It's update time again!
This release has some significant gameplay changes that will shake the meta! The tl;dr: we removed Eagle Eye, added Aim action and new traits, revisited and improved "transition" levels (first and last levels of a moon), improved manual targeting, balanced a shitload of stuff and added plasma ravagers. A more detailed description follows!
Accuracy
We've rewrote the accuracy calculations and decided it's time for a significant changes in this territory. Following our design goal of not having traits just increase numbers, we've removed Eagle Eye. In turn we added a new basic action, Aim, activated by waiting (the same as hunker - you can have both now!). It gives a whopping +50% to accuracy (up to 100% after two waits). But there's more - several new traits have been added instead! Marine got Focused fire (+10% accuracy to every next successive shot if only shooting), Scout got Deadly precision (your Aim bonus is also a bonus to critical chance) and both Scout and Marine got Steady shot (retain the aim bonus after shot). Technician already benefits much from Aim synergy with Hunker, so we gave him a different trait - Tinkerer (+2 charges on stations).
Looking at aim we obviously looked at cover too, now accuracy always helps to avoid cover properly - this fixes a few wierd behaviours too! At the same time we noticed problems with shotgun damage vs cover. Movable cover was taken into account, but wall cover wasnt. We decided to go halfway - cover affects damage, but only half as it affects accuracy of weapons. To offset shotgun stopping power, we increased basic shotgun damage.
Ranges
Following that we took a look at ranges and noticed that they're not to clear. The minimum range was tweaked so now it's the minimum range at which you have full accuracy, and the max range is the range at which you still have any base accuracy. We tweaked some values to a couple weapons, see CHANGELOG below for details - most notably chaingun has now minimum range 3.
Manual targeting
Accuracy also made us take a look at manual targeting. Now the last manual target is remembered unless you move, and as a bonus you can see the health of inanimate objects! I hear rejoicing from blind fire abusers, but hold your horses - aiming at stuff you don't see no longer takes accuracy into account (how can you aim at what you cannot see?) and has the standard -50% to hit penalty against things that are not targeted.
Weapon/Armor mods
Further on the balance train we also took a look at modding. We decided to reduce the mod capacity increase of Whizkid to +1, but to offset that we decided to allow everybody to mod exotic (magenta) weapons with one mod. The idea is that due to overmodded basic weapons there was no place for exotics or ADVs in the meta unless you were a Technician (who can still multi-mod them).
Balance
A small change that might not immediately pop from the list - enemies are now more aggressive, especially in their optimal range. They will more likely shoot instead of moving, especially at the higher difficulties.
We hope that some of the balance changes will introduce more weapon variety viability as well as make mid-late game harder (e.g. we buffed the armor of post-Callisto formers and Summoner). The latter goal is still in the works though (in the meantime play around with plasma ravagers). In general we hope that Scout got a general buff in this release to make him as viable as the other classes - between Deadly precision, Aim and the stealth vs melee improvement.
Transition levels
However, the most immediately visible change is the transition levels! No longer will people ask us how do you take an elevator from Callisto to Europa :P. We took the occasion to add some balancing too - e.g. you have all three energy weapons guarantee to appear on Io early levels.
Visual
Finally there are visual improvements with shadows and smoke effects. The former being a side effect of FINALLY fixing the Iris Pro shadow bug!
Full changelog below!
Changelog
NEW #792 - Callisto L1 upgraded!
NEW #772 - Aim action added (use Wait to add +50% to hit)
NEW #777 - new trait - Steady shot (retain your aim between shots)
NEW #777 - new trait - Focused fire (successive shots +10% acc)
NEW #777 - new trait - Deadly precision (Aim bonus -> crit chance)
NEW #790 - new trait - Tinkerer (+2 charges on stations)
NEW #780 - manual targeting remembers targets until you move
NEW #779 - new setting - turning off "idle" voice quips
NEW #771 - settings now in categories
NEW #780 - targeting doors or other destructible objects shows hp
NEW #690 - weapon range and accuracy topics added to Help
NEW #796 - plasma ravagers added
CHANGE #800 - Valhalla Spaceport updated
CHANGE #801 - Europa L1 - smaller "intro" level with own generator
CHANGE #804 - Europa Central Dig revisited
CHANGE #805 - Io L1 - intro level with guaranteed energy weapons
CHANGE #796 - Whizkid gives +1 mod capacity per level
CHANGE #796 - everyone can mod exotics once
CHANGE #798 - min distance now correctly shows the minimum distance
at which the tohit chance is full while max distance
shows the maximum distance at which it is possible to
hit the enemy (consistency) - all values updated by 1
CHANGE #789 - stealth gives 150% evasion (so -75% melee to-hit)
CHANGE #777 - removed Eagle Eye
CHANGE #781 - shotgun damage properly depends on cover
CHANGE #781 - increased shotgun damage to compensate
CHANGE #777 - removed EE from Marine and Scout, both get Steady shot
Marine gets Focused fire, Scout gets Deadly precision
CHANGE #776 - accuracy calculations refactored!
CHANGE #776 - accuracy now always helps to not hit cover
CHANGE #780 - vault, keydoors have now armor instead of shitload hp
CHANGE #769 - cannot aim at something you cannot see (blindfire -50%)
CHANGE #796 - most demonic melee enemies now cause Bleeding
CHANGE #805 - you can now compare amps on floor
CHANGE #788 - balance - hunter rifle min distance raised by 1
CHANGE #796 - balance - rocket launchers have min dist 2
CHANGE #796 - balance - chaingun min and opt ranges raised by 1
CHANGE #796 - balance - reduced auto, assault, energy max range by 1
CHANGE #788 - balance - non-ammo using enemy ammo drops made more
consistent, with a guaranteed amount
CHANGE #796 - balance - revolver max distance raised by 1
CHANGE #796 - balance - turret max distance decreased (-acc on long)
CHANGE #796 - balance - enemies more likely to attack in opt range
CHANGE #799 - balance - europa+ formers have slightly better armor
CHANGE #799 - balance - CRI marines have better armor
CHANGE #799 - balance - summoner armor buffed
CHANGE #633 - improved shadow quality
CHANGE #807 - improved smoke rendering
FIX #633 - Intel Iris Pro (esp macOS) - fixed shadow rendering
FIX #776 - fixed hitting enemy in cover by firing at enemy behind
FIX #776 - fixed high accuracy display and real chance mismatch
FIX #778 - fixed repeating no ammo quip on reload dance
FIX #781 - fixed mismatch of shotgun damage between world and UI
FIX #768 - explosion range in targeting no longer reveals enemies
FIX #796 - fixed advanced SMG's sometimes having no stats
FIX #792 - fixed yet another case of lootbox in tight corridor
FIX #805 - fixed display for armor value 10 and over
FIX #774 - fixed rare cases of running out of texture space
A traditional bugfix release will probably follow. Next update will probably be 0.9.0 (note that the scheme we use moves to 0.10.0 afterwards, so it's NOT 90% ). It will probably be out at the beginning of October!
Thank you, and good luck!