December 4 2020, 12/11 update 41 preview
To our brave space conquerors: It’s that time of year again! ‘Tis the time to be jolly! Well, of course I’m talking about the bi-weekly Earth From Another Sun update preview time! What else?
--- The Really Important Stuff ---
In Alpha 41, there will be a new conquest battle scenario, “Space Intruders”, where your very own space fortress gets raided by a hostile armada! You will have to defend yourself with your own fleet, with numerous types of military spacecraft (AI-controlled, not pilotable yet).
Your cool superhero flight has some new VFX, new sound effects and more fluid dodging! Think you can take down the intruder’s mothership? Be careful to not touch the new space mines and not get caught in the lines of fire of the laser and missile turrets (they hurt).
These conquest battle scenarios act as temporary holders of the combat features of the Conquest Campaign, which we have been working on every bi-weekly sprint, but not available to play yet (it’s not really playable without most of its features implemented, which is why these battle scenarios are available to play so you can still test out the combat features without starting a Conquest Campaign).
Eventually, when you enter a combat encounter during your galactic conquest, the encounter will be dynamic, meaning the placements of important map features are determined by the player or the AI.
For example, if you have a city, you can lay out its defenses to your liking. You will be able to place walls, turrets, patrols, bunkers and other important combat elements the way you see fit.
--- Other Updates ---
In the Giant in the Plains scenario, the giant mech will not walk on air anymore, because our talented engineers have implemented IK (Inverse Kinematics) so that his feet will always touch the ground. And if they do not, please spam me with pictures of levitating mech feet.
Another thing I personally quite enjoy is the brand-new lottery machine and scratch tickets, available in the Roguelike Adventure! If you’re not a gambler, you can simply enjoy the new loot effects made with care by our new VFX artist. (YAY, we finally have a VFX artist!) They don’t look that different but they are super-optimized for extreme performance!
Still not convinced? What if I told you we might have balanced the game? (MIGHT is the big word here) We’ve made many changes to the numbers in the game, drastically changing the difficulty curve to create a better experience and flow state, and we really need feedback on this so we hope you’ll play!
You will now be able to see your allies’ movement when they pilot vehicles in multiplayer, thumbs up to our network engineer for this one!
There are quite a few bug fixes as well. Of course, we have also been hard at work writing new bugs (wink wink)
Oh, and before we forget we held a community poll to decide the focus of the next update, and the community spoke! For update 42 you will receive a brand new, pilotable, bipedal mech! Head there if you want to vote in the next poll! https://discord.gg/R3CSBED
That’s it for today. Have a good one my friends!
P.S. There will soon be a public roadmap on our website where you can view all the features that we are working on, planned, and completed. You will be able to suggest new features and give feedback (and we LOVE feedback)! We hope you will find this roadmap helpful and informative.
With love,
Anthony and Freeman
Your cranky community manager and gung-ho producer.