Changelog Tweaks / Improvements

• Added a Top Bar UI toggle to the advanced options menu.
• The Observatorys scanned Status Effect icon will always show for Aliens within range, regardless of HUD detail settings. (Similar to the Parasite status effect icon for Marines.)
• Re-added the Railgun Exos target outline HUD effect on all Aliens and resolved the performance issues when looking at something far beyond the effects maximum range. (Thanks Axtel!)
• Three additional status effect icons added: Nerve Gas, Spores and Armor Healing.
• All status effects are now clearly marked as buffs/debuffs.

• New Friends Group feature where you can invite up to 2 other friends before joining a public lobby, to end up on the same team! There is a maximum of two friend groups per public lobby, and one group per Team.
• New Private Lobby feature where only those whom you invite can play in your match! Note that Matched Play rewards are disabled for this mode.
• Penalties are temporarily removed until they can be administered in a more fair and accurate way in a future update.
• You should now be able to reconnect to an in-progress match after crashing, unless steam has gone offline or the lobby no longer exists.
• New and improved shuffle algorithm which ensures Friends Groups will stay together and evenly balance teams around them.
• Lobbies now robustly handle users leaving and joining after the lobby has reached 12/12 players. Lobbies will correctly roll-back the lobby state as long as the lobby has not reached the Planning Phase.

• Fixed known cases where player names and avatars would not show up in the Planning Phase screen. All players on the same team should now be visible to team-members after a short delay.
• Fixed known cases where a lobby would fail to spin up a server due to lobby authentication issues.
• Fixed known cases of users being assigned to Team 0 and thus kicked from the match.
• Fixed the lobby status UI (waiting for commanders) not updating properly in some scenarios.
• Fixed some instances where a client could get into a desynchronized state with the lobby UI.
• Fixed users who volunteered to command not being able to see their voted maps during the map voting stage.
• Fixed users not being able to see the Map Vote button after a lobby was rolled back to Waiting for Players.
• Fixed the volunteer to command button showing up after a map vote.
• Fixed a case where Waiting For Commanders timer could get stuck at 0 without progressing the lobby.
• Fixed an issue where players who left during the Map Vote stage would still appear to be in the lobby if the Map Vote screen was open when they left.
• Fixed several issues with player names and avatars being in an incorrect state in the Lobby screen after multiple players left/joined.
• Fixed ability to join a match that just completed using steam friends.
• Fixed ability to join a lobby that had progressed to or beyond the Planning Phase (the user would be kicked from the server when they joined).
• Fixed inconsistent behaviors with in game lobby invites and steam friends invites.
• Fixed numerous script errors and other scenarios that would break a lobby.
• Fixed multiple issues where clicking too fast on some UI elements caused script errors.

• Trigger reinstall of hotfix mods if they are failing consistency check.
• When a file fails consistency check the mod it belongs to is now listed in the log when failing to connect to a server.
• Force caching the current version of a hotfix mod if it was updated outside the game by steam to reduce chance of mod out of date errors connecting to a server.
• Switch to auto updated steam runtime libraries for the dedicated server to try and fix mod download issues.

• Fixed that the Marine Flashlight rate was tied to moverate.
• Fixed Marine structures taking too long to build in some cases. They were affected by server performance or even latency. The TSF has issued a mandatory firmware update to all build tools to resolve this issue.
• Fixed Exo Crosshairs not being included in the default consistency exclusion list.
• Fixed Marine tutorial not progressing when asked to open Map if binding was set to toggle instead of hold.
• Fixed base tutorials not automatically progressing to the next tutorial after completion.
• Fixed Ambient Occlusion graphics setting being turned off on every client restart.
• Fixed Hallucinations not using the player skins of those they were copying. Hopefully they never learn how to copy Marines.
• Fixed player names that used certain special characters causing the Windows error sound during server joining, chatting, or death.
• Fixed Atmospherics graphics setting defaulting to 1.0 even though the UI reported 0.15, the intended default.
• Fixed seasonal throwables (snowballs and candy) causing console errors and not being rate limited. Well be sad to see the infinite streams of candy go.
• Fixed Bmacs getting hit with the Axe making flesh sounds. It creeps us all out just a little bit less now.
• Fixed weapons dropped upon death near an Armory still having a decay timer. (Thanks Axtel!)
• Fixed the Revert button not working correctly when making changes in the Options menu.
• Fixed old hooks\console commands of hot reloaded lua files not being cleared.
• Fixed the menu sometimes being restarted from Lua errors.
• Fixed hallucinated Drifters occasionally making Marine footstep sounds when they moved about. It was terrifyingly funny, but an unfortunate evolutionary dead-end.
• Fixed that Nano Shield could not be used on unpiloted Exosuits.
• Fixed Power Nodes not playing their critical sound effects for players who have left relevancy range and returned. You have no excuse for not welding the Power Node now.
• Fixed outdated Alien commander tutorial that required manually infesting tunnels.
• Fixed outdated Marine commander tutorial that blocked progress due to Robotics Factory size change.

• Gravity Control - Fixed death trigger.

• Fixed death trigger issues in Crevice and Crossroad

• Map editor workflow improvements (Thanks Axtel!)
• Added reliable transform gizmo planar handle selection.
• Added Ctrl-click and Alt-click to selection filter toggles.
• Fixed multiple editor state corruptions that could result in an unusable editor.
• Moved select object layer functionality to Alt-LMB with Select tool active.
• Negative texture scales are properly preserved when using the paint tool.
• Reduce unintended viewport freezes when manipulating objects.
• Improvements to supporting light placements in a level file when flipping rooms or entire maps. (Thanks Axtel!)

• Event.RemoveHook is now an engine function instead of Lua and the table of registered hooks can now be accessed from Event.HookTable.
• Scripts are now passed a hot reload depth as toplevel parameter if it's being hot reloaded otherwise its nil.

• The Matched Play Team Imbalance auto-concede feature that is triggered when too many players have left one team, does not work well with reconnecting players just yet.
• Clicking the Find Match / Cancel Searching button in the Friends Group screen multiple times in quick succession can trigger script errors that require the group host to restart their client.
• When entering the planning phase the First Team splash screen may sometimes show up twice.
• There is currently no visual indication of which players in a lobby, if any, are in a friends group.
• Chat messages received while the Map Vote screen is open will not be visible after closing the Map Vote screen.