User blog:Bloodhit111/The Orbital Strike is Back!

Hello again! For those who haven’t seen me, I’m Nick Silva, Producer on Planetside 2. First I would like to thank all of you for your continued support of the game. The team has been working very hard on this patch and we are excited to deliver both the Orbital Strike and our new and improved Implant system. Both of these features have been in development for a long time and it feels great to deliver them to our Live environment for everyone to see.

We believe Orbital Strike adds a vital element to the construction system and are excited to see how players will change their construction play. We have also based on your feedback made changes to prevent players from placing construction objects in areas not in the spirit of how the game is meant to be played.

For the new Implant system we hope you find them more interesting and compelling to interact and experiment with. Remember that your old implants will be automatically broken down into the new ISO-4 currency used for upgrading your new ones. For PS2 players that have supported the game by purchasing implants with DBC in the old system, they will be receiving free new Implant Packs for the new system. Please give us some time to arrange all of those free packs on our end, it could take a week or two.

We hope that you enjoy all of the improvements made with this patch and look forward to hearing your feedback.



Attention all units planetside, incoming Orbital Strike to your Live servers. Players can unlock the Orbital Strike Uplink from the Depot and spawn it with the Construction System. Once charged, players can grab the targeting device from the Uplink and call in a devastating Orbital Strike on the target location.

New and Improved Implants System

 * The Implants System has been completely overhauled to be more engaging and rewarding, while also alleviating the frustrations caused by the old system.
 * Energy has been removed, and a new currency called ISO-4 will now upgrade implants directly.
 * Old implants have been converted into ISO-4, and duplicate implants can be broken down into additional ISO-4.
 * All players receive Tier 1 Safeguard and Tier 1 Target Focus implants for free.
 * Additional implant bundles can be purchased for Certs or Daybreak Cash in the Depot.

New Implants Available

 * Target Focus - Reveals spotted targets' health bars and increases how long you can hold your breath.
 * Safeguard - Upon being revived, reduces damage taken for a short duration.
 * Ammo Printer - Periodically restocks ammunition for you and your vehicle.
 * Assimilate - Headshot kills restore shield health.
 * Battle Hardened - Reduces screen shake and flinch caused from damage and explosives.
 * Vampire - Restores health upon killing an enemy with a melee weapon.
 * Catlike - Reduces the movement speed penalty for crouching.
 * Sweeper HUD - Relays target distance information, and automatically spots nearby explosives.
 * Safe Fall - Reduces damage from falling.
 * Regeneration - Restores health while out of combat.
 * Counter-Intelligence - Automatically spots targets who damage you, and provides HUD notifications when spotted by an enemy.
 * Minor Cloak - Remaining stationary for a time will cloak you.

Hardlight Barrier

 * Engineers can now unlock and equip a Hardlight Barrier which, once deployed, provides chest-high cover from incoming attacks.
 * “Draw Fire” experience and ribbons have been added; triggering when targets who damage your Hardlight Barrier are killed.
 * A Draw Fire directive has also been added to the Engineer’s Directive Tree.

Spartan Armor

 * New Player Studio NC armor bundle available in the marketplace. Created by fuzzbuket. Check it out.

Continents

 * Faction continent population imbalance threshold from 15% to 10%.
 * Made adjustments to the Reinforcements Needed system to select more ideal spawn locations, and increased the maximum number of available spawns from 2 to 3.
 * Eastern and Western AV Turrets at The Crown are now Anti-Infantry Turrets
 * A lattice link from Rime Analytics to Eisa Mountain Pass has been added.

Construction

 * Additional sockets have been added to Construction items to reduce exploitable placements.
 * Bunkers now contain an Infantry terminal within them, and are powered by an active Silo.
 * Deployable Decon Tool renamed "Deconstruction Tool"
 * Various string adjustments.
 * Added Faction Banners to the Decorations tab of the Construction screen.

AI Phalanx Turret
Dev Note: AI controlled anti-infantry turret effectiveness is being toned down; these changes only affect the turret while it is unmanned and automated.
 * Cone of Fire from 1.45 to 2
 * Damage from 200@10m-167@85m to 125@10m-75@50m

Infantry

 * Knives have received new wield animations.

TRAP M1
Dev Note: These adjustments should increase the range and accuracy on the 2x burst, and further separate it from the 3x burst.
 * Tooltip no longer mentions single-fire mode.
 * 2x burst horizontal tolerance from 0.4375 to 0.15
 * 2x burst ADS bloom from 0.07 to 0.06
 * 2x burst Hipfire bloom from 0.14 to 0.12

Misc. Adjustments

 * C-4 can now be deconstructed by Engineer Repair Tools
 * AVA armor may now be purchased per class, in addition to the armor bundle.
 * Removed all weapon cert lines from the certs list page. Dev Note: The overhead to maintain this list had left it in an undesirable state. We can look at returning the feature once we find a better way to maintain it.

Bug Fixes

 * Polish to NSX Kabuto.
 * Explosive damage should once again award assist experience.
 * Various fixes to exploitable Construction areas.
 * Made solid some base banners that were acting like one-way shields.
 * Fixes to broken decals.
 * Fix for VS Munitions Pouch rank 1 not providing ammo
 * Repairing Harassers no longer connects the repair beam to the sky.
 * Air Pads at the Indar Northern Warp Gate should now resupply ammo.
 * Fixed skinning on Female Darkstar shoulders.
 * Adjustments to VS HA arms in first person.
 * Fixed broken UI strings for remote vehicle spawning.

Known Issues
We plan on fixing these issues in the next hotfix.
 * Designator tools for the orbital strike and Glaive ION cannon aren’t playing nicely with each other. If you have one in your loadout, then go pick up the other one, you’ll be unable to fire that new designator successfully. There is a quick workaround for this if you run into it - if you cycle to any other tool or weapon in your loadout, then back to the problem designator, it should function properly from there out.
 * Minor cloak activate timer can fire shortly after beginning to fire your weapon, you will cease firing and be unable to continue firing until you disengage minor cloak.
 * Infantry terminals inside the updated constructed bunkers display only VS graphics/color no matter what faction you are.
 * These terminal will work correctly despite the fact they are showing VS graphics/color.

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