The Auraxian News Network is proud to present you with all the latest insider news from PlanetSide. Tune in to find out everything you want to know about what we can expect to see gracing the battlefields!

In the inaugural edition of the Auraxian News Network we’re presenting you with some first-ever looks at the upcoming MAX Factory. You saw a sneak peak at the factory in last week’s news however this will cover quite a few more areas and offer a better look into what to expect. The Auraxian News Network has secured the rites to get an inside look at the progress that’s being made on the MAX Factory so we’ll be checking in on the progress week in, week out.

Here are some of the details that we can share with you regarding the area and what you can expect.

• Inside the factory you’ll find places along the assembly line where MAX Units are being built.
• The battles will be fought in heated Close Quarter Battles with some open spots that snipers and medium range specialists will enjoy.
• Along the way you’ll likely find some nifty “easter eggs” around and inside the industrious factory. You may even find a CEO’s office.

We've secured some top secret imagery for everyone to take a look at. We will definitely have more images to share as time progresses however we hope you enjoy these early looks at the MAX Factory.

We’ll share more news on what you can expect when we hear more.

Until Next Time,
-Joel "Raijinn" Sasaki
Auraxian News Network

The holidays have passed us all by and hopefully everyone has recovered from the turkey hangovers that put you to sleep. Yeah, you know what I’m talking about. Things around these parts are geared up and everyone is cranking to get some goodies for our next update. I’m fairly certain you’re curious as to what’ll be in our upcoming updates so here’s what we have chalked up.

Battle Domes

• We’re expecting to test these out a bit more but the hope is that we’ll have something ready for prime time very soon.

• Yep, it’s been in the works for a good amount of time but we’re getting close to this actually hitting the live servers. Ideally we’d like to get it in to the test server sometime early February with the hope that It’ll be in a late February update.

• We didn’t forget about this one folks. I know we brought up the fact that we’d like to implement a TR MAX Capacitor some time ago and we’re getting close to making it happen. We’re not sure which update will add the Capacitor to the TR MAX but expect something sooner rather than later.

• Let’s face it, playing against the odds all the time is pretty lame and not very compelling. We’re planning on adding new population incentives with the hope of correcting this without having to put a hard cap on how many people can be on each side (yeah, because that just plain s*cks)

For those who haven’t been able to check out the Battle Domes yet I’ve included this super awesome screenshot. Go, look!

Until next time,
Joel “Raijinn” Sasaki

We’re quickly closing in on the Holiday season in PlanetSide and we’re shooting for any update next week (if everything goes well). We’re going to have all the old goodies from years past in that update including the Super Med Packs!

If you happen to wonder what we have planned for the immediate future, this information is for you! The team is working on getting the “Surgile” event on the test server to see how things play out there. There’s 2 implementations of the event as follows:

• Surgile as it was known back in the days of yore
• Everyone (all infantry minus MAX Units) moves at Surge speed without the use of the Surge implant.

This will likely see the test server in the near future and should be up throughout the Holiday season.

That’s all I have for the time being! Also, please note that there won’t be a Development Uplink next week due to other meetings going on.

Until Next Time,
-Joel "Raijinn" Sasaki.

• Adding a capacitor that slightly increases your agility and bumping up the rate of fire. We’d also be bumping up the cone of fire during this time. The damage output would be slightly lower than locked down.
• Capacitor’s life span would be 10 seconds as of right now and you would have to blow it all in one shot. This would recharge over 30 seconds.
• Lockdown stays as is.

Population balance, yay! We all read the feedback that was provided on the forums and felt that having negative incentives for the high pop wasn’t the way to go, neither way increasing health for the low pops. Here’s what we have so far:

For lower populations:

• Lowering the acquisition timers on vehicles, MAX units, etc.
• Lower HART timers
• Lowering the NTU usage scaled by population percent.

For higher populations:

• No benefits
• Increased NTU usage scaled by population percent.

Until Next Time,
-Joel "Raijinn" Sasaki.

I went away for a few months in May of 2007 to help out the Vanguard Team and in that short period of time, Glenn Snyder AKA "Xahn" (the Producer that replaced me) moved up north to work on another project for Sony. So what's a guy to do when he sees one of the games he loves the most, looking for a new leader? I couldn't help myself - I threw my hat back in the game. So, I'm back on PlanetSide and I'm looking at the path we were headed in and reading up on the current feedback from the forums and from the community leaders to see if that path needs to be remarked.

So some of the things that are in the works at the moment (and Raijinn may have already given you a bit of information on them already) are some of the following:

Galaxy Gunship

Wow - We need the instagib weapon to knock these down! We're going to tune the armor down to about 66% of its current state. Also, we're going to look into removing the afterburner.

Buggies

We're going to give the buggies a bit more survivability versus Mines. Let's face it, no one is using them unless you're doing a module run - so we're going to see about making them more viable in the game. Enhanced Mine Detection - We're going to add a new implant that helps you detect mines and if you are in a buggy, the buggy will additionally add to that enhancement to detect mines sooner rather than....well, you know....before you blow up.

Balance Populations

For some reason, someone decided that the NC was fun again. Someone should find that person! Looking at the imbalance lately, we need to figure out what is the best way to stop the one way teeter-totter we have currently. We're going to look at some of the following to see if we can curtail this activity: Adjusting Respawn Rates; Adjusting Reuse Rates; Giving the other empires access to the higher populations weapons and vehicles; Base resources draining faster; Health Benefits; Spawning with limitations or with limited health, armor, stamina; "Surge" automatically on for lower populations; Propaganda; Making it impossible to drop a generator and make you have to fight for a base; etc...

Nevertheless, we're going to have to make it scale so that if populations continue to get out of flux, you will gradually feel the pinch.

TR Max

I believe Raijinn mentioned we're looking at giving the TR Max a capacitor that allows you to shoot faster without having to lock down while at the same time giving you a mobility burst. For me, I would hate to lose the lock down functionality so we may be leaning towards adding the capacitor while not removing the lock down functionality.

New Levels into PlanetSide

Xahn and other PlanetSide members revealed at the Fan Faire that we're going to put in new levels into PlanetSide. We're getting close to this now. We have a couple of levels that we are playing with to test out the different editors with the game (ie, testing out the development pipeline). We have a small level that we will need to test out with more population so you may be invited to patch up to the test server in the near future to tell us what you think about the game play and send us feedback for improvement. Even though we have a lot of indoor fighting, we think that the smaller game play maps will add another level to the "fun-factor". Outfit Wars - We failed in delivering the Outfit Wars properly and we're trying to keep that in mind with our new levels. Outfit Wars should have been hands off to us and we failed you with this deliverable. Therefore we're going to keep that in mind while creating new zones and arenas to settle the "best of the best" arguments in PlanetSide. We may not have it all completed by the time we start testing new levels but we will build up to give you the opportunity to challenge another squad or outfit in one of the new zones. Stay tuned...More to come soon.

Other items we are currently looking at starting:

• Advancement on Hacking Skill
• Advancement on Medical Skill
• Damage pass on weapons - More details to follow but yes, we're going to look at doing a damage balance pass on all weapons. J

Thanks for your patronage and I look forward to your comments!
Discuss Here

Do note that while looking at the numbers helps, nothing is better than practical application so there’s a whole lot of testing that needs to be done.

Other than that, there wasn’t a whole lot discussed this week since it was a straight forward, let’s make it happen, kind of a meeting. Oh, something of note, you should be seeing a familiar face in the near future. Sit tight!

Also, Brewko is going to be running some Black Ops events, you can keep informed by checking out the PlanetSide Events forums.

Until Next Time,
-Joel "Raijinn" Sasaki.
 

• TR MAX Capacitors
• Galaxy Gunship Balance
• Population Balance
• Vista Compatibility
• The Terminal Bug

• Option 1: Add a Capacitor to the TR MAX that increases the fire rate but possibly blooms out the cone of fire a bit more. We would remove the lockdown.
• Option 2: Same as above only we’d allow for the lockdown as well using the “C” (crouch) button.
• Option 3: Leave it as it is currently.

Those are the options we have on the table as of right now and we’d like for the community to tell us what you’d like to see.

As far as the Galaxy Gunship and the Population Balance goes, we’re going to have a meeting set up specifically for balance which should take place in the near future. While nothing has been done as of right now, we are looking into balance issues. Feel free to share what you’d like to see balanced.

Vista Compatibility is currently being looked into but we’re not entirely certain when we’ll have a solution.

The Terminal Bug, we know, it’s a pain to deal with when it happens. The team is looking into it and the hope is that we may be able to find a solution.

Aside from that we’re having a Tier 3 Hacker meeting later in the day and hopefully we’ll have more good things to share with everyone.

Until Next Time,
-Joel "Raijinn" Sasaki.