MAJOR FEATURE: Drones

Unlock at level 27

Drones are combat units that hover around your robot, providing it with different kinds of support. You can deploy drones with your robot, using the same power cells that are spent on active modules. Unlike pilots and modules, drones aren't tied to particular robots — you can select them on the deployment screen before going into battle.

Drones by themselves cannot do much other than hover around. Their combat functions are defined by microchips you install in them. Some microchips unlock their built-in weapons, some allow drones to boost robots’ powers, and some make them react to certain situations (like enemies suppressing or freezing you) in certain ways. You can get basic microchips from the store. Chips of higher tiers can be acquired by fusing together multiple basic chips of the same type for Gold.

There are multiple types or drones, each has a fixed number of microchip sockets. Socket types are randomized every time you get a new Drone. Also, each Drone has a limited battery capacity to allocate between microchips. Limited capacity means that you cannot just beef up your drone with the best chips possible — you have to make certain tradeoffs to fit into the limit. Better chips are more powerful, but consume more of the drone's energy, so you have to look not just for powerful, but for balanced microchip combinations that will give you the best benefits for your fighting style

Balance Update

Currently, the meta is dominated by close combat burst builds — “get close, kill fast, retreat” is the most prominent tactic by far. We want to give more space for other styles of play: snipers, sustained-damage builds and supports should have their opportunities to contribute to the fight as well.

We attempted to address this with some surgical tweaks, and while this had some local effects (a few select weapons like Atomizers or Thermites play much better now), it didn’t affect the situation as a whole. Hence, we're going for a larger rebalance.

To begin with, we're fixing lots of weapon-related bugs (such as Cryo weapons and Pulsar accuracy issues) and attempting to comprehensively equalize all playstyles by tuning not particular pieces, but whole sets of weapons.

As a result, multiple items take significant nerfs. Some of them got overly generous buffs in the past (Cryogenic weapons, Scourge line), some got too strong with the introduction of the respective pilot (Ao Jun, Ravana, Blitz), some are just too efficient in their respective tiers even after nerfs (Avenger).

On other hand, there are lots of outsiders that are in line for major buffs: Wasp and Sting, long-range Ion, Arbalest and Ballista, sustain-ish rocket launcher Avalanche, as well as Hades, Weyland and Mender. See the details below.

"Super-close" range nerfs

Ravana and Scorpion along with the latest shotgun rework made builds for super-close range (sub-200 meters) incredibly effective — perhaps, tad too effective. We are happy to see new play styles emerging, so our aim with this change is to bring point-blank fighters in line with others instead of making them non-viable. In other words, tune these builds enough so the War Robots won't turn into War Ravanas.

Also — Phase Shift tweak had that coming for a while, so we're actually making it happen. Inability to capture beacons while your robot is "shifted" should promote more active gameplay around the contested zone.

Ravana
Durability: ↓ 10%
Ability duration: ↓ 1 sec
Ability cooldown: 14 → 15 sec
Cannot capture beacons while the ability is active

Phase Shift
Robots cannot capture beacons while the module is active

Storm
Particles per shot: 8 → 6

Sharpshooter (Pilot Skill)
Shoot grouping bonus reduced:
T4: 37.5% → 25%;
T3: 30% → 20%;
T2: 22,5% → 15%;
T1: 15% → 10%

Support robots buffs

Nightingale made repair-bots mainstream — now it is time to bring some attention to the old guard. Weyland had some survivability issues due to its lack of mobility, so we're turning it into a mini-bastion by increasing its damage resistance in Repair Mode. Mender had troubles keeping up with faster teammates, which made its repairs very tricky to utilize — that we're addressing too.

Tyr is okay. Not as okay as Nightingale though, so we've made it a bit okay-er.

Weyland
Added 15% damage mitigation in Repair Mode
Repairs per tick: ↑ 15%

Mender
Mender starts repairing immediately after ability activation
Repair pulses: 4 → 7
Movement speed increase from ability: ↑ 30%
Damage resistance from ability: 50 → 70%

Tyr Repairs per tick: ↑ 20%

Other changes

Robots

• Ao Jun: ability duration ↓ 2 sec, ability damage ↓ 20%
• Leech: ability duration ↓ 1 sec
• [Blitz] Clive Vicious’s pilot skill: Blitz damage resistance 90% → 80%
• Hades: Retrubution damage  ↑ 15%, durability ↑ 15%
• Fenrir: speed in mobile mode ↑ 5%
• Bulwark: Aegis durability ↑ 5%

Weapons

• Halo, Corona, Glory: damage per particle ↓ 10%
• Viper: damage per particle ↓ 10%
• Glacier, Cryo, Rime: damage per rocket ↓ 20%, targeting issues fixed
• Spark, Scourge, Calamity: damage per tick ↓ 15%, ammo ↓ 15%
• Avenger: damage per particle ↓ 15%
• Sting: damage per particle ↑ 10%, corrosion damage ↑ 10%
• Wasp: interval between shots: 0.85 → 0.5, ammo 5 → 12, reload 5 → 12
• Avalanche: damage per rocket ↑ 15%, ammo 12 → 16
• Arbalest, Balista, Trebuchet: damage per charge ↑ 10%
• Ion: damage per shot ↑ 10%
• Redeemer: now pairs better with Taran (ammo: 21 → 32; particles per burst: 3 → 4; damage per particle: ↓ 45%)
• Taran: damage per particle ↑ 5%;
• Ember, Igniter, Blaze: usability tweaks, damage per second: ↑ 5%
• Quarker, Atomizer, Nucleon: targetting issues fixed
• Pulsar: targetting issues fixed

Bug and usability fixes

• In equipment menu there’s now a button that returns you directly to hangar (it saves you three taps!)
• Premium button relocated to the left side of hangar menu
• Fixed a targeting issue causing Pulsar, Quarker, Atomizer, Nucleon and Cryogenic rockets to lose effectiveness against moving targets
• Fixed an issue causing Isabella Porter skill to not work properly in certain situations
• Minor adjustments to certain items Gold costs in Workshop: Atomizer, Bulgasari, Cryo, Dragoon, Ember, Glacier, Haechi, Mender, Nucleon, Quarker, Redeemer, Rime and Weyland production speed-up for Gold got slightly cheaper
• Improved performance on certain devices