In Short
- New event: Lunar New Year
- New robots: Dragons. [Au] Ao Qin, [Au/Comp] Ao Guang,[Comp] Ao Jun
- Numerous balance changes: tweaks to Invader, Rayker, Hellburner and many others
- UPGRADE TIMERS REDUCTION — full before/after comparison below
- Module tweaks: module slots changed for Griffin, Leo, Natasha, and others
- Bug fixes
Note: With Lunar New Year event's start, WR Royale will be removed from the game. Remaining tokens will be converted into another resource later. Stay tuned for details.
Event: Lunar New Year
Starts: TBA
More news to come later!
New robots: Dragons
Will be available once the Lunar New Year Event starts
Dragons' ability allows them to fly. With it, you can get anywhere with a perfect sense of control. When Dragons are on the maximum height, they activate an extra weapon that keeps shooting as long as you're flying.
Red Ao Qin is an affordable robot for middle leagues. When flying, it activates a long-range energy beam that automatically sticks to the target in range
Green Ao Guang is the most reliable Dragon. When flying, it takes significantly less damage from all sources. Equipped with homing missiles for mid-range shootouts
White Ao Jun is made for high-risk high-reward attacks. Built-in flamethrower works best for fighting up-close, and Stealth that activates in the flight mode lets Ao Jun cover large distances safely.
Community robot: Bolt
The community-made robot is available for purchase for Gold starting from level 5.
Balance Changes
[Buff] Invader
Developer notes
Playstyle-wise, Invader is somewhere between tank and saboteur. With higher mobility, it doesn't have much firepower and is very reliant of team coordination.
In result, Invader is too risky to play in general games. We want to make its gameplay to be more reliable and similar to what you have on other tanks. This is why we give Invader some damage reduction to help it survive while exposed in the air.
Damage resistance: +33% (while in the air + for 5 seconds upon landing)
[Buff] Rayker
Developer notes
Like Invader's, Rayker’s playstyle could get confusing. While it was initially conceived as a support robot, most pilots found much more success using Rayker as a duelist.
We empower support Rayker further by giving its ability one more charge. This means you can now keep half of the enemy team suppressed — although this won’t make much difference in duels, as once suppressed enemies get resistant to the effect for a while.
Ability charges: 2 → 3
Ability cooldown: 8 → 10 sec
[Nerf] Hellburner
Developer notes
We are happy that Hellburner found its place on the battlefield with its unconventional playstyle. However, as this robot's popularity went up, some highly exploitative playstyles started to emerge. A coordinated push of 6 Hellburners is extremely hard to fight back against. It has a speed advantage, huge damage, plus Repair Kit module made it even harder to destroy. And even if you accomplish this, Hellburner usually goes like "Hell no, you're going down with me!" — and takes you out with the last explosion.
It's time to give Hellburner's opponents an opportunity to fight back.
Ability duration: 7 → 5 sec, Ability cooldown: 3 → 5 sec
- reduces the speed advantage (Hellburner now has to close the distance more carefully)
- gives skilled Hellburner players more control over their explosions (as the delay before explosion is lower now)
Self-inflicted damage (on ability use): 15000 → 12.5% of max durability
- makes mistakes more costly on higher levels
Ability damage upon death: 59750 → 29875
- makes dying on Hellburner less rewarding
Other changes
- [Buff] Natasha Movement speed (at level 12): 36 → 38 kph, durability: +5%
- [Buff] Butch Movement speed (at level 12): 39 → 43 kph, durability: +10%
- [Buff] Raven Movement speed (at level 12): 44 → 47 kph, durability: +6,5%
- [Buff] Lancelot Movement speed (at level 12): 30 → 33 kph, side shields durability: +12,5%
- [Buff] Stalker Movement speed: 66 kph at all levels
- [Buff] Gepard Durability: +10%
- [Buff] Bulwark Physical shield: +10%
Weapons
- [Buff] Shredder Bullet spread reduced
- [Buff] Sting, Wasp Damage +10%
- [Buff] Redeemer, Thunder Damage +5%
- [Buff] Ion Damage +7.5%
Upgrade timers reduction
At some levels upgrade timers stretch for too long. We want exciting milestones to happen more often, so we cut down upgrade times across the whole weapons/robots list.
Full before/after comparison below:
Modules tweaks
Lots of Griffin, Leo and Natasha players had success in higher leagues, and not having benefits from active modules became a big detriment over there. In their case, we replaced one passive slot with an active one.
We also revised the module progression for earlier robots. Starter robots don't have modules anymore, while those a bit higher got 2 passive modules switched for 1 active. On these robots, it is too early to commit for deep customization, while active modules' abilities might already come in very useful.
Note: we haven't yet changed the placement of Module ability button, what many had requested. We tested new button positions on the test server, and only half of test server players agreed those were good enough, which is not enough to push the change to the live server. We keep looking for a better solution hoping to deliver it with the 4.8 technical update
- [Adjust] Destrier, Cossack, Vityaz, Patton, Gareth, Jesse, Golem, Boa: Module slots removed
- [Adjust] Gepard, Stalker, Rogatka, Bolt: 2 passive slots → 1 active slot
- [Adjust] Leo, Griffin, Natasha, Doc, Fujin: 2 passive slots → 1 passive slot, 1 active slot
Community Paintjobs
Usability and bug fixes
- [Modules] Fixed a bug causing wrong amounts of power cells on the Hangar screen
- [Modules] Fixed a bug causing module activation button to not work properly
- [Modules] Fixed a bug causing Battle Born and Last Stand timers not to appear correctly on Android devices
- [UI] Fixed a bug causing item sorting in inventory to not consider items being used in another Hangar deck
- [UI] Fixed a bug causing pilot's nicknames not being shown in combat
- [UI] Fixed a bug causing filled equipment slots to be shown as empty
- [Robot] Fixed a bug causing Rayker to get stuck in random places
- [Robot] Mercury can now use the ability while being immobilized: stealth and explosion will be triggered, but robot won't jump
- [Robot] Raijin doesn't get stuck near beacon E on Springfield
