The biggest and most important changes in today's Battlefield 5 Overture patch

With Battlefield 5's Overture patch now rolling out, DICE has released a whopping 15-pages of patch notes to go along with it.

Some of what's contained in Battlefield 5's Overture patch notes has previously been touched on. Things like the improvement to SMGs, KE7 nerf, and Company Coin and weapon unlock issues were previously detailed.

The 15 pages of patch notes [PDF] may be a bit daunting to go through, so we've been reading and picking the most interesting changes as we go along. See below for the top updates.

New content

• Practice Range
• Vehicle-focused map: Panzerstorm
• Final War Story: The Last Tiger
• Vehicle skin customisation

General

• Improvements for the issue involving infinite loading screens.
• Fixed an issue where vehicle passenger gunner turret animations would not align with where the player was aiming.
• Players no longer get into a soft hang when viewing assignments in-game.
• The automatic spawn when round starts will be disabled in all game modes (except Final Stand).
• The icon above the bomb carriers in Airborne and Frontlines will no longer be visible.
• Conquest catch-up will now only be activated when the losing team is very far behind instead of rounds that are fairly close.
• New Panzerfausts damage model with reduced the maximum damage, but much better damage for poor hits.
• Reduced Panzerfaust damage against tank side and rear hits.
• Increased the direct hit damage of Stationary and Half Track mounted AT guns.
• Reduced LMG and conventional weapon damage to airplanes.
• Ragdolls no longer have strange movement after being dead for a certain amount of time.

Vehicles

• Players occupying top gunner positions in land vehicles are now able to duck down and become somewhat protected from incoming shots.
• Airplane Zooming in first-person will now give 2.5x zoom, allowing for superior scouting of the battlefield and aiming at long range or small targets
• Airplane forward firing machine guns and cannons now start with less ammo.
• The 8x MG specialization on the Spitfire has a new overheat behaviour.
• Tweaked the JU-88 bomber to only carry one 1,000kg bomb and reduced the rate of fire when dropping the 16x50kg bombs.
• Changed the Stuka damage model to be closer to bombers, to improve its intended ground attack role.
• Added reload time to bombs and rockets, after planes re-supply, so that they’re not instantly available after a resupply.
• Refactored flak to deal more consistent damage vs. large planes, and slightly less vs. smaller planes.
• Moved aircraft resupply points further away from the infantry combat areas on most maps, to make Attrition a bigger factor for bomber planes.
• Changed the Stuka damage model to be closer to bombers, to improve its survivability vs. most forms of damage, and strengthen its intended ground attack role.
• Reduced the number of light bombs carried by the Ju-88 A to 16 and also reduced the rate at which they drop from the plane.
• Fixed an issue preventing squad spawning on the Blenheim airplanes.
• Fixed an issue when spawning into vehicle gunner positions that caused the weapon to appear disconnected from the player.

Weapons and gadgets

• Added a confirmation sound when successfully spotting with the Binoculars.
• Smoke Grenade Launcher now properly blocks spotting (including from suppression).
• Players can now disable enemy placed AT Mines and Dynamite by interacting with them when playing as a class that supports it.
• Throwing knife maximum damage range reduced to 6.5m (from 13m).
• Throwing knife maximum capacity reduced to two from six.
• Bolt actions no longer deal slightly reduced damage when hitting the lower body or upper arms.

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Maps and modes

• Fixed an issue on Airborne and Frontlines where the bomb could spawn below the ground.
• Delayed all airplane spawns in pre-round by 30 seconds as an intermediate measure to prevent bombers spawn killing players.
• Frontlines on Twisted Steel: Increased respawn timer on tanks, from 30 seconds to 90 seconds.

UI and HUD

• The in-game chat log will now stay hidden even if the player joins a squad and the player has chosen to hide the chat log.
• Fixed an issue where the social widget was overlapping on the end of round screen.

Misc

• [PC]The social hub no longer closes down if you invite a friend to your squad.
• [PC]Squad leaders are now able to leave and create new squads.
• [PC]Squad members are now able to invite other players into their squad if the previous squad leader leaves.
• [PC]If the player cancels during matchmaking, the game will no longer be stuck in a cancelling state.
• [PS4]If the player loses connection to EA Online it should now be easier to reconnect if the servers are available.

For more on Battlefield 5, give our Battlefield 5 guide a look.