Version 0.9.97

Just a quick hotfix for some nasty little bugs.

BUGFIXES:

• Don’t trigger ai unit stuck handling if movement is disabled (e.g. if PCXSiegeArmor is using its active skill)

• Place status icons of entities at the right position again

• Allow use of ESC to close tutorial windows - if you tried this before it actually led to a state where the game was basically soft locked.

If you are on beta the fixes will come over there later today. Do not switch back to main, it might mess up your saved run.

This update changes the game a lot. Summing up the highlights:

• ROBOS: It makes Robos more viable with a whole list of balance changes, new hacks & upgrades. 

• NEW UNITS, HACKS & UPGRADES: More than 10 hacks and upgrades each, 4 new units and 2 new support buildings help fill out some gaps.

• REWORKS AND REBALANCES: A lot of units, hacks and upgrades have been reworked. For example the Core Harvesters can be redeployed now. Robo Marines shoot a triple salvo, making them benefit more from their bounty skill and many more small and big tweaks.

• UI OVERHAUL: We rearranged some of the UI to make it more coherent and to add clickable buttons for some functions that previously were only accessible via hotkeys.

• BATTLE ARCHIVE: It makes some painful but necessary changes to the Battle Archive by replacing Universal Armor and Universal Shields.

• RETROACTIVE ASCENSION ACHIEVEMENTS: If you beat a higher ascension, you will now automatically be granted the earlier ones as well.

• PERFORMANCE: It should greatly improve performance. 

I will keep it a bit shorter and go back to work, where there is a lot going on…

As the version numbers suggest (Although that is actually pure coincidence) we are quickly approaching version 1.0. There is new content cooking on the beta branch, that could use your feedback! A new specialist and new Ascensions are being tested and will be held there until we launch out of Early Access.
You can simply access the beta branch by enabling it in your steam library, right clicking the game going to properties -> Game Versions & Betas -> changing the branch to beta. Although called “latest unstable version” it is very rare that there is actually instability going on, usually it is our way to get feedback on new content. So if you want to help us out on the last stretch to 1.0 we would greatly appreciate you playing the beta and giving feedback either here on the Steam Forums or our Discord[discord.gg]. 

Read the full changelist below:

Version 0.9.94

GENERAL CHANGES:

• Key rebinding now supports side mouse buttons (Mouse Back / Mouse Forward)

• new PCX Variants and units 

• Combat Engineer rework - can now teleport to refineries.

• Called down buildings now trigger chests

• Don't show health decimals on card

• Upgrades "Vampiric Attack", "Burnout Culture", "Material Transfer" and "Consume Death" cannot be assigned to Bombs any longer (except for Rocket Marines)

• Upgrades “Infested Skill” and “Robust Skillset” can only be applied to blueprints with active skill that is not a toggle

• Upgrade “Skill Damage” can no longer be applied to Robo Marine

• Unlock all ascension Steam achievements up to the current beaten ascension

• AI: If possible a Builder Base won't be built at the same location two times in a row

• AI now avoids placing Builder Bases at unreachable positions

• AI units now have a chance to flee in combat

• Cleaned up some effects which should lead to less hitches when new units spawn

• Cleaned image size scaling to use less RAM and initialize units faster

• Improved visual on some smoke trails

• changed building selection visual to better resemble their pathing size.

• A long list of different optimizations that should improve performance overall and remove a lot of the worst dips in performance

• Heat Level Display changed from Roman Numerals to normal numbers prefixed by an "H”

• PCX Fortress has a cooler death now.

• Strength Drop should no longer cause a slow down

CONTENT ADDITIONS AND CHANGES:

• New Unit: Siege Bomb (XP Level 20)

• New Unit: Robo MG Bot (XP Level 39)

• New Unit: Hover Jumper (XP Level 37)

• New Unit: Med Walker (XP Level 34)

• New Super Weapon: Precision Artillery (XP Level 37)

• New Support Building: Strength Uplink (XP Level 26)

• Removed Hacks: Ambient Destruction, Rush Home, Explosive Obstacles - because basically  nobody ever picks them.

• New Hack: Protect The Squad (XP Level 0)

• New Hack: Efficient Fortifications (XP Level 34)

• New Hack: Got your back (XP Level 0)

• New Hack: Drive By Hit (XP Level 25)

• New Hack: AdvancedEngines (XP Level 30)

• New Hack: ElusivePack (XP Level 5)

• New Hack: Blurred Target (XP Level 19)

• New Hack: Targeted Blast (XP Level 29)

• New Hack: Concussive Blast (XP Level 50)

• New Hack: Critical Strength (XP Level 25)

• New Hack: Overconsumption (XP Level 0)

• New Hack: Scattered Optics (XP Level 32)

• New Hack: Robust Benefits (XP Level 0)

• New Hack: Robotic Solidarity (XP Level 7)

• New Hack: Strengthened Impact (XP Level 35)

• New Hack: Get Well Sooner(XP Level 47)

• New Hack: Healing Expertise (XP Level 8)

• New Hack: Loaded Bots (XP Level 12)

• Reworked Hack: Melee Uprising

• Reworked Hack: Crystalline Undergrowth

• Reworked Hack: Efficiency Model 

• Reworked Hack: Rich Wood 

• Reworked Hack: Spider Buddies

• Removed Upgrades: Anti Burn Coating - because nobody picks 

• New Upgrade: Advanced Targeting (XP Level 21)

• New Upgrade: Advanced Reload (XP Level 10)

• New Upgrade: Spark Of Resistance (XP Level 31)

• New Upgrade: Sticky Finish (XP Level 37)

• New Upgrade: Wrecking Ball (XP Level 47)

• New Upgrade: Terrain Clearance (XP Level 50)

• New Upgrade: Back To Base (XP Level 42)

• New Upgrade: Future Rewards (XP Level 14)

• New Upgrade: Focused Blast (XP Level 22)

• New Upgrade: Delayed Detonator (XP Level 12)

• New Upgrade: Shared Charge (XP Level 16)

• New Upgrade: Attack Upgrade (XP Level 0)

• Reworked Upgrade: Ghostly Protector

• Reworked Upgrade: Armored Attack

• Reworked Healing Fire - Incinerator Specialist Hack

• Reworked Shrinking Fire - Incinerator Specialist Hack - is now called Persistent Flames

BALANCE:

• Robo Rebalancing: Factory cost for a lot of Robo Factories decreased

• Reworked Core Harvester - can now use the skill to manually redeploy.

• Increased the allowed maximum factory of a lot of starting units factories 

• Incinerator Active ability sequence happens a lot quicker, making it more reliable

• Heavy MG Tank: Skill and passive reworked with Turbo instead of self-burn

• MP ChargeBot: Skill and passive reworked with Robust instead of self-burn

• Changed Hack: Quantity over Quality - HP reduction now only 15% instead of 30%, Cost reduction still 20%.

• Changed Hack: Long Reach gives +2 instead of +3 range.

• Changed Upgrade: Team Taker - now with slightly lower upside and a way smaller downside.

• Changed Upgrade: Benevolent Ghost - now applies effect to most damaged units instead of closest and to 5 instead of 3 targets.

• Changed Upgrade Payback: Duration increased to 10 sec from 8.

• Reworked Bounty Bot skill and buffed it

• Improved Health Boost Upgrade from 20 to 50 HP

• Upgrade Critical Exit: target and duration increased. 

• Upgrade: Premium Choice - effect improved slightly

• Robo Poker attack rate and damage buffed

• Small Health Boost Hack gives 20 instead of 10 HP

• Meta Node: Healing Home Base Range increased

• Healing Rush Upgrade: Heal increased from 1 to 5 HP

• Robust Revival Upgrade: chance increased to 30 from 25

• Frontliner Upgrade: Tradeoff more favorable.

• Robo Micro now has an active ability that grants it stealth.

• Changed spawn limit and lifetime on Leaking Egg effect to be more intuitive with description.

• Mantis - Recovery passive changed to trigger with a fixed range instead of sight range. So raising sight is no longer a disadvantage for Mantis

• some objective buildings block player building construction like PCX Builderbases

• changed A5 building armor to an HP boost on A7

BATTLE ARCHIVE CHANGES:

• Universal Shields: Replaced by Shield Recharge Time node

• Universal Armor: Replaced by Advanced Armor

• Armor Shred: Replaced by Critical Armor Rounds 

• Healer Boost Node max level increased to 10

BUGFIXES:

• Prohibit exception that occurs if Phase Walker gets killed while targeting the Phase Walker skill

• Siege Bomb no longer falsely triggers hacks for vehicles to appear.

• Prevent exception that may occur if ai wants to produce something in the moment the level finishes

• Advanced Reload cannot be given to Furnace any more

• Shift-left-click in Battle Archive not always incremented node as far as it could - this is now fixed

• Heavy MG Tank no longer has an unused skill range value, falsely allowing those upgrades to be applied

• Turret Veterancy - Fixed that some Turrets and super weapon / support buildings did not have a max rank value, preventing them from reaching Veteran status.

• If AI units get stuck they try teleporting out of the situation instead of being stuck forever

• Core Harvesters now can deploy on cells with other units on it as long as it is no other Core Harvester and they cannot undeploy on building cells.

• Hotfix: battle archive view enabled in shops by default. 

• Advanced armor Battle Archive node works as advertised

• Med Walker heal lines no longer hang around when there is no healing target

• removed some auto playing particle systems from some obstacles

• Bugfix: Light Artillery shoots three times again

• future reward behavior matches description

• fixed Datapod highlight ring

• fixed PCX Bombers not attacking correctly

• Fixed small typo in Flame Walker skill description

• Attacks on things that can't be attacked (like crates) will be converted into attack move on this position instead

• Display mana tooltips on card again

• Fixed typo in tutorial

• Fixed: Left click for attack move order could be blocked by projectiles

• Fixed: PCX turrets tried to answer attacks even if target is out of reach and in between did not target anything else

• When auto-attacking and target flees out of range choose a new target if existent

• PCX Dragon Bug correctly immune to Burn status

• Static Eater ability now only targets enemies

• Don’t Touch Me - Hack now also affects enemy spawns

• Engineer Death Stun now gets retriggered and should also catch enemy spawns etc.

• Fixed Missile Truck impact sounds not playing

• Fixed Swarm Walker Egg playing sound in selection screen

• Select Idle Harvesters doesn't select busy Core Harvesters any more

• Fixed: entities that visualize something with a circle when selected hide it if applying a skill

• Visualization circles don't need another selection click to update their size anymore

• Changed settings to have vsync turned off as default correctly

• Fixed Weird green ring on FireMech Card

• Fixed Battle Archive Factory Cost Reduction not working correctly

• Fixed Battle Archive Skill Damage Increase not being applied to correct targets

• Fixed Production Boost Tower skill effect not disappearing

• Fixed Battle Archive Node that allows engineer range now matches the description

• Fixed PCX Crystal Cleaner skill effect and visual match correctly now.

• Fixed: MechCommander skill doesn't activate reliably on PCX Units

• Fallback win condition: if all enemy buildings and units are destroyed the player wins

• Fixed PCX Pokers with high attack rate having trouble dealing damage

• Now Cooldown changes are reflected in fire point delays, too

• Fixed Player Unit Chests will no longer spawn Spawns.

• Fixed Battle Archive Building MP Charge node info not being reflected on cards.

• Upgrades "Advanced Targeting", "Critical Growth", "Critical Slowness" and "Payback" can no longer be applied to blueprints without attack damage

• Reroll button is deactivated for a second after clicking to prevent spamming it

• Battle Archive: if using shift left-click: correct visual and audio feedback if fully upgrading or failing to do so

• Fixed PCX Fortress no longer deals friendly damage

• Fixed Strength icon not showing correctly on some turrets and buildings

• Fixed options menu headers being very ugly in some languages

• Added visual indicator when Marine Blast Tower is ready.

• Added missing death state for CF Transporter

• Fixed CF Transporter Description

• Fixed missing localization for Fire Bomb

• Fixed Firebrand PCX loca and some logic

• Fixed some buildings status effect particle systems and icons not being wired correctly - there still might be some missing, let us know if you encounter something off.

• Fixed Enemy Sense Battle Archive effect not scaling correctly with sight range of engineers.

• Lower the probability that crashes occur when the level is loading or while in combat

Thanks for reading, let us know if you have any questions, we usually try to answer every comment here or in the forums (although sometimes it might take us quite a while).