Star Conflict OBT v0.8.1

Mercenary Center Patch Discussion
1

Star Conflict OBT v 0.8.1
 
Note: There will be an extended maintenance tomorrow on May 23rd, 2013.
 
General changes

Steam

  • Simplified logging in through Steam. Linking your login and password with Gaijin.Online is no longer mandatory.

Game modes

  • Added functionality to create custom game lobbies in practice mode.
  • Chat command /lobby deleted.

Game balance

  • Reworked the friendly fire system:
    • In Arcade PvP mode, you take full damage from your own weapons and missiles, but do not take damage from your allies.
    • In Classic PvP mode, you take full damage and damage your allies.

Player Account and Security

  • Added the ability to store your password.
  • PLEASE NOTE! This is an unsafe operation and we can not guarantee the security of your password, if you use this feature on public computers or provide access to your computer to other people.

Battlegrounds

  • Added a new battleground for PvP battles “Abandoned outpost”.

Looting system

  • Reworked the looting system.
    • Upon discovering a valuable module, it is now necessary to “extract” ir from the wreckage of the ship.
    • There is a chance of breaking the module during extraction, in which case you will automatically receive credits for a broken unit.
    • The probability of finding loot has been significantly increased.

Implants

  • Beta catalyst “Cheetah II” now increases maximum speed by 15% (previously 20%).

 

Other

  • Combat log is now stored in a separate file. Control commands can be found on the game’s wiki at wiki.star-conflict.com

  Ships

  • Afterburners now grant only a 50% increase in maximum speed, instead of 75%.
  • Base speeds of all ships have been compensated to maintain the same dynamics.
  • Slightly reduced Jericho shield bonus.

Interceptors

 

General

  • Speed increased by 5% (from base speed).
  • Hull and shield capacity increased by 25%.

Recon

  • Parasitic Remodulator recharge reduced by 15%.
  • Phase Modulator recharge time reduced by 15%.

Covert Ops

  • “Orion” Targeting Complex improves damage by an additional 20%. Recharge time reduced by 15%.
  • “Plasma Arc” damage increased by 15%.
  • The “Plasma Arc” module icon now shows how many targets it can potentially hit.

ECM

  • Weapon System Inhibitor efficiency increased by 30%.
  • Energy Absorber recharge time reduced by 15%.
  • Stasis Generator recharge time reduced by 50%.
  • Ion Emitter effect duration increased by 20%. Recharge time reduced by 15%

 

Frigates

 

Engineering

  • Engineering frigates now only have 4 cannons (previously 6).
  • Changed the logic of engineering drones:
    • Now the drones activate themselves, attacking the enemy and repairing the owner’s ship.
    • Enabling the module overloads the drones’ logic circuits, they start repairing all allied ships around them, but eventually break down and disappear.

Long-range

  • EM Scattering Field effect duration changed from 20 to 60 seconds.
  • Weapon Overcharge now affects the next shot after activation. The cost of shots and cooldown change accordingly.
  • Infrared Pulsar can no longer be activated until your ship is locked by an enemy (to prevent false activations).

 
Modules

 

General

  • Lightweight Hull now grants 20% less bonus speed.

  Interface
 

General

  • Current bonuses to module and ship characteristics are available again. They can be displayed by pressing CTRL.
  • Removed bonus display in the ship tree. Only the actual characteristics are shown.

Shipyard

  • Reworked managing equipment in shipyards, modules are now grouped by type.
  • Removed the warranty repair system.

Mail

  • Added the ability to send text messages to other players.
  • Mail messages you don’t read disappear after 60 days.

HUD

  • Added highlighting object contours. You can turn it off in the game options.
  • In the tactical map you can see any player’s ranking and corporation by hovering your mouse over the player.

  Contracts

  • Fixed some starting contracts. Now the victory contract will be available from rank 1. Its cooldown time has also been removed
  • Fixed a bug related to a rank 8 Techs contract. Now the contract is executed correctly by the ships of the Fighter class, using the T2 module.
  • Simplified the terms of several Tech and Warden contracts.

  Sounds and music

  • Added new phrases for PvE and PvP (Rus).
  • New sounds for several role modules.
  • Fixed Diffusion Shield sounds.
  • Fixed a bug with the sounds of Warp Gate.
  • Improvements sounds of hits (on stone surfaces).

  Bug fixes

  • Activating Adaptive Camouflage now correctly resets EMP bomb in “Detonation”.
  • Fixed the display of the number of targets (in module icon) that may be affected or are affected by it. More powerful allied modules were not previously accounted for.
  • Improved mechanics of missiles with energy-neutralising and slowing effect fields. Previously, it could fail if the target ship was destroyed with the missile still in flight. 
2

Wow, thats a hefty Covert Ops nerf, not sure it was neccessary.

3

Wow, thats a hefty Covert Ops nerf, not sure it was neccessary.

What patch notes are you reading?! Orion buffed and cooldown shortened. Plasma Arc buffed.

4

What patch notes are you reading?! Orion buffed and cooldown shortened. Plasma Arc buffed.

 

 

“Orion” Targeting Complex improves damage by an additional 20%

 

I thought this means orion went from 100% to 20% bonus. If it means it went up to 120%, well okay then. Verification would be good here, I took this as the new tooltip.

5

Game balance

  • Reworked the friendly fire system:
  • In Arcade PvP mode, you take full damage from your own weapons and missiles, but do not take damage from your allies.
  • In Classic PvP mode, you take full damage and damage your allies.

this is hardly going to fix the nuke problem :confused:

6

this is hardly going to fix the nuke problem :confused:

 

Agreed. If you use a guard frigate and turn on thermal resist, that’s around 200 thermal resist and your nuke only damage your frigate less than 4000 of your shield. If you use a fast ship, just run away from it.

7

Reworked the looting system.

  • Upon discovering a valuable module, it is now necessary to “extract” ir from the wreckage of the ship.
  • There is a chance of breaking the module during extraction, in which case you will automatically receive credits for a broken unit.
  • The probability of finding loot has been significantly increased

 

Does this mean that looting will have an increased chance in finding modules or just general loot chance increased?

8

when the servers go down ^^^^^^^^^^^^ tonight

9

No fix for the Guard Frigates and nothing much for the Long Range frigates?

10

No fix for the Guard Frigates and nothing much for the Long Range frigates?

 

was the last 60% damage buff not sufficient ?

11

Great patch, nice changes, especially for the interceptors, they really needed the buffs. I don’t think this will fully address the issue with nukes on T3 but I saw Error saying the nukes themselves will be reworked. I hope they will be just removed though. :V

 

I also really hope that I wont need a licence to use the lobby system in practice mode.

 

edit:

Changed the logic of engineering drones:

  • Now the drones activate themselves, attacking the enemy and repairing the owner’s ship.
  • Enabling the module overloads the drones’ logic circuits, they start repairing all allied ships around them, but eventually break down and disappear

So what will happen with the modules providing the shield/hp healing auras? If they remain unchanged, will the healing effect of the drones stack on top of those?

12

ugh no chance you can quickly up the numbers for that new t2 scenario so it can run at tier 3?

13

edit:

 

So what will happen with the modules providing the shield/hp healing auras? If they remain unchanged, will the healing effect of the drones stack on top of those?

 

As the drone heal stacked with all other heals before the patch, I’m assuming it will continue to after the patch.

14

Does this mean that looting will have an increased chance in finding modules or just general loot chance increased?

 

Hear, hear! They need to unpack this and give us information on exactly what percentages they’re upping. Is it just trash loot, or green/purple mods, or everything?

15

Looks cool. Covert ops is going to melt people even better. Especially with my purple rapidfire plasmas+orion complex.

 

Engy frigate to 4 turrets. Maybe we’ll see less of them. Who knows.

16

Added a new battleground for PvP battles “Abandoned outpost”.

Well, I guess a new map is a good change of pace…

 

Reworked the looting system.

Yeah, cause it was easy enough to GET loot as it was. I can predict a LOT of frustration in players that finally, after days of waiting, get a purple, only to have it lost forever.

 

Afterburners now grant only a 50% increase in maximum speed, instead of 75%.

Base speeds of all ships have been compensated to maintain the same dynamics.

Slightly reduced Jericho shield bonus.

Gunships and Ceptors are going to suffer from this, but assuming they increase the speeds to compensate and keep the afterburned speed around the same values, I don’t mind it…

Now… Jericho shield drops? Their tank is flimsy as it is, you should be increasing it, tbh…

 

Interceptors

Speed increased by 5% (from base speed).

Hull and shield capacity increased by 25%.

*Professor Frink voice* GOOD NEWS EVERYONE!!! Ceptors are now twice as hard to kill.

 

 

Recon

Welp. Time to get Jericho Recon Ceptors to abuse the xxxx out of this new-found shield booster.

 

Covert Ops

Yeah, cause CovOps wasn’t OP’d enough, let’s give players MORE reasons to fly them. Nothing will be done about the highly abusable cloak, right? WELP. Also time to abuse the xxxx out of this.

 

ECM

ECM was already one of the best combat Ceptors in the game, imho. This makes them OP’d to the point where they could easily kill Frigates.

 

Frigates

Engineering

… Yeah, cause they weren’t OP’d enough… Giving their Drones free-reins is EXACTLY what they needed the most.

 

Lightweight Hull now grants 20% less bonus speed.

Nice one! It is now useless.

 

Contracts

So, nothing has been done to reduce the stupidly long cooldowns and bread-crumbed rep gains.

 

 

In short, my point is that breaking more things to try and fix an already broken game doesn’t make it better. It makes it worse. GJ devs, I hope people keep abusing the hell out of the current broken systems that this patch will not fix:

  • non-friendly fire Nuke spam (making you kill yourself with a nuke doesn’t help the game in any way, but it WILL help your team mates help you farm loads of kills, especially on the Strong, god knows carrying 18 nukes helps you to achieve this objective so easily);

  • even more OP’d Engineer Frigate swarms (It takes about 4-5 Mk2 geared Frigates to curbstomp any map if the pilots can add 2+2; it’s not rocket science and it’s easy as all hell to coordinate long enough for even 3 of these to survive);

  • CovOps 1-shotting Frigates (Upping Plasma Arc & Orion damage only helps THEM in killing; they already killed fast enough without these boosts);

  • ECMs now also 1-shotting Frigates (ECMs could previously nuke the smut out of Command Fighters while they were locked down, now they’re capable of taking down Frigates that much more easily);

 

Etc, etc… the list goes on… I realize that if the enemy brings out a certain squad of ships, you refit to counter that squad, but the current trend seems to lock onto 2 Engineers, 1 Gunship, 1 Command and that squad is very hard to counter, considering this same squad will curbstomp any other squad they face. It doesn’t take very intelligent pilots to realize this and abuse it to kingdom come, which has been the sole used strategy, so far. This has been DYN’s recipe for success. Countering it also requires some abusing on the opposing team, which STILL hasn’t been fixed.

17

 

Well, I guess a new map is a good change of pace…

 

 

Yeah, cause it was easy enough to GET loot as it was. I can predict a LOT of frustration in players that finally, after days of waiting, get a purple, only to have it lost forever.

 

 

Gunships and Ceptors are going to suffer from this, but assuming they increase the speeds to compensate and keep the afterburned speed around the same values, I don’t mind it…

Now… Jericho shield drops? Their tank is flimsy as it is, you should be increasing it, tbh…

 

 

*Professor Frink voice* GOOD NEWS EVERYONE!!! Ceptors are now twice as hard to kill.

 

 

 

Welp. Time to get Jericho Recon Ceptors to abuse the xxxx out of this new-found shield booster.

 

 

Yeah, cause CovOps wasn’t OP’d enough, let’s give players MORE reasons to fly them. Nothing will be done about the highly abusable cloak, right? WELP. Also time to abuse the xxxx out of this.

 

 

ECM was already one of the best combat Ceptors in the game, imho. This makes them OP’d to the point where they could easily kill Frigates.

 

 

… Yeah, cause they weren’t OP’d enough… Giving their Drones free-reins is EXACTLY what they needed the most.

 

 

Nice one! It is now useless.

 

 

So, nothing has been done to reduce the stupidly long cooldowns and bread-crumbed rep gains.

 

 

In short, my point is that breaking more things to try and fix an already broken game doesn’t make it better. It makes it worse. GJ devs, I hope people keep abusing the hell out of the current broken systems that this patch will not fix:

  • non-friendly fire Nuke spam (making you kill yourself with a nuke doesn’t help the game in any way, but it WILL help your team mates help you farm loads of kills, especially on the Strong, god knows carrying 18 nukes helps you to achieve this objective so easily);

  • even more OP’d Engineer Frigate swarms (It takes about 4-5 Mk2 geared Frigates to curbstomp any map if the pilots can add 2+2; it’s not rocket science and it’s easy as all hell to coordinate long enough for even 3 of these to survive);

  • CovOps 1-shotting Frigates (Upping Plasma Arc & Orion damage only helps THEM in killing; they already killed fast enough without these boosts);

  • ECMs now also 1-shotting Frigates (ECMs could previously nuke the smut out of Command Fighters while they were locked down, now they’re capable of taking down Frigates that much more easily);

 

Etc, etc… the list goes on… I realize that if the enemy brings out a certain squad of ships, you refit to counter that squad, but the current trend seems to lock onto 2 Engineers, 1 Gunship, 1 Command and that squad is very hard to counter, considering this same squad will curbstomp any other squad they face. It doesn’t take very intelligent pilots to realize this and abuse it to kingdom come, which has been the sole used strategy, so far. This has been DYN’s recipe for success. Countering it also requires some abusing on the opposing team, which STILL hasn’t been fixed.

 

You completely ignore that they are reducing engi frig’s turrets from 6 to 4, which is a HUGE nerf. The small boost to drones is barely a buff at all. Engi frigs are having their damage output reduced by 33% in exchange for a tiny boost in team heals.

 

Ints needed the buff, as they’re by far the weakest ship class right now. I say this as a person who only flies engi frigs and fighters because of how fragile ints currently are.

 

You also ignore the fact that they’ve completely removed the timer on the win X battles contracts, which I believe will cause a huge spike in loyalty gain rate.

 

Further, it looks like drop rates will actually be increased rather than decreased. I’d hold off judgment until you actually see how their rework of the looting system changes things. If it reduces drops overall I’m against it as well, but it seems to me that they’re saying things will actually get better.

 

Your criticism of them changing lightweight hull doesn’t take into account how drastically they’re reworking ALL ship speeds. Given the big changes to everyone’s base speed, the original % boost would probably be OP.

 

And finally, you have no idea what you’re talking about when you refer to a  “2 engi/1 gunship/1 command squad” as DYN’s recipe for success. DYN doesn’t have any set recipe for success. We adapt our squads to the situation as needed and don’t ever require a squad to run X of Y ship — we play to have fun, not to win matches.

18

 

  • Added functionality to create custom game lobbies in practice mode.

 

Dear god, yes!

 

  • Game balance

  • Reworked the friendly fire system:

  • In Arcade PvP mode, you take full damage from your own weapons and missiles, but do not take damage from your allies.

  • In Classic PvP mode, you take full damage and damage your allies.

 

 

Step in the right direction, still not going to end the nuke spam though 

 

Battlegrounds

  • Added a new battleground for PvP battles “Abandoned outpost”.

Looting system

  • Reworked the looting system.
  • Upon discovering a valuable module, it is now necessary to “extract” ir from the wreckage of the ship.
  • There is a chance of breaking the module during extraction, in which case you will automatically receive credits for a broken unit.
  • The probability of finding loot has been significantly increased.

 

Yes! More maps! Loot system looks cool. Seems like we’ll see a lot more items but have a good chunk of them break, leading to a bit more excitement in the loot screen (that “Aahhh, so close!” feeling, which will keep us coming back and getting our hopes up)

 

Implants

  • Beta catalyst “Cheetah II” now increases maximum speed by 15% (previously 20%).

 

Awww, not my Cheetah II!

 

 

Ships

  • Afterburners now grant only a 50% increase in maximum speed, instead of 75%.
  • Base speeds of all ships have been compensated to maintain the same dynamics.
  • Slightly reduced Jericho shield bonus.

Is this to slow down the game and keep people away from hitting the 700 m/s speed wall? Easier on the engine/servers or something? 

 

 

Interceptors

 

General

  • Speed increased by 5% (from base speed).
  • Hull and shield capacity increased by 25%.

Recon

  • Parasitic Remodulator recharge reduced by 15%.
  • Phase Modulator recharge time reduced by 15%.

Covert Ops

  • “Orion” Targeting Complex improves damage by an additional 20%. Recharge time reduced by 15%.
  • “Plasma Arc” damage increased by 15%.

ECM

  • Weapon System Inhibitor efficiency increased by 30%.
  • Energy Absorber recharge time reduced by 15%.
  • Stasis Generator recharge time reduced by 50%.
  • Ion Emitter effect duration increased by 20%. Recharge time reduced by 15%

 

Awesome. Will make interceptors more effective in bursts against larger targets, but still leaves fighters/frigates as the ships you go to if you want to stay on the field. 

 

 

 

Frigates

 

Engineering

  • Engineering frigates now only have 4 cannons (previously 6).
  • Changed the logic of engineering drones:
  • Now the drones activate themselves, attacking the enemy and repairing the owner’s ship.
  • Enabling the module overloads the drones’ logic circuits, they start repairing all allied ships around them, but eventually break down and disappear.

Long-range

  • EM Scattering Field effect duration changed from 20 to 60 seconds.
  • Weapon Overcharge now affects  the next shot after activation. The cost of shots and cooldown change accordingly.

 

Frigate balance was needed. Taking damage away from the engineers is a good step - making players choose their role instead of having one ship do to many things well will only be good for the game. 

 

 

 

Modules

 

General

  • Lightweight Hull now grants 20% less bonus speed.

Again, don’t see why things need to be slowed down, but this fits with the other adjustments. 

 

 

 

 

Contracts

 

  • Fixed some starting contracts. Now the victory contract will be available from rank 1. Its cooldown time has also been removed
  • Fixed a bug related to a rank 8 Techs contract. Now the contract is executed correctly by the ships of the Fighter class, using the T2 module.
  • Simplified the terms of several Tech and Warden contracts.

 

 Cool. Contracts have really improved since the initial nerf to sub-faction loyalty.

 

 

All in all, it seems like the devs have been paying attention to the game and the players this time around and have responded accordingly. In other patched I’ve read the notes and gone “why on earth are they doing that?” - in this one I go “ok, I see what they’re trying to do there”, which is a nice change. Also, seems like the game is moving towards a system of soft rather than hard counters (which is great). 

19

Things aren’t slowing down. Patch notes themselves are pretty sketchy (not issue of translation, original ones were just as unclear) but it was later clarified that speeds for all ships but interceptors will:

 

  1. Stay the same when using afterburners with afterburners implant.

  2. Become faster in ranks where afterburner implant was not available.

  3. Become faster without afterburners.

 

Essentially the idea was to keep the speeds the same while distributing the speed differently. Now you will go faster without afterburners (inside propulsion inhibitor for example) but keep the same speed on afterburners.

 

 

Sadly the changes will do nothing to deter the current nuclear winter playstyle in T3. Strongs will just diffusion shield off their own nuke and engineers will not give a damn about one nuke. Standard gameplay will remain to fly in with Strongs and engineer frigates and drop a nuke on yourself to clear the beacon of enemies.

20

I think everyone is forgetting to tell Error something! So I will say it!!

 

Thank you Error for the patch notes PROIR to the update. You are the solar wind beneath our wings!!!