The Ground Support Update is here bringing you the Turret, Support and Mining Drones amongst many other improvements and fixes!
Volcanoids is also 30% OFF, so now's a good time to get your friends on board!
Eruption-sized thanks goes to everyone who's been patiently supporting us while we brought this update to y'all! Hope you have a ton of fun with the new content!
- Rich
Player Drones
The stars of the show this time are of course the new drones. And as opposed to the previous update, these are for you and you only!
They'll be of massive help if you're a solo player and at the same time really fun in multiplayer due to all the tactics you can do when you have more people on hand.
The drones come in 3 different flavors: Turret, Support, Mining
The turret and support drones will let you bring some of the most useful parts of your drillship away with you into combat no matter where you are. While the mining drones will completely automate resource gathering for you so you never have to touch the pickaxe again (except when you need to hit a COG with it).
You will unlock the drones around the end of Area 2. As far as actually getting them, you have to build a module for the type of drone you want. Once you do, the module will automatically create and store the drone (1 drone per module).
After that's done, you can deploy them using the new drone gadget added to your bracer toolbar or the map (more on that later). This doesn't apply to mining drones which are fully automated.
Support Drones
They are essentially walls that you can build anywhere you need for cover. But you can go as far as building full-fledged pop up fort with them!
However, there's a lot more going on behind these walls than meets the eye:
- Each drone has platforms that let you do what I call the "peak-shoot-crouch combo".
- There are little windows you can use to spot your next target.
- You also have medical and armor stations attached to them.
And saving the best for last... the support drones will be able to bring you items from your drillship's inventory and vice versa!
Need more ammo? Have the drone bring it to you. Need to empty your inventory? Drop it on him and send him back!
To have the drone bring you items, select the support drone on your bracer like normally but right-click instead of left-click. This will open the inventory allowing you to drag and drop items from the drillship to the drone. When you're done, click the "call drone" button.
To send items back, simply click the inventory hatch on the drone itself when it's deployed to open its inventory, drag and drop items in it and then click the red button above it.
Turret Drones
The second type of drone is the turret drone. They come with 8 different types of turrets, pistol turret being the default one.
You can easily change the type on the drone's module. The only requirement is that you have the weapon you want to put on the drone (eg. rocket launcher) available in the drillship inventory. Though you also want to make sure there's corresponding ammo (eg. rockets) available in the ship's inventory for the drone to take.
As some of you noticed in the trailer, you will indeed be able to hook up the gunner seat to your turret drones giving you manual control over them! So there can now be a dedicated gunner who sits back at the drillship while the others deploy turret drones for him out in the field.
Mining Drones
Aka the pickaxe killer is completely automated, meaning you don't deploy it like the others. It goes out on its own.
Once you build the module and it constructs the mining drone, it will automatically start going out mining all the resources around your drillship. Unless you set a specific resource to look for on its module.
To know, which resources are nearby, we added a new marker to the map to show you exactly that. The colors reflect the resource yield (green = high, yellow = medium, red = low).
Map Changes
Aside from the markers, you will also notice two new buttons on your map in this update. The drone button will bring out a menu with all the available drones. After that, you can simply select one of the drones and click on the map to deploy it in that location.
The second button will bring all the currently deployed drones back to the ship.
Other Drone-Related Features
- Opened production modules increase the speed of drone construction.
- If a dial on the drone turns red, it indicates a critical problem preventing the use of the drone (eg. no ammo in the drillship's inventory for the drone to take).
- If a helper drone is closed or the entire drillship goes underground, the helper drones will go underground as well. Meaning you have to have the drillship on the surface in order to use the helper drones.
- If your drillship is low on power, drones will malfunction.
- Destroyed drones get automatically reconstructed by their modules.
- Loot carried by a drone that got destroyed can be looted from the drone's wreck.
- Damaged drones get repaired automatically when returned to the home module.
- Players can repair drones in the field with the wrench and repair kits.
- Drones can be seen on HUD when the control bracer is equipped.
- Control bracer has a new drone build tool, allowing you to place drones in the proximity of the player. This includes mines and basements.
- Map can be used to place support and turret drones over distance. Use the return button to call all drones home in case of need.
- Mining drones will escape when under fire. Turret and Support drones will withstand for as long as possible till critical HP is reached.
- When the drillship goes underground, all helper drones return automatically and empty their inventory into the drillship's storage.
Additional Patch Notes
When it comes to the less exciting stuff, we focused on fixing the issues related to the often mentioned hit registration. We also began optimizing different parts of the game but we're still in the early stages, so a lot more is coming on that front. Other than there's two new achievements, two new languages, some QoL improvements, audio improvements and a whole bunch of bug fixes.
General
- Added two new achievements
- Increased the speed of weapon projectiles
- Chat messages have a different color than server messages
- Changed the size of world map icons
- Reduced enemy lock time for all cog units
- Added missing scrap recipes and rebalanced all of them
- Quests now point the player to the drillship boiler instead of individual cargo modules
- Added input hints for switching ammo in the gunner seat
- Default input hints are now set to Auto (fixes missing controller hints)
- Improved cog and tank avoidance
Optimizations
- Optimized island transitions
- Optimized tank movement
- Optimized 3d audio processing
- Optimized ambient audio processing
- Improved performance of damage effects on drillship modules
Localization
- Added two new languages - Japanese and Dutch
- Updated other localizations
- Fixed grammar mistakes in descriptions
Audio
- Adjusted sound on the rocket launcher, marshal, and rattlesnake
- Added new audio clip for drillship inventory error message
- Added new audio for modules getting damaged in the interior
- Adjusted volume of weapons in caves
- Added spark and death sound for large drones
- Added new steam sound variations for module explosions
- Improved machine gun audio
Fixes
- Fixed issues related to hit detection
- Fixed colliders not being large enough on small drones
- Fixed weapon reload issue on clients in multiplayer
- Fixed custom logo resolution issues
- Fixed low ammo warning on turrets when using non-default ammo
- Fixed cogs stuck underground when loading a save file with an enemy drillship going underground
- Fixed submarine hatch collider issues
- Fixed issues related to turrets not shooting in lava sources
- Fixed tanks sinking into the ground
- Fixed issues with tank debris not being properly synced in multiplayer
- Fixed toolbar - slot symbols are no longer localized
- Fixed issue with large drone module on cog drillships
- Fixed icon rendering on chests in the fog
- Fixed visual issue on smoke particle effects
- Fixed a few small localization issues where the translation was missing
- Fixed geothermal module - removed production points (that was never intended)
- Fixed large drones shooting from the wrong position
- Fixed large drones having wrong scale
- Fixed wrench object placement blinking
- Fixed scrap recipes
- Fixed screen shake caused by explosions far away
- Fixed HP not being updated in multiplayer on roof modules
- Fixed steam sounds on newly placed modules
- Fixed steam sounds on drillship modules
- Fixed rocket launcher audio
- Fixed cogs not being able to navigate some mines and shelters
-FAQ-
If you got any questions, drop them below and I'll continually update this section.
EDIT:
Q: Do the drone turrets use normal or turret ammo?
A: Normal. So the same ammo you use in your weapons. Officer's Pistol uses Revolver Ammo, the Marshal uses Sniper Ammo and the Rattlesnake uses Gatling Ammo.
Q: The turret drones don't take enough ammo with them when deployed. Is there a way to specify it?
A: Not yet but we will definitely look into it since we've seen this issue mentioned a lot. In the meantime, remember that you can drop more ammo in the turret's inventory when it's deployed. Like this: https://i.imgur.com/usB9Gyq.mp4
Q: Why is my turret drone not working?
A: The two most likely causes are 1) you don't have the weapon you selected in your drillship's inventory, in which case you'll see this icon on the module 2) or you don't have the weapon's ammo in the drillship's inventory for the drone to take.