If you like Raid Mode, these notes are going to delight you.
What's in the build?
New content for Raid Mode in the form of new Trophies and Commendations.
New stats for Raid Mode, improving the Commando Knife and other abilities.
An actual end to Raid Mode, you don't just go infinite until you die.
Character Select screen for Raid Mode
A few new things tha--
WTF Character Select?
Ever the optimist, I have added the Raid Mode Character Select screen. You can see a whole bunch of them, and select exactly one: The Commando. The rest are some combination of WIP and/or Maybe Possibly. None of them are straight up lies though. The trouble is that new characters cost money, and I don't really have a lot of that, so all I can do is push forward and try to get a budget for this beast.
Right now, you cannot unlock anything!
I say again, the other characters do not yet exist, and you can't unlock them or play them or look at anything but their tantalizing silhouettes*.
Character select does let you customize your Commando, and the customization will stick between runs. Beef McBeefbeef, who likes Steaks? All yours. Future customization options are on the way.
Of note, the Raid Mode Commando's class is Commando, so he doesn't get any of the bonuses that other classes get in Campaign Mode.
Raid Mode: Exfiltration!
There's actually an endpoint now! Clearing the last level of you selected raid difficulty will set you up for Exfiltration and... you've been waiting for this... GET TO THE CHOPPA! You'll get some rough guidance as to where you need to go, so listen for the helicopter blades, look for the smoke, and grab the ladder to get out.
Exfiltration increases your final score by 35%. You're welcome to stick around and gather up points, but enemies will start to scale up infinitely, and it is gonna hurt the first time you die only two steps from the ladder.
Also: there's a really hype new music track for exfil! I'm delighted. The UI for said exfiltration is a little sketchy but I'm on it.
Raid Mode Difficulty
Your raid is now one of three difficulties, by which you are determining the final threat level.
Overcast (4), Twilight (8), and Midnight (12). Right now today, only Overcast is playable. This is partially because I need to tighten up the graphics on level 3 the loop and make sure player damage and enemy stremf are relatively even. I know people go infinite all the time, and I'm working to add some teeth to the challenges at higher threat levels.
The Phiend won the score contest!
He did, and hooray! We've been going back and forth via Discord DMs about building a new item together. I'll have another contest soon!
Raid Mode Loots and Balance
New Stats!
Marksmanship: Extends your gun's range, adds crit chance, and a chance to ignore enemy cover entirely.
CQC: Kept you waiting, huh? Boosts knife damage and gives a per-turn chance for the knife to come off cooldown early. This replaces the melee / melee cooldown stats, and it actually works I promise ːstremfː
Magnet Range: All games of this type have you pulling in items, so why not join the club? Health items are only pulled in if they are fully useful to you.
New Commendations!
Quartermaster's Medal: Increases your magnet range, because a good quartermaster always has supplies at hand, and can get them out of nowhere.
Vanguard's Medal: Gives you small-but-non-zero chance for a free action after your current one. The cap for this stat is 50%, the Medal will get you to 25%. Probably OP, live it up.
Firepower Medal: Straight up damage increase. Some of you want this, here you go.
New Trophies!
GLORY HOUND (rare): +20% Danger, +3 State of Raid turns, and every medal grabbed during a State of Raid extends it by 1 turn.
DESERT BREAKERS (rare): a pack of smokes granting +70 Marksmanship, at the cost of 1 max health every time you level up.
Picks n' Bans
lol no not really, but you can now Banish trophies you don't want to see any more. Right now, that might just be the Desert Breakers, but there's more on the way.
Knife Damage
The tooltip makes it more clear, and some broken stuff was fixed. Your raid mode knife damage is:
MG damage × 2
100% CQC
25% of your Ninjutsu
Other melee bonuses from gear and flag captures.
UI Love
All the loot art has been retouched, and larger versions created for tooltips and world spawns. They look great, and you can thank CoolerSK for all his hard work.
Prettied up tooltips when picking bonuses to see what you will have. This took so much effort it should be at least two sentences of patch note. Maybe three.
The pause screen shows the current track name and artist.
Campaign Mode Character creation starts with a random commando and a random main weapon pre-selected.
Raid game over now offers Back to Character Select alongside Restart and Main Menu.
You can Abort Mission during a run to end it early. You'll "lose" but your score and accomplishments will still matter.
You can skip Raid Chest open animations.
Gamepad Improvements Too!
Just felt like calling this out: many places have been improved for players (like me!) who want to rock the gamepad. Big thanks to Cyranix for putting in a ton of hours on the Steam Deck to help polish it all up. There's still quite a ways to go.
Bug Fixes
FIXED THE X IN THE BIG FONT oh man it's been like two years.
Enemy shield beams fired outside your view no longer hold up the turn for their animation.
Fixed a few softlocks involving subweapons. Shout out to T1shero for enduring more than his fair share of these.
Name re-rolling is a little smarter about giving you something different each time.
The pause menu / options cursors have once again placed the beans placed below the frank.
Strafe Roxxor does a much better job of finding you, and not standing still forever, if you are far away and out of LOS.
The Combinator has been improved, and will totally work perfectly this time, worry not.
You can't throw the Remote Turret into the ocean, or on top of itself, or any other number of buggy failures.
Some weirdness with music starting, stopping, and the jukebox has been wrapped up.
Raid maps are better about generating unreachable areas. But are they perfect? Is anyone?
Fixed some missing names for enemies in Raid Mode.
Fixed up some Rocket AOE weirdness with splash damage sometimes failing, and bullets that bounce off of the Photonic Reverser should behave more like we all expect.
Sometimes subweapon ranks would stop showing up in the random list of level-up choices, that's been fixed.
Think Hard and Send Feedback
What should we do with the bow?
The Buckblaster 78 is headed for a sideways nerf. It's really REALLY good right now, and it needs to only be REALLY good. The plan is to remove the quiver from it, so it's one shot per S-Ammo, but to give you the chance to aim over multiple turns. Waiting one (draw), two (hold), or three (hoooold) turns before firing will result in bonus damage, and a full draw of three turns (draw on turn 1, pass turns 2 and 3) will knock the enemy back and debuff them like the knife does. What do you think, good idea?
What sort of heroes do you want to see?
Character Select is full of ideas, and there are things in the works, but I'm really hoping to hear about what excites you, the player. So if something on that screen catches your eye, and you've got a neat idea, you're welcome to come by the Discord and let me know. This is what Early Access is all about, right? No promises that I can get your feature in, but I am listening.
What sort of Raid Mode objectives excite you?
Proper Metaprogression is on the way, as soon as the next build letter increment. You'll earn some currency during your raid run, and spend it on unlocking fun things. You'll also have objectives to conquer, some of which must be completed in one run, others are long term tallies.
*I spelled that word right on the first try, no spell check. That never happens.