Surviving the Aftermath News

Hello there, survivors!

We’re back aboard the update train after the PDXCON Remixed and the silver update “Trailblazers”. We have bigger new things brewing in the background, but in this update we want to focus on improving the existing features. As an example these improvements include giving more accurate information in building info panels, world map bandit combat, combat balance changes in the colony and a new, more proactive way of acquiring specialists. But let’s start by taking a look at the new colony alarm system.

The new “Alarm” feature sends out a colony-wide call for all your colonists to take shelter inside their homes. You can enable this straight from the main UI next to the game speed settings. Colonists will stop what they’re doing and immediately run inside to take cover from catastrophes or approaching enemies. Medics are the only workers who’ll remain at their workplace. Guards and Specialists stay outside and react to hostiles on a much larger area. Be careful when sounding the alarm, though, as colonists will suffer a major happiness penalty and can’t take care of their basic needs like eating or treating conditions while confined to their homes. Our longer term plan is to improve the colony combat in various ways, so hopefully this will aid in surviving all the upcoming challenges we have in mind.



The second part of colony combat changes affects the balance and aims to make the feature more impactful and an integral part of surviving the hostile wasteland. We are rebalancing the combat speed in the colony to give more time to react to threats and make more decisions during the combat. Previously fights ended before you even got there, and we wanted to change that. To achieve this individual colonists are less effective against enemies, but guards and specialists are deadlier than before. Hostile unit damage and health values have been adjusted accordingly and there are more encounters with hostiles than before. There’s also one new enemy unit variant amongst other tweaks, but we’ll leave that for you to discover.



We admit that acquiring new specialists has been challenging and hard to predict. Adding more outposts and emphasis on the world map also requires more specialists, so this part will be expanded further in the future. But we wanted to acknowledge this change already with this small addition which hopefully gives more control over acquiring new specialists instead of just waiting for survivor groups. The new recruit feature in the specialist menu on the top of the screen allows you to send a word out that you’re looking for a specialist. This triggers an event where a random specialist appears at the gate and offers their services in exchange for silver. Whether you want them or not, you must then wait for a few days before trying again.



Building info panel has been revamped to give more accurate information about its various states and possible issues, but also tell more accurate information about colonists working in the building. Inaccurate information has been removed to reduce confusion and various status messages help you understand why a building is having production problems, for example. There’s still work to be done with the ultimate goal of providing a clear, easy-to-understand interface for solving issues and optimizing your colony production.



The outpost system from the previous update is expanded further with something the community has requested for a long time: a Medical Outpost. Once built on the world map by a settler, it allows one specialist to patch themselves up without having to return to the colony. Specialists can finally spend their entire time exploring the map fighting bandits and scavenging resources without necessarily setting foot in the colony, which is the direction we had in mind for them.



Several user interface updates have been added on the world map for a smoother user experience. The balance of power indicator has been added on the floater, so you can see how the fights are going while navigating on the world map. We’ve removed unnecessary clutter from the battle UI and added small touches like verbal balance of power status and bandit group types to help you assess the threat better. A new context-sensitive command menu collects all the actions together in one place.

We’ll come back with new additions after July. Hopefully you enjoy this Control Update and have a wonderful and safe summer! Take care of yourselves and play games!

Hello Survivors, welcome to PDX Con Remixed! We have many Surviving the Aftermath events and activities planned, you can check them out here!

Friday May 21st
13:25 CEST - Contriving the Aftermath: Building a Game from Scratch - Twitch The apocalypse doesn’t just happen – it takes hard work! Iceflake Studios will guide you through the process of designing and building Surviving the Aftermath from the ground up.

14:15 CEST - Survivor: Remixed - Twitch Follow Iceflake’s concept artist in the exciting process of designing a new character for Surviving the Aftermath. See how a new survivor comes together from sketch and design into its final form.

Saturday May 22nd
00:30 CEST - Surviving the Beforehand: Developing in Early Access - Twitch Fan feedback and in-game experiences during the Early Access period have helped shape Surviving the Aftermath into a new game for its full release. Join Iceflake for a look at how they’ve worked together with players on changes and features!
Sunday May 23rd
13:10 CEST - Improving the Aftermath - Twitch Learn more about the latest updates for the game. Let’s play the game together and look at new features!

14:10 CEST - Colony Specialists: Meet the Aftermath Team - Discord Join Iceflake at the colony gates for a meet & greet! The team behind Surviving the Aftermath are eager to say hello and share their survival strategies with you.

We hope to see you there!

Greetings, trailblazers!

In this Silver update called “Trailblazers” we’re adding a lot of depth to the world map by expanding the features like outposts and bandit combat. Other major improvements involve new building-based colony exploration, prefabricated buildings for game start and a number of quality-of-life improvements from research queue to carrier limits and more.



The outpost system introduced in the last update has been expanded with two new outpost types. The Research Outpost allows you to extract science points from new types of locations on the world map. Once built by a settler, this outpost will steadily produce science points to fuel your research. The other addition is the Survivor Outpost which looks for survivors wandering the wasteland and invites them to join your colony. The sector info UI panel has been added to give high level information about the sector, quantity of survivors in the sector and the science rating of that sector to help in finding good locations for the outposts. Science Point amounts and requirements have been rebalanced to accommodate this addition.



On the combat side of things, the new rules of engagement add bandit groups to the world map with a reworked method on how damage is divided between the combatants. The entire bandit group shares a common health pool - the smaller it gets, the more bandits are taken out, reducing the damage they can inflict on you. Bandits damage specialists in the battle evenly, so fighting against larger forces there will be more damage dealt for each specialist. This means large groups can do serious harm and should be approached with more than just one specialist to divide their attention, even if they’re competent fighters. The new combat UI with a balance of power indicator helps you assess the threat better and track how well you’re doing and how the situation changes in case you bring reinforcements, or pull someone away from the battle.



In our continuing efforts to reduce micromanagement, colony exploration is now handled via the Campsite and the new Scout Towers. You’ll no longer be ordering your specialists around to expand your colony limits one step at a time. Instead, once the Campsite or Towers are built, they’ll start revealing the area around them automatically - faster at first and slowing down when they’re closer to their maximum range. You can also upgrade the Scout Towers into Guard Posts for added security against intruders. Campsite improvements speed up its scouting speed and range. The final Command Center upgrade explores the entire colony map almost instantly.



New prefabricated or "prefab" buildings have been added to kickstart your colony in the first stage. You can see their amount in the various sections of the Build Menu. Prefabs cost nothing to place, and are quickly and automatically built. Once completed, they act like any building of similar type. We’ll start small with this feature and improve it with future updates for more impact.

Technologies can be now queued within a single category. For example, if you want to rush for Reinforced Gate, you can queue it to have your colonists tackle all the prerequisite techs first and your chosen tech right after without additional input. You’re then free to manage your colony without having to return to the tech tree after each new discovery. You can also reset the queue if research priorities change.



Other various improvements include adding a minimum carrier count for the Campsite. This helps you avoid accidentally assigning all of them to other tasks, effectively grinding logistics and construction to a halt. Colonists will also pick up and drop resource boxes faster to speed up resource transportation further. Guards and specialists are now more responsive in combat, firing faster after given an order to attack. And as usual, this update includes a number of bug fixes and balance changes to improve the game further.

That’s it, trailblazers and survivors! We’ll keep improving the already existing features and adding some new ones while polishing the game. Hope you’ll enjoy this new update and share your thoughts here on the forums and via the in-game feedback tool. Stay safe and play games!

Don’t forget to check out the full changelog here.

Game version

PC: 1.15.0.9103
Xbox: 1.15.0.153

General

A new way of scouting in the colony has been implemented.

• Previously the scouting was done by the Specialists and the colonists.
  
• Now your Campsite and its upgrades as well as the new building Scout Tower and its upgrade Guard Post will do the scouting for you.
  
• The scouting is done little by little automatically for all buildings, but the Tower buildings will need to have a colonist working in them for them to scout.
  
• The first upgrade to the Campsite, the Mission Control will scout faster than the Campsite and the second upgrade, the Command Center will scout the entire colony very fast.
  
• When placing one of these buildings, you will see a circle around them which indicates the range of the scout.
  
• Scouting will first be faster but slow down with time as the distance to the building is larger.
  
• The Scout Tower is immediately visible in the Build Menu and can be built after the Gate has been built. With this change, the colonists and Specialists can no longer be commanded to move to the fog and they cannot be used to clear it.
  

World Map Combat has been renewed.

• Most locations will now have several bandits in them. You can see the amount of bandits from the number in the bandit portrait.
  
• Each bandit will deal a small amount of damage to their combattants. This damage however will now be divided between the Specialists attacking the bandits.
  
• After each turn the amount of bandits in the combat will be decreased based on how much damage the Specialists caused to the group.
  
• You can also now see a clearer Balance of Power prediction of the combat before commanding your Specialist to attack. This meter will show you an estimate of the outcome of the combat. Adding or removing a Specialist will be reflected in this meter.
  

Two new types of Outposts have been added to the game.
The first type is the Research Outpost.
- This outpost will produce Science Points on a daily basis that are automatically added to the colony’s amount of Science Points.
- The effectiveness of the Research Outpost is based on the biome of the sector and the amount of Science locations in the sector. You can spot these locations by the floaters on top of them.

• The second type is the Survivor Outpost.
  

- This outpost will attract survivors to it who can then be sent to the colony. Please note that if your colony has too many colonists already, the survivors cannot be sent to it.

• The effectiveness of this outpost is based on the biome alone.
  
• You can see the effectiveness of a sector for these outposts from the new Sector Info panel that is shown in the bottom right corner above the World Map / Colony button.
  
• The panel will also show you who is the holder of that sector, its hostility and its biome. It will also show you if the sector is walkable and if you could build an outpost to the sector.
  
• Bandits in the sectors can also affect the effectiveness.
  
• The previous type of outpost can also still be built, it is now called the Transport Station.
  

- This outpost is used in the same way as before, moving on top of it will make the Specialists drop their resources so that they will be transported to the colony.
- If you are continuing a save, your old outpost should have been transformed to this type of outpost.

• All three outposts are built in the same way as before by creating Settlers from Specialists in the Outpost Depot in your colony.
  
• The Outpost Depot no longer requires you to unlock it from the Tech Tree. You can now build it straight from the Build Menu after building the Gate.
  

A new ingame intro has been added to the game.

• This will be shown always when starting a new game.
  
• During the intro you will see a Settler who arrives to the colony site. You must place the Campsite to exit the intro and move back to normal gameplay.
  
• After placing the Campsite, you are also able to place some prefab buildings to your colony.
  

- These buildings are completely free to build and will be completed automatically. You will only need to place them to your colony.
- You can spot the prefab buildings and the amount from a numbered icon shown on top of the building in the Build Menu.

Gameplay

• You can now queue techs in the Tech Tree.
  
• Selecting a tech that is beyond your reach at the moment will give you the option to Queue Research in the panel. Selecting this will automatically plan a route to the tech.
  
• Using the Queued Research, researching the tech will not be started until you leave the Tech Tree and go back to the colony. Using the Research button on a tech that is currently available will start the research immediately as before.
  
• Your colonists should no longer get the same condition all at once. Instead if the colony is hit with a disaster that causes conditions to several colonists, they will now be affected one by one within a time period.
  
• The Campsite building now has a setting called Carrier Count. Setting this will reserve that amount of colonists to work as carriers in your colony. If a new workplace is opened but there are not enough colonists, the workplace will remain open and wait for a colonist to be free to work there.
  
• The Tenement and the Shanty buildings now have upgrades available for them. As before, these upgrades will need to first be unlocked from the Tech Tree. The birth rates for each building have been adjusted as well, the upgrades will have a higher birth rate than the normal buildings.
  
• Specialist tooltip in the Specialist Selection Menu will now show the correct name after changing the Specialist’s name to a custom one.
  
• Specialists and Vehicles on the World Map should no longer prevent trade and outpost route calculation. This issue previously could cause the route to be longer or cause an issue where the route was -1h.
  
• Boars should no longer spawn to the middle of a pollution deposit.
  

Graphics

• World Map biome textures have been tweaked.
  
• The textures of the pollution craters around the colony have been visually adjusted.
  
• New portraits for bandits on the World Map have been added.
  
• New outpost models have been added to the game.
  
• With the added Scout Tower, the Guard Post was also redone and now has a completely new look.
  
• A lot of optimization has also been done on the buildings in the colony to improve the performance of the game.
  

Balance Adjustments

• The movement speed of the colonists has been increased.
  
• The Pavement road should now increase the movement speed of the colonists more than before.
  
• Happiness values and penalties have been adjusted.
  
• Colonists suffering from Despair should no longer stop working because of it.
  
• Malnutrition and Poorly Nourished conditions now cause a happiness penalty.
  
• The Dirty condition also now causes a happiness penalty.
  
• Homelessness and living in a shelter of lesser quality causes a bigger happiness penalty than before.
  
• Dehydration and Starving conditions have a smaller effect on happiness than before.
  
• Deposits around the colony will now be harvested a bit faster. The colonists will take a bit more time for each cycle but they will gather a larger amount of resources in each cycle.
  
• The colonists can now carry more resources at one go.
  
• The birth rate of the entire colony has been slightly increased.
  
• Combat groups arriving at your colony gate should now be more balanced. They should now be more balanced based on how large your colony is at the moment of the attack.
  
• With the new Outposts producing Science Points as well, the costs of the techs in the Tech Tree have been increased.
  
• The amount of resources in Plastic and Metal deposits around the colony has been increased.
  
• With the addition of the Research Outpost, the cost of different techs in the tech tree have been increased and the amount of Science Points in the locations in the World Map have been adjusted as well.
  

Good day, Survivors!

This rather massive “Remnants” update combines several months of work into a single patch. It overhauls core features like colony terrain and deposit generation, adds a new outpost system, and includes many AI and quality-of-life improvements. It also includes Steam Workshop support for adding and downloading mods on Steam. Our programmers have been hard at work on increasing the performance of the game, which finally allows us to start increasing the population limit. In this update, the increase is still small, but in the future, we can hopefully remove it completely.

We’re proceeding with our plans on better mod support, this time with Steam Workshop. It allows players to add, manage and download mods and extra content for the game via its own interface. Existing mods will need to be updated for them to work, though. We’re very excited to see what you come up with and continue to expand the modding capabilities in future updates.



The new colony map generation includes reworks to both how the soil is generated and how the resource deposits are distributed. The new soil system makes the colony map less granulated, so you can now build a large farming zone on a nice big fertile patch. Although reaching fertile areas might need some effort as these patches of land are located farther from each other. The environment looks more apocalyptic since we’ve added some devastated urban areas on the map with destroyed buildings and other remains reminiscent of the old world.

Resources are now spawned in clusters instead of all around the map, so you can concentrate your production efforts next to these new clumps of metal, concrete, and plastic. For example, when expanding your tools production you can build Scrappers, Stockpiles, and Toolshops next to a cluster with lots of metal and have the final products delivered to the warehouses in the colony center.



The renewal of the outpost system starts with this update and will be expanded in the future. Our goal is to make the world map an essential part of a builder game where it can be explored with specialists, but exploited with the diverse selection of buildings called outposts. This update also changes how outposts are built. From here on out outposts will be built by converting a specialist into a settler at the outpost depot and sending this new unit to the world map. This settler can be controlled similar to specialists, and then commanded to establish an outpost in a free and non-hostile sector. The transformation is irreversible and settlers can’t be converted back to specialists. More outpost features which use this new system will be added later.

The list of AI and quality-of-life improvements is more extensive than described, but here are some of the more impactful ones. The new construction priority system allows prioritizing one construction zone over all others and replaces the old system, which didn’t function properly in several situations. Several advanced utility buildings like the large transformer can now be built straight from the build menu instead of having to be upgraded from the normal transformer first.



Colonists have a new appreciation for meals over raw food and will attempt to eat the best kind of food available. They’ll also take care of their malnutrition better. On the same note, mixed and insect meals are now cooked in the mess hall only, and the building itself is faster in producing all meals in general. Colonists will now prioritize carrying boxes in danger of decaying and also stock up buildings, like burners, more evenly. The boxes themselves have also received a facelift into something more of a realistic look.



On the user interface front, the specialist menu shows a progress bar about their current action, and icons below their portraits tell more precisely about their current status. Hovering over the specialist portrait shows a tooltip that tells you the Specialists’ name and type with their current location and assignment. The construction zone info panel also shows more accurate information about the state of the construction and its builders.



Mentioning all changes to game balance would be a too-long list to be written here, so let’s mention a few of them. Tents, emergency shelters, and shanties have had their capacity slightly increased to help deal with early game housing. Water wells produce the maximum amount of water more easily. Tier 2 and 3 tools, clothes, and weapons last longer and offer more benefits over basic items of the same type. Resources from the world map are dropped more clearly next to the gate and bandit camps have had their health increased but damage reduced, so specialists can stay exploring for longer. And finally, nuclear fallout will irradiate less people.



These were some of the changes in this update. Check out the latest patch notes to see the entire list of additions, bug fixes, and improvements. We hope these improvements will make your stay in the apocalypse a more interesting and enjoyable one, sparking hope for a better tomorrow - stay safe!

PS You can check the full changelog here.