BATTLEFIELD 2042 UPDATE #5.3.0

Introducing a brand new Codex System, Vehicle Count Overhauls, Vehicle Balancing Improvements and more.

Hello there,

Update 5.3.0 is on its way to launch next week alongside Battlefield 2042: Redux! Take a look below to discover everything new in this game update.

Here is an overview of some of the more important aspects of this update:

• The in-game Codex - The Lore of Battlefield 2042 now all in one place
• Conquest-wide Vehicle Count Overhaul for All-Out Warfare maps
• Vehicle weapon balance and handling improvements
• Reduced RPG & Recoilless projectile travel speed for Engineers

//The Battlefield Team

Stay Informed

Follow us on the @BattlefieldComm Twitter account to stay informed on the roll out of our updates. You can also follow along with our tracking of Known Issues.

Redux starts on August 29th and brings back new ways to play across your favorite modes and maps, as well as making new and returning weekly rewards available to earn. From Rush Chaos XL, Tactical Conquest, Breakthrough Chaos to Conquest Assault, Shutdown and more. We're giving you a wide variety of ways to play and earn rewards.

But we're not just bringing these modes back as they were. We've listened to your feedback, so expect refined modes every week, on more maps, and with new players counts.

Back by popular demand this week, Control will be taking place on a bi-weekly basis during Redux!

The Codex

The Codex Feature is our one-stop shop for all things Narrative in the World of Battlefield 2042. With its story spread across many features and components, both in-game and external, the Codex brings all of these pieces together.

You'll be able to read the lore for factions, maps, specialists, themed events, narrative hunts and more!

Update 5.3 will display all story elements up to Season 4: Eleventh Hour, and further updates to the Codex will follow alongside the release of Season 6 in October.

Find the Codex in-game via Profile > The Codex.

Conquest-Wide Vehicle Count Overhaul

Vehicles are an inherent part of the chaotic and immersive gameplay that we want you to experience with Battlefield. As we've now concluded reworking all All-Out Warfare launch maps, our focus shifts to how vehicles interact with these reworked locations.

Scheduled for the week following Update 5.3, a server-side change will overhaul the vehicle counts for Conquest on all All-Out Warfare era maps. Areas we reviewed when deciding on improved vehicle counts per map are for example the locations, their fantasy and conflict, and player counts.

The first update to vehicle counts is for our reworked All-Out Warfare Conquest maps. Vehicle counts on Battlefield Portal maps will be reviewed in a later update.

Below we will list two examples of the new vehicle counts, and we encourage you to feel for yourselves how each map plays after this update. Please continue sharing your feedback with us.

Exposure

Exposure offers a significant amount of verticality due its mountainous region, while also providing much needed respite for infantry through its tunnel system and interior layouts.

Air vehicles gameplay are the new focus of Exposure.

Exposure Conquest 128:

• Light Transport: 4 > 4
• Armored Transport: 1 > 0
• Light Armor: 2 > 2
• Heavy Armor: 2 > 2
• Gunship: 1 > 1
• Attack Helicopters: 1 > 3
• Jets: 1 > 2
• Utility: 2 > 1
• Civillian Vehicles: 12 > 6

Exposure Conquest 64:

• Light Transport: 2 > 1
• Armored Transport: 1 > 1
• Light Armor: 1 > 2
• Heavy Armor: 1 > 1
• Gunship: 1 > 1
• Attack Helicopters: 1 > 2
• Jets: 1 > 2
• Utility: 1 > 1
• Civillian Vehicles: 2 > 0

Discarded

Discarded is instead an example of catered towards ground combat focus. Aircraft will be part of its gameplay, but the majority of combat will be between colliding infantry and ground vehicles.

Discarded Conquest 128:

• Light Transport: 4 > 3
• Armored Transport: 1 > 2
• Light Armor: 2 > 1
• Heavy Armor: 2 > 3
• Gunship: 1 > 1
• Attack Helicopters: 1 > 1
• Jets: 1 > 2
• Utility: 2 > 1
• Civillian Vehicles: 12 > 4

Discarded Conquest 64:

• Light Transport: 2 > 2
• Armored Transport: 1 > 2
• Light Armor: 1
• Heavy Armor: 1 > 2
• Gunship: 1 > 0
• Attack Helicopters: 1 > 1
• Jets: 1 > 0
• Utility: 1 > 1
• Civillian Vehicles: 2 > 2

A note from the Vehicles Team

We wanted to take a quick moment to discuss some of the changes taking place with vehicles in this game update.

We have seen attack helicopters not performing as well as we would like them to. Especially in comparison with vehicles such as the MD540 Nightbird and Stealth Helicopters in terms of dealing and receiving damage. The changes we're making are as follows.

Dealing and Receiving Damage

Currently the gameplay armor/health difference between Attack Helicopters and their lighter variants are not noticeably felt and they equally struggle against anti-air weaponry. To address this we are lowering the damage that Attack Helicopters take from 30mm Cannons on the Wildcat and Flak weapon explosions by 25% which will help with better survivability versus their lighter counterparts.

We're also changing how damage is dealt to other ground vehicles when using anti-vehicle missiles. These missiles will now deal damage primarily through their blast to ensure they’re more effective as an anti-vehicle option. With this change it’s vital that you aim for direct hits to ensure full damage output. 

These changes affect all air vehicles that use anti-vehicle missiles.

Gunner Improvements
We’ve also realigned the weapon and camera positioning of the front gunner. With a wider and better view, this now helps you understand the heading of the helicopter as you traverse across the Battlefield.

We're also increasing the weapon efficiency of the gunner position through a series of balance changes and the addition of thermal optics. Thermals come at the cost of your ability to zoom, so it’s up to you to decide if the pros outway the cons.

Turn, turn, turn!
In this update you'll also notice that we’ve slightly lowered the sensitivity of all helicopters. This is to allow for easier target acquisition while giving micro inputs to adjust your aim during those chaotic moments.

Zooming across
We're also improving the handling of ground vehicles. We’ll be starting off with the LCAA Hovercraft by changing how force is applied with this vehicle as we've heard from you that it had too much drift.

We have increased the input response of the hovercraft and you should feel it now accelerates and halts faster than before. It will feel a lot less drifty, alongside the addition of yaw acceleration to help rotate from a stand-still position.

Zooming out
We've received a lot of flak for it so let's also discuss Flak Cannons.

In one of our previous updates we've temporarily disabled the Flak Cannon for the LATV4 and LCAA Hovercraft because an issue allowed the Flak to use the vehicle blast values when it explodes on time out.

In this update we're re-enabling the Flak Cannon, but we're removing their damage against infantry as we felt it was too powerful, alongside adding to the prevalence of explosions.

We’ll keep monitoring these vehicle changes and address feedback where necessary!

//The Vehicles Team

Soldier & AI

• Fixed an issue that resulted in running animations getting stuck if the player decelerated rapidly while jumping.
• Fixed multiple AI navigational issues within Battlefield Portal maps that were preventing AI from going upstairs or through certain doorways.
• Fixed an issue that caused Ranger to get stuck whilst trying to vault in certain locations.
• Fixed an issue that prevented AI from using up all of the Polaris vehicles from the US HQ on Arica Harbor.
• Fixed an issue that prevented AI from being able to navigate through destroyed barriers on Arica Harbor.

Specialists & Gadgets

• Fixed an issue where you could place some gadgets on top of automated doors and stick them to it like Spider-Penguin.
• Fixed an issue that caused smoke deployed from the Smoke Grenade Launcher to sometimes not hide spotting information and disrupt stat tracking.
• Fixed an issue that caused the directional indicator to still be present on the minimap while concussed.

Boris

• Fixed an issue that caused Boris' Sentry Gun Turret to be resupplied by the Hazard Zone ammo stations.

Crawford

• Increased the minimum damage of Crawford's Mounted Vulcan's bullet from 10 to 12.
• Increased the accuracy of Crawford's Mounted Vulcan after firing for a small period of time.

Dozer

• Fixed an issue where Dozer could teleport on the map after interacting with Ranger while having his shield equipped.

Engineer

• Reduced the speed at which the RPG & Recoilless projectile travels by 17%
  • Dev Comment: We saw that players were using the rocket launchers primarily for anti infantry use and sniping vehicles with ease at range, thus we want to make this a bit more of a skillshot to perform at a long distance.

EOD Bot

• We’re getting intel that the Penguins have tampered with the EOD Bot which caused it to no longer blow up from a gentle impact from stationary vehicles. We can’t decide if this was intentional or not, and we’ve yet to work on a translator for the Penguins.
• EOD Bot’s health has been lowered from 400 to 300, likely also the Penguins' doing.
• Added an impulse modification to the EOD Bot so that when it gets shot with bullets it doesn't push the EOD Bot around.
• Increased the weapon sway on the Recoilless M5 while aiming down sights.
  • Dev Comment: This should mostly impact targeting of infantry where we found players were using the Recoilless M5 to snipe infantry at distance as opposed to having it be used against its intended use-case, vehicles and structures.

Weapons

• Fixed incorrect rate of fire on AC9 Extended and AM40 Subsonic Magazines.
• Fixed weapons missing the recoil penalty when Underbarrel Launcher Attachment is present
• Fixed an issue that caused 40mm Underbarrel Incendiary Grenade Launchers to sometimes not deal damage to players
• Fixed an issue that caused the 40mm Underbarrel Smoke Launchers to have their smoke blown out almost immediately in rainy conditions.
• Fixed an issue on the SWS-10 that caused shell ejects to be misplaced in third-person perspective.
• Fixed an issue that caused 4x and higher scopes to not glint on the XM8, Type88 and RPK LMGs

Vehicles

• Anti-vehicle missiles damage now deal primarily deal blast damage.
•  Zero point adjustment for Attack Helicopters and Jet anti vehicle rocket pods.
• Barrage missiles will no longer give impulse to the vehicle it fires from.
• Vehicle fired Incendiary grenade convergence settings lowered to work for point blank hits
• RHIB Boats on Noshahr Canals will now be abandoned & destroyed after use much earlier and spawn much sooner, providing players spawning on the aircraft carrier with an easier time getting to land.
• Fixed an issue that caused the CAV-Brawler's 40mm Incendiary Grenade Launcher to collide & explode with smoke plumes
• Fixed an issue that prevented Radar Missiles from being able to lock on to a Stealth Heli in Stealth mode whilst it had been tracer darted
• Fixed an issue that would cause multiple visual projectiles to spawn from tank cannons when fired (this did not cause multiple instances of damage to be clear)
• Fixed an issue that caused the LATV4 to not be displayed as neutral when called in by an enemy in Hazard Zone
• Removed blast damage of 20mm flak to infantry and re-enabled the weapon.

Helicopters

• Added thermal option to helicopter gunner seats.
• Fixed an issue where you would use the wrong exit point on the MV-38 Condor.
• Lowered yaw sensitivity of all helicopters slightly. It should now be easier for target acquisition and controlling of the vehicle.
• Improvements to Nightbird first perspective crosshair position.

Attack Helicopters

• Attack Helicopter pilot TOW Ammo increased by 1.
• Attack Helicopter gunner aiming constraints have been reduced by increasing the min and max degree in pitch the player can move the gun.
• 3p camera positions adjusted to keep the vehicle more centered and aligned to the cross-hair.
• Attack Helicopter gunner seat camera position has been moved up on KA-520 Super Hokum Helicopter and gunner seat weapon position on the AH-64GX Apache Warchief.
• Increased gunner rate of fire from 200 to 600.
• Attack Helicopter Gunner blast damage has been lowered from 20 to 18.
• Attack Helicopter Gunner starting damage has been lowered from 40 to 25.
• Attack Helicopter Gunner overheat adjustment to meet the new characteristics.
• Attack Helicopter Gunner speed reduced from 800 to 350.
• Reduced damage Attack Helicopters take from AA of the Wildcat and Flak Explosions by 25%.
• Drag forces updated for better hover control and maneuverability.
• Made KA-520 Super Hokum and AH-64GX Apache Warchief more similar, moving the center of mass for more control, adding more horizontal force and adjusting drag to keep top speed the same while making hovering and direction change faster.
• Inertia tensor adjusted for both Attack Helicopters to be similar in handling.

Jets

• Lowered the rate of fire of Jet rocket pods 300 to 240.
• Lowered pitch stickiness of jets, you should feel that there is noticeably less weight after pitching up or down. Let us know your feedback after trying it out!

LCAA Hovercraft

• Increased acceleration responsiveness of the LCAA Hovercraft, it should feel snappier when you give forward input and when attempting to steer.
• Turn forces center of mass moved to center of vehicle instead of originating from the drive fan.
  • Dev Comment: This makes the hovercraft turn more like a car and increases the driver control of this vehicle.
• Tweaked damping values to ensure LCAA Hovercraft drifts less and comes to a halt quicker allowing players to have more control over driving and steering.
• Increased yaw acceleration to allow for quicker and more responsive turning.

This announcement may change as we listen to community feedback and continue developing and evolving our Live Service & Content. We will always strive to keep our community as informed as possible.