Weekly Dev Activites - 5/3

[Strygun]

Just on time, Sporkfire has posted today's Weekly Development Activities over on the official forums.

We are putting version 2.7 into QA today. It will not be available on Public Test for at least a few days after this. We actually don't expect to see it public anytime this week, as there are several items that will require thorough internal testing first (there is a whole battery of new vehicle tests, for example, which must be completed). It contains the following items:

We are introducing alternate vehicle loadouts, mounting different weaponry to existing vehicles. The first variants include the Fury, a Basilisk variant equipped with a fixed-forward firing rocket launcher, and a set of Empire-specific Deliverer configurations. Check them out In Development.
The AMS is being redesigned. It will now feature two equipment terminals, a matrixing panel and a deconstruction panel. The spawn tubes are being removed, since players now spawn in the cloak bubble, not in the tubes. The AMS will retain all of its current functionality, while adding an additional equipment terminal.
Empire Incentives are being improved. These have been described in the In Development Forum.
Session stats are displayed on the HUD so that players can see their kill/death ratios, the amount of time played, etc.
Tower SOIs will show up at all zoom levels on the continent map.
Relative Population Indicators will allow players to see the population distribution of the three Empires across the world. Players will be able to view what percentage of an Empire is on a given continent.
Continental Dominion Indicators will display at a glance which Empire holds dominion over each continent on the world map.
An issue that caused difficulty of attaining and achieving locks with lock-on weaponry has been resolved.
new Fixed an issue that would allow implants to be used with no stamina drain.
new Changed certain properties in the texture loading process that would cause stuttering and a reduction in framerates. This should result in smoother graphical performance, particularly after first loading a continent.

Just a note on the last bullet point: There are actually two separate issues that would be causing a performance difference since 2.4. One of them has been fixed and is heading to QA. We are hoping to resolve the second in time to release with 2.7. If we do not, we will continue working the issue out for subsequent release.

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