Swirl W@tch News

The second major content update for Swirl Watch is live, just in time for the endless replayability sale. 1.2 Precision Gear adds a much requested loadout system, allowing you to more easily manage your ship equipment. And you can fill those loadout slots with new 9 new items too, including many fresh gadgets that allow for new tactics, interactions and synergies. Teleport yourself or other objects across the map with the displacer pad, open new paths by consuming structures with the recycler torpedo or use some of the titular precision gear to take out CorPo ships with a single hit.

The new sync-shot gadget drone always aims true and copies your own attack, enabling simultaneous takedowns of multiple guards if you are using high powered weapons. The bridge bore heavy weapon even homes in on enemy bridge section for big critical damage. And on top of that, the Rhizome Blue ship got new mods and base stats that benefit long-range precision builds. Other existing gear like recyclers and copy-goo got major reworks as well and a bunch of items got some new mods to give them new functionalities.

Also newly added: A wildlife capture system that gives you access to certain unlocks, as well as new bestiary entries for Cloud 2’s distracting critters. But in order to go on animal rescue runs you will need to unlock the net launcher first. This new gadget can be used to capture ships too, at range and even when they haven’t been incapacitated.

Most of the new gear becomes available in the mid and late game. Loadout slots also require wins on various difficulties. So if you are already progressed well into the high level missions you will have many new options available immediately, otherwise the game will ease you into these new systems, as it does with the original content. Some of the new items got their own training sims and some more demanding simulations scenarios have also been added, allowing you to stress test your builds in more complex and dangerous scenarios.

And of course the update also includes a bunch of small changes and fixes (full changlog here). As with all my updates, 1.2 is now part of the game for free. I hope you get something out of it.

Up next I'll be focusing on finishing the next entry of the Hyperspace Anthology: Hyperspace Deck Command. It has a demo available if you want to check it out. There are still some minor additions to Swirl Watch I want to implement, but that will probably only happen after HDC is out.
Until then, a thousand limbs uplift you!

Stefan – Sleeper Games

New Stuff
-Added loadout slot system that allows to save and re-equip custom loadouts.
-9 new items added.
-New mods added to some existing items.
-Reworked Rhizome Blue to allow turning it into a long range focused attack ship.
-Added wildlife capture system with new bestiary entries and some wildlife related unlock conditions.
-Rearranged title area so that simulations are easier to access after loadout changes.

Changes/Balancing
-When launched for the first time, this update needs to reset your loadout and mod selection.
-Some items now require wildlife capture. If you already spent PS to unlock the item it will still be unlocked once you capture the required creature.
-Ammo crates found in vaults now only contain a single random pickup (ammo, supf or capture balloons).
-Shot cursor homing now only takes affect for as long as you are aiming.
-AoE damage now factors less into how weapon max ammo is calculated.
-Player shutdown time from EMP explosions is now based on EMP damage taken (capped at 4s, previously fixed 2s).
-Cursor homing and fragmentation shots now only apply to weapons that fire physical projectiles.
-Weapon mods that increase damage are now generally cheaper, due to how they also affect max ammo.
-Recycling now takes time, makes noise and can be applied to living ships through certain means (acting as an armor strip DoT).
-TAG TOR is now more focused on being an AoE tag tool, with a new gadget filling the role of continuous AoE detection.
-WIRE TOR is now undetectable to CorPo APS and can not be intercepted.
-NANO WIRE upgrade no longer has any damage falloff, but also deals reduced damage (20-->10).
-UNIVERSAL COPY GOO has been converted into a gadget that can be used on a single unequipped upgrade.
-PRINTER now drops printed upgrades instead of auto-equipping.
-Several other items rebalanced.

Fixes
-Fixed a problem with capture witnessed comms.
-Fixed Cargo Friend bestiary entry never unlocking.
-Fixed cascade weapon mods not applying their effect.
-Fixed a problem with one mod for a late game weapon.
-Fixed some SLDG PMP mods having their effects mixed up.
-Fixed WRNCH ARM not being able to sabotage industrial accelerators.
-Fixed player being able to jumpstart disabled and dying ships into a weird temporary zombi state.
-Fixed a problem with CHARGE SPUR emp damage calculations.
-Fixed a potential situation that would enable ship capture without having vac balloon ammo available.
-Fixed a problem preventing individual laser fence posts from being EMPed multiple times in a row.
-Fixed wreckage being spottable if they spawned after alert wears off but their source died during combat.
-Fixed opening gear menus requiring too much time during reflex mode.
-Fixed bridge lock indicator remaining displayed if switching target to an non-critable object while aiming.

Swirl Watch Version 1.201 (Precision Gear)
-Fixed NET LNCHR not deploying balloons correctly.
-Fixed TRACKER cone limit not taking effect.
-Fixed a problem with ADV-NAILR supf mod.
-Fixed RECYC TORP tutorial simulation range exit check triggering even when near structures.
-Fixed problems caused by simulation O3 erroneously having two unlocks tied to it.
-Fixed a problem where lasing a LoS blocking object as it is removed would also remove player lidar beam and ability to detect.
-Fixed some problems arising from loadout saves initiating at incorrect circumstances.
-Fixed a very cool bug causing loadout slots to apply all their passive preview items to the player whenever they update their preview items.

Swirl Watch Version 1.202 (Precision Gear)
-When launched for the first time, this update needs to reset your loadouts and mod selection.
-Boss sonar cooldowns reduced.
-Sonar capable boss ships no longer emit sonar idle sounds.
-Boss ships with APS longer show idle flash.
-Added several safeguards to prevent undetermined situations in which player lidar detection would get removed until returning to title.
-Fixed simulations being unable to spawn reinforcement docks.
-Fixed a rare situation in which simulations would replace a patrolling ship with a longcaster (?)
-Fixed net launcher shots remaining APS interceptable if stealth tape is equipped.
-Fixed some issues with title area.

Just letting you know that I started work on a second small content update for the game, mainly focused on adding a much requested quality-of-life feature: A loadout system that allows you to more easily manage your gear set-ups once you’ve got many unlocks available. You’ll be able to store up to 5 loadouts in different slots and easily reequip them later from the title screen. Your mod slection will also be saved as part of your loadouts.

Alongside that the update will also add a bunch of new items, mostly implementing some gadget ideas I have been considering for a while now. Recycler nanites will get a bit of a rework and Rhizome Blue will become more of a long range attack ship through base changes and new mods. There will be a bunch of new mods for other things as well.

1.2 Precision gear will launch within the next weeks, but I can’t say when for certain yet. See you then.
A thousand limbs uplift you!

1.138
-Altered threshold of what is considers low range combat for adaptive difficulty scaling.
-Lethal combat kills now increase both long and short range threat profiling (was just short range before).
-Enemy mines now stay revealed after being fully identified.
-Changed mine detection UI to better contrasting color in zone 5.
-Increased rate at which ship resource manager calls in escorts.
-Some item and mod costs rebalanced.
-Flare Printer mod: increased max ammo (1-->4) and lowered regen delay (20s-->12s).
-Longnailer supf mod nerfed (20-->15 shots suppressed)
-Increased artillery gadget base damage (80-->100).
-Small objects (ships, floating chunks, wildlife) no longer block sight-line for artillery targeting.
-Increased Charge Spur emp multiplier (40%-->120%).
-Nerfed recycler wreckage disassembly SRM gain (3-->2).
-Fixed recycler not using up charges when disassembling wreckage.
-Fixed recycler targeting sometimes not obeying range restrictions.
-Fixed certain enemy sonar emitters not reacting to damage.
-Fixed ships/wrecks becoming hidden while held if they are disabled/created within concealing circular hazards.
-Fixed a collision issue on a structure in [redacted].
-Fixed a situation in which multiple non-NPC objects could be tagged/affected by a single shot.
-Fixed player exiting deafened state not resetting certain sfx volumes correctly.
-Fixed bad damage calculation on Charge Spur collisions.
-Fixed a potential zone softlock that can happen if a comms encryption key satellite is destroyed after objective completion.
-Fixed guards reporting volunteer ships as hostile in distress after they have been disabled and dropped by the player (?)
-Fixed being player being able board-grab ships through walls with high enough melee range.
-Corrected some tooltips.

1.139
-Decreased lvl 1 mission PS gain multipliers.
-Increased mission PS gain multipliers for all missions above lvl 1.
-Added some additional info to the bridge hit manual page.
-Kill switch database can no longer target boss enemies.
-Fixed a bug preventing Informer Class from assisting nearby search actions with sonar.
-Fixed cargo crates becoming non-intractable after a guard pops an attached balloon.
-Fixed unit death sounds being unaffected by foam sound suppression (?)
-Fixed a situation resulting in bad LOS check when attempting to use artillery or long range melee.

1.140
-Some items rebalanced.
-Lvl 1 missions now get an increasing PS gain penalty once you have unlocked higher lvl missions.
-Further increased mission PS gain multipliers for lvl 4+ missions.
-CorPo Proving Grounds now generates with more access paths to outpost chunks.
-All boss ships now have further improved anti-reflex systems.
-All boss ships, CorPo Riot Control and Enforcer Class now have increased blind recovery rate.
-Impeding foam now depletes faster when ships with powerful engines get stuck within.
-Ships that revive through redundant systems now also pull you out of reflex mode.
-Bosses now clear cascade state faster.
-Cascade damage is now capped at 30dmg every 2 seconds.
-Fixed a problem where completing a comms key objective might interfere with other stationary objective completion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBZprZeheIE
Hi there Sleeper Games crowd. To be a part of Steam’s ongoing Deckbuilder Fest I put together an early experimental demo for Hyperspace Deck Command, my upcoming sci-fi deckbuilding roguelite that will also be the third entry in the Hyperspace Anthology. You can try it right now here on Steam.

The game has only been in development for 5 months now, so this is still just a small part of what is yet to come. In the demo you can fight your way through 5 different simulation encounters using a randomized starter deck, culminating in an super long final battle hat requires a powerful fleet and proper mastery of the game’s fresh dual-use status effect system. A lot of main features (starting deck selection, card upgrades, stores) are still missing though, but I hope you get a few hours of fun out of it regardless.

I'm sure it makes up for the lack of content with an abundant supply of bugs, so feel free to contact me on discord with reports (link in the pause menu). I'm looking forward to your general feedback too! Please wishlist the game on Steam if you want to support its development.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2711190/Hyperspace_Deck_Command/
Cheers!
Stefan – Sleeper Games