Hi
For this patch I have several new skills for the soldiers (and changes to some existing ones), some major fixes to combat using height and even changes to some existing maps to take advantage of these fixes.
Let's go in detail:
New Skills:
- Cloaking: with this skill, an Assassin can become invisible to enemies for a few turns or until they shoot a target or receives damage.
- Retaliation: this passive skill allows a Human Mercenary to respond with fire if they receive normal ranged fire (and there's ammo available).
- Dodge Overwatch: this skill makes any Raider (human or Krell'Sha) immune to overwatch fire.
- Melee Blocking : this skill makes any Raider (human or Krell'Sha) able to block melee attacks that come from the front. The blocking skill do not work against critical hits or flanking attacks.
- Charge: this passive skills adds a critical chance bonus per every cell moved when executing a melee attack (applies only to Raiders).
- Quick Shot: this skill allows an Assassin to take a sidearm shot without expending action points. It does have a minor hit and crit chance debuff though.
- Final Firing Position is now passive: this Assassin skill now activates automatically at the start of the turn if the Assassin is in cover.
NOTE: some of the skills have made some classes way more powerful than others but I plan to keep adding more skills to the rest too. Also if some of them are too overpowered (like the Assassin skills) I might tweak their requirements or conditions in a future patch.
Map Changes:
- Modified "Snowed Infested Settlement" with towers and a landing pad. I also added "XenoEgg Traps", these are egg clusters that react to close soldiers and spawn larvas (some of them can be inactive, this is determined by a random chance that increases with difficulty).
- Modified "Jungle Abandoned Outpost" map with new assets (now it's basically a small fort that uses more height in combat). I also added random starting positions to it and changed the skybox.
- Modified "Stranded Krell'Sha in Alien Planet" map with outpost assets. Now the mission is about Krell'Sha taking a Guild outpost and there's more random starting positions.
- Modified "Desertic Settlement" map with guard towers and a landing pad.
- Modified "Alien Diaspora Camp" map with some new observation towers.
- Modified "Infested Pirate Ship" map by adding some XenoEgg traps.
These are the ones I managed to modify in these last few days but I also plan to improve the rest to make them more interesting.
Minor content, changes and fixes:
- Added a few beards to the male human classes (they are in the "Lower Face Accessories" list).
- Added minimum distance stats to some weapons. This means that weapons like sniper rifles have a penalty when aiming at close targets but a buff when aiming at distant targets (this in turn makes pistols more useful for Assassins).
- Fixed an issue where the wrong weapon stats were used in the hit and crit chance formula (especially for melee weapons).
- Changed the Health bonus per level to +1 every 3 levels.
- Changed height bonuses to +5 hit and crit chance per meter.
- Fixed an issue where the cover of a prop could overwrite the cover of another close prop. Now both cover values are combined.
- Fixed an issue where the camera would make a "jump" trying to follow an enemy that's shooting after reloading.
- Now loot containers can be opened by clicking them directly (as long as a soldier is next to it) instead of just using the action button. Also added sound and an extra visual effect to it.
- Tweaked jump, vault and landing animations for bipeds when leaving a high platform.
- Modified some jumping animations to use with xenobeasts when they are climbing a ladder.
- Added new surprise/trap spawns mechanic (for now it only works with xenoegg traps but I plan to use this mechanics to add more surprise enemies like xenobeasts that jump from vents or from underground).
- Added sound effect to bodies hitting the ground.
- Fixed an issue where some projectiles would have a wrong rotation or be fired from a wrong position.
- Changed the way the movement range outline is drawn so the cells in a high position are drawn correctly.
- Fixed an issue where a melee attack could affect a target with a different height.
- Changed the way the camera follows a unit making a melee attack, now it follows from normal height instead of shoulder height.
- Fixed a rare issue where enemies would get stuck in their turn if they couldn't plot a path to their target when using melee attacks. Now if they have no possible path or alternative target, they will hunker down.
- Fixed an issue where the image in the Loot panel in the Star Map could be empty.
- Fixed a collider issue that made hard to click the holographic buttons in doors.
- Other minor changes and internal fixes.
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Thanks for reading and following the project, if you want to support me further please consider leaving a review.
My objective with all these patches (and the major ones I have planned) is to turn around this project even if it takes time and maybe reach more players. Hopefully hard work will pay off in the end (but if not, I plan to use what I learn with this project in future games, I have tons of ideas and I love turn based games).
Regards,
Jorge