Beta 16 "The Unchained"

A new expansion begins! Our Beta 16 eponymous opponents are upon us... With them comes upgraded Scanalyzer functionality for all, and a batch of over 200 more achievements to catch us up with the last seven years of ever-expanding content.

Hard to believe I've been working on Cogmind full time for 12 years now, with still several major releases planned out, but given the trajectory of recent versions as we arrive at and continue to explore increasingly extreme possibilities, I'm really looking forward to what's coming :)

Today let's get started with the changelog, then dive into demos and some of the more interesting topics within...

Changelog

Cogmind Beta 16 "The Unchained" (251021) changelog (excerpt):

-----( HIGHLIGHTS )-----

• NEW: 228 more achievements covering new content since 2018, spanning plot, style, challenges, and more
• NEW: 5 Unchained
• NEW: 21 new items
• NEW: 17 turrets and drones
• NEW: 3 new robot variants
• NEW: Use Scanalyzers to study common non-prototype 0b10 parts for an additional permanent modifier to using any such part

-----( CONTENT )-----

• NEW: Separate Heavy ARC variant specific to assaults and other non-patrol uses
• NEW: 11 new sound effects (total = 1350)
• MOD: Luggers generally smarter about selecting goals and dealing with more complex scenarios
• MOD: Moved Cep. Phasing Heat Sink into the lab area
• MOD: Special prototype robot variants added in Beta 15 now explicit about RIF immunity
• MOD: Achievement "Wheee!" description now more specific
• MOD: Achievement "Armchair Analyst" more specifically limited to Terminal sources
• MOD: Splice Drones no longer indirectly award "Error 47" achievement
• MOD: Removed achievement "What Is This Thing?"
• MOD: Removed challenge mode win achievements

-----( QOL / UI )-----

• NEW: Item search window results include any Unknown parts and unidentified prototypes
• NEW: If part data visualization in info mode, item search also shows info summary instead of last known integrity
• NEW: Prefix item search window text string with '-' to exclude it from results
• NEW: Added .mat(ter)-specific type search filter to item search window
• NEW: Added .unc(ollected) filter to item search window to limit to items not yet in gallery
• NEW: Contextual tutorial message on first time affected by Drag when moving
• NEW: Option to intermittently show full text of map comments even outside comment mode (advanced.cfg: mapCommentsPersistent)
• NEW: Option to persistently highlight all known Heavy sensor ranges (advanced.cfg: alwaysShowHeavySensorRanges)
• MOD: Comments created via autocommentHeavies advanced.cfg option no longer automatically cleared upon security rotation
• MOD: System corruption visual effects no longer continue while in game menus

-----( MECHANICS / ITEMS )-----

• NEW: Using RIF Installers restores any lost Relay Coupler IDs
• MOD: Search patrol dispatches may become applicable more quickly than before
• MOD: "Search Patrol Dispatched" influence decrease reduced from 150 to 100
• MOD: Allies will not swap with Botcubes during build sequence
• MOD: Myomer Exoskeleton speed improved from 100 to 90
• MOD: Dimensional Slip Node armor reduced to 5
• MOD: Removed bothacking penetration bonus from offensive hackware (low-impact remnant of older placeholder system)
• MOD: Access(Main) branch hacking results inside Garrison no longer report specific exit destination
• MOD: Fabnet override duration increased from 10 to 20

-----( SCORESHEET / DATA )-----

• NEW: Scoresheet records Scrap Suit usage data
• NEW: History log records successful CPS Tube targets
• MOD: Scoresheet "Initial Warlord ECA Mod" records highest value for overall stat rather than total
• MOD: Scoresheet instead records intercept dispatches on a one-to-one basis with announcements

-----( BUGS )-----

• FIX: Security rotations almost never occurred more than once per map [R-26 Lightspeed]
• FIX: Arc weapons always hit within their potential arc, even on a miss [Runia, aoemica]
• FIX: Civil war avoidance guarantee following quickest exit route could fail if top-right Scraptown stairs not yet discovered [aoemica, calico]
• FIX: 0b10 autonomous weapons were unaffected by active ID Mask [Infomantis]

Extended Beta 16 changelog including additional categorized minor details for advanced players...

>>>: CONTENT

• NEW: 1 new type of build class modifier based on new mechanic
• MOD: Deep Caves detects a wider variety of intruders
• MOD: Multinova Projection Cannon can no longer be faulty
• MOD: Immobilizer description specifically indicates target must have innate disruption immunity to be immune to the effect
• MOD: Updated C-30 ARC analysis text

>>>: QOL / UI

• NEW: Option to bypass warnings for removal of fragile/fused parts (advanced.cfg: ignoreDestroyOnRemovalConfirmation)
• MOD: Selecting an item to path to via search window ignores advanced.cfg warnOnMoveOutsideMapView setting
• MOD: Context help for originally melee-specific damage types updated to remove melee-only references
• MOD: Several log message colors for non-controllable allies switched to use same as controllable allies
• MOD: Some original achievement icon border types and default order updated
• MOD: [RPGLIKE mode] UFD Drillbomb size reduced to 3

>>>: SCORESHEET / DATA

• NEW: Scoresheet records "Prop Armor Coverage (%)"
• NEW: Scoresheet records "ECM-based Alert Blocks"
• NEW: Scoresheet records total thermoelectric energy gain
• NEW: Scoresheet records part restoration tallies

>>>: MISC

• NEW: All patron supporter names registered since Beta 15 added to in-game list (see Credits menu)
• NEW: All patron item-attribution names registered since Beta 15 added to the item collection gallery

For the complete changelog including all bug fixes, see the latest iteration packaged with the game or online here.

Saves from earlier versions are incompatible with Beta 16, but even if you're on Steam and Cogmind automatically updates, Beta 15 is still available via its own legacy branch and you can roll back to finish a run in progress first if you like. Cogmind will remind you which branch to use if it finds an old save, and your old save won't be deleted or affected by the update.

Chained No More

First introduced back in 2020 as part of the ARG event that teased a wide variety of optional future content, the "Unchained" have gradually made their way into Cogmind lore, most extensively as part of the latest two UFD-related releases.

If you've been to Scraptown a few times, by now you may have collected references to some of their names and capabilities.

Rightly feared by Derelicts everywhere, these former wild Derelicts now work for MAIN.C in a semi-autonomous capacity, featuring unique AI and gear seen nowhere else. Each is quite different and presents its own challenges, with the power to significantly shake up a run depending on the circumstances.

Unlike other mechanics designed to keep Cogmind moving along over time, Unchained are capable of tracking and pursuing threats to the Complex (e.g. a dangerous Cogmind) across multiple maps. Eventually they'll give up the chase, or you can opt to confront the danger.

Just like other such pressure mechanics, however, they are telegraphed in advance via announcements, so you'll know they're coming and can take evasive or preparatory action as necessary before they actually arrive.

The average player or basic winning run will not really see these guys much, if at all, whereas top runs by experienced players are much more likely to encounter at least one, if not more. Incurring the wrath of Unchained is even rarer (though not entirely impossible) if not playing on the harder difficulty setting around which Cogmind is balanced: Rogue.

But how to attract their attention to begin with...

Aside from sterilizing a large map, no individual actions are capable of triggering them, as they are more intended as a response to long-term behavior, in general repeated cumulative actions that Complex 0b10 finds very offensive to its normal operation. This is also why quicker shorter runs/wins are not as likely to see them, either.

For more background on Unchained design, you can check out this article from last month on Patreon.

Importantly I must say that the Unchained are a work in progress! There are many more types to come and while the goal was to have half or more of the total completed by now, before introducing their base of operations in Beta 17, I didn't want to keep everyone waiting too long between major releases, and a big chunk of time was instead already allocated to the achievements expansion (which itself was planned for later, but I decided to move that up).

Aside from greater variety, we'll have a possible tiering system and weighted dispatches, finer control of where each can and cannot appear or chase, and more general behavior tweaks... altogether things that will be better implemented once we do have a wider array of options available.

There are currently five different Unchained to meet.

Huge thanks to the patrons playing prerelease versions, especially the Unchained hunters out there forcing encounters to face these threats head on, but also just everyone in general providing very useful data with regard to when, where, and why Unchained were appearing, chasing, and to what extent this impacted runs, allowing for ongoing tweaks.

Not going to spoil anything else about these guys, just expect the unexpected. Maybe the Exiles can help.

Things sure are looking a little different around these parts...

Scan This!

Although naturally not everyone will be able to partake in (suffer at the hands of?) the arrival of the Unchained, everyone will be able to take advantage of our newly-upgraded Scanalyzers!

Scanalyzers have always had useful core functionality in terms of identifying parts and acquiring schematics for them, functions that some players make extensive use of, but for years I've wanted to expand them to include an even greater number of use cases across almost any build or strategy type.

Well for Beta 16 patrons voted to include this feature, and it's here! Also it's great :D (Personally as a player given my own strategies I tend to ignore Scanalyzers most of the time, but will definitely take advantage of them from now on given this new feature...)

In short, with a common (non-prototype) 0b10 part in your possession you can retrieve "studies" for that technology, giving you a better understanding of its capabilities and therefore improve a stat for all parts of that type.

The steps to this process, with an example:

• You have one or more Carbon-fiber Legs attached or in inventory.
• Visit a Scanalyzer and use the new direct Retrieve Study option which gives a list of all parts in your possession for which you can download study data.
• Select Carbon-fiber Leg from the list and, if successful, the effective move time of all Carbon-fiber Legs you ever use is reduced from 120 to 105!

Many builds are composed of salvage to some degree, and most salvage is common parts, so this is a consistent way to put together even more effective builds from "junk."

Parts for which you have an applicable study append a '+' after their name, as you cna see in this example below that downloads multiple studies:

To keep things simple, the type of stat modification acquired for a given part is consistent across entire categories of parts, as follows:

• Lgt/Mic/Mni power sources: +1 supply
• Other power sources: +2 supply
• Treads: Penalty/2
• Legs: -15 time/move
• Wheels: -10 time/move
• Hover/Flight: +1 support/slot
• Weapons: +10% accuracy

There are no studies for Utilities, but you can do some really nice things with the rest of these options, especially given how aside from repeat salvage from particular robots, you can also find larger caches of useful regular parts. Some common parts may also see use through long stretches of certain run types, increasing the value of acquiring a study on them early.

Just like the Insert() feature, Study() allows you to identify unknown parts (hence their same base chance, actually, which is high so this is pretty easy for non-hackers to pull off).

Like schematics, part studies also prevent you from losing the respective part IDs to corruption.

And as with schematics and analyses, we're going to need a way to access a list of what you know, so that's been added to the Status window where you'd expect (the button in this case being named just "List" so we can use 'L' for keyboard access as 'S' is unavailable).

Alongside schematic, fabrication and repair lists, run scoresheets now also include a complete list of where and what parts Cogmind studied, which will be very interesting to look at in the future data.

Achievements++

Well it's been a hot minute since we got new achievements in Cogmind :P

The existing list has served us well over the years, but naturally a huge amount of content has been added since the first batch went out in 2018, but no new achievements to match! I kept waiting to introduce more since I imagined that would be better left as a "near 1.0" sort of thing, but seeing as there is still no specific timeline for 1.0 and it's been this long already, I decided we really need to catch up with the content on this front sooner rather than later. Another part of what originally kept reinforcing the decision to wait was that expanding our achievements would be quite an undertaking, not just for the sheer amount of content to take into account, but also because I would need to rewrite some of the underlying architecture to increase the system's flexibility. On that note, good news is it's now very easy to add new achievements, so they'll be able to better keep up with any new content or mechanics needs going forward.

Beta 16 includes 228 new achievements spanning the full range of categories I established back when developing the first set. They are distributed as follows (graph was put together several months back, before a few more achievements were added for yet newer content, but it's close :P):

There's more background info on development of the new set available in this article.

As part of this process, I also did a full review of old achievements, though little was changed among those, mainly just a few icon adjustments in light of newer developments.

The biggest change was the removal of all "challenge mode" win achievements. This is not the Challenge category achievements, of which we're seeing plenty more, but instead refers to the old challenge modes which most people don't know about--they're too different from the regular game, not easily accessible, and, most importantly, no longer updated/maintained. The modes themselves can still be accessed as indicated in the manual, there's just no achievements associated with them. At the time many years ago they might have become a more integral part of the game, but I decided not to go down that route, and it's not feasible to properly maintain them or require that players activate and deal with those just for achievement hunting.

But this achievement update is essentially just more more more...

For those of you who've been playing for a while, you will likely earn quite a few new achievements very quickly, since you'll be able to breeze through a run and interact with an even wider array of mechanics compared to newer players. You may also earn some achievements in a sometimes unexpected order, but this is because they're designed with a fresh player experience in mind, not the experience of someone who's been playing for dozens/hundreds of hours already. New achievements from the Style, Challenge, and Win categories will of course come at a more reasonable pace :)

A reminder that hidden achievements are such because they'll be earned through normal play across all story and build types / content interaction, so you don't really need to look them up unless you are explicitly trying to earn all achievements in as short a time as possible (the record for 100%-ing Cogmind achievements through planned runs is under a month).

And another reminder regarding Steam "global achievement" rates: They have always been pretty off for Cogmind given that achievements were introduced years after release, and the weirdness will only continue with this new batch, in fact getting far worse and confusing, so one shouldn't pay attention to those numbers xD

Aaand one more important notice here: If you are playing Beta 16 via Steam on day 1, note that it will take some hours after release before all new achievements are available on the platform itself, but don't worry about missing any since if you play in the meantime and do earn achievements, as usual Cogmind records them in its own more detailed interactive interface/database anyway, and will sync up with Steam once those do become available very soon (after you start up the game again on any later date). Accessed via the game menu (Esc) -> Records (7) -> Achievements (a).

QoL

Mmmm, tasty QoL...

I've finally accumulated enough little things I wanted to do to further improve the already-powerful item search feature to package it all up for release in Beta 16. Like in the past item searching always used the integrity view for listed items, but now if you're in info mode (Q), it can show that instead! This might allow you to better see the effects of rating-based filters, if you use those, or just generally more quickly identify the basic stats for a part you may have forgotten the details of.

Text searching also allows for exclusion of a string by inserting a '-' before it, for example "-corr" to exclude corrupted parts:

Searches can also now properly find prototype or otherwise unknown parts, if that's what you're looking for (or want to exclude).

We also have some new advanced options regarding more persistent data visualizations on the map. Normally the map view avoids using too many permanent extra indicators, since they can be distracting, but in the past I'd identified some features that I thought might be interesting or useful to have as permanent options for some folks.

The first is map comments. Of course there are customizable map comment indicators that mark each location, but to see the contents you have to enter comment mode. Well how about always (well intermittently based on your settings) showing the full text alongside the marker, which may not be too distracting if you're the sort of player to leave only occasional short comments... Here's that option in action (advanced.cfg: mapCommentsPersistent), with both an automated and manual comment:

There's also an option to always shown the detection warning radius for known Heavies nearby, the same info you can see when putting your cursor over them (advanced.cfg: alwaysShowHeavySensorRanges):

(I'm putting myself in the wall there just so we can watch two Heavies rotate past :P)

Among the other long-term notes I have finally converted into reality... we have a new variant of the Carrier class. Previously ARCs have always belonged to one of those rarer single-variant classes, but come Beta 16 you'll (maybe) be seeing a new type of ARC: C-45 Heavy ARC.

For quite a while now I've been sitting on the possibility of adding a new ARC, saving the idea for a special future case that simply hadn't materialized yet, but was more recently inspired to put it in action to address an occasional annoyance: ARC confusion.

More than once we've seen folks who aren't aware there's a difference between an assault and a patrol roaming around in an ARC, plus of course even if you're an experienced player there are situations where you may not be sure which is which unless you watch for a bit. Viewed in QoL terms, it would be really nice if these uses were more explicitly differentiated!

So from now on regular patrols use the old ARC, and any other instances (mostly assaults) use the new Heavy variant (which is red).

Naturally now that we've differentiated the two we also have further leeway to consider other changes beyond the purely cosmetic! Assaults may sometimes get even closer to visible targets before deploying (if not shot at beforehand), which could be interesting. They'll also be better protected, with core shielding and a switch to Armored Huge Wheels, making them a little slower but also more durable. Also good news for Garrison divers who want to salvage some of those sweet wheels ;)

See this Heavy ARC test with closer deployment:

And a comparison between a patrolling ARC and... ARCs of a different persuasion...

In addition to reflecting their different purpose, adding this variant will be a nice reinforcement of the idea that their respective contents are different, too!

Community

Lotta great work coming out of the community these days! Sadly for health reasons I have not been able to stream--sucks, though in the meantime as usual we do have others streaming some great runs mostly on Discord, or sharing snapshots of sweet builds or lamentable situations, or there getting advice on their runs from other helpful folks.

And streaming or no, we can all appreciate some sweet fan art :D

u/Southern_Shine200's 3D tank render composed of ASCII art for the actual parts one might use for such a build (source and more shots here):

A sighting of the Great Nut?! This is what McSaucyNugget would have you believe...

Watercolor G-47 Trooper, also by McSaucyNugget:

Zyalin's been cooking up something else new we'll maybe get to see in the future, but this one's just a quick sketch of my TRAPPER-ASSASSIN build I was streaming some months ago.

(I guess I did also stream some Beta 16 early on to share the new Scanalyzer study feature--that, too, turned into a gladiator/assassin build :P)

I should make some new wallpapers or something since I haven't done that in *checks calendar* a decade (xD), but it seems like u/Southern_Shine200 has you covered there, too!

CaptainWinky continues to expand his crazy amount of "expanded lore," many with design, art, and visual aids.

Merchants, you don't say...

One very impressive piece of work to come out in recent months is not of the visual variety. If you're into excellent writing, I'd like to point you in the direction of fernman's fanfic "All's Quiet on the Warlord Front," a short story describing a particular theoretical scenario from a regular Derelict's point of view. Short excerpt:

It unfolds. It’s beautiful and it’s disgusting. The disk morphs into something massive and ethereally angular – no bot should be that large and not grounded. Armour plates curve out and flex around, a cloth cloak crossed with the wings of a metal beetle, exposing an esoteric mass of sensors and processors and tertiary subsystem computers that rapidly mark it as a far greater threat than even Warlord, who is himself broadcasting the order base-wide – not that it’s likely anyone is left to hear it – to ‘Come and help me deal with whatever the hell just flew into my throne room,’ and he’s squeezing off a volley that strikes mere armour.

Within the full 2k words is an inspiring vision of what earning the "Traitor" challenge achievement must feel like from the other side, assuming you're prepared to pull it off ;)

That's the rundown. Get out there, earn some achievements, study some parts for more efficient builds, maybe find some Unchained (or more properly speaking, get found by some Unchained), and... expect a 16.1!

Been a while since I did a minor version release that wasn't just a patch, and have never actually announced one in advance, but this time is different due to the state of Beta 16 and how it differs from what I'm aiming for before we head for Beta 17: We need more Unchained!

Again, catching up on achievements ended up getting priority and we're at a good enough spot for public Beta 16 release now already, so better than pushing it back just to accommodate more Unchained work. Their overall balance will improve as more are added though, plus there are a lot of neat but complex internal mechanics on the way to support them, so better to not try rushing any of that.

Also of course there will likely be some tiny updates here in the near term--those don't get announced separately but patch content is always added to the changelogs as usual, and the in-game version/News reminder is another way to know about those if you have it active in the options.

The leaderboards will soon be archived and reset for our new version followed by stat analysis from our tens of thousands of runs submitted from Beta 15.