Stoke the Flames! Foundry 2.0 and Update!

Bringing the Fire back to the Foundry

By: George Argyropoulos

a/k/a Dragon_Bane   

Foundry 2.0 :

The Foundry got a HUGE makeover today which looks to help players get into relevance quicker in the game so that they can succeed in the PvE aspects of the game expeditiously and, hopefully, with some alacrity.

The biggest change to the Foundry is the removal of any necessity of requirement for fragments or components. This means that you don't have to endlessly hit a bazillion things just to get your next upgrade going. Instead, all Foundry technology will be available through timed research.

This also means that the World Map targets will no longer drop these fragments. Does this bode well for all those 40 Salvages to start disappearing? Will our map become cleaner? I hope so. At the very least, this will open the door to that discussion. As a prelude to this the Legion Assault Forces will no longer be spawning on the World Map, hopefully alleviating some of the memory bleed issues players have with heavily scrolling around on the World Map.

In addition to these changes, Kixeye is helping ease the transition by giving away tech in the Tier 1 - Tier 3 trees. If you are a level 30 or above with at least a level 1 Intelligence Lab, you will find all Tier 1 - Tier 3 Foundry Hulls and Blueprints in your inventories. Even better yet - these hulls have been automatically upgraded to their maximum retrofit level for you at no cost! (Side note: This does NOT mean you have to build them!!!!) New players, or those that do not qualify for these freebies will NOT be granted them in the future (as of this writing).

The flip side of this is that all Tier 1 - Tier 3 blueprints will be discontinued going forward. This may annoy some collectors, however, since the Foundry will be starting off at Tier 4 tech levels, it really is a moot point as Tier 1 - Tier 3 tech is essentially obsolete in today's game and likely won't really help anyone advance in the FM or TLCs. Additionally, the window for the Foundry will now also show recommendations for complementary weapons and/or specials for each hull. Of further note - the timed research is... long in some instances. I'm not sure how that will pan out going forward, but for now, some of the research times (Citadel) are going to be a 'time investment'! On the plus side - you can research as many of them as you want concurrently so as to avoid a bottleneck in the process of 'catching up'. Good choice here, kudos!

They also have gone ahead and completed your current Tier 4 or 5 hull research for you. If you are currently working on Tier 4 or Tier 5 Foundry tech, they have granted you the next hull in your progression OR the next retrofit level. Which one is dependent upon your current progress.

The example Doom supplied looks thusly:

• If you don't own blueprint X (Tier 4), congrats! Now you do!
• 
  
• If you do own blueprint X (Tier 4), we gave you blueprint Y (Tier 5). Congrats!
• 
  
• If you own both, we upgraded them to the next retrofit for you. Congrats!
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• We did this for all classes in the Foundry. (Garrison, Siege, etc.)

What does this mean for the Gantry and Hyperion? Same thing! No fragment requirements. Timed research.

Update :

We were all hoping for at least a 2 day token to get some builds out for VXP weekend, right? Well, unfortunately, that will not be happening this week as we have a load of new prizes in the FM, two of which are in Prize Pool 4 'blocking' a 2 day token this week.

Of serious note is the addition of a new target to the FM that is intended for the Icebreaker or Monolith. At this point all we can do is speculate as to its difficulty, but the point pay out should be the same as the current 109 FM target and in addition it will pay out a Reinforced Chest that may contain VXP tokens for the Icebreaker or Monolith. I like that part, though I would wildly like it if there were some small possibility for build tokens for those hulls as well (hint, hint!!!!).

• Prize Pool 5

Not exactly sure about this special as yet unless a blitz hull is coming out. The way it reads is that the hull has to be in range of this special for the special to have an effect on the projectile speed. At the moment, it gets a 'Meh'. It would be interesting to know if the effects stack and how that would impact a blitz fleet. To be continued...

This should be an interesting addition to the toolbox. Lower splash and spread with a massive increase in ship damage, this is offset by, contexually, de minimis wall and building damage. This should relegate this weapon to Fleet v Fleet use. Pride as a defender now? Hmmm....

A complementary special for the weapon above, it also can be used for your 'other' Pride builds. In addition, that low 12% weapon weight means this can take the place of the 19% weapon weight costing Barrel System 3 or Emissions Generator in some builds, saving you weight!

• Prize Pool 4

Before anyone gets too excited at the two additions into this Prize Pool, please note that both of these are sadly relegated to the Generalist classification. <Insert sad, sad face>

Like the special, I am not thrilled with this addition. Barring some other way of increasing range, I would avoid building a rocket Generalist Class hull. 'Meh'.

Oh how I wish you would fit on my stillbirthed Icebreakers. How I wish... Again, much like the special above, this seems odd for a Generalist Class hull. I'm not sure the Splash Damage Reduction is enough to offset running into the teeth of a defense, so I'll still pass on building a rocket Generalist for now.

One additional note of interest was this line:

• Unidentified Raiders 101 (similar to May S-target) will only spawn from Fri, 9am - Sat, 9pm.

This will be interesting to see and play with. I think many players may be hitting these targets with fleets already skulled to get an idea of what to expect- just bear in mind the egregious changes form the last test server to the live event.


And that's a wrap folks! Hope you enjoyed it!