The second October update is larger than the previous one. I've been able to sneak in some improvements from the last mission of the campaign into the random game modes.
New Mission - Periapsis
The campaign is almost complete and here is the next-to-last mission in it. In this one, you get to face off against someone you've seen before.
For this mission, I was inspired to ask what a MOBA would look like in Infested Planet. Both you and the aliens have 3 bunkers that are pumping out squads of marines and you have to tip the balance in your favour.
The result is a mission that feels quite different from the other ones. You're not as worried about protecting territory, because the marines can do a decent job of it themselves.
New Random Difficulty - Terminus
Some of you have asked for modes more difficult than The Abyss. I think that's rather insane, but who am I to argue?
I've been working on some AI for the final mission of the campaign. Normally the mutations are picked randomly. Well, I wrote something to have the aliens look at your build and pick the most evil mutations that exist for that build.
It's horrible, scary and unfair. When I plugged this mode into Abyss mode, I was able to complete half the map before the aliens stomped me. Yup, it's hard.
For those of you who think Abyss is a walk in the park, try the new Terminus difficulty. It's available after finishing Abyss or in the skirmish mode browser.
Minigunner Buff
Most of the time I hear you talk about minigunners, you say that they're underpowered. I had a bit of think and I think that they could use a buff.
The first buff is that their shield allows them to survive even longer now - up to 75 seconds from 40.
The other change is that I changed the "BLAST" damage type to go through shields. This includes minigun bullets, the second part of the helicoper salvo and rockets.
This means that all of the things above can punch through the reflective shields. No more minigunners and clone minigunners standing there for half a minute shooting each other. This also means that you can nuke the clone minigunners with rockets if you have to.
Other Changes
- Lowered alien mine radius
- Added temporary shield to marines heli-dropped by "Reinforcements" tech
- Expanded mutation UI to handle more mutations
- Fixed objective typo in convoy mission
- Changed ammo belts not to be dropped or picked up by AI marines
- Made blast damage (rockets, minigun and helistrike) pierce shields
- Upped the resilience of minigun shields
- Fixed some human navigation bugs
- Reworked scripted marine god mode to be more reliable
- Blocked all tech effects for AI marines
- Changed marine assault mode behaviour (optimization)
- Changed prop building damage resistance (since it can be a target now)
- Fixed audio issue with lots of barriers being killed