Rust Marque Logo

December Update

Excavator changes, AI tweaks, some weapon balancing and the usual bug fixes and improvements

02 December 2021
devblog

The excavator has received a massive production buff. One unit of Diesel fuel will run the excavator for 2 minutes and produce any one of the following yields :
  • 100 HQM
  • 2000 Sulfur Ore
  • 10,000 Stone
  • 5000 Metal Fragments
In addition to this, a terminal can now be found next to the generator. While the excavator is powered on, the communications relay will charge. Once it has charged for 100% (10 minutes or 5 diesel by default) you can use the terminal to request airdrop supplies to the excavator.


Hopefully these changes to the excavator will see it be a more viable and widely used monument.
We have frequently heard from you about the limited real estate left available on some map seeds. One of the main complaint was about the Giant Excavator monument. It was meant to impress by its sheer scale when first introduced, but we have come to recognize that it does sacrifice a good amount of play area. As a result I have remodelled the terrain surroundings of the monument, and shrunk the overall surface it consumes by a good 30%.
Spectating players should be a more pleasant experience this month with a revamped First Person Spectate mode. I've tried to mimic the actual gameplay perspective as much as possible, supporting proper weapon viewmodels, better camera perspectives, alt looking and much of the standard game HUD like the compass, vitals, hotbar and teams.

This new mode will automatically activate when spectating in first person, it also works when playing back demos. I've also added a button to easily spectate a specific player in the admin UI tab.

Hopefully this will make spectating players more enjoyable for admins, as well as providing some new cinematic options for demo users.
NVG Clarity
Reduced NGV grain and overlay intensity
Vehicle Animal Attacks
Animals will no longer attack players inside cars
MP5 Costs
MP5 research cost increased and drop rates lowered
MLRS Barrage
MLRS rockets cluster less towards the centre
Compound Bow Changes
Compound Bow now unlocked from Tier 1 Workbench
Tech Tree T2
Electricity and car parts now on a separate branch
Check out the changelog for more changes.
This month I was finally able to remove two more of the various AI setups that we've had in Rust over the years. Now pretty much everything is running on one system. This meant I was able to remove a ton of code and prefabs - this is better for maintenance and long term development of the AI. There should also be some slight performance improvements.  

I've also made some tweaks to the animal and human AI, such as fixing some annoyances and increasing responsiveness. 

There's more improvements to come in this area now that the bigger features are finished. 
Since the World Revamp update, we've received a lot of player feedback surrounding forest density, the aim of world revamp update was to upgrade Rust's visuals without sacrificing performance/FPS. While balancing performance to visual fidelity we were conservative with foliage density values while trying to match them closely as possible to the prior procedural generation. 

Today we've slightly but noticeably increased forest density, we hope this will bring back some much-needed forest density while keeping performance under control. 
With today's update, all servers will have their Blueprints wiped and player progress reset.
If you missed our announcement last month then here is a summary of the launch of Rust's permanent in-game store. The new store will feature premium cosmetic items and skins.

We kicked things off by releasing the Nomad skin. The Nomad skin is a hazmat reskin replacement that can be applied when crafting the hazmat suit or by placing the hazmat suit into a repair bench. 

Additionally, we've also launched some new items such as new lights, underwear and even a used sofa.

Full details of the permanent store can be found here.
Rust turns 8 this month and we’ll be celebrating for one day only on 11th December with a birthday cake and hats. In the near future, we plan to talk more about how the last year has gone and what we learned as well as some information about how Rust has performed.
We've retired the following Facepunch servers, most of these were brought online during January - February 2021 when we saw extremely high concurrently player numbers and long queues across our server network. Since then player counts have stabilized and we're now adjusting our servers in line with the current player count. 
  • EU 11
  • EU 12
  • EU 13
  • EU 14
  • EU 15
  • EU 16
  • EU 17
  • EU 18
  • EU Small 9
  • EU Small 10
  • EU Softcore 7
  • EU Softcore 8
  • EU Softcore 9
  • US Softcore 3
  • US Softcore 4
  • US East 5
  • US East 6
  • US Small 4
  • AU Hapis
If you play on any of these servers please look for an alternative server. 

Additionally, some Facepunch servers have had their max player limit increased and EU1 has changed to a new IP address.  
On December 16th at 19:00GMT / 14:00 EST we'll be releasing a mandatory server and client update to enable the Xmas event and some festive features!
add_circle

Features

  • Enhanced First Person spectate
  • Excavator supply drops
arrow_circle_up

Improvements

  • Excavator 2.5x more yield
  • Failed code lock entry for after 8 failed attempts now locks out user for 15mins
  • Exposed bear, boar and chicken populations in Server Admin UI
  • Increased human AI line-of-sight responsiveness.
  • Compound Bow moved to T1 Techtree
  • Compound Bow loses condition while drawn back
  • Reduced NVG grain and overlay intensity
  • Fish can now be sold for more scrap at fishing village exchange
  • MP5 NPC drop chance lowered
  • Watch tower decay, health and craft time higher
  • Table item craft no longer need metal fragments
  • Higher forest density
  • TechTree T2 electricity and car parts now on a separate branch
  • [MLRS] Increased the target hit area, and rockets cluster less towards the centre. In general it's now better for larger bases vs. precision targeting.
  • [MLRS] Increased the MLRS UI map zoom a little to make targeting easier (remember that it will show a marker you've placed as well).
  • [MLRS] The MLRS UI now supports characters from other languages.
  • [MLRS] The MLRS rocket explosion ground effect now plays at the true hit point rather than directly below the main explosion.
  • [MLRS] Reduced MLRS rocket world model size and mass to 25% of actual size and mass. No more giant rockets.
handyman

Fixed

  • Fixed skull rock skin missing sound effects
  • Fixed case where ammo would be lost when an auto turret reloads a weapon
  • Animals no longer continue to attack player corpses.
  • Animals will no longer attack players inside modular vehicles.
  • Fixed desync exploit abused by some private hack providers
  • Fixed gap exploit abused by a large number of hacks
  • Fixed missions UI enabled on first open and requiring double click to close
  • Fixed some mission typos, incorrect text and wrong reward amounts
  • [MLRS] Fixed MLRS rocket backfire effects flashing on when entering LOD range.
  • [MLRS] Fixed cassette recorders not sticking correctly to MLRS moving parts.
  • Fixed SAM sites not shooting hot air balloons anymore
  • The info panel for rocket ammo now shows their true maximum range instead of a semi-fabricated one.
  • Fixed LOD issues on the excavator

Newsletter

Recieve monthly updates straight to your inbox