April 20, 2022 - The Arsenal Update (PS4 Update)

All PS4 servers will be offline for the following update, April. 20, at 6:00am PT (3:00pm CEST), downtime is expected to last up to four hours.

The Arsenal Update

This update brings in over 800 weapon attachments, new vehicle and infantry balances, and new infantry and vehicle equipment.

NSO Legacy Outfits

Leaders of legacy NSO Outfits can now permanently align their Outfit to a home faction by speaking to Emerson on Sanctuary. This is a one-time transaction that will cause all the current members in our Outfit to move to the selected faction. Members who are online will need to relog (or re-zone into Sanctuary) for their home faction to be updated proper.

Black Market

• All Black Market weapons are now purchasable with Daybreak Cash, as an alternative to the normal A7 currency costs.
• A new "Black Market" directive can be found in the Specialty directive tree. Progress through this tree by showing your expertise with Black Market weapons.
• New to the Black Market: SPRK-33's Stomper - This heavily modified Thumper fires anti-vehicle sabot rounds capable of shredding enemy armor over moderate distances.

The new Black Market directive, with new banner and Punisher variant rewards.

New Faction-specific Mines

Tactical mine options have been added to each faction to add more defensive layers during point defense.

Flashbang Mine (VS only)

• Vanu Sovereignty Infiltrators and Engineers now have access to the new Flashbang Mine.
• Flashbang Mines blind enemies within 12m when triggered.

EMP Mine (NC only)

• New Conglomerate Infiltrators and Engineers now have access to the new EMP Mine.
• EMP Mines deplete shields and scramble the HUD of infantry within 12m, as well as destroy or disable deployables caught in the blast.

Concussion Mine (TR only)

• Terran Republic Infiltrators and Engineers now have access to the new Concussion Mine.
• Concussion Mines slow and disorient enemies within 12m when triggered.

Havoc Mine (NSO only)

• NSO Infiltrators and Engineers now have access to the new Havoc Mine.
• Havoc Mines prevent repairs of mechanical targets within a 12m radius when triggered.
• These mines only trigger when vehicles or MAX units come within range (or are destroyed.)

New Class-specific Grenades

Cleansing Grenade (Combat Medic only)

• Combat Medics now have access to the new Cleansing Grenade.
• Cleansing Grenades detonate on impact, removing most status effects and healing 100hp/sec. for 3sec.

Havoc Grenade (Heavy Assault only)

• Heavy Assault now have access to the new Havoc Grenade.
• Havoc Grenades detonate on impact in an 8m radius, preventing repairs for 6sec.

Timed EMP (Infiltrator only)

• Infiltrators now have access to the new Timed EMP grenade.
• Timed EMPs detonate after 3 seconds in a 10m radius, depleting shields and scrambling the HUD.

Impulse Grenade (Light Assault only)

• Light Assault now have access to the new Impulse Grenade.
• Impulse Grenades detonate on impact in a 5m radius, knocking back enemies or yourself.
• When used on enemies, the knockback is less extreme than when used to propel yourself.

Grenade Balance and UI

General

• A new HUD grenade warning indicator has been added for offensive tactical grenades like Flash and Concussion Grenades.
• Detonation visuals for EMP, Flash, and Concussion Grenades have been updated.
• Targets who are Flashed or Concussed now display small debuff visuals.

Concussion Grenade

• Effective radius from 12m to 10m.

Flash/Quick-Det Flash Grenade

• Effective radius from 12m to 10m.

EMP Grenade

• Effective radius from 15m to 10m. (Dev Note: You should still have no problem hitting spawn beacons.)

Nanite Healing Grenade

• Renamed to Nano-Regen Grenade.
• Healing over time from 150hp/sec. to 175hp/sec.

New Vehicle Top Guns

New empire-specific "Basilisk" (jack-of-all-trades) top gun options have made their way to the game. These new weapons have statistical variations that set them apart from the common pool Basilisk, and will be available on multiple vehicles. The Prowler, Vanguard, and Magrider will receive these new weapons as a part of the default equipment, and the Sunderer, ANT, and Harasser will be capable of unlocking them as an option.

N30 Trawler (New Conglomerate)
The Trawler is a slow firing, 30mm heavy machine gun that dishes out heavy damage over short distances.

M18 Palisade (Terran Republic)
The M18 Palisade increases rate of fire over the first second, unleashing a barrage of machine gun rounds from its large magazine.

V42 Pariah (Vanu Sovereignty)
The Pariah is a stable, rapid fire plasma platform that offers consistent high-caliber damage over even long-range engagements.

Vehicle Adjustments

General

• Tank shell tracers have received new visuals.

Reload Speed Certification Lines

• The reload speed certification lines for main cannons, noseguns, ESF wing mounts, Liberator bellyguns, and Flash weapons have been standardized at 5/7/8.5/9.5/10% reload speed.
• The reload speed certification lines for top guns, air vehicle non-nosegun (and non-bellygun) weapons have been standardized at 10/14/17/19/20% reload speed.
• Weapons with no magazine size option are an exception to the above, and remain at the 10% reload speed cap (Halberd and Gatekeeper, as examples.)

Dev Note: In many, but not all cases, this is a buff to the reload speed cert line, with bigger gains at lower levels to increase accessibility to newer players.

Chimera
The changes here help compensate for the Chimera being a larger target, and give the non-Satyr main cannons more presence on the battlefield.

General

• Chimera Health from 5000 to 5500

CT-135 (Chimera Main Cannon)

• Direct damage from 550 to 600
• Reload speed from 2.5sec. to 2.25sec.

CT-150 Cyclops (Chimera Main Cannon)

• Direct damage from 800 to 900

HCG-20 (Chimera Forward Turret)

• Projectile velocity from 550 to 650
• Max damage range from 10m to 50m
• Min damage range from 100m to 250m
• Min damage from 167 to 143
• Refire rate from 150ms to 171ms
• Now has an Extended Magazine certification line.

Dev Note: Since the Chimera already had a unique "Basilisk" weapon, it's received some adjustments to set it apart. These weapons are now unlockable on the Harasser/ANT/Sunderer as well.

Valkyrie
Changes below help move the Valkyrie a bit further away from piñata territory by increasing its overall movement capabilities and its anti-vehicle effectiveness with non-VLG weaponry.

General

• Increased forward speed by roughly 25kph.
• Increased downward thrust speed.
• Increased forward and rise acceleration.
• Increased braking capabilities.
• Tank shell resist from -65 to -80

Wyvern

• Damage resist type from 28 (Armor Piercing Chaingun) to 4 (Heavy Machine Gun)
• Minimum damage from 143 to 150
• Minimum damage range from 100m to 200m
• Reserve ammunition from 300 to 480

Pelter Rocket Pods

• Reload speed from 3.5sec. to 2.25sec.
• Direct damage from 125 to 145
• Reserve ammunition from 100 to 200

Hellion G20

• Magazine size from 60 to 90
• Reserve ammunition from 450 to 720

Sunderer

• Deploy Shield now uses hex shield visuals to show when it's active.
• Basilisk (top guns) refire rate from 171ms to 150ms

Dev Note: The refire changes revert a long-standing adjustment that left Sunderer Basilisks less powerful than vehicles with only a single top gun. Reverting this renews the possibility of battle bus tactics.

ANT

• Added Deliverer Module as a defensive slot option.
• Deliverer Module passively dispenses ammunition to nearby vehicles, and acts as a global spawn point while deployed. Additionally, The Deliverer Module allows Squad Members to spawn directly into the vehicle.

Galaxy

• Added the Lodestar Module as as defensive slot option.
• Lodestar module now allows the Galaxy to deploy into a global spawn point, with a defensive shield layer and attached equipment terminals.

Infantry Suit, Ability, and Implant Changes

Nanoweave Armor (Suit Slot)

• Rank 1 Nanoweave now reduces Sniper Rifle (resist type 20) damage received by 20%, instead of Small Arms (resist type 2).
• No longer reduces movement speed.

Dev Note: As part of the ongoing experiments with Nanoweave, we're pulling off the movement speed reduction and moving the resistances of sniper rifles into their own category that can be contested by this armor. Sniper Rifles traditionally have a low skill floor for the bodyshot damage they put out (yet feel bad when they're not given enough bodyshot damage, Daimyo being a good example.) Pushing more of the focus subtly toward headshots through this method is something we'd like to explore.

Adrenaline Shield (Heavy Assault Ability)

• Reduced the energy return on kill from 31/35/38/41/44% to 15/18/21/23/25%.

Dev Note: Returning a couple hundred effective health after winning a firefight has more value than we were balancing against with previous numbers, the changes here reduce the effectiveness of Adrenaline Shield to make more room for alternatives.

Nano-Armor Cloaking (Infiltrator Ability)

• Removed the 100 extra shield provided by Nano-Armor Cloaking.
• The damage reduction from Nano-Armor Cloak is now 35% at all ranks, instead of just the last one.

Dev Note: Removing the extra 100 shield helps create more consistency surrounding weapons that should be able to one-shot an infiltrator (the Commissioner with a headshot, for example,) while ensuring, similar to Resist Shield, that the ability is active to receive benefits.

Symbiote (Implant)

• Healing provided by Symbiote's activation from 50 to 125.
• Added visual FX when healing is triggered.
• Damage taken while already at full health no longer triggers the healing effect, and thus the cooldown.

Dev Note: This bug above effectively broke the implant in the majority of situations you'd find yourself needing it to trigger, and we've increased the health return to a more noticeable amount as well.

Experimental Stims

• Now passively allows you to equip 1 additional stim (Restoration Kit, Medical Kit, or Infradine) on top of its previous benefits.

Broad Weapon Changes

This update includes many sweeping changes that will broadly impact the balance of certain weapon archetypes. The areas below will be broken down into groups to make it easier to digest.

Directive Weapons

• Enabled attachment customization on all applicable directive reward weapons.
• Directive weapons can now be used with the Advanced Specialization Program.

Dev Note: The changes above allow for customization of the weapons you've spent hundreds of hours working toward, and also factor into the subsequent balance adjustments that are made in each faction's weapon balance sections further down.

Sniper Rifles

• Anti-infantry sniper rifles now use a separate Sniper Rifle resistance (type 20).
• Being struck by a sniper rifle now has more prominent audio.

Dev Note: The damage values for this new resistance are equivalent to small arms. This change will allow us to do is modify the bodyshot damage output from Nanoweave, as mentioned above.

Power Knives

• Activated knife damage from 1050 to 900

Dev Note: Power knives consistently kill with two shots to the body or one shot to the head. This change is meant to dampen the effectiveness of specific setups, and give players more time to react to the burst of damage when the user can't land a headshot.

Sidearms

• Most sidearms now have their ADS CoF bloom set to half of their hipfire CoF bloom. Weapons impacted by this are noted further down.

Dev Note: This is a subtle change that technically extends effective range, but won't be noticeable in most cases. More realistically, this change is closer to housekeeping.

Select Fire Modes

• Select fire modes that aren't an important part of the weapon's capabilities have been removed.

Dev Note: There are many weapons in the game that don't make use of their select-fire functionality, and realistically, it wouldn't make sense to try to tune all of that extra baggage to be useful. Removing the burst/semi-auto modes on weapons that don't lean on them will help streamline the weapon quality overall. Examples of weapons that make good use of alternate firemodes are the TRAP-M1, SABR-13, TS2 Inquisitor, LA3 Desperado, Phaseshift VX-S, etc.

Shotguns

• Starting CoF for all shotguns is now 0.15 in all non-jumping/sprinting/falling movement states.
• Pellet spread values while aiming and firing from the hip have been standardized using the wider hipfire values.
• Cone of fire now blooms per shot by 0.3 from the hip, and 0.15 while aiming.

Dev Note: The above changes aim to reduce the inconsistency and frustration of using these weapons, which was mainly caused by cone of fire spread stacked on top of the pellet spread. These changes are important when the new attachments and updated attachments come into play.

Attachment Changes

More than 800 new weapon attachments have been added, allowing for much more customizability. Those changes and additions can be found here, in quite possibly the most anxiety inducing way imaginable: https://imgur.com/a/zBKaoBw

Slug Ammunition
Slug ammo now comes in 3 flavors with different damage ranges with independent hipfire cone of fire values. It's intended for semi-auto shotguns to be the most desirable to use with slug ammo, where others have steeper tradeoffs.

• 650-500 damage, pump shotguns.
• 600-400 damage, semi-auto shotguns.
• 475-300 damage, auto-shotguns.

Underbarrels

• Shortened the firemode switch timer for underbarrels from 0.8sec. to 0.4sec.
• Weapon equip time penalty for having an underbarrel equipped has been standardized at 0.25sec.
• (The above changes do not affect integrated underbarrels, like the one on the Punisher.)

Dev Note: The changes here are meant to reduce some of the clunkiness of Underbarrels in general.

Compensator

• Increased Compensator's vertical recoil reduction from 15% to 30%.
• Decreased Compensator's hipfire cone of fire penalty from 20% to 15%.

Dev Note: Compensators tend to be used less as players learn to control vertical recoil. These changes push the attachment closer to relevance for more setups and skill levels.

Forward Grips

• Advanced Forward Grips have all been converted to Forward Grips.
• The equip time penalty for these grips have been standardized to 0.15sec. across all weapons.

Dev Note: Advanced Forward Grips were previously given to weapons who already had top-tier horizontal recoil models, and the benefits of a grip far outweigh the drawbacks.

Laser Sights

• Advanced Laser Sights have all been converted to Laser Sights.

Dev Note: Like above, Advanced Laser Sights were typically given out to weapons that already had top-tier hipfire cone of fire, only furthering balance discrepancies. Unlike most attachments, laser sights don't have a real drawback beyond opportunity cost.

Comfort Grip

• Penalty now increases vertical recoil by 20%, instead of increasing hipfire cone of fire by this amount.
• Most Shotguns, Sniper Rifles, and Scout Rifles now use Comfort Grips, instead of Forward Grips.

Dev Note: Traditional Forward Grips offered no functional benefits to slow firing semi-auto weapons, so swapping them for Comfort Grips (which reduce the equip and unequip time of a weapon,) can be interpreted as a buff in almost all cases.

Mobile Prediction Laser

• An MPL now reduces vertical and horizontal recoil by 60% when fired from the hip, instead of reducing hipfire pellet spread.

Dev Note: With the changes to cone of fire for shotguns, all shotgun laser sights have been converted to MPLs so that the attachment remains a relevant option for certain setups.

Disruptor Ammunition

• Now reduces total per-shot damage by 20% at all ranges, and strips maximum shield energy on hit, instead of a flat value.
• The amount of shield and energy stripped varies from weapon to weapon, this is unchanged.

Dev Note: Overall this results in a buff to any weapon using Disruptor Ammunition, and further increases its effectiveness against enemies with higher-than-typical shield pools.

New Weapon Attachments

Heavy Barrel

• Reduces cone of fire bloom by 20% while aiming down sights.
• Reduces aim down sights movement speed by 20%.

Short Barrel

• Reduces cone of fire bloom by 40% when firing from the hip.
• Increases vertical recoil by 20% while aiming down sights.

Angled Forward Grip

• Reduces first shot recoil by 60%.
• Increases overall horizontal recoil by 10%.

Flechette Ammunition

• Triples maximum and minimum damage falloff ranges, but reduces the number of pellets fired (weapon dependent.)

KCAP Ammunition (Terran Republic only)

• Reduces headshot damage by 50%.
• Increases legshot damage by 20% and removes the legshot damage penalty.

Dev Note: The accessibility of bonus damage through legshots might be too powerful, so we might move a different direction based on feedback.

Manticore Ammunition (Vanu Sovereignty only)

• Reduces infantry movement speed by 20% for 2 seconds on impact, reduces projectile velocity while equipped by 40%.

Cerberus Ammunition (Vanu Sovereignty only)

• Causes the weapon to fire a 3-pellet spread horizontally from the hip, and vertically while ADS.

Balance Adjustments

• Semi-auto shotguns now use the same Slug Ammunition as automatic shotguns, changing their damage from 600-400 to 475-300.
• 19A Fortuna, CB-ARX Newton, TRAC-Shot, Eclipse VE3A now all have access to Soft Point Ammunition.

Misc. Changes, Fixes, and Additions

• Compensators for the Eclipse VE3A, TRAC-Shot, and 19A Fortuna now operate as expected.
• NSO's HCG turrets no longer have view model issues in first person while looking up.
• Heavy Magazine attachment no longer prevents rail attachments from being equipped on weapons that were affected by this bug.
• Heavy Magazine attachment no longer increases the magazine size of underbarrel grenade launchers.
• Compensator's attachment description has been updated, and properly conveys the increased hipfire penalty.
• NS-45P Pilot now has compensator and flash suppressor like it's base weapon counterpart.
• Havoc Mines no longer show the tactical grenade indicator above them.
• Mines added in the last update no longer stick to surfaces.
• Updated the cert line description of Nano-armor Cloaking.
• EMP, Flash, Concussion, and Havoc grenades now all grant assist experience.
• Equipping a laser sight on the "Treasured" LA1 Anchor no longer conflicts with barrel attachments.
• MG-A1 Arbalest now has proper barrel attachment models.
• Earning a Flashbang Mine medal no longer also grants a Flashbang Grenade medal.
• The My Stats page have had the missing grenades added to it.

For a complete list of weapon changes, misc fixes and more, head on over to our full patch notes here.

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