Alpha 6
We are happy to announce that Alpha 6 is now available in the main branch.
Our main objective in this update was to improve game balancing. Our goal was to keep the game challenging, but make it a bit more forgiving, less repetitive, and less frustrating.
We changed how the base attacks happen, so they are less frequent and annoying, but still keep the player on edge, knowing that the base is never really safe.
We also tried to make the game more forgiving, so that losing a fight or a few survivors would not mean that all hope is lost.
Other than that, our priorities were adding more content, fixing bugs, and improving usability.
While loading saves from previous alpha versions is possible, due to the many balancing changes, we strongly recommend to start a new game instead, specially with high survivor counts.
Main Changes
- New defence mechanic - Awareness Level. As time goes by, the demons become aware of your base. The larger your population, the faster it happens. The frequency of attacks on your base now depends on the awareness level. Once the attack happens, the difficulty of the attack is determined by how long since the invasion started (how many game days have passed), and also on the awareness level. On higher awareness levels even early game attacks can be devastating.
- Priorities Summary Panel - the panel for setting survivor task priorities has changed so that you can see all the survivors in one place, sort them by their skills, and see how good they are at each task.
- Key Binding - you can now configure keyboard controls.
- Scavenge loot - the way scavenge loot is calculated has changed to make scavenge more worthwhile. Beware, though, as scavenge missions now increases enemy awareness.
- New creature - Fallen Angel - if you thought you can just hide behind cover and the enemies will come to you - think again. Although they deal lower damage than some of their counterparts, their long range and high accuracy make them the deadliest enemy we've seen so far.
- New Research - a few new research subjects were added, and a few coming soon were implemented. Mostly, we've added research that provides passive bonuses, and new research to support new mechanics/items.
- New Items - a bunch of new items were added to the game, including a rare weapon that can only be found in scavenge, if you're lucky.
- Larger expeditions - you can now research "Logistics" which will increase the size of your taskforce to 6 survivors.
Full list of changes
- Mechanics: New Awareness Level mechanic, determines strength and frequency of enemy attacks.
- Mechanics: Enemy attacks on base are sometimes split into several groups, coming from different directions.
- Mechanics: Enemy attacks may now happen even before the craft weapons quest is complete.
- Mechanics: Survivors no longer start walking to far away tasks, if they will become hungry/tired before reaching them.
- Mechanics: Can no longer set "Needs" priority. It is always highest priority.
- Content: Several new items were added to the game.
- Content: Several new research subjects were added.
- Content: Coming soon research subjects were implemented.
- Content: New rare weapon that can only be found in scavenge.
- Content: New random event: Scouting Party (affects awareness)
- Content: New enemy creature: Fallen Angel.
- Content: Combat maps are now selected in a way that reduces the chance of getting the same combat map again and again.
- Content: Repel evil ritual now reduces awareness instead of cancelling an incoming attack.
- Content: New building - lookout post, patrolled to reduce awareness growth rate.
- Visuals: added a few more variations for the dead bodies in combat maps.
- Balancing: Changed the way enemies are split into groups in combat, so that the groups are more evenly balanced.
- Balancing: Changed enemies in hellgate, added fallen angels, and increased difficulty due to increase of max survivor team size.
- Balancing: New loot generation algorithm.
- Balancing: Changed costs of many research subjects.
- Balancing: Changed costs of several items.
- Balancing: Difficulty of rescue survivor mission is now less dependent on time and more dependent on number of survivors.
- Balancing: Holy equipment now requires "Holy Words", can be scavenged (rare) or obtained by killing fallen angels.
- Balancing: Made summoning imps a bit more expensive.
- Difficulty: Added new "Casual" difficulty level
- Difficulty: Added new "awareness rate" difficulty setting in cusotm difficulties, that determines how fast awareness level grows.
- Difficulty: Added new "attack frequency" difficulty setting in cusotm difficulties, that determines how often the base is attacked. Works in conjunction with awareness growth, since attacks are more likely when awareness is high.
- Difficulty: Changed "Normal" difficulty name to "Challenging", to more accurately describe the challenge level. It is still the default and recommended difficulty level.
- Difficulty: Changed "Beginner" difficulty name to "Forgiving"
- Usability: New priorities panel shows all survivors and can sort by skill.
- Usability: Can configure keyboard controls.
- Usability: Added zoom keyboard controls, for laptops without mouse wheel.
- Usability: Selecting values in settings panel is no longer cycling, so it's easier to determine which is higher/lower.
- Usability: When alerted of an incoming attack, survivors will remain in their position if you manually send them somewhere, until after the attack.
- Usability: New keyboard control to open help panel (default "H")
- Usability: Removed "Best" resolution option ins graphics settings, instead it defaults to highest resolution and remembers whatever has been set manually.
- Fixed bug: Enemies stuck inside walls and cannot be killed.
- Fixed bug: Base attack enemies would only spawn on top/right edges.
- Fixed bug: 4:3 lower aspect ratios would not see the entire tech tree.
- Fixed bug: Loading a game with the "Scavenge" quest active would always spawn a new rescue mission.
- Fixed bug: Some maps had too little clay/stone.
- Fixed bug: Selecting multiple survivors and clicking retreat would not work.
- Fixed bug: Entering a non-numeric value in map seed would crash the game.
- Fixed bug: Right clicking an already selected target would reset the attack timer.
- Fixed bug: Animations when using medkit would not play when performing survivor was crouching near cover.
- Fixed bug: When multiple workstations were available, such as beds or workbench, survivors would only consider using the closest one.
- Fixed bug: Survivor skills appearance was bad in lower resolutions.
- Fixed bug: When using a medkit, health bar in portrait would not update.
- Fixed bug: Scrollbar in survivor HUD was not clickable.
- Fixed bug: Clicking on the keyboard shortcut for combat ability (heal/retreat) would always use the last ability (heal)
- Fixed typos