Build 127

[rob]

Greetings Brave Testers! It's time for build 127 -- changes include:

* Add an on-screen notification when you get nerfed by a gun hit
* Fix buggy enemy icon drawing in red regions
* Have lua-scripted targeting respect cloak
* Change appearance of item text
* Add Pathogen-class Brutality Center to red regions
* Better position "war materiel" quests

It's a hodgepodge of little things this week. Bug fixes and little tweaks. It's tweak week, here at Jetbolt! Plus Tim spent a lot of time tinkering on non-user-facing stuff.

Due to how much I hate having to manually meld and apply augments all the time, we are considering making another big change to them. This time, we plan to have them auto-equip onto your current tank, the way prisms do. In fact, you could consider them to be somewhat like per-tank prisms. Each augment you collect increases your augment level of that stat (rate of fire, hull, speed, etc) by one. You get a 4% bonus to that stat at augment levels 1, 3, 7 and 15, with 15 being the max. You'll lose half your augment levels at death. This system is pretty similar to the current one with three exceptions: augments are auto-applied to the current tank (no saving them for other tanks); you can no longer buy/sell augments; and you don't have to go through the bother of manually applying augments all the time. I'm interested in any feedback you have on this plan.

As always, we really appreciate all the time you spend playing the game. Your feedback helps us a lot. So thank you!

Rob & Tim
Jetbolt Games

[renenutet]

Honestly, this game needs more than tweaks to keep its head above water. The permaloss of tanks puts this game on the level of Realm in terms of stress level, there really isn't much of an objective other than "kill enemies", the status hierarchy of "has 912038019238 gridcoins" in the leaderboard is simply unattainable as there aren't enough coin sinks, the squad system needs work to even be a noticeable part of the game, there are only ever 5 people on Grid at a time, lag is an easy killer especially with homing missiles, bombs don't handle any latency well at all, etc. I could keep pointing faults out.

I don't wanna tell you how to do your job, but bugfixing and tweaking and positioning and balancing is usually an afterthought, and the core gameplay is something that needs a lot more work.

[Will]

Especially the HP count delay thing that has people dying in the Origin... trust me, I have been sitting in the Origin only to see tanks explode randomly lol

[Crunch]

Bug:
Shield recharge timer is reset on all segments, when any segment takes damage.

Description:
Shield segments do not recharge while player is actively engaged in an exchange of fire. A damaged segment will not begin to recharge until the player has avoided all incoming fire for the duration of its cooldown. If any shield segment or player's hull takes damage, the cooldown timer is reset for all damaged or broken shield segments. 

To repro:
> Select any tank class with multiple shield segments. I will use the Fury in my example.
> Drive Fury to maze region and approach an outer-corner Isolator Unit. 
> Begin taking damage from the corner gun. 
> Rotate shields as they become depleted. 
> Notice shield segments do not recharge. 
> Notice all depleted segments (of like delays) will recharge simultaneously once the Fury has left combat. 

Scope:
This seems to work against all tanks, although the Herc would, essentially, be unaffected. I've also repro'd on an alt account to verify that it wasn't an upgrade/shield/powercell conflict of some sort. Obviously, this reduces the effectiveness of scouts, shield rotation/positioning, and shield segments in general. Shield configurations which incorporate layers are greatly affected, as their inner shields cannot recharge while the outer shields absorb damage. 

If anyone has already reported this, I'm sorry. I couldn't find mention of it. 

[Deleted]

^ I believe this only started happening very recently. It's definitely a major problem for any tank with more than one shield segment (i.e. every tank except Hercules and Vindicator).

[rob]

Thanks for this report.