Hi everyone, we’ve released Major Update 5! All the additions and changes are listed below but a quick thank-you to everyone that played the betas and provided feedback – the help is invaluable and greatly appreciated!
The version number for the update is 0.91.29753 or later – check the bottom-right of the main menu to be sure you’ve got the latest.
As usual your profile saves will carry over (i.e. all your equipment, uniform and campaign unlocks), but any in-progress escape run will not – so if you’re in the middle of a campaign and you don’t want to lose any new blueprints you haven’t banked, reach a gate and bank them before switching to the new version. If you want to sync to the previous version to finish a run, we’ve archived MU4 as a beta branch (called "0.9.27757 - Major Update 4").
And now onto the exciting bits…
Prologue!
We’ve redone the start of the game to include a narrative campaign. We felt this important for three reasons:
- The original opening taught the navigator-level mechanics, but wasn’t an exciting or explosive enough introduction to the game
- Your first experience of combat was taking in a lot of mechanics while in a time-pressured environment (a countdown before enemies attacking), which meant some people felt the game was too hard and unwelcoming
- We wanted to bring the Prologue in line with our full release plans for the Initiate, Starfarer and [Redacted] campaigns, where we’ll be adding cinematic sequences that provide a pay-off for victory
The new prologue should greatly improve all those aspects (and was fun for us to make, too!)
The Prologue is split into two sections. The first tells the story of the initial moments of the invasion from the perspective of an engineer on a space station orbiting Earth. The surprise attack wiped out the main resistance aside from a backup system that needs to be activated: The SENTRY Defense Program. We refer to this part as “The Listening Post”.
The second part focuses on navigating to and destroying an alien device that is sat next to a Jump Gate, preventing escape from the system. Completing this will allow the Initiate campaign evacuation effort to commence. We call this section “Operation Pilot Light”.
We previously didn’t allow co-op until you’d completed the original tutorial – which took about 40 minutes. We now unlock co-op when you reach Operation Pilot Light, so if you and a friend got the game to play together you’ll be able to do so a lot sooner (once you’ve finished The Listening Post, which is about 15 minutes).
While new players will naturally see the Prologue, we’ve worked hard to make sure it’s a fun experience even for those who are familiar with SENTRY or interested in the surrounding lore/universe we’ve built – if you already own the game and want to play it, just create a new profile.
Difficulty Modes!
We get a broad variety of feedback regarding difficulty, with a lot of people saying the game is too easy with even more finding it too hard.
For that latter camp, one aspect of addressing this is the introduction of the Prologue. The other way we’re tackling this wide range of difficulty requirements is the addition of new modes that you’ll select when you start a mission.
These choices not only affect the “Threat Level” (i.e. base difficulty) of the boarding parties you encounter, but a variety of modifiers too. These break down as follows:
- Casual has Threat Levels 1, 2 and 3 correlating to each sector. Bosses won’t carry special hazards and crew revival won’t escalate in cost.
- Normal is the default game mode and rules that you’ll be used to, with threat levels 2, 3 and 4 depending on the sector you’re in.
- Hardcore commences at threat level 3 and escalates to threat level 5. In this mode hazards will stack when a sub system gets destroyed and can be cleared when you repair that level. You won’t be able to use crew revival, so will need to rely upon crew pods and merits for new crew. Finally, previously banked blueprints can’t be built so you’ll need Supply Beacons to expand your equipment on the mission
Adding difficulty modes gave us the opportunity to make the ship launch menu look a lot nicer too :)
Operator Enemy Behaviour Overhaul!
The “Operators” are the term we use for the three most common enemy types. The melee-weapon carrying Scrappers, alien pistol/shotgun/burst/assault rifle wielding Raiders, and the alien minigun or shield bearing Assault/Storm Wardens.
Each of these had three tier variants (i.e. the “grunt” grey ones, the “veteran” blue versions and the “elite” red ones). Previously, the main differentiator between them was health, aggressiveness and where you’d face them in a campaign.
These have all had a major rework and our guiding principle has been to:
- Make the grunts feel like they occupy more of a cannon-fodder role
- Add increasing amounts of behaviour throughout the tier levels
- Provide different behaviour per weapon, per tier
This allows us to escalate the behaviour across a campaign, providing a greater feeling of combat variety as you play through each sector. It also ties into the new difficulty modes, so you’re going to see more Veterans and Elites in Hardcore compared to other difficulties, more Grunts in Casual etc.
First up we’ll delve into the Scrappers. We’ve given each tier a different weapon to reflect their behaviour:
Grunts wield a simple club and only perform melee attacks. They won’t dodge when under fire either. The Veteran will have similar behaviour to what you’d be used to in the original game, so they will dodge to the side, perform ranged attacks and do the charging uppercut. The Elite will have more aggressive attack behaviour, will evade grenades and at low health can become enraged – at which point they’ll forgo some of their more advanced behaviour and become focused on melee-ing you. We also made different animation sets to further distinguish their tiers so they’re easier to read in battle.
For the Raiders, each tier can carry any weapon – so first up was making them more distinctive depending on what they’re equipped with:
You sometimes couldn’t parse this in the heat of battle, often only registering what weapon they had when they’re already fired it at you. This change makes them more recognisable so you can react accordingly.
Regarding their behaviour:
- The Elite tiers will perform a dive out of the way of player grenades
- The Elite tier that carries the pistol carries a health vial. If they take damage they’ll use it to replenish their health – but if you kill them before they use it, they’ll drop it on the floor and you can move over it to receive a health boost
- Tier levels and weapons determine whether they can move and shoot, crouch and shoot and the amounts they’ll fire in a burst – the higher the tier, the more they’ll do
- Grunts will no longer throw grenades (so there’s a hell of a lot less enemy grenade spam)
- Only Veteran and Elites that carry the burst weapons will now throw grenades
- The Elite Shotgun wielding alien throws a special EMP grenade that powers down deployables
(Oh and while I’m on the subject of grenades, you may remember that if you throw one and catch a bullet as it left your hand it would blow up in your face. We’ve fixed that now.)
Moving on to the Wardens, they’re split into two types. Storm Wardens wield the shield and flak pistol, while Assault Wardens carry the Plasma Minigun.
The Elite Assault Wardens have gained a spin attack at melee range, while the Veteran and Elite Storm Wardens can initiate a shield charge. The Elites can also perform a rallying cry that makes nearby enemies immune to stagger.
New Enemy!
Speaking of enemies, we’ve added the Bile Pod to the roster. These aren’t traditional enemies that enter via breach points. Instead, these are spawned into levels as a hazard.
They are positioned on the floor and ceilings and are fixed in place. If you get too close to them they enter an alert state – get even closer and they’ll detonate, causing damage within a radius.
You can attack them, but they’ll only enter a dormant state for a period of time before reviving. They also prevent deployables being placed on them, so when these are active in a level you’ll not only have to be mindful of running around freely, but also where you position your traps.
Gamepad Support!
We’ve now implemented gamepad support on all menus and done a pass on the combat controls, too.
Right now the game doesn’t auto-detect which gamepad you’ve plugged in (or if you’re using Steam Deck) but if you’re using a PS5 pad or are on Deck, you can go to the settings menu and adjust the Input Prompt Display to show the buttons for those formats.
Other noteworthy additions!
I’ll put the list of miscellaneous changes in the section at the bottom, but there are some other areas that are worth calling out.
First up is the new Loadout Specialities system. At the start of each mission you can influence the equipment you get assigned by choosing a speciality:
A “Balanced” Speciality is the traditional choice you’re used to in SENTRY, but the following have been added:
- Assault is weighted to weapons versus deployables. You’ll start with more weapon slots, fewer deployable slots, a 5-slot weapon plus 2-slot weapon, no Gear and two deployables. You’ll also commence the run with a weapon-based Tech
- Bastion is the opposite of assault, being more focused on deployables. You’ll get 4 weapon slots but start the run with 4 deployables, plus a deployable-based Tech.
- Overwatch is a speciality focused on turrets. You’ll get 5 weapon slots but only start the run with a single 2-slot weapon. You’ll get a turret plus one other deployable and a dispenser, along with a piece of Tech that combines with turrets.
When you make your choice, you’ll then be shown the equipment you’ve been assigned from the pool you’ve previously banked, but now at least you have some say in how you want to shape your upcoming run.
Aside from the Balanced Speciality, each of the new ones have unlock requirements based around the equipment you’ve banked.
Another area we’ve been reworking is Turrets.
Much like difficulty, we get a lot of conflicting feedback around turrets. Some people find them too weak, whereas others find them overpowered.
Learning good placement is crucial for getting the most out of turrets – and that’ll never change. Bad placement will always mean turrets underperform. However optimal placement should not allow you to AFK while they take care of an entire boarding party!
With those thoughts in our mind, we’ve made the following changes:
- If a turret is destroyed, the base plate remains in place. When the next Prep Phase occurs, the turret will rebuild with a small amount of health and become active again (as long as nothing is blocking it rebuilding).
- Turrets now have ammo. This gets replenished for free in the Prep Phase and you can manually restock individual turrets mid-combat for a scrap cost. This should put a ceiling on their power but allow you some agency to keep them in the fight if you need it. Their health bar now has an ammo indicator underneath.
Next up is the concept of merged boarding parties. If two enemy boarding parties were due to attack the same level they’d attack it one after the other. This meant you’d have to fight two battles in the same location, which could become repetitive. We’ve changed this so that they now merge, meaning you have to fight a single but tougher battle with double the hazards instead.
And last up of the big additions is the Enemy Path Preview.
This has been a popular community request and something we experimented with a long time ago (before the game even released!) but a combination of the visuals and enemy behaviour at the time resulted in a very flat feeling combat experience. This surprised us, but sometimes prototypes don’t work out so we moved on from the idea and filed it away as something to revisit in the future.
Anyway, our latest attempts were much more successful without any of the negative effects we experienced previously, so you’ll now see an enemy path preview during each Preparation Phase:
The path preview will turn red if the enemies are blocked by a closed door with no alternative routes.
Oh and for those that want it old-school, there’s a setting in the Options Menu to disable this if you want.
Other Stuff!
There’s a huge amount of other changes that have gone into this Major Update which you can find below…
Levels:
- Updated Guardian Camera positions
- Chasm: fixed some collision issues and added more space for ceiling deployables around the A and B breach points
- Storage: collision fixes, improved D breach so the enemies have a greater chance of being pushed into the nearby pit, added better trap placement areas near E breach, fixed a hole where you could see out into the skybox, fixed a ledge that enemies could get stuck on. Fixed some z-fighting on decals.
- Hallway: Added an extra wall section for deployable placement near B breach. Added some more ceiling spots for deployables. Fixed some floors that you couldn’t build on.
- Fuel Exchange: Fixed an area that you couldn’t build on.
- The Crossing: Added a better vantage point by the bridge by the C & D breach point
- Mainframe: Fixed a hole you could see out of the level
- Habitation: Added an extra pillar for deployables by the A & B breach points. Fixed an issue where one of the death pits didn’t have a killbox. Fixed a ledge that enemies could get stuck when falling off the edge.
- Changed the colour on the door panels so they stand out more
Equipment:
- Fixed partially broken Tesla Turret upgrades
- Improved weapon animations on DMR and SMG
- All weapons balancing tweaks
- Added a little more ragdoll chance to shotguns
- Improved how weapons look when they dry fire
- Added a visual effect when you place deployables
- Grenade balancing
- Player grenades can only take damage once they collide with something, which reduces the occasions where your grenade would explode in your face if you were being shot by the enemy as you threw it
- Player grenades detonation fuse now only starts after colliding with something, not as soon as it is thrown
- Various deployable balancing
- Reduction in damage from exploding turrets
- Spare mags rebalanced across all weapons
- Added a new crosshair effect to denote when you’re hitting a shield
- Added a dot crosshair for when the Fabricator is equipped
- Increased force from equipment that causes explosions so enemies are thrown a lot further
- Big buff of the force on Pulse Pads
- Reworked the upgrade path on the Traction Pad
- You can now pay scrap to use empty dispensers
Tech:
- Increased the chance of Tech selections that are compatible with the player’s current equipment
- Support for an exclusion list for certain Tech and Equipment combinations. Previously this was just based on the tags, which meant for example a Traction Pad would consider floor damaging Tech an appropriate match (as they both share the floor tag). This exclusion list should reduce the frequency of rolling Tech that isn’t useful to the player’s current equipment
- Increased the chance of bonus damage on the Instagib Tech
- Added the Ceiling tag to the mastered Thermal Discharger
Enemies:
- Rambull, Mutt, Bile Hound, Drone, Ghost and Wardens have had a health decrease
- Volatile Grubs (i.e. the red ones spawned from the hazard) have a decreased lifespan
- Adjusted weapon spread on Raider depending on their state (e.g. crouched)
- Expanded the Raider dialogue for new behaviour
- Other Raider adjustments: Reduction in Elite health, reduced pistol shot amounts, slight reduction in burst rifle accuracy. Made their “aggro” animations shorter and faster. Raiders no longer melee at close range, instead they use their normal ranged attack and try to move away to their desired ranged attack position
- Ghosts now disable turrets rather than damage them
Campaign:
- Reduced starting lives to 3 from 4 (aiming to make pods and the Medical ship more attractive)
- Various Boarding Party balancing tweaks
- Minor tweaks to sector layouts
- Increased the Diverse Deployment value from 5 to 7
- Increased the Quick Draw time limit to 30 seconds (from 15)
- Rebalanced scrap drops
- Improved the boss material rewards
- Changed vessel unlocks so that the Mining ship is unlocked once you beat Initiate and the Science ship is unlocked by finishing Starfarer
- Added a new victory panel to the Starfarer campaign (this serves until we do a cutscene in the full release update)
- Fixed the Storm Warden and Super Raider portrait not appearing in the subsystem information panel
- Added a tooltip to the threat level icons in the subsystem information panel
Audio:
- Add “Pod Malfunction” in-suit dialogue to play when spawning with the Pod Malfunction hazard (used to be called Pod Shortage)
- Added new music for Sector 3
- Changed navigator music so that each sector has its own track
- Added a “typing” sound for text being displayed in various UI panels
Miscellaneous:
- Status effect visual polish (both the VFX and associated HUD visuals)
- Fixed the differing sizes of titles on the Loadout menu tabs
- Changed the setting for “Loadout Double Click” to default to true rather than false
- Renamed “Melee” to “Weapon Bash” so the function is distinct from other usages of the word “melee”. Also renamed “Optional Objectives” to “Tech Challenges”
- Fixed planet turn direction :)
- Increased the character interaction distance (i.e. with doors, dispensers etc.)
- Added a key rebinding option for respawning a SENTRY and triggering the breach early
- Ensured the armour bar in the HUD isn’t displayed if the SENTRY entered the battle with no armour
- Updated credits and newsletter crew names
Bug-fixes:
- Fixed various UI issues at non-16:9 aspect ratios
- Fixed an issue where if a Mastered Tesla had no enemies it could chain the shock effect to, it would insta-kill any enemy regardless of the target’s health
- Improved the client occasionally not seeing all the connecting lines between rooms in the Ship Overview (this happens a lot less now, but we did spot an instance in testing it happened again so not claiming this as 100% fixed yet)
- Fixed an issue with the Pod Malfunction hazard where the After Action Report wouldn’t appear if the player lost by dying, but still had lives remaining
- Fixed the Railgun mastered charge that wasn’t exploding
- Fixed the issue where the game could pause for several seconds when scrolling through the language options in the Interface Settings menu
- Fix for co-op issue where clients could sometimes get stuck on a black screen after a sector change
- Fixed an issue with the Jump Jets where they would trigger in the same frame as jumping if the player was suffering from very low framerates
- Fixed an issue where the Flechette Strip title wasn't being translated in the upgrade menu
- Various translation issues that were flagged by the community have been fixed
Phew! Thanks for reading this far! Please keep sending us your feedback as it’s immensely helpful. We log everything into a big tracker to help shape our future work, a lot of which you can see reflected in this major update.
The next big update we’re planning is the full release one. We’ve been gradually doing passes and reworking most major systems and there’s a few left that haven’t received this treatment yet – we’ll of course share our plans for these through the monthly Dev Transmissions. In the short term we’ll keep an eye on anything that may be suitable for a patch – and once the translators have done their work we’ll update the non-English languages too.
As ever, we hope you like the latest Major Update and we massively appreciate your support :)
The Fireblade Crew
