Meta Madness

Meta gameplay changes are here! Aimcone reduction, weapon buffs and changes to weapon attachments, safe zone recyclers, PvP walls, Cargo Ship docking, Launch Site and much, much more.

02 May 2024

DEVBLOG

Aimcone reduction

Helk

Any movement in rust would modify your baseline Aimcone so that shots taken while in motion were somewhat inaccurate. This was supposed to discourage "running and gunning". The problem with this is that *any* kind of motion while in a firefight puts you at a disadvantage (minor dodging) and increases the amount of RNG experienced by the player.

What I've done is reduced this penalty to zero to start, and blend it up to the full amount after 4 rapid fire shots. This means is you can now strafe and dodge while tap firing and not experience a huge aiming penalty, however full auto will be penalized.

I've also adjusted the Aimcone curve modifiers for a few weapons so that more shots have a higher probability of landing closer to the center. This has been applied to the Custom SMG, SAP and LR300.

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Weapon + Attachment UPdates

Helk

Weapon mods have received some love this month.

BURST MOD

The duration between bursts while using the burst mod has been significantly reduced to 2x firerate instead of 3x firerate.

HOLOSIGHT

The holosight mesh has had its edges thinned so that less of your vision is obscured while using it. This is a stopgap until we produce a new model for it. I've also fixed the Holosight reticle being affected by motion blur.

MUZZLE BRAKE & BOOST

Both the muzzle brake and muzzle boost have had their negatives reduced, they now have less damage reduction and less damage falloff and should prove to be far more useful.

LR300 TWEAKS

In addition, I've made some changes to the recoil, damage fall off, bullet velocity, and burst mode of the LR300. This should now be the best in class AR.

Everything subject to change.

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Safezone REcyclers

Helk

Starting today, Recyclers in safezones have been nerfed. Their cycle time has been increased to 8 seconds and they now yield 80% of what they used to. This is the price you now must pay for safety.

However, the recyclers found at monuments have the same cycle time as before but now yield 120%! This is to reward players taking the risk out in the open.

While I am aware that a great many keyboards may be smashed as the death screen fades in over the droning hum of the active recycler, I still have hope this helps usher in a new era of roaming and monument combat.

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sale sale sale!

Helk

Some great items were not used because they were way too expensive. To that end I've made the following changes:

HV Ammo - Gunpowder cost reduced from 6x to 2x the cost of non HV ammo
Torpedos - Craft yield increased from 3 to 5.
Incendiary Rockets - The cost has been drastically reduced and their damage + flame spread increased.
Drones - Tech trash is no longer a requirement for drones.
HMLMG - Gear cost has been reduced.

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External structure changes

Large External Gates and Walls now require the player to stand still for 1.5 seconds when placing, making them less useful for immediate PvP encounters in the wild. We felt that being able to place down such large structures in a short amount of time felt at odds with our style of combat that rewards situational awareness and environmental tactics.

WOODEN BARRICADE RESIZE

To fill the void left by the external wall changes regarding dynamic cover during PvP, we have doubled the size of the deployable wooden barricade. The wooden barricade remains instantly deployable and provides a moderate amount of cover on-demand without being overpowered or polluting the landscape with large, unsightly deployable.

This is without a doubt a large shift to PvP, we'll be monitoring these changes carefully

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BRADLEY CHANGES

Adam W

Some further tweaks to the Bradley this month:

Scientists now spawn in stages, based on the Bradley's health, and there's some Heavy scientists thrown in the mix now, too.

At 80% health, 2 scientists will spawn
At 60% health, 4 more will spawn
At 40% health, 6 final scientists will spawn

There's also been some tweaks to make some of the Scientists more aggressive and use varying attack angles.

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DOOR CONTROLLER

Flavien

You can now use door controllers without worrying about raiders abusing them to open your doors! This is accomplished by unpairing door controllers once your TC is destroyed & requiring code lock authorization for pairing.

They also are much easier to setup as they can now be placed just like code locks.

This should reduce the pain of constantly opening and closing the doors of your base... especially when your teammates tend to leave them open.

Now deployable on doors like code locks
Automatically paired when placed
Added 2 new side inputs : 'Open' and 'Close'
Unpaired when the associated tool cupboard is destroyed

We also carried on improving electricity by adjusting components and fixing various bugs this month. Thanks again to the community for reporting bugs and suggesting ideas.

The full change log of each component can be read in the section at the bottom of the blog.

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Patrol Helicopter Changes

Ian Henderson

We know the latest helicopter changes had some mixed feedback, so we've revised them. No go zones should feel a lot more fair, and most major bugs experienced with heli since the last update are now patched.

Monument Crashing - the helicopter will now attempt to crash at a nearby monument on death. It won't crash at monuments with safe zones: outpost, fishing village, etc. This can be disabled by server owners via: patrolhelicopterai.monument_crash

Flee Behavior - heli would previously flee when it sometimes didn't mean to. Damage to start a flee has been tweaked, ensuring a flee every time you quickly remove 30% of its overall HP.

Numerous Fixes & Improvements - heli will now properly target you on boats, cargo, trains and other moving entities. Targeting fixes and performance improvements have been made throughout the code. More legacy bugs: such as heli not exploding immediately on impact with certain terrain are also fixed.

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Launch Site Loot

Alistair

The Launch site loot had received an overhaul. Before, the loot inside the main building shared the same respawn group as the rest of the launch site, meaning loot inside the main building was never guaranteed. Loot had a chance to spawn elsewhere at the monument, which felt discouraging when completing the puzzle and running the main building.

The main site building now has a dedicated respawn group, which guarantees 23 loot crates when the puzzle resets.

Additionally, more loot now spawns throughout the monument.

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UNderwater IMprovements

Helk

Underwater vision has been improved substantially. You can now see much farther when using goggles and even more so when viewing out a submarine porthole.

In addition, the surface accuracy of submarine torpedoes has been vastly improved and torpedoes were made cheaper to produce by way of an increased craft yield. Lastly, the duo submarine fires torpedoes slightly faster than the solo.

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Building QOL

Jake_Rich

Tool Cupboard Auth Friend Can authorize other players on a tool cupbard

Demolish High Walls Can demolish high walls & gates for 10min after placement

Fixed High Wall Snapping Hold SHIFT to disable snapping

Foundation Placement Fixed foundation placement under roofs & floors

Foundation Debris Foundations now drop debris

Floor Debris Floors now drop debris

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Tech Tree CHanges

We’re making some changes to how the Tech Tree works to try and incentivise new styles of play. Starting this month you will notice that the T2 and T3 workbench tech trees now have a tax rate applied to them which will increase the cost of unlocking items. We’re starting this at 10% for T2 and 20% for T3. This cost increase only applies to unlocking via the Tech Tree, researching items via the Research Table is unchanged.

Our thinking behind this is that we feel the Tech Tree progression path has become a little stale and needs to be shaken up, but we don’t want to lose the advantages that the Tech Tree brought to progression - making difficult to find blueprints attainable in a way that felt fair and not as at the mercy of RNG. While there are a number of avenues we can use to try and make both forms of progression feel more balanced, this feels like a simple and understandable starting point.

As with all of our changes, we’ll be keeping a close eye on this and will likely make further changes in the future.

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Cargo Ship Changes

Jarryd Campi

It’s been great to see the reception to last month's Cargo Ship/harbor update, and we hope you’ve all enjoyed some very (very) intense firefights. Based on the feedback we have received, we’re making a couple of changes this month:

The Cargo Ship will now dock at both harbors (if they exist) on a map before leaving. Note that any containers that have already been placed on a ship will be deleted when it starts its approach to the next harbor.
You can now mouse over the ship on the map to see if it has already docked.
The containers that are spawned to be placed on the Cargo Ship will now be spawned when it starts its approach (about 100m away from the harbor) rather than when the ship arrives at its dock, giving you more time to hide in the containers.
The container spawn points have been mildly tweaked so that all of the containers should be accessible, although you might need to do some climbing.

We hope these changes make the event a bit more understandable at a glance as well as make the combat encounters more interesting.

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Viewmodel renderers

Jarryd Campi

Since implementing a dedicated viewmodel renderer system back in April 2021, all of our viewmodels have been split between the old and new system. The primary stumbling blocks were viewmodels with lots of particle effects and lights (torches, flamethrowers, etc). While we covered most of the high impact cases of viewmodel jittering by supporting guns (how often do you use the birthday cake on oil rig?) we’ve been wanting to consolidate everything for a while. This month, we’ve updated all of the viewmodels to use the new renderer so they should appear smooth and jitter free, regardless of where you are in the world. The affected viewmodels are:

Both flamethrowers
Water Bucket
Beancan Grenade
Molotov Cocktail
Flashlight
Birthday Cake
Garry’s Mod Toolgun
Poker playing cards
Lunar New Year spear
Minigun
Paddle

You should see no visible changes if it's all working correctly.

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AI Performance fixes

Adam W

I've investigated and addressed a couple of AI performance issues that were causing the AI to take longer to process than necessary, especially on servers that have been running for a while.

This should help with AI server performance across the board.

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EFFECTS PERFORMANCE

Flavien

After noticing occasional framedrops during gunfights, I've spent some time investigating the issue and found out that our impact effects prefab warmup wasn't working as intended.

All impact effects are now warmed up correctly during loading times.

This should drastically reduce the stuttering when spawning a big amount of effects prefab for the first time (e.g when a fight starts and bullets start flying). This has a very little if no impact on loading times.

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Map Uploading

lamalove

Procedural maps are now automatically uploaded from game servers to our backend, so players can just download them instead of generating them when they first join the server.

This should significantly reduce the time it takes to join a server for the first time after it wipes. It may also reduce the number of players seeing "Rust is not responding" pop ups while joining servers for the first time.

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Harmony 2

Jake_Rich

Harmony is Rust's built-in modding platform shipped with the server. It powers modding frameworks like Oxide & Carbon, as well as standalone mods.

We upgraded from Harmony 1.2 -> Harmony 2.3 which brings us up to date with the latest features & additional stability.

This requires mod authors to recompile their Harmony mods. Fortunately the majority of mods only need to change a single line.

Before

using Harmony;

After

using HarmonyLib;

Players shouldn't need to worry as the majority of large servers already started updating their mods before the update went live. Server owners please keep an eye out for mod updates as every Harmony Mod will needed to be updated.

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Electricity Change log

Flavien

Tesla Coil, Igniter

To stop them from self-destructing, they are now disabled upon reaching <10% of their max health.

No longer take damage when picked up.

Electrical Branch

Reduced minimum branch out power from 2 to 1.

Button

Reduced press time from 5s to 1s.

Storage Monitor

Will now recognize partial stack changes and pass power through when removing or adding items to a stack.

Splitter

Fixed power distribution issue when not all outputs were used.

Memory Cell

Fixed side inputs triggerable by 0 power circuits.

Timer Switch

Fixed an issue where its side input was triggered inconsistently by circuits update (e.g: industrial conveyor updating its state).

Counter

No longer requires a connection to its output to display its passthrough when set to 'Show Passthrough'

RF Receiver

Updated recipe:

- Metal Fragments 100 → 150

- Tech Trash 1 → 0

RF Broadcaster

Updated recipe:

- Metal Fragments 100 → 150

- Tech Trash 1 → 0

RF Transmitter

Updated recipe:

- HQM 5 → Metal Fragments 100

- Tech Trash 1 → 0

RF Pager

Updated recipe:

- Metal Fragments 50 → 100

- Tech Trash 1 → 0

AND, OR, XOR Switch

No longer emit light when unpowered.

Industrial Conveyor

Can be placed upside down again.

Industrial Light

No longer referred as Simple Light when looking at IO connection handles.

Smart Switch

No longer referred as Switch when looking at IO connection handles.

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Features

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Upgraded to Harmony 2
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Tier 2 and Tier 3 Workbenches now cost an additional 10%/20% scrap per purchase
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External Structures now take 1.5 seconds to deploy

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Improvements

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Moving no longer applies aimcone penalty to the first shot but rather the movement penalty is now blended in over several shots (full auto while moving)
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Safezone recyclers yield 20% less resources than before and take 8 seconds per cycle
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Radtown recyclers yield 20% more resources than before and take 5 seconds per cycle
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Large, Small and Fish hunting trophies now have gibs when destroyed
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Added debris to foundations
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Added debris to floors
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Thinner holosight attachment edges
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Reduced SAP aimcone
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Reduce hv ammo gp cost
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Slightly increased torpedo surface accuracy
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Torpedo craft yield increased to 5 from 3
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Decreased metal plate craft cost from 25 to 18 hqm
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Increased roadsign armor condition
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Removed tech trash from drone crafting cost
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Reduced gear cost in HMLMG
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Submarine duo fires torpedos slightly faster than solo
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Decreased LR300 damage falloff (more damage at longer range)
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Increased LR300 bullet velocity
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Decreased LR300 horizontal recoil
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Reduced refire delay for burst module from 3x refire to 2x refire rate
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Reduced cost of incendiary rockets and slightly increased damage
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Added ability to drag items directly into backpack without opening it
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Can demolish external walls & external gates for 10 minutes after placement
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Can rotate vending machine 90 degrees
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Can authorize other users on the tool cupboard
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Muzzle brake and muzzle boost have a bit less negatives associated with their usage ( less damage reduction/damage falloff )
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Barricade always deploys horizontal rather than aligning to terrain
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Relaxed Barricade deployment
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Custom smg now has a 30 round magazine
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Custom smg has slightly higher chance for more center-fire hits
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Barricade always deploys horizontal rather than aligning to terrain
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Compress server tags to avoid servers going above 128 tag character limit
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NPC’s that can give you a mission will now appear on the map (this can be toggled on the right of the screen)
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Missions can no longer be completed if the player doesn’t have enough space in their inventory for the rewards
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Added a dedicated UI panel explaining the steps and rewards of a mission before accepting it
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Active missions will now appear as a list in the map - clicking on a mission will focus the map to its current objective
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Can now close conversations with the Escape key
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Improved server performance of Industrial Conveyors - they should no longer cause as much Item churn
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Improved server performance of Industrial Conveyors when sending the screen info to clients
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Promoting a team leader is now done via the team section in your inventory, the old promote to leader prompt when looking at another team member has been removed
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Improved the feedback and responsiveness of the Start Tutorial button in the options, including communicating when you are not connected to a valid server
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Minigun now shows the movement speed reduction in it’s information panel
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Containers spawned for Cargo/Harbor event should now all be climbable
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Cargo Ship now will dock at both Harbors
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The Cargo Ship icon on the map now communicates whether the ship has already docked
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The Containers for the Cargo/Harbor event will now spawn when the ship begins its approach
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Updated Cargo Ship sounds
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Can no longer soft lock the tutorial by attacking the killed bear with your spear
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Getting crushed by a Container in the Harbor will now show an appropriate death icon
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Implemented PR #54 for CUI - Adding Support for Scrollable Containers (thanks to Kulltero)
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Updated remaining viewmodels to use new renderer (for list see above)
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Further Bradley gameplay changes. Heavy scientists and stage based spawning.
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Added a ramp into the legacy shelter to ensure you can get in on difficult terrain
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Wires and hoses can now be attached to doors and will move accordingly
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Reduced Electrical Branch minimum branch out power from 2 to 1
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Reduced electrical button press time from 5s to 1s
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Added snapping support to Counter, Fluid Switch & Pump, Connected Speaker, Electrical Heater, Laser Light, CCTV camera and Simple Light
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Improved Deluxe Christmas Lights inconsistent UI behaviour, it now displays the five options and select the current mode by default when opened
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Added 'electricbattery.battery charge' and 'electricbattery.battery deplete' admin commands to respectively charge and deplete a battery easily
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Added 'pipette' command: gives you the item you're looking at and places it in your hands
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Added 'selectitem' command to allow non-admin clients to use pipette without the item giving part
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IO entities configuration screen now supports numpad enter key to confirm
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Updated RF items crafting costs, removing tech trash and HQM
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Increased RF frequency range from 4 to 6 digits
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Improved client performance of bullet impact effects causing stuttering during gunfights
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Increased default MLRS 'broken' time after use from 10 to 20 minutes
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Reworked bandit camp's roulette randomness

handyman

Fixed

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Fixed erroneous black line on Hobo barrel icon
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Fixed ping estimation causing large lag spikes on linux servers
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Fixed industrial conveyors moving items into empty slots instead of filling partial stacks
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Fixed photos & headbags not working when inside a backpack
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Fixed several movement issues with ridable horses
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Fixed head trophies not returning headbags to players when destroyed or picked up
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Fixed heavy scientists not dropping minigun & flamethrower as much as intended
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Fixed player health sometimes flickering when spectating
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Fixed stashes sometimes being inconsistantly revealed
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Fixed server disk space being endlessly consumed if full server demos is enabled but upload disabled
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Fixed oil rig radiation not working after server restart
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Fixed "Assign Friend" menu having dark names
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Fixed steam nicknames sometimes being very slow to refresh
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Fixed ammo sometimes being dropped to ground when unloading weapon / switching ammo types
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Fixed horses sometimes taking 1.5x by bullets ricocheting
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Fixed sleeping bags being difficult to place against walls in base
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Fixed external wall snapping not being disabled when holding shift
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Fixed storage adapter blocking looting chest
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Fixed backpack being dropped in safezone when dying
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Fixed hover looting clothing out of a full backpack not working
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Fixed using doors & external gates to block up TCs behind walls
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Fixed ability to rotate walls when an explosive is attached to it
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Fixed holosight reticle being affected by motion blur
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Fixed missions on the tutorial island counting towards the “Mission Accomplished” achievement
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Fixed a case where dying during the tutorial island would result in duplicate objective markers appearing
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Fixed error when starting some the lumberjack mission
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Fixed incorrect translation string on the last objective of the lumberjack animal kill mission
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Fixed lumberjack harvest wood mission step listing the incorrect amount
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Fixed the mission objectives sometimes appearing on top of the marker list in the map screen
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Fixed being able to right click scrap into an invisible loot slot at safe zone workbenches
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Fixed some text not fitting in the help box in the tutorial
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Fixed a case where holes in the terrain would appear in the tutorial island
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Fixed a case where some environment props in the tutorial island would appear covered in snow
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The hidden achievement in the tutorial should now be more reliable
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Fixed being able to unequip the minigun while it is spinning and being able to fire immediately when it was next deployed
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Fixed an exploit that allowed players to fly by dismounting a chair near a climbable surface
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Fixed the reload button for the minigun not getting localised
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Fixed a case where a specific configuration of hoses would cause massive server lag
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Fixed several guns inventory panels showing too many attachment slots
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Fixed an issue where Hobo barrels from the tunnel dweller decorations would leak to world origin after a server restart
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Fixed Minigun having the same description as the HMLMG
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Minigun reload help prompt now mentions Workbench T2/3
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Fixed an NRE when rapidly switching between some weapons
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Fixed not being able to open some storage containers with the chicken suit equipped
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Fixed water wake components getting run on the server
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Fixed several AI performance issues
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Fixed animals sometimes floating above the ground until in range
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Weapon rack collision area/bounds fixes
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Military flamethrower scale fixed for weapon racks
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Minigun can no longer be reloaded at weapon racks
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Fixed buildable areas at harbor being inside the docking path of cargoship
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Fixed NRE caused by the rangefinder in the binoculars
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Fixed cargoship not destroying floatsams it passes over
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Fixed cargoship stopping leaving if the server was saved mid-leave
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Fixed NRE caused by our version of LeanTween
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Fixed Splitter power distribution issue when not all outputs are used
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Fixed Counter and HBHF sensor still rotating based on your view angle while being deployed
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Fixed Smart Switch and Timers not deployable ~1 meter below ceilings
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Fixed Smart Switch referred as Switch when looking at IO connection handles
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Fixed Industrial Wall Light referred as Simple Light when looking at IO connection handles
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Fixed AND, OR and XOR switches emitting light when unpowered
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Fixed Memory Cell side inputs triggerable by 0 power circuits
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Fixed electrical components consuming 0 power still mentioning 1 power usage in their information panel
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Fixed Storage Adaptor not working after reskinning a tool cupboard
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Fixed Caboose light switches
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Fixed physics regression bug for physics objects on moving vehicles, where the physics became "sticky"
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Fixed gun audio issues from the previous update
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Fixed the new cargo ship side doors being sometimes opened by cargo ship NPCs
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Fixed Sprinkler incorrect water drain
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Fixed patrol helicopter orbiting random zones far away on the map
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Fixed patrol helicopter targeting players with strafes inside no go zones
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Fixed patrol helicopter not exploding when hitting the ground at weird angles
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Fixed an exploit allowing players to get inside the walls on the small oil rig
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Fixed a flyhack violation when using one of the crane ladders in one of the harbors

Meta Madness

BURST MOD

HOLOSIGHT

MUZZLE BRAKE & BOOST

LR300 TWEAKS

WOODEN BARRICADE RESIZE

Features

Improvements

Fixed

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