Heroes of Science and Fiction News

Hi everybody! While we are busy working on more content for the bigger updates planned for February and March, in the meantime here's a smaller patch with some fixes and translation updates.

[h3]Community translations[/h3]

• Added Russian community translation
  
• Fixed missing outline on the JosefinExt font used with Russian texts
  
• Added Hungarian texts for the Festive Features update
  

[h3]Fixes[/h3]

• Fixed progression blocker in the Await map if you chose a commander with only two units in their army and entered your base
  
• Fixed disappearing Aura Coin Storage in fog of war if a unit is standing on its first tile/position
  
• Fixed pressing [Alt] to highlight objects was breaking the game when there was no active commander
  

[h3]Misc[/h3]

• Enabled support for streaming the game on GeForce Now, feel free to send your game requests in the GeForce Now app or upvote here: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/forums/gfn-game-requests/44/551525/span-classhighlightsilencespan-of-the-span-classhi/

Hi everybody,

As every year, we would like to wish all of you Happy Holidays and also give you a bit of an update about how things have been going at Oxymoron Games.

The big news is - of course - the release of Silence of the Siren in Early Access and four updates that went live since. The game's soundtrack by Matúš Široký is now available too! Silence of the Siren has released with amazing reviews, so big thanks to everybody who gave us thumbs up or helped with feedback and testing before release!
We also keep supporting Project Hospital and quite a few bugfixes should release with patch #42 in January.

Next, we have a more recent bit of news: Vojtěch Nepraš has joined the team to fill the role of social media manager/content creator, so you can look forward to more posts, updates and behind the scenes. We also made an account on Bluesky and can already see a lot of activity there.

Now, it's time for us to take some time off after a very demanding season, so most of the team will be out of town until January 2nd. If you encounter any issues, don’t hesitate to ask our amazing community here on the Steam forum or on discord, otherwise we should be able to get back to you at the beginning of January.

So, enjoy the Winter Sale and then Merry Holiday and see you in the New Year!

Hi everybody! As we've recently enabled and tested this feature, here's a quick guide how to set up Silence of the Siren hot-seat multiplayer as an online game with your friends using Remote Play Together.

[h3]Setup - "host" side[/h3]

• Shift + Tab to open Steam overlay
  
• Switch to the Remote Play section and invite your friends from here
  
• When they join, make sure to enable keyboard and mouse controls for them
  

• Start a custom scenario and set your players to "human", feel free to choose the same team if you'd like to play a co-op game
  
• It's a good idea to run a voice call in parallel with the game session to coordinate who "holds" the controls at which point :)
  

[h3]Technical issues/troubleshooting[/h3]

• If one of the players is on Linux, the video stream might not work, but it works the other way around, if the Linux player hosts the game
  
• Increase streaming quality to improve text readability
  

We hope you get to enjoy the game with your friends and we'll be curious to hear your feedback!

Hi everybody, we're very happy to bring you the first update from the Winter roadmap. Features, fixes, new skills and a big balance update!
We hope you will enjoy the game over Holidays - and let's jump straight to release notes.

[h3]Features and improvements - version (commit) 493fe698[/h3]

• Selectable starting factions
  
• Local coop / team support with shared Fog of War and resource gifting UI
  
• Saves in zip format and a new archive folder for autosaves to better organize them
  
• All globetrotter abilities now have icons in commander action menu
  
• Damage preview shows inflicted status effects and their probability
  
• Implemented canceling unit move by escape in hero meeting
  
• Added small/medium/large map info to scenario descriptions
  
• Cloud saves have been enabled for player made saves, will be enabled for autosaves soon (after the game has updated for most of you and has sorted out the archive folder)
  
• Remote play together on Steam has been enabled, so you can use local multiplayer as a simple way how to play online with your friends! [QUICK GUIDE]

[h3]NEW: Factions skills[/h3]

• Available to be learned by any commander of the matching faction
  
• Children of the Source - Renewed Spirit - victory in battle restores movement on the map
  
• Fossorians - Bloodlust - units have up to 100% chance to get an extra move after killing a hostile unit stack
  
• Sovereign Fleet - Field Repair - your units get healed when attacking units of the same class (tech-tech or bio-bio)
  

[h3]Balance update[/h3]
Welcome to the longest section of the release notes. A lot of smaller and bigger changes aimed at making all the skills, abilities, attributes and play styles more balanced. These are based both on the feedback we gathered since the Early Access launch and on our own testing.

• Exploration attribute: lowered movement points gain when the attribute increases
  
• Combat attribute: much higher damage bonus for units
  
• Ability attribute: lowered energy regeneration, more expensive abilities
  
  
• Brawler skill: double bonus for damage, no unit movement bonus
  
• Sniper skill: double bonus
  
• Chess master skill: double morale bonus
  
• Defensive specialist skill: 100% extra retaliation on level 3
  
• NEW War Hawk skill: movement and initiative bonus for units in combat
  
• Collector skill: up to 30% lower energy cost for equipping items, no fusion core reward bonus
  
• Scavenger skill: double resources
  
• Engineer skill: no energy pool bonus, lower energy cost for equipping items moved to Collector
  
• NEW Raiden skill: increases energy pool, increases effect of the Recharge Cell consumable
  
• Explorer skill: bonus increased to plus 4 - 8 - 12 movement points, movement attribute adds more movement points
  
• Scout skill: bonus to exploration XP, movement partially replenished when visiting buildings, removes movement cost for transferring armies between commanders, removed vision bonus and ? icon in fog of war showing various resources and buildings
  
• Tracker skill: removes penalty for bad terrain, extra fusion core moved here from Collector, removed Xenoslime breaking discount
  
  
• Eagle eye ability: now uncovers hostile commanders within certain range
  
• Show resources and Show treasures have been merged
  
• Supercharged cloud ability: available as level 2 ability, longer duration
  
• Invisibility ability: available only on level 3
  
  
• Acid Projectile ability: added damage on hit, was only over time
  
• Lighten Armor: increased effect
  
• Lure Local Beast: now available from level 2
  
• Walking Rations: also prevents affected unit from retaliating
  
• Armor Incrustation and Artificial Muscle Fibers have been merged, available from level 1
  
• Restoring Biofilm ability: available from level 1
  
• Glue Grenade ability: available from level 1
  
• Blast Wave ability: also pushes the targeted unit itself, not only units around it
  
• Resurrect ability: is now cheaper
  
  
• Vortex Mines ability: removed as hero ability, the feature stays as a defensive structure at bases
  
• Draining Coil ability: always drains half of remaining energy
  
• Teleport ability: now available from level 2 (friendly only, level 3 teleports any unit)
  
• System Equilibrium ability: available from level 1
  
• Sentry Airdrop ability: available from level 2
  
• Orbital Strike ability: increased damage
  

[h3]Fixes[/h3]

• Upgraded Unity engine from 2020.3.17 to 2020.3.48, this fixes some issues with windowed mode and resolution switching on Linux
  
• Fixed progress blocker in some campaign levels in the rare case of an enemy commander killing themselves on a neutral army
  
• Disabled starting commander selection for AI players in maps with locked factions, fixed starting commanders getting overridden for maps with locked factions (Await specifically)
  
• Fixed Crusaders siege loophole had double health
  
• Fix Unit counts in combat are not updated on certain events(damage from mines, healing)
  
• Fixed unit count UI in combat not scaling correctly when showing damage preview
  
• Fixed Evacuation could leave the commander on an energy fields tile if it is right next the target base access point
  
• Fixed Evacuation ability not taking energy points after being used, because commander landed in base and was refiled automatically, but did not actually enter the base
  
• Fixed end tactics button stuck on in the next battle when retreating during tactics
  
• Fixed random neutral armies sometimes generating zero unit stacks and erroring out
  
• Fixed starting commanders with ability skills getting one random ability and one ability specified in their xml after first load
  
• Fixed broken tooltip on energy cost icon in inventory slots
  
• Fixed "neutral units run" dialog wasn't taking in account different effects modifying neutral army size
  
• Fixed Meatboy Shredder doesn't attack twice with activated berserker mode after waiting
  
• Fixed scroll bar enabled at exploration skill academy/pirate skill acedemy even if there's nothing for a commander to learn
  
• Fixed ability icons in ability book and commander action selector were not sorted in the database order but according to when they were learned
  
• Fixed Replay crashes on hiring new commander
  
• Fixed Fog of war is not updated on visibility change cycle event
  
• Fxed a lot of typos :)
  

As the Early Access development continues, we're happy to share more details about what is coming in the nearby future!
Apart from smaller patches with bugfixes, these will be the bigger feature and content updates that you can look forward to.
One big topic based on all the feedback we gathered is re-balancing the different skills and abilities, which will come in the next update already - and we'll be curious to hear what you think.