Dev Blog #001 – The Health Update

INTRODUCTION

Welcome, Marauders, to our first Developer Blog! Our goal with this document is to provide the Community with details on upcoming releases and features that the team are working on. We hope to release a Dev Blog every month but that may be adjusted depending on production. So let’s get right into it! Mac has some exciting updates to talk about regarding our first update “HEALTH”, coming November!

Crashes & Crews

Mac – We are currently investigating, with the Community’s assistance, the variety of crashes that can happen when launching the game, or when joining a match. This has been going exceedingly well, and we hope we can resolve the majority of these instances for the next update. On top of this, we are looking into the mystery of some players not joining their captain when entering a raid. This is under full investigation!

AIRLOCK BUSY

We have also made efforts through all maps, to add extra airlocks. This should help reduce the issue of players running into the AIRLOCK BUSY problem, when trying to enter a location. Alongside the addition of these extra Airlocks, it was important for us to try and balance the ability for people to rush an adjacent airlock, for example, in the Terraformer Maintenance dome or the Asteroid Mine air processor segment. We want it to be harder to do, but still possible. Our hope is that these adjustments will add an intense dynamic to the gameplay loop, but just slightly more balanced for everyone.

BATTLE RIFLE

Now, it’s time to get to the good stuff! Introducing the EM-2 Battle Rifle! This fully automatic bullpup with a 20 round magazine, chambered in 5.56, will help you make short work of any space pirates you might encounter on your raids. This rifle has been modified from the original by the Kingdom Alliance, once it was noticed that the original .280 caliber variant wasn’t getting the job done! Once the Patch drops, you can pick one up for yourself from the S.A.S Operatives or raiding a vault!

ATTACHMENTS

I think it was Friedrich Nietzsche who said, “The best weapon against an enemy is one with more attachments.” Or maybe I am misremembering that.

Let’s start off with the Sten, our goal is to have more weapons get modified to have 4 to 5 attachments available, most of which can be unlocked through a trader (the Sten attachments will be through the Overlord trader). Included attachments for the sten re-work are a drum mag, stock and muzzle break, but with the suppressor to remain a craftable. This redesign was inspired by the prototype Mark 1 Sten which has given it our unique diesel-punk spin, this is also something that we will continue to do with all our weapons across the board!

 

 

Ceeg – Receiving your feedback & suggestions in our Discord, has been incredibly helpful in how we choose to balance different aspects of our game. Here are some of the changes that will be taking effect with the upcoming patch! First off, the Merchant ship and Capital ships have had their spawn rates increased!

This paired with the improvements to the map cycling should help prevent too much raid repetition. We’ve also made some adjustments to loot distribution, like adding a cheeky new depot in the Navy Outpost, helping make more of the locations appealing, even if you don’t have a quest primed for that map. In terms of our Weapons and stats, we are enjoying that a hard meta hasn’t formed and players are enjoying trying out different kits. This is something we love to see and will always encourage.

Lastly, some changes have been made to Mission Requirements, making some of the extremely hard ones a little more forgiving, but also adding more variations to the Daily Contracts, so that Penal Colony and Navy Outpost are included in the loop!

QOL & ANTI CHEAT

You said it (a lot!), so we did it! Toggle Lean is being implemented with the upcoming patch. And the whole Universe rejoiced! We have also made some headway into the FOV Slider and various other QoL adjustments, so watch this space…

James – We thought we would share with you that we have been performing daily ban waves since launch, reaching 20 waves total with many cheaters removed from the game. So, thank you to everyone who has been diligent with the player reports.

We knew making such a hardcore competitive game would attract this sort of attention, and wanted to let everyone know that this will be an on-going battle and we have no intention of letting off the pressure. We would also like to take this opportunity to say that we do see a lot of *minor* cheating, including the use of exploits (using only what is in the base game) that will result in a ban. So don’t chance it. We don’t enjoy implementing full bans on players who clearly enjoy the game, and have pushed the boundaries a little too far!

BONUS EXPERIMENT

Every so often, we will try and experiment with a new feature that has either been highly requested, or something that we really want to see in Marauders, even though it might not necessarily be planned, or on the Roadmap. With this update we wanted to see if scopes could give our semi auto rifles a stronger position in your armoury. We love our focus on ironsight gameplay and it is here to stay, but we couldn’t resist seeing what a sniper rifle might feel like. So keep an eye out for them in the near future!

That’s it for this Dev Blog, keep a close eye out for the Patch Notes with Update HEALTH!

See you out there, Space Pirates!

– SIG team

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