Bionic Dues:Alpha Release Notes

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Alpha 0.919

(Not yet released; we're still working on it!)

  • Fixed a bug where holding shift would not show your attack ranges for non-AOE weapons in the prior version.
    • Thanks to nas1m for reporting.
  • Hostage rescue missions no longer include fuel tanks, since those were often too dangerous around hostages and could create unfair situations where a hostage was un-rescuable even with stealth.
    • Thanks to nas1m for reporting.
  • Fixed the description of TeslaBots, which implied that they would sometimes miss shots, which they do not.
    • Thanks to Aquohn for reporting.
  • Fuel tanks, sentry turrets, and robots on the player's team (virused bots) no longer show the "virus points to convert" part of their tooltip.
    • Thanks to Winge for reporting.
  • Fixed a regression from the early alpha period where RadarBot had stopped making shots landing near it miss. Instead it was making shots fired FROM near it miss, which is not remotely the same thing.
    • Thanks to Misery for reporting.
  • Fixed several ways in which fuel tanks could be "alerted" as if they were enemies.
    • Thanks to Arnos for reporting.
  • The base health of CommandBots has been reduced by 50%, to make them less of a pain.
    • Thanks to Misery for suggesting.
  • Removed the "Multiplayer?" checkbox that was still in the start new game menu.
    • Thanks to Penumbra for reporting.

Alpha 0.918 - Better, But Please Keep Watch

(Released September 20th, 2013)

  • Put in another ton of changes aimed at not just generalized efficiency, but specifically at resolving a performance issue that strikes OSX builds of the game for some reason.
    • And, naturally, this could mean a whole slew of new and exciting bugs. Sigh. Apologies for this, it's regrettable but part of why we're still in an alpha.
  • Fixed a bug where you could not simply right-click to fire at an object that was not an enemy or fuel tank in the prior version.
    • Thanks to Winge, Tridus, and Arnos for reporting.
  • Fixed a bug where AOE weapons would not show their radius when targeting an enemy or other target unless you were doing ground-targeting (holding shift).
    • Thanks to Winge for reporting.
  • Fixed a longstanding issue with the game where parts of a large multi-tile object could be one visibility while others were a different visibility.
  • Fixed an issue in the prior version where certain types of pathfinding would not work, such as enemies trying to move along with one another in a line down a narrow corridor.
    • Thanks to Winge and Misery for reporting.
  • Fixed an issue in the previous version where sensors would go up to a door but not onto the door itself.
    • Thanks to Winge for reporting.
  • Fixed a number of other oddities with sensor scanning in the prior version.
    • Thanks to Misery and Winge for reporting.
  • Fixed a bug where sentry turrets would attack other sentry turrets as soon as you placed the new one, but no further.
    • Thanks to bytestream and Misery for reporting.
  • Fixed an issue where destroyed tiles and in some cases explosions could show up in or over the blackness of unexplored areas.
    • Thanks to windgen for reporting.
  • Fixed a bug on Linux/OSX where the EMPBot was not showing its graphics due to case sensitivity in the OS.
    • Thanks to windgen and Pepisolo for reporting.
  • Fixed a bug in the prior version where splash damage from exploding cover objects was always centering on the player.
    • Thanks to Winge for reporting.

Alpha 0.917 - Please Still Keep An Eye Out

(Released September 19th, 2013)

  • Put in a fix for a bug in the prior version that would cause savegames that were on the city map to error out.
    • Thanks to Hyfrydle and orzelek for reporting.
  • Put in some self-check code that should make the game not completely disallow your continued movement if there is an error inside of the game AI code. Which obviously we don't want in the first place, but a failsafe is also good.
    • Thanks to bytestream for reporting.

Alpha 0.916 - Please Watch For Strange Behavior

(Released September 19th, 2013)

  • Fixed a bug where Overload was considered a stealthy action (and thus could be done without the enemy bots responding). Maybe you were pressing the "partially blow myself up" button very carefully?
    • Thanks to Winge for the report.
  • Fixed a couple tooltips still referring to "trap avoidance level" instead of "trap skill level".
    • Thanks to Winge for the report.
  • Fixed an issue that was causing the game to seem extremely laggy when it was technically just being really... well, kind of stupid. When a bunch of instantaneous commands were queued for the game to execute (like enemies powering up other entities, or even thinking about doing it -- commandbots, etc), the game was only executing each one one-per-frame, which is an extremely silly thing to do that made the game seem laggy just because it was twiddling its thumbs.
    • Thanks to Misery for tipping us off about this.
  • Put in looooaaads of performance improvements under the hood. This may have some blowback in the form of new bugs, but it should make things run more smoothly on lower-powered machines.
  • Virused bots and turrets are something that enemy bots will deal with better now, preferring to strike them if they are closer than the player rather than being single-minded after the player.
  • Adjusted how vsync is set in the game, and how some other internal graphical settings work. This should improve performance on older GPUs.
  • Got rid of the custom cursor from the prior version, as it didn't work except on windows anyhow, apparently.

Alpha 0.915 Linux Support!

(Released September 18th, 2013)

  • Fixed a continual expansion of managed memory that wasn't really so much a memory leak as it was a memory inefficiency. Probably. At any rate, it's fixed now; this was to do with mapgen.
  • The health of non-boss bots on hard difficulty is now 2x instead of 4x, and on expert is now 3x instead of 7x.
    • Thanks to nas1m for suggesting.
  • Added a new custom cursor for the game - hardware cursor.
  • Upgraded the Unity 3D game engine from 3.3 to 4.2.1. Knock on wood, this has finally gone without a hitch after a number of issues in prior versions between 3.3 and 4.2 preventing us from upgrading. If you see any anomalies, please do let us know.
  • Now that we are on Unity 4.2.1, we've added a linux build for the game. This is 100% untested at the moment, as we are still getting our VMs set up. If you have a linux box and would not mind testing it, please do!

Alpha 0.914

(Released September 18th, 2013)

  • Dissolver, Shotgun, Volatizer, and Welding Laser were previously not properly treated as AOE weapons. Fixed.
    • Thanks to nas1m for reporting.
  • Fixed a bug where the self-destruct (now overload) ability was not drawing explosion particles on all tiles in the area of effect.
    • Thanks to Pepsisolo for the report.
  • Fixed the Explosion Booster description incorrectly claiming that the AOE-boost caused targets to take more damage (it used to slow down the rate of splash-damage attenuation, but no longer does so).
    • Thanks to GrimerX for the report.
  • Fixed a bug where the potion-terminal effect that was supposed to give all bots a ton of extra attack power was instead reducing it to a minimal level.
    • Thanks to Misery for the report.
  • Fixed a bug where the current robot level was being applied twice for a +shields boost from a CommandBot, leading to some pretty wacky numbers on bots thus buffed.
    • Thanks to Histidine for the report.
  • Plasma Cannon:
    • AOE radius from 7 => 6. To bring the max from parts down from 28 to 24, mainly. Goodness it's still huge.
    • Range from 12 => 13.
    • AOE damage is now reduced by 10% for every 2 squares distance from the point of impact, to a minimum of 20%. This is most noticeable for the plasma cannon, but applies to all AOE weapons. In general the idea is that the actual number of tiles hit goes up hugely with each additional point of radius past a certain point, so you're still definitely getting your money's worth.
    • Thanks to Tridus and Winge for inspiring these changes.
  • Fixed an issue where players could not virus bots that were standing on anything other than empty floor.
    • Thanks to Winge for reporting.
  • Clicking the hacking button now gives you an actual error message when you are pointed at something invalid.
  • There are now little popups off your exo when you successfully activate an ability like stealth, hacking, mines, or whatever.
  • When you try and fail to virus something that is not a bot but fail, it now does a little popup saying this.
  • Fixed a bug where if you tried to take an ability like virusing an enemy, but failed, it would still give enemies a turn.
    • Thanks to Winge for reporting.
  • Fixed an issue where virused bots would in some cases state that they were granting double moves to enemies when they moved, whereas they don't actually ever grant moves to enemies at all.
    • Thanks to Winge for reporting.
  • Bahamut missions no longer spawn so many bots as before; these were pretty interminable on higher difficulties in particular.
    • Thanks to Misery for reporting.
  • The higher difficulties no longer add more bots, instead just using the same number of bots as are in medium difficulty.
    • Thanks to Misery for inspiring this change.
  • On hard difficulty, non-boss bots now get 4x the shields they previously did. On expert, it's 7x. Boss bots already had plenty of shields and do not get a bonus.
    • Thanks to Misery for inspiring this change.
  • Fixed a null reference exception when players ctrl-hovered over enemies with disabled weapons.
  • Fixed an issue where the tooltips for enemies were not updating in realtime with their actual stats changes.
    • Thanks to nas1m, Ipkins, mrhanman, and Winge for reporting.
  • Fixed a bug that was likely affecting all sorts of stat buffs on exos and bots: when in-mission effects were applied to them, they were always applied twice.
    • Thanks to Histidine for reporting.
  • Fixed a bug where the TethysBot was getting well more than 5 boosts from its ability.
    • Thanks to Histidine for reporting.

Part Stats Polish, Round 2

  • The "+X% Sentry/Mine Strength" stat has been removed and its function rolled into the "Trap Avoidance Level" stat, which has been renamed "Trap Skill Level". This moves the main burden of that particular role from the computer to the propulsion system, helping to balance propulsion with the other systems and the Trap stat with the other two propulsion stats (Stealth and Overload).
    • Since the sentry-turret and minelayer parts no longer have to split their item budget across their main stat and the strength-boost stat, their magnitude calculations:
      • For +sentry-turrets, from (3+level) => (1+level).
      • For +mines, from (7+level) => (3+(level*2)). So now it's much easier to get mines in quantity than sentry turrets.
  • The Self-Destruct-Level part stat and ability have been reimagined as "Overload".
    • The effect is pretty similar, except that instead of instakilling you, it just hits you with the aoe (like if you shot an AOE weapon at yourself somehow). It also only does 25% normal damage to you, though this multiplier may need tweaking.
    • The end result is that it's basically a point-blank-aoe weapon that drains your shields instead of ammo. We are confident in your ability to make hilarity ensue.
      • More to the point, we hope this ability's potential hilarity will better compete with Stealth for your propulsion slots, on at least one exo.
    • It also still fires on-death, but does 4x as much damage then, and does a radius-8 explosion instead of radius-4.
    • Thanks to Pepsisolo and others for inspiring this change.

Exo-Customization Screen Polish

  • The Exo Customization Window now has mouseover tooltips for each of the weapons (if your cursor is within their area without being over a filled slot of theirs; otherwise it shows what's in that filled slot), listing attack power, range, aoe radius and type (if any), and ammo capacity.
    • Thanks to Tridus, Misery, nas1m, and orzelek for inspiring this change.
  • The Exo-Customization Window's lower-left scrollable stat block now uses a standard format regardless of current stat values, so you can always go there to see all the important info in a summary form. It also groups the stats by "shield-related", "propulsion-related", etc.
    • Thanks to nas1m, khadgar, Misery, Tridus, and others for inspiring this change.
  • Added a "Remove All Parts" button to the exo-customization screen that... well, does pretty much what it says. After a confirmation.
    • Thanks to Tridus, mrhanman, Pepsisolo, and Winge for inspiring this change.

Alpha 0.913

(Released September 17th, 2013)

  • Fixed a bug in the previous version that could cause the game to experience massive slowdown on the exo-customization screen within a mission due to a ton of debug-logging.
  • Since system-damage-resistance recently became irrelevant on difficulties below Hard anyway, and it's been confusing people even before that: Removed the System Hardener part type and the System-Damage-Resistance stat.
    • No difficulty now has the possibility of causing system damage from normal enemy shots.
    • All boss shots now have a 10% chance of causing system damage (on all difficulties).
    • Shields, Propulsion, and Computer are now immune to system damage, only leaving weapons capable of being disabled that way (by boss damage or a bad potion terminal).
  • Fixed a bug in the last version where the exo-customization screen's summary of exo-wide stats could factor in an inherent exo-wide +% boost (like the science guy's +50% to computer stats) twice, leading to an incorrect readout.
  • The exo-wide computer, shields, and propulsion % boost stats now no longer draw in the exo-customization-screen's bottom-right summary or the part-picker's comparison block. All the stats they actually affect are drawn in those areas (where relevant, in the comparison's case) already, so it was confusing and largely redundant.
  • Refactored the generation of BalanceInfo_ModuleEffectType.csv (the game writes it to your RuntimeData directory during the game's initialization) to be easier to read. It's helpful when giving balance feedback, at least.
  • The last two floor graphics are now in place.
  • When a bot has its weapons disabled, it no longer stops showing its stats for that weapon. This helps you plan better for when it comes back from being disabled.
  • The "I'm lonely!" popups for CannonBots no longer show if they are not in current vision.
  • Fixed a bug where splash damage would not work if you shot directly at an EMPBot.
    • Thanks to GrimerX for reporting.
  • Fixed an issue in recent versions where empty slots in your exo customization window could have a mark level.
    • Thanks to GrimerX for reporting.
  • In the first "Hot Tips: City Map" screen, it now tells you to not worry about the final battle quite yet, that more info will be forthcoming after the first mission.
  • After you click out of your mission results of your first mission, there is now a "Hot Tips: Final Battle" that says the following:
    • During the final battle, your exos will face off against hundreds of enemy bots in a mission taking place inside your HQ. You will have a couple of tries to win it, each time whittling down the final forces more, based on how much health your HQ has.
    • Doing Lion's Den and Assassination missions can help whittle down the number of regular enemies and bosses in the final battle. Attacking Factories can reduce the level of enemies in the final battle.
    • Most other missions are based around improving your own Exos. Which kinds of missions you choose to undertake is up to you.
    • Over on the right-hand sidebar here on the city map, you can see exactly what enemies are currently slated to be in the final battle.
  • The current and proposed modules in the part picker now show their icons next to their text so that it's easier to see what they are (and just more attractive in general).
  • The current selected part no longer shows in the part picker list of potential parts, as that was visually confusing. Now it just shows down in the bottom textual section, as previously mentioned.
  • There is now a dedicated "Clear Current Part" button on the part picker, rather than having you click the current part to unequip it (which was confusing).
    • Thanks to Misery for suggesting.
  • For purposes of "things that affect AOE weapons," grenade launcher was previously not counting as an AOE weapon. Fixed.
    • Thanks to nas1m, Winge, and Misery for reporting.
  • HideBots have had their base attack range reduced from 4 to 2, since they are invisible from more than 5 tiles away.
    • Thanks to Misery for suggesting.
  • Fixed a bug where Casual mode was not seeding any bots, and thus could also throw some exceptions.
    • Thanks to Pepisolo for reporting.
  • The tooltip on the robot command icon on the far right of the city map was still referring to training grounds missions instead of lion's den. Fixed.
    • Thanks to Ipkins for reporting.
  • The tooltip of the sniper exo no longer refers to the alert range being increased, as that was not true anymore.
    • Thanks to Winge for reporting.
  • Improved the clarity of the wording on Hot Tips: Missions.
    • Thanks to Pepisolo for suggesting.
  • The Hot Tips: Missions now explicitly tells you what your reward is per exo surviving (more loot).
    • Thanks to GrimerX for suggesting.
  • The human cryopod text has been updated with the following extra text in its description:
    • To win the mission, you must have at least one of these still alive, and you get more loot for each one that lives.
    • Thanks to GrimerX for suggesting.
  • The hostage mission has been updated with the following extra text in its description:
    • To win the mission, you must kill all of the bots in it.
    • Thanks to GrimerX for suggesting.
  • Improved the clarity of the tooltip text for the parts fabricator, armory, science station, bahamut device, construction vehicle, propulsion lab, reactor fabricator, and shieldworks.
    • Thanks to Tridus for suggesting.
  • Virus points were in one place incorrectly called "virus level." Fixed.
    • Thanks to GrimerX for reporting.
  • ScorpionBots accidentally had their weapons surgically removed!
    • Thanks to Aeson, Misery, Winge, and Tridus for reporting.
  • Fixed a bug where you could still give queued orders to your exo while windows were open like the escape menu.
    • Thanks to GrimerX, Pepisolo, and Winge for reporting.
  • Put in code such that you cannot give any orders to your exo if there are more than 1 queued move/attack actions left to playback from the bots or yourself. This lets you still move fluidly, but keeps you from being able to queue actions that are then irrevocable if there is too much going on and you click or press a button without realizing how much is still happening.
    • Thanks to GrimerX for reporting.
  • "Hates Everyone" robots now also hate each other, rather than just hating the player and non-Hates-Everyone robots.
    • Thanks to Winge for suggesting.
  • Salvage, Assassination, Lion's Den, Bahamut, and Robot Command Center missions are no longer allowed to seed directly next to the home command of the humans, as that makes the start of the game far too constrained.
    • Thanks to GrimerX for reporting.
  • The "Customization and Loot" hot tip now only shows up once per visit to the city map in a game.
  • Fixed that issue with the left side of the city map not being clickable unless you were zoomed in, thanks to the bounds of the sidebar there.
    • Thanks to PattyG for reporting.

Part Stats Polish, Round 1

  • Note: generally speaking, none of the changes below affect parts already generated in saves from previous versions.
  • Sentry Turret stat magnitude from 5+level => 3+level.
  • Mine stat magnitude from 12+((level-1)/2) => 7+level.
    • It actually ended up lower than the Sentry Turret, before. Whoops!
  • AOE-boost stat magnitude from 4.17%*level (capping at 100% at level 22) => 25%+((level-1)*3.125%) (will cap out at 100% at level 25).
  • Overcharger stats rebalance:
    • The following second-order stats:
      • Exo-wide-Attack-boost.
      • Exo-wide Computer-related-stats boost.
      • Exo-wide Propulsion-related-stats boost.
      • Exo-wide Shields-related-stats boost.
    • Used to be 5+(1.13^level)%, and so started at 6.13% and grew to 26.23% at level 25. The problem is that they grow so very slowly in the early levels, when second-order stats don't need to really be exponential in that way (the stats they modify largely already are, to the extent necessary):
    • So now they're simply (5+level)%, giving 6% to 30% with linear growth.
  • Similar to the above, the +%-to-all-power-generation stat from 12.26%-52.46% exponentially => ((5+level)*2)%, so 12% to 60% by linear growth.

Alpha 0.912

(Released September 16th, 2013)

  • Removed a few ways in which it was still previously possible to (for example) get +Hacking from a part in a Shield slot, etc.
    • Won't affect parts already generated in old saves.
  • Part-Picker UI:
    • Added "Sort and Filter By" dropdown.
      • With the following options:
        • Normal
        • Kind
        • Power Impact
        • And then one for every effect that is actually present in any of the parts eligible for the slot. So "+X Max Shields", etc.
      • When an effect is selected, it also filters out (doesn't show) any parts that simply don't have that effect (for that system) at all.
      • When Power Impact or an effect are selected, it also shows the actual value for that stat above each displayed part, instead of displaying the mark level for each part.
    • Reworked the comparison area to:
      • Show exo-wide values for stats in the comparison area, rather than showing you what's coming from that specific system.
        • Except for stats like Ammo which are inherently system-specific. But even for these they're displayed below all the exo-wide stats, in a sub-section specifically marked "(System-Specific)".
      • Focus only on what would actually change from the part switch being considered at that specific moment, rather than including other stats that would remain the same. While it would be nice in some sense to display absolutely all the exo's stats, in practice this would require a radically different layout and even if it fit... honestly, that'd be an awful lot of text to have to parse for a "comparison" that should be far simpler than that.
    • Thanks to Tridus, Misery, Pepsisolo, and many other players for feedback leading to these changes.
  • Added the above-mentioned "Sort And Filter By" dropdown to the Inventory and Store interfaces, too.
  • The game now maintains a "LogicLog_PartGeneration.txt" file in your RuntimeData directory that gives details on the computations used to generate a part's stats. Not all the details, by a significant margin, but enough to be helpful to us in debugging why you're seeing very high values in some cases, etc.
    • So basically while you're welcome to look at this for curiosity's sake, this is mainly for you to include along with a bug report about some part's stats.
  • Fixed a bug where coolant-tank parts could give... curiously large +maxHealth and such stats.
    • Thanks to Misery for the report.
  • Explosive Runes no longer show up in Bahamut, defense, assassination, or lion's den missions. These were trivialized by the runes.
  • Explosive runes are now only triggered by direct hits, rather than via splash damage, which was their original design anyhow.
  • In the keybindings editing screen, there are now 15 items per page rather than 10, making it much easier to see what is going on.
  • Rather than just lumping everything into a semi-organized General tab, the input bindings screen now has Basics, Abilities, and Switching. These are also better organized than previously.
  • The "hold middle mouse button down to pan" keybind is now actually visible, and is also re-bindable.
    • Thanks to greywolf22 for reporting how that was invisible.
  • All six of the special abilities now have keybinds (all default unbound) that you can set order to trigger them without use of the mouse.
  • The MurderBot now cannot be converted with the Virus ability, and the DoomBots and WyvernBot and RaptorBot and Boss Bots all now cost more virus points to convert, though still possible to convert.
    • Thanks to Tridus, Misery, Winge, Aeson, khadgar, MaxAstro, Hyfrydle, Histidine, and madcow for suggesting.
  • The number of virus points required to infect a bot is now shown in its tooltips.
  • The tooltips for the exos no longer doubles their descriptions.
  • Probably fixed an issue with Explosive Runes not in LOS not being triggered, although this hasn't been definitively tested.
    • Thanks to Aquohn for reporting.
  • When you win or lose a mission, and the mission results window pops up, it now immediately takes you back to the city map view instead of being in the mission view.
    • This gives you a more relevant view of things, as well as preventing some strangeness such as after a fuel depot mission when it seems like nothing blew up.
  • Fuel Depots no longer have a mission exit that you are required to step on; simply destroying the large fuel tank itself now wins the mission.
  • Fuel Depots are no longer crammed with cover objects, as that made traversing them rather a pain (and too easy, what with the way the bots were arranged).
  • Fixed a bug where sometimes specific missions would fail to load with an Exo in them.
    • Thanks to Hyfrydle, Gemzo, and Ipkins for reporting.
  • Fixed a strange bug where very rarely after one Exo died, the next would not swap in properly and the game would just be at a standstill.
    • Thanks to Coppermantis for reporting.
  • Fixed a bug where attacking an explosive rune tile with a sufficiently large AOE weapon like a plasma cannon with lots of AOE upgrades could make the game interminably slow and then crash.
    • Thanks to Winge for reporting.
  • Bots now prefer to attack the player instead of the player turrets.
  • Bots now get a turn after the player takes a turn regardless of how far away the bots are, making bots more effective at chasing you. And getting rid of some strange issues where they would do nothing because they were slightly outside of your turn-propagation range.
    • Thanks to Winge for reporting.
  • Stealth. So it looks like this is basically OP right now. And also a little more confusing than necessary with the "consecutive" thing.
    • Firing a weapon, deploying a mine, or deploying a sentry will now cause your stealth to break (and be unable to resume until the next turn).
      • The Ninja Exo is exempt from this new rule (bwahahaha).
    • The concept of "consecutive stealth turns" as a stat has been removed: you can now burn your whole pile of stealth turns all in a row if you really want to. We were seeing lots of confusion on how that worked and it wasn't making the job of displaying stats any easier. So this is basically the buff to go with the nerf of not being able to stay stealthed while firing (unless you're a ninja, bwahahaha).
    • Thanks to khadgar, Misery, chemical_art, MaxAstro, Histidine, Hyfrydle, nas1m, and others for inspiring these changes.
  • Since the "Regen Window" concept is a source of frequent confusion among new (and even not-so-new) players, it's been removed as a stat. The mechanic is still there (unlimited autoheal would lead to a lot of waiting around), but is just internally always 5 now, with the description of Regen updated to just say it works on damage "a few turns" old.
  • Put in a few performance improvements related to pathfinding.
  • Made it so that when the AI is taking a bit longer than usual to calculate its moves, the game doesn't get jumpy in the sense that it starts skipping animations.

Alpha 0.911

(Released September 14th, 2013)

  • The concept of the scavenging level has been removed in favor of just having items get better with each passing day. Otherwise it was far too complicated to understand, and in general players were not getting the top-tier items anyhow.
    • This probably also fixes the "no energy cost" or "negative energy cost" bug from the prior version, but let us know.
  • The progression of item levels is now a bit faster, so that you wind up with the max item level a few days before the last day, rather than exactly on the last day.

Alpha 0.910

(Released September 14th, 2013)

  • The scavenging computer terminal has been made more clear in terms of what it means when you hack it.
    • Thanks to GrimerX for reporting.
  • Previously, the first slot in each system in the customization screen was not showing a mark level. Fixed.
    • Thanks to mrhanman for reporting.
  • The changes to how many prefix/suffixes/stats each part grants have been rolled back to the way they were in .908.
    • Thanks to a variety of players for suggesting.
  • The prefixes and suffixes that granted ability points had previously been removed in .909. That has now changed so that:
    • Stealth-related and self-destruct ability points in prefixes/suffixes only come in propulsion slots.
    • Hacking, virus, sentry turret, and mine ability points in prefixes/suffixes only come in computer slots.
    • This returns the ability to get more hacking points without it being quite so crazy in terms of getting things from all systems and sides: it was previously far too easy to get too many abilities very strongly on even an exo with a cruddy computer.
  • The hacking cost has been returned to just the level of the tile, rather than 5 plus the level of the tile.
    • Thanks to orzelek and Winge for reporting.
  • The number of random loot drops from enemies has decreased dramatically, although they are still there, since it was filling up your inventory pretty fast.
    • Thanks to Aquohn for suggesting.
  • The first three levels of robots now give relatively more credits than they previously did.
  • The granularity of the item levels has been cut in half, which should be a very good thing for players who have been thinking the individual increments were too small. Basically the balance is still the same as it ever was, but rather than there being a max of 50 item levels, there is now a max of 25, and you progress through them half as fast. But level 25 is the same as level 50 used to be, and level 10 now is like level 20 was before, etc.
    • As a part of this, this makes it so that you actually will stay on a given item level at least for a few missions, rather than constantly having item levels just fly past you before you can really stay there long.
    • This is easy to change back if the adjustment is not popular, but we hope you'll like it.
  • There are now quick buttons for getting back and forth between the player inventory and the store when the player is on the city map.
    • Thanks to Winge for suggesting.
  • The following explanation has been added to the layaway line on the store window: "Layaway costs you nothing, but keeps the item around for future purchase."
    • Thanks to GrimerX for suggesting.

Alpha 0.909

(Released September 13th, 2013)

  • Fixed a bug where installing or removing parts with the "-X power cost of other parts in same system" effect would not properly update the exo's power consumption numbers.
    • Thanks to Winge for the report.
  • In the prior version, your first exo was still getting a free hacker piece of loot by accident. Removed.
  • Added two new floor types to the game.
  • Player turrets no longer rotate to face the player, and they also now a red glow like enemies do.
  • Player turrets are now fully lit and animated.
  • Turrets can now be destroyed by holding shift and firing at them, and the tooltip for them now states this.
    • Thanks to mrhanman and Hyfrydle for reporting.
  • HideBot, SilenceBot, and StealthBot are all now fully lit and animated.
  • Emma's special ability turned out not to be that great, and so has been completely redefined into something a lot more exciting:
    • A young socialite from the relatively privileged upper-middle classes, she still was not able to afford the expensive bionic implants that could have saved her from the accident that claimed part of her face and neck. Still, she is able to use her social connections to open up useful doors into the deeper black market: the store carries three times as many items for her compared to other Exo drivers. This allows her great flexibility in kitting out her Exos exactly as she wants to.
  • Fixed a bug that was making player turrets act extremely stupid; they would often want to target guys outside their range, and thus just do nothing.
    • Thanks to Misery, Aquohn, and Winge for reporting.
  • Made it so that "hates everyone" enemies and player turrets will not target cover objects and computers and the like.
    • Thanks to Winge for reporting.
  • Fixed a bug where when Exos had too much damage reduction on, enemy AI would go wonky if they could not do any damage to the Exo anymore. Now the damage reduction can never reduce enemy damage below 1 (which, come on, is already tiny). This fixes the AI, aside from making enemies not totally pointless in that sort of case.
  • Fixed a bug where "Hates Everyone" enemies would act really strange around cover objects, often getting stuck.
  • Adjusted the bottom left scrolling section in the exo customization screen so that it doesn't have bad line breaks and in general has more room.
    • Thanks to Winge and mrhanman for reporting.
  • Fixed an issue where half of the 5th computer slot was unclickable.
    • Thanks to Histidine for reporting.
  • TreadBot, PantherBot, and TigerBot are now fully lit and animated, meaning that all the bots are now fully lit and animated!
  • The wall edges no longer ever get dimmed by the "have seen here but don't have current LOS" fog of war, making it so that the edges of the play area are much more distinct from the "never seen this" fog of war.
    • Thanks to Penumbra, mrhanman, and Winge for helping to figure this out.
  • Added in some bits of flavor machinery behind the walls, very dark and dim, just hinting at more in there.
  • All three of the wall edge graphic types have been updated to be more mechanical-looking and not have any organic flavor to them at all.
  • Increased the damage dealt by the LeaderBot, CommandBot, and MasterMindBot 4x, so that they actually have some combat value directly.
  • Put in a fix to a very strange issue where apparently a Player Squad robot was selected instead of the Exo. The game now autocorrects this if this happens.
    • Thanks to Tridus for providing a save where this was happening.
  • BombBot, EMPBot, AvalancheBot, BatBot, EagleBot, and GaffeBot are no longer allowed to be in the final battle.
    • Thanks to Misery for suggesting.
  • The internal per-level scaling exponent for enemy shields and attack now varies by difficulty, and is now different for bosses and regular enemies (generally bosses need to grow slower since they start more crazy to begin with).
    • Previously, this was always 1.08. Now it is typically 1.08 for bosses and 1.11 for normal enemies.
    • On hard difficulty, this is now 1.11 for bosses and 1.16 for normal enemies.
    • On expert difficulty, this is now 1.13 for bosses and 1.19 for regular enemies.
    • This matters _enormously_ in terms of enemy balance, because, you know, exponents.
    • Specifically the formula is exponent^level * (attack or shields).
    • Thanks to Misery for suggesting that the per-level effects of enemies were not really enough, particularly on higher difficulties.
  • Fixed a bug where the Expert difficulty level was only granting 9 levels to bots per day instead of the slated 20.
    • Thanks to Misery for reporting.
  • Factory missions, if won, now blocks most bots from leveling up at the end of that day!
    • Thanks to Misery for inspiring this change.
  • The range at which enemies are alerted to you if they have LOS on you now varies by difficulty level. Normally it is 7, which is what it was before.
    • On hard it is now 10.
    • On expert is is now 14.
    • Thanks to Misery for suggesting.
  • Added a new "Show Robot Forces Window In Missions" option in the Extras tab:
    • With this on, you'll see the city map's right-hand window even during missions. Normally this is not something you'd want to do, as this blocks some of your screen real estate. But particularly if you have a condition where your eyes need (relatively) equal amounts of light coming into them at once, this helps to balance out the amount of light hitting each eye during missions.
    • Thanks to Aquohn for reporting the potential issue.
  • The self-destruct button has been moved to the bottom of the list of abilities. Thus if you have more than 5 abilities this is the one that disappears.
    • If you have more than 5 abilities equipped now, it properly only shows the first 5 rather than doubling up #5 and #6 on the same slot.
    • The idea of finite space for abilities is intentional, although we'd not expected players to be able to get all the abilities on one exo due to limited slot space. However, the way some of the loot is set up, this became surprisingly possible and is potentially something we need to deal with. But for the moment, it doesn't act bugged at least.
    • Thanks to Winge for reporting.
  • AOE damage rebalance:
    • Rocket launcher default range is now up to 9 instead of 7, but its AOE range is down from 3 to 2. Its ammo is also down from 11 to 7.
    • Grenade launcher default range is now down from 9 to 6, and its ammo is down from 26 to 14.
    • The reasoning is that these things can be upgraded pretty enormously, and they go from being powerful to being ridiculous. Now they go from being moderate to being powerful. Otherwise it's too easy to just AOE your way through all the levels.
    • Thanks to Misery for sort-of-kind-of suggesting this.
  • New parts are now much less likely to have prefixes and/or suffixes.
    • Thanks to GrimerX for pointing out the issues with how easy it was to stack lots of stuff, and to various players for pointing out how overwhelming it was to have extra stats on so many items.
  • Ability-granting stats now no longer occur in prefixes or suffixes.
    • This does not affect gear generated in older saves.
    • Thanks to various players for pointing out how easy it was to get every ability on every exo.
  • Fixed an issue where health on objects was being reported as shields instead of health.
    • Thanks to GrimerX for reporting.
  • The volatizer now uses a new Ring pattern of attack, rather than a line attack. Thus making it more distinct from the welding laser, for instance.
    • The ring attack hits the center tile, as well as the outermost layer of tiles around it, leaving everything else in the center untouched.
  • The shotgun now uses a conical damage pattern rather than the radial damage pattern used by grenades and so forth.
    • Thanks to GrimerX for reminding us to do this.
  • The "Hot Tips: Missions" now mentions the keybinds for switching weapons and exos.
  • Fixed a bug where the walls could be carved out (!) by explosions of tiles from the ThunderBot or the explosive cover in destruction missions.
    • Thanks to Misery and Histidine for reporting.
  • Finally got the zooming in the city map to work smoothly with more clamped edges of where you can pan. This way you don't start panned off into the middle of nowhere!
  • When enemies get EMPed, it no longer says that they ran out of ammo.
  • Fuel tanks will no longer be granted buffs from nearby enemies, or be vampirized by them, etc. If you see anything more like this, please do let us know, as it's not all in one place.
    • Thanks to Aquohn for reporting.
  • Fuel tanks can no longer be disarmed by EMPs, and never say "out of ammo."
    • Thanks to Aquohn and GrimerX and Histidine for reporting.
  • Fixed an incorrect description of the "Exo-Wide Shield-Related Boost" stat.
    • Thanks to mrhanman for reporting.
  • Emma's new commander ability is now more impressive:
    • Instead of getting 8 Rares and 16 Epics in the store, she gets 6 uncommons, 6 rares, 6 epics, and 6 legendaries. The ability to buy uncommons is nice because they're cheap, the ability to buy legendaries is nice because... we shouldn't have to tell you that.
    • For Emma, when the store rolls a new part it has a higher chance of rolling a part type that is not already present in the store. Rolling an already-present type is still very possible, though, since you may want more options of the same type.
    • Now the store only normally pays you 75% of an item's value when you sell it, but for Emma will still pay 100%.
  • When you switch exos, it automatically deselects stealth as that happens.
    • Thanks to Aquohn for suggesting.
  • Fixed an issue where it was possible to cascade-lose several exos in one attack volley if the first one died. Now it can't even damage the one that gets swapped in until you take your next action.
    • Thanks to Penumbra and greywolf22 for reporting.

Alpha 0.908

(Released September 12th, 2013)

  • LeaderBot is now fully lit and animated.
  • When you hover over an enemy while holding the Ctrl key, it now shows the attack range of their current (biggest) gun.
    • We considered making it always do this, but it felt too fiddly and strange when we tested that out.
    • Thanks to madcow and mrhanman for suggesting.
  • CommandBot and MastermindBot are now fully lit and colored.
  • A new keybind has been added that triggers your whistle ability. It is unbound by default.
    • Thanks to Cyborg for suggesting.
  • Added keybinds (default unbound) for cycling forward and backwards through the list of exos on your roster.
    • Thanks to Cyborg for suggesting.
  • Added keybinds (default unbound) for cycling forward and backwards through the list of weapons on your left sidebar.
    • Thanks to Cyborg for suggesting.
  • Fixed a bug where the +%-to-(shield,computer, or propulsion)-stat was being _added_ to each related stat, rather than multiplied in. So the science exo's +50% computer stats thing was giving it an effective +0.5 hacking points, rather than adding half-again as many hacking points as it would otherwise have.
    • It had been showing correctly in the bottom-left of the exo customization screen, but not actually behaving properly in-game, hence further confusion.
    • Thanks to Winge for the report.
  • The "+% to power generated by parts in the same system" effect (which is featured most prominently on the Magnetic Containment Chamber part-type), has been changed to "+% Total Power Generation", with the following new description:
    • "Increases all power generated by this exo (including the reactor's base amount, and any power-generating parts installed in any system)."
    • Also fixed a bug where this % wasn't even being fully factored in for power generation by parts in the same system.
    • This may result in an overall effect that's just too nice to the player. Our kindly players would _surely_ inform us of such an intolerable discrepancy, right?
    • Thanks to orzelek and others for inspiring this change.
  • DragonBot, BombBot, EMPBot, RaptorBot, and WyvernBot are all now fully lit and colored.
  • The amount of (primarily) loot per level has been dropped:
    • The frequency of the locked doors with loot behind them has dropped from a general range of 5-8 to a range of 3-5.
    • The frequency of hull repair and stealth repair stations also has dropped substantially.
    • The frequency of the small loot chests that are scattered throughout levels has been reduced as well.
    • In particular, this cuts out the higher volume of lesser loot. The goal here is to make it so that your customization stage between each mission is not so lengthy.
    • Thanks to Histidine for suggesting.
  • Put in a fix for a rare issue where if you wind up being stuck in a mission that couldn't seed you for some reason, you can still abandon -- and most importantly, abandon it without losing a point of HQ health.
    • Thanks to Aeson for reporting.
  • Fixed an issue where level 0 items could crash the game when viewed in your inventory or the store.
    • Thanks to Misery for reporting.
  • The hacking cost of hacking doors and computers is now 5 + ( TileLevel / 3 ), where TileLevel is the day ( 50 - DaysRemaining). Previously the hacking cost was just ( TileLevel / 3 ). There are some exceptions that are cheaper or more expensive than this baseline.
  • The virus cost of converting enemies is now 5 plus the robot's level, rather than just the robot's level.
  • Thanks to Aquohn for inspiring this change.
  • The level of tiles that are relevant to have a level (locked doors, traps, and computer terminals) now shows in their name in their tooltip.
    • Thanks to Aquohn for suggesting.
  • Updated the description of normal and glass doors to encourage players to shoot them for tactical reasons (since walking up and opening them is usually the stupid choice).
    • Thanks to Aquohn for suggesting.
  • Automatic Doors now have 100x more health, so that it's more likely you'll have to walk up to them and actually open them yourself, verus shooting them.
    • Hey, variety is good.
  • Thanks to Histidine for suggesting.
  • Rather than getting a piece of loot that provides hacking points, the science computers just get an inherent 6 hacking points. This is more powerful, and simpler for the player.
    • Thanks to Histidine for inspiring this change.
  • Rather than getting an incredibly-unusually-good stealth generator at the start of the game, each exo now gets those same stealth points and consecutive turns as inherent effects. That both feels more natural and frees up one of the propulsion slots for other stuff later on.
    • Thanks to Histidine for suggesting.
  • A number of the robot voice prompts no longer play when in fog of war, and a number of the more frequent ones play only some of the time now (such as the BatBot).
    • Thanks to khadgar for suggesting.
  • Splash damage no longer has a damage falloff as the range gets further from itself. This was never represented in the GUI very well, and was generally a bit confusing.
  • Previously the locations that splash damage could hit did not match up with the actual overlay of where it said it would hit. Fixed.
    • Thanks to Winge for reporting.
  • Adjusted the difficulty levels around so that the lower ones are more appropriate.
    • Added a new Casual difficulty level, which has more or less the stats that Easy used to, except with 10 HQ health rather than 7.
    • Easy difficulty now has 5x exo health rather than 10x.
    • Normal difficulty now has 2x exo health rather than 4x.
    • Thanks to Tridus, mrhanman, and Histidine for suggesting.
  • The following mission types now give at least rare-quality loot instead of at least uncommon-quality loot:
    • Armory
    • Science Station
    • Shieldworks
    • Reactor Fab
    • Propulsion Lab
    • Their descriptions have also been corrected to not imply giving Epic or Legendaryy loot (there's a small chance of it, but certainly not guaranteed).
    • Thanks to Histidine for the report.
  • Keeping up with the Joneses! Enemy ranges were quickly getting outclasses by player ranges, but no more. Now the enemy ranges increase by 1 every X number of levels for that enemy, where X varies by difficulty:
    • Casual: 12 levels
    • Easy: 9 levels
    • Normal: 6 levels
    • Hard: 5 levels
    • Expert: 4 levels
    • This may be too extreme, we'll see. But we want players to have an easy time of it at the start, relatively speaking, and then get into increasing hot water as the campaign progresses. This way those range extenders don't become balance-breaking, they become quite important.
    • Thanks to Tridus and Misery for inspiring this change.

Alpha 0.907 Alpha Round 2 Start

(Released September 11th, 2013)

  • The full (as opposed to the partial preview that was there before) title track for Bionic Dues, "The Home That We Once Knew," is now integrated into the game!
  • Completely redid Tuck's bonus, since he was kind of useless with his other bonus:
    • Tough and resourceful, Tuck's skills at sleuthing lend him an enormous tactical advantage in missions: he can see both his objectives and the location of all terminals and loot without first exploring to them.
    • Thanks to Histidine for suggesting.
  • The description of Axis has been rewritten to make it clear how powerful she is:
    • A professional scout drone pilot before she became an Exo driver, Axis has the ability to see 4 missions out on the city map instead of the usual 3. Even more importantly, she has the ability to undertake missions that are 2 away rather than the usual 1, thereby letting her skip missions at will.
    • Thanks to Histidine for inspiring a shift.
  • Added text to the bottom of the missions hot tips:
    • The finishing touch to any mission is to find the Warp Pad and get your Exos out of here!
    • Thanks to Breach for suggesting.
  • The health stats on all the bosses have been majorly scaled down so that they are still impressive on the last day, but not insane.
    • Thanks to mrhanman and Cyborg for reporting.
  • The function of the whistle has been redefined a bit, so that it now alerts all enemies that you have detected which are not currently alerted, rather than those in your (invisible) sensor range. This basically makes it work like probably everyone thought it already did.
    • Thanks to mrhanman for reporting.
  • The system stats for mines were garbled in the customization view. Fixed.
    • Thanks to Winge and nas1m for reporting.
  • When Rey's fifth Exo is restored, it now comes in with full ammo and no disabled systems, unlike before. If you see anything more strange with this, please do let us know!
    • Thanks to Coppermantis for reporting.
  • The font of the normal tooltips has changed to the more compact font used for the Exos.
  • Fixed a bug with the tooltips of scrolling textline areas where the tooltip detection was not being offset for the scrollbar's current position. This was causing the wrong tooltip to show for items once the scrollbar had been used.
    • Thanks to Tridus for reporting.
  • Fixed the missing localization for ModuleEffect_Desc_IncreaseSpawnedUnitStrength.
    • Thanks to Winge, orzelek, mrhanman, nas1m and Tridus for reporting.
  • The tooltips on locked doors now note that you should walk into them to hack them.
    • Thanks to Coppermantis for suggesting.
  • Previously, using some of the in-game keybinds on the main menu or the city map would cause unhandled exceptions. Fixed.
  • GalaxyBot has been mildly redefined such that it now increases the range at which enemies are alerted to you without increasing your sight range. Doing both was confusing.
  • Added more to descriptions of the difficulty levels to make it clearer to players which they should choose:
    • Easy: For people new to the game who want to ease into things without being slagged in the face by robots all the time.
    • Normal: For people who want a bit more of a challenge, but still are playing without optimizing every last piece or loot or every last move they make. You can definitely get slagged in the face, but it probably won't kill you most of the time.
    • Hard: The baseline difficulty of serious play for the game. Your health is much lower, the enemies are more numerous. To live you must optimize your Exos and economize your moves.
    • Expert: For, well, expert players. Your health is even lower, the enemies are even more numerous. You must play well, very well, to live.
    • Thanks to Misery for inspiring this change.
  • The sight range for all exos has been increased to 16 instead of 8, and 20 instead of 12 for the snipers.
    • Now that sight range does not (improperly) affect the alerting of enemies, this doesn't matter too much (well, not in a negative sense). It lets you see more of the level more clearly, and frankly better models what might be considered some form of reality.
    • On the positive side, this also lets your longer-range weapons be fired at the extents of their ranges more (speaking here of longer-ranged weapons further upgraded with range-enhancing parts).
    • This also does let enemies with long range weapons fire at you from the same sort of longer range, since enemies can only fire when in your line, although there are not many enemies that are that long-ranged to begin with. So that doesn't really change much.
    • Thanks to Aeson for inspiring these changes.
  • The following enemy attack ranges have been adjusted to make for a more interesting playing field:
    • TigerBot: 5 to 5
    • DoomBot: 6 to 7
    • TethysBot: 5 to 7
    • DumBot: 3 to 4.
    • Invigorated DumBot: 4 to 5.
    • BlasterBot: 4 to 5.
    • BlasterMaster: 3 to 4.
    • DragonBot: 5 to 7
    • WyvernBot: 5 to 7
    • ClawBot: 4 to 7
    • ViperBot: 3 to 5
    • The reasoning? This makes being out in the open more dangerous than it was previously. It also makes for more of a mixed field in terms of ranges, and makes the ranged assault bots (DumBot, BlasterBot, BlasterMaster) more distinct from the "melee" assault bots (BatBot, EagleBot, NinjaBot) in terms of range.
    • For the bosses in particular, this also gives them all a quite-long engagement range, meaning that you'll want to resort to things like mines and sentry turrets for them in particular, since they hit hard and hit far.
    • Thanks to Misery for inspiring these changes.
  • Greatly updated the way that bot highlights are done, both in sensor range and out of it. Should be way more clear, and it still looks attractive.
    • Thanks to nas1m for suggesting.
  • BatBot, EagleBot, and NinjaBot are all now fully lit and animated.
  • The MurderBot, ScorpionBot, TethysBot, and ViperBot are now fully lit and animated.
  • You can now get full tooltips on bots that have been detected (show with the gold wireframe) but not visual range just as if they were in visual range.
    • This lets you make tactical decisions a lot better without having to memorize wireframes.
    • Thanks to Tridus and mrhanman for suggesting.
  • WyvernBots and RaptorBots no longer can seed prior to day 30, since players need time to prepare.
    • Thanks to Tridus for suggesting.
  • PantherBots and AvalancheBot no longer appear prior to day 20, since their effects also require some preparation before you can meet them properly.
  • On the exo customization screen, it now shows the base mark level of each item in your slots, so that you can easily tell how old in general these things are.
    • Thanks to Misery for suggesting.
  • The store now shows the level of the items in it, and also no longer shows the money values overlapping the items above them inappropriately.
    • Thanks to mrhanman for reporting.
  • And lastly, in the inventory and part picker windows, it now shows the level of all the items there, as well.
  • Fixed the explanation of which stats get boosted by the stat-enhancing shield-related, computer-related, and propulsion-related stat boosters. Previously the explanation lied to you, apologies.
  • Each part's description now explicitly states what kinds of slots it can go in.
  • The text descriptions of each part now states what systems it can be mounted in.
    • Thanks to mrhanman and nas1m for suggesting.
  • The horrendously ugly borders for the part buttons have been made pretty.
  • Fixed the lion's den missions to give much more open, difficult terrain, which is what they were supposed to have been doing all along.
    • Thanks to Misery for reporting.
  • The Lion's Den and Assassination missions now warn you that they are very difficult and should not be attempted until there are 30-40 days remaining or fewer.
  • Opposite day! Fixed a bug where missions that were supposed to give awesome loot of a specific type (shieldworks giving you shield-related stuff, for instance) were explicitly giving you anything BUT those kinds of loot. Whoops!
    • Thanks to nas1m, Winge, and Misery for reporting.

Alpha 0.906

(Released September 10th, 2013)

  • Player ammo reductions relative to 0.904 (increases from 0.905, though):
    • Laser Rifle 50 to 35.
    • Machine Gun 80 to 55.
    • Rocket Launcher 14 to 11.
    • Gamma Ray Laser 20 to 18.
    • Grenade Launcher 36 to 16.
    • Chaingun 100 to 70.
    • Shotgun 30 to 24.
    • Volatizer 20 to 17.
    • The prior changes were a bit too harsh, so this is the middle ground. Further feedback welcome!
  • Fixed a bug with ClawBot where it was healing itself (!) as well as its nearby allies each turn. Wow OP.

Alpha 0.905

(Released September 10th, 2013)

  • The DiamondBot and RecoilBot are now fully lit and animated.
  • Fixed a bug where the DragonBot's grenade launcher stats were swapped with the player ones, making the DragonBot terrifying and the player incredibly weak.
    • Thanks to orzelek for the clue that led to this finally, after a number of people mentioned it.
  • RadarBot and ShieldBot now fully lit and animated.
  • You can now opt out of repeated showings of the intro briefing text and voiceover.
  • Fixed a rare parts-related null reference exception.
    • Thanks to mrhanman for reporting.
  • BodyBot is now fully lit and animated.
  • Only Hard and Expert difficulty levels now have system damage (in the sense of a random chance from enemies), since that's a bit more complex and can be frustrating if you are still learning.
  • The part attributes and parts that are specifically for system hardening and system damage prevention are also now limited to hard and expert difficulties.
  • Added the new Capacitor part type, which provides another way of generating power either directly in your reactor or in your computer. Actually this isn't power generation, it's power savings, but it works out either way. See the game for details, and yes we know this only sort of makes sense if you are big into electronics. The game already makes fun of this, so you don't have to. ;)
  • Updated the explosive runes a bit to be easier to use via only triggering from certain kinds of weapons. Their text has been amended as follows:
    • These runes are actually a warning label overlaid on top of sub-floor explosive equipment: so straight-shot and laser weapons won't penetrate far enough to cause any problems. Only rockets, plasma weapons, dissolver blasts, grenades, shadow torpedoes, and volatizer fire will trigger the runes.
    • Thanks to Cyborg, mrhanman, and orzelek for inspiring this change.
  • Indirect shots against explosive runes now triggers them the same as direct shots do.
  • Reduced the number of floor types (for now) to just the ones that are most attractive, and which have the tile-based grid.
    • The tile-based grid in turn makes the fog of war look nicer, and makes movement and attack ranges a bit clearer.
    • We will be doing more floors in the coming weeks, but we want all of them to be up to the standards of the very best ones we have already, so we cleaned house a bit.
  • Invisible robots and robots that are allied with you no longer draw targeting lines at you.
  • Invisible robots that are right next to an Exo now become visible no matter what. Otherwise it feels like a bug when you try to move into their tile and mysteriously cannot.
  • AS AN EXPERIMENT, the game has been updated to use pessimistic line of sight rather than the more permissive shadowcasting algorithm.
    • This prevents any instances of being able to shoot around corners on the part of yourself or bots, but it is much more restrictive view-wise.
    • In the pre-alpha stages we had a lot of unpleasantness with this, but on further recollection the problem was how we were visibly modeling the LOS rather than the LOS method itself. So this may work out fine and feel more natural than the prior approach. So far that does actually see the case, but we'll see.
    • Thanks to Misery for pushing this issue.
  • When enemies or tiles get shot, it now automatically alerts nearby enemies, as you would expect. So you can't shoot somebody and have the guy next to him just sit there.
    • Thanks to Misery for suggesting.
  • When enemies are not in fog of war, you can already tell if they are activated or not based on their animations and glows. However, when they are in fog of war that was not possible to tell until now.
    • Now enemies in fog of war that are deactivated show up darker in their wireframe view, and then they become full bright when they are activated.
  • Some of the overly-alert-happy logic for enemies has been changed. It was a bit unclear, and the new alert logic handles the cases that make the most sense anyhow. It should in general feel a lot more natural now.
  • Enemies which are within 7 range of you now see you when you get near. Before it was 20, which made it pretty crazy if you were a sniper.
  • Updated the pathfinding for enemies enormously; it got changed away from the kind that worked so well in Skyward at some point, but now it has been reverted to that and enemies now act much more sensibly. Dangerously so.
    • There was also some funky (lack of) pathfinding around fuel tanks that has now been fixed.
    • Thanks to Misery for reporting the strangeness here.
  • When your weapons are disabled, it now shows them properly red and cracked on the sidebar.
    • Thanks to Cyborg and nas1m for reporting.
  • Meg is now the default commander for new players, as she is easier to play with than Axis.
  • Fixed an issue where the electric floors in Assassination missions could sometimes let you into loot closets without your having to unlock the door.
    • Thanks to Misery for reporting.
  • There is a new Warp Page (Mission Exit) tile that now seeds in all missions.
    • When all your mission objectives have been completed, stepping onto this pad will warp your Exos out and declare mission victory!
    • In other words, these are the "stairs down" if you are thinking of other roguelikes.
    • The reason for this addition is to give you more control over when exactly you win a mission (so you can explore more prior to exiting if you want).
    • In old savegames, you may find that you insta-win your current mission if the objective is simply to find the mission exit, which doesn't exist in that mission. Later missions in that same savegame won't have this effect. We figured you'd prefer this to having the mission being unwinnable. ;)
    • Thanks to mrhanman and nas1m for inspiring this change.
  • Fixed the collision box on the reactor fabricator not being the right size.
  • Fixed an issue where old exos were not being properly cleared out of memory, and thus all sorts of strangeness could happen including auto-won and auto-lost missions, and I'm sure more. It was also a form of memory leak. Good grief!
    • Thanks to Histidine, Aeson, and Misery for reporting.
  • The trap evasion message was showing up garbled with a hex address.
    • Thanks to Cyborg for reporting.
  • The laser rifle now has range 8 instead of range 6.
  • Plasma Cannon now has no falloff in its damage that it does to enemies, it now has a range of 12 instead of 6, and its radius of splash damage is now 7 instead of 4.
    • This is the grandaddy of guns, and was not really feeling like it previously.
  • Player ammo reductions:
    • Laser Rifle 50 to 20.
    • Machine Gun 80 to 30.
    • Rocket Launcher 14 to 7.
    • Gamma Ray Laser 20 to 18.
    • Grenade Launcher 26 to 16.
    • Chaingun 100 to 40.
    • Shotgun 30 to 18.
    • Volatizer 20 to 14.
    • The idea here is that you need to actually swap out and use more of your Exos, and ammo scarcity during missions actually feels present.
    • The prior alpha balance had been based on much larger levels (about 300% larger), and we had not scaled down the ammo to match the newer, more compact (and more fun) levels.
    • Note that the ammo for the low-ammo weapons are unchanged, so aren't shown above.
  • The name for ninja exos was saying tank instead -- oops. Fixed.
    • Thanks to mrhanman for reporting.
  • The portrait of Rey no longer has his text blending in so much with his shirt.
    • Thanks to Aeson for reporting.

Tutorializing

  • The way that the stat lines are done at the top of the part picker screen has been reorganized somewhat so that it goes by column before going by row now. This makes the visual space look more sensible, and this plus some other changes also ready us for doing tooltips on those individual line items.
  • All of the stats up at the top of the part picker screen now have tooltips that explain what each of those stats mean. This is in addition to the previously-added tooltips on the Exo stat lines on the main Exo customization screen.
  • There is a new "Hot Tips" popup for the city map that shows when you first enter it (after the game start voiceover). This also has an opt-out.
    • You have 50 days. Each mission will bring you closer to the final battle.
    • Each mission has consequences that will equip your Exos or weaken the enemy in the final battle. You can take on up to 50 missions in any order, then the robots attack.
  • There is a new "Hot Tips" popup for the customization screen that shows when you first enter it. This also has an opt-out.
    • You get loot from winning missions, from hacking locked doors, and from spending credits at the store on the left sidebar of the city map.
    • Customize your Exos to your play style between missions. Getting to the final battle is only half the challenge. You will need creativity in design to get there!
  • There is a new "Hot Tips" popup for the missions that shows when you first enter one. This also has an opt-out.
    • A "turn" is a single action (take one step, shoot one shot, use an ability, switch Exos). After you take a turn, any activated enemies each take their turns.
    • Go slow during fights. Hang back and let your enemy come to you. Use narrow places. Use your whistle ability (left sidebar) to draw them out.
    • Switch which of your four exos is active, which gun they are using, and activate special abilities such as Stealth on the left sidebar.
    • Mouse over your objective (the mission icon on the bottom left for each level), and try to survive with the least amount of casualties. You will be rewarded!
  • New tutorial-y text added on the end of the description of loot containers in tooltips:
    • Don't forget to actually go into the Exo Customization screen between missions (on the left sidebar in the city map). Creatively customizing your Exos is a huge part of surviving to the last day.
  • Added the following to the description of the Assassination mission type:
    • You can locate the bosses by their bluish color on sensors, as opposed to the usual gold.
    • Thanks to Aeson for inspiring this change.
  • Training Ground missions are now called Lion's Den missions to better reflect their nature. Otherwise players seemed a bit too inclined to jump into an easy-sounding mission and get killed.
    • Thanks to Aeson for suggesting.
  • When you go to start a new game, it now has some hot tips there as well. Which can be opted out of.
    • All of the pictures on this screen can be clicked to change which Exos, Commander, and City you are playing with.
    • If this is your first time, feel very free to leave the defaults alone for now. It's a strong party good for new players.

Alpha 0.904

(Released September 9th, 2013)

  • In the store, exo customization, and inventory windows the message log now disappears after a little while of showing like it used to (it does not hide outright since that's also where MP text chat goes).
    • Thanks to Histidine for reporting.
  • The visuals of your sidebar abilities are now not disabled-looking all the time.
  • Fixed a number of oddities with large objects.
    • Note that this fix will not apply to existing missions you are already in, but will affect new missions in existing savegames.
    • Fixed them not completely disappearing when destroyed.
    • Fixed them looking like they were in sensors still when they were partially in line of sight.
  • Fixed a bug where shooting explosive runes was costing you extra ammo for each further rune that got triggered from it.
    • Thanks to orzelek for reporting.
  • The part picker has been heavily redesigned.
    • Rather than showing partly over the exo customization screen itself, it now hides that and shows as its own thing. While the other was great, there's just no way to show all the info that needs to be shown when space is restricted that way.
    • There is now a "Return to Customization" button that lets you easily get back to the other window.
    • The tooltips on the individual items are gone again, and instead the description texts at the bottom of the screen now include all that information in much larger spaces set aside for them. The font of the stuff at the bottom has also been shifted to a more compact one so that it can actually all fit.
    • Thanks to Aeson and Tridus for various suggestions that helped lead to these changes.
  • Fixed a couple of typos.
    • Thanks to Aeson, mrhanman and Histidine for reporting.
  • Some of the parts that increase "all shield stats" now say "all shield-system stats" to be more clear.
    • Thanks to Tridus for inspiring this change.
  • All references to "health" have been instead changed to "shields." This should make things a lot clearer.
    • Thanks to Aeson, Gemzo, Tridus, and orzelek for suggesting.
  • Added another group of 8 cover object graphics.
  • AmmoBot is now fully lit and animated.
  • ThiefBot is now fully lit and animated.
  • MantaBot is now fully lit and animated.
  • RazorBot is now fully lit and animated.
  • The "hover here for more stats" thing on the left side of the customization window has been replaced with a scrolling text area that gives you way more information without hovering.
  • When you are viewing the exo customization screen, all of the stats for the bot as a whole now show you descriptions of what they are. So you can find out just what the heck regen and regen window are this way, etc.
    • Thanks to mrhanman and Misery for suggesting.
  • The exos and city and character portraits all now have labels on them with their names.
    • Thanks to Coppermantis and Histidine for suggesting.
  • Fixed a bug in the last version where the handcrafted bots were actually not even showing up in the first missions!
    • Thanks to orzelek and nas1m for reporting.
  • The stats scaling for the enemies toward later days had drifted into the land of insanity, and have now been brought back down.
    • This is definitely fine for bosses, or at least more in the realm of fine. But if it seems too low for regular enemies in practice, do let us know and we can split those out.
    • Thanks to Histidine for reporting.
  • The TethysBot special ability has been altered so that it only happens for at most the first 5 shots that hit her, and sometimes fewer.
    • Thanks to Histidine for inspiring this change.
  • Robots should no longer shoot at player mines.
    • Thanks to mrhanman for reporting.
  • Fixed an issue where new images being loaded would cause the startup screen to flash.
    • Thanks to mrhanman for reporting.

Alpha 0.903

(Released September 8th, 2013)

  • Changed how mines/tripwires/etc do their "on stepped on" logic so they no longer fire when an entity is being put on a tile during game-load or because an exo is switching in to that tile.
    • This prevents the situation where you step on a mine with a weakened exo and the mines kill it, then immediately damage the next exo. In fact, if that resulted in the second exo's death sometimes this caused an immediate mission loss despite having more exos to switch in (not sure why).
  • Baseline part stats have been bumped up four rows on the table.
    • Thanks to Misery for inspiring this change.
  • The "Blockade" object type has been renamed to "False Wall" as it was confusing with the Blockade missions previously (the two have nothing to do with one another).
    • Thanks to Breach for inspiring this change.
  • The default message log in the upper right corner now stays around forever, like most roguelikes.
    • Thanks to Breach for suggesting.
  • The tooltips for objects and units have all been made so they appear immediately, rather than requiring you to hold left-click.
    • They have also been greatly condensed vertically so that this is no longer an issue. The information shown is the same, as is the font size, though.
    • Thanks to Misery, Tridus, and others for suggesting.
  • Blockade missions now have half as many enemies as before, as they are supposed to be exceptionally easy.
    • Thanks to Breach for inspiring this change.
  • The amount of buffer zone between yourself and enemies at the start of the game has been increased from 6 tiles to 10. This should prevent all cases where enemies immediately have firing lines on you right at the start of a mission.
    • Thanks to Breach for inspiring this change.
  • Several part stats now have non-scaling bases to bump up their initial values. So +attack now starts at 12% instead of 2%, but the scaling up for higher-level items is only applied to the original 2%, etc.
    • Thanks to Misery for inspiring this change.
  • Mines can now be blown up by players shooting them, but the mines also now have more health so that you can't just one-shot them with your pistol or something.
    • Thanks to orzelek for reminding us that this was not working properly.
  • The way that the attack overlays show over top of multi-tile objects is now much better, working like you would expect now.
  • Grenade launcher base damage is now 400 instead of 300.
    • Thanks to madcow and Coppermantis for suggesting.
  • Stealth is no longer hard-locked into the first ability slot on your ability bar (which was making it look broken if you took it off).
    • Thanks to Breach for reporting.

Alpha 0.902

(Released September 8th, 2013)

  • Fixed a display bug where the amount of power generated by an auxiliary reactor or whatever would display as 4000 instead of 40, etc. FWIW it was counting correctly in the stats.
    • Thanks to Misery for reporting.
  • Fixed a bug where the part effect that gave a +% to attack power of all your exos weapons was... well, giving you a whole lot more than it said it would.
    • Thanks to Misery for the report.
  • Fixed a bug where your using the Minelayer would actually deploy a... well, a computer terminal. There was an accident involving testing code. And then an accident involving the programmer.
    • Thanks to mrhanman for the report.
  • Improved the sentry turret placement tooltip to say:
    • Left-click to place a sentry turret in front of you. If you don't like what direction you are facing, you can use the arrow keys to change your facing without actually moving.
    • Also updated the description for mines and virus similarly.
    • Thanks to Misery for suggesting.
  • Toggling stealth is now an inherently stealth action, meaning that enemies don't get to fire on your when you go into or come out of stealth.
    • Thanks to Misery for suggesting.
  • The range on the laser rifle of the players has been reduced from 10 to 6.
    • Thanks to Misery for inspiring this change.
  • Sniper Balance:
    • The range on the sniper's gamma ray laser has moved from 50 to 12, and ammo has dropped from 70 to 20. Still very powerful as an effect.
    • The sniper's sight range has moved from 50 to 12 (as opposed to the usual 8 per exo).
    • Thanks to Histidine for inspiring these changes.
  • Updated the tooltip for the human cryo pods to make it clear that they just have to survive to the end of the mission for you to get the loot.
    • Thanks to Misery for reporting.
  • The basic tooltip at the bottom of the screen now mentions that you can hold shift to attack the ground.
    • Thanks to Tridus and Histidine for reporting.
  • When you are in the store window, the exo customization window, or the inventory window, your outer screen will no longer pan invisibly behind there.
    • Thanks to Misery for reporting.
  • The part picker in the exo customization view now shows the full tooltip when you hover over anything there.
    • Thanks to Misery for suggesting.
  • The function of the mouse clicks in the store are now consistent with what the instructional text tells you.
    • Thanks to Histidine for reporting.
  • The "click a mission to start" tooltip no longer shows into the store or the exo customization screens.
    • Thanks to Tridus for reporting.

Better Difficulty Level Balance

  • The health of exos now varies by difficulty:
    • 10x higher on easy.
    • 4x higher on normal
    • Same on hard as it was before.
    • 0.75x on expert.
    • Thanks to Tridus for inspiring this change.
  • The first X missions now have hand-designed mixes of bots that should provide a more natural progression. It then becomes purely-random after these missions are done.
    • Easy: 10 days
    • Normal: 5 days
    • Hard: 3 days
    • Expert: 0 days
    • Thanks to Tridus for inspiring this change.
  • The first X days no longer include the "special bots" like sentry bots, razorbots, etc, instead letting you get your bearings (and your parts in order) first:
    • Easy: 20 days
    • Normal: 12 days
    • Hard: 8 days
    • Expert: 0 days
    • Thanks to Tridus for inspiring this change.

Alpha 0.901

(Released September 8th, 2013)

  • Fixed a couple of typos in the stealth tooltips.
  • Possibly fixed that null reference exception in the GetEffectiveIsOnAlert logic. Do let us know if you see it again.
  • The way that the edges of the walls look has gone back to how we did it earlier (in earlier screenshots and the PAX build), to make it more clear where the lines are between that and the unexplored areas are.
  • When in the fog of war (in sensor range), objects now show up mostly as outlines, particularly the cover objects.
  • When hovering over many objects (in sight range), they now show up with an outline under them hinting at their function.
  • The radarbot now just makes you miss on a tile adjacent to it, not in a wildly different direction. This was the original design intent.
  • Fixed a bug where entities missing a shot could never miss to the left.
  • Fixed a bug where temporary system damage from EMPs was not wearing off.
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