Rivals pre-alpha patch 3 July 2018

The 3 July 2018 patch for Command & Conquer: Rivals was the game's fourth official patch, which affected the game's balance but not the build number.

Announcement
On 2 July 2018, game designer Greg Black announced the focus points of the patch.

Changes
We decided to make some quick tweaks to promote some of the early game diversity we lost when making the Warfactory buffs. Most of those changes are left in place but we've reduced the effectiveness of the Rhino & Buggy to make Barracks openings more viable.

Dr. Liang

 * Repair Drone full heal time increased to 30 seconds (was 20)

Sniper Team

 * Damage vs Infantry increased to 120 (was 100)

Rhino

 * Attack Duration increased to 0.75 seconds (was 0.6)
 * This reduces the Rhino’s rate of fire and lowers it’s DPS.

Riflemen

 * Damage vs Vehicles reduced to 15 (was 30)

Buggy

 * Attack Duration increased to 0.7 seconds (was 0.56)
 * This reduces the Buggy’s rate of fire and lowers it’s DPS.

Attack Bike

 * Attack Duration reduced to 4.25 (was 5.0)
 * Damage reduced to 240 (was 300)
 * These combine for a small reduction in Attack Bike DPS.

Militiants

 * Damage vs Vehicles reduced to 15 (was 30)

Map Update Notes
We've been investigating map balance & bugs across the game and have made some initial quick fixes. We'll be continuing our work on maps with an eye on making some larger changes in the future.

Map Spawn Points

 * Some maps have had their unit spawn points moved to create better gameplay.

Harvester Automation

 * We examined Harvester automation and found that in some cases it was causing harvesters to move into dangerous situations (and in some cases it was outright broken). Harvesters look at the Tiberium fields as being part of a friendly group, a shared group or an enemy group. They will automatically mine friendly & shared groups. We've removed some fields from shared groups where it was getting Harvesters into trouble.
 * When a Harvester runs out of valid Tiberium it will stop moving. You can manually send it into peril if you desire.

Map Pools

 * Sectors 1, 2 and 3 now share the same pool of maps. This will increase early progression map variety.
 * In Sectors 4+, players now have access to all 5 maps in each set. This will increase the variety of maps players experience across the game.
 * You'll now play on maps with 3 Missile Platforms more frequently than maps with 2 Missile Platforms. We think the 2-platform maps add nice texture to the game, but they were showing up too frequently and matches on them tend to run longer.