Randomness control, difficulty modes and a new specialist - Early Access Update #9
This update is immense. In terms of making the game more fun it is probably the most impactful we have released yet. Here is a quick overview:
More control over the randomness in your builds
Difficulty selection
Balance rework
New specialist - Phasewalker
Heat modes - late game challenge
BLUEPRINT POOLS - A LITTLE LESS RANDOMNESS = A LOT MORE FUN
Update 9 addresses one of the biggest issues in the game: until now the only way to control how you build your deck is unlocking the rerolls every 10 XP Levels. This led to a bigger and bigger pool of choices which made it harder and harder to control the composition of your deck throughout a run. And while randomness will always be a part of Rogue Command, this was not satisfying. 
With this update we are introducing the concept of themed blueprint pools. So instead of just getting fully random choices you will get some information about the choices. So you might get pools for Tanks, Burning and Healers. Or turrets, support buildings and armored units.
In our testing and according to the feedback from our beta branch players (thank you to our discord community <3 !!!) this makes the deck building a lot more fun.
DIFFICULTY MODES - CHOOSE YOUR CHALLENGE LEVEL
RTS-Games are hard to learn. And Rogue Command is supposed to be a challenging game. But what that means for each player can be so vastly different that we needed to offer a way to adjust this. You can now choose your difficulty level at the start of each run.
This does not affect any of the progress, XP unlocks or Heat Levels. Just set it to where you have the most fun.
Just because we like to punish ourselves does not mean you have to.
HEAT MODES - ENDLESS CHALLENGE
For the players who have mastered the game there is also a new (still a bit experimental) way to keep pushing through ever increasing stages of hardship - The Heat Levels.
After beating Ascension 10 on the current patch you will unlock the Heat Mode selector in the Run Setup. Each Heat Level makes the enemies stronger with more HP and more damage. Counted in roman numerals this mode is theoretically endless and in our discord we saw people already pushing this way further than we ever thought possible. How far can you push it?
BTW, difficulty is independent of Heat, so if you choose a lower mode you can still enter the gauntlet, at your own pace.
BALANCE CHANGES
The balance has more or less been completely reworked. The goal is to have more action but less “spammy” enemies. Scarier big units and more easily disposed of smaller harassers. We are still not done. But in terms of how we want the game to feel this is a huge step in the right direction.
The basic challenge has increased, so feel free to adjust the difficulty setting if it does not feel enjoyable.
NEW SPECIALIST - THE PHASEWALKER
Jump your army across the battlefield and hit the enemy where it hurts! A powerful fighter in its own right, the Phasewalker shines by providing your army with a way in and out of fights and simultaneous powerful buffs. The added mobility makes playing with it feel very different to the other specialists.
We can not wait to see the builds you will come up with around it.
NEW CONTENT
On top of a new specialist, there is also a couple of new blueprints.
The Buckler Mech: Combining a great protective active ability with heavy melee attacks.
Missile Truck: super long range multi missile artillery unit
Weather Tower: a turret / super weapon combo with a powerful stun strike ability
And some more cool new Hacks and Upgrades that add depth to systems that were a bit neglected. More to come for sure!
BETA BRANCH UPDATES
If you want to get all the updates early and help us test out the new changes, you can switch your game to the Beta branch in your Steam library. Right click -> Properties -> Betas and select the beta from the dropdown menu.
See the full list of changes below.
FULL CHANGELIST
NEW CONTENT:
New Specialist Phase Walker
New Unit: Buckler Mech
New Unit: Missile Truck
New Support Turret: Weather Tower - powerful turret and global stun wielder.
New Hack: Ancient Protection
New Hack: Abrasive Bounty
New Hack: Long Reach
New Enemy Variant - CF Tank Patrol
New enemy unit - PCX CF Tank
New enemy variant: PCX Elite Deconstruction Division
Themed starter blueprint selection
Additional passive effects for Support Tank and Mantis Specialists.
Objective to hunt a mobile PCX Controller in L1 or L2
New enemy unit: PCX CF Burner
Added active ability to Sniper Racer that summons a SpyCam
ASCENSION CHANGES:
Ascension effects have been reworked a lot.
Highlights is that Elite and Boss Enemies now get specific benefits at certain Ascensions.
And enemies can get a chance to build “Overclocked” units.
GENERAL CHANGES OR IMPROVEMENTS:
Wisdomes cannot be targeted by ai anymore
The first upgrade of a card can now influence the possibility of assigning the second upgrade of the card (e.g. Armored Attack upgrade can now be assigned to a blueprint with Armor-Up-Upgrade that had no armor originally)
opening in-game menu, card view or deck view while in slow mode will now return into slow mode after closing it
Introduced Heat Level after last Ascension is beaten
Introduced difficulty modes
Now it's possible to order an attack move via minimap
Battle Preview Widget now also shows ascension and stage
Database: sort by name as default
Rerolls in the shop now also refills slots of bought items.
Intermission screen now contains themed blueprint selections.
Removed ability to build buildings on top of enemy units.
Missile Truck now needs to deploy to attack
Added duration info to Mantis specialist hacks
Enemy or neutral buildings lying behind secondary fog of war now can be clicked and card info can be retrieved
The deck can now be viewed again in the run results screen
BUG FIXES:
Critical Burn upgrade can now only be applied to cards that deal attack damage
Building Drop now destroys things like spider spawns and robo cores instead of letting them stuck beneath it
While having multiple units selected and choosing target skill location the effect range circle will now update depending on which unit will cast its spell
Made it more likely that no ai start building lies next to player start
Boulder Turret Attack works more reliably
Don’t let PCX units target stealthed player units with their skill
Fixed Brazilian Heal Tower description
IncendiaryAmmo now can only be applied to damage dealers
Upgrades that change the area of skills or attacks can no longer be applied to lightning tower
RangeUp upgrade can no longer be attached to Furnace
While performing attack move now new targets are chosen within sight or weapon range (depending on what is higher) instead of sight range only
Factory Glitch Drop and Factory Charger now work even if the factory is all queued up
Don’t show crystal collect confirmer when Core Harvesters get a move command onto a crystal cell
Fixed Boulder Turret dealing friendly damage.
Don’t stack selection sounds
Combat Engineer: don't teleport freshly produced units into map corners (where they stuck)
Crystals can no longer be damaged by anything (except by harvesters)
Prohibit walking on small cliffs diagonal to buildings because units might get stuck
Prevent all healers from trying to heal allies, that can not be healed.
Fixed a memory leak in the procedural mesh generation process
Hack Faster attacks works correctly now
Engineers can not be replicated by transport glitch hack.
Reclaimer works correctly now
Fixed some memory leaks
Fixed some problems with layer borders introduced in the last update
Robo medic heal line showing on card fixed
Fixed some problems with layer borders introduced in the last update
Tooltips now have a minimum distance to the borders
Only select all units of same type if double clicking on same unit
If blueprint is not yet unlocked it will not appear as reward in a specialised blueprint pool. If the pool contains not enough cards to choose from, it will be changed to the default pool.
If AI unit cancels stealth of player entity because it is next to it, show entity as unstealthed again
Fixed following behaviour while auto-attacking: the follower changed to its weapon range as follow distance and does not anymore
Attack cooldown has now a minimum value of 0.025 (and thus attack rate has an upper limit)
Hit box size on small PCX Slimes increased.
Spy Tower should show up in Support Building Pools
PCX Scouts should not interfere with volumetric fog
Skill widget stat texts should no longer line break
Healing Frugality now only checks for Harvester Factories and still works, when other types of refinery entities are on the map.
Fixed the PCX Overseer card texts
Fixed Infectious Extraction giving hidden stat boost
(hopefully fixed) audio issues when zoomed out too far.
Engineer Particles should no longer shine through the deck view background
missing Sniper Tag on Missile Truck added
callback spire no longer showing in “spawner” pools
Fixed “Solo” passive on sniper racer.
Small layout fixes to the run result screen
Fixed interaction between Hover Harvester passive rate increase and rate increase from active skill.
Run Results Screen: Deck Overview can now be closed correctly using escape
Vengeful silicone can no longer stun mantis when it kills friendly with redirect damage.
Fire Mech Projectile hit more reliably and projectile count matches description
Fixed error where enemy sometimes could no longer build Abductotrons
Phase Walker Teleport no longer affects Harvesters.
CF RespawnBackpacks only work when origin is AI
Cargo only triggers on the first ever built Harvester Factory.
BALANCE CHANGES:
PCX Prison HP reduced
PCX Abductotron Skill charge up more visible / audible
Crystal Towers no longer a possible base location for PCX
Robo Harvester - Capacity 15 -> 10
Armored Harvester - Capacity 80 -> 60 / Rate 8 -> 6
Hover Collector - Cost 240 -> 260 / Rate 5 -> 4
Core Harvester - HP 50 -> 30
Kill charge upgrade charges 0.5 MP instead of 2.
Recycler HP reduction 25 instead of 30%
Support Tank HP bonus 25% instead of 20%.
Mantis starting hack reduces attack by 10% instead of 20%. Added 25% move speed bonus for melee.
Mantis Cap raised to 4, cost from 400 to 250 crystal.
Light Artillery Cap raised cost reduced.
Support Tank - Added passive Heal aura. Cost 160 to 140, DMG 9 to 12, Attack Cooldown 2.5 to 1.5, Skill Duration 30 to 25
A lot smaller changes to the enemy starting building configurations.
Blink Walker enemy nerfed.
Strength and Turbo effects reduced.
made some of the simple PCX units slightly stronger.
Shields amount decreased on a lot of units and upgrades, decreased Shield recharge cooldown and increased recharge per second.
Almost all PCX units +10 HP
Player turrets caps raised and adjusted some damage and hp
Tweaked the variables for the enemy attack behavior a bit.
Complete Mantis rework
Team Taker upgrade attack rate impact reduced
Multi Grenade Van Projectiles are homing now
Duplication ray can no longer target buildings
Bounty bot skill damage adjusted upwards to make up for the shield decrease
Rocket Walker shields increased and HP slightly decreased.
Adjusted collision sizes on PCX small and mid slimes.
Harvest Tuner rate increase 25% instead of 15.
Tunneler enemy variant setup adjusted.
Material Transfer has a max stack of 10 Armor now.
A lot of changes to enemy units and enemy variants. The general goal is to have less unit spam in higher ascensions. A more difficult base level of difficulty. A better spread of the enemy bases.
Recycler has a new passive aura effect (experimental).
Mantis starts with 1 cap limit. Gains another with the specialist hacks.
Protected Start no longer affects spawns.
Further enemy variants changed to do less unit spam.
Heat 0,10,20,30,40 and 50 now reduce enemy attack cooldowns by 5%
Heat damage increase reduced to 2.5% per heat level.
Heat: Added additional factories to Boss enemies from Earlier Ascensions added to the random rotation in heat runs.
Mantis rebalance - MP cost rises per skill use. Base damage increased.
Phase Walker rebalance
Vampirism heal cap introduced
more tweaks to some enemy setups
PCX Corrosive Tractor armor reduction duration increased but capped at 0
Increased the heal on Defender Heal upgrade
Increased damage granted by Death Lesson Upgrade
Buffed Sole Income Hack
Decreased Wall Block Armor and raised HP
PCX Tacticonnections summon more reinforcements on Ascension 6+ and 9+