Greetings MechWarriors!

Two of our customer appreciation awards are now in-game!

The limited edition Atlas AS7-S and CN9-AH each come with custom camo and geometry, new loadouts, and a 30% C-Bill reward bonus.

As a quick refresher from the anniversary E-mail and forum thread: The AS7-S is being awarded to players who have purchased any tier of Founders, Phoenix, Clan Wave 1 or Wave 2 pre-order package in their MWO career.

The CN9-AH will appear in the Mechlab of anyone who had purchased an MC package or any Founders collection. For more info, please refer to: http://mwomercs.com/forums/topic/171445-anniversary-faq/.

We have even more prizes for all players to benefit from with the introduction of Rewards 2.0: These new rewards are designed to encourage even more engagement, teamwork, and role warfare.

Many of these are new designs and have several requirements to trigger in-game. Please take a moment to review the list and table below, but keep in mind further tuning may still occur. (We will let you know if and when it does!)

In Conquest game mode, point capture has been accelerated significantly. A tuning pass has also taken place on jump jets, fall speed, and LRM-5s. A number of major bug-fixes are appearing in today's build, including one where Post-AA was being forced on despite player-selection otherwise, fixing the out-of-bounds in River City and resolving a memory corruption issue as well as others listed below.

If you encounter any new issues in the patch, we invite and encourage you to report your bugs on the patch feedback forums: http://mwomercs.com/forums/forum/192-patch-feedback/

We hope you enjoy this patch and thank you all for your continued support and enthusiasm in the game. We have more big things coming, so stay tuned!

Content

New Reward 'Mechs

Atlas AS7-S

• Tonnage: 100
• Engine: 300 Standard
  • Top Speed: 48.6 kph
  • Max Engine Rating: 360
• Torso Movement:
  • 75 degrees to each side.
  • 16 degrees up and down.
• Arm Movement:
  • 35 degrees to each side.
  • 30 degrees up and down.
• Armor: 608 (Standard)
• Internal Structure: Standard
• Weapons & Equipment:
  • Left Arm: Medium Laser, Double Heat Sink x2
  • Left Torso: LRM 20, SRM 6, Streak SRM 2 x2, LRM Ammo x2, SRM Ammo
  • Center Torso: Medium Laser x2
  • Right Torso: AC/20, AC/20 Ammo x2
  • Right Arm: Medium Laser, Double Heat Sink
  • Left Leg: Streak SRM Ammo
  • Right Leg: AC/20 Ammo
• Hardpoints:
  • Left Arm: 1 Energy, 1 AMS
  • Left Torso: 4 Missile
  • Center Torso: 2 Energy
  • Right Torso: 1 Ballistic
  • Right Arm: 1 Energy
• Heat Sinks: 15 Double
• Jump Jets: 0 (0 Max)
• ECM Capable?: No
• Module Slots:
  • 'Mech: 2
  • Consumable: 2
  • Weapon: 2
• Movement Archetype: Huge
• Quirks: None
• 30% C-Bill bonus

Centurion CN9-AH

• Tonnage: 50
• Engine: 200 Standard
  • Top Speed: 64.8 kph
  • Max Engine Rating: 275
• Torso Movement:
  • 110 degrees to each side.
  • 25 degrees up and down.
• Arm Movement:
  • 0 degrees to each side.
  • 35 degrees up and down.
• Armour: 272 (Standard)
• Internal Structure: Standard
• Weapons & Equipment:
  • Left Torso: LRM 10, LRM Ammo x2
  • Right Torso: AC/20 Ammo x2
  • Right Arm: AC/20
  • Left Leg: Heat Sink
  • Right Leg: Heat Sink
• Hardpoints:
  • Left Torso: 3 Missile
  • Right Torso: 1 AMS
  • Right Arm: 3 Ballistic
• Heat Sinks: 10 Single
• Jump Jets: 0 (0 Max)
• ECM Capable?: No
• Module Slots:
  • 'Mech: 1
  • Consumable: 2
  • Weapon: 2
• Movement Archetype: Medium
• Quirks:
  • Torso Turn Rate (Yaw): +35%
  • Turn Rate: +10%
  • Acceleration Rate: -10%
  • Deceleration Rate: +10%
  • Additional Armor (RA): 10
• 30% C-Bill bonus

Gameplay

Rewards 2.0 - What's New?

The new rewards system comes with a number of new rewards specially designed for role warfare. With Rewards 2.0 all rewards were re-balanced in order to be economical. Many rewards are based on a system measuring engagement/disengagement with enemy players.

Engagement/Disengagement Rules:

• Dealing or receiving damage makes you engaged.
• Depending on sight, distance and time since the last damage was dealt, timers work to see if you are still actively in combat or disengaged.

The following rewards are new or follow a different system now:

Scouting:

• Be the first to spot a target.
• Do not engage.

Flanking:

• Move behind an enemy Mech without being targeted by it and without being engaged.
• Deal damage to the enemy Mech from behind (out of sight).
• Reward has a cool-down of 20 seconds.

Kill Most Damage:

• Compared to all other players, deal the most damage to a target.
• The target dies.

Killing Blow:

• Deal the killing shot to a target.

Solo Kill:

• Achieve both "Kill Most Damage" and "Killing Blow" for the same target.

Capture:

• Being inside of a base while the base re-aligns.

Brawler:

• Get a "Solo Kill" in between 0 and 450 meters distance to the target.
• Be in a medium or heavy 'Mech.

Lance Formation:

• All players of one lance are in a distance of 140 meters to each other.
• The whole lance is engaged.
• Reward occurs every 15 seconds if not interrupted.

Protected Light:

• Be in a light 'Mech.
• Stay close to a 'Mech that is at least 2 weight classes higher.
• Both are engaged.
• Reward occurs every 8 seconds.

Protected Medium:

• Be in a medium 'Mech.
• Stay close to a 'Mech that is at least 2 weight classes higher.
• Both are engaged.
• Reward occurs every 8 seconds.

Protect Proximity:

• Staying in a radius of 150 meters to a damaged friendly 'Mech (critical damage).
• Be engaged.
• Reward occurs every 10 seconds if not interrupted.

TAG Damage:

• TAG a target.
• Damage is dealt to that target while target is still TAGed.
• Reward is multiplied by the damage dealt in points.
• Reward is only shown on HUD once finished or interrupted (total number rewarded).
• Reward is only given if the target is tagged for at least 2 seconds.
• Reward is only given if the target takes at least 5 damage.
• The reward has a cooldown of 2 seconds.
• This timer resets to 2 seconds with every point of damage dealt.
• Once the timer reaches 0 all the accumulated reward is given to the player/shown on HUD.
• The reward is finished when:
  • Tag is removed from the target.
  • The target dies.

TAG Kill:

• The user is tagging the target.
• The target gets destroyed WHILE being TAGed.

Hit and Run:

• A hit and run “Score” is generated based off an engagement.
• Every point of damage dealt counts for 1 point of score.
• Every point of damage taken counts for -2 points of score.
• If score is greater than 10, you are awarded with a hit and run award.
• If the total damage taken during the engagement is greater than 15 the score is zeroed and no award is given.

First Capture:

• Player gets the capture collector reward for a previously uncaptured collector.
• Can only occur once per collector per match.
• Does not apply to starting bases that are already captured.

Stealth TAG

• Player TAGs a target.
• Player stays out of the line of sight of any enemy.
• Player is rewarded every 6 seconds.

Rewards 2.0 - What is the New Balance?

UI

• Users will now return to the 'Home' tab instead of 'MechLab' after a match.
• Added the 'Configure' button to the Home screen.
• When viewing a 'Mech in the MechLab, if any of the summary bars in the lower right hand corner exceed their maximum value, the actual value will now be displayed and colored red.
• New MechLab warnings have been created to facilitate correcting invalid load-outs.
  • If a 'Mech is over tonnage, the player will receive a warning when they attempt to edit it. The player must manually remove unwanted equipment until the 'Mech is no longer over tonnage.
  • If a 'Mech has too many jump jets equipped, the player will receive a warning when they attempt to edit it. A number of jump jets are automatically removed in order to meet the 'Mech's jump jet limit.
  • After making these corrections the player must save their new load-out in order to commit to it.

Tuning

• Added LRM-5 heat scale. Linked to all LRMs. This is for both Clan and IS. All Clan and IS PPCs now have a 7.0 heat scale multiplier.
• Increased the capture rate of the resource collectors in the Conquest game mode.
  
  • The amount of time it took to go from the mid point on the capture meter to full cap to your team has been drastically reduced.
• Jump Jet thrust has been adjusted on Class I, III and IV Jump Jets to make them feel livelier.
  • You will notice a small increase in height.
  • You will notice that you get to max height much quicker.
• OmniPods that provide additional jump jet slots have been changed to automatically include those jump jets as fixed equipment.
  • 'Mechs with these OmniPods equipped may experience invalid loadouts until they are edited in the MechLab.
  • The OmniPods affected are:
    • Kit Fox S: Left Leg, Left Torso, Right Leg, Right Torso.
    • Timber Wolf S: Left Torso, Center Torso, Right Torso.
• The fall speed limits over which a 'Mech takes damage have been updated to:
  • Light 'Mechs: 46 m/s.
  • Medium 'Mechs: 39 m/s.
  • Heavy 'Mechs: 35 m/s.
  • Assault 'Mechs: 33 m/s.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue where PostAA was not turning off even though users had it off.
• Fixed a memory corruption issue.
• River City out-of-bounds fixed.
• Terra Therma Bridge off-set fixed.
• Misc. geometry improvements River City, Canyon Network, Alpine Peaks, Forest Colony.
• Fixed inconsistencies in weapon modules naming.
• Fixed a text issue where XP is labelled as GXP on the EOR screen for players without Premium Time.

Known Issue

• The total XP on the HUD in Modern Reward Display Mode will show the previous XP total if user is receiving rewards that have zero XP such as the 'Conquest Pulse' reward.

We thank you for your patience and we look forward to seeing you on the battlefield!

- The MechWarrior® Online™ Team