Last week, EA and DICE shared details on the third expansion for Star Wars Battlefront, as well as a bit of information on the coming offline mode. The DLC hasn't quite released, the Death Star DLC is due in September and the Rogue One DLC will release sometime after that, but the most important feature has released.
The offline mode, Skirmish, is now currently available for any Battlefront owner to download on the PS4, Xbox One and PC. Of course, the Skirmish mode doesn't come alone, there's plenty of other stuff in the update, like bug fixes, increased spawn checks and more.
You can check out the details of the update below, but before that, here's a bit more information on Skirmish mode! You'll be able to play the game alone or in split screen co-op, which is why you'll see those "partner" fixes in the patch notes. Skirmish will be playable on different difficulties across two modes: Walker Assault and Fighter Squadron.
Patch notes:
General:
- Skirmish: A new mode, Skirmish, is now available for all players.
– Play Walker Assault or Fighter Squadron against AI bots together with a friend in online co-op, split screen (console only), or singleplayer. - Partner: Increased the spawning checks made on partner from 2 seconds to 1 second in order to more accurately determine if you are able to spawn or not. This should make it less likely that players will be able to partner spawn when being close to an enemy before a fire fight has started.
- Partner: Spawning is disabled on partners if an enemy is within 10 meters, changed from 2 meters.
- Cloud Car: Resolved a bug in which the blaster VFX incorrectly fired while playing in first person in the cloud car.
- Scoring: Changed the kill assist event to not trigger a kill and count towards your next trait rank. Now a kill assist will only give score.
- Team balance: Resolved a bug in which a team could be split and no auto partner assigned if the server had a low player count.
- Appearances: Resolved the bug that made all Rebel items usable on the Bespin maps without purchasing them.
Maps & Game Modes:
- Pre-round: Changed the pre-round timer from 60 to 90 seconds
- Administrator's Palace: Resolved a bug in which Boba Fett could reach an invisible collision box located very high up on the level.
- Cloud City: Resolved an issue with a misplaced out of bounds area.
- Cloud City: Resolved an issue in which the capture area for an objective in Turning Point was cut off by out of bounds.
- Cloud City: Resolved various instances in which the players could fall through the map and not die.
- Cloud City & Turning Point: Moved back the Imperial spawn locations from the last set of capture points.
- Cloud City & Walker Assault: Reduced amount of turrets & droid power-ups for the Empire.
- Cloud City & Walker Assault: Increased the time for AT-AT Pickups to spawn from 30 to 100 seconds.
- Cloud City & Walker Assault: Changed the AT-ST token respawn time from 34 to 60 seconds.
- Cloud City & Supremacy: Increased the size on the final Rebel objective and moved it slightly.
- Cloud City & Supremacy: Resolved a bug in which the hero spawn was outside of the combat area, resulting in the player dying when spawning in.
- Supremacy: Changed the default respawn time for AT-ST tokens from 34 to 60 seconds.
- Bioniip Laboratories: Resolve a bug which limited the usage of orbital strike to a few select areas. Now it should be usable a lot more on the open areas on the map.
- Bespin: Updated various locations where objects weren’t correctly placed next to each other creating breaks on the maps.
- Twilight on Hoth: Resolved an issue with a DF-9 being partially hidden underground which resulted in players falling through the level when they tried to exit the turret.
- Hero Hunt: Resolved a bug in which players wouldn’t correctly spawn as a hero and would remain a soldier, making it so no one could be killed and no new hero spawned.
- Hero Hunt: Resolved an issue in which 20hp was only granted from health pick-ups and not 50hp.
- General: Resolved a bug in which players could get stuck in the lobby if the teams were unbalanced and the pre-round timer had started.
- General: Staying in close vicinity of any game mode objective will decrease the cooldown of your star cards.
UI:
- Spectator: Resolved a bug in spectator mode which caused the charge icon to get stuck in an enlarged state when observing a player in private matches.
- Spectator: The switch team button has been removed from the spectators view.
- Private Matches: Players are now unable to switch teams after they have become a hero in hero hunt or heroes vs villains.
- Heroes Vs Villains: Resolved a bug that would make the UI disappear in the lobby for players on the same team as a player who left the server.
- Charge: Resolved an issue which caused the charge icon above an enemy to cover the health bar if active at the same time as a level 3 trait was reached.
- End of Round: Resolved issues which caused text overlapping to occur for stats in some game modes and for certain languages.
- Partner: We now correctly show the yellow partner color instead of green when playing as a hero or inside a vehicle.
- Texts: Added the trait descriptions for Lando Calrissian, Dengar, Nien Nunb
- Text: Resolved various spelling issues, spacing, missing commas etc.
Weapon & Star Cards:
- Shock Grenade: Slight decrease to bounce speed multiplier and increase to explosion delay to prevent grenade from detonating in air after bounce.
- RelbyV10: Changed weapon sway from 0.8 to 0.5 and the amount it’s increased by from 0.2 to 0.1. Recoil per shot has changed from 0.3 to 0.1.
- X-8 Night Sniper: Changed weapon sway from 0.35 to 0.2, increased start damage from 32 to 40, and changed end damage from 20 to 25.
- DT-12: Increased the fire rate from 220 to 250.
- DLT-44: Increased rate of fire from 180 to 210 and increased end damage from 13 to 19.
- EE-4: Changed the dispersion angle from 1.5 to 1.75, reduced the end damage from 10 to 9, and changed the damage falloff range from 20 to 10 meters.
- Cloud Car: Lowered damage multiplier against Cloud Cars with blasters and Ion Neutralizer
- Disruption: Changed the penalty time from 2 to 1 second.
- Disruption: Increased the cooldown for standard from 18 to 23 seconds and upgraded from 16 to 20 seconds.
- Scout Binoculars: Fixed issue where binoculars wouldn’t spot soldiers in Missions
- Scout Binoculars: Fixed issue where the binoculars wouldn’t spot enemy soldiers when looking up and down
Heroes:
- Lando: Enemies failing the Shocking Trap mini-game will die instantly.
- Lando: Increased the damage dealt to heroes in Shocking Trap from 90 to 100.
- Lando: The Power Blast ability can be cancelled by pressing the activation button again.
- Lando: Power Blast has a slight homing effect when fired towards an enemy.
- Lando: Power Blasts active time has been changed from 7.5 to 5.5 seconds.
- Lando: Power Blasts recharge time has been changed from 17 to 16 seconds.
- Lando: Increased the multiplier chances, RISKTAKER: 2% to 5%, GAMBLER 5% to 10%, HIGH ROLLER 10% to 20%, ****’S ARRAY 25% to 50%.
- Lando X8: Increased the start damage from 50 to 63 and the end damage from 30 to 35.
- Lando X8: Increased the start damage fall distance from 25 to 40 meters and end damage fall distance from 50 to 70 meters.
- Dengar: Updated the explosive rush ability to now throw only 3 grenades.
- Dengar: If an enemy soldier is hit by a grenade and standing still, he will no longer be immobilized.
- Dengar: The Hurricane Strike ability will no longer instantly kill Luke.
- Dengar: Regular enemies that are under the effect of the Bacta Bomb will instantly die from the Hurricane Strike ability.
- Dengar Trait: Increased the traits multiplier, RESILIENT 10% to 15%, BATTLE-HARDENED 25% to 40%, UNSHAKABLE 50% to 60%.
- Dengar: Increased health from 1000 to 1075.
- Dengar: Increased close damage from 19 to 21 and far damage from 16 to 17.
- Vader: Can now deflect Lucky Shot and Trooper Bane, but will still be stunned.
- Luke/Vader: Enemy soldiers will now always die from lightsaber swings even when under the Bacta Bomb effect.
- Boba Fett: Resolved an issue in which the flamethrower would not affect elevated players correctly.
- Boba Fett: The flamethrower ability can be canceled by pressing the activation button again.
- Boba Fett: Flamethrower outer damage distance has been increased from 3.5 to 4.75 meters and the outer damage angle from 25 to 28 degrees.
- Boba Fett: Flamethrower inner damage distance has been increased from 2.5 to 3.5 meters and inner angle from 17 to 22 degrees.
- Han Solo: Increased close damage reduction distance from 10 to 25m and increased far damage reduction distance from 25 to 35m.
- Leia: Increased close damage reduction distance from 10 to 25m.
- All Heroes: The Disrupted duration for abilities is now the same as regular soldiers.
- All Heroes: Disruption immunity has been added and will be active for 5 seconds after a Disruption ability hits them.