Contents:

** Additions
** Balance/Tweaks
** Fixes
** Known Issues

Additions:

Gameplay
** Respawn penalty has been applied for situations where a pilot would intentionally destroy the ship to either reload missiles or prevent another player from getting a kill
** Reworked the server, instance, and matchmaking service from the ground up
** Lobby system and game servers now talk to each other about the teams that a client is on in the lobby and in game
** Lobby system will now remove players from a lobby if the instance system crashes rather than letting a group remain in a broken lobby
** Game Instances are able to transition from completed matches to hosting a new match more quickly
Ships
** Vanduul Scythe is hangar and combat ready (shows as captured vanduul fighter in lobby)
** P52-Merlin is hangar and combat ready
*** Due to being a snub fighter, the Merlin does not have intakes. As such, it does not replenish fuel while flying. In the PU, it would do this by docking with a Constellation
*** Accounts that have constellation variants that come with a snub fighter will be given a Merlin loaner ship to use in Arena Commander
*** Like other loaner ships, loaner Merlin’s cannot be placed in the hangar
*** Placing a Constellation Andromeda in the hangar will also spawn a Merlin
Components
** Added support for spray patterns to weapons based on weapon mount type
** Added new attenuation for missiles explosions
** Added weapon names to Vanduul armaments
** Added blade extension for captured Vanduul Scythe. It is activated by turning the item on in the weapon UI
** Human engineers have increased the weapon lethality for the ship for the captured version of the scythe
User Interface
** Added a HUD effect to the Vanduul Scythe where the alien ship HUD will appear in some situations
** Electronic Access button has replaced the Arena Commander button in the main menu to help with indicating that Arena Commander and Star Marine and simulations within the game fiction
** Arena Commander and Star Marine icons have been added for each game module
** Game module icons will be grayed out for accounts that do not have access to them (Star Marine is grayed out for all accounts)
** Game modes and maps will have a red overlay for accounts that are invited to lobbies which contain game modes they can’t play
** Lobby host will receive an error if a player in a lobby doesn’t have access to the selected game mode
** Match ID’s have been put back into the game to make it easier for players to report issues with specific instances
** Match ID length and complexity has been increased to ensure that they’re always unique
Environment
** Transitioned the audio system for all game content over to new cross-platform sound engine
** Added additional ambiance to the VFG Industrial hangar
** Added new splash screens when initially logging into the game

Balance/Tweaks:

Gameplay
** Battle Royale and Squadron Battle have had their maximum player count increased to 16
** Updated how ships calculate their mass when in the hangar
Points that are earned for doing damage to ship hulls has been adjusted due to the changes in ship health
Tweaked REC rewards due to changed in ship score values
Increased amount of REC rewarded from Capture the Core to better incentivize the game mode
Rebalanced Vanduul Swarm to be in line with desired difficulty due to the balance changes made to ships
*** Vanduul are much more aggressive and will keep the player under pressure
*** Vanduul are more than likely going to tail you when they can
*** Speed for all types of Vanduul have been reduced to prevent them flying away from the player as quick
*** The difficulty of the first boss on wave 3 has been reduced
Ships
** Boost consumption has been rebalanced so that it involves more decision making for when to use it and involves less attrition
** 300-series hull health increased x2
** Aurora hull health increased x3
** Aurora top speed increased to 175
** Avenger hull health increased x2
** Avenger wings upsized from size 1 to size 2
** Gladiator hull health increased x2
** Gladiator adjusted to drift more when turning so that it handles appropriately for its size and role.
** Gladius hull health increased x2
** Hornet family hull health increased x2
** Hornet rotational velocity increased
** Hornet rotational acceleration decreased (not as much as the first PTU build)
** Tightened up Hornet lateral strafe
** M50 hull health increased x3
** Mustang hull health increased x3
** Restricted missile hardpoint sizes from size 1-3 to size 3 only to restrict possible missile racks on the Hornet Series
** Old Merlin models have been removed from the constellations
** Cutlass hull health increased x3
** Decreased Cutlass boost angular velocity from 3x normal to 2x normal
Components
** Weapon damage increased by about 25%
** The weapon damage disparity between sizes increased to 75%. Helps to make fixed weapons vs gimbaled weapons a more valuable decision.
** Weapon accuracy for gatling weapons decreases/spread increases over longer sustained rate of fire
** Decreased spool up time
** Gatling weapons can now fire while weapons are spooling up
** Increased range and velocity of ballistic weapons
** Omnisky velocity reduced
** Omnisky power consumption increased
** Increased Suckerpunch range
** Weapon mount and gimbal slew rates are now set based by size
** Adjusted weapon mounts so that their IM and EM signature generation scales with mount size
** Increasing cooling flow for weapons due to higher health and shield values
** Chaff counter measures will now fire in bursts of 4 across a 120 degree horizontal arc, chaff counter measure ammo box sizes have been quadrupled to match the burst
** Size and potency of chaff reduced
** Missile damage raised x1.5 for all missiles to help compensate the increased ship/shield health and the raised Shield absorb for splash damage
** Added distortion damage to missiles
** Increased missile range
** Tempest II reduced explosion radius and overall damage
** Stalker V reduced explosion radius and overall damage
** Shield values have been doubled
** Shield splash damage absorb factor increased from 1 to 1.25 as a baseline. SECO-Splash shields raised to 1.5 and SECO-Drop shields raised from 0.8 to 1
** Shield recharge rates have been reduced
** Shield regen delay increased across the board for all sizes. Shortest delay is 9.5s for Size 1 and 19.5s at Size 4
** Reduced amount of ballistic weapon damage that Shields absorb before applying damage to hull through the shields
** Reduced armor energy absorption to make it less effective vs energy weapons
Environment
** Rotated the holotables and moved most of them next to a wall
** Improved load times for ragdolls

Fixes:

(PTU) – denotes an issue from the PTU that was fixed

Gameplay
** As a temporary fix to some instant cockpit kill issues, we’ve made the character invincible when sitting in the cockpit
** Client and server performance for when ships are destroyed and respawn has been greatly improved
** Clients that enter a team game mode from the same ranked lobby will now be on the same team
** Fixed a server crash that was causing large amounts of players to disconnect (PTU)
** Fixed an issue where game instances were turning into bottomless pits for specific game types and ate all the matchmaking requests without spinning the instance up (PTU)
** Fixed one of the issues that was causing clients to get kicked back to hangar due to entering a state that would allow the client to connect to a match, but never finish the connection process (PTU)
** Hard coded team values into the Generic Instance Manger to prevent a client from trying to connect to a match with a team size of 0 (PTU)
** Spectator cameras are more stable when observing another ship (PTU)
** Characters rolling while prone is now seen by other clients
** Characters no longer spawn in as a pair of eyes
** Fixed a few issues that were causing characters to spawn in a pilot seat standing up (some still exist)
** Fixed an issue causing ships to sometimes sink into landing platforms in Multiplayer Free Flight when using automatic landing
** Fixed a crash that would occasionally occur when landing in Multiplayer Free Flight
** Fixed a crash that would occur when using the pistol after landing in Free Flight
** Fixed several issues that would prevent tutorial completion (PTU)
** Fixed several issues that were caused by reloading the tutorial (PTU)
Ships
** Fixed an issue where the ship name would appear as debug text for the tutorial Gladius’ ship AI
** Front panels on the Mustang now animate when used
** Fixed some thruster issues with the Merlin that would cause it to jerk around when boosting (PTU)
** Fixed an issue where the Andromeda loaner Merlin wouldn’t be accessible unless the Andromeda was in the hangar (PTU)
** Fixed an issue where the loaner Merlin granted by the Andromeda would get stuck on a permanent load screen (PTU)
** Mustangs no longer float in the air after landing with damaged or destroyed wings
** Fixed the mustang turret showing debug text in the holotable
** Fixed an issue where swapping turrets in a constellation would cause character animations to malfunction
** Killing a Cutlass now gives proper credit
Components
** Delta Rocket pods no longer display their name as debug text
User Interface
** Fixed an issue that caused cross-hairs and reticule to sometimes go missing upon respawn
** Thrusters can now be deactivated in power management
** Holding tab will no longer cause the score board to default to on
** Toggling comstab wasn’t working for the first (PTU) version and has been fixed
Environment
** Large invisible collision blocks have been removed from the Aeroview hangar (PTU)
** Murray Cup poster now appears in the VFG Industrial Hangar (PTU)
** Cloud in race maps are no longer popping in and out
** Fixed a crash that was being cause by the social module elevators in the hangar (PTU)
** Fixed an issue that was causing some of the platform numbers in Free Flight to look like bubbles hovering over the landing pads (PTU)
** Fixed some missing texturs that were causing red ‘replace me’ squares are under the ships in the tutorial (PTU)

Known Issues:

These are not representative of all known issues in the build. The following issues are bugs that were introduced with this version of the game that we feel are most impactful to play experience.

Gameplay
** REC will sometimes not be awarded at the end of a match due to some server side issues
** Error code 8 will happen occasionally when connecting to a multiplayer match which results in the client kicking back to the hangar after a load screen
** Matchmaking isn’t differentiating clients based on map selection for race modes
** Ships are rarely unable to respawn after being destroyed
** The ability to send invites doesn’t recover if the Generic Instance Manager goes down due to the friends server not knowing when to rebroadcast its information
** Respawning will rarely cause blood to appear on the characters visor
** Missiles can fail to track their target in the third chapter of the tutorial and prevent the tutorial from being completed
Ships
** The Mustang Delta is loading in with the Mustang Alpha geometry, causing it to lose its rocket pods
** Interior of the Freelancer variants are pitch black due to missing textures and lighting
** Sections of some Constellations are pitch black due to missing textures and lighting
** Central seat of the Constellation cannot be sat in
** Retaliator bomb bay floor is missing collision
Components
** Motion blurr for some ship components is set too high, causing ships to often times appear more blurry than they should
User Interface
** There is no respawn timer for respawn penalties
** Error code 8 isn’t displayed to a client when it’s kicked back to hangar. Sometimes it shows up if the client completely backs out of the lobby UI
** Gladius is missing its HUD in the tutorial
** The HUD for the P-52 Merlin cannot be interacted with
** Client will black screen if the lobby service is not able to communicate with the instance manager
** Force closing the client while readied up will break the accounts ability to ready up (workaround: become a host of a lobby and the accounts ready state will be flushed)
Environment
** Multiple kinds of audio will drop out in matches with large amounts of ships