Hello Raiders

Once again, a considerable time has passed since the last update, so we wanted to share the current progress of the next update. Truth be told, most of this should have been released a while ago, but as is tradition the update's scale has outgrown the initial plans.
Next to the previously mentioned daily bounties and operation additions, we've been working on a shakeup for the enemy AI, along with new convenience features and a Crash Reporter Tool.

We also fell down a lot of rabbit holes we have to dust out for our own good, and while these code cleanups may not immediately improve the game, they do help us in the long run by having less useless code to skim through when chasing issues. (it also feels good to throw all that junk out)

We cant give an ETA on the update yet since we're not sure how long it will take to iron out the remaining issues, but still wanted to share what's going on and gather some feedback on the update, so let's get to the breakdown:

Bounty RAIDs

We have showcased the new bounty RAID system on our devstreams before, but those who arent in the loop, bounties are daily missions that assigned a level and a randomly generated bounty card from most card effects in the game. The effects can range from simple stat modifications, to more interesting gameplay changes. (yes, even crab people)

Upon completing a daily bounty, you will be rewarded with gold, card packs, outfits or melee weapons, all based on the cards rarity.

Of course, we know these rewards are not much different from drops you can already get from end of mission chests, and we understand if some of you won't find them satisfactory enough. We are actively trying to find what we can include as fun unlockable stuff, but lot of them are not simple to implement.

We would like to ask for you feedback on this matter. If you have any ideas for interesting unlockable items you'd like to see drop from bounties that would be possible for us to implement, let it be player name tags, commwheel customization options or what have you, please let us know!

Operation Free-Play

Not all of you like playing through the two current operations, but you may still like certain stages in them, so we're adding the option to play any of the stages as standalone missions whenever you'd like. We debated whenever we should lock the ability to play these to finishing the operations, but decided its better to let people play them whenever they like, in the event they wont play through the operations even once.

This solution also technically adds more immediate content to the game, which is always good!

Blitz Operations

Blitzes are a simple concept, they are a new operation type that take existing missions from the game and strings them together in a series. There are some rules with the generation to make sure the narrative they create somewhat makes sense, but they can be any mission from the game.
There are 3 versions available:

• Short Blitz - Two stages with lower stake missions
• Medium Blitz - Four stages with one gold gathering mission and a longer finale.
• Long Blitz - Six stages with two gold gathering missions and a longer finale.

Regular operation xp bonuses do count with these, so they will be a good opportunity for gaining xp, as well as giving you maps to play on when you cant decide for yourself.
In the future we might try other type of operations as well, such as ones that keep applying harder modifiers after every mission. Let us know if you'd be interested in that!

Our focus on AI

(Enemy AI, to be clear.)

The AI in the game is undeniably a mess. Inherited from the game's progenitor, the enemies in this game has always had a ton of issues, from unbearable spawn rates, nonsensical voice lines, broken behavior and simply failing to think at all. Some of these issues have been addressed in previous updates, but now we are taking action to reduce the the worst offenders.

Previously unused enemy behaviors have been re-implemented, so enemies should be seen utilizing more tactics to flank you, defend exit locations, guard downed players, and charge in when the time is right. This doesn't mean that every issue has been solved- not at all! There will still be many cases of AI acting unusual due to the sheer complexity of their code and how many potential mistakes there can be. But we hope this will be a good stepping point in the never ending fight against AI goofs.

Additionally with this change, some enemy groups have also been tuned, giving more weapon variations to all enemy groups. We also began working on an AI loadout system, allowing AI to carry different weapons and equipment. For now, this is only used to make friendly bots swap to pistols if they go into bleedout. In a later update we hope to implement more interesting enemy tactics, maybe also utilizing weapon switching.

Radio Officers will now come with some goons at his side.

Team AI has been tuned up as well. Before they would almost instantly regain full health if they had not taken damage for about 2-3 seconds which made them sometimes extremely tanky and sometimes fall like a sack of potatoes. Now the Team AI will constantly regen only a part of their health but at a much faster rate. Expect them to last longer in regular combat, but go down if they're caught in a mortar barrage or a flamers frenzy of fire.
We also increased their movement speed, this should make the AI more capable of reviving you if they need to take odd routes to get to you.

And a final note on AI. Many unused voice lines for enemies will be implemented, Hope you've brushed up on your German so you can understand if they're running away from you or running towards you!

QoL Features

Adding little bits of polish and convenience is matters a lot in making the game feel smoother, and this update contains a few requested features along with the usual UI improvements:

Controller hotswapping has been reworked to work real time, allowing you to quickly jump between input methods by simply pressing a button on the desired one. No need to keep plugging stuff in and out anymore.
We hope to do even more for controllers later on, with this update we have set up the systems required to support controller key rebinding in a future update (after we figure out a few more things), as well as support for unique controller features.

Some players have complained about hand pains from having to spam click the mouse with semi-automatic weapons, so we'll be adding a new "weapons always full-auto" option to allow for continued fire even with semi-auto weapons. For fairness sake, the fire rate with this will be lower then if you were manually clicking, but it should help players with hand problems.

Player names have been freed from their forced uppercase prisons, and now they'll be displayed with the capitalizations you've intended. A setting to return the old shouting names will be available though for those who prefer it.

Crash Handler

We’ll be adding a new in-engine crash handler to help streamline the bug-reporting process and improve the game’s stability.

If the game crashes, you’ll now see a crash report window with the following features:

• Crash Log Viewer – A detailed, read-only crash log is automatically filled in to capture what went wrong.
• Optional User Note – You can describe what you were doing just before the crash to give us more context. This gets packaged in with the crash report file.
• Save Crash Report – Save a full report to your system with one click. This contains the crashlog, along with a memory dump that can help us identify engine sided crashes.
• Open Crashlog Folder – Instantly access the folder where crash reports are stored.
• Restart Game – Try launching the game again directly from the crash window.
• Close Button – Exit without a report.

You will be able to share crash logs in the bug-reports channel on our Discord server or post them to the Steam forums.

This will help us identify and fix issues faster—and make the game more stable for everyone long term.

Other Surprises

There are more things waiting in the update that we are not ready to talk about just yet, but will hopefully be able to showcase soon, once we figure out the best way for it. We hope it'll be worth the long wait.

There are also features such as the camp rework and card crafting we previously talked about, which are progressing, but will still require a lot more time to complete, so will post an update on them when we have something

- M.U.G Team