• Be respectful to other participants and the organisers of the event.

• Do not switch or edit your ship after the tournament has started. The ships you started with are the ships you'll use till the end.

• Do not exploit the game in any way, including its physics (i.e. clang drives)

• Shields are back. As per overwhelming feedback from the community (84% per the survey) as well as the balance council, shields have been reintroduced for TT#4.  Shields have had their HP scalar halved, their recharge doubled, and their heat production adjusted to compensate for faster recharge. 

  • Note: Shields were always meant to be reintroduced again, if originally only at a later point. The changes made to shields via their config is drastic, but we believe it will lead to more dynamic combat, with the shield not merely working like a second health bar.

• WeaponCore Damage Multiplier has been reduced from 1.5x to 1.0x.

  • Note:  This change means that we are back in the range that most weapon mods were designed for. However, it will likely also mean that fights end up longer being longer overall. We will have to see whether this is viable long-term once we've experienced its impact in TT#4.

• Welders removed from list of allowed blocks.

  • Note: Due to an issue with the way welding is enabled ingame, welders currently do not work if building is disabled in a world. As we rely on that setting being off to prevent cheating, we were forced to remove welders from the allowed blocks this week. We are looking into solutions for this issue for future tournaments.

Mod Changes

• We are switching from Radio Detection and Ranging (Radar) by Kamikaze to SE Minimap by jTurp for our radar / detection mod of choice.

  • Note: We've had several reports of the previous mod not always being accurate nor reliable. SE Minimap is a very different mod - it adds a minimap to the screen as well as a larger map. It is also not block-based: You will always be able detect all grids within range. You can find its manual here.

  • Additionally, DarkStar has added a minimum targeting range server config for WeaponCore, which is currently set to 10km.

• We have added the StarCore Logo Pack mod by stonelords, adding the StarCore logo as a 3D object, a flat texture, LCD texture, faction logo as well as SafeZone texture. Many thanks to stonelords!

• Blocks prohibited by the tournament are now unavailable ingame. This should make it much easier for your to tell whether your ship complies with them.

• Block Battle Point (BP) costs have been multiplied by 10 (with the limits being raised accordingly).

  • Note: This allows us to balance block costs in finer detail.  Due to our implementation, decimals are currently not an option.

• Added cost to Decoys.

  • Note: We've seen a lot of decoys last tournament from multiple teams.  A large part of the reason for this was because there was no downside to placing these all over grids. Together with the other balance changes we believe that introducing a cost for decoys is the way to go. 

• Added cost to Rotors, Hinges and Pistons.

  • Note: Subgrids affect performance. Together with fixes in WC, which should remove the need for having subgrids to affect prediction, they should be much less necessary.

NW Weapons Battle Point Changes

• 75mm Railgun Turret: 70 --> 80

• 250mm Railgun Turret: 350 --> 300

• 100mm Gun Turret: 70 --> 30

• 203mm Gun Turret: 130 --> 110

MA Battle Point Changes

• Point Defense Turret: 110 --> 70

MWI Battle Point Changes

• Battleship Cannon Mk1: 50 --> 60

• Battleship Cannon Mk2: 100 --> 110

• Battleship Cannon Mk3: 200 --> 210

• X-3 Heavy Battery: 400 --> 420

• M-1 Torpedo: 450 --> 500

• M-8 Destroyer Launcher: 200 --> 300

Kreeg Battle Point Changes

• Grimlock Launcher: 700 --> 850

Vanilla Block Battle Point Changes

• Large Reactor: 200 --> 300

• Small Reactor: 20 --> 18

• Battery: 10 --> 15

• Decoy: 0 --> 50

• Rotor / Hinge / Piston: 0 --> 50

• Large Ion / Armored Large Ion: 0 --> 450

• Small Ion / Armored Small Ion: 0 --> 50

• Switched to the new Test Tournament #4 skybox: SKYBOX Zerra -- Lush Blue Planet.

• An asteroid field has been added to the map.

  • Note: The asteroid field offers more interesting terrain for this iteration of the test tournament. Teams can use it as cover and to their tactical advantage. The denser field also breaks direct line of sight from one spawn to the other, preventing immediate opening MAC shots.

• Grimlock Launcher: Has been rebalanced heavily by Kreeg. See the changelog here.

  • Note: This weapon being imbalanced in TT#3 is squarely on our shoulders, not Kreeg's, as we'd made custom alterations to its tournament edition. We will be using Kreeg's original stats from now on.

• Series 8 MAC:  The projectile's diameter has been increased. It should now make a more distinct hole through its target and thus have a chance to deal a bit more damage. 

  • Note: This change, along with the improvements DarkStar has made on the WC side for fixed weapon targeting / performance, is a slight buff to its damage output and should make the weapon overall easier to use.

  • Note: There might be an issue with the MAC cannon not always working correctly when not on DS. DarkStar is investigating and will push a fix asap. That should not have any influence on any balance-related matters however.

• Mexpex has updated MWI Weapons Collection with balance changes to his weapons. 

  • Battleship Cannon Mk1: Aim lead prediction from advanced to accurate projectile speed to 700m/s from 550m/s and turret rotation speed +40%

  • Battleship Cannon Mk2: Aim lead prediction from advanced to accurate projectile speed to 700m/s from 500m/s and turret rotation speed +40%

  • Battleship Cannon Mk3: Aim lead prediction from advanced to accurate projectile speed to 800m/s from 550m/s and turret rotation speed +25%

  • X-3 Heavy Battery: Aim lead prediction from advanced to accurate projectile speed to 850m/s from 650m/s and turret rotation speed +27%

• Mexpex has updated his MWI Homing Weaponry launchers to track slightly better. See the changelog here.

• 100mm Gun Turret: Aim lead prediction from advanced to accurate.

• 203mm Gun Turret: Aim lead prediction from advanced to accurate.