Meridian Trigger 0.62.0-beta

For Minecraft 1.21.1 (NeoForge). The second public beta: everything since 0.56.0-beta.

Highlights

• Every trion soldier redrawn after the series, with the series' names, sizes and behaviour: Rabbits capture trigger users, Bamsters carry captives in their mouths, the Bander fires its eye beam.
• NPC agents fight far smarter: they read your weapon, fight gun-to-gun from cover, use squad tactics, hold Shields up and raise Raygust's Shield Mode, and snipers climb roofs and look for a new angle.
• Hired agents form real squads: faction squads led by NPCs, whole NPC squads for hire, and agents you can move between squads from the Faction page.
• Outbreaks reworked: led by a Gate Rad, sized to who's fighting, and a place left too long is OVERRUN.
• Rank Wars: three-way matches with NPC teams, squad rivals, choosing the map, and seasons that end on their own.
• NPC talk is out of chat: duelist cards and Rank War ready checks are windows, and what NPCs say shows in speech bubbles.
• A feel pass on every trigger: hit markers, a sound and recoil for every gun, a ring for every blade, and a flash showing where a hit came from.

Triggers and combat

• The kill goes to whoever landed the last hit.
• A trion body holds 150. NPC agents hold 150 at C-rank, 175 at B-rank and 240 at A-rank.
• Every blade blow costs trion when it connects. A blow you can't pay for still lands, but breaks the blade for 5 seconds.
• Your role's own type of weapon costs 25% less to use and reserves 40% less.
• Shields are three times as strong, and anything a Shield or a Raygust guard stops costs 5 trion a point.
• Vanilla weapons used from inside a trion body deal 35% damage to trion bodies.
• Bullets push back half as hard as a blade blow.
• Shooter: a cube now comes whole. R splits it straight into your chosen split (x8 / x27 / x64), and R with no cube in hand changes the split. A split cube fires one layer per click; hold to keep firing.
• Starmaker is a toggle (V + R): while it's on, every shot costs 3 extra trion and marks what it hits.
• Snipers have no ammo slot; a chip loaded earlier is given back at the bench. The Grenade Launcher always fires Meteor.
• Reloads and cubes cost more depending on the ammo: Asteroid is cheapest, then Viper, Hound, Meteor, with Lead the most expensive.
• Raygust hits harder and can riposte after a guard.
• Scorpion reaches 2.5 blocks. Mantis and Mole Claw reach 6, and Mole Claw's lift no longer stacks with a jump.
• Gen'yō readies a bending blow that curves round Shields and guards (+1.5 reach).
• Escudo: raising one out of a wall shoves you along it. Escudo walls and Dummy Beacons take your Master colour.
• Grasshopper: the dash goes the way you face. A pad placed in mid-air stands upright and throws people sideways. A pad can't be dispelled for 1.5 seconds after you place it.
• Switch Box: sneak + V + R clears every mark.
• Teleporter shows where you'll land. Idaten points must be within 20 blocks of each other and of you, and it runs along the ground.
• Composite bullets (Gimlet, Hornet) are switched off for now.

Looks and feel

• A hit marker on the crosshair when a hit of yours lands, bigger for vital hits.
• Each blade rings its own way when it lands.
• Each gun has its own report and recoil.
• Snipers make a rising tone while charging and chime when the shot is ready.
• A red flash at the screen edge and a direction arc when you're hit.
• New in-hand models and icons for the triggers. Kogetsu, Scorpion and Raygust are redrawn closer to the anime, and Sōgetsu is a crescent axe.
• Yellow trion motes, a green Shield that cracks, an azure Grasshopper pad, a Teleporter trace and white-hot bullet cores.
• The agent uniform is painted into your skin while in a trion body, so it shows with any skin, in first person and with Epic Fight's animations.
• Guns are aimed one-handed, so two guns, or a gun and another trigger, both show.

Trion soldiers and gates

• All 14 soldiers redrawn, with the series' names and sizes. Bamsters are twice as big, and the Bander and Ilgar are 1.6x.
• Spawn ids now use the series' names, e.g. /summon meridiantrigger:bamster. Soldiers and spawn eggs from older worlds still load as the same kind.
• They act like the series:
  • Rabbits capture trigger users.
  • Bamsters hold captives in their mouths, and go for villagers and NPC agents first.
  • The Bander fires a straight eye beam, and Dogs and Idras have beams.
  • The Bado watches, then weaves in close and low.
• The anime-only soldiers (Scare, Pneura, Guries, Melissa) are off by default.
• Gates draw fewer big soldiers. Bamsters and Rabbits only come through gates.
• In the wild you'll meet Bado watchers and lone Marmods or Dogs, and wild soldiers leave civilians alone.
• Soldiers break into houses to reach you and dig out a target standing on a pillar.
• They prefer a Trigger-On agent over a civilian, and give up on a target they can't reach.
• Tanks and assault soldiers are tougher, and gate soldiers are retuned.
• Large gates scale with at most 3 players.
• Soldiers walk in step at their own size, and big soldiers measure their reach from their edge, which is why Bamsters couldn't hit anyone before.
• Bailing out clears every soldier's target on you.

Outbreaks, threat and bases

• An outbreak is led by a Gate Rad: it comes through the first gate and opens more gates where it stands. Destroy it and the gates stop.
• An outbreak is sized to who's fighting it: smaller for a C-rank, and the Neighbor squad only lands when a B-rank or higher is fighting.
• An outbreak you walk away from carries on where it stopped next time, instead of opening a fresh ring of gates.
• Overrun: an outbreak not cleared in time leaves the place OVERRUN. A garrison of soldiers holds it until someone clears it, for half the reward.
• If an outbreak drags on, Border agents and squads come to help.
• Sirens, gates and defense events give more time. Events end when the gates are really closed and no soldiers are left, and the HUD's threat clock stops while the game is paused.
• Only those who hit a soldier in an outbreak share its reward.
• Trion Reinforcer:
  • Pays once per blast, not once per block.
  • Holds 3,000 charge, and each core adds 250.
  • Has a 5-slot core store (right-click with an empty hand).
  • Hoppers and pipes feed Turrets and Reinforcers.
• The Training Console now only protects blocks from a player in training mode, so the Reinforcer is what holds a base.
• Every new Border base comes with two charged Reinforcers. The roof hut has a doorway, a light and a Gate Detector.
• Base duelists answer gates and hunt the soldiers on their radar, and agents at bases clear hostile mobs around them.

NPC agents

• They fight against the weapon you're holding:
  • A shotgun agent closes in to its real range.
  • A gunner keeps blades at arm's length.
  • An attacker comes at a gun from cover to cover, weaving, with its Shield up.
• Gun against gun is fought from cover: bursts from beside a firing post, reloads behind it. A charge the bullets keep pushing back, such as against a Gatling, becomes a creep from cover to cover.
• Squad tactics come from a squad's make-up (Overwatch, Crossfire, Snare, Blitz, Kite). Squads focus cracked and isolated enemies, and a lone agent pressed by two or more gives ground towards its squad.
• Rank shows: C-ranks aim and land blows less reliably than A-ranks.
• They move like players: speed follows Mobility, and a leap is never higher than a player's jump.
• Snipers:
  • Climb to roofs, using a Grasshopper pad if they carry one.
  • Fire a mostly charged shot instead of restarting the charge.
  • Find a new angle on an enemy close by that they can't see.
  • No longer show a red aiming line.
• They hold their Shield up under fire and on the way in to a gun. A Raygust user raises Shield Mode while it closes under fire.
• They open doors, smash glass and leaves in their way, and never strike through a wall.
• An agent shut away from its target redeploys beside it. A target that's dug in or up a pillar is waited out from cover.
• They never run into a map's barrier.
• In a Rank War they only know what they could know: radar, sight and whoever hit them. They never stand idle.
• NPC gunners and shooters use Lead Bullet. Border agents no longer carry Meteor or the Grenade Launcher.
• An NPC agent can be taken out while it rebuilds after a Bail Out.

Hired agents, squads and factions

• The Agents page on a Mission Board:
  • A Squads view lists the NPC squads nearby. Hire one whole for your faction, or challenge it to a squad match.
  • There's a random C-, B- or A-rank squad to challenge.
  • Agents are grouped by squad (yours first), each with a squad tag.
• Mission Boards placed inside a faction base hire agents too.
• NPC-led faction squads:
  • An agent hired for the faction joins one of these squads, or captains a new one, at most four to a squad.
  • They take faction squad places, and each is named after its captain ("Honda Squad"), renamed when the captain changes.
• The faction's leader:
  • Moves agents between squads from the Faction page. Moving into or out of a player squad needs that squad captain's permission.
  • Can let an NPC squad go.
• A squad's captain can Remove a member from the Squad page.
• The defender limit holds for hiring, the Defend order and moves alike.
• Follow and Hold are only for your own squad's agents.
• An agent set off duty keeps its place in its squad.
• Triggers beyond an agent's default kit cost their chips; you get them back on Default or release.
• Sneak + right-click one of your faction's agents for its card.
• Recall agents on the Rank War page pulls your agents out of a match. A squad can't be left or broken up mid Rank War.
• Squad point share: squad mates within 32 blocks of a soldier kill get 15% of its points. They must have moved or used a trigger in the last minute, so idling earns nothing.
• Squad missions: one member takes it, the whole squad shares it.
• Faction page:
  • The engineers are a row under the squads.
  • The leader can let members set which soldiers the engineers summon.
  • The faction lists count NPC squads and agents.

Rank Wars

• Three-way Rank Wars with NPC teams: two NPC squads, or a player squad and an NPC squad, from a duelist's card or the Rank War page's NPC tab. The NPC teams must be the same rank.
• Pick a map when you challenge, or leave it random.
• "3v3" is now Squad match, and a rival squad match brings the whole squad and every on-duty agent.
• A Rank War is a simulation: afterwards your trion, body and rebuild wait are put back as they were.
• A match ends 20 seconds after the last player is out, or the NPCs left in it fight it out to the end (a server setting).
• A Bail Out forced by a hit is the hitter's point. One nobody forced is nobody's, and a real death counts as a take-out.
• Take-outs show the points on your trigger, and a win pays a share onto it.
• In a three-way, the last side standing gets +2 if it took someone down.
• Points won from NPC duelists are capped per day.
• Seasons can end on their own after a set number of days.
• Rank War maps are rebuilt after every battle, and nothing in them is worth mining.

Rivals

• Squad rivals: after 3 Rank Wars together, a squad gets a rival squad of its own (hired agents count). Beat it to unlock its emblem shape for the whole squad.
• A rival waits 5 minutes for your answer, and a refused rival squad waits its cooldown before coming back.
• A rival's lines show as bubbles to your squad mates nearby too.

Joining Border

• The entrance patrol goes straight from the last checkpoint to the gate scene. There the patrol's rival kills the gate soldier and waits for you to talk.
• Joining Border is a window.
• No gates open around civilians on their own. If someone else's gate opens near one, their future rival's squad lands to clear it.
• A civilian pressing J is told to join Border and where the nearest base is, or the server's hub.

Side Effects

• Side Effects are back: one awakens at random at B-rank. A Side Effect Scan from a level 3 Trion Engineer (48 cores) rolls a different one.
• Each one now does something in a fight:
  • Animal Talk: nearby animals give away a hostile trion body.
  • Sleep Memory: rested after waking, with faster regeneration.
  • Keen Hearing: hears hostile trion bodies within 24 blocks, Bagworm or not.
  • Emotion Sense: feels someone holding you in their sights.
  • Danger Stealth: half radar range against you while you sneak.
• An On/Off switch on the Profile page.

The End

• Bailing out in the End lands you on the End's spawn platform.
• Until the dragon is beaten, patrols only come near crewed ships, and crews leave Trigger-Off players alone.
• Bail Out Beacon (new block): your next Bail Out in that dimension lands there.

Interface

• The agent file has a Points tab, and the Profile shows what your next rank still needs.
• Speech bubbles are drawn over the speaker's head on your screen, so nothing in the world hides them.
• The radar shows enemies just below you, and the disc tilts towards your eye.
• HUD messages stack, hand labels fade, and Bail Out shows a ring.
• The guide is in seven parts with a clickable contents page, and is easier to read.
• Many smaller layout and wording fixes across the agent file, Mission Board and Faction page.

World

• In new worlds, cities are 2,048 blocks apart (old worlds keep theirs). A duel ground that lands on a city moves instead of vanishing.
• Treetops cut off at a city's edge are cleared away, and new city chunks are tidied before you see them.

Commands

• New operator commands: /mt trion set, /mt level start, /mt threat clear, /mt arena restore.
• Commands that take a player suggest online names only.
• /mt trion refill only refills.
• /mt ai and /mt balance are removed.

For server owners: new settings

• rankWars.npcsFightOn: NPCs fight on after every player is out.
• rankWars.randomNpcSquads: random NPC squads to challenge.
• rankWars.simulationKeepsTrion: restore trion after a Rank War.
• rankWars.npcSquadmatesInPvP has a new PLAYERS_ONLY choice.
• soldiers.animeSoldiers: the anime-only soldiers (off by default).
• soldiers.capturePlayers: whether capture soldiers can grab players.
• blocks.soldiersBreakIn: soldiers break in after a target.
• threat.overrun: places can be OVERRUN.
• gates.spareCivilians: no gates around civilians.
• trion.regenWaitsForCombat: Trigger-Off regeneration waits until you're out of combat.
• trion.sideEffects: Side Effects on or off.
• level.squadPointShare: squad point share.
• missions.rewardAtSiteOnly: pay only those who came to a mission's site.
• seasons.lengthDays: seasons end on their own.
• bases.hubPointer: point civilians to your hub.

Updating

• Worlds from 0.56.0-beta load: soldiers saved under their old ids come back as the same kind, and existing cities change as their buildings are restored.
• The client and the server need the same version of the mod.