12:00am EST - With just one week till the big update, the team is killing it with changes and forward progress.

Our update preview stream goes live at 3pm EST. Follow @Rustafied for news throughout the day.

Auto Turret: Electricity and more

Base protection has seen some huge shifts this week with the addition of an electricity requirement for the Auto Turret. Along with this, Helk has added several outputs which can provide valuable information for base owners.

With a total of 3 outputs, the Auto Turret now allows players to set up alerts (lights, sounds, pagers, etc.) for when a specific Turret has a target, is low on ammo, or out of ammo. On top of this, Turrets have been made undrainable, giving a significant buff to offline base protection. 

The community has already provided a few examples of how to wire these up efficiently.  Accompanying this change, Helk has shifted some things with grenades...

F1 Grenade buffs

To balance out these Auto Turret shifts, Helk has modified the F1 Grenades. They are now more predictable and less bouncy. Their fuse is shorter (3.5 seconds to 3 seconds) and they do more damage to Turrets (about twice as much as before).

F1 Grenade vs. Auto Turret

Damage per hit
107 damage

How many to destroy
10 grenades

Small Generator added

With the advent of electricity requirements for Turrets, Helk has added in a new way to generate power. Meet: The Small Generator. This new item runs on Low Grade Fuel (500 max) and generates 35 power. It’s a pretty common blueprint, requiring only 75 scrap to research and a Tier 1 workbench to craft.

It also features inputs to force start and force stop - allowing you to hook them up to switches or other electrical components to control.

8/30 Edit: Some of the values have changed

Small Generator

Cost
15 HQM
2 Gears

Craft time
30 seconds

Workbench
Tier 2

Research Cost
75 scrap

Electricity Generated
35

Consumption per minute
8 low grade fuel

Pressure Pads can be hidden

In a buff to base protection, Pressure Pads can now be hidden under rugs. They also output a slight amount of power for a split second if they are triggered with no power. This is enough to open a door briefly, turn on a light for a second, or increment a counter. It is not enough power to turn on a Turret.

Scrap Helicopter fixes and changes

The newest vehicle to grace the skies of Rust, the Scrap Transport Helicopter, has received some changes and improvements this week.

Along with all the gauges working, the Scrap Heli now uses twice the amount of fuel as its little brother, the Minicopter. Players under the Heli will experience an unpleasant surprise as touching the underneath of the body is now an instant kill (helicopters are, after all, heavy).

Finally, repairing the Heli now only costs metal frags. You can also harvest the remains of a crashed heli for metal frags.

Rocket changes

With the recent influx of air vehicles, Helk has made some buffs to rockets. Specifically, the Rocket Launcher is now cheaper and a Tier 2 item. Also, a new type of damage has been added for HV Rockets and SAM Sites, which deals extra damage to air vehicles. HV Rockets have also been made cheaper, tier 2, and now move faster than before with more accuracy. 

All this should amount to players on the ground having a bit easier time countering all those flying Newmans. In initials tests, a Minicopter will be destroyed by 2 HV Rockets and the new Scrap Helicopter is destroyed by 3 HV Rocket hits. SAM Sites will destroy a Minicopter in 6 hits and Scrap Heli in 8.

Rocket Launcher

Old Cost
50 HQM
6 metal pipes

New Cost
40 HQM
4 metal pipes

High Velocity Rocket

Old Cost
1 metal pipe
100 gunpowder
2 explosives

New Cost
1 metal pipe
100 gunpowder

Monuments added back to small maps

After a very unpopular change last month which removed many monuments from maps smaller than 3500, the team has reverted some of the change. Large monuments have been added back to small maps (launch site and excavator still require at least 3500 world size). This will not take effect until the next map wipe (Sept. 5th), but should have things on small maps back to the way they used to be. 

Given this, Rustafied servers with small maps (Small’s and Odd Jr.’s) will go back to a 3k map size after the next update.

Horse changes

Your trusty steeds will be a bit weaker after the next update as horse health has been reduced. This is likely in preparation for the Horse Armor, the artwork of which we saw for the first time the other week. Does this mean horse armor is making it into the next update? We’ll see...

In addition to the health changes, Helk has fixed some animation issues, made horses more responsive, and optimized them a bit.

Map improvements

Some significant improvements are underway for the in game map. Although it’s still on a separate branch - meaning we can’t see it just yet - the commits are giving us a taste of what’s to come. 

First, it looks like players will be able to place custom markers. In addition, team leaders will likely have their own marker now. It also appears as though we’ll have the ability to add notes and maybe even see where you last died!

No word on if this will be making it into the next update, but we’ll keep you posted as always.

Screen settings menu

Adam has added a new screen settings panel in the ESC menu in game. Home to some new options, this panel will allow users to change resolutions and toggle full screen and vsync. There is an apply button to activate the changes. If you escape out, any settings will just reset. 

He’s also added console commands for viewing/setting screen resolution and fullscreen mode in-game. Along with these changes, the launcher window has been removed while loading the game.

Instruments

Thai continues tooting along on the instruments branch. Working this week on the Drum Kit, Piano, Tambourine, Bass, Flute, and Trumpet, he is very quickly getting this new orchestra of Rust ready for opening night. No word on exactly when that will be, but we’ll keep you posted when we find out more.

New Large Battery model

The model for the Large Rechargeable Battery has been updated. Nice.

Vehicles

Bill is trucking along on the new modular vehicles functionality. This week putting in the basic driving inputs for throttle, steering, and brakes. He’s also made it so the engine modules provide wheel torque and placed storage containers on to the flatbed module.

As you may recall, this body of work will feature a number of different vehicle modules, allowing players to create numerous types of 4 wheel transportation, each with special uses. This is a huge undertaking, so I imagine it’ll be at least another month or two before we see these Mad Max-esque transports in game.

F1 console focus

A small but amazing quality of life shift has worked its way in this week. For the first time, the console text input field will be auto-focused when switching to the console tab or re-opening it. Thank god!

HDRP progress

Work continues on the humongous project of overhauling graphics and improving performance. The team continues pushing commits to the HDRP branch, chipping away at all the various aspects which come into play with such an arduous task. 

Remember this body of work stands to drastically shift the look and feel of the game, all while improving client performance in a potentially big way.

Given this is one of the biggest projects in Rust for a while now, it is not expected to be ready any time soon. That said, word on the street is the December Rust update could be the largest we’ve ever seen!

Wires and power lines

There have been some tweaks to wires and power lines around the map. Along with being optimized, they now show up around monuments.

New merch!

Facepunch has launched a store for Rust gear. Go check it out!

Other

• New icon for picking things up

• Some slight changes to the vitals display

• Automatically authorize player deploying tool cupboard

• Fixed upkeep display

• Fixed loading screen button being 1 pixel smaller than the bar next to it

• Pick up notices hang around for a second longer

• Cargoship exploit fix

• Hitching post and trough can now be placed on construction

• HAB inflation collider is disabled when rigidbody is asleep

• increased HAB nobuild zone to encompass inflated balloon

• Added more textures to streaming pool: nature/ores+treessource

• Door knocker no longer prevents explosives damaging doors

• Removed damage values from building hammer

• UI Fixes incoming

• Fixed time scale affecting debug camera movement

• Added optional save name parameter to debugcamera_save and debugcamera_load for multiple save / restore slots

• Added debugcamera_autosave and debugcamera_autoload to automatically save and load the debug camera state (separate convars to enable certain use cases)

• Added zoom to debug camera state saving and loading

• Added camzoomlerp (like camlerp)