Dreadnought News

Lead Game Designer Matt Tobiason answers some of the most common questions about Dreadnought’s recent game update and plans for what’s coming up next!

A: On a general level, we felt that our Drain modules were not granular enough in their effects, and that at the same time Energy Generator trivialized their effects too much by overriding them.

More specifically, there were a lot of modules affecting energy that were part of various strategies that were nearly impossible to counter. Drain Pulse in particular was in and of itself pretty overpowered and only really had Energy Generator as a valid response. Energy Generator was also a fairly major component of a lot of ‘Heal Ball’ builds that we don’t especially want to encourage.

Q: Why were the Storm Missiles nerfed in the recent patch?

A: The problem we hit with Storm Missiles was that the combination of the missile count and the speed of the missiles simply overwhelmed existing anti-missile countermeasures, leaving targets with no real way to defend themselves.

Q: Nukes are really strong now! What's the counter?

A: Nukes in Dreadnought are essentially a way to punish the opposing team for clustering tightly to play defense. Once the enemy group gets hit with a nuke, your team can go on the offense against heavily damaged opponents. We increased the overall power of the ability simply because it wasn’t doing its job well enough, and at higher tiers of play it was getting severely overshadowed by Tartarus Missile.

Apart from direct counters to the ability, shields will generally go a long way toward getting you through a nuclear blast. Still, your best bet is to avoid bunching up and making your team a tempting target for trigger-happy Dreadnoughts!

Q: What are the goals of moving tier 4 out of Veteran with the tier change?

A: As players advance through tier 3 currently, it can be a bit of a slog because of the power mismatch between tier-3 and tier-4 ships. Our decision to rearrange the tiers in the way we are doing stems from two aspects of our progression:

• The power differential between tier-4 and tier-5 ships is significantly smaller than the differential between tier-3 and tier-4 ships. Tier-5 ships are definitely stronger, but the module selection is effectively the same. This means that tier-5 players can’t utilize tactics that a tier-4 player has absolutely no counter to, which we can’t say about the tier-3/tier-4 divide.
  
  
• Players spend a lot more time in tier-4 ships than tier-3 ships. Because players advance through tier-3 relatively quickly, the current fleet tier layout ends up creating matches that are mostly composed of tier-4 ships, with a small number of tier-3 ships mixed in. In our future version of the fleet tiers, although players with tier-4 ships in Legendary tier can easily land in matches composed entirely of other tier-4 ships, or of mostly tier-4 ships with a couple of tier-5 ships mixed in, the same is not true at all of players commanding tier-3 ships in today’s matchmaking pool.
  

Q: How is Battle Bonus being affected by the change to make tier 4 exclusively in Legendary?

A: Battle Bonus is receiving a very significant overhaul in our coming revamp of fleet tiers.

Currently, the effects of Battle Bonus are a flat bonus tied completely tied to the fleet tier. After we release this change, the effects of Battle Bonus will be tied to the ships equipped in your fleet. Basically, each ship in your fleet will increase your Battle Bonus. Higher-tier ships will provide much greater increases, so the bigger and more advanced your fleet is, the more rewards you’ll rake in from matches. The cost of refreshing Battle Bonus is going to be higher in each match than it is today, but the bonus percentage you can reach with an advanced fleet for that tier is also quite a bit higher.

In essence, some players want to diversify and pursue a lot of different ship lines at once, while others prefer to focus their efforts on pushing one ship forward as fast as they can. Our goals with this change are to make sure that neither group is being punished for their play style, and that even when players are ‘done’ with a fleet tier, it’s still worth dusting off their old ships from time to time in order to pull in a nice haul of credits.

Q: How is the current “Spider-Tank” / “Heal Ball” Metagame being addressed?

A: The Rupture modules that will be introduced soon, along with a variety of changes to the existing armor modules, are going to be the first steps in dealing with this problem. Stay tuned for more work going into this in the near future!

Q: Is there a plan for PTR servers, and if so, how does it look?

A: We’re all for implementing something along these lines, and we’re trying to determine the best way to approach this. We’ll let everyone know as soon as we’ve figured out the most valuable way to run this.

Q: Is there a plan to have new/more Officer Briefings in the game?

A: Absolutely! We’re in the process of defining a new set, though we’re not quite sure when we’ll have it ready for release.

Added ‘Quick Play’ to the main menu, which queues players directly into their last selected game mode using their last selected Fleet.

Updated all module icons to be more visually distinct and intuitive.

Rotating around your ship in the hangar now temporarily hides the UI.



Global Change: Standardized the duration of the Drain status effect, which stops energy from regenerating on the target, to 10 seconds across all Drain modules. This change is independent of any changes to the actual energy removal of any given module.

Drain Drone (Tactical Cruiser): The energy drained by the drone has increased from 4.2/second to 6.5/second at tier 4, and from 9.8/second to 14/second at tier 5.

Drain Missile (Artillery Cruiser): Reduced energy reduction per missile by 15 at tier 2, and by 10 at tiers 3 and 4. The resulting total energy drained should be 35 at tier 2, 60 at tier 3, 80 at tier 4, and remains 125 at tier 5.

Drain Pulse (Destroyer): Reduced energy reduction from 100 to 65 at tier 4 and from 125 to 85 at tier 5.

Drain Torpedo (Corvette): Reduced energy drained from 65 to 45 at tier 2, from 80 to 55 at tier 3, from 100 to 70 at tier 4, and from 125 to 85 at tier 5.

Drain Torpedo (Destroyer): Slightly increased the cooldown and a significantly increased the damage of this module across all ability tiers. The Drain component should also be equal to the Corvette version of the ability, with energy drained reduced from 65 to 45 at tier 2, from 80 to 55 at tier 3, from 100 to 70 at tier 4, and from 125 to 85 at tier 5.

Energy Generator (Destroyer and Tactical Cruiser): Normalized the total amount of energy granted by this module. The module now provides about 14 energy per second at all tiers, and the duration and cooldown of the two versions have been standardized.

Nuclear Missile (Dreadnought): The effect radius and damage of this module have been increased.

Offensive Lockdown (Dreadnought): This module's functionality has been standardized across all tiers. The module now increases rate of fire by 30%, reduced reload time by 50%, and increases damage per shot by 20% for 10 seconds at every tier, with cooldowns that vary by tier.

Storm Missiles (Destroyer): Reduced the missile count from 16 to 12 at tier 4 and from 32 to 24 at tier 5.

Triad Pods (Dreadnought): The damage output and the duration of the pods spawned by this module have been increased substantially.

Stasis Pulse (Artillery Cruiser and Dreadnought): Increased pulse radius from 1200 to 1600, decreased Stasis duration from 10s to 6s at tier 4, and from 12s to 8s at tier 5.

Rapid Fire: The module will no longer hold the user in place at tiers 4 and 5, and will remove the user's energy at every tier. In addition, the effects have been standardized across all of its tiers.

• Improved general stability and log-in connectivity
  
• Improved error texts for several connectivity issues
  
• Player’s ship now appropriately despawns if they disconnect
  
• Improved several vanity item descriptions
  
• Players with Chinese or Russian characters in their password can now log into the launcher
  
• Resolved an issue where players were unable to equip modules from previous tiers on their current tier of ship.
  
• Improved localization text strings for all languages
  
• Re-added ‘Tutorial’ as a selectable game mode for players to play through again
  // Playing this mode should resolve the issue of returning players being unable to complete “Answer The Call”
  
• Fixed an issue where players would sometimes lose chat functionality when chatting in combination with using the Short Commands Wheel
  
• Ships that were not used in Proving Grounds but were in your Fleet should now generate XP rewards.
  
• Resolved an issue where “Processing…” would display indefinitely when navigating the Market
  
• Improved disruptive audio levels for numerous modules
  
• Resolved a visual issue where “Total Credits Reward” would display less Credits than the player actually earned and received
  
• Improved distorted graphics/textures for the lava rivers on Amirani
  
• Resolved an issue where players were unable to select a new ship from the respawn screen
  

KNOWN ISSUES
- The “QuickPlay” button may sometimes disappear if a player ‘resets all settings.’ Relaunching resolves this.
- Rapid Fire module sometimes holds user in place. This should be fixed in a future patch.

** This event is live! The Predator Retrofit is available under the "Bundles" section of the Market for 0 GP!

Get ready to rack up extra battle rewards! Beginning the morning of Tuesday November 20th, we will be overclocking XP systems on PC and PS4.

Play in any game mode to earn additional Ship XP and Free XP. Even better, all your Battle Bonus and Elite Status bonuses will benefit from this boost too!

Be sure to stop by the Market and pick up the elusive Predator Retrofit, available free for the duration of the event! Stalk your enemies in style with these unique ship cosmetics for all Jupiter Arms Corvettes.

Everyone who logs in during this time will also be granted a new iteration of the Community Event Decal and the community-created Wisdom Decal shortly after the conclusion of Bonus XP Event.

Ready to grab that sleek, shiny module or that tier-IV ship you’ve had your eye on? Now is the perfect time to make them yours!