The Swarm: Introducing Update 6.4
Confront a new threat to the universe in update 6.4, The Swarm. The Traveller soul is fragmented, and something terrible hangs in the sky. Battle swarms of elite agile ships, face off against the huge, formidable Hive of Glass, and strategise with other players to construct the technology to defeat it.
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The Swarm Expedition
Join other Travellers in a time-limited campaign to defend against a new menace. Uncover the mystery of the swarm, and work together with the whole community to prevent its spread and banish it from this reality.
Direwasp Armour
Display and wear your accomplishments against the swarm with the six-piece Direwasp customisation set. This heavy-duty combat armour comprises a chestpiece and plating, boots, gloves, cuisses and a helm - all forged from salvaged swarmer alloys.
The Hive of Glass
This monstrous alien starship has been sighted lurking just outside the atmosphere of planets, obliterating any Travellers who venture too close. Confronting it will require both skill and strategy, piloting through a deadly wheel of lasers to target its vulnerable core.
Rival Teams
The Swarm expedition fragments the community into three teams, each representing an aspect of the Traveller soul - the royal, the sage, and the weaver. Every fragment is essential, but only one team will finalise the counter-swarm effort and be celebrated in the Space Anomaly for all time.
The Swarm
The galaxy is overrun with droves of fast-flying, fast-shooting swarmers. Equip your favourite ship weapons and prepare to dogfight against overwhelming odds.
Research the Enemy
Gather intelligence for the war effort by dismantling the bodies of fallen swarmers, exposing the corrupted ichor that flows through their circuits.
Huge Battles
The battle against the Hive of Glass will not be evenly matched. Supplementing the Hive’s own weaponry are fleets of swarmers, defending their mothership and making short work of unprepared pilots.
Direwasp Flightpack
Harness the flight of the swarm with the Direwasp Flightpack. This exclusive jetpack hums and oscillates, as though buzzing with the rage of a thousand metal insects.
Ground Enemies
Tiny, nimble clusters of planetary swarmers defend the shells of their fallen allies. Be prepared for a challenge - they are fiercer than their size suggests!
Unite Against the Swarm
The swarm presents a threat to all Travellers. A joint effort within teams - and between teams - is required to overcome this common enemy. Will the Traveller soul be reforged as one, or remain shattered?
Restore Planets
Planets are riddled with the debris of swarmer ships, leaking corruption and decay into ecosystems. Teams can choose to dispatch a dedicated team of sweepers to cleanse these contaminated worlds.
A Threat to Atlas
The volatile Hive of Glass seems determined to eradicate Travellers - at any cost.
Team-Themed Rewards
Commemorate the weaver, royal, and sage Traveller fragments with a set of decorative posters, and a bonus set of flags exclusive to your own team.
Sabotage the Swarm
Track swarm activity and deploy from the Space Anomaly to intercept and disrupt the swarm network.
Rifle Multi-tool
Participate in the expedition to earn the Direwasp Disintegrator. Fabricated from swarmer alloys, this powerful rifle is precisely calibrated for comfort and balance, allowing the user to eliminate great swarms of hostiles without fatigue.
Construct the Core
Assist Specialist Polo in their development and construction of the Prismatic Core: a unique device with the potential to weaken and defeat the swarm invasion.
6.4 Patch notes
The Swarm Expedition
- Expedition Twenty-Two, The Swarm, will begin shortly and run for approximately eight weeks.
- Players on the expedition will be assigned into one of three teams of Travellers, and allocated a ship and uniform in their team colours.
- All teams must work together to unlock the final battle. Progress is represented by the construction of the Prismatic Core in the Space Anomaly, as well as displayed in the Mission Log and on the Galactic Atlas website.
- Construction of the Prismatic Core is driven by completing three categories of missions to counteract the Swarm - Purge, Restoration, and Sabotage. Each category has a different impact on the rate and balance of construction.
- The most valuable team will be glorified in the Space Anomaly for all time.
- Rewards include new posters, decals and titles; flags representing your assigned soul fragment; the Direwasp rifle Multi-Tool; the Direwasp Flightpack; and the six-piece Direwasp customisation set.
Swarmer Enemies
- During the expedition, players will encounter two new enemy types: small, agile swarmer ships, and the huge, formidable Hive of Glass boss.
- In all game modes, crashed swarmer ships can now be found on dissonant planets. Crash sites are defended by small but deadly planetary swarmers.
- Buried debris from crashed swarmer ships can now be found on worlds which are both dissonant and contain salvageable scrap.
Stability and Optimisation
- Fixed a rare softlock where the Connecting banner could display indefinitely when viewing the initial frontend screens.
- Fixed a crash related to rendering thumbnails for multiple complex corvette-class starships.
- Implemented a number of memory and performance optimisations related to ship trails and speedlines.
- Improved performance when piloting wheeled Exocraft on Switch, Xbox One, and PS4.
- Implemented a significant optimisation in freighter battles.
- Improved performance of certain lighting calculations on CPU.
- Significantly improved performance when handling object visibility in complex scenes.
- Optimised memory usage when rendering UI in sub-4K resolutions on PS4 Pro.
- Fixed an issue that could cause a crash when playing in 4K on PS4 Pro.
- Fixed a number of rare crashes.
Space Combat
- Improved the visibility of targeted enemy ships in third person space combat.
- Improved weapon aiming of the starship in third person space combat.
- Improved the navigation of the starship when using auto-follow in space combat, and allowed auto-follow to boost the ship.
- Improved the navigation and flight patterns of enemy ships in space combat.
- In space combat, when battling enemies with weak points, hitting the weak point will now always crit, and hitting other areas of the enemy will never crit.
- Improved the appearance of speedlines in the starship.
- Fixed an issue that caused mission notifications counting the number of nearby enemy ships to delay updating until a destroyed enemy ship completed its death spin.
- Improved controls for the player ship while in space combat.
- Fixed an issue that could allow Sentinel interceptors to spawn when space combat was disabled in the difficulty settings.
- Fixed an issue that prevented Sentinel interceptors from detecting criminal activity in space if ground combat was disabled in the difficulty settings.
- Fixed an issue that could allow the countdown notification for the pulse engine enabling after combat to display a negative time.
- Improved the notifications for re-enabling the pulse engine after combat to display the correct pulse technology name for the current ship.
QOL and Bug Fixes
- Fixed an issue that caused teleporter endpoints from previous galaxies to be removed when progressing to the next galaxy through the galactic core.
- Fixed an issue that prevented teleporter endpoints from being added in galaxies outside the player's "home" galaxy.
- Fixed an issue that caused In Stellar Multitudes to direct the player to the galaxy map when their first purple star system was actually in a different galaxy.
- Fixed an issue that prevented corvettes from landing in the Space Station and the Anomaly.
- Fixed an issue that caused the player's backpack to disappear from the inventory screen when piloting a corvette after being in third person.
- When viewing a corvette through the Analysis Visor, the name of the specific module is now displayed on the HUD.
- Fixed an issue which caused the Analysis Visor to close when attempting to tag a marker whilst facing an interactable object.
- Fixed an issue that could cause markers to be displayed for non-existent resource deposits.
- Fixed an issue that prevented transferring inventory items when purchasing a ship.
- Fixed an issue that prevented inventory items from being deletable when transferring into a storage container.
- Fixed an issue that caused the camera to spin if the player quickly exited the ship after answering the ship communicator.
- Fixed a camera judder when first entering a ship after repairing it.
- Fixed an issue that could cause Corrupted Sentinels to flicker rapidly on Nintendo Switch 1 & 2.
- Fixed an issue that allowed retroviral pellets to be duplicated.
- Arena League Challenger's Invitations are more likely to encourage you to battle on multiple planets before offering a Champion's Invitation.
- Arena League Challenger's Invitations are more likely to pick Holo-Arenas you have not previously visited.
- Arena League Champion's Invitations will now function correctly when used in Outlaw systems.
- Improved the balance of experience awarded to companions when battling in the Holo-Arena against opponents of a much higher level.
- Fixed an issue that could cause the prompt to claim Twitch rewards to persist when all rewards had been claimed.
- Added support for viewing the Gamercards of each Xbox player in the host's session when on the Join Game screen.
- Hid the Quick Menu keyboard hotkey prompts on PC and handheld devices when playing without mouse and keyboard.
- Fixed an issue that caused armour on display near the Exosuit Research merchant in the Space Station to disappear as you got closer.
- Hid the holographic representation of community mission progress above the Quicksilver Synthesis Bot when no blueprints are currently being generated.
- Fixed an issue that prevented the use of touch controls to claim expedition rewards.
- Fixed an issue that would prevent saving of gyro settings when applying changes from the front end menu.