Phantom Brigade News

• 🦾 Adjusted contest mechanics to make raiding more straightforward. Escalation increase over time can no longer progress to a next level: only winning a fight can progress the escalation meter further. Players can avoid the contest state or higher escalation by leaving a province, with no time limit.
  
• 🦾 Added more information to overworld UI. Selected POI will display escalation increase after combat, making it easier to choose safe targets while raiding. During province contest, the game will additionally display faction strength changes.
  
• 🦾 Added a difficulty setting for Home Guard strength decay during province contest. The decay can be disabled entirely. Note: battle sites will not spawn if the decay is disabled and Home Guard score remains above 90%.
  
• 🦾Added hint that spacebar can be used to skip dialogue
  
• Added text hint for how to multi-select in the inventory screen
  
• Items can be marked as "favorite" with a new button, making it easier to track your favorite loot in inventory.

• ▼ Reduced the per-missile damage of the Scythe ML (75 > 45), increased heat generation (130 > 140)
  
• ▼ Reduced the total damage of the Hydra ML (160 > 140).
  
• ▲Increased the leading factor for friendly units, slightly improving accuracy of player attacks
  
• ▼Locked level upgrading on boss reward weapons

• Improved the visuals of Shieldbearer and Frigate bosses
  
• Improved the boss weapon visuals
  
• Added new destruction effects to the Shieldbearer boss shields
  
• Improved the camera animation at the start of boss battles
  
• Improved background detail and prop placements on a number of new maps
  
• Fixed floating grass appearing in the corner of every combat encounter
  
• Fixed explosion effects not appearing on some of the background vehicles
  
• Fixed the smoke effects on boss part destruction sticking around for multiple turns
  
• Fixed missing distant sun shadows, improved distant shadow quality

• Fixed the Hydra ML randomly targeting units in all directions instead of prioritizing targets ahead of it
  
• Fixed missiles fired from the rear launcher on boss units not being accurately predicted during planning
  
• Fixed missing translations to the message log button tooltips
  
• Fixed missing localization for the overworld boss tutorial
  
• Fixed planned actions being deleted from the timeline after a unit recovers from a cross-turn crashing state
  
• Fixed the "Token of Appreciation" event triggering at sites other than civilian settlements
  
• Fixed mech frame salvage causing combat units to remain active in player saves.
  
• Fixed the game failing to enter combat at radio station sites.
  
• Fixed missing tooltip on the Home Guard strength progress bar during province contests.
  
• Fixed the original level of parts not being loaded from saves, enabling unlimited level upgrading.
  
• Fixed an issue in the database system that led to some config mods failing to load
  
• Fixed the game failing to load configs with tags introduced through mod libraries
  
• Fixed cargo units sometimes spawning next to their retreat zones
  
• Fixed mislabeled side launchers on the Redback frigate boss

• You now need to defeat a massive enemy boss to liberate a province.
  • Provinces host different bosses, revealed once you deplete the enemy war score.
    
  • The bosses possess unique weapons and abilities, such as air strikes, split missile barrages that circle cover, proximity fuse cannons, and shockwaves that crash units that get too close.
    
  • Mech weapons based on some of the boss armaments are available as rewards upon victory.
• Allied war score is slowly drained, preventing an indefinite contest state.
  
  • Losing at battle sites or letting their timer run out depletes the allied war score further. Winning at battle sites restores a small amount of the allied score, preventing an unwinnable contest state.
    
  • Battle sites no longer spawn at high allied war scores.
• Provinces are contested automatically.
  
  • You no longer need to press a button to stop raiding. Contesting will now happen automatically when the province escalation increases to 1 (only one province can be in a contested state at a time).
    
  • Raiding is still possible, but you need to be careful about your targets. Attacking enemy convoys has a low effect on escalation while an attack on an enemy base will provoke a more significant escalation increase.
    
  • Updated contest UI will guide you through all the steps of liberating a province.
• Patrols and convoys will no longer get designated as priority objectives during war states, increasing the variety of designated objective encounters. Repetitive bases no longer spawn when all enemy military sites are liberated.

• Convoys:
  • Ambush (new): Intercept enemy tanks or mechs carrying cargo before they escape to a retreat zone. Rewards scale based on the number of units you intercept.
    
  • Raid (changed): Prevent enemy aircraft from taking away the cargo. Disrupt their approach by staying close to targets. The scenario can no longer be completed by simply eliminating every guard and ignoring the objectives.
    
  • Assassination (new): Eliminate a high-ranking enemy officer, but expect complications: targets like these might try to escape or have something up their sleeve.
• Patrols:
  • Mobile Base Defense: The mobile base gets disabled by the patrol. Defend it from waves of drones or cruise missiles while the techs work to get it back up and running for a quick escape.
    
  • Elimination & Blitz (changed): Combined into one scenario group with several variations. Deal with spotters guiding air support or unexpected reinforcements.
• Military bases:
  • Demolition (new): Damage as many structures as possible before time runs out, avoiding constant enemy reinforcements.
• Settlements:
  • Liberation (changed). Take out the enemy squads while minimizing damage to civilian structures. The scenario no longer involves defending a few isolated buildings.

• New airbase map (encountered with military POIs)
  
• New farm map & 2 new natural terrain maps (encountered with convoy, patrol, farm POIs)
  
• 4 new boss facility maps (encountered in boss fights)
  
• Some of the maps include bodies of water cooling down the units entering them.

• New armor set, Hakobu: a specialized light armor preferred by the logistic corps of the invasion forces. Rewarded from the higher tier objectives in the convoy ambush scenarios.
  
• New weapons rewarded after boss fights:
  
  • ML-X4 Scythe: Experimental missile launcher. Pincer trajectory allows missiles to bypass cover.
    
  • ML-X9 Hydra: Experimental missile launcher. Splits shortly after launch, releasing a swarm of missiles independently selecting targets.
    
  • AR-X4 Prism: Experimental auto rifle. Each round packs a small amount of solid propellant, enabling a mid-flight course correction.

• 🦾 New tutorial step: At the end of the tutorial players will be shown the workshop and how to construct mech frames. Quick-started games will now begin with a 3rd mech frame under construction.
  
• 🦾 Added ability to view the replay for the final turn of combat. Most of the combat UI now remains available after the final turn.
  
• 🦾 Improved prediction to also include more information about moment-to-moment dangers in the upcoming turn. This includes holograms for upcoming splash damage zones, projectiles with direct flight paths, and guided projectiles with indirect flight paths (the latter gets an approximate prediction focused on arrival time, not a full simulation). The prediction can be disabled in the options menu.
  
• Added an event log to combat. All comms messages and unit updates are kept in a log on the top left of the screen. You can adjust which messages are displayed at any time. It can be disabled from the options menu.
  
• Added new gameplay options:
  
  • 🦾 Time from paths - this will allow you to select if hovering over a unit path will scrub the timeline to that point. You can either set this feature off, to only affect selected units or to always be on by default (how it worked before). This can help in busy scenarios with multiple intersecting paths.
    
  • 🦾 Reset time on inactivity - This can be toggled on or off. When on, after a short period of inactivity, the timeline will reset from scrubbing.
    
  • 🦾 Always show target details - This can be toggled on or off. When on, the targeting details that usually only appear while holding CTRL will always be displayed.
    
  • Show Damage Numbers - This can be toggled on or off (on by default). When on, damage numbers appear above units when they get hit.
    
  • Show Event Log - This can be toggled on or off (on by default). When on, the event log will be available in the top left during combat.
    
  • Display Attack Cones - This can be toggled on or off (on by default). When on, it will display effective range and scatter of unit attacks in an upcoming turn.
• Improved visibility of weapon range indicators.
  
  • Improved the scanning indicator with an animation to better differentiate it from a weapon range indicator.
• Updated the briefing screen to present mission information in a more focused and readable manner.
  
  • Adjusted the layout to accommodate more hints about the battle ahead. Reviewed and updated a number of hints to reflect current game mechanics.
    
  • Improved mission descriptions to reflect the actual content of the encounters. Added hints about whether that has an impact on unit performance.
    
  • Removed the imprecise difficulty prediction. Relocated squad editing to the second briefing screen.
• Added detailed tooltips to difficulty settings.
  
• Added a difficulty setting for salvage drop chance. The setting defaults to 100%. Lowering this value makes the game harder, randomly discarding parts too damaged to be reused; preventing salvage of entire armor sets from a single enemy mech.
  
• Unit tabs in the combat timeline UI will now display the assigned role icon. This includes player units. You can edit the role icon of your unit by clicking the button to the left of the unit name field in the customization screen.
  
• Units that are targets of scenario objectives are now highlighted in the combat timeline UI, separated into a new tab group. These units are additionally highlighted in-world with a yellow targeting bracket.
  
• Improved the display of countdowns, block destruction, and other counter-based objectives in the combat scenario UI.
  
• Improved highlighting of building objectives such as turret generators in combat. A 3D frame around the targeted building now accompanies these objectives. Clicking the objective in the list will now focus the camera on the building.
  
• 🦾 Added support for rebinding the key hiding the UI.
  
• Thrusters are now available to all mechs, including mechs with common quality torsos.
  
• Improved the dash action, making it break missile lock with greater precision and adding visual effects highlighting successful disruption. Disruption now diverts missiles a certain distance opposite the dash direction, making dashes effective against missiles even for units with lower dash range.

• Improved vegetation rendering to reduce visual noise and improve blending with terrain. Improved some vegetation models.
  
• Fights at high elevation have a chance to take place with snow on the ground and snow replacing rain.
  
• Improved how all transparent effects render against fog and sky. Low angle shots of smoke, explosions, missile trails etc. now render correctly. Moon, stars and the debris ring are now properly visible in the sky.
  
• Improved beam reflection mechanics. Powerful beam attacks are now harder to deflect. It is no longer possible to reflect a beam 180 degrees straight back at the attacker.
  
• Added a way to upgrade your equipment level. If your workshop level (increased based on the average level of your squad equipment) is higher than the level of a given part, you can upgrade its level.
  
  • Visit the inventory and select the part you'd like to upgrade. The upgrade button will be available above the level readout.
    
  • The upgrade costs resources based on the quality of the item. The costs increase exponentially depending on the number of times you upgraded a given item. An item can only be upgraded up to 3 times. Check the tooltip for the breakdown of these details.

• 🦾 Reworked the timeline action dragging based on community suggestions. Dragging actions on the timeline no longer triggers crashes under certain conditions and no longer allows you to break the upper limit on action start time. Dragging actions have improved performance.
  
• 🦾 Added generators to all military bases. Garrison sweep scenarios will now allow for destroying generators to disable turrets.
  
• 🦾 Fixed the PLS Curve being very difficult to score hits with
  
• Fixed missing alarm towers on all maps utilizing them (settlements & military bases).
  
• Fixed saving and loading the game with 0 liquid fix refilling liquid fix.
  
• Fixed scatter increases from movement not getting correctly applied to weapons that can have variable scatter.
  
• Fixed reflecting beam damage with shields still applying damage to the mech and not just the shield.
  
• Fixed the enemy mechs receiving mixed armor sets. Every enemy now generates one consistent armor set per unit.
  
• Fixed a bug causing incorrect placement of objectives and enemies relative to the player squad when entering combat.
  
• Fixed patrol reinforcements appearing in some scenarios they were incompatible with.
  
• Fixed mechs and tanks being unable to aim up or down in some circumstances.
  
• Fixed mechs not aiming to the right point when using certain weapons.
  
• Fixed guided projectiles causing memory allocations every time a new projectile was created.
  
• Fixed area of effect explosions failing to detect more than 10 targets at a time.
  
• Fixed area-of-effect explosions being able to apply orders of magnitude more damage depending on a number of intersecting targets.
  
• Fixed some projectile effects being unnecessarily split into multiple pools, increasing memory use and leading to lower maximum number of visible projectiles.
  
• Fixed the unit targeting mode getting stuck on the first hovered unit in certain circumstances.
  
• Fixed excessive fog in the prequel tutorial mission.
  
• Fixed projectiles with proximity fuses not detonating on approach to secondary targets.
  
• Fixed automatic victory (on the elimination of all enemies) and defeat (on the elimination of all player units) conflicting with mission objectives, e.g. a victory occurring despite spawned reinforcements.
  
• Fixed ability to clear input bindings for critical actions, locking up the game (keyboard confirm/cancel and primary/secondary mouse click). Attempts to clear these actions would be ignored.
  
• Fixed player mechs not targeting elevated tanks in the folded state.
  
• Fixed movement scatter disappearing from weapons if certain operations were performed during mech customization.
  
• Fixed exit from unit editing not bringing you back to the squad briefing screen
  
• Fixed some overworld events repeatedly triggering
  
• Fixed cases where units could not be inspected or targeted in combat despite the overlay UI suggesting otherwise
  
• Fixed the difficulty settings not being applied upon starting a new campaign.
  
• Fixed the player units not being controllable in the concussion tutorial in certain cases.
  
• Fixed localized mods always loading the last language.
  
• Fixed missiles overestimating the speed of their targets, leading to overshooting.
  
• Fixed missiles occasionally targeting a point behind the launcher, leading to them spinning out of control.
  
• Fixed salvaged mech frames being stuck in repaired state.
  
• Fixed units randomly crashing when part of a level was destroyed anywhere on the map.

• Fixed close combat squads sometimes featuring load-outs that were geared towards long-range combat
  
• 🦾 Fixed the pilot pod being positioned incorrectly on the Elbrus armor set.
  
• Fixed the ore decals being rendered incorrectly, interfering with collision prediction visuals, grass, and some effects.
  
• Fixed the turrets spawning with a pilot inside.
  
• Fixed weapons firing sideways in cases where the barrel wasn't aligned to the target direction.
  
• Fixed several unused or misconfigured units having a low chance of spawning in generic enemy squads
  
• Fixed terrain smearing past the playable area when TAA or motion blur is enabled.
  
• Fixed glass and water appearing through the fog.
  
• Fixed hidden, escaped, or intact enemy units being available for salvage.
  
• Fixed level damage not being reset properly when loading a briefing save and re-entering combat.
  
• Fixed battle sites awarding reputation when Home Guard units die.
  
• Fixed tanks in the prequel scenario appearing too early.
  
• Fixed enemy tanks not properly displaying their livery colors.
  
• Fixed destroyed units not allowing damage to pass through.
  
• Fixed retreated units being able to execute actions.
  
• Fixed combat dialog continuing to affect audio after combat is concluded.
  
• Fixed a number of issues in the second tutorial scenario, restoring missing dialog, clarifying objectives, and preventing early victory.

• 🦾 Fixed ability to get negative scatter values on weapons.
  
• Moved the Replay button above the Execute button to fix issues with overflow in localizations and overlap with other UI elements.
  
• Fixed using the mouse wheel to scroll the upgrade screen moving the camera diagonally instead of up/down.
  
• Fixed ability to bind multiple actions to the same key.
  
• Fixed scenarios incorrectly stating that you cannot retreat from a battle site.
  
• Fixed rare rounding error that led to mech parts sometimes appearing destroyed in the UI when they still had 1 HP left.
  
• Fixed text on time control UI during combat being misaligned in some localizations.
  
• Fixed stagger value being shown as a percentage in turn summary.
  
• Fixed Radio for help tooltip stating that reputation would be re-gained if home guard units survived.
  
• Fixed blur effect not applying correctly on ultra-wide monitors
  
• 🦾 Fixed clicking on the parent part of a module closing the info window for the parent part after selecting a module.
  
• Fixed the subsystems appearing instead of parts when filtering options during mech customization after a prior visit to the inventory screen.
  
• Fixed the unit path indicators becoming obscured by transparent surfaces.
  
• Fixed outlines not appearing in some contexts when hovering over units in combat.
  
• Fixed blurry texture filtering on roads in combat maps.
  
• Fixed salvage screen rarity holograms being incorrectly rotated on some armor pieces.
  
• Fixed the action bar in the prequel scenario not appearing in the timeline tutorial if the preceding dialog was skipped.
  
• Fixed action cooldowns not updating when customizing player mechs.
  
• Fixed hover over dash actions failing to display appropriate range preview.
  
• Fixed clicking on a selected item a second time closing its info card.
  
• Fixed info banners on equipment that display if it is an upgrade/new in salvage screen ignoring anything currently equipped to mechs.
  
• Fixed the battle-site timer in the initial tutorial not being synched to the objective timer on the overworld.
  
• Fixed enemy pilots in the capital battle all being listed as Trainees.

• All audio except for cutscene audio will sometimes not play.
  
• Tooltips can flow off the sides of the screen in some circumstances.
  
• Occasionally destroyed mechs are flung around the map after viewing replay mode.
  
• On launch, it seems audio is occasionally not playing on the main menu and in gameplay except for cutscenes. If you do encounter this please relaunch your game.
  
• There is a chance of the province liberation event being interrupted by other post-combat events, meaning the opportunity to participate in the parade is not given to the player when the province is won.
  
• Some events do not end correctly - this could be caused by playing with an older save file.
  
• Sometimes patrols can get stuck behind the mobile base without engaging in combat. This can be resolved by entering liberated territory briefly.
  
• Performance issues are common.

There's a lot to like about Phantom Brigade. Launched on Steam in February 2023 after several years in early access on the Epic Games Store, the indie tactical RPG blends gorgeous mech designs with an interesting combat system that pulls from the likes of the best mech strategy games such as BattleTech and Into The Breach. The result is a game with satisfying battles that make you feel really smart for solving its combat puzzles, but one that ultimately feels a little too repetitive as you progress through its campaign. Fortunately, developer Brace Yourself Games has some welcome upgrades on the way in Phantom Brigade patch 1.2 that I'm very excited about.

Read the rest of the story...

• New mission types attached to commonly encountered entities such as convoys, patrols, and military bases.
  
• New combat maps attached to commonly encountered location types.
  
• Streamlined contest mechanics preventing an indefinite raiding state and deprioritizing repetitive patrol encounters.
  
• New special encounters you'll need to complete to finish province liberation.
  
• By popular request, an ability to replay the last turn of combat encounters.
  
• Projectile prediction system helping you foresee and evade individual shots before they happen.
  
• A new way to upgrade your favorite equipment to a higher level.
  
• And more!

• Fixed an issue that caused splash damage weapons to convert all heat/stagger damage into concussion damage
  
• Fixed an issue with melee attacks applying concussion damage as stagger debuff resulting in extreme stagger damage
  
• Fixed all active proximity detonation projectiles (missiles/energy weapons) getting deactivated if a targeted unit executed a dash or melee attack
  
• Fixed concussion damage getting reduced by mechs holding heavy weapons. Concussion damage will only be reduced by the weight of mech body parts
  
• Fixed a rare case where locked options became clickable in overworld event UI on completion of fade in animation
  
• Fixed hovering over attack actions in the timeline failing to trigger target information to display in the top left corner of combat UI.
  

• Extended the library of 3D models available for kitbashing to allow creating new custom visuals for weapons and equipment
  
• Added a console command to generate documentation about available interface functions, including examples of how to write them in YAML
  
• Added ability to mod sprites in combat comms UI
  
• Mod can now trigger arbitrary overworld functions on base upgrades
  
• Added direct input support for modding kitbashed visuals.
  
• Added support for color field modification in config edit mods.
  
• Fixed config editing mods crashing when attempting to edit integer dictionary keys.
  
• Simplified config editing with support for reusing last path.