A new week, and guess what we’re going to talk about?

If you’ve been watching for the past couple of weeks, you’ve seen that the BFR’s are being refined and polished continuously with new builds at least every other day. In particular, there has been a balance bonanza going on to make sure that these guys fit seamlessly into the war for Auraxis in a satisfying but not overwhelming way. TO see the adjustments as they have been happening, check the Release Notes Forum.

There is a lot there to digest, so we’ll also be summarizing the changes later in the week (allowing for a few more final adjustments to happen) into an Intelligence Report that you can use to understand the individual characteristics of each BFR, variant and weapon without having to track the multitude of Test Server changes.

We’ve also named the BFR Variants. We appreciate all of the great suggestions from the Community to name them. Many suggestions were not used, but did interest us enough to reserve them for future introduction of new equipment.

TR Flight: Invader
TR Gunner: Juggernaut
NC Flight: Eagle
NC Gunner: Sentinel
VS Flight: Eclipse
VS Gunner: Orion

Other Items of Note:

*We are changing the way kills are counted for statistical tracking and display. For more details, check out the In Concept Article.
*Implemented the Vehicle Viewing Direction Indicator and Advanced Color Options.
*Vehicles access permissions can now be controlled for each type of mount point (Driver, Gunner, Passenger, Trunk). Galaxy and Lodestar cargo use the passenger access setting.
*Fixed an issue that prevented lock-on weaponry from locking after deconstructing in a spawn tube.
*Repair Silos will be placed in Sanctuaries.
*Capturable Cavern buildings show SOI’s on the map.
*Telefragging will only occur against enemy soldiers.
*Created a new certification tree for Armored Assault that includes acquisition for BattleFrame Robotics.
Armored Assault 1 - Access to the Lightning Tank - cost 2
Armored Assault 2 - Access to the empire specific Medium Battle Tank - cost 1 (requires that you have Armored Assault 1)
Flail - Access to the Flail - Cost 1 (requires that you have Armored Assault 2)
BattleFrame Robotics - Cost 2 (requires that you have Armored Assault 2)
*The Harasser is now also included in the Assault Buggy certification. While the Light Scout vehicles are now located in other certs (Lightning in Armored Assault 1 and Harasser in Assault Buggies) we left in the Light Scout cert for anyone who is interested in keeping it.
*Moved "Toggle Chat" and "Toggle Radar" buttons from Hud Items (status bar with health, shortcuts, etc) to Hud Management (button bar with other toggle buttons like Inventory, Character, etc).
*Players may now recall the first-time help dialog of any object they have already interacted with by clicking on that objects entry in the Training section of the Character Pane.
*Zipline nodes now have a 30 second vehicle deconstruct timer.
*Vehicle deconstruction distance from vehicle pads has been reduced to make it less aggressive.
*Vehicle deconstruction timers have been increased to allow for 30 seconds of warning.

All of this and ongoing event planning too

[UPDATE] A few more things that were not a part of the original list:

*The Lightning's 12mm machinegun cone of fire and recoil have been adjusted to make it much more accurate.
*Lightning armor has been increased from 1300 to 1500.
*Slightly increased the refire rate of the TR Pounder and Dual Cycler MAX armor when locked down
*Flail Adjustments:
Increased refire time from 4 seconds to 5
Decreased armor from 3000 to 2400
Increased the Flails damage vs. BFRs to compensate for the increased refire time
*Made the Fury's Hellfire rocket travel inside the BFR shield sphere