Surviving the Aftermath News

[h3]Hello survivors! [/h3]
It's the spookiest time of year, and we are excited to bring you a free in-game event on Steam and Epic that includes Halloween themed decorations and buildings. This also includes a free patch of some gameplay fixes, such as improvement to the day and night meter to display when night starts and ends, as well as some graphics and balance adjustments like increased fiber production in the fields. What better way to prepare for the moon shattering DLC Shattered Hope that comes out the week after?

The event visuals will include:

• Halloween themed hats and masks for colonists.
  
• Two new decoration "buildings":
  
• A Scarecrow
  
• A Cauldron full of nuclear liquids
  
• Buildings with lights will change their appearance with more Halloween themed lights:
  
• Regular lights/lanterns in buildings in the game will now turn into Halloween themed lanterns, such as jack-o'-lanterns
  
• Halloween Decorative lamps

The Halloween event will turn on automatically on the 24th of October, but can of course be turned off in the settings if you prefer playing without it.


[h3]Change notes - “Halloween patch”[/h3]

General

• Added Halloween content to the game. Spooky! The Halloween content is turned on automatically on the 24th of October and turned off on the 7th of November. The content can also be toggled on or off in the settings.
  
• Added Goo Cauldron and Scarecrow decorations that can be unlocked by Prestige.
  
• Torch, Lantern and all Street Light decorations change to more Halloween themed lights.
  
• Added jack o'lanterns and other halloween props to colony buildings.
  
• Added halloween themed hats for colonists.
  
• Added six new events. These should improve the early game event variation so that the same events don’t happen that often.
  

Gameplay

• Improved the way that queued movement works when sending specialists to combat in the World Map. Specialists should no longer get stuck on each other when pathing to a location.
  
• Added a tooltip for repair tool that displays the amount of resources required to repair a building.
  
• Added a tooltip for demolish tool that displays the amount of resources gained when demolishing a building.
  
• Improved the day and night meter to display when night starts and ends.
  
• Notifications display hours instead of days when there’s less than a day remaining. Previously notifications had texts such as “0 days remaining” and that is now displayed in hours.
  
• Changed the way that quick tool can be accessed on a controller. Quick tool now has a single button that activates it and then it’s possible to change between repair/demolish/overtime mode with another button.
  
• Destroyed buildings can now be removed with the demolish tool.
  
• Fixed an issue that caused pause and demolish hotkeys to be usable on construction zones that had those functionalities disabled e.g. Campsite could be paused during the intro and would cause a softlock.
  
• Fixed an issue that occurred when saving and loading the game just as colony combat was about to finish.
  
• Fixed an issue that caused disasters to disappear after saving and loading a game while the disaster was ongoing.
  

Graphics

• Added four new child portraits and seven new female portraits for colonists.
  
• Updated textures for over 30 buildings.
  
• Added DLC icons to save game menu that displays which DLCs are enabled in the save.
  
• Added a tooltip to main menu DLC buttons that displays if the DLC requires a new game to be active.
  
• Added a popup to save game menu that informs if activated DLCs cannot be applied to a save that is being loaded.
  

Balance Adjustments

• Reduced the fiber cost of Basic Clothing.
  
• Slightly lowered the protection value of Basic Clothing.
  
• Very slightly lowered the protection value of Sturdy Clothing.
  
• Increased fiber production in Fields.
  
• Changed the way that scaling works for catastrophes. The goal is to make all catastrophes scale better with game difficulty. Previously catastrophes had the same “effective phase” that affected conditions, damage and other factors.
  

Hello survivors!

We are pleased to announce the new DLC for Surviving the Aftermath. Shattered Hope introduces the Shattered Moon calamity, giving players the ability to boost resource production and the task of maintaining survivor’s hope. Surviving the Aftermath: Shattered Hope launches on November 3rd for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC at a suggested retail price of 9.99 USD / 7.99 GBP / 9.99 EUR.

During the apocalypse, the Moon was destroyed and now the consequences of that are showering down from the sky in an unforeseen disaster. By gathering resources from Moon Rock deposits and coming together as a people, the survivors must find hope to proceed and prosper. Shattered Hope focuses around increasing resource production in the colony while attempting to keep up Hope for the colonists - otherwise the new Anguish condition can cause trouble for them and the entire colony.

Surviving the Aftermath: Shattered Hope Key Features include:

• Face the Moonfall and use it to your advantage with the new Building Boost mechanic
  The Moon is shattered in the sky and its fragments are crushing down on Earth leaving behind them devastation - but also moon rock deposits. You can refine lunar fragments and obtain lunar dust which will be used to increase the production of your buildings for a limited time. This new building boost mechanic is called overtime.
  
  
• Keep your hopes up, and feast!
  Hope is a new global value that decreases over time and when catastrophes happen in the game. If kept too low for too long, it will trigger a new condition called anguish that, if left untreated, may turn your colonists hostile. So, keep your hope as high as possible by holding feasts at the new colony square building.
  
  
• New production chain: take care of your colonists
  When colonists experience anguish, you can help them by building a trauma centre where they will heal. They will recover faster thanks to a brand new medicine called antistress. To make it, you’ll have to grow raw resources on the mushroom farm, then refine them into the actual medicine in the med hut building.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h3]Base game[/h3]
General

• Added 11 new achievements:

• Base game:

• Doomsday is canceled - Complete the Doomsday Bunker Project.
  
• Choo-choo! - Escape the harsh winter by fixing the train in Cold Rush.
  
• Finnished - Survive in the Endless Winter scenario for 100 days.
  
• Tailored to fit - Survive until day 100 in a custom game.
  
• Customized calamities - Secret!

• New Alliances DLC:

• Undercover - Complete all four covert mission types.
  
• Best friends forever - Ally with a society.
  
• Binary world view - Secret!
  
• Diplomatic quarter - Have four embassies built at the same time.
  
• Dynamic Duo - Secret!
  
• Federation forever - Form the federation.

• Improved build menu performance dramatically.
  
• Fixed an issue that prevented loading a save if a resource box was out of colony bounds and the game was saved while a carrier was moving to pick up the box.

Gameplay

• Replaced the “trade offers available” text in the society menu with “trade unavailable” when there aren't enough workers in a Trade Center.
  
• Double-clicking now works when overwriting a save game.
  
• Fixed an issue that caused some buildings to not receive resources from storages if request resources was used. This was the reason that Fuel was not always delivered properly to a Garage.
  
• Fixed an issue that caused up and down navigation to be inverted on a controller in request board.
  
• Fixed an issue that caused NPC animations to freeze in combat upon selecting a specialist.
  
• Fixed an issue that caused the camera to move to the wrong location when pressing the resource depleted notification.
  
• Added a missing text in French in the custom game pregame menu.

Graphics

• Updated portraits for caribou, boar and bear in the world map.
  
• Added tooltips to colonists, resources and buildings tabs in the statistics menu.
  
• Fixed many text overflow issues in multiple languages.
  
• UI polish:
  
  • Updated some tech icons in the tech tree.
    
  • Added a black filler background to the society menu for ultrawide monitors.
    
  • New icons for group health and animal attack in the world map UI panel.
    
  • Many smaller button and text changes in world map panels.
• Added fake colonists to entertainment buildings and adjusted animations in them.
  
• Added fake workers to Forester, Maintenance Depot and Concrete Scavenger.

[h3]New Alliances[/h3]
General

• Added a tooltip to the society menu that displays information about embassy bonus buildings.
  
  • It should now provide an easy way to see information about different buildings when allying with a society.
• Fixed an issue that prevented loading a save caused by a roaming bandit spawning incorrectly.

Gameplay

• Rival reputation gain is now visible when failing or declining a society request and in the world map when hovering over a request location.
  
• Added reputation markers and player/rival reputation amounts in the society menu’s reputation bar.
  
• Fixed an issue that caused society convoys to move out of bounds.
  
• Rewards from society requests are now visible after forming the federation.
  
• Fixed an issue that caused the carrier count to increase visually when adding and removing workers in the Academy building.
  
• Roaming NPCs in the World Map now face the way they’re moving.
  
• Replaced generic specialist mission accomplished sounds with a voice-over for covert missions.
  
• Added sound to Bomb Bunker.

Graphics

• UI polish:
  
  • Changed the coloring and reduced the size of roaming unit’s path indicator.
    
  • Reduced the size of request, animal and convoy floaters in the world map.
    
  • Many smaller button and text changes in New Alliances related menus.
• New Alliances building polish:
  
  • Fixed icicle placement on Society Depot.
    
  • Texture changes to most New Alliances buildings.
    
  • Reduced the size of outposts in the world map.
    
  • Added a missing material in Bomb Bunker.

Balance Adjustments

• Reduced silver from scavenging locations.
  
• Increased New Alliance tech costs.
  
  
• Requests and reputation:
  
  • Patrol and Teach loan request sector triggers lowered.
    
  • Lowered individual request type cooldowns across the board.
    
  • Increased rival rep gains from failed requests (by quite some margin).
    
  • Decreased the cooldown to spawn new requests.
    
  • Increased Rival reputation gains from failed requests across the board.
    
  • Altered request rewards to less silver and more other resources.
    
  • Reduced combat and loan requests slightly, increased build requests slightly (via cooldowns).
    
  • Reduced timeouts on almost all requests, so there’s less time completing them (esp. loans).
  
  
  
• Covert Missions:
  
  
  • Player:
    • Increased damage specialists take from failed covert missions.
      
    • Increased covert mission duration for theft and steal research mission types.
      
    • Reduced archetype bonus in covert missions from 85% to 75%.
      
    • Reduced base covert mission success chance from 60% to 55%.
      
    • Increased duration a specialist spends on a loan request.
    
    
    
  • Hostile society & rival:
    
    • Increased minimum silver amount stolen in Theft.
      
    • Increased chances to identify the culprit, especially if the hostile mission failed.
      
    • Decreased rival's mission cooldowns.
  
  
  
• Society rewards:
  
  • New Alliances building repair resources updated to use higher tier resources in most cases.
    
  • Added pollution to Chemville's tradable goods.
    
  • Increased Nuclear Plant’s initial resource request amount.
  
  
  
• Society buildings:
  
  • Removed tools from greenhouse society building recipe and increased plastic required.
• Population and federation:
  
  • Increased minimum rival population slightly.
• Roaming units:
  
  • Reduced the amount of roaming animals.
    
  • Decreased the cooldown for spawning society convoys.

Greetings survivors!

“New Alliances” is here and we can finally share more details about what it means for Surviving the Aftermath. We’ve already teased its contents a bit, so let’s dig deeper into what makes it special. Society requests, alliances and federation add a fresh dimension to societies, while roaming bandits, covert missions and a new powerful Rival faction challenge you in new ways.

IMAGE: Keyart

New Alliances adds a new, more dynamic layer to the world map and how you interact with societies. Instead of just having nice trade partners, you can now befriend and eventually ally with them with the ultimate goal of creating a federation! To do this, you must help your soon-to-be allies by completing requests and assisting them against various threats in the wasteland. But if making friends isn’t your thing, you can raid their convoys for resources or have your specialists complete covert missions inside the societies to steal loot, science points and other benefits. But note that you’re not alone in your ambitions, as a mysterious Rival faction has taken an interest in your part of the wasteland.

IMAGE: Build request

Forming a federation and solidifying your status as its leader will take some time. Once you’ve met the first societies, a new society depot building becomes available. It allows you to construct helpful buildings inside societies to raise their population, protect them from bandit raids or provide alternative sources of science points and silver. You can construct these buildings for a society whenever you want, even if they haven’t specifically sent a request for them. In addition to building requests, societies might also ask you to hunt bothersome animals, deal with dangerous bandit forts or loan one of your specialists to them.

IMAGE: Federation screen

Each completed request gives you rewards and brings your two colonies closer. Once you’ve gained enough reputation, they’ll offer to ally with you and share their secrets after you’ve built their embassy in the colony. These unique, society-specific benefits range from nuclear power plant blueprints from Chemville to extra action points for every specialist from Dead Creek. Discover all the perks in the new federation status screen and choose which ones you want the most! New Alliances features eight new reward buildings and 13 permanent bonuses for your colony.

IMAGE: Part of the rival illustration with failed request

But as you encounter more societies while still dealing with all the hardships of catastrophes and bandit assaults against your own colony, you’ll be forced to decide who to help and who’s plea for aid goes unheard. Each failed request pushes them closer to your Rival, who will turn them against you! To end their influence in the wasteland, you must create a strong federation with your closest allies.

To form the federation you must get the majority of the wasteland’s population on your side. Raise your allies’ population by constructing shelters and food production facilities while embarking on propaganda missions to draw people away from hostile societies. Once the majority has been achieved, you’ll be rewarded with sharing the spoils of war your Rival left behind along with other benefits.

IMAGE: Successful covert mission end screen

Another major aspect in New Alliances involves a bit more shadier tactics. Your specialists can now embark on four different types of covert missions against other societies for various benefits. You can for example steal science points for your research via espionage with your scientists or sabotage Rival operations with scavengers to reduce their influence. Different specialist types have a higher chance to succeed on these missions, so pick your operative carefully as failure means a big drop in reputation and a potentially lethal escape from the rather offended society.

IMAGE: Anti-covert mission buildings

But be on your guard as these covert missions can also be used against you. Both your Rival and other societies can infiltrate your colony to steal, disrupt your research or even set off explosives! To combat this, unlock protective buildings like anti-propaganda towers and surveillance vans from the new tech branch and have them staffed at all times. The more workers you have stationed, the greater the chance you’ll prevent anything bad from happening and maybe even uncover the culprit in the process.

IMAGE: Roaming animal

The world map is also more active than ever before. You might spot a herd of deer roaming around looking for food or a group of bandits searching for prey. Hostile units might chase your specialists who are moving on foot or decide to take over your world map outpost, halting its operations until you clear them out. For best protection, have a fleet of capable vehicles on hand at all times, as the bandit hordes are unable to catch a fast-moving car with all your scavenged loot inside. As the game progresses, you’ll start seeing more powerful Rival troops on the world map. Approach them with caution (and several specialists).

The base game is also receiving an update with a number of quality-of-life improvements, user interface additions and bug fixes. Most notably the main quest now has mid-quest rewards, permanent effects are now visible in the Statistics screen so you can see which affect your colony, and a toggle for faster world map animations has been added to the Settings menu. Check all improvements and fixes from the Changelog: Update 4 link below.

IMAGE: Colony beauty shot

We hope you’ll jump in and discover all that the New Alliances DLC has to offer in terms of new buildings, tactics and decisions. There’s a lot to play around with from deciding who to help and who to hinder, and which powerful rewards to go for. So prepare yourself against bandits, rivals and sandworms alike to unite the wasteland!

As we’ve mentioned before, New Alliances will be released for PC platforms first while we continue working on the console counterparts, so stay tuned!

Surviving the Aftermath: New Alliances is available now on Steam and Epic Store. It is also included as a part of the Ultimate Colony Upgrade with more DLC to come later.

[h2]Changelog[/h2]

[h3]General[/h3]

Added Main Quest rewards.

• Gather enough Main Quest knowledge to unlock new modifiers that improve your colony, or alternatively, choose a resource reward instead.
  
• Each knowledge type (Life Support, Medicine, Defense and Ecosystem) gives different rewards.
  

Added a new Global Effects tab in the statistics menu:

• Other: displays modifiers that affect the whole colony.
  
• Custom game settings: displays the chosen custom game settings.
  

Added a setting for faster World Map animations.

• Increases the animation speed of World Map actions, such as specialist movement.
  
• Changed the way that other societies spawn in the World Map.
  
• Societies now spawn randomly to improve gameplay variation.
  
• Previously certain societies always spawned in the World Map, such as Lushton.
  

Added the New Alliances DLC banner to the Main Menu.

• The banner is visible for players that do not have the New Alliances DLC.
  
• The banner changes to a DLC toggle button for players that have the New Alliances DLC enabled.
  

[h3]Gameplay[/h3]

The carrier bringing the last resource to a construction zone should now start constructing the building.

• Previously a random worker would start constructing the building.
  

Defeating bandit camps in the World Map now gives resource rewards based on the location.

• For example, defeating bandits in a research location will reward the player with science points.
  
• Defeating bandit sectors gives a currency reward.
  

Notifications that have many targets can now be selected multiple times to go through all the affected targets.

• Affects all notifications, such as “constructions finished” and “colonists are injured”.
  
• Previously, clicking on the notification moved the camera to the first affected target.
  

Research queue now takes the active research into account when choosing its path. This should make the research queue work much smoother.

• The top row was prioritized before. This change fixes the issue where a tech has been researched on the bottom row and it would still queue techs through the top row.
  

Low HP colonists will now visit Medical Tents or Field Hospitals to heal themselves.

• Colonists often had very low health that caused unintended deaths caused by hunger, malnutrition etc.
  
• Guards are now more effective as they will heal themselves if their health drops low enough.
  

Critical conditions from workers in entertainment and sanitary buildings are not instantly removed anymore.

• Building many saunas or entertainment buildings reduced the amount of conditions given to colonists in different situations.
  

Specialists can now be commanded to move to the exact same location as the previous specialist. This was mainly an issue on a controller.

Removed camera centering when exiting specialist menu while using a controller.

• Previously, the camera moved to the player’s colony when the specialist menu was exited.
  

Added a notification when finding a new building in the colony view. Mainly affects the Cold Rush scenario right now.

Percentage bonuses from techs now stack cumulatively. Only the latest percentage bonus was active previously.

• Main quest gives percentage rewards that affect the whole colony. This change was added so that the rewards can stack with all other percentage modifiers e.g. building durability.
  

[h3]Graphics[/h3]

Polished the Society Menu.

• Removed unnecessary society introduction texts.
  
• Added “Trade offers available” text.
  
• Added reputation text and icon.
  
• Other smaller image, text and icon changes in different society menu panels.
  

Polished all World Map panels.

• Increased the size of World Map panels and the texts in them.
  
• Made the Society panel more concise.
  
• Improved textures for Wind Turbine, Food Storage, Tent, Emergency Shelter and Trapper.
  

[h3]Balance Adjustments[/h3]

Added resource rewards to the early stages of the main quest.

• Rewards have been added throughout the main quest to make it more compelling to do.
  

Hungry colonists now seek food when hunger is at 20%, was 10% previously

• We received many comments about colonists dying from hunger, even though there was plenty of food available in the colony. This change should reduce the times random hunger deaths happen.
  

Tired colonists now seek shelter to sleep in when tiredness is at 20%, was 10% previously.

[h3]Bug Fixes[/h3]

• Xbox only: fixed an issue that caused Wind Turbine, Lightning Rod, Lightning Tower and Martian Wind Turbine to be unrepairable when the Ultimate Colony DLC was active.
  
• Fixed an issue that caused the colonists to run in place and the game would reset to day 0 when loading a save where a building has just been destroyed before saving.
  
• Changed the wording for “wasteland biome” in multiple languages in the main quest. This caused misunderstandings in the main quest step that required an outpost to be built on the wasteland biome.
  

Greetings survivors old and new!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

We’re very excited to reveal what we’ve been doing amidst all the updates up to this point. It’s the first part of our Season Pass and will be released very soon. Here are some of its key features which gives the game’s sandbox a whole new dimension with more replayability and new challenges!

Surviving the Aftermath: ”New Alliances” adds an in-depth layer to world map societies and a new, powerful rival faction as your adversary. Help your neighbours deal with new threats and gain unique rewards while uniting the wasteland under a single banner! Or use your specialists to conduct covert missions inside other societies for your own gain…

Form the federation
Assist societies and complete requests to gain enough reputation to ally with them. Build embassies to unlock unique permanent bonuses and buildings for your colony. Help your alliance population grow and bring the wasteland on your side by forming a federation!

Rival faction
A powerful opposing faction has taken an interest in your part of the world. Their control over societies grows every time you ignore or fail requests, so fight back by helping those in need or use specialists to reduce rival influence.

Covert missions
Your specialists can now embark on covert missions within societies to steal resources or incite its population. But beware as the same tricks can be used against you! Build new protective buildings such as Surveillance Vans and Anti-propaganda Towers to defend against these attacks.

Roaming bandits and animals
Bandits, society convoys and even animals are now active on the world map. Move out of their way or risk an attack. Raid convoys for loot or defeat bandits for loot and reputation. Hostile units can even take over your outposts, so be prepared to clear them out to resume production.