Battlefield 1 May Update live on all platforms – full patch notes

By Stephany Nunneley

The Battlefield 1 May Update, which makes it easier to find Operations games and nerfs bayonet charge, is now available for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

Along with weapons, tweaks, balances, and adjustments made to Battlefield 1, Premium Friends has returned. DICE said it will be active in the lead up to EA PLAY, which takes place the Saturday before E3 2017 kicks off.

As previously reported, one of the changes made to Operations is players will loop back to the same Operation rather than exiting the mode. This will put the player on opposite side of the battlefield.

DICE used the French and German armies as an example. If a player was on the French side when the Operation ended, it will loop the player back to the same server instead of returning to the globe screen, and they will be on the opposing side.

This should help reduce the occurrence of being matched into an empty server, said the studio.

In the coming updates, DICE plans to “continue to expand this feature” to cycle through a complete Operation playlist.

Below you will find the full patch notes for the game, which provide more information on the promised changes to the Netcode. Once the update is applied, it will relax some of the ping requirements that were added with the previous patch.

Battlefield 1 May Update

Map and Modes

• Fixed a Spectator Mode bug where the first-person camera could become stuck during the Pigeon Carrier Artillery camera sequence on the Assault Tank.
• Changed ticket count for Domination to 200 from 100.
• Fixed missing game mode description for Operations.
• Tweaked scoring values for capturing flags in Conquest. Capturing gives less score now, however more capture ticks have been added and the team controlling more than 3 flags than the other team will be awarded Conquest Control bonuses.
• Decreased the percentage of contribution to flag capture/neutralize from 50% to 30%.
• Added “Join Any Operation” button to main Operations screen. Will start a matchmaking session to join any available operation at any size (40 or 64).
• Spectator camera no longer missing from the map on Frontlines, Verdun, and Soissons.

Vehicles

• Tweaked self-repair for A7V, FT17, St. Chamond, and Pierce Arrow.
• Reduced health gained per self-repair cycle from 320 to 200.
• Reduced time taken to complete a self-repair cycle from 8s to 5s. This makes these vehicles’ self-repair equivalent to the self-repair of the MkV Landship.
• Doubled the health of Field Gun and Stationary AA. Made Field Gun and Stationary AA repairable. Field Gun and Stationary AA will now enter a disabled state at 50% health where they become unusable. To use the weapons again they must be repaired back to 100% with the repair tool.
• Increased time that the shell camera is active on the MkV mortar landship from 3.5s to 4.5s. This better suits the increased flight time of the new heavy shell.
• Extended Fighter and Attack Plane elevator flap scaling curves to better cover the entire speed range.
• Reduced cooldown of speed boost ability from 30s to 15s for both the Dogfighter and Airship Buster Attack Plane.
• Set up rear view on all planes: Albatros, Fokker, Spad, Sopwith, Rumpler, Halberstadt, Salmson, Bristol, Gotha, Caproni. To activate: Hold freelook while in third person to use rear view.

Changed how max range for AA is applied

Max range now varies depending on the pitch of the gun. Shells can travel a maximum horizontal distance of 300m, and a maximum vertical distance of 450m. This applies to both the stationary AA and the AA truck.

Previously AA shells timed out at the same max distance from the gun regardless of direction, resulting in a roughly spherical volume covered by the gun. This means horizontal range was as large as the max height the shells could reach, and that at very high altitudes the AA could cover very little area, even if its range was technically large. The new AA shells will have slightly less horizontal range than before at low altitudes, but they will retain that range all the way to the flight ceiling.

This will make AA much more effective against high altitude aircraft without making it able to reach distant, low flying ones as well.

Attack Plane Changes

• Re-tuned attack plane elevator flap scaling curve. Attack Plane turning will now be much closer to that of Fighters, but still slightly worse.

Improved Underused Attack Plane Variants

• Increased damage of the Airship Buster variant’s primary MG from 32 to 40. This puts its AA DPS on par with Fighter MGs.
• With its speed boost active, the new flap scaling curves will allow this variant to achieve a higher turn rate than the Fighter for a short time. The reduced cooldown on speed boost will allow this advantage to be used more often.
• Together these changes should make the Airship Buster more competitive with Fighters in its air to air role.
• Increased velocity of tank hunter 37mm from 222m/s to 267m/s and reduced drag from 0.005 to 0.003. These changes should make the 37mm slightly easier to land hits with, especially against moving or distant targets.

Changes to Fighter Plane Variants

Dogfighter

• Added new secondary weapon, Incendiary Ammo. Incendiary Ammo does greatly increased damage to plane parts, allowing the dogfighter to quickly cripple an enemy plane by breaking a wing.
• Changed active ability from emergency repair to speed boost.

Bomber Killer

• Changed active ability from speed boost to emergency repair.
• Swapping speed boost and emergency repair on the Dogfighter and Bomber Killer should help both variants in their respective roles. Speed boost gives the Dogfighter a maneuverability edge over the other Fighter variants, and emergency repair gives the Bomber Killer a better chance of surviving tail gun fire from Bombers and Attack Planes.
• Increased field gun damage against light vehicles. Armored cars will no longer take less damage than light tanks from field gun hits.

Changes to FT Packages

• Added rear firing Tankgewehr as driver secondary weapon for the Tank Hunter Landship Variant.
• Enabled driving and third person camera while using driver rear guns in the Squad Support and Tank Hunter Landships.
• Improved MkV Mortar Landship Variant Changed secondary mortar shell from airburst mortar to heavy mortar. Heavy mortar does much more damage and is effective against both infantry and vehicles, but has a much longer reload.
• Replaced alternate smoke and gas mortar shells with track repair and vehicle smoke equipment. These changes should make the mortar Landship more viable as a combat vehicle, rather than sitting in mortar stance in the backline.
• Fixed a bug with third person aiming on vehicles that caused a bullet to not fire in the correct direction when aiming at a soldiers head while they are on a horse.

Close Support Tank

• Increased 37mm HE ammo from 4 to 5.
• Replaced Secondary Case shell with Coaxial LMG. These changes should help this tank better fulfill its general purpose role.

Flanker Tank

• Increased reload time on the autocannon from 2.5s to 3.75s.
• Increased HE autocannon direct damage from 15-10.5 to 17.5-12.5.
• This results in a 20% reduction in cannon uptime. The direct damage increase will offset the lower uptime against vehicles when targeting vehicles. These changes should make the Flanker slightly less effective against infantry.

Howitzer Tank

• Corrected primary weapon to HMG as shown in customization, this was actually LMG. The more powerful HMG should help offset its limited firing arc when compared to the Coaxial LMG of the Close Support Variant.
• Changed driver secondary weapon from case shell to flamethrower on the A7V Flame Tank Variant. This change will reinforce this variant’s role as a close range tank.
• Added third person freelook to the FT Howitzer Variant. Missed this one with the other tanks because the normal version has a turret that can rotate 360 anyway.

Weapons and Gadgets

• Fixed bug where Bipod Audio could persist when switching to secondary weapon.
• Tweaked criteria for cross-class medal to require single shot rifles.
• Added UI for grenade resupply.
• Reduced the occluder size for the scope glint from 0.25m to 0.15m to hide it behind walls better.
• GAMEPLAY
• Added a camera shake advanced gameplay option to adjust the amount of camera shake caused by explosions, etc.
• Added missing spotting animation when spotting a downed allied soldier as a medic with the Medical Syringe.
• Automatically show low on ammo icons on friendly soldiers.

Changes to bayonet charge

• Activated aiming speed modifier during prepare state as well as charge state. This means a player can rotate a maximum of 50 degrees during the prepare state. Also added an input modifier disabling strafe while charging.
• Adding subtle boost to third person footsteps when bayonet charging to increase threat awareness. Boosted volume of Enemy VO for Bayonet Charge when close to player.
• Slightly reduced maximum turn rate while charging.
• Removed damage reduction while in charge. Weapons will now hit charging players for normal damage.

Controls

• Players using controllers can now do custom button/stick mappings.
• Fixed “Select Operation” button not properly appearing when using the joypad or on console.

UI

• Moved ping widget to be below the kill log.
• Fixed an issue in the squad select screen where no squad would be automatically selected for player not part of a squad. The first squad in the list will now be selected by default. Also added support on PC for pressing the space bar to join/leave a squad.
• Fixed issue with the flag icons and world icons ghosting when going in and out of the customize screen from the deploy screen.
• Added ability to disable UGC

Netcode

• Implemented per region threshold settings for server side hit detection: 130ms for US + Europe, 200ms elsewhere.
• Fixed server side hit registration interpolation.
• Leading shot only necessary by the margin above the threshold, e.g. For US @ 150ms ping, you have to lead by 20ms.
• Fixed latency display for server which is also responsible for decision if to perform client or server side hit registration.
• Fixed input offsets for server side hit registration to match client side.
• Fixed wrong hit indicator display when dying.