Hey Everyone,
Once again, thank you to everyone who has been giving feedback and reporting bugs across Discord, the Steam forum and reviews. Many people on Discord have been helping me find bugs and improve balance in this update. As a solo dev it's community support like this that makes these frequent larger updates possible.
0.1.2 includes a lot of balance changes, additional units, perks and maps. The Laboratory is the core meta progression system of survival mode and it will continue to evolve based on feedback and future content updates.
As always, feel free to provide feedback and report any bugs you come across on Discord.
The Laboratory
- The Laboratory introduces 10 new units and 25+ global perks (Stratagems) which can be unlocked by spending biomass or by completing specific maps.
New Human Units
These units are designed as alternatives to the core human units and not direct upgrades.
- Frost Trooper - Replaces Trooper - Shots slow enemy units, but has reduced damage
- Avenger - Replaces Reclaimed - Has increased melee damage and a small aoe attack. Reduced health
- Grenadier - Replaces Mortar Team - Fires a volley of 3 small grenades over a wider area.
- Liquifier - Replaces Flamer - Increased health and fires a poison cloud that reduces enemy armour.
- Electro Cyborg - Replaces Cyborg - Has a chain lightning attack that will bounce off multiple targets
- Support Drone - Replaces Skyranger - An unarmed drone that will heal/repair nearby units
- Railgun Walker - Replaces Walker - Has a slow firing railgun that will deal damage to all enemies in a line
- Viper - Replaces Tortoise - A mobile artillery gun that will fire a single shell long distances that on detonation will also slow enemies caught in its blast
- Zapper - Replaces Slipstream - A heavily armoured slow moving flyer that releases a massive charge of electricity directly below it
- Obliterator - Replaces Monolith - Equipped with powerful plasma scythes that slice through a large area in front of it.
Stratagems
- 25 stratagems are available to unlock and use. These provide boosts across any mission where you have them equipped. Unlock up to 3 slots to hold them.
New Maps
- Aegis Valley - A valley full of resources with only one chokepoint for hordes to enter. An RFI cruiser will also assist by automatically blasting units that attack you and sending in drop pods. It will progressively get more powerful with time.
- Anomaly Omega - Where have all the Goo gone? Race against the clock and build up on a map with no enemies above or below ground. One particularly powerful wave is on its way.
New Goo Units
- Mind Core - Temporarily increases the attack speed of nearby goo when it attacks
- Gunker - Can only target air units and your projectiles
Map System Changes
- Bonus alien biomass and stratagem rewards are now available upon completing each map for the first time on any difficulty.
- Added the ability to view and set the seed of procedurally generated maps and choose between the 6 "The Simulator" maps.
Anti Projectile Projectiles
This system enables certain units to target and shoot down projectiles. All projectiles have an avoidance chance. For example a Tortoise rocket will survive 10% of hits, a ship shell 50% and captain skills 100%. This is quite experimental and more units will be added that can interact with this system.
While this does give enemy hordes some ability to counter artillery in the late game. You can still overwhelm their air defence through sheer volume of fire, tactical aiming, your own air defence or other strategies.
New Building
- SAM Launcher - Can only target enemy air units and projectiles. Has extremely long range.
QoL
- Added player and enemy unit outline options including custom colours to improve readability
- Added a toggle to change unit attack priority between elite enemies (All units excluding, hoppers, thrashers and androids) or the closest enemy. In future updates I'm considering adding additional options like furthest target and more detailed priortisation
- Your previously selected captain and ship will be remembered between games
Balance
- Research now works on a percentage scale instead of a flat reduction. Each research point reduces time, cost and population requirements by 1%
- High activity events now also boost burrowing sensitivity. Burrowing sensitivity outside of high activity events has been reduced
- Reduced the rate that flyers and other elites spawn close to your landing point
- Slightly increased the number of environmental aliens overall
- The Tribes have left The Oasis
- Reduced tribe relation loss if damaging aggroed units
- Aggroed tribes will now restore relations faster the longer they are aggroed.
- Increased the health of many of the human units
- Increased Cyborg shotgun damage - 8 -> 12
- Gate health 350 -> 500
- Wall health 220 -> 250
- Sensor Array Power use 10 -> 7
- Sensor Array Vision 1.35 -> 1.65
- The Brain Commander will also increase the spawn rate of Mind Cores
- The Sludge Commander will not appear on explorer difficulty
- The Savant Captain is now unlocked at 130% score modifier to keep her in line with score modifier rebalancing
- MK4 200mm Plasma Shotgun added distance damage falloff similar to other shotguns in game. Base damage 120 -> 130, Cone radius 30 -> 27
Bug Fixes (Some of these have been released in 0.1.1e)
- Fixed hydroformers breaking when near geysers
- Improved visibility of some attack particles
- Fixed units with low range not engaging if on patrol
- Units that can attack while moving will now not move to melee range of manually selected targets
- Changed procedural map generation to significantly reduce the chance of single width strips of crystals forming near your landing pad
- Fixed frames dropping when ordering moves to moderately large groups of units
- Fixed saved games not fully connecting your base before loading
- Fixed sound breaking and a drop in frame rate if a very larger amount of status effect particles spawn in a short span of time (fire, hit etc)
- Fixed dead enemies sometimes impacting horde pathfinding
- Fixed GUI warning including units in demolish count
- Fixed depot healthbar sizing
- Fixed railgun damage not applying consistently
- Made the start of some Simulator maps easier
- Fixed "Click again to attack" confirmation playing if no units are selected
- Adjusted which Goo units can block each other
- Fixed an edge case causing androids to not upgrade and continue on load
- Fixed "Construct" being visible when first opening the spaceship panel
- Fixed ore and isotopes spawning on water ruins
- Orbitors will no longer stay overlapped on each other
- The tribal placement warning will now only display on click
- Fixed some instances of the tooltip panel staying on
- Fixed factories holding 11 instead of 10 resources
- Fixed settings not saving if the options window is closed with Escape
- Fixed the saw orbitor restoring health
- Removed red squares underneath the map
- Alien colonies are now removed from the minimap when destroyed
- Fixed saved games sometimes not appearing in the list
Looking ahead, 0.1.3 will likely be smaller content wise as I focus on overall polish, QoL, performance, balance and remaining bugs. However I do plan to add another captain and more spaceships and modules.
Then the focus will be on 0.2 which will be a major content update adding a new playable faction along with associated captains, units, buildings, mechanics, maps and more!