AirMech v27424 - Return of the Beta Bundle! Now with Beta Striker! Free upgrade for existing owners!

12 Lipiec 2014

Beta Bundle is back! After much discussion and negotiation, we have settled on the contents and price to re-release the Beta Bundle for players as we near the end of Beta. All existing owners get free upgrades to the new content, including the amazingly awesome Beta Striker, the second generation of the Alpha Striker. The price is high, at $75, but was arrived at by looking at the price of the Beta Bomber on the Player Market for completed sales. It's average price would be over $45 USD, so adding a second exclusive variant, actually makes this a great deal. And it can only go up in value from here.

Balance! We've been saving up a lot of balance changes for after the tournament, along with a number of changes to attempt to make the game more accessible for new players. Something that might give an initial shock is the reduction of movement speeds in the air. We need to slow these down to give us the headroom to increase lag tolerance. Proportionally, they should all be the same as they were before, and some of the carry speeds should be a bit better.

Pay close attention to the global changes to AirMechs below. They have always had a reduction in damage vs units to balance them out a bit, and we're reducing this value which will make them a lot more deadly vs units. There will be a domino effect here, changing the survivability of almost every unit vs AirMechs. The auto-repair changes are also quite drastic, so make sure you try it out.

• Beta Bundle released! Needs to be purchased ingame.
  
• Alpha Bundle owners receive special pricing for the Beta Bundle!
  
• Beta Striker awarded to existing Beta Bundle owners on login
  
• Wooden Zeppelin is the newest Diamond VIP bonus reward

• Lunchboxes on Outposts now are a shield like the Fortress (should work better)
  
• remove auto-repair when moving/firing
  
• 100% increase to auto-repair rate (after 3 seconds of not moving/firing)
  
• note that auto-repair rate is doubled in ground mode (always been this way)
  
• reduce all air movement speeds by 10%
  
• tweaked carry values for heavy loads to reflect new movement speed
  
• increase damage vs units by 30%
  
• decrease recharge rate over Outposts by 8%
  
• increase turning responsiveness of various AirMechs

• increase Air DPS by 4%
  
• increase Melee DPS by 20% (Melee does not get the +30% buff)
  
• increase Armor by 7%
  
• decrease Fuel use for Bombs by 30%

• increase Air DPS by 7%

• Increase transform to air speed by 10%
  
• Increase pistol Piercing damage by 10%

• Assassin Melee Damage increased by 33%
  
• Assassin Build Time reduced by 33%
  
• Assassin Movement Speed increased by 11%
  
• Joker HP decreased by 4%
  
• Joker Piercing Damage increased to 20 from 5
  
• Joker DPS reduced by 25%
  
• Zipper Piercing Damage doubled
  
• Tango Piercing Damage doubled
  
• Jackal Piercing Damage increased by 17%
  
• Longhorn/Gemini/Goliath/Devastator Movement Speed decreased by 22%
  
• Longhorn/Gemini turret rotation speed reduced by 22%
  
• Goliath/Devastator turret rotation speed reduced by 17%
  
• Grinder rear weak spot added (it is a tank after all)
  
• Dinger HP increased 33%
  
• Bucky Accuracy increased 33%
  
• Seeker missile damage reduced 9%
  
• Seeker and T99 missile lifetime reduced 6%
  
• T45 Build Time reduced by 25%
  
• T45 Build Cost reduced 17%
  
• T45 HP reduced 17%
  
• VaultBox HP increased 50%
  
• Bombs Build Time increased 14%
  
• Bombs Cost increased 9%
  
• Bombs Carry Weight reduced by 30%
  
• Bombs Damage reduced by 7%
  
• Bombs Upkeep increased to 1 (from 0)

• recharge rate decreased (last patch)
  
• energy capacity increased (last patch)
  
• Armor increased to 50 from 35

Patch 27320 - Ingame Mail, July 4th, New Skins & Parts!

4 Lipiec 2014

You've got mail! Or is it AirMail? Either way, we're happy to introduce our latest "we never thought we'd add something like this when we started" feature--ingame mail. I'd consider the mail system very "alpha" because it hasn't been tested much, but I expect after getting it in players' hands we will quickly see what needs to be done to finish it off.

There are some rules for mail however. Due to the risk of people abusing the mail system, non-VIPs are only allow to send mail to people on their friends list. We made it cost 10 Kudos to send a message, and 10 Diamonds per attachment. We'll watch the behavior of players and tweak this up or down as needed. As long as you have Silver VIP status you can send mail to anyone, but abuse of the mail system will result in your ability to send mail being cancelled. Players will always be able to receive mail, just not send it.

For our American players, Happy Independence Day! We've turned on our "Liberty" exclusive items, including the Liberty Paladin. He's also backed up by the new Camo Paladin skin which is part of the Military set and has teamcolor support!

Someone ask for new Parts? We have just the thing for you! In preparation for raising the level cap for AirMechs, we're adding some rare parts. These will generally have the "Mk2" distinction, though as we add more we may revise how we present it. Feedback welcome!

Updates:

• New Feature: In-Game Mail System for sending and receiving messages between players
  
• New Angel Quests: "Spotter", "Hunter", and "Kentucky Windage"
  
• Auto builder will now not build units if the player is at 90% of their total Upkeep
  
• New Paladin Variant: Camo Paladin
  
• New Warthog Variant: Mecha Warthog
  
• New Parts: Heavily Armored Engine Mk2
  
• New Parts: Titanium Shield Mk2
  
• New Parts: Reprogrammer Mk2
  
• New Parts: Amplified Heal Beam Mk2
  
• New Parts: Agility Hand
  
• New Parts: Armored Hand
  
• Continued updates to the AI
  
• Adjust some of the drop tables
  
• Full Force Cards are no longer dropping (the item they will craft is being worked on and will arrive in a future patch)
  
• Greatest Matches Cards are now dropping
• created by ThyTombstone!

• Fixed a bug where AirMechs would sometimes get stuck when transforming on the ledges and scaffolding around the Thar and Rath main bases
  
• Fixed a bug where AirMechs would sometimes get stuck when transforming near the broken bunkers on Nesthorn
  
• Fixes some position reconciliation bugs in network games, and forced transforms to air on outpost and fortress corners
  
• Fixes bugs in the sound system causing sound clipping and playback problems
  
• Fixed a bug that doubled the effect of the Credits Earned stat modifier
  
• UPDATE: Fix a desync, this is why there's a second patch