Overview:
New gameplay stage - Pre-combat encounter
Added text speed control
Small balance tweaks
Pre-Combat Encounters:
Before starting a combat, players will be presented with some mood setting art featuring the creature's main mechanic, as well as a short introduction to the enemy - each pre-combat has 2 sets of choices that lead to 4 overall variants of the combat encounter. These can vary from changed behavior/moves, different stat allocations, buffs, debuffs, and even modifications to biomass.
Initially these were a feature reserved for the Act bosses, however I realized that this addition to the gameplay loop allowed for more variety, strategy, and choice to the combat section in general, so I added it for the existing combats and all others moving forward. The largest amount of work for this was new scaffolding for the encounter type - hopefully this helps with optimization as more encounters and pre-combats are added.
Text Speed Controls
With the addition of more text segments, I thought it would be good to give players the ability to change the speed that text appears on the screen. The options are configurable in both main and combat settings menus.
Small Balance Tweaks:
Normalized all combat Biomass to roughly equal 100
Increased amount of biomass allocated to enemies in Severe difficulty from 1.5x to 2x
Tweaked Mawsquito stats to be a little less punishing
The additional biomass hopefully makes Severe difficulty runs more about resource management/allocation instead of scarcity. While testing Hivemind fight varieties I found the Mawsquitos were ridiculously overtuned, I've pulled back some of their stats to keep a bit of challenge without being wildly strong.