Hey Everyone,
0.2.3 is now live! Thanks to everyone who helped to test it and offer suggestions while it was on the beta branch. As always, feel free to provide feedback and report any bugs you come across on Discord or the Steam forums.
0.2.3 (Content Update #8)
New Game Mode - Operations
Operations is a new game mode with some roguelike elements where you unlock a variety of upgrades of different rarities and play 3-5 wave games across 3 missions. There are currently two different kinds of operations, Colonization and Search and Destroy.
Colonization – Play 3 missions with the same colony. Each mission involves defending the colony against 3 waves.
Search and Destroy – Play 3 missions across different maps. These maps could be either horde defence or destroy all bases (Like in Elysium Mons)
This mode also includes some new perks and map mutators.
My aim with this mode is to provide a way for people to play shorter, higher intensity games. While also enabling some experimentation with playstyle and unit design like bosses.
Long term, the Survival and Campaign mode are my main priorities. But this mode offers a good opportunity for people to experience the game in a new way.
New Buildings
Raised Platform (Human) – A tile that can be built under structures which lifts them increasing their health and range. Connectors inside them will become untargetable
Skygarden (Human) – A Tier 3 habitat for your colony
Bosses and other new units
Added 3 Goo bosses, one for each commander. Currently these will spawn on Endless Extreme mode and at the end of operations
Added 3 new Goo units, one for each commander. These are available across all modes, for now on Survival they'll only spawn on the two higher difficulties.
Added the Sentinel to the human roster, an alternative to the Skyranger. An unarmed drone with a large vision range
Added the Lancer Team to the human roster, an alternative to the Mortar Team. A weapons team with a high damage and long range gun designed for taking down large units
Laboratory
Construction of the Laboratory is locked until research tier 3 is reached.
Each laboratory gives a benefit from a pool of perks as well as giving research points.
Can now be constructed by The Robots
Endless Extreme mode
Past wave 10 enemy damage, health and speed will gradually increase with each wave
Bosses will spawn from wave 10, gradually increasing in number
Battle of Illian verge
The RFI have gained some buildings and turrets
QoL
Walls can connect to each other in all directions. Making vertical and horizontal construction easier.
Research can now be queued
"Clone Building" now works for both moused over buildings and if nothing is under the mouse, any building you have selected
The number of “Free” buildings available is now displayed on the building respective button
You can now hide the unit counter
Garden and thruster modules will highlight their relevant adjacent spaceship modules
“Free” buildings will now be built immediately on placement
Added some more tooltips to the robots to help explain heat and modules
Other
New Volcanic biome tile-set
Increased explosive force on corpses and improved their directional movement
New enemy commander portraits
Added an indicator if module choice is an upgrade
Added names for each upgrade step of modules
Unit command markers improved
Units have kill counters
Added debug command "out###". Give a number from 1-100 to change the thickness of unit outlines. Out25 is the default
Stopped an indicator appearing if no effort is produced
The show suppressed area button will now not include partially suppressed tiles
The captain panel will now list all modifiers currently applied. Added a scrollbar to the captain stats panel
Balance
Humans
Increased negative population penalty -150% → -250%
Solar Panels provide +2 power when placed on Desert tiles
Buildings won't use population until they receive their first construction resource
Increased the population upkeep of some late game units
Robots
Turbo Module - Base heat reduced 1.5 -> 1.2
Industrial Module - Extra effort production from being boosted increased from 3/3 to 3/6
Storage Tiles - Gain an extra +2 effort storage per connected module
Mecha Tarantis - Attack Speed 0.2 -> 0.25
Mecha Tarantis - can no longer shoot air targets
Strike Barge - Drone attacks apply an armour debuff
Strike Barge - Drones are released faster, move faster and both drones and the Barge now have firing SFX.
Performance
Improved the performance of large robot colonies
Fixed a memory leak relating to landmines that was causing performance to degrade
Fixed Map Editor performance degrading over time
AI
Noise System
These changes are a bit experimental and may be changed if they are applying too much additional pressure on players.
Enemies that detect noise will now move towards the source of noise rather than aggro directly to your Landing Pad.
Increased the sensitivity of enemies to nearby noises
Increased the amount of noise created by battles
Fixed a bug causing explosions to trigger very far away enemies
Other
Improved the enemy's avoidance of lava
Player melee units will try to surround the enemies they're attacking
Fixed units jumping in their previous direction when leaving combat and chasing a target
Fixed some animation stuttering
Map Editor
Added wreckage pickups and tribe placement
Modding
Added "aiPathRadius" and "attackSounds" variables. aiPathRadius lets you change the pathfinding radius of the unit. This can be helpful for people creating unit sprites which are larger than normal. attackSounds lets you assign other attack sounds to units, for now only attack sounds already in the game can be used. See readme for more details
Bug Fixes
Removed a tiny delay between explosions occurring and the explosion appearing
Fixed voiceless units (Tribes) sometimes inheriting voices from other units
Fixed spreader connection lines staying on if demolished
Fixed a case where The Swarm captain's building assistant animation would stay on
Fixed tutorial difficulty adjustments not carrying over on load
Fixed Endless Extreme initially scaling horde size slowly
Desert whirlpools should now blend in better with other desert tiles
Fixed resource perks not increasing storage
Fixed the wrong combat stat improving for captains if more than 1 unlock is waiting
Fixed being able to drop units off the edge of the map
Fixed some rounding issues with modules if they are impacted by heat
Fixed Robot Outposts spawning on lava and into mountains