Commanders, this became more than a patch: this is a medium-sized update to the game!
We are introducing some experimental synergies and would love to hear your feedback! We are working on more while expanding and finetuning our underlying systems for that. Any reports we receive from you will help us improve these game mechanics to make the game more interesting, varied, and fun!
Some of these new synergies include:
- Panzer Chocolates grant additional movement speed if your maximum HP is below 100.
- Chemtrail can grant a critical hit chance bonus to the whole squad based on your XP gain bonus.
- Kevlar Vest grants a flat armor bonus and multiplies other bonuses to Armor.
- Silverback scales his damage with other Melee Mercs on the squad.
- Nerd Glasses scale their XP bonus with the number of Tech Mercs on the squad.
- and some more...
There are also other changes to Gear, mainly that they use only 3 level-ups to max, taking some pressure off the XP progression in a run. But their trade-off kicks in also much earlier, in exchange for most of the bonuses already being granted from level 1.
Traits haven't changed a lot, yet. New synergies and more effects for Traits will go into the game in the next updates, mainly based on the feedback and data we can collect from the current experiments.
Without further ado, here are the detailed patch notes:
BOSS IMPROVEMENTS
- Added improved miniboss & boss variants for the Elite Ops to offer a slightly more different challenge than the Standard Ops.
- Adjusted nearly all minibosses & bosses in general to offer a more interesting challenge.
- Minibosses are no longer 100% immune to knockback.
BALANCING ADJUSTMENTS
- The initial level-ups require fewer XP to make it easier to upgrade your squad in the early phase of an Operation.
- Rebalanced all room upgrade requirements to reduce the grind for BD and components, particularly for the early build and upgrade levels.
- Reduced research prices for most Traits, particularly higher-tier ones, to reduce BD grind and the impact of Trait research blocking other unlocks.
- Mercs' skill trees now offer a mix of flat damage increases and multipliers. Multiple Mercs received major adjustments to fix some imbalances with some of their different skill trees.
- New experimental synergy effects for selected Mercs, Traits, and Gear introduce dynamic stats that are scaling with different variables.
- Introduced a new stat "attack range" in some skill trees.
- Multiple Mercs grant bonuses to parts or everyone on your squad.
- Added a "Loot Goblin" enemy that is carrying some BD and may also drop some components.
- The final upgrade for the Storage adds an additional stack for each item.
- The initial armored enemies and first minibosses have slightly less armor.
- Lightning attacks now also benefit from Piercing to become more effective against armored targets.
- Increased bonus from Generic Upgrades to BD gains to 5%.
- Reduced re-roll cost multiplier for consecutive re-rolls to x1.5 instead of x2.
- Rare components now drop with a more even distribution in each map.
- Gym no longer provides an Armor bonus.
- Luck provides a tiny bonus to critical hit chance for your whole squad.
BUGFIXES & PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENTS
- Fixed the issue with the "Re-roll" option not becoming available after building the Procurement room.
- Fixed the Boss details tab not revealing the information about Mammoth on the Bootcamp map.
- Improved the performance of target acquisition for Lightning Projectiles.
- Lightning Projectiles continue jumping between targets and are not "consumed" by armored enemies as easily.
- Hogsheads' barrels deal explosion damage instead of fire damage by default.
- Priest now correctly enables her Shield effect on the Commander after reaching the final skill in the Crusader skill tree.
- Fixed multiple issues with stats for Gear, Traits, and Mercs not displaying correctly in various menus & popups.
- Removed some "ghost colliders" on Mercs causing rare issues with collision detection.
- Fixed various instances of minor UI element offsets and removed unnecessary animation components to improve UI performance.
- Improved performance of health bars.
- Fixed various instances of strings not updating correctly to the selected language if set to anything but EN.
- Fixed an issue where the end-of-run statistics screen was not showing the dead Commander but the next one that would be generated as a new clone.
- Fixed an issue with the Armor Workshop referencing the wrong upgrade values.
- Fixed various typos in DE & EN translations.
- Improved physics collider setup to prevent PhenX from pushing your Commander out of the arena.
- Forcefield no longer shatters from enemies and projectiles you are just evading.
- Treasury is giving the correct BD gain bonus.
- Gene Synthesizer correctly allows configuring all 3 Traits at max level.
- Napalm, Neurotoxins and Tesla Ring should correctly apply their bonus and trade-offs.
UI IMPROVEMENTS
- You can now view the individual stat modifiers for each Trait in the Clone Bay, also for existing Commanders and not only during clone configuration.
- Bunker Rooms now show a little marker if they can be upgraded or hold a new item for purchasing or researching.
- New color schemes for certain enemy types help them stand out more from the horde.
- Heavier enemies have their own animation now.
- Added HP bar segmentation for bosses to communicate more clearly when bosses transition between different phases.
- The end-of-run inventory shows some placeholders instead of empty panels when dying or extracting without any loot, especially in the early game phases.
- Mercs & Gear now show their current level in the Pause Menu and ingame HUD.
- Gear now shows its stats at the current level in the Pause Menu.
- Ranged enemies show an effect when shooting, making their attacks a bit easier to spot.
- Status Effect visual effects were tweaked to be slightly more noticeable.
- Fixed some gaps in the selection outlines for Awards.
- Adjusted the Twitch integration setting strings to be less ambiguous.
- Removed line from aiming direction indicator.
- Tweaked hitbox for the Defender shield to reduce tunneling. Please note that enemies have a small invulnerability window, too, and can still tunnel through your shield if you try to use it like a bulldozer.
KNOWN ISSUES
We are currently investigating a few Known Issues that we plan to fix as quickly as possible with a hotfix patch:
- PhenX can in some cases shove you out of the arena in the Elite Ops bossfight when you get squeezed between him and the walls. We are already working on a solution, until then please be cautious as you currently have to abort the run if this happens to you!
- Automatic input recognition is still causing some nuisance with the mouse cursor sometimes interfering with controller input and vice-versa.
- Some stats may still not show up correctly in each menu or popup, or may be labeled ambiguously. Specifically the stats list in the Clone Bay is still showing too many and sometimes not all stats from modifiers.
- When configuring your clone with mouse controls, you have to click a Trait in the list once to activate the stats popup.
- Gear items sometimes show the same "utility" icon twice. They also don't show any damage type icon that may be affected negatively, e.g. Napalm buffing fire but nerfing other damage types.
- "Carry Capacity per Merc" is ambiguous when choosing a Merc for your squad: this stat is only showing the Carry Capacity for the specific Merc.
- Nubetube's Multi-Launcher skill does not spread the shots in a wide arc but concentrates them into a smaller-than-intended area.
- If an enemy gets stuck and teleported back into play, you may sometimes see parts of their VFX flash across the screen.
Commanders, we want to hear your opinions! Join us on Discord or in the Steam forums and let us know what you think of the experimental synergies, and - as always - if you encounter any issues.
Please help us refine the game experience!
Lock, load, and loot, Commanders!