When Dual Universe kicked out a tease to its Ares update on the game’s roadmap, it had plenty to list but not a whole lot of detail. Those details are now starting to come to light thanks to the first part of a dev blog series, which talks about PvP fixes, what it calls “shields v2,” and core combat stress.
Core combat stress isn’t a reference to players getting sweaty when under fire; it’s a reference to a construct’s core getting damaged under prolonged weapons fire, which will cause it to get destroyed if the unit suffers too much stress, counting as a PvP kill. Stress will be accumulated as the construct takes non-shield weapons hits and will be displayed in the form of a gauge that starts at 0% and goes up to 100%.
Another feature arriving in the Ares update is the ability for shields to have their four resistances adjusted by increments of five from a total pool. Resistances can be changed, but only after a cooldown time of 60 seconds has elapsed. Players can also choose to vent their shields, but the effects of doing so are not specified — in fact the blog post says the two functions of shield venting are “undefinedundefined.”
Finally, the devs are deactivating Speed Resume on construct death and will soon see offline players killed if they’re on a construct that blows up. These adjustments are being made in order to plug up exploits players have found, like “ghost-riding” destroyed ships into safe zones or ragequitting before a construct gets destroyed so players can later log in, repair a core unit, and flee.
