Hey Brigadiers! We're making steady progress on the next update, and today, we want to share a deeper look at the upcoming pilot changes. We touched on these changes in our previous blog posts, but the subject deserves a full breakdown.

Our goal is to make each pilot feel more impactful. They should be more than just a name with a health bar. We want them to add real depth to your squad building. Pilots should provide more depth to the squad building, with meaningful differences between each pilot and offering new synergies with different mechs.

Pilot Progression and Traits

First, let's talk about progression. Each pilot class will now have its own set of traits that you can unlock as they level up. Pilots will gain experience from combat missions, and with each level, they'll learn a new trait. At specific levels, you'll need to make a choice between multiple traits, guiding your pilot's specialization.

Pilot classes define a role pilots excel in. Some pilots might specialize in close quarters combat, other pilots might be best at supporting their comrades from afar. Each class will get traits that benefit that role. Furthermore, each class has two different variants that affect the traits in the progression tree. With over a hundred unique traits, even two pilots from the same class can evolve into completely different builds.

But the pilot journey does not stop at the top of the progression tree. Once a pilot reaches their maximum level, they can be promoted to the next prestige rank. This promotion allows you to permanently increase a pilot's stats, and preserve a trait of your choice, while resetting the trait tree with a new set of random traits. This allows you to keep building the ultimate ace pilot throughout your campaign.

Squad Management: Fatigue and Trauma

We also wanted to introduce mechanics that encourage you to rotate your squad, matching the theme of a challenging resistance campaign.

Alongside experience, your pilots gain fatigue from combat deployments. A fully exhausted pilot might collapse on the battlefield, while a well-rested one will push their mech to perform better. Expanding your roster and allowing your pilots to take breaks will be key to keeping your squad healthy and combat-ready!

We want these challenges to be fair, without making the game frustrating or pushing you to immediately reload a save. One of the issues want to address was how easy it was to instantly lose a pilot permanently from one unlucky hit. With pilots becoming so important to your long-term progression, the death mechanics needed to be adjusted.

Now, when your pilot goes down, they can survive - but they'll gain a trauma. Each trauma adds a random trait to the pilot. Some might be minor, while others might necessitate a change in tactics. Each pilot has different tolerance for trauma, and only pilots who have reached their limit will be permanently lost in combat. We hope this system will create more interesting stories and further differentiate your pilots, while smoothing out the bumps of the old approach!

This doesn't cover all the changes we are making to the pilots, but we hope this was an interesting glimpse into what we're working on! While we're not ready to confirm the launch date quite yet, we are excited to share more details soon.

Thank you for your continued support! Hold strong, and see you soon!

— The Phantom Team