9.8HF

Mortars no longer spawn random groups of cultists when destroyed, and are back to just 1 tanker and 1 assaulter.

9.8:

HOPEFULLY HOPEFULLY HOPEFULLY put a stop to the USCM space encounter kick-to-ship

Cultist Ship Siege: 6 SRS are now guaranteed to spawn with up to 4 additional srs. No more getting shafted on reinforcements.

Apex Prison Ship: Setting off the alarm now has a tangible effect: it will now cause Miniknog reinforcements to appear out of doorways.

It has come to the attention of the Ministry of Knowledge that due to incompetence, non-apex miniknog scientists were able to be encountered in the field. This has now been rectified: all non-apex miniknog scientists have now been sacked and deported. Praise Big Ape.

Turrets have been given a bit of a boost in power. The anti-mat USCM turret in particular was really weaksauce so it's been heavily buffed. However, Turrets no longer deal contact damage because that's just plain silly.

Mortar crews no longer infight when the mortar is destroyed.

Mortars no longer deal contact damage and have a minimum range.

Finally got it right this time.

Again

jinxed it

Minor fix: removed duplicate file. Didn't affect much but it did throw an error into the log.

Ver 9.7

New Cultist Pillboxes: High and low level variants.

The low level variants are found on lower tier planets (including lush!). They have less health, less protection, and fire slower and less accurately than the normal ones. But they otherwise function identically including having a stash of goodies under the hill they're on.

The high level ones on the other hand are very recognizable, being made out of purple painted metal rather than wood. These have higher health and protection, fire faster, more accurately, and in regular intervals, and have fire resistance (rather than vulnerability). They appear on high level planets, including the infamous 'gun hill' microdungeon and on top of cultist bunker macrodungeons.

Pirate Camps Have Destructable Tents:

This is a long time coming, but pirate camps now operate like the cultist camps (with destructible tents that spawn enemies and can be sniped to prevent spawning, instead of with spawners.) This also applies to the pirate slave camps.

Cultist Ship and Rocketeer Changes:

They now have a one-use console in the back to open the door. This is done on the siege version to prevent the SRS from getting overwhelmed by the cultists before you arrived to help. This was done on the non-siege versions for consistency.

In addition, Rocketeers are 100% guaranteed on level 4 on up to appear on the back of cultist ships (other than the seige version of course). (At tiers 1-3.9, it remains at 40%). Rocketeers also get exponentially stronger at higher levels in order to better shoot your mech down. Finally, they are now exclusive to said back of ships, and will no longer appear from dropships, trucks, or APCs.

Thematic Turrets: The miniknog have long since had their own 'miniknog twiguns' and 'miniknog omnicannons', but the other factions have had to make due with the vanilla ones.
... Until now.

Cultist Twiguns shoot a weaker but faster projectile and shoot it more often, and wear occassus colors.

Pirate 'Twiguns' are crude contraptions, consisting of a pair of AK47s crudely wired to a twigun base to make a 'defense turret'. They're inferior in just about every aspect to normal twiguns except for one: they can track you while they shoot.

USCM gets two: The 'TwiSaiga' which functions as a 'shotgun turret', and the 'Monocannon', a semi-auto .50 cal sniper turret for sniping pesky space critters and mechs. Thanks to Col. Sam for both the sprites and concepts!


Cultist NPC loadout changess

Mostly geared towards higher levels.

* Assaulter: at level 6 on up, they wield ak47s less frequently. By level 8, they've dropped them entirely.

* Paras: At level 6 on up, they wield the saigia exclusively.

* Snipers: Become more skilled at higher tiers. By tier 10, they always headshot.

* Summoners: At tier 5, they drop their AK47s for RPKs. At tier 6, they wield RPKs or PKMs. At tier 7 and higher, they wield PKMs exclusively.

* Tankers: At tier +4, they stop using the sword, and will start adding other pistols to their arsenal, and even vzs and uzis. By tier 7, they use uzis and desert eagles exclusively.

Ver 9.6:

* Updated Arcana compat (WAY overdue!)

* Updated Maple32 compat (again, way overdue)

* Fixed terrestrial_worlds.config issue with halloween worlds.

* Apex Research Lab (Seige: Rebel) rebel spawn at entrances increased while spawns on other floors decreased. Done to enhanced player interactivity

* New space encounter offshoot: Cultist Ship Seige: The regular cultist ship but the ship has been intercepted and boarded by the SRS in order to rescue hostages. Has more cultists but you start with 0-8 friendly SRS at the back. Guaranteed to have slaves to rescue.

Future Plans:

None at the moment.

Yeah, I've decided to cancel the penguin city sieges and FFS Dreadwing. The former would have turned them into a serious threat like the occassus and I really kinda want penguins to remain as these 'goofy little flappers' that no one really knows what they're doing and be more comic relief threat than serious.
As to the latter, well, I feel it's not really worth the effort especially since I decided to cancel the former. It would have only appeared in one place (the penguin siege on the apex research lab macrodungeon) and it really is not worth the effort for something that only appears as a goofy easter egg.