Green Hell (0.9.15) - Major Early Access Update #9
Welcome to the Farmine Inc. Rainforest Protectorate a.k.a. Green Hell!
Commanders, report in for the latest major update briefing. Grab a drink & some rations and make yourself comfortable, this is a big one:
Intel was able to locate the main operations of Farmine Inc. - a M.E.G.A. Corp. subsidiary responsible for "advancements in agricultural innovation and efficiency optimization". We spotted its CEO operating a multi-purpose platform that is able to raze acres of rainforest at a concerning rate. Codename: Sawpeon.
Your engineers developed an update for your clone interface remote control stations (CIRCS). The combat HUD uses a higher-resolution holo-screen that is also used in many other areas like your operations map, squad status assessment, and various areas in the bunker.
Conduit was able to procure some new equipment racks for your Armory and the Barracks finally received some lockers for your mercs to store their personal belongings.
Your radio engineers upgraded the data connection, resulting in smoother CIRCS network communications with reduced lag and smoother frame transmissions.
Meanwhile the scientists claim a breakthrough discovery that revolutionizes how your clones express their individual strengths and weaknesses. It's a lot of biochemical geneatolo-whatever mumbo jumbo. You only need to understand that there are fewer primary clone attributes you need to consider for your squad composition, and they define how a lot of your clones' skills evolve from there.
Of course, the gunsmiths had to take this as a challenge and re-built your arsenal to match this new simplicity mantra. Basically, all weapons follow the idea that specific damage and effect types form a natural match. And with Chemtrail's help, poison munitions were reformulated into acid which proved to be more effective against M.E.G.A. Corps. units.
Lastly, you should know that your bunker construction plans were re-evaluated. The good news: you need to scavenge for fewer building components to loot off M.E.G.A. Corp. The bad news: Nubetube and Curveball decided to just blow up the Storage.
[hr][/hr]
[h2][color]⚠ SAVEGAME NOTICE ⚠[/color][/h2]
Savegame Reset: OPTIONAL - NOT REQUIRED
This update adds and removes content and re-adjusts how various systems work. If you continue playing with your existing savegame, you are potentially not experiencing all of the new content but all existing savegames should be fully compatible.
We offer you to reset your savegame in the Settings menu.
By doing so, you will start fresh and a backup of your last savegame is created in your local game folder.
You can find a guide on how to restore savegames from older game versions here: How to access & restore savegame backups (Steam Forums)
[hr][/hr]
Read on for a detailed breakdown of Update 0.9.15 "Green Hell":
[h2]Synergies 2.1[/h2]
As your scientists evolved your cloning process, you will now see new base attributes for each of your Commander clones:
You no longer need to manage a multitude of attributes defining your biases, prowess, and weapon specialization.
Based on these six core competencies your Commander clone's skills and stats will change by applying bonuses to the respective base values, e.g. your HP and Armor will benefit from Resilience, but Combat will only benefit Armor and even reduce some utility stats.
Your Mercs on the other hand are built around the concept of a "Main Class" and a "Support Class". Their combat effectiveness scales with the respective core attribute, and some special abilities will be tied specifically to their Class attribute.
This "synergy overhaul" is meant to reduce the complexity of the "mental model" to make it easier to create an effective squad-build in the heat of the battle. But don't be mistaken, even if the rules become less complex, the overall number of build options is meant to grow.
Another key component for this is the introduction of the new Weapons 2.0 system. While this is mainly working under the hood, you will see the main changes appear in the new coupling of damage types to certain (status) effects:
Tech Damage -> Piercing Kinetic Damage -> Knockback (bullets & explosions)
Acid (formerly Poison) Damage -> Armor Decay Shock (formerly Lightning) Damage -> Stun (and slow)
Fire Damage -> Damage over Time (DoT)
Your Mercs are now more specialized and you have to combine their individual strengths & weaknesses to create more interesting squad-builds. Some weapons can still benefit from two different damage types or receive a different status effect normally reserved for a different damage type. And the Mercs' specializations via upgrade paths may still transform them quite drastically over the course of an operation.
In turn, Gear and Traits can have much different effects on certain Mercs - or your Commander Weapons who act similarly to your Mercs' armament.
With update 0.9.15 you should now see a cleaner, better separation between Gear, Traits, Upgrades and Skills, even if our work on these is not finished yet.
Accordingly, you will see various changes to Gear, Rooms, Equipment & Mercs - some more distinct than others. Of course, we're interested to hear your thoughts about the new systems, so don't hesitate to send us your feedback with the Community Discord Server or on the Steam Forums.
[h2]UI 2.0[/h2]
Once you return to the bunker, you will see some major changes to the UI, primarily around the combat HUD and in sub-menus of your HQ.
On the one hand, the improved UI art style is shaping up the game to look better for v1.0. But it mainly serves the purpose to make many things in the game easier to understand, more accessible, and generally improve clarity and information density for an improved experience.
One big improvement are the newly added skill tree overviews on the Merc recruitment & upgrade cards.
This familiar skill tree view is now also available for room upgrades and equipment items. Basically everything that can be upgraded during a run (or in your HQ) is using a skill tree or progress path to show you the current effects and upcoming improvements.
While many of the rooms are still rather linear in their upgrade paths, we aim to add more interesting modifiers to these skill trees to give you more strategic options to plan for certain upgrades.
Another major change is the simplified Pause menu and squad stats overview. We tried to condense all important information for your current operation into one big screen, and you can open this overview screen by pausing during combat and from the map overview screen between battles.
The stats and modifiers are also showing more information, specifically about their targets. So if a skill or item affects e.g. the whole squad or only the Dash ability, it will show up in the list. Additionally, many upgrade cards now have a section about who or what this modifier/upgrade is immediately and directly affecting in your current squad.
[h2]New Map: Farmine Inc. Rainforest Protectorate[/h2]
This is the main part of this update, at least according to lending it its name:
Fight a new M.E.G.A. Corp. subsidiary - Farmine Inc. - and their CEO, codename "Sawpeon", in a new map with a distinct biome and some new challenges.
Of course, Sawpeon comes with the support of 3 new minibosses: Dozer, Firebug and Buzzsaw.
The map comes with its own individual music theme for the perfect score while fighting against various new enemies:
You will encounter some new challenges, so be prepared! Of course you'll be rewarded with some new Achievements and Awards for beating Sawpeon and his minions.
[h2]Resource & Loot Overhaul[/h2]
In the wake of improving the game and reduce unnecessary complexity, we drastically reduced the amount of loot components to invest in your Bunker HQ.
You will now only find three loot items: Scrap Metal (common), Tools (uncommon), Electronics (rare).
The maps, loot tables, and room upgrades have been rebalanced to use the new components. We will continue tweaking these, but this change was long overdue and we finally went ahead and did it. This also means you no longer have to scavenge for this one specific item or buy a missing component just because you've been unlucky in your last Operation. And the end-of-run UI is now less convoluted and much more streamlined to spend more time fighting and less time moving stuff between inventories.
[h2]Performance Improvements[/h2]
With the work on the underlying systems, we were also able to optimize parts of the physics simulation & collision detection. The game should run smoother now and feel more responsive.
We primarily fixed some issues with framerate-dependent velocity calculations and reduced some lag spikes, even though some things still remain on our to-do list to finally get to that smooth constant 60 fps.
[h2]New Demo Incoming![/h2]
We are excited to release a new demo for Survivor Mercs soon!
When we showed the very first prototype of the game for the very first time about 2 years ago at a local game show, we would have never guessed where this journey has led us by today.
The game was very different from the version you are playing today. With this update, it is again one step closer to the v1.0 release - and finally shaping up to become the game we wanted to develop with your player feedback and input.
The demo will be built around the early game experience, and its savegame will be fully compatible with the full version to continue playing from where you left off in the demo.
So if you followed along until now but didn't buy into the full game, or you just want to share it with friends - this demo is for you to join the battle against M.E.G.A. Corp.!
[h2]More Additions, Fixes, Adjustments, Improvements & Details[/h2]
As always, there are many more improvements and fixes:
[h2]Known Issues[/h2]
[hr][/hr]
[h2]What's Next?[/h2]
"Green Hell" is major Early Access update #9 for Survivor Mercs.
It is a very big update with lots of changes both over and under the hood. Please report any issues or bugs you encounter to help us fix these as quickly as possible.
We are looking forward to bringing even more improvements into the game in these upcoming months while we are approaching a v1.0 release. So please "Follow" the game to be notified when the next Early Access Roadmap Update drops Soon™.
Our plans for these upcoming updates include:
⏩ doubling-down on the new Map & Operations structure to provide even more varied runs, new Objectives, and less random tactical squad-building
⏩ further refinements for UI & HUD to improve readability of the action and immersion in the game, including high-fidelity illustrations for more characters and more nicely animated screens
⏩ more Story Missions framing your battle against M.E.G.A. Corp. goons and highlight the Mercs' personalities
⏩ deeper gameplay and improved replayability by refining squad-builds & synergies and expanding the number of challenges and procedural generators for the maps & operations
⏩ better performance while improving enemy & Merc AI behavior
⏩ settings for input mapping and other accessibility options.
And, of course, we will continue to work on new maps & bosses, enemies, Mercs, and other content along with these features.
[hr][/hr]
Commanders, we are truly grateful for every one of you who supports us with feedback and input during Early Access.
[color]Please don't forget that the game is still under development. All your feedback helps us make a better game and iron out some of the remaining rough edges, imbalance, and bugs![/color]
We hope this update gets you as excited as we are for the future. We are dedicated to listening to you and building Survivor Mercs into an outstanding game. Please, help us grow the community with a positive review and get involved in the development by participating in our community projects, and sharing your feedback, insights, and ideas on our Discord server (or the game's Steam forums).
Let's continue making a great game, together ❤
Lock, load, and loot, Commanders!
Commanders, report in for the latest major update briefing. Grab a drink & some rations and make yourself comfortable, this is a big one:
Intel was able to locate the main operations of Farmine Inc. - a M.E.G.A. Corp. subsidiary responsible for "advancements in agricultural innovation and efficiency optimization". We spotted its CEO operating a multi-purpose platform that is able to raze acres of rainforest at a concerning rate. Codename: Sawpeon.
Your engineers developed an update for your clone interface remote control stations (CIRCS). The combat HUD uses a higher-resolution holo-screen that is also used in many other areas like your operations map, squad status assessment, and various areas in the bunker.
Conduit was able to procure some new equipment racks for your Armory and the Barracks finally received some lockers for your mercs to store their personal belongings.
Your radio engineers upgraded the data connection, resulting in smoother CIRCS network communications with reduced lag and smoother frame transmissions.
Meanwhile the scientists claim a breakthrough discovery that revolutionizes how your clones express their individual strengths and weaknesses. It's a lot of biochemical geneatolo-whatever mumbo jumbo. You only need to understand that there are fewer primary clone attributes you need to consider for your squad composition, and they define how a lot of your clones' skills evolve from there.
Of course, the gunsmiths had to take this as a challenge and re-built your arsenal to match this new simplicity mantra. Basically, all weapons follow the idea that specific damage and effect types form a natural match. And with Chemtrail's help, poison munitions were reformulated into acid which proved to be more effective against M.E.G.A. Corps. units.
Lastly, you should know that your bunker construction plans were re-evaluated. The good news: you need to scavenge for fewer building components to loot off M.E.G.A. Corp. The bad news: Nubetube and Curveball decided to just blow up the Storage.
[hr][/hr]
[h2][color]⚠ SAVEGAME NOTICE ⚠[/color][/h2]
Savegame Reset: OPTIONAL - NOT REQUIRED
This update adds and removes content and re-adjusts how various systems work. If you continue playing with your existing savegame, you are potentially not experiencing all of the new content but all existing savegames should be fully compatible.
We offer you to reset your savegame in the Settings menu.
By doing so, you will start fresh and a backup of your last savegame is created in your local game folder.
You can find a guide on how to restore savegames from older game versions here: How to access & restore savegame backups (Steam Forums)
[hr][/hr]
Read on for a detailed breakdown of Update 0.9.15 "Green Hell":
[h2]Synergies 2.1[/h2]
As your scientists evolved your cloning process, you will now see new base attributes for each of your Commander clones:
- Tactics benefits move speed, XP gain, and visibility ranges; reduces bonus to HP
- Combat grants armor bonus and benefits many weapons; reduces bonus to pickup range and capture speed
- Technology grants bonus to capture speed, pickup range and various equipment; reduces bonus to Armor
- Devatation benefits many heavy weapons & equipment; reduces bonus to visibility ranges.
- Resilience grants bonuses HP and Armor, benefits defensive equipment; reduces bonuses to move speed.
- Luck benefits loot gains and critical hit chances; reduces bonus to XP gain
You no longer need to manage a multitude of attributes defining your biases, prowess, and weapon specialization.
Based on these six core competencies your Commander clone's skills and stats will change by applying bonuses to the respective base values, e.g. your HP and Armor will benefit from Resilience, but Combat will only benefit Armor and even reduce some utility stats.
Your Mercs on the other hand are built around the concept of a "Main Class" and a "Support Class". Their combat effectiveness scales with the respective core attribute, and some special abilities will be tied specifically to their Class attribute.
This "synergy overhaul" is meant to reduce the complexity of the "mental model" to make it easier to create an effective squad-build in the heat of the battle. But don't be mistaken, even if the rules become less complex, the overall number of build options is meant to grow.
Another key component for this is the introduction of the new Weapons 2.0 system. While this is mainly working under the hood, you will see the main changes appear in the new coupling of damage types to certain (status) effects:
Tech Damage -> Piercing Kinetic Damage -> Knockback (bullets & explosions)
Acid (formerly Poison) Damage -> Armor Decay Shock (formerly Lightning) Damage -> Stun (and slow)
Fire Damage -> Damage over Time (DoT)
Your Mercs are now more specialized and you have to combine their individual strengths & weaknesses to create more interesting squad-builds. Some weapons can still benefit from two different damage types or receive a different status effect normally reserved for a different damage type. And the Mercs' specializations via upgrade paths may still transform them quite drastically over the course of an operation.
In turn, Gear and Traits can have much different effects on certain Mercs - or your Commander Weapons who act similarly to your Mercs' armament.
We realized that the Synergies 1.5 introduced with the last "Merry MerX-mas" update (0.9.14) were not having the desired effect to create more interesting squad builds. Based on player feedback and testing, we decided to take more drastic steps to give each Merc, weapon, and equipment a more distinct profile. Where various Mercs "had it all" before, it's now more important to consider the pros and cons of different damage types, e.g. to combine Chemtrail's acid attacks with Hail's kinetic bullets to be effective against armored enemies - or try to go for the "Uranium Bullet Tips" Gear to add tech damage and piercing to your regular kinetic bullets.
Our intention moving forward is to refine and add more Mercs, Gear, and weapons with more distinct profiles and interesting rules to mix up damage types or create more impactful combinations between them. We also intend to show more details around how the new base stats and Main/Support Class actually intersect to define the actual stats of your Commander, Mercs, or equipment.
So this update does not mark the end of the design work on synergies but finally takes it to the polishing stage.
With update 0.9.15 you should now see a cleaner, better separation between Gear, Traits, Upgrades and Skills, even if our work on these is not finished yet.
Accordingly, you will see various changes to Gear, Rooms, Equipment & Mercs - some more distinct than others. Of course, we're interested to hear your thoughts about the new systems, so don't hesitate to send us your feedback with the Community Discord Server or on the Steam Forums.
[h2]UI 2.0[/h2]
Once you return to the bunker, you will see some major changes to the UI, primarily around the combat HUD and in sub-menus of your HQ.
On the one hand, the improved UI art style is shaping up the game to look better for v1.0. But it mainly serves the purpose to make many things in the game easier to understand, more accessible, and generally improve clarity and information density for an improved experience.
One big improvement are the newly added skill tree overviews on the Merc recruitment & upgrade cards.
This familiar skill tree view is now also available for room upgrades and equipment items. Basically everything that can be upgraded during a run (or in your HQ) is using a skill tree or progress path to show you the current effects and upcoming improvements.
While many of the rooms are still rather linear in their upgrade paths, we aim to add more interesting modifiers to these skill trees to give you more strategic options to plan for certain upgrades.
Another major change is the simplified Pause menu and squad stats overview. We tried to condense all important information for your current operation into one big screen, and you can open this overview screen by pausing during combat and from the map overview screen between battles.
The stats and modifiers are also showing more information, specifically about their targets. So if a skill or item affects e.g. the whole squad or only the Dash ability, it will show up in the list. Additionally, many upgrade cards now have a section about who or what this modifier/upgrade is immediately and directly affecting in your current squad.
The UI rework is still an ongoing task, so there will be some remaining quirks or suboptimal screens. Another part of this UI improvement is the "beautification" of the bunker HQ. You will see a new visual design for the Armory and Barracks, for example, or some new Merc portraits in preparation for the upcoming Story MIssions with high-res illustrations of each Merc.
Eventually, the whole bunker will be looking much more beautiful, as will the VFX and many other areas of the game approaching v1.0
[h2]New Map: Farmine Inc. Rainforest Protectorate[/h2]
This is the main part of this update, at least according to lending it its name:
Fight a new M.E.G.A. Corp. subsidiary - Farmine Inc. - and their CEO, codename "Sawpeon", in a new map with a distinct biome and some new challenges.
Of course, Sawpeon comes with the support of 3 new minibosses: Dozer, Firebug and Buzzsaw.
The map comes with its own individual music theme for the perfect score while fighting against various new enemies:
You will encounter some new challenges, so be prepared! Of course you'll be rewarded with some new Achievements and Awards for beating Sawpeon and his minions.
[h2]Resource & Loot Overhaul[/h2]
In the wake of improving the game and reduce unnecessary complexity, we drastically reduced the amount of loot components to invest in your Bunker HQ.
You will now only find three loot items: Scrap Metal (common), Tools (uncommon), Electronics (rare).
The maps, loot tables, and room upgrades have been rebalanced to use the new components. We will continue tweaking these, but this change was long overdue and we finally went ahead and did it. This also means you no longer have to scavenge for this one specific item or buy a missing component just because you've been unlucky in your last Operation. And the end-of-run UI is now less convoluted and much more streamlined to spend more time fighting and less time moving stuff between inventories.
In a future update, we want to introduce Blueprints for your rooms as mission rewards, as well as more specialized objectives to hunt for specific loot.
[h2]Performance Improvements[/h2]
With the work on the underlying systems, we were also able to optimize parts of the physics simulation & collision detection. The game should run smoother now and feel more responsive.
We primarily fixed some issues with framerate-dependent velocity calculations and reduced some lag spikes, even though some things still remain on our to-do list to finally get to that smooth constant 60 fps.
[h2]New Demo Incoming![/h2]
We are excited to release a new demo for Survivor Mercs soon!
When we showed the very first prototype of the game for the very first time about 2 years ago at a local game show, we would have never guessed where this journey has led us by today.
The game was very different from the version you are playing today. With this update, it is again one step closer to the v1.0 release - and finally shaping up to become the game we wanted to develop with your player feedback and input.
The demo will be built around the early game experience, and its savegame will be fully compatible with the full version to continue playing from where you left off in the demo.
So if you followed along until now but didn't buy into the full game, or you just want to share it with friends - this demo is for you to join the battle against M.E.G.A. Corp.!
[h2]More Additions, Fixes, Adjustments, Improvements & Details[/h2]
As always, there are many more improvements and fixes:
- You can now quit the game during an active run and resume your Operation from the last stage you cleared once you open the game again.
- Auto-scrolling UI lists, e.g. the Commander Stats list in the Clone Bay, can now be scrolled manually, too.
- You can open the Rooms detail popup even after fully upgrading the room, enabling you to check their stat modifiers again.
- Commander Weapons no longer de-spawn when your Commander dies and is revived.
- Fixed unlock condition for Nubetube preventing you from hiring him.
- Fixed an issue with unlock conditions for the research tiers ("rings") in the Genome Lab not showing up correctly.
- Fixed the checks for "no damage received" conditions on Achievements not registering properly.
- Improved behavior of Mercs to reduce instances where they "wiggle" back and forth in certain positions.
- Improved Mammoth's barrage attack to have a more consistent pattern.
- Fixed some instances where the game could lock up when your Commander dies just around the time you captured an Extraction Point or defeated a boss.
- Fixed level-up popups still opening when you're already extracting.
- Retreating from an Operation no longer counts as "death" towards unlock trackers.
- Fixed an issue with in-combat and end-of-stage kill counters showing different numbers.
- New Beacon objectives no longer spawn when your Merc slots are filled.
- Tweaked calculation for Luck's impact on upgrade rarities: there's a tiny chance for rare and epic upgrades even with low Luck, but the chances increase exponentially towards 50+ Luck.
- Improved map generation algorithm to prevent "dead ends". Albeit not a blocker since you can always "retreat", the map pathways should ideally always lead to the boss.
- Introduced small delays to various popups to prevent accidental selections, e.g. in upgrade popups or confirmation prompts.
- Improved various UI icons to improve readability.
- Improved sprite outlines for irregular shapes.
- Improved auto-scrolling for text exceeding the layout containers.
- Fixed some issues with erratic UI navigation behavior in menus and within skill trees.
- Fixed some instances where elements hidden behind a UI panel were still clickable.
- Fixed some instances of incorrectly rendered materials.
- Improved overall stability of the game to prevent potential crashes or lock ups in cases where configuration files do not load correctly, e.g. due to a corrupted save or game file.
- Updated the sprites for Mercs in preparation for their new high-res illustrations coming with a future update that introduces story missions.
- Added basic functionality to support visual mods with a future update.
[h2]Known Issues[/h2]
- The game's performance can potentially still degrade heavily when playing at very high screen resolutions (UHD+), please lower the resolution to a maximum of 1440p if you encounter this. We are still trying to find the root cause of this problem.
- Some upgrades and stat modifiers may show empty fields or incomplete information. We are already working on a fix for this.
- Some prior existing synergies have been disabled for the moment. We are looking to introduce them again with the upcoming patches for this major update.
- Sometimes, objective spawns can cause small lags. We're working on a fix for this already.
- Some skill trees show up with no icons, and a few UI elements may overlap in rare instances.
[hr][/hr]
[h2]What's Next?[/h2]
"Green Hell" is major Early Access update #9 for Survivor Mercs.
It is a very big update with lots of changes both over and under the hood. Please report any issues or bugs you encounter to help us fix these as quickly as possible.
We are looking forward to bringing even more improvements into the game in these upcoming months while we are approaching a v1.0 release. So please "Follow" the game to be notified when the next Early Access Roadmap Update drops Soon™.
Our plans for these upcoming updates include:
⏩ doubling-down on the new Map & Operations structure to provide even more varied runs, new Objectives, and less random tactical squad-building
⏩ further refinements for UI & HUD to improve readability of the action and immersion in the game, including high-fidelity illustrations for more characters and more nicely animated screens
⏩ more Story Missions framing your battle against M.E.G.A. Corp. goons and highlight the Mercs' personalities
⏩ deeper gameplay and improved replayability by refining squad-builds & synergies and expanding the number of challenges and procedural generators for the maps & operations
⏩ better performance while improving enemy & Merc AI behavior
⏩ settings for input mapping and other accessibility options.
And, of course, we will continue to work on new maps & bosses, enemies, Mercs, and other content along with these features.
[hr][/hr]
Commanders, we are truly grateful for every one of you who supports us with feedback and input during Early Access.
[color]Please don't forget that the game is still under development. All your feedback helps us make a better game and iron out some of the remaining rough edges, imbalance, and bugs![/color]
We hope this update gets you as excited as we are for the future. We are dedicated to listening to you and building Survivor Mercs into an outstanding game. Please, help us grow the community with a positive review and get involved in the development by participating in our community projects, and sharing your feedback, insights, and ideas on our Discord server (or the game's Steam forums).
Let's continue making a great game, together ❤
Lock, load, and loot, Commanders!