Build 138

[rob]

Hey folks, it's time for build 138! Changes:

* Add motherships
* Eliminate "cut-off forts" debuff
* Nerf yellow and orange patrol loot somewhat

Motherships have a chance to appear in regions (well, not the Origin region) in the interval between 25% and 75% completion. On average, you should expect two motherships per region. If one spawns, it'll show up somewhere in the middle 2/3rds of the region, possibly hovering over unkilled forts or even cities. You have five minutes to kill it before it disappears; if you kill it, it spawns eight smaller escape pods which flee in all directions. The mothership and the escape pods all drop the same loot, so you can get 9 loot bags if you kill them all.

I finally eliminated the debuff you apply to enemy forts by cutting them off from their neighbors. It was just a little too unobvious and a little too abusable.

Please post bug reports and other comments below. Thanks for playing!

Rob & Tim
Jetbolt Games

[Crunch]

Oddity:

Strike spawned within field of view, aiming away from my position. Also, minions did not spawn until I was completely underneath it.

Edit:
Can we have the RBs spawn closer to the center, similar to how Motherships are supposed to? I feel like this has happened an unreasonable number of times recently.

[rob]

Was there anyone else online when the strike force spawned? That is, was it attacking someone else?

[Crunch]

Apr 16, 2015 8:57:55 GMT -5 rob said:

Was there anyone else online when the strike force spawned? That is, was it attacking someone else?

I was lone-wolfing it. Is it possible that there's some kind of delay between when it picked my location and when it spawned? Lag?

[rob]

They spawn some distance away from their target and slowly move toward it. Perhaps you were at location A and a strikeforce spawned at location B (headed to kill you at A), then you just happened to teleport over to location B? Or maybe it's a real bug...

[Crunch]

I was doing no teleporting, just clearing in a line. I saw it spawn, so it wasn't as though I drove up onto it.
I have to say though, it was pretty surprising... and not in a bad way.

Edit: 
Dreadfangs seem to need to go through their cooldown period, immediately after spawning, before launching their drones. I had another one materialize just out of view range (kinda nice that they spawn so close, tbh) and its drones didn't launch until it was 90% dead. Shouldn't they be able to spawn and immediately launch their fighters? 

[Crunch]

More strike weirdness. This one spawned just outside of visible range, and was facing away from my position, similar to the first one I reported. I was the only player online. There was a second event, which I do not have an image of (scared the crap out of me) where the Strike spawned directly on top of me. These happened in the same part of the same region, not sure if that's important. Also, again, there is an odd period of time, directly after spawn, where no missiles or drones are launched by the Strikes (I thought it was just the Fang, but was mistaken).


Edit: Spawned on me


and another spawned just off to the side, flying the wrong way. There are three more which spawned on me or flew the wrong way, but I did not get a screen shots of them.

I would estimate that ~25% of strikes are either heading the wrong direction, spawning on me, or both. It may be higher if there are wrong-way strikes I never even see. 

Edit: and another...