Hi all,

It’s been a few weeks since the last patch, but we’ve been working away and are now ready to launch the next Major Update: Combat!

We’ve got more enemies, 30, new enemy patterns, more enemy behaviours, updated enemy attacks and even a new gun in this one.

Updating the combat experience for more variety a better experience was something I really wanted to get done, so I’m super happy to set this live.

Let’s check it out.

I’ve added a Kinetic Shotgun. Like the other weapons, there are three levels of increasing power for this gun, which uses a new ammo type of… shotgun shells (natch).

I don’t need to tell you that this weapon is specialised for dealing lots of damage up close, with limited range but a large spread. Try it out indoors!

The highest level shotty is pretty powerful and quite handy for entity base attacks or just generally outdoors too.

We’ve added a new spherical Entity with a fireball projectile attack. You can encounter them in the wild or during base attacks.

This hungry fellow will charge at you and try and take a chunk out. The attacks will also damage your base if they miss you, so take care!

Entity now have different patterns and appearances depending on what level they are. This amounted to 30 new patterns, with 5 variations per Entity type. Now you can tell how tough the enemies you’re facing are, more easily. Generally the more bright and alarming the colours, the more deadly!

Entity level is still displayed as a number above their health bar. The health bar, and often their attack lasers, now have a colour that matches their level and patterns.

The fearsome Entity Warden now has an updated attack behaviour. It now uses a laser sight to track the Scavenger, before unleashing a deadly ray of plasma when it finds its target.

In previous builds, base attacks would only consist of Squid Entity and Hunters. I’ve updated this so you can have different groups attack you now. It can be a mix of any enemy, or occasionally all of just one type, say Jellies, Wardens or Orbs, in addition to the Hunters who go for your base.

Attack duration has now been tweaked, to last longer depending on the Threat Level of the system you are in. You can see the threat level of a system on the galactic map when you jump there. Keep this in mind mind when choosing where to jump to.

Of course, if you are after a more chill experience, you already have the option to reduce or even remove base attacks, and to cap the max Entity level you face, in Options > Game.

I have made some various bug fixes and tweaks. Probably the nicest of these is fixing up the facing and shooting behaviour so that the player won’t fire a beam of laser off at the wrong angle now and then. This makes combat feel much better.

Another improvement is the health bar on enemies and damaged rig structures are now much smaller which looks neater and less distracting.

Once again I'd like to thank you for picking up the game, and especial thanks also if you dropped us a nice review on Steam. We’re a small team of two, and it really helps!


Entity and attacks
-Added New enemies and attack type:
-Added new Charger Entity with 5 levels. Charges at player and implements damage on player (or base) on impact.
-Added new Orb Entity with 5 levels. Slow moving entity that shoots fireball projectile type.

-Update Warden Aim and Fire Behaviour
-Warden uses slow targeting laser which tracks player before initiating powerful laser blast
-Update warden health to make more dangerous

-Added 12 gauge kinetic shotgun, recommended for close range:
-Added shotgun
-Added shotgun 2 and 3 with recipe and gates to mining.
-Added shotgun shells item types.

-Visually updated all Entity to have 5 distinct colours and patterns depending on their level:
-Added 5 levels of Jelly
-Added 5 levels of Squid and Squid Base attackers
-Added 5 levels of Tadpole Entity
-Added 5 levels of Base Hunter Entity
-Added 5 levels of Tadpoles
-Added 5 levels of Warden
-Updated all lasers and blast projectile colours to match Entity patterns
-updated all health bars to match Entity patterns

Misc gameplay
-Remove watered crop sound at distance.
-Half size of health bars on base and enemy (much neater)
-Updated base attacks to have variety of entity types and random mixes of different types. Base attacks can now feel very different (eg all Jellies, or Chargers etc)
-Sector danger level affects duration of rig attacks
-Laser Rifle 2 gated to mining as requires gold.
-Tweak Turret angle checks in effort to fix intermittent and unreproduceable fire failure

Misc bug fixes
-Fixed bug with entity base destruction triggering multiple fragment drops (laggy). This may have caused you to get excess entity base matter in existing runs.
-Fix strange Nan bug with collision point on seed 76.
-Fixed player shoot behaviour so you now correctly point when shooting and do not shoot off at wrong angle for a frame when firing
-Fix settings missing save handler preventing saving settings when changed in game

Until the next time, Scavenger!

Al.

-Fix bug causing potential issues with goals not completing or jumps to new sectors not working when you have completed certain questlines. You will need to jump sector to update erroneous goals or to move to correct sectors.