Happy (belated) New Year, Commanders! We wish you all the best for 2024 and hope you had a great start!
We are excited to drop another Early Access Roadmap post with an outlook on what's to come in the next weeks for Survivor Mercs!
In the last update, "Operation Overhaul" (0.9.8), we took all of your feedback and added it to improve the game massively with many new features and a major revamp of the metagame, balancing, and progression. This was our second major Early Access update, following "Welcome to Waste Land" (0.9.7) which was our first major content update for Survivor Mercs, including the new Waste Land map and its unique boss, GriftLift.
We couldn't have made these updates (and the many smaller ones) without your great help, feedback, and input. So THANK YOU very much, and let's continue this dialogue in 2024 ❤
Make sure to join our Discord to get in touch with us and improve the game:
Now, Commanders, report in for the briefing on updates 0.9.9 and beyond!
The immediate next updates will not only bring the remaining core features but also many things inspired by community feedback. Our main goal is to finalize the gameplay foundation and improve performance to add more complex synergies, tactical depth, and much more valuable loot.
After that, we aim to add new maps & bosses, refine the narrative & lore, and add more things for the late game & replayability, e.g. new Operation types.
Here are the highlights for the immediate next update 0.9.9 "Evolution":
Armor System & Armored Enemies
Getting perforated by those pesky sentries? Another extraction foiled by a rogue Peashooter? Looks like you need some Armor!
Your Commanders get an Armor upgrade alongside adjusted Traits and Gear to modify that attribute. Armor will not only reduce the kinetic damage you take, it can even mitigate it completely. And it will reduce the impact of negative status effects.
Unfortunately, your engineers aren't the first to discover that fantastic new tech. M.E.G.A. Corp. also deployed new armored foes. Intel suggests you can penetrate their armor with strong piercing attacks. But there may also be other ways to bypass their armor or damage the enemies who seek cover behind the tanks.
There will be more armored enemy variants in the updates after 0.9.9. Right now the focus is mainly on your Commander and the squad build variety, supported by these next features:
Genome Lab 2.0
Say goodbye to the randomness when researching new Traits!
Your scientists and engineers achieved a major breakthrough in genome editing. The new Genome Lab offers clear research paths for new Traits. You can work your way towards desired Traits and see the specific effects of each Trait alongside the requirements for researching it.
This advancement led to discovering new Traits and how to combine them for improved Commander clones. As a consequence, your science team purged the database of old Traits and incinerated all prior clones.
Your new clones will have more interesting Trait combinations that lay the groundwork for better synergy effects and squad build variety.
❗❗IMPORTANT NOTE❗❗
When you return to your Bunker after update 0.9.9, your researched traits and pre-existing Commanders will be wiped, and you will receive a compensation of Blood Diamonds and DNA.
This is unfortunately a necessary step to keep your savegames intact and prevent broken Commanders.
Configure your Commander Clones
With the new Genome Lab, you will also find a new blueprint for the Gene Synthesizer room. Build it to start configuring your Commanders by pre-selecting certain Traits before cloning them.
Upgrade the room to pre-select 2 or even all 3 Traits. But be aware that these configured clones require more DNA than your random clones!
❗❗IMPORTANT NOTE❗❗
Your DNA balance will most likely be reduced after returning to your Bunker after update 0.9.9 to align with the other balancing changes and new research system.
Performance Improvements
Optimiziation and balancing are fickle tasks. But we investigated the biggest culprits that are causing the performance to drop, and are working on various improvements.
The XP dogtags receive a major optimization pass which should notably increase the performance on crowded screens. Spawning enemies, objects, projectiles, and objectives will be faster, reducing the lag spikes during a run. And we're tackling some optimizations in the physics system to increase fps.
The main bottleneck at the moment is your CPU, but we're still looking at improving the rendering performance, too. We aren't getting stable 60 fps with the upcoming update, but we're aiming to get there step-by-step with each update!
UI Improvements
As the game is evolving, so is the UI. You will start noticing various improvements and fixes in different menus, together with some new UI elements.
The Operation Details provide more details and a better overview. Plus: you can finally click on the map to select an operation 😲
Also, the room upgrade menus look nicer, and you'll find multiple smaller improvements & animations everywhere.
The Road Ahead...
We are working on many additional things at the moment. The following list of items is neither complete, nor final!
We want to provide an outlook as to what's coming, and are always happy to hear your thoughts!
These improvements, features, and changes will not be part of 0.9.9 but build on top of it:
⏩ We're about to add more synergies between Commander, Mercs, and Gear, specifically:
- things that happen "on crit"
- combining status effects can trigger other effects
- adjusting projectiles of certain damage types to behave differently
⏩ A new Airlift room allows you to save some loot instead of extracting.
⏩ You can adjust Merc weapon loadouts to create more nuanced squad builds.
⏩ Play new Operation Types like Elite or Endless runs to get rare items and special achievements.
⏩ Enjoy a better, more polished UI and configure your input mappings alongside other improved settings and options.
Apart from these we're always looking into adding new maps & bosses, enemies, Mercs, and other content as they fit these updates.
We can't promise exact dates, yet. Each update need thorough testing to ensure we don't have to nuke your savegames.
We're currently planning to continue the Early Access period and release regular updates over the course of the next three months.
Please join the discussion on our Discord server and let us know which of these new features or improvements you are most excited about.