Tribes: Ascend Version 1.0.941.0 (the Raid & Pillsage Update) is scheduled to be released on Tuesday, April 24.
Major Highlights
- Three new weapons and two new skins have been added to the Raider class.
- Players may now setup Custom Servers from inside the game menu system. Custom servers are private “rooms” for you to rent and play Tribes: Ascend in. Custom servers can be password protected. The sever administrator can choose from scores of custom rulesets to help tailor the play experience as desired.
- A new Capture and Hold map has been added to the Quick Play rotation (Night Drydock).
- Several improvements to player movement in networked games have been implemented. This eliminates some of the “jerkiness” while moving within the game, especially when playing at high ping.
Weapon/Balance Items
- Added 3 new weapons for the Raider class:
- Plasma Gun: A flexible weapon, the Plasma Gun fires massive spheres of plasma that explode on contact, with excellent rate of fire.
- NJ5-B SMG: The NJ5-B has a slower rate of fire than its predecessor, but deals more damage per hit. It can also fire while in scope.
- Cluster Grenade: The cluster grenade breaks apart into several smaller bomblets on detonation, each exploding for additional damage.
- Add two new skins to the Raider class (Griever and Mercenary).
- Increased damage on the Infiltrator’s Prism Mines by roughly 14%.
- Increased damage on the Brute’s Light Sticky Grenade by 10%.
- Increased damage on the Doombringer’s Heavy Bolt Launcher by roughly 7%.
- Increased Technician’s Sparrow Pistol clip size by 2, adjusted starting ammo to 144.
- Call-ins will no longer fully reset when being moved too quickly or hitting an invalid target location. Instead they will lose build-up time.
Custom Server Notes
- All players may create their own custom servers under PLAY NOW | CUSTOM SERVERS | MANAGE SERVERS on the main menu.
- In order to activate a custom server, you must ADD RENTAL TIME using gold. You can add additional time in 10-Day, 30-Day and 90-Day buckets.
- All Custom Servers are assigned to a specific server region. You may change the assigned region at any time through the Custom Server configuration menus. The Custom Servers use the same pooled/virtual server infrastructure that is used for Quick Matches. So when a match is spun up on your Custom Server, it is done so from the shared pool of server resources available in the specific server region you chose upon server setup.
- As the owner of a custom server, you may always administer your server. You may also set an ADMIN PASSWORD that other users can use to gain access to some (but not all) administrative features of your custom server.
- XP and Badge Rewards
- Players earn their normal Base XP on non-password protected servers.
- Bonus XP is only awarded on Custom Servers when at least 6 players have been on the server at some point during a match.
- No XP is awarded on custom servers that require a password.
- Badges, Statistics and First Win of the Day are disabled on Custom Servers (so you do not earn progress toward badges while playing on Custom Servers).
Additional Items
- Match-making and backfilling logic has been improved to make it easier to get into matches with your friends (additional improvements planned for future releases).
- An issue where weapons could dry-fire if fired immediately after switching has been fixed.
- Perks are visually represented as implant chips within the main menu.
- Fixed an issue where players could sometimes appear to be jetpacking after a death.
- Fixed an issue where the Infiltrator’s Jackal would not perform an inactive reload if all of the rounds had been detonated and if the player switched weapons before the reload completed.
- Fixed an issue where the first-person weapon and body and mesh could jolt and pop while jetpacking.
- Fixed issues with the Determination perk not working properly.
- Fixed an issue where mines were being activated by friendlies in custom servers with friendly fire enabled.
- Fixed an issue where the Brute's Nova Colt and Sentinel's Nova Blaster could fire an extra shot if the clip was emptied rapidly.
- Reworked a bit of the spawn point rotation logic by fixing an issue where players would not respawn at certain spawn points.
- Fixed an issue where the announcer voices would sometimes abruptly cut out.
- Reworked spawn locations for Capture and Hold maps so that base-owned spawn locations are slightly further away from the captured base.
- The flagstand on CTF Temple Ruins has been moved back to its original position.
- Vehicles will now have proper marker coloring if a friend is in the vehicle.
- Fixed an issue where throwing a grenade and then meleeing (or vice versa) would cause you to throw an extra grenade or melee again.
- Fixed an issue where mines were able to be pushed around by vehicles, this was visual-only and had no affect on gameplay.
- Fixed an issue where player deployables weren’t able to be properly placed in certain situations, resulting in ammo consumption when it wasn’t deployed.
- Resolved an issue on Sunstar where players could get outside the map boundary.