Hello everyone!
I know I promised no new features to the demo, but I had a few ideas that I really wanted to implement that affect the early game in a meaningful way. This, of course, doesn't mean to stop sharing your feedback with us, it will still help us shape the full game, and will still fix game-breaking bugs if found in the demo.
Considering our plans for the future, we are aiming to have a feature-complete game by the end of the year, but we want to avoid releasing it during the Christmas season. So we delay our release until the start of next year, sometime after participating in the February Steam Next Fest. Now onto the patch note itself!
1.4.10 patch note
Visual changes:
- Bloodrage condition (and it's level) is now visually represented on the character if active.
- Stunned condition is now visually represented on the unit while active.
- Units will actually visually raise shield when affected by the raised shield condition.
- Ranged attacks firing animation has been modified to improve clarity.
Gameplay changes:
- New Inquisitor enemies:
- Inquisitor recruit, which replaces the shielded redeemed. This unit provides a more smoother transition for the player toward the more armored Inquisitor variants.
- Inquisitor archer and arbarest, which replaces the two-handed sword using soldier, and the two-handed hammer using soldier. This adds a bit more variance to the Inqusitor enemies, as the last Inqusitor can be either a ranged threat or an armored two-handed axe-wielding soldier, forcing the player to adapt.
- Reworked Assassinate mission. The 2 leaders will be more vulnerable with fewer bodyguards, and they will be stationary till they see a player unit. Their location will be revealed after the combat phase if the player has not found them in the planning phase. The other pods will patrol as usual. This should help to make this mission more distinct from a simple kill of every enemy with guaranteed 2 leaders that was previously.
- Teleport sickness mechanics added. This means every unit after a combat mission will receive the teleport sickness debuff for a few days. This doesn't prevent them from going to further missions, but the penalty for not letting them rest will mean they will get some injuries after the mission (even if they did not suffer any damage). Two new traits have been added as well, Teleport phobia which increases the teleport sickness time, and teleport resistance which completely eliminates it. One of the reasons for including this feature is to make sure the player needs to manage at least 2 teams worth of soldiers improving the importance of training and recruiting soldiers as a result. The other is to better balance the XP spread between ranged and melee troops, as ranged combatants generally take fewer wounds, meaning they could go on more missions.
- Stunned condition has received a mini-rework. Now, it will cancel the target's raised shield, the affected unit has no threat range nor can use any reaction (like attack of opportunity). It will be removed at the start of the unit's next activation. Won't stack.
- Removed the cooldown from the one-handed hammer's stunning strike skill as it is no longer necessary as the stun no longer stacks.
- Increased the minimum damage by 1 and the maximum damage by 2 for ork weapons.
UI changes:
- In the combat layer planning phase, when a unit is selected, the unit's basic commands will be seeable instead of the scrying command.
- When hovering over enemy units while a friendly unit movement command is active will now show the enemy movement range.
Bugfixes:
- Fixed that the scrying command was not being selected when pressing the 1 key.