2024/4/1 - Patch v17.4

From BTAWiki
Jump to navigation Jump to search

v17.4 (aka the "Amaris Fools!" patch) has been released to the installer. It's our annual April Fool's patch so you'll definitely want to see what we've got cookin' this time!

SOMEHOW, AMARIS RETURNED: The Inner Sphere once knew true fear as Stefan Amaris, the Usurper of the Star League and conquerer of the Hegemony, crushed those who dared stand before his might and now, after centuries of hiding, he has returned to claim what is rightfully his. His realm, the Rim Worlds Republic, lives again and the worlds of the former Terran Hegemony will be his once more. If you dare, you can stand against his forces and be obliterated by his new superweapons in combat. If you are willing to accept him as your rightful lord though you can aid in his takeover and reap the plentiful rewards that come with such obesiance (put plainly, you can work for the RWR and ally with them; the RWR faction store has some unique mech variants and four new unique superweapons you can buy: the Meatgrinder MG, the Death Ray, the Mercy autocannon, and the Atom Smasher/10).

THE RATTLER COMETH: Ok, you might think this is an April Fool's event but no, this is very real. The Rattler Mobile Fortress has been added to BTA as a unique "monster" fight akin to the Union and Overlord dropships. However, fighting a Rattler is like fighting a mobile mountain. It has no turrets that are easily killed like the dropships, instead the literally hundreds and hundreds of tons of weapons are built right into the body and are active right up until you kill the whole damn thing. Oh, and it has three Barracuda capital-scale missile launchers and a Sub-Capital Naval Laser to boot. Good luck, you are gonna need it. To be honest, I am dubious that you can kill it without extreme cheese but should you manage it, you'll get the ultimate reward (beat it to find out what it is). Finally, in order to fight this monster you must fly to Terra itself and buy the contract in the store, just like the dropship fights.

THE HANSEATIC CRUSADE HAS ARRIVED: As many of you predicted, the inclusion of the Goliath Scorpions and Nueva Castile was 100% a prelude to the Hanseatic Crusade. Starting in January 3065, Clan Goliath Scorpion will invade and assault the Hanseatic League and, over the course of that year and part of 3066, will eventually conquer it, ending in the foundation of the Scorpion Empire as the Clan unifies itself with Castile and the Hansa. You can participate in either side of the war as you like, the Scorpions will hire you and you can even ally with them (and later the Scorpion Empire) for access to their faction store. Enjoy the sprawling extended war!

NEW VOICEPACKS: At RogueTech's request, we have incorporated five new voicepacks from RT into BTA. These voicepacks include the Das, JellyRoll, MIG, Pagan, and Svelte voicepacks. I've given them a very cursory listen and they seem nice to me. BTA is still not super interested in further voicepacks but since RT asked nicely we decided to incorporate them as a favor to RT. Thanks, RT, for the extra content! <3

DFA PENALTIES IMPLEMENTED: In order to attempt to curb the AI's extreme overuse of Death-From-Above attacks, we have implemented a DFA penalty setting. Right now, the DFA penalty is +7, which is pretty steep. We'll see if it helps curb the AI's bad behavior or not.

DROP SLOT ADJUSTMENT: The UI has improved for putting Battle Armor onto BA carrier units. Now, in the deployment screen you'll see that each unit has a pop-up slot that you can put a BA suit + pilot into (assuming the unit can *carry* BA in the first place; if it can't carry BA you'll still see the slot but you can't put anything in the slot). For now, the four dedicated BA slots remain in Lance 3 but they may be getting removed as it's not clear what they're really useful for anymore, we'll see.

NEW PERFORMANCE ENHANCEMENT: Thanks to the work of community member, friend, and team member of BTA, Jamie Wolf, it has been discovered that HBS BT has a large amount of internal telemetry that HBS intended to use for data collection. However, that telemetry is no longer being used by HBS but *is* still running, causing noticeable performance slowdowns. In order to help performance, Jamie developed a mod that disables the telemetry from running and thus claws back some small performance gains. They're small but every bit counts! Thanks Jamie!

UPDATED OMNIMECH LOADOUT: The Preta (the Word of Blake Celestial OmniMech) has had its loadouts adjusted. Now, they all have a Retractable Blade in the left arm. Your Pretas will need to be stored and re-readied to receive the updated blade and to fix any errors introduced in your loadouts. This was done because the Preta is unusual. While it does not have the blade model in the *mechbay*, it does have it *in battle*. This produces odd dissonance and we decided to make it properly reflect the in-combat visuals with the addition of the blade.

CLAN QUIRK MODIFIED: The Clan quirk now provides 10% decreased heat generation. This was done in order to help the Clans remain dangerous, help Clan chassis remain competitive, and to help the Clans manage their increased weapon heat in hot biomes.

NEW MECH CHASSIS: The Tolson, a 60 ton non-canon Star League e-war chassis, has snuck into battle. This mech is focused heavily on command and control functions and serves as an excellent e-war platform thanks to its integrated Command Console. Find it wherever old Star League mechs are found, as well as in the factory at Tukayyid where ComStar produces it.

NEW MECH VARIANTS: There are a handful of new mech variants in this release, including: 10 new variants for the RWR's forces; a new Shadow Hawk-style Periphery mech named the Skadi; there's a pair of new Wyvern variants (including one with a new weapon, the Vehicular Grenade Launcher); there are a lot of new gladiator heroes, all of which are also on the hero reward lists (included are heroes for the following chassis: Argus, Cephalus, Dragon Fire, Dragoon, Great Turtle, Icarus II, Lancelot, Medusa, Phoenix, Rifleman III, Sirocco, Talos, Tarantula, Valkyrie II, Vision Quest, Wawkalak, Yeoman, Cyclone, Ironclad, Lao Hu, Osteon, Pulverizer, Scorpion, and Verfolger); a large batch of new introtech and 3050-tech Commandos have been released, including the Blazing Inferno II (also, the Blazing Inferno I has had its designation updated to match the newly assigned canon one).

COMMUNITY CONTENT NO MORE: In a new first for BTA, a piece of Community Content has graduated from CC into BTA proper. The Surtur, a Hanseatic League original chassis, has been moved into BTA proper and has received two more variants. It has also had its model changed from the Wolverine to the Valkyrie II to better represent the sword the Surtur carries.

BREAKING NEWS IS BROKEN: This is a bit of a sad announcement but the flashpoint Breaking News has... some issues. We discovered this after last patch when it was discovered that Breaking News still wasn't spawning properly. It also turns out that Breaking News isn't actually *done* and while technically playable does not meet the standards we like to keep BTA to. For now, it remains unavailable to play through until such time as we can manage to fix it. Sorry folks.

COMMUNITY CONTENT: There's some new CC here today, hurrah! First we have a new pilot, Warper Jawa; there's a Hunchback with a Bombast PPC; the LBX-RAC5 got a further nerf (I don't want to hear any complaints, it needed it and you know it); the Blackjack BJ-1M was updated slightly; and there's a new JagerMech, the JM6-1M!

  • Fixed Gambier's allowed biomes such that you can actually get duels there as intended.
  • There was some file consolidation on the backend that changed some filepaths. Most users should see no effect but submodders might need to look around for a few things.
  • Knight at the Omni was properly fixed, again.
  • Fixed some RepMes for the Goliath Scorpions.
  • Lots of fixed typos and such.
  • A few mechs got expanded factionality (mostly pertaining to the Hanseatic League).
  • The Mech Taser got a small buff, it was rather underwhelming.
  • The Dire Wolf and the Kit Fox had incorrect structure values, that has been corrected.
  • A bug with the Black Python BP-3 and BP-4 was corrected.


IMPORTANT: v17.4 is an "update" update. In this case, read the detailed update notes above to see best practices on how to update to 17.3.

IMPORTANT: v17.4 is not a save breaking update, your saves are compatible and will work fine.

REMINDER: This update, and others like it, are made possible by my Patreon and Ko-Fi supporters. Without their support, updates would come slower and be less impactful. If you feel like being a part of the support for BTA, you can find me on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/bloodydoves) and on Ko-Fi (https://ko-fi.com/bloodydoves)

REMINDER: Custom mod commissions are still available if you're interested. If you'd like to get your own community content added to BTA DM me, bloodydoves, and we can work something out.


BTA Light

BTA Light has been updated to v17.2.lite. This is a minor update, with a few minor fixes. However, it also includes the performance update mentioned above for BTA Classic, so it's definitely worth you getting.

Retrieved from "https://www.bta3062.com/index.php?title=2024/4/1_-_Patch_v17.4&oldid=55913"