Hello Mercs!
This week's focus was on more immediate bug fixes, some quality of life changes based on your feedback and further balance changes of the game. I've also started preparing for new mission content to be added in the coming months.
Please post your issues and suggestions in Discord or the forums. Thank you!
BUG FIXES
- Card details for mercs with a large number of status effects go out of bounds at bottom of the screen.
- Unlocking skill mastery (18 points in tree) does not visually flag skills with 3/5 ranks which can be upgraded further.
- Remaining training points are not changing on the merc cards after using Respec and spending points again into any weapon training.
- Mercs are seen glitching across multiple cards on some encounters of mission Tunnel West.
- Mercs drawn in hand and left unplayed are sometimes seen not to return on the next combat encounter.
- Grenade damage dealt to adjacent targets is not 1/2 of the primary damage dealt, as indicated on the card.
- Player is unable to stash away loot items or give items to mercs on Area Cleared.
CARD CHANGES
- Skills Propane Tank and Siphoned Petrol now explain the stacking fire damage in card details.
- Skill Snap lighter has been rebalanced with increased damage on the first rank and reduced on the top 2 ranks.
- Skill Siphoned Petrol has been reduced to cost 3 AP from 4 AP.
- Skill Dynamite has been reduced to cost 2 AP from 3 AP.
- Skill Buckshot now properly works with Pump Action, spreading damage on every shot unless missed.
- Playing Viper while a dead Viper is in combat will now despawn the dead Viper first.
GAME BALANCE
- Hard Mode has been changed to grant 5 points per skill (same as Normal). This change was based on accumulated feedback from many players. Hard Mode will go through a further rebalance offering additional incentives in the future.
- Increased kill requirements for bonus items on mission repeats by about 20%.
- Added a small warning to the mission details view to remind the player of potentially unbalanced enemy scaling after a specific number of repeats. The number of repeats to show this message depends on the mission.
- Unaware enemies can now be alerted on a full board of enemies in play. Alerted cards are now added to the imminent threat deck (red cards) where as before they were never alerted. This change also applies to using Initiative.
- Noise no longer drops to 0 with no unaware enemies remaining and can still go up or down. This is due to other cards potentially being added to the threat deck through events or skills.
- HP scaling of all Normal Mode missions has been reduced by 30% and should be noticeable past 3 non-tutorial mission repeats. Scaling will have a much bigger rebalance when more content gets added to the game, so this change is to make the current missions a bit more accessible to the players spending 20+ hours in the current state of the game.
- Note: Next week more work will be put into Hard Mode to offer a bigger challenge.
- Adrenaline in Unarmed mastery has been slightly rebalanced to give +10 HP at max rank instead of +15. More work will be done on this mechanic later.
- SMG base hit chance has been increased from 60% to 70%, so Degraded will start with 70%.
- SMG max hit chance has been increased from 75% to 90%.
FEATURES / CONTENT
- Saved games now support custom names and include a confirmation.
- Changed the saved game displayed date format to be more consistent across different world regions.
- Added an option to the loot selection for items to be drawn into hand or stashed away. This should greatly reduce hand clutter for cards not intended to be played, but still collected as loot. The option is not shown on the first tutorial mission.
- Eliminated enemy bodies can now be removed by interacting with a merc. This consumes an attack turn and there are plans for new gadgets to improve the mechanic.
- Combat message Area Cleared can now be closed per user feedback.
- Added 2 new combat music tracks for a total of 22.