Death Star Update

The Death Star Update was an update for DICE's Star Wars Battlefront that was released on Tuesday, September 20, 2016. It introduced the Death Star expansion pack as well as a host of additional features and bug fixes for players of DICE's Star Wars Battlefront.

Notable changes in this update included:

• Addition of the Death Star as a location, whose maps could be accessed by owners of the Death Star expansion pack or Season Pass
• The removal of helmetless Stormtrooper customization
• Complete overhaul of Trait card bonuses
• Addition of several new Body customization options for Rebel Alliance and Imperial soldiers, including the Rebel Officer and Imperial Officer skins

Patch Notes

New content for DLC owners

• New levels: Five new maps set around or on the Death Star.
• New game mode: Battle Station

A new three-phased mode in which Rebels attempt to destroy an Imperial Star Destroyer in order to clear space for a GR-75 and its brave Rebel boarding party. Then, these Rebels participating in an assault on the Death Star in hopes of rescuing R2-D2 before, finally, attempting to destroy the Death Star itself with the help of Luke Skywalker.

New Weapons

• TL-50 Heavy Repeater: A heavy blaster with a secondary fire mode which launches an explosive round.
• K-16 Bryar Pistol: A powerful blaster pistol with a secondary fire ability which allows the player to charge up a powerful shot.

New Star Cards

• Laser Trip Mine: Can be attached on any surface and will explode when an enemy passes it. It will also scramble the radar of any enemy that gets too close.
• Medical Droid: A stationary droid that is placed by the player. The droid will send out a “healing pulse” every 3 seconds and reduce the cooldown for the players star cards.

New Heroes

Bossk

• Micro Grenades – The primary weapon fires "micro grenades" which are tiny grenades that deal explosive damage.
• Predatory Instincts – It changes the visuals so you see characters’ heat signatures. Bossk is also enhanced while the power is active, increasing his damage, his sprint speed, and the cooldown speed of his abilities. This ability doesn’t have a cooldown and can be turned on/off at anytime.
• Toxic Escape – Bossk throws a Dioxis Grenade and leaps away from the explosion in the direction in which he was moving.
• Trait: Trandoshan Regeneration – Bossk regenerates part of his lost health when killing enemy soldiers or doing high damage to heroes.

Chewbacca

• Multi-Bolts – Doubles the amount of bolts fired from his weapon
• Mighty Roar - Chewbacca roars and empowers himself and his allies. It will do the following:
  • Rebel soldiers receive the Berserker level 3 effect and increased armor for a limited time.
  • Friendly Heroes receive increased armor for a limited time
  • Chewbacca receives increased damage and armor for a limited time.
• Ground Slam - Chewbacca slams the ground, damaging and pushing back enemies in an area around the point of impact. This ability can be used while in the air.
• Trait: Furious Firing : Increases the amount of bolts fired from Chewbacca’s Bowcaster by 1 per rank in the trait.

New Vehicles

• New Hero vehicles: Red Five (Luke Skywalker) and TIE Advanced x1 (Darth Vader) will be introduced as new playable hero vehicles on both Battle Station and Fighter Squadron. In addition to this, users will be able to spawn in as "wingmen" whenever Red Five or TIE Advanced x1 are active on the level.

Red Five

• Shields - that prevent the vehicle from taking damage for a short duration or until shields are depleted.
• Proton Torpedoes - that are missiles that track down enemy targets.
• R2-D2 Repair - which will heal a set amount of health.

TIE Advanced x1

• Shields - that prevent the vehicle from taking damage for a short duration or until shields are depleted.
• Speed Boost - which will allow the vehicle to briefly fly faster.
• Relentless Assault - which will allow the player to fire the main weapon more rapidly, deal bonus damage and not overheat.

Hutt Contracts

• New Hutt Contracts: Six new Hutt Contracts have been added to the game.

General

• Soft lock [ Vehicles ]: An overheat mechanic has been added to the softlock system.
• Vehicles: Improved vehicle collision handling, meaning that whenever two vehicles collide they will only deal a small amount of damage to each other and not instantly explode.
• TIE Interceptor: Missiles have been removed as an ability and replaced with a new ability called Laser Barrage. When active, the player fires without overheating for a short duration of time and deals more damage per shot.
• A-Wing: The Shield ability has been replaced with a Speed Boost ability.
• Skirmish: Resolved a bug in which players could spawn as a soldier with hero abilities if they were playing co-op.
• Skirmish: Resolved an issue in which players in co-op could spawn in as the same hero if they both activated the hero token at the same time.
• Skirmish: Resolved a graphical glitch that occurred in co-op when one player would spawn in as an AT-AT.
• Appearance: With the arrival of the Imperial Officers, the certification for Stormtroopers to remove their helmets in combat has been withdrawn.
• Skirmish: The multiplayer hand can now be used in Skirmish.
• General: Fixed various minor issues with Skirmish.
• General: Various minor UI issues.
• General: Resolved various spectator issues.
• General: Updated the localization.
• General: Various minor audio fixes in the UI.

UI

• Soft lock [ Vehicles ]: Introduced new visuals for the new soft lock system.
• Appearance: Updated the appearance system and now allows the user to switch heads to the various body types.
• Unlocks: Now allows the player to filter options to the unlock & Hutt Contract screen. These options are: Active, Unlocked, Locked and All.
• HuD: updated the player health visual to better illustrate the boosted health that can be gained from the Bacta Bomb.
• Fighter Squadron: Removed an on-screen prompt for the player to be able to exit the Cloud Car.
• Hero Hunt: Resolved a bug which caused some hero defeat messages to not appear in the kill log.
• Chat [PC]: Resolved a bug in which the in-game partner chat was limited to your friends and didn’t work with automatically assigned partners.

Weapons & Star Cards

• Scout Binoculars: Reduced cooldown with 10 seconds.
• Bacta Bomb: Reduced the cooldown with 10 seconds
• Bacta Bomb: Added a 4 second healing immunity from the Bacta Bomb.
• Bacta Bomb: Resolved a bug in which users wouldn’t get healed if their health wasn’t at 100%.
• Bacta Bomb: Updated the logic for triggering the healing effect. Players hit by the Bacta Bomb will get 5 health periodically over 3 seconds (max 30 health). If players take damage during this time, all future health ticks are cancelled.
• Traits: Players can now equip a trait card on each of their hands. Meaning you can bring two different traits into the battle.

Traits

• Traits: All traits have been updated and most levels have new abilities. The changes are:

Bodyguard

• Level 1: “Explosive damage reduction 30%“ has been changed to “Damage reduction with 10%”
• Level 2: “Explosive damage reduction 50% has been changed to “Damage reduction with 25%”
• Level 3: “Explosive damage reduction 50 & Blaster damage reduction 30%“ has been changed to “Damage reduction with 50%”

Bounty Hunter

• Level 1: “25% power up chance on kill” has been changed to “10% Faster card cooldowns”
• Level 2: “50% power up chance on kill” has been changed to “25% Faster card cooldowns”
• Level 3: “50% power up chance on kill & Kills shave off 80% of cooldown” has been changed to “50% Faster card cooldowns”

Berserker

• Level 1: “25% damage increase when hurt” has been changed to “15% bonus to hip fire damage“
• Level 2: “50% damage increase when hurt” has been changed to “ 30% bonus to hip fire damage”
• Level 3: “50% damage increase when hurt & 50% armor value when hurt” has been changed to “50% bonus to hip fire damage”

Escape Artist

• Level 1: “10% bonus to sprint speed” has been changed to “5% bonus to sprint speed”
• Level 2: “25% bonus to sprint speed” has been changed to “15% bonus to sprint speed”
• Level 3: “25 bonus to sprint speed & lethal melee strikes” has been changed to “30% bonus to sprint speed”

Scout

• Level 1: “Sprinting doesn’t trigger enemy scanners” has been changed to “Firing blasters doesn’t trigger enemy scanners”
• Level 2: “Firing blasters doesn’t trigger enemy scanners” has been changed to “Sprinting doesn’t trigger scanner”
• Level 3: “Killing an enemy resets primary blaster heat” has been changed to “scramble enemy scanners”.

Sharpshooter

• Level 1: “Headshots shaves of 25% of card cooldown” has been changed to “15% bonus damage while zooming”
• Level 2: “Headshots shaves of 50% of card cooldown” has been changed to “30% bonus damage while zooming”
• Level 3: “Headshots shaves of 100% of card cooldown” has been changed to “50% bonus damage while zooming”

Survivalist

• Level 1: “Health regen starts 25% faster” has been changed to “6 seconds to health regenerates”
• Level 2: “Health regen starts 50% faster” has been changed to ”4 seconds to health regenerates”
• Level 3: “Health regen starts 50% faster & Kills regenerates 50 health” has been changed to ”2 seconds to health regenerate”.

Heroes

• Darth Vader: Regular soldiers that are under the effect of Force Choke will not be able to use melee attacks.
• Leia Organa: Increased the Trooper Bane cooldown from 14 to 15 seconds.
• Leia Organa: Increased the start damage from 50 to 53 for her E-11 Blaster Rifle.
• Leia Organa: Increased the end damage from 25 to 35 for her E-11 Blaster Rifle.
• Leia Organa: Increased the damage fall off distance from 25 to 30 for her E-11 Blaster Rifle.
• Emperor Palpatine: Increased the base lightning damage from 15 to 18.
• Emperor Palpatine: Increased the block time by 60%.

Game Modes

• Fighter Squadron & Battle Station: New power-ups have been added for both the Rebel and Imperial sides. Once activated a group of AI vehicles will spawn in next to the player and engage the enemy in dog fighting for a duration of 60 seconds. The vehicles are:
  • Y-Wings and B-Wings for the Rebel Alliance
  • TIE Bomber and TIE Defender for the Galactic Empire
• Fighter Squadron: AI A-Wings and TIE Interceptors have been added to the game mode
• Fighter Squadron: Added Red Five and TIE Advanced x1 as hero vehicles on all levels.
• Turning Point: Resolved a bug in which players sometimes would spawn outside the map when playing turning point on Clouds_01.
• Heroes vs. Villains: All players are now immortal during the EoR screen and can’t be killed by turrets or droids anymore.
• Drop Zone [Private matches]: The player count has been changed to 12 players

Stats & Progression

• Diorama: Bossk and Chewbacca have been added to the Diorama.
• Ranks: Increased from 70 to 90.
• Appearances: New visual unlocks have been added:
  • Stormtrooper with pauldrons
  • X-Wing Pilot
  • Death Star Trooper
• Hutt Contracts: Resolved a bug in which the Scout Pistol and Scatter Gun wouldn’t track towards various contracts.
• Achievements: Resolved a bug in which the "A New Hope" achievement would not trigger when playing Walker Assault.