We're trying actively to get F&F up as soon as possible. We just completed a full company play test of another release candidate. We've still gone one back end issue that is partially fixed (better than it was this morning), but not performing responsively enough. Server engineers are working on optimization as we speak.

The process is:
a) Proposed fix added to build and deployed...
b) Internal QA team beats on it for about 45 minutes to an hour... if it fails, go back to a) if it performs adequately under that load then...
c) Full company play test.... if it fails, go back to a) if it performs adquately under that load then...
d) Commit all changes to live environment, flip on all the switches to be "live"
e) Release the Friends & Family steam codes to get several hundred folks playing/beating on it... if it performs adquately under that load for some period of time (yet to be determined) then...
f) Push the big green button that makes it live for everyone, though even then we will have our PlayQueue system in place at a certain threshold to limit the maximum peak concurrent users.
g) We will monitor server/system performance at the then current PCCU cap... if it performs adquately under that load for some period of time then...
h) Increase the PlayQueue cap and go back to g)
i) Once all of this hits thresholds that we believe will be similar on PS4, commit those changes to PS4 for a release candidate there
j) Submit to Sony, get approved, deploy client to PSN
k) Turn on PS4 live service
l) Celebrate/Fortnite dance

This is the process we are following.
Right now we have been pinging back and forth between a) and c).

The team has been working weekends and up to 2AM/3AM every night. We will be working again this weekend crazy hours.

Confirmed, you will have to redownload on Steam.

The good news though, Steam's compression is really quite amazing. It's 22GB on disk, but it's an 8GB download. And when we patch, it's a bit-by-bit differential patch, which means that most patches will be only a few hundred MB as opposed to multi-GB in our current system.

I understand your frustration and we're sorry but trust me, no one wants the game back up and operational more than we do. We're working on a few last minute issues that we can't go live with. We hope to have resolutions shortly.

For PS4, it will unfortuantely not be this week. We need to make sure the back end is stable, using PC as the guinea pig before the PS4 gets submitted/brought back up.

You can probably safely assume it'll be a day or two of stable PC operation before we roll the changes into the PS4 codebase. We then need to retest PS4 (at least a day) and submit (submission will be a rapid patch with Sony so it should be very quick once we've put it in). Again, that's if no additional issues are found. Additional issues mean additional time required to fix and test.

I'm sorry this is taking so long but I'm sure you'd rather have something working in a stable form than something that's going up and down every few hours. Trust me, no one wants the game up and running on all platforms more than we do.

Conquest XP will be addressed in an upcoming patch (XP will be doubled for Conquest in 1.13 per some details given to me by one of our senior designers). It's still my favorite mode to play, personally. Thanks much for the input guys.

As a heads up, this bug should be resolved in the second phase of the UMG (new UI) conversion which will hit at Steam launch. It's a Scaleform issue and come Steam, Scaleform will no longer be used in the game at all.

It's most likely a driver issue. Restart your computer.

Taking geography into account for matchmaking (e.g. spinning up regional battle servers) is on our roadmap post-Steam. We have the ability to spin up servers via regions anywhere in the world, but that would create hard coded regions which we desperately want to avoid (thus us remerging the PS4 regions this month).

The whole exercise here is to have smarter matchmaking that can group geographically similar folks, at the same fleet levels with a battle server that is "conveniently located". For us to do this cost effectively, we will also have to rewrite the servers to run on Linux (they don't currently). And lastly that also requires a complete matchmaking rewrite, which again, is on the books eventually.

Dark_Incendium#2113 posted (#post-220252) said:

The Onslaught Command ship isn't really worth protecting to be honest, 100k health, peashooter's for guns that literally sound like someone tapping on a tin can and nothing else.

It needs something to make it worthwhile to protect like a weapon or armour boost pulse or maybe even a healing pod pulse.
Machine gun turrets and flechette missiles so it can actually defend itself and its allies, maybe double it's health.

This WILL happen. It's going to take a little while but there will be different command ship difficulties by fleet type eventually. We have folks looking at this and some other tweaks to Onslaught as well. Stay tuned.

As I've posted elsewhere, post Steam launch, the back end team will be taking another look at matchmaking logic and seeing what we can do to try for some improvements. I'm sorry you had some challenges in the T3 to T4 transition. I can agree, that it's not a "slam dunk" until you get a few important modules on your T3s to be able to complete better against the T4s that can have experienced, well organized captains.

I also suspect that once we have a larger player base with Steam and additional languages, most T4 players should be moving into Legendary matches where battle bonuses should drive higher xp and credit gain than vet matches (even if they perform well). That will free up Vets for T3 and newish T4 captains to have room to breathe.