update that was causing the score to only go down. This means the longer you play, the lower your rating would be. This obviously destroys the ability to matchmake based on skill and causes matches to be lopsided. I have fixed the issue, but in order to make it right we are resetting all matchmaking ratings so that the system can right itself as quickly as possible.

• Fixed matchmaking rating update algorithm.
  
• Reset backend MatchMaking Rating for all players.
  

[h2]Market Items on Sale[/h2]

• Emerald Isle Bundle - 60% off
  
• Shamrock Decal Collection - 60% off
  
• Pot o' Gold Emblem Collection - 40% off
  
• Limerick Coating Collection - 40% off
  
• Shamrock (Emerald) Decal Collection - 40% off
  
• Shamrock (Gilded) Decal Collection - 40% off
  
• Highlands Green Coating Collection - 40% off
  
• Aegis Retrofit - 50% off
  
• Akkora - 70% off
  
• Zilant - 60% off
  
• Heal Bundle - 75% off