Starship Troopers: Extermination News

Greetings, Troopers!

Today, we’re thrilled to announce a groundbreaking new feature that’s set to revolutionize your gameplay experience in Starship Troopers: Extermination. Get ready for Carnage!

[h2]What is Carnage?[/h2]

Carnage is our latest groundbreaking innovation in battlefield dynamics. With Carnage, the aftermath of your battles against the Bug menace becomes an enduring part of the landscape. Gone are the days when fallen enemies vanish into thin air; now, countless Bug corpses can remain scattered across the terrain and persist until you and your fellow troopers choose to obliterate them.


But that’s just the beginning. Blood decals will now permanently stain various areas of the map, serving as a stark and visceral reminder of the intense and brutal conflicts that have transpired. Every skirmish will leave its mark, ensuring that with each battle fought, the sacrifices made are immortalized in the blood-soaked grounds of war.

[h2]A Realistic Battlefield[/h2]

We believe that the addition of Carnage will provide troopers with a more realistic and immersive experience that fans expect from a Starship Troopers game. Witnessing the aftermath of your skirmishes offers tangible evidence of your impact in the ongoing war against the Arachnid menace. With every fallen foe, you’ll feel the weight of your actions and the relentless intensification of the conflict. Carnage ensures that the consequences of each battle are vividly etched into the world around you, enhancing the depth and authenticity of your gameplay experience.


[h2]More Than Visuals[/h2]

As you watch the Carnage unfold, troopers will realize this feature is more than just a visual enhancement. Bug corpses will now have full-body collisions, creating new paths and obstacles that can alter the course of a battle.


Troopers need to keep in mind that living Bugs will adapt to these changes, as they will update their navigation dynamically to take advantage of the new terrain created by their fallen brethren. This allows those pesky Bugs to reach previously inaccessible areas, adding an extra layer of tactics and unpredictability to each encounter.

With an ever-evolving environment now in play, every action has more meaning, and troopers must be more vigilant in their mission to exterminate the Bug menace.
Thanks to this cutting-edge technology, with Update 0.8.0, we invite troopers to plunge into increasingly chaotic landscapes filled with mountains of Bugs. We’re confident this will provide a unique gaming experience you won’t find anywhere else.


This is just the beginning for Carnage, as this is a system we’re committed to improving and expanding upon to bring you even more unique gameplay opportunities. We can’t wait to see how you tackle the enhanced challenges and strategize your way through the Bug-infested terrains.

With Carnage, every battle is a step into the unknown, every sacrifice will be remembered, and every victory is a testament to your skill and courage.

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We’d love to hear your thoughts on this new system. If Carnage has got you scratching to exterminate some bugs, you can find fellow troopers to aid your mission in the ST:E Community Discord!

We leave you with some unsealed photos from our development on Carnage but remember troopers when the time comes... Kill ’em all!

With Update 0.8.0, we will introduce a new location that the Federation has tasked the Deep Space Vanguard with uncovering new developments on: Planet X-11. First conceived as a listening outpost, Planet X-11 was born of the team's desire to explore a new biome with a heavy emphasis on space.

[h2]Inspiration and Focus[/h2]

A goal in enhancing our maps in Starship Troopers: Extermination has been to significantly improve the vistas and skyboxes, allowing us to convey a greater sense of scale and depth. The concept of delivering an epic sense of scale to the player ignited our creativity, driving us to craft an environment that seamlessly blends high-tech elements with the nostalgic feel of Lunar Expeditions.

Imagine traversing a desolate, alien landscape and being able to look up and see a colossal neighboring planet looming just beyond the horizon. We aim to provide this visual experience and instill troopers with a sense of awe and wonder. Creating a new environment where troopers playing on a planet and being able to see another massive one right around the corner and the feeling of seeing hordes of Bugs coming across a moon-like crater were some of the first grounding elements we set out to explore.


It was important that we established contrasting shapes between Federation technology and the barren, unexplored environment to highlight the Federation’s advanced tech against X-11’s rugged landscape. The massive planet and asteroid field visible from the main crater emphasize X-11’s dynamic motion.

Lore-wise, Federation troopers are on a mission to uncover data from a Bug Meteor strike. Setting up a mining operation to retrieve meteor fragments crucial to helping the Deep Space Vanguard (DSV) regain territory. We hope this dynamic setting deepens players' immersion and encourages exploration in uncovering what happened on X-11.


Later on in development, we realized it would make sense for the Federation to dig tunnels around the area, and that would offer a nice counterbalance between outdoor and indoor spaces for this map. In the interior Federation areas, we wanted to tell the story of the Troopers fighting the Bug menace to expand the DSV’s informational network. Lots of mining equipment, drills, and construction tools dress the interior of X-11– with a few key rooms filled with Easter Eggs for our players to check out!


To communicate that intent to the player, the environment team worked on the Antenna, which relays important information to fleet leadership and is the main Point of Interest for X-11. If they can hop onto the right places, Snipers will be able to use this structure in combat, and if they take the time to inspect it closely, they may find some interesting details


Artistically, the team felt a desire to move away from the earth tones predominant on Valaka and Agni Prime and instead embrace more primary and secondary colors in purples and yellows. The atmosphere of X-11 is tinted with a hint of gray-purple so that color would bounce on the shadows and nicely contrast the yellow rings of the planet in the vista. Just because the planet is a rocky asteroid doesn’t mean it should be devoid of color!

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We're very excited for troopers to get their hands on Planet X-11 and if you like what you see and want to discuss it with like-minded troopers. We welcome you to join our ST:E Community Discord!

The development on the new Federation science outpost took many months, but we at Offworld are extremely proud to bring you Planet X-11 in update 0.8.0 – Please enjoy these unsealed images and videos from Terran Command, troopers!

Troopers, when fighting Bugs, here is a tip: aim for the nerve stem!

As part of developing Starship Troopers: Extermination, many troopers in our community have been highly anticipating and requesting this feature, which we can now happily say will be included in Update 0.8.0 alongside a slew of additional content. Troopers will now be able to hone in on their abilities and face the Armor and Weak Points system for Arachnids!

[h2]What are Weak Points and Armor?[/h2]

The new Armor and Weak Points feature will enhance and add additional depth to the gunplay within ST:E. Troopers can no longer blindly put rounds down range, as these pesky Bugs are now armored and more resistant to damage. That said, if troopers bring the right tools, capitalize on a given opportunity and make use of what they have learned in training, they can hit the Bugs where it hurts the most -- in the nerve stem!

[h3]Weakpoint Effects and Hitmarker [/h3]
[h3]
Armor Hitmarker[/h3]

[h2]How Does It Work?[/h2][h3]Most Bugs will feature a Weak Point somewhere on their body.[/h3]

• Hitting a Bug at its Weak Point will deal bonus damage based on the weapon used.

[h3]All Bugs will now have an Armor Rating and feature areas with and without armor on their carapace.[/h3]

• Armor Rating scales from 1 to 5 (1 being the lowest, with 5 being the most armored of foes).

[h3]All weapons will now feature an Armor Penetration rating.[/h3]

• Armor Penetration scales from 1 to 5 (1 being the lowest, with 5 being the highest Armor Penetration the Federation can provide.)

[h3]Hitting a Bug in an Armored area will do the following[/h3]

• If your weapon has an Armor Penetration Rating equal to or greater than the Bugs Armor Rating, you will deal regular weapon damage.
  
• If your weapon has an Armor Penetration Rating that is less than the Bug’s Armor Rating, you will deal reduced weapon damage based on the difference in Rating. On Normal and below difficulty for every one-point difference between Armor Penetration and Bug Armor Rating, your damage will be decreased by 25% from 100%. Going against a heavily armored opponent with the wrong weaponry, troopers can expect to deal only 25% of your total weapon damage. (On hard difficulty, this scaling is more drastic)

[h3]Hitting a Bug in an Unarmored area will deal regular weapon damage.[/h3]

[h2]The Design Intent[/h2]

[h3]Add Depth to the Shoot Mechanics[/h3]

• Currently, as a trooper, you can simply fire into the Bugs, and that is perfectly fine if that is what you enjoy. However, some troopers might seek a more challenging and immersive experience, and the goal here is to address both player types
  
• Troopers who prefer to fire into hordes of Bugs relentlessly might benefit from using weapons with higher Armor Penetration ratings, allowing them to bypass the need for precise Weak Point targeting. On the other hand, troopers looking to test their skills will likely opt for a low Armor Penetration weapon that deals higher damage to Weak Points. While the damage potential is significantly greater, so is the risk, as bullets may glance off the Bugs’ carapaces if you don’t take the time to line up your shot.

[h3]A New Way to Address Difficulty[/h3]

• Currently, the hard mode experience suffers as Bugs feel overly spongy, with no real solution to this issue. This is because, on hard mode, Bugs have a flat 50% increase in health, making it difficult to balance weapons for two dramatically different health populations.
  
• With the introduction of Armor Rating, Bugs in hard mode will receive a smaller health buff (much less than the previous 50% flat increase). Instead, they will gain increased damage resistance when you fail to penetrate their armor.
  
• For example, a Morita Mk1 with an Armor Penetration Rating of 3 will only be slightly slower to kill a Warrior Bug on hard mode but significantly slower to kill a Tiger Bug in hard mode compared to normal difficulty.
  
• This new system aims to require players to either know which weapons are effective against which Bugs or develop the skill to consistently hit the Weak Points.

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We hope troopers can look forward to honing their skills against the Bug menace with the new Armor and Weak Points system. If you wish to discuss with fellow troopers this exciting addition coming to Update 0.8.0. Please feel free to join the ST:E Community Discord!

Til next time, troopers!

Starship Troopers: Extermination has been in early access since last year and, buoyed by the success of Sony's similarly themed Helldivers 2, is coming in hot for a full October launch that among other things boasts the return of Casper Van Dien as Johnny Rico. Rico is the beating heart of the original movie's ensemble cast, has many of the finest lines, and is kind of the audience's anchor as director Paul Verhoeven blasts off on an excoriating drive-by about social control, war from the space grunt perspective, and man's inhumanity to… well, everything...
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Helldivers 2 has been one of 2024's big hits, and found a huge audience ready to spread managed democracy across the galaxy. The game's setting has one inspiration above all others: Paul Verhoeven's film Starship Troopers, loosely based on the Robert Heinlein novel. The game is packed with references and tributes, and sparked some renewed interest in the movie, with even Casper Van Dien (main character Johnny Rico in Starship Troopers) calling it "really quite wonderful."..
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