April Patch Day – Happy Highlander!

It’s patch day!  The MechWarrior Online servers are currently down for maintenance, but the patch notes have been posted here.

Big news for the day, is of course, the release of the Hero Highlander, inspired by Rhonda Snord’s BattleMech.. so, I’m going to start with the BEST line from the patch notes:

Plays a music clip from its head-mounted external speakers after an enemy kill

Yup.. that’s it.. that’s the coolest part of today’s patch.. so, might as well not read any further notes!  I’ll be buying my Heavy Metal Highlander when I play tonight.. can’t wait!  Regular Highlanders will be added to the game on the 16th.

Since it’s the first patch of the month, we also get a new set of trial ‘Mechs rotated in, including the winner of last month’s competition!

New Consumables (Airstrike, Artillery Strike) – which follow the same general pricing scheme as coolant flush, are in.. along with details on the shared cooldown.  10 second shared team cooldown on the strikes, so no carpet bombing an area with 8 strikes at once.  There is also a 60 second cooldown at the start of the match, so everyone will have time to get out of the spawn points, before they can get air striked..

Remember.. if you see that smoke flare in your area… move!  ;)

The new thermal and night vision modes make their official debut today as well.. no more ThermalWarrior Online!  Each mode is now only the ‘best’ in certain situations, and is limited to the same distances as ‘normal’ vision.  Look for continued tuning of these views based on feedback/metrics.

New cosmetics and camo patterns too.  Quite a bit of stuff added, some bug fixes, good stuff.  Looks like the whole ‘change your Hero ‘Mech’s camo’ didn’t make this patch either.

Special warning to Nvidia users:

UPDATE YOUR DRIVERS… the 311.xx drivers are BAD, they will make BAD things happen (crashing in 3 out of 10 games)

Full patch notes after the jump:

Open Beta Update #14

Upcoming Patch – Tuesday April 2nd @ 10AM – 1PM PDT

Patch Number:  1.2.209

Change Log

UPDATE

Greetings MechWarriors

Yesterday was April Fool’s day but these patch notes are no joke!

First is our Hero BattleMech Heavy Metal! Yes this ‘Mech is pink and does really play music when you get a kill! This is the first time we have released the Hero Mech before the base variants (coming April 16th). Don’t let the color stop you from buying it, though, we will eventually add changing Hero ‘Mech colors.

Next we have added air-strike and artillery consumables. I think Conquest mode just got more interesting! Here is a pro tip: Use them for when a light is capping your base on Alpine and save yourself a walk back to your spawn!

New Thermal and Night Vision modes are in! They look amazing and are balanced for game play! No more BlueWarrior for you!

We also have cool new digital camo patterns for your ‘Mech and more ‘Mech Statues for your cockpit! Keep reading for other fixes and tweaks!

See you on the battlefield!

Matt Newman

Important Known Issue

During testing we ran into a crash issue that only occurred using Nvidia 311.xx drivers, drivers before 311 tested fine as did drivers after 311. The 311 drivers have since been removed from the Nvidia website. If you are using 311.xx drivers YOU MUST UPDATE YOUR DRIVERS failure to do so will likely result in a low frequency (3 out of 10 games from our tests) crash when playing the game.

Content

New Hero Mech

“Heavy Metal”  HGN-HM

Highlander HGN-HM

– Tonnage:  90
– Engine:  275 XL Top Speed:  49.5 kph
– Max Engine Rating: 330
– Torso Movement:
– 90 degrees to each side
– 20 degrees up and down
– Arm Movement:
– 20 degrees to each side
– 30 degrees up and down
– Armor:  544 (Standard)
– Weapons & Equipment:
– Left Arm:  3 Medium Lasers
– Left Torso:  LRM 20, SRM 6
– Right Arm:  Gauss Rifle
– Internal Structure:  Standard
– Hardpoints:
– Left Arm:  3 Energy
– Left Torso:  2 Missile, 1 AMS
– Right Arm:  2 Ballistic
– Heat Sinks:  13 Double
– Jump Jets:  5 (5 Max)
– ECM Capable?:  No
– Module Slots:  2
– 30% C-Bill Bonus
– Plays a music clip from its head-mounted external speakers after an enemy kill

Trial BattleMechs:

– Raven RVN-4X
– Centurion CN9-A
– Dragon DRG-5N(C)
– Awesome AWS-8Q

BattleMech Cockpit Items:

– Jenner Statue
– Cataphract Statue
– Centurion Statue

BattleMech Skin:

– Digital Skin

New Consumable Modules:

– Each team has a separate global cooldown timer governing their use of artillery and air strikes
– No one can activate an artillery or air strike while their team’s cooldown timer is counting down
– At the start of the match, each team’s cooldown timer counts down 60 seconds
– When a player activates an artillery or air strike, his team’s cooldown timer starts to count down for 10 seconds

– Artillery Strike
– Calls in a barrage of long range artillery.
– Press [Home] to target the area under your crosshairs with an artillery strike.
– After a 5 second delay, 6 shells drop into a 50 m radius around the targeted area.  Each shell does 10 points of damage.
– Consumed on use.
– Cannot be equipped to a Mech that already contains an Artillery Strike, Improved Artillery Strike, or Priority Artillery Strike module.
– Upgradable to Improved Artillery Strike.

– Priority Artillery Strike
– Calls in a barrage of long range artillery.
– Press [Home] to target the area under your crosshairs with an artillery strike.
– After a 4 second delay, 10 shells drop into a 50 m radius around the targeted area.  Each shell does 10 points of damage.
– Consumed on use.
– Cannot be equipped to a Mech that already contains an Artillery Strike, Improved Artillery Strike, or Priority Artillery Strike module.

– Air Strike
– Calls in a fighter air strike on a targeted zone.
– Press [End] to target the area under your crosshairs with an air strike.
– After a 5 second delay, 6 bombs drop along a 100 m strip, starting at the targeted area and moving away from your location when you activated the strike. Each bomb does 10 points of damage.
– Consumed on use.
– Cannot be equipped to a Mech that already contains an Air Strike, Improved Air Strike, or Priority Air Strike module.
– Upgradable to Improved Air Strike

– Priority Air Strike
– Calls in a fighter air strike on a targeted zone.
– Press [End] to target the area under your crosshairs with an air strike.
– After a 4 second delay, 10 bombs drop along a 100 m strip, starting at the targeted area and moving away from your location when you activated the strike. Each bomb does 10 points of damage.
– Consumed on use.
– Cannot be equipped to a Mech that already contains an Air Strike, Improved Air Strike, or Priority Air Strike module.

New Support Modules:

– Air Strike Accuracy
– Decreases the radius of the targeted area by 20%.

– Artillery Accuracy
– Decreases the length of the bombardment zone by 20%.

New Consumable Module Upgrades:

– Improved Artillery Strike
– Upgrades the Artillery Strike module.
– Increases artillery shell count by 4, and decreases flight time by 1 second.
– Does not need to be equipped to a BattleMech.

– Improved Air Strike
– Upgrades the Air Strike module.
– Increases air strike bomb count by 4, and decreases flight time by 1 second.
– Does not need to be equipped to a BattleMech.

Notable Enviornment Changes:

– Changed HDR eye adpatation numbers to reduce amount of HDR blooming, and speed the recovery rate.
– Tweaked lighting in all levels to minimize lighting differences due to HDR eyeadaptation changes.
– Extended LOD distances in River City on many large buildings.
– Reduced strength of parallax occlusion mapping on some snow terrain textures to help reduce “crawling” terrain textures.

Gameplay

– New Night and Thermal vision modes
– Thermal vision is now “white hot” and is restricted to normal view distances.  i.e. Players can no longer use thermal to view long distances.
– Night Vision is now monochrome green and shows greater detail in the surroundings.
– Players will notice that Night Vision is more useful for navigation and Thermal Vision is more useful for seeking out Mechs.
– More tuning will be done but these vision modes are on target for final implementation.

Bug Fixes

– Artemis Line-of-sight check is now more accurate
– EMP will now turn off ECM in Counter Mode
– Mech damage glow now fades away after they die

We thank you for your patience and we look forward to seeing you on the battlefield!

The MechWarrior® Online™ Team