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Hello folks,
UI 2.0 Release
We are about to release UI 2.0 on to the live production servers. I would first like to thank all of the internal development team who have been putting in crazy hours to meet this deadline. It has been a year in production with code starting from scratch along with a full design revamp. In the past, adding any sort of new feature of any size had a high probability of bringing UI 1.5 to its knees and potentially breaking the main path of getting into a game. With the new structure put into place by engineering, this will no longer be a high risk problem. Turnaround for new features will be much quicker and with a focus on data driven screens, a lot of new things can be implemented dynamically without the need to restructure the layout and flow of the UI.
While it's been humorously been talked about as the be-all end-all to all things MechWarrior, UI 2.0 is indeed the gateway to plenty of new features including the upcoming CW Launch Module and beyond. As mentioned, getting a new feature/screen put into the UI is now a lot lower risk than UI 1.5 and we plan on utilizing this in bringing you updates and fixes in a much timelier manner.
That being said, we do have a number of known issues and we will be addressing them with every patch over the next several months. A 'Mech warning widget has been built that will tell you if you've invalidated a Mech build or are building a 'Mech that will perform outside of normal operation (Heat Scale for example). This is a key piece of information that is not in the UI2.0 launch but is scheduled to be implemented and released on the following February patch.
The "Smurfy" layout that the community has been asking for will make its first appearance in March. Below is a mock-up of the current plan for initial viewing. This is a placeholder mock-up but should give you a general idea of what to expect when the feature is distributed to the live servers.
More information will be added to the mouse-over state information pannels as time goes on. This pannel also does not appear on some screens and this will be addressed very soon after Feb 4th.
More options will be added to the options screen that will allow players to customize their experience without having to edit a user.cfg file (which is talked about here in Matt Craig's technical update http://mwomercs.com/...ruary-feedback/ ). An example of this is the ability to toggle cockpit glass on and off as well as other visual effects.
Weapon Modules - Range Tier 1 and 2
A new set of modules are now available to be equipped to your favorite 'Mechs. This first release of weapon modules affect overall range of the various weapon systems of MWO. Please keep in mind, these modules are not a straight up buff, there are drawbacks to each of them and you should make your purchases carefully. You may notice that the numbers that are being incremented are small. This is as intended. They are micro-increments that will be spread across 5 tiers as they are added to the game. The 5th tier of a module should be considered "end game". This does not mean there's a hard cap at Tier 5, it is simply where we plan to stop until further investigation is put into seeing how far we can push these modules without throwing the entire game out of balance.
Full details on the individual modules will be available in tomorrow's patch notes.
Assault Game Mode - Defensive Turrets
The defensive turrets have been added to two maps (River City Day and Crimson Straight). The turrets will only be seen on the Assault game mode for now. They are placed strategically around the capture points on both sides of each map.
About the turrets:
- Turrets have 2 modes - Cocoon and Active
- When a turret is in Cocoon mode, it takes a 99% damage reduction to all incoming damage.
- When a turret is Active (Enemy Mech within 450m) it will open up and start firing. The turret is 100% vulnerable to damage in this state.
- Each turret has 150 health.
- There are 2 turret types:
- Medium Laser turret - Fires 2 Medium Lasers at its target.
- LRM turret - Fires an LRM-10 at its target.
- The LRM turret has a minimum range of 75 meters. (Yes, this is shorter than normal LRM range. Guess they get Clan Tech first
)
NARC - Will disable ECM on a 'Mech with ECM equipped for it's duration. Will not be knocked off by damage. Will be deactivated at the end of its time cycle (currently 30 seconds/may be tuned longer).
Flamers - Rate at which heat is applied to the targeted 'Mech will be increased so the 90% threshold is hit faster. Possible slight damage boost.
LRMs - Initial investigation into increasing flight speed.
Large Pulse Laser - Initial investigation into possible heat adjustment.
Please leave your feedback related to this post in the official feedback thread.
