[2022] Packing Update Is Here

A lil somethin somethin: You can find the details for this event on the announcement page here.

This post will be rather short, since we had a very long one just last weekend and it's more of a follow-up update, so the focus will be on the new packing changes and the similarities with the previous version of it. We'll expand on other parts of the development later this week, as we promised, and answer the most pressing questions in a Q&A format in just a few days.

Balang Walker - The Packing Dream
Packing is finally back in a new and slick packaging! We're happy to announce that you'll be able to freely move your base and walkers around your own tile and between them, something that truly has a nomadic spirit to it and allows to resettle on new territories or move into a better spot for convenience or just a picturesque view from your base.

Please take note that I emphasize the word move here because this is now the main focus of the packing feature in its current form, rather than storing bases or walkers for long periods of time, as it was before. Our goal with this update is to allow complete freedom of movement and settling on a different map. What isn't our goal is to make Hangars obsolete or make it an abusable mechanic for deploying forward operating bases or using it to store a small base at all times to quickly deploy to take advantage of an opportunistic situation with regard to PvE or harvesting as it was often used previously.

What it means in practice is that the packing will now have a timer until decay that will take 2 hours with the current balance, after which anything packed into that slot will start slowly taking decay damage, similarly to how it works without a Maintenance Chest. The full time to decay any packed base or a walker is 6 hours, on top of the first 2 that we call a Grace Period. We hope that this new mechanic will promote usage of the packing for moving and resettling, essentially, packing up your base and walkers, moving to another place, and unpacking as soon as possible not to take any decay damage.

In addition to this, another measure in vein will be the minimal time to pack and unpack structures and walkers, which is 2 minutes of packing and 20 minutes for unpacking. It means that before each piece of the packed base or a walker starts packing or unpacking, the Preparation Phase needs to finish before it actually starts. Another, maybe obvious, thing to point out is that our goal for the packing is to make it usable out of combat as much as possible, for that reason the Packing feature will work only when out of combat, but unlike before when it would instantly cancel packing as soon as someone is in a way or a rupu attacks and crosses the place of unpacking, the process will pause and give you 20 seconds to clear the area, at which point it will continue unpacking. If the area is not cleared in that time, the system will assume that it's a larger-scale attack and cancel the packing, both to prevent its use in combat as a FOB and to protect the base from attacks.

On that note, the Balang Walker is a real beats when it comes to Walker strength. It stayed Solid as it was previously, even thought it's not limited to a core as before and allows to pack regular bases. In addition to it, the Walker will have 50,000 HP to make sure your possessions are completely safe from the outside interference or an accidental Okkam attack. The only thing to worry about in that case will be the decay timer, but we hope that 8 total hours that a base or your walkers can be packed for will be enough to safely move and unpack in any conditions or even if you have to suddenly leave for some time and come back in a few hours. Your packed structure might endure some damage and will require repairs, but it will maintain structural integrity and you can be sure that no one will steal your things.

When it comes to how much you can pack, we decided to go a bit above our original estimation and allow 300 base pieces per Balang Walker. Keep in mind that it's the only limiting factor for packing, but also worth mentioning that Hangar pieces count as 4 walls and will take 4 seconds to unpack, as opposed to a single wall or other structure that will take a second and only actual base pieces like foundations, walls, roofs, and so on will count in this limit. In addition, the Balang Walker will allow to pack up to 3 Walkers of any size, except, of course, another Balang. That means that most players should be able to easily pack their entire base together with the garage and the Walkers inside, as we estimated that players who own more than 3 Walkers in addition to a Balang are likely player at least with a couple of friends, who each can drive their own Balang and pack as much into their mobile homes.

Those Values are in no way final and will definitely be tweaked and balanced as we keep observing the gameplay on servers and collecting your feedback, so please let us know what you think after you try it yourself. We specifically ask you to try it yourselves first before passing any judgement, as words often don't describe the actual experience well enough to imagine how it is to actually use. With that, hopefully, there shouldn't be any issues, as Balang Walker Schematics will drop from both the new Sleeping Giants and Canyons to allow its use from early gameplay soon after Cradle.

In other aspects, the Balang Walker stayed pretty much the same, as we felt that it was a fair balance compared to other walkers, with regard to its Armor type and Health. It means that the Walker will not have a usable deck that allows placing anything on it and neither does it have a storage or a gear container. What it will have is a Water container to allow respawning on it with the first tier unlocked by default to allow immedaite respawning on it as soon as you fill it with a bit of clean water, so that once you pack your base and Walkers to move away, you have a safe walker to respawn on from the get go, without the need to additionally unlock the water container. Of course, if you want to increase the capacity of the water container or unlock the ability to use Torque in case of the Wing failure or just to run away from danger when the most precious things are packed inside, you're free to do so by upgrading them manually.


Home Renovation Kit
As promised, in addition to Balang Walker with the ability to pack bases and other Walkers, we're also adding packing and moving functionality to Maintenance Chests of all tiers. As opposed to the Walker, packing in Maintenance Chests is limited to individual structures like crafting stations, chests, humidifiers, and so on.

Essentially, this is a way for you to move your structures within your base, on your walker, or even between the two. It should work seamlessly with the rig system and hardpoints, so you can easily move a structure from your base to any of the acceptable points on any of your walkers or vice versa. The distance at which you can pack and unpack is limited to 30 meters, which, similar to all other values mentioned, is a subject to change and we'll likely be tweaking it once we get the first feedback. As most Maintenance Chests are usually near the entrance to a base, it should be more than enough to move the structures between your base and your walkers or just neatly place down the chests that someone threw around the base like they're garbage bins. Basically, it's the dream of any home renovator.

Using the same system as the packing on the Balang Walker, Maintenance Chests will have decay period assigned to them, which, in this case is much shorter and takes only minutes. The reason for this is, essentially, the same - we designed this feature to be used for moving and not storing. I can just say that from our tests, none of us needed more than was given by the chests to move some chests around or exchange a weapon on a Walker.


The Future of Packing
As we talked previously, we want to continue developing this feature moving forward. We've already established that we'll keep iterating over what's here now and will be tweaking the numbers and improving the mechanics using your feedback. What else is on the horizon for packing then?

Well, we already mentioned that we're considering a special walker that would do the opposite of Balang and could actually be a mobile fort used for combat. In that case, it will mot likely be similar to what Balang was originally. As in, having a special core part as its main foundation to create a sort of a mobile War Tower that you can deploy around your base for protection, next to a PvE camp to use as a respawn and gearing outpost when taking on an especially vicious camp or a monster, or even in PvP to get the benefits of a base on the go and attack others having a safe place to fall back to in the heat of combat. It could be especially useful once we start getting into more detail on the PvP Update and start testing out mechanics and ideas.

To be clear, this is just a rough idea at this moment and more of an example of what we could consider for the future of packing in general. Another, much more tangible thing, would be the second tier of a packing walker - the Silur. This one is most likely a done deal at this point, as it would be a direct improvement over Balang, same as it was previously, just with more packing pieces, more Walker packers, and maybe some more interesting deviations from the original design.

For now, we'll stop here with speculations about where the packing feature could go. Let us know what you think about those ideas and send us your own. We read Discord and other platforms on a daily basis and will surely read your discussions about anything related to packing, so even if you don't send an official feedback report, we'll take note and take it into account when making decisions on future planning.

That's it for today! Keep an eye out for the next big post later this week and we'll most likely do some kind of a smaller update too, but will mainly depend on how the current update will go and what we'll plan for the upcoming weeks.

You can find the changelog for the today's update below. Thanks for reading and supporting us through this (quiet turbulent) season.


Full Changelog:

• Added Balang Walker able to pack a large base and 3 Walkers.
  
• Added packing to all Maintenance Chests to move structures easily.
  
• Overhauled Packing System entirely. Packing now only possibly with special Packing Walkers, there is a decay timer that pushes you to use packing for moving instead of storing, completely remade the UI, made it more clear, overhauled packing restrictions to only count walls. Basically, read the post.
  
• Fixed dead mobs like Okkam dealing damage after being dead if you ram into them.
  
• Fixed Furnace not crafting quality items. All recipes should now craft quality.
  
• Fixed Sap and Sulfur Pebbles not being the same Rarity as the original foliage.
  
• Fixed Automatons not dropping their ammo inventory on destruction.
  
• Fixed Automatons sometimes getting destroyed when netted.
  
• Buffed Automatons from 500 to 900HP at default Rarity.
  
• Made Automatons use Soft Armor instead of none.
  
• Fixed Xbox/Controller navigation in some menus and containers.
  
• Fixed all placement issues on Buffalo Walker.
  
• Fixed some collisions on Trading Station. Made it easier to pass in some places, patched up holes where there was no collision.
  
• Fixed Purification Station evaporating Water (won't do it again).
  
• Made furniture light sources not craft items.
  
• Improved furniture light sources UI to be more clear, added names and tooltips.
  
• Added Wooden Slab as an optional source for fueling furniture light sources.
  
• Increased burning time of items in furniture light sources. Basically, improved light sources.
  
• Fixed Humidifier not having proper name and tooltip when opening the screen. Lots of UI improvements this patch.
  
• Made containers always show the correct name of the structure when renaming them.
  
• Disabled renaming containers inside them. Made it more consistent to rename through building menu.
  
• Removed Rarity from Flots. That was confusing.
  
• Removed Flots from some Rupu loot tables. They were giving way too much.
  
• Changed Buffalo and Falco T3 legs from Reinforced to Medium.
  
• Fixed Rupu Throne rotation, position, and available poses.
  
• Maybe fixed Rupu getting stuck in Ash Region Fortress camp on Sleeping Giants (please report if it happens again).
  
• Fixed Papak, Okkam, and Nurr sometimes respawning instantly after death.
  
• Fixed Contaminated and Toxic Water not evaporating when dropped like clean one.
  
• Made Insect Bomb damage not stack the timer, but work the same as grappling hook snapping by extending the timer.
  
• Lowered Insect Bomb damage from 0.9 to 0.5 per tick.
  
• Fixed Gunpod Stinger not having Bone and Chitin ammo allowed like normal Stinger.
  
• Fixed Gunpod and Gunpod Stinger sounds not playing when in use.
  
• Added new icons for Gunpod Stinger to make it different from regular Stinger.