Version 0.29.00 (Currently in experimental, Steam PC only)

September 20, 2020

A good deal of progress has been made for the first wave of Enemies 2.0, but it isn't ready yet. Please enjoy this content & quality of life update, while focus fully shifts to enemies 2.0.

Major Features

Added a new Body Gear: Leviathan (Nova Drift's most requested feature!)

Major rework: Helix Shield has been replaced with Orbital Shield, and has been given entirely new mechanics and visuals (Nova Drift's second most requested feature!)

Rework: Assault Body has been granted new power: There is an 8% chance for weapons fired by you to be "empowered", greatly increasing the stats of the attack. As with all unique body powers, certain mods can scale this power

Rework: Assault Body now resists mobility-reducing effects from weaponry by 15%

You gain additional gear choices at account level 25 and 50, to a maximum of 7. This means that with 7 choices, it will never cost more than 1 reroll to get the gear you want

Added the above "Empower" mechanic to a few Wild Mods: Outrage Module & Phantom Strike. More mods will gain this keyword later

Added a new BGM, "Recursor", to both Standard and Wild Metamorphosis modes

Added the game credits to the main menu. If I missed anyone, please don't hesitate to mention it

Wild Metamorphosis Adjusments

Added a new Wild Mod: Evolutionary Niche

Added a new Wild Mod: Grandeur

Added a new Wild Mod: Maelstrom

Added a new Wild Mod: Quantum Decoherence

Added a new Wild Mod: Spontaneous Generation

Rare Wild Mods are now slightly more common (1 in 4 -> 1 in 3.5)

Chaotic Ambition no longer grants +1 reroll, however if you increase your maximum Wild Mods per level by more than 7 it will begin to increase your minimum Wild Mods per level

Transmogrification now grants +1 level

Obsession penalties -1.25% / level -> -1% / level

Phantom Strike is now an empowered attack

Outrage Module is now an empowered attack

Improvements & Balance

Research hull 90 -> 85

Research shields -10% -> -15%

Research can no longer banish THE VOID (Void banishes you)

Research must now pay 2 rerolls in order to banish a rare Wild Mod

Rare Wild Mods now say "RARE" in their titles

Added shake and sound feedback for failing a Banish

110 -> 115 shields for Reflect Shield

There is now a hard level cap of 100. If you manage to somehow reach this, we've got a problem, please report it

Homing projectiles now seek enemies and targets equally

You can now toggle healing numbers in settings for you and your constructs, off by default

You can now toggle self-damage numbers in settings for you and your constructs, off by default

Drones now spread out their firing sequence evenly

If you have an old corrupted save file, the game will attempt to fix it

Experience orbs now scatter a bit from enemies

Experience orb probabilities change as waves progress, resulting in less but more valuable orbs for the same value. This reduces visual clutter

Increased base exp needed per level a touch. This only really impacts the first dozen waves or so

Increasing your level by a mod no longer affects the EXP curve at all. You will be treated as though you are your base level

Added a border and some breathing room to owned mod displays

Retribution gained a new rule: If Retribution causes your mines to exceed your mine construct limit, an existing mine is detonated

Charged Mines gained a new rule: -1 to mine construct limit

Antimatter Rounds is now stronger but only affects weapons fired by you. This change was made because it enabled insane shenanigans with mines, especially when charged. Additionally, the game could use more incentives for self-firing builds

Since it is now possible to achieve +50%, or even +100%, for unique body powers, Engineer's added construct limits now respects this modifier (rounded down)

Courser & Battery now scale their added projectiles with modifiers to body unique powers (rounded down)

Warp Strike total damage -35% -> -30%

Homing Strike has been given a more informative description

Homing Strike total projectile damage -80% -> -70%

Homing Strike total blast, velocity & size modifiers -70% -> -60%

Homing Strike grace degeneration time extended from .6667 -> 1 seconds

Changed how targeting affects various weapons. Most notably, very fast projectiles are now better at targeting

Modifiers to thrust now have a minimum value of 0%

Rampage now scales with modifiers to thrust, and the text has been changed to "You gain constant added thrust power"

The pause menu now reports your size modifier

The pause menu now reports your plating

Construct Improvements:

Interceptor allies with Salvo now build up stockpile count and fire a spray of missiles of at least 10

Improved construct targeting behavior, especially for Guardian Allies:

Guardian targets the objects closest to the player

Guardian tries to stay between the player and its combat target

Turret with Counter-Artillery tries to shoot down projectiles heading toward the player

Construct aiming rotation now has more damping so they don't overshoot

Swarm Constructs now deal 6 -> 7 damage

Swarm Constructs cap their firing range at 240 units so they don't fire out of range

Swarm Construct attack scaling based on their target's distance is now more likely to hit

Swarm Constructs consider the average of sprite width and height for the purpose of range, instead of the larger

Swarm Constructs are allowed to clump up a bit closer

Swarm Construct target range is now slightly shorter

Enemy Changes

Triangle mine now sprays projectiles 3 at a time with wider spacing (Because triangles)

Enemy serpents use degrees for sinusoidal movement and reduce sinusoidal movement when near a screen edge to avoid leaving the screen

Bolt-Throwers linger a bit longer after firing

Interceptor Champion charge speed ramps up more slowly, and they spend more time "charging". They drop mines less frequently for longer. As a result, mines are dropped farther apart, and you have more time to react to the charge

Saucers now require wave 10 to be elite and wave 15 to be champion

Spitfire grants you an extra half-second to react to its arrival and deal with other waves before charging its orb

Saucers give +25% orbs

Fixes

Fixed a silly bug where enemy knockback would apply twice from collisions, resulting in about +25% more effective knockback from all crashes than intended (I'm so sorry)

Interceptor Ally aim now takes firing direction modifier from Propulsive Munitions into account

Fixed a crash with Ally

Blades created by allies can no longer take blast or beam damage to their non-existent shields

Made global damage calculations more sensible

Fixed a bug where Scion wouldn't drop its rewards

Fixed a bug where Settings would become stuck if you tried to go to the online leaderboards, but they aren't available on that game version

Having both Overseer, a construct that can use your weapon, and Rapid Reconstruction no longer results in no Weapon Gear being offered

Removed an exploit where you could enable Mayhem mode and disable the other modes by editing your save file

Various performance optimizations

Version 0.28.12



Updated May 25, 2020

Please note: Due to the settings overhaul, you may need to rebind your custom controls.

The next major update will focus on sweeping changes to enemies and waves, improvements to Wild Metamorphosis, and improved game balance!

Major Features

Added French, Russian, Traditional Chinese, and Simplified Chinese localization, which you can toggle between in the Settings menu. The game will attempt to detect your OS language settings and otherwise default to English

Added a menu to the pause screen. You can now resume, quit, change your settings, or view Super Mod requirements during a game. The pause menu has also been improved, displaying more stats about your build. Quitting from the pause menu now requires a confirmation

Overhauled the Settings menu

"Mouse Mode" and "Keyboard Mode" have been consolidated into one mode. Both always work. The toggle for WASD or Arrow Keys has been removed, but you can reset to the defaults for either one in the customization menu. You can now assign two bindings to both thrust and fire, which accepts mouse or keyboard inputs. If you were previously using Mouse Mode, or Customized Mouse Mode, you may need to rebind your custom controls

Updated Gamepad and Keyboard / Mouse customization menus to be more intuitive and consistent

You can now choose which gamepad stick is used for steering, which works with all 3 aim styles

If you are already using directional aiming, it will default to the right stick, and otherwise default to the left stick

Gamepad Stabilize is now PRESSING the stick, because down doesn't make sense for the directional aim setting

Gamepad can now rebind Stabilize

There are now multiple toggles for windowed resolution. The game will also accept any resolutions that you manually input into your save file

Rewrote Nova Drift's system for handling audio. Music, SFX, and global volume can now all be adjusted separately from settings

The Challenge Modes you used are now displayed on your High Score list! However, this addition isn't retroactive for old scores

Added new BGM: the Infinitum remix, Infinitum (Genesis), now plays in Wild Metamorphosis

Improvements

Removed the delay when switching from mouse aim to keyboard/gamepad aim

Reduced the delay when switching from keyboard/gamepad aim to mouse aim (This delay exists so that accidentally brushing your trackpad or mouse doesn't interfere with keyboard controls)

More mouse buttons are now supported for customization

Whenever avoidable, text is no longer used in tutorials to increase the ease of localization

Collapsed a few tutorials into one

Framed tutorial buttons now have a few discrete sizes to make localization easier (There is a known bug with this where the button is larger than needed)

Added hue cycle offsets to Super Mods

Reworked sound effects for huge explosions, large explosions, Torrent, Saucer enemy shots, and several EMP blast sfx

Barrage variants have been added for Blade, Torrent, and Dart

Addes SFX for Champion Beamcasters

Game Balance

Salvo can no longer stockpile while your weapon is on cooldown, but the base damage has been increased 60 -> 90

Salvo now unloads your stockpile faster for each stock you have remaining

Salvo's diminishing returns for high levels of stock are now more favorable

Thermal Lance base damage has been increased by 10%

Charged Shot now properly considers Rancor if benefiting from extra projectiles from Charged Shot

Constructs pursuing targets do so faster and more efficiently. This is especially meaningful for Swarm Constructs

Fixes

Fixed a bug where Singular Strike always considered you having one more pre-existing projectile than it should (so it does 10% more total damage now)

Added a very small cooldown to Player wrapping, to prevent a bug where Singularities could cause you to wrap dozens of times per second

Fixed Viper's burn duration not applying to Incendiary Strike

Fixed Incendiary Strike not benefiting properly by increased Burn Duration

Warden plasma shots generate smaller "splinters" after being degraded by Counter-Artillery

Optimized trail performance

Optimized construct performance

Version 0.27.20

Updated April 29, 2020

A great deal of this month's work is not featured in this update, as it is part of a larger update coming in May, focusing on menu overhauls, better settings, quality of life, controls, and localization. Thank you for your patience! But, hey, we obliterated the bug queue!

Visibility, Features, and QoL

Started improving the pause menu. It has a bit more info, and it is partially dynamic to your loadout

Asteroids now have a slight outline to differentiate them more from the background

Added a finder circle and a finder pointer for when you're near the edges of the screen

Grenade explosion artwork has been made less occlusive

Salvo explosion effects have been made smaller (the blast radius is the same)

When you screen wrap, the pulsing effect now moves with you, making the player object easier to locate

The volume and pitch of the crash sfx now changes depending on how hard you are knocked back

Added some pitch randomization to a few other sfx to try it out

More fonts are now retina friendly. All fonts now scale at 50% for non-retina to reduce distortion

Enemy missiles no longer screen flash if fired rapidly

Firing direction no longer modifies your forward-facing aim scope

Enemy and Wave Balance

Made the wave speed modifier from Danger Zone and Mayhem a little less crazy compared to the previous adjustment

Added considerably more wave time padding for early waves, before wave 30 (was 20), up to 8 seconds

Enemies now start becoming stronger at wave 100 instead of 120

Reduced the scaling value, and the maximum value, of enemy knockback dealt to the player based on their hull

Serpent Elites fire their spines a little less frequently

Serpent Elites won't appear in the wild before wave 25 now, up from 20

Wardens and Interceptors now allow a little more time to defeat them

Pulsars now chase you somewhat less quickly

Normal and elite Pulsar shots have a little less targeting

Spitfires now won't introduce more Pulsars if there are already 2 or more

Spitfire is a little harder to trick into not firing, now

Eclipse champions won't spawn randomly before wave 45 (was 40)

Eclipse shield retaliation cooldown 2 frames -> 3 frames

Small asteroids now push less hard

Small asteroids are more likely to contain orbs

Small Asteroids deal 10 -> 5 damage

Game Balance

Grenade's knockback has been halved, making it easier to hit with clusters

Grenade base damage: 75 -> 85

Salvo base damage: 50 -> 60

Salvo's stockpile rate from projectile count now works consistently with other sources of rate of fire, and also has been improved from 5% -> 15% per projectile (If you go this route, I recommend Convergence over Fusillade)

A previous buff to Salvo's stockpile diminishing returns was accidentally a nerf. I have inverted this and buffed it further

Barrage now properly affects projectile count for the purposes of Loaded Mines (with all projectile-based weapons) and Stockpile

Mine hull 30 -> 25

Charged Mines now prevents mines from using a trigger radius. They will still detonate on impact (This is a huge buff for this mod in most set ups)

Mine trigger radius decreased by 25%

Loaded mines now take 2 -> 4 damage for innately charging weapons

Swarm Construct damage 5 -> 6

Interceptor Ally now uses a larger cone angle for targeting integrated weaponry. It is now more likely to start charging Vortex, more likely to start or keep firing Thermal Lance, and more likely to fire other weapons near enemies

Vortex base damage 4 -> 3.4 (-15% base damage)

Loaded Mines last rule has been modified: "For weapons that charge innately, your mines charge your weapon at 75% of your charge rate. Additionally, they constantly take 4 damage /s and pay +100% charge costs" (Note that Thermal Lance does not have a "charge cost", only Vortex does)

Mine effect, for innately charging weapons, has been made consistent with other forms of charge rate scaling instead of being multiplicative

Explanation: Vortex is most fun when it has a high risk vs reward element. Recent changes to its scaling allowed it to become monstrous without ever really putting you at much risk, due to increased levels of crowd control and charge rate. This reduction in damage will require that you spend longer charging and taking damage to reach those huge damage numbers from huge vortexes. As for the mine changes, Architect was on another level, with Vortex Mines being substantially better than any other kind of mine (or maybe even any other Architect choice). This was because of both mine hull being disposable, unlike the hull of the player or allies, as well as some explosive scaling with Architect's mine effect. Combined, these changes affect Vortex considerably, and Thermal Lance mines only a little.

Fixes

Fixed Adrenal Module setting a value where it should be adding a value, overwriting the global damage gained from Masochism

Homing Strike now works properly with Burst Fire for Allies

Construct formations no longer flip out if the player teleports or is schlorped into a singularity

The finder no longer activates if the player does the above

Fixed some description formatting

Gemini + Shielded Drones + Discharge now properly ignores Gemini

Architect charging a blade doesn't detonate other constructs until it actually fires

Prevented the Ludicrous Speed achievement from being earned in debug mode

Phantom Strike and Outrage module now work with Homing Strike

Fixed a crash with Outrage module

Square Drift no longer crashes (perfectly square aspect ratios)

Grenades with Hyperboost are now less occlusive

Fixed Grenade's damage being misreported

Gemini Protocol now indicates that your shield must protect you, as was the case

Allies using Thermal Lance no longer discontinue the charge if a valid target exists

Ally burst fire homing strike no longer breaks projectile count

Halo + Gemini no longer works with Shielded Constructs, as intended

Prevented Bastion + Architect from detonating mines when it is assembled but not deployed (using Shielded Constructs)

Fixed Shockwave not creating a shockwave when your shield cooldown completes, but your shield capacity is full

Fixed Echo Strike misreporting that it hits twice

Fixed Carrier text colors

Blade now informs you that its construct limit is equal to your projectile count

Fixed Shockwave depth sorting

Stabilize now works while thrusting if Thrust and Up are bound to the same input

Defensive Drones prioritize hazards in Orbit formation

Orbit and Rampart formations prefer targets in the direction they're facing

Vortex charge and Thermal Lance beam now take directional offset from Propulsive Munitions into account

Antimatter Rounds proced with Salvo's stockpile now divides its added self-damage by your burst fire count, preventing unintentional massive self-damage from burst fire

Antimatter rounds with Salvo's Stockpile was additionally being applied a second time at a value far greater than intended. This has been removed

Clamped Bastion Shield's sprite index to prevent a crash when it gets too high

Prevented a crash involving enemy beam charges being unable to find their leader (when its cleaned up for being off-screen for too long)

Prevented Sanctuary from (improperly) working with Shielded Constructs

Fixed cases of Gemini Protocol (improperly) working with Bastion Shield when you have Shielded Constructs

Fixed some cases of Bastion using base damage instead of current damage to trigger hull-threshold-based mods

Prevented hull-damage-threshold-triggered mods (that they themselves trigger self-damage) from overwriting the original hull damage you were intended to take (?!)

Siege Weaponry self-damage now reports in the combat log

Outrage Module trigger now reports in the proper place in the combat log

Architect now properly triggers detonate on your constructs when a blade is produced by Phantom Strike or Outrage Module

The pause menu now properly reports ignite duration modifiers from body gear

The singularity doesn't blot out the pause menu anymore

The singularity doesn't draw in front of the darkness anymore

Fixed excessive Volatile Shield / Tempest Break with Blade + Bastion + Shielded Constructs + Burnout Reactors

Blade + Burst Fire + Courser / Battery can no longer cheat blade count and fire extra projectiles

Blades with Shielded Constructs no longer do less damage after taking damage

Visual Warp Shield radius now works with shield radius modifiers

Essense Sap can no longer leech from Asteroids and such using Force Armor's blast

Thermal Lance beam now resets its color after Hyperboost ends

The Blink reticle no longer disappears if you pause during a blink

Champion Juggernaut displays its hull bar

Fixed cargo train box hull bars

Hidden Power now prevents Mortar

Rancor charge slow down no longer persists with Mortar

Swarm Constructs will now attack Eclipses properly. When targeting, they have more accurate ranging (it was using square hitboxes, so oddly shaped enemies were an issue)

Updated March 20, 2020

Please note that the new gear in this update is available to all players, regardless of account level, despite their relative complexity. The new super mods are available as soon as the first super mod is unlocked.

We'd like people to immediately begin testing them, but it won't remain this way. The next major update will likely comprehensively overhaul which upgrades are unlocked when.

New Features:

Weapon gear, Thermal Lance has been added to the game!

Shield gear, Shockwave has been added to the game!

Body gear, Carrier has arrived!

Added a new super mod: Mortar

Added a new super mod: Charged Mines

The mine tree has been reworked and mines have been adjusted

Auto Mines has been replaced by a new mod: Minefield

Loaded Mines and Retribution have switched places

Two new BGM tracks have been added to the game: Superlumen (and its Wild Metamorphosis remix, Superlumen (Warped)), and Infinitum

Large or dangerous enemies are now announced with a HUD warning, similar to what comets use. This feature will be further iterated on in the future as enemies 2.0 progresses

Allies that can fire your weapon can now utilize innately charging weapons (Vortex and Thermal Lance)

Mines that can fire your weapon can now utilize innately charging weapons (Vortex and Thermal Lance) while deployed

Mechanical Changes:

Vortex uses new, more sensible logic to calculate its damage and charge rate

Vortex charge rate now additionally scales with weapon blast radius mods

Power Reserves now reduces the malus from turn rate penalties (presently only Thermal Lance while firing)

Rancor now works differently. Instead of the increased charge level gained being permanent, it now falls off over time. The charge level gained is ~5x greater than before

Retribution now has a 0.5-second internal cooldown

Mines now have a shorter fuse, which no longer resets when you upgrade

Mines check their proximity detonation more often

Architect now detonates all constructs if there are more than one when you switch to it

Blades not produced by the player no longer screen-wrap

Firefly + Rampage now combos as you'd expect

Mayhem and Danger Zone have been adjusted, along with small aspects of the difficulty curve. The first 20 waves grant additional, but decrementing, bonus time per wave instead of only the first 10 waves. Danger Zone now affects wave speed by a factor of 0.65 again, down from 0.70. As a result, Mayhem is fast and more hardcore again, but the very early waves are a little less overwhelming

Balance Adjustments

Drones in Predator formation move 33.33% faster than they previously did

-5% -> -7% recovery and shield cooldown on Twin Strike

+70% -> +80% regeneration rate on Rapid Reconstruction

+30 -> +35 base hull on Rapid Reconstruction

+15% -> +10% hull damage resistance on Shielded Constructs

Galvanic Outburst does considerably less damage

Pulsar's blast attack now has far less knockback

Temporal Shield's effect has been made ~11% stronger

Bug Fixes and Optimizations

Fixed a case where Gemini + Absorption actually creates lethal damage with shields up by splitting a damage value less than 0 and then increasing it to 1

Made many major improvements to game terminology and text descriptions

Streamlined the player upgrade script and removed a lot of redundancies

Blades now use "dynamic trails" which is far more performant, especially in extreme cases

Medicharge takes Hypermetabolism-reserved shield and hull into account

Fixed a crash with Priority Zero

Vortex + Gemini now properly soft-triggers shield cooldown

Having no weapon now prevents any mobility-reducing effects from your weaponry

Fixed a problem where shielded constructs would be counted at the wrong moment

Temporal shield now properly slows Pulsar enemy dashes

Fixed many instances of things apply Corrosion but shouldn't. Player constructs, their abilities, and even some enemies self-inflicting

Fixed some cases where Corrosion would last forever

Fixed a mistake with how mine projectiles / Thermal Lance mines are calculated. You should see a smooth progression of projectiles, thermal lances, or pulses as your rate of fire and mine effect increases

Updated February 3, 2020

Major Changes: Turret

Turret has been given its own mod tree and removed from its original

Turret has been given new visuals, sfx, and effects

Added 3 mods to the Turret tree: Point Defense, War Machine, and Counter Artillery

The turret T2 mods scale with your level, so the turret has quite a high power ceiling. Its new incarnation is designed to be stronger with less up-time, making it a construct you want to deploy tactically. To that end, its assembly time has been made longer

Created a new mod to replace Turret in its old tree: Priority Zero

Turrets can now be pushed around a little by the player

Major Changes: Allies

Allies and their evolutionary trees have been retooled to give them earlier utility, more meaningful mods, more individual identity, and better interaction with construct super mods

The Ally tree has been altered: The Ally mod, Double Team, has been removed from the game and Evasion has taken its place. Evasion was previously found in the Interceptor Tree

The Interceptor Tree has been reworked. Integrated Weaponry, previously a T3 mod, is now included in the T1 mod, Interceptor. Interceptor has also been reworked

Ranger has been removed from the game. The Ranger functionality is now innate to Interceptors. Flak, Torrent, and especially Pulse have closer ideal ranges, modified by either your blast radius or velocity, depending

Outmaneuver has been added to the game to replace where Evasion previously was

Wingman has been added to the game to replace where Ranger previously was

Overpower has been added to the game to replace where Integrated Weaponry previously was

The Guardian tree has been reworked. Service, previously a T3 mod, is now included in the T1 mod, Guardian. Guardian has also been reworked

Echo Strike has been reworked

Decoy has been reworked

Medi-Charge has been added to the game to replace where Service previously was. Note: Medi-Charges produced by the guardian count as power-ups for the purpose of the Research gear's ability

Allies and their evolutions now have their own projectiles and firing patterns

Ally Specialist has been reworked. It no longer adds additional assembly and instead offers specialized benefits

Turret Specialist has been reworked. It no longer adds additional assembly and instead offers specialized benefits

Behavior scripts for all allies have been polished

Balance Changes

Overseer now calculates after Engineer's bonuses, as you'd expect

Adjusted Architect powers 45% -> 50% construct stats, except hull. Construct hull is now 45% -> 30%

Courser hull 90 -> 100

Courser damage blast radius and projectile size -15% -> -10%

Essence Sap: 1.5% -> 1% hull stored as essence. Essence now recovers hull at a rate of 10% of your maximum hull /s and can store a maximum of 5% of your maximum hull

Bastion 130 -> 120 maximum shields

Bastion now stores energy at 75% the rate it previously did

Bastion innate regen formula is now less explosive at very high durability

Galvanic deals much less damage in light of its recent ability to stack damage

Armor Stacks once again always give at least 1 stack for "hit" damage

Armor Stacks grant 50% stacks for self-damage

Burning damage when used with Corrosion now generates 3 -> 2 corrosive stacks /s

Dying Star is now considered an "ignite", not burn, and thus does not work with Essence Sap or Corrosion

Damage scaling from Masochism and from advancing waves is now the final damage scaling event. Previously, it preceded Barrier, making Barrier (and shields by extension) feel mandatory at high waves

Tactical Link now reduces damage from Burnout Reactors and Turret self-damage

Vital Bond 50% -> 60% of your regeneration

Tactical Link's damage reduction is now additive (this is a buff) (to be clear this doesn't mean it stacks with multiple sources of Tactical Link, it means it interacts additively with other sources of damage reduction)

Vortex damage has been returned to its pre-nerf values: ~+10%

7% -> 10% Heavy Caliber buffs

Leaf on the Wind time to reach full power 90s -> 60s

Salvo base damage 45 -> 48

Split Shot innate blast damage 50% -> 30% of base damage

Dart now penetrates targets destroyed

Deadly Wake is now a burn and an ignite for 120 damage /s instead of only an ignite for 240 damage /s

Ignites now always last 3s base duration unless otherwise stated. As a result, removed some text describing ignite duration. Some ignite damage has been adjusted to compensate

Corrosion burning damage is now considered an ignite

Celestial Surge now ignites enemies in the same way that Celestial Lance does

Dart, being burn damage, now applies corrosion stacks over time as per the recent change

Halo's self-damage while burning enemies now applies armor stacks

Enemy and Wave Changes

Shredder Mine spikes no longer fire in random directions. They now align with the spikes in the artwork. This also means that they never shoot more projectiles than are displayed

Shredder Mines now flash when they're going to explode soon. They also project the direction of the spikes they will shoot with an effect

Shredder Mine projectiles now degenerate, but not enough to destroy them before they leave the screen unless you have Temporal Shield

Shredder Mine projectiles now have trails

Shredder Mines now declump from one another

Shredder Mines do very slightly more damage

Shredder Mines now enter the screen more quickly but quickly slow to an overall slower movement speed

A pair of Champion Celestials participating in a "Bomb Fiesta" was a bad time. Now, bomb frequency is lesser with more Champion Celestials on screen

Removed the potential Elite Enemy mode Champion Eclipse spawn from wave 35. A spiral of Shredder Mines can spawn in its place

Added a new Elite Enemy mode spawn to wave 45: It will create either a Champion Eclipse, an Elite Juggernaut, or a huge asteroid field + Vanguards

The Elite Enemy mode spawn at wave 65 which spawns an Elite Juggernaut now also spawns a pair of Beamcasters with it

Improved a weirdly non-threatening Beamcaster wave

Saucers grant a little more time to defeat them

18 -> 12 damage for enemy Eclipse "Torrent" projectiles

Increased wave speed scaling

Reduced enemy damage scaling

Minor Changes

Turbo Tortoise has been changed from 3.0s to 3.5s since Bastion's assembly time has been increased and this was no longer possible

Added combat log support for Discharge

The combat log now displays construct shield damage resistance with shielded constructs on all hits

Named the construct key bindings in customization by construct

Purge text clarified to show how it interacts with both burns and ignites (it works with both, but benefits differently)

Clarified various other strings

Fixes and Optimizations

Refactored, organized, and optimized the gigantic script which updates the player when you upgrade

Ataraxia updating your stats no longer messes with anything other than the stats it affects

When you leave the upgrade menu, your stats are no longer refreshed unless you've actually purchased something within the "chain" of upgrades

Banishing with the Research body now immediately updates your defenses, not just when you buy an upgrade

As a result of the above notes, several exploits, bugs, and hiccups are corrected: Sanctuary scales properly with Bastion, Ataraxia no longer deletes or creates anything unintended, Last Stand problems are resolved, the order of operations problems are addressed (e.g. Essence Sap was calculating max hull wrong), and more

Gemini was skirting enemy damage scaling from advancing waves for the hull portion of the damage

Bastion was skirting enemy damage scaling from advancing waves entirely

Gemini with Bastion Shield was also double dipping defenses for the shield portion of the damage

Bastion no longer burns up faster than intended with multiple shielded-Bastion-constructs

Many cases of ignites erroneously working with the Essence Sap mod have been corrected. Only "direct contact" burn damage is meant to work with Essence Sap or Corrosion

In cases where degenerations ticked once every 4 seconds, the proper number of corrosive stacks from burning are now granted

Fixed a mistake where enemy explosives damage would be set to 15% of the damage you did when you shot them

Gemini now takes enemy damage modifiers and scaling into consideration for whether or not it is able to split the damage

The achievement for Turbo Tortoise now requires you to actually be using Bastion

The pause menu now properly reports the damage of projectile explosives

Dart Splinters now degenerate as intended

Fixed a few enemies missing jet streams either on spawn or wrapping

Added a failsafe so that Armor Stacks cannot become lower than 0

Refactored the settings menu so its cleaner and easier to maintain. In a future update, this menu and controls customizations will be overhauled

Updated December 20, 2019

Major Changes

The exp curve has been smoothed out. The climb to level 20 is a bit slower, and the average player should be able to reach a maximum of about 5 levels higher than before

The game text was given a sweeping overhaul, adjusting grammar, readability, spelling, and consistency. Localization efforts can now ramp up!

Changed many game terms in minor ways. For instance, Hull Strength is now Hull, Shield Durability is now Shields

Balance Changes

Blade: Blades not generated by the player no longer collide with enemy projectiles

Blade: 1/s -> .8/s rate of fire. Player assembled Blades bypass this restriction

Blade now works properly with Barrage, gaining the appropriate number of projectiles from Engineer and other sources

Homing Strike Blades no longer collide with enemy projectiles

Homing Strike Blades now use the 3 prong blade graphic

Homing Strike: Now adds additional time before projectiles begin degenerating

Armor Stacks no longer require damage to "hit" in order to generate. Any damage taken will do. Damage to proc an armor stack is accumulated fractionally

Corrosion Stacks can now be gradually applied by burn damage (not damage from ignited enemies). Hits still generate 1 stack per hit

Essence Sap has been reworked for clarity: When you damage an enemy, store 1.5% of your damage as Essence. Essence causes your hull to recover over time. You recover hull from Essence at a rate of 7% of your maximum hull /s. The amount of stored Essence cannot exceed 7% of your maximum hull

Masochism: +4% -> +3% damage taken from enemies

Dying Star: 10 -> 11 self damage /s. (To compensate for constantly having Armor Stacks)

Sanctuary: ~+20% maximum recovery rate (achieved at minimum shields)

Charged Shot: Adds even more damage and velocity with charge time. In many cases, this is now actually a DPS increase

Salvo: +4% Stockpile rate for each additional projectile

Salvo: Stockpile rate now correctly uses rate of fire (this was a long-standing bug)

Barrage: Low and high damage have been lowered by 10%

Barrage: Barrage now extends the time before projectiles begin to degenerate, compensating for some of the range lost to projectile size

Fusillade: -20% -> -15% blast radius and total projectile damage. +20% spread -> +15%

Antimatter Rounds now considers 10 stockpile worth 1 projectile for the purpose of calculating self-damage, instead of 5

Siege Weaponry: self-damage has been reduced by 10%

Adjusted the degeneration system, making it more consistent across different weapons

Railgun: Base damage 155 -> 165

Flak: Fussed with the effective range in light of degeneration changes

Self Destruct: 50 -> 25 base damage

Overseer: -2.5% -> -2.0% thrust per your max construct assembly

Dart: 15% -> 50% Splash damage from base damage. This isn't intended to do more than provide quality of life

Drones & Allies: Improved avoidance of dangers. This works with and without Evasion

Changed the logic for whether weapons are offered with Overseer. If you have Overseer, they're now offered only if you have Integrated Weaponry or Loaded Mines, but not Hidden Power

Seraph orbs and Station Omega orbs now ramp up to their full damage over 1 second. Because these are spammed, this helps with being "insta-gibbed" by them if they're spawned on top of you

Scion uses the new beam-lance artwork from Reflexive Shields, turns a little faster, maintains its beam a little longer, and can spawn more Beamcasters a little more frequently

Increased some enemy base hull values. Beamcasters: 150 > 175. Tentacles: 60 > 75. Serpents: 140 > 160

Reduced Eclipse core base hull 750 > 700

Cargo boxes can now screen wrap for 2 seconds after their creation

Input Improvements

Improved directional steering behavior for game pad

Fixed the odd "jerking" motion when starting to turn

Turn intensity compensates for the size of the dead zone

Refactored and minimized a bunch of the player input code

Player input handling now performs directional strafe logic

Directional steering mode allows arbitrary strafe/blink angle

Bug Fixes

Ataraxia now recalculates by refreshing the loadout, which fixes some problems with it. This appears to also solve the weird Research-Banish interaction

Gamepad Controls tutorial now shows the correct right stick used for steering

Fixed a bug where small orbs could not screen wrap

Updated November 16, 2019

Major Changes

‌‌* Harnessing mysterious cosmic powers, the Stealth body gear has been divided into two separate body gears: The Spectre and the Firefly‌‌* The Spectre body gear represents the stealth aspect of the original Stealth body. It is able to cloak faster and enjoys up to a +200% weapon damage buff when fully cloaked. It is able to move at low speeds without breaking cloak and can apply a partial damage buff while partially cloaked‌‌* When you cloak, enemies behave a bit more naturally. They will first target the location they last saw you, and then start guessing where you might be. Some enemies even fire in every direction, if able‌‌* The Firefly body gear represents the speed, thruster burn, and self-damage resistant aspects of the original Stealth body. Its thrusters are now larger, deal more damage, are more wide-spread, and are more unique looking‌‌* The Firefly body and the Spectre body are both available without unlocks‌‌* The Split Shot weapon has been reworked. It has been given several new visual effects and animations, and its damage and spread has been increased while its degeneration now accelerates. Additionally, the weapon now innately deals 50% splash damage on hit to targets behind its point of impact ‌‌* Added a new recursive common Wild Mod: Masochism. Masochism grants +8% self-damage resistance, but increases damage taken from enemies by 4%. It also provides a stackable "Adrenal Module-like effect", at up to +15% increased global damage‌‌* The effect that reduces hull damage by a flat amount has been named "plating". Descriptions have been updated to refer to this effect as such ‌‌* Reworked how waves are spawned under the hood, removing several problems. Very late waves are less chaotic and spammy, but enemies are more powerful‌‌* Enemies now scale up their hull and damage values increasingly higher, starting at wave 120. This scaling won't be present in modes where "Endless" is not enabled, once disabling it becomes possible

‌‌* Created a combat log, which you can enable any time during the game by pressing the Backtick key, which is the key just below Escape. This feature will log all of the hits you take, and show you exactly what your defenses are doing. Currently this feature does not report self-damage or burn damage, but may in the future as I continue to iterate on it‌‌* Created a new debug tool, the wave log. This will help us diagnose any problems with the enemy wave system, as well as show you exactly what's going on with them. If you've enabled debug mode by pressing Delete, you can toggle the combat log (detailed above) by pressing Shift + Backtick

‌‌Quality of Life Changes

‌‌* If you have stored more than one upgrade, you can choose them all before the menu closes. You can disable this feature in the settings menu‌‌* You can now select "Directional Steering" as a gamepad control mode from the Settings menu. This makes the player attempt to face the direction you are holding on the right stick. The controls for stabilize and displace still work with the left stick. In a future patch, this too will be made directional. This has been a popular request, but I recommend instead becoming accustomed to the default steering controls‌‌* Added support for analog thrust. Thrust strength is proportional to trigger value and Stabilize strength is proportional to stick value‌‌* Reserved hull and shield values are now depicted with a different color on the hull and shield bars‌‌* Burst Fire delay between firing has been capped at 1/5 of second‌‌* Player bullets dispose in a wider range outside of the game boundaries, giving them a bit more time to reach their targets if they swing wide

‌‌Upgrade Changes

‌‌* Reflexive Shields has been reworked and given a visual upgrade. Additionally, it does considerably more damage‌‌* Sources of burn such as Discharge, other lightning mods, and Helix Orbs which did not previously stack damage from overlapping instances now do so‌‌* In addition to its attack now stacking, Galvanic Outburst provides an additional +2% shield effect power. However, it can no longer be self-triggered in order to differentiate it from Discharge‌‌* Regenerative Shields now applies its effect 75% to shields and 50% to hull, up from 70% and 30%‌‌* Death Blossom and Emergency systems now require your shield to protect you, not your constructs. Shielded Constructs now blocks Emergency Systems from appearing in the upgrade pool ‌‌* Shielded Constructs flat hull and hull increases +5 -> +10 and +5% -> +10% respectively‌‌* Hypermetabolism has been reworked. It now reserves hull and shields instead of reducing them. Its increased regeneration values have been reduced, but since the maximum value from which they are derived is no longer reduced, the resulting values are similar‌‌* The Defiance mod has been reworked, as it was allowing certain builds to achieve immortality. It turns out that "plating" is an extremely strong modifier when stacked high‌‌* Defiance self damage reduction +7% -> +4%‌‌* Defiance plating 1 -> .5‌‌* Defiance now additionally resists recoil and thrust-reducing effects by 4% each‌‌* Celestial Lance damage and self-damage have been reduced by 10%. The damage and self-damage now ramp up over time the longer the aura is maintained through fast movement‌‌* Loaded Mines and Death Blossom were scaling more than intended from added projectile modifiers. These mods now use a new formula‌‌* 4% -> 5% global damage per unspent mod for Ataraxia‌‌* 85 -> 90 base hull for the Research and Engineer bodies‌‌* -15% -> -10% shields for the Research and Engineer bodies‌‌* 80 -> 100 base shields for Siphon Shield‌‌* 65 -> 70 base shields for Temporal Shield‌‌* Blade splinters no longer collide with enemy projectiles‌‌* Blade splinters now degenerate and decelerate faster‌‌* Blade splinters now reduce hull by an additional 25%‌‌* Warp Strike damage malus for screen-wrapping 5 + 15% of your defenses -> 5 + 10%‌‌* Velocity and Snipe each provide 5% less of an increase to projectile speed. To compensate, the base velocity of most weapons has been increased by 10%. Railgun, instead, had its base damage increased. These mods felt like too much of a shoe-in for certain weapons to hit a usable threshold‌‌* Antimatter Rounds self-damage decreased about 5%‌‌* Rupture now does what it says it does (3% of enemy maximum hull as blast damage. Was actually 2.25%, and erroneously reported 3%)

‌‌Minor Changes

‌‌* Drones, Allies, and Turrets take their target's size into account, which increases their likelihood of firing when close or overlapping‌‌* Gyrogun bullets accelerate and have a lower starting speed. They degenerate, as well‌‌* Barrage now fires from a circular spread instead of a rectangular one‌‌* Rewrote the "declumping" code which prevents enemies from stacking on top of you. It now looks nicer and more elastic‌‌* Reduced the damage over time from Spitfire orbs. They also take considerably longer to explode / hatch‌‌* Spitfire now moves and reverses less quickly, making it less punishing for close-range builds‌‌* Seraph hull reduced a bit‌‌* The logic for choosing a common and rare Wild Mod in the upgrade menu has been rewritten

‌‌Bug Fixes

‌‌* Fixed a long-standing bug where the wave would elect to advance despite there being an enemy spawner present (but no enemies)‌‌* Fixed Hives getting trapped off-screen (fourth time is the charm?)‌‌* Purification wasn't healing the player in most cases, it is now functioning again‌‌* Dart now triggers Eclipse Shield retaliations‌‌* Pausing doesn't interrupt Death Blossom anymore‌‌* Prevented Skirmish from proccing in edge cases where you can't fire, but somehow do anyway‌‌* Fixed several strange interactions of Bastion Shield and Reflexive Shields‌‌* Fixed a crash related to Ally targeting‌‌* Fixed a "leak" with Celestial Shots getting stuck off-screen causing slowdown‌‌* Fixed odd Minelayer shield behavior‌‌* Fixed a typo preventing strafing or displacing left from working on game pad

September 30, 2019

New Features

Wild Metamorphosis has been added to the game! It can be enabled from the Loadout menu. At least temporarily, this Challenge Mode is not gated behind any unlocks

12 common Wild Mods have been added to the game!

12 rare Wild Mods have been added to the game!

Wild Metamorphosis now plays the remixed version of the 6 standard BGM tracks! Later, this may change to be a mix with the other tracks, and may not play in this order

The Research ship has learned a new ability. It now gains 1% total Hull Strength and Shield Durability for every banished mod (through any means)

Quality of Life Changes

Hidden Power now refunds your Weapon Gear upgrade point, if you spent one

Rapid Reconstruction now refunds your Shield Gear upgrade point, if you spent one

Shield Gear is now selected before Body Gear

Improved the visuals and transitions for upgrading

Blade Weapon Changes

Blade has been reworked. Blade can now be utilized by other constructs, Burst Fire, Siege Weaponry, Saturation Fire, and Barrage

Blade's stats have been changed. As a result, Blades created by the player are effectively the same power they previously were, and 25% weaker and 15% smaller when deployed by other constructs. Blades deployed by constructs also do not fire submunitions

A Burst-Fired blade is deployed one at a time instead of in a spread

Blades (and any future constructs) not deployed by you cannot be shielded or employ shield effects from the Shielded Constructs mod

Blades have a rate of fire of 1/s for the purposes of all calculations. When deployed by the player, this is effectively bypassed at the cost of using assembly and construct limits, as usual

Blades attempt to return to their launcher. If a launcher doesn't exist, they take 60 hull damage /s

Architect stat bonuses and limitations only apply to Blades it directly created (For example, Blades created by an Ally construct won't be beefy or be detonated by Architect's ability, but the Ally construct which fired the blade will be)

Pulse Changes

Pulse has been reworked and has received new artwork, which occludes visibility less

Blast-based weapons (currently only Pulse) now fire in a cluster when used with Loaded Mines. The number of Pulses created depend on your rate of fire and mine effect modifiers

Pulse now works with Barrage (As it has no primary projectiles, it will Pulse once and then barrage the secondary projectiles)

Pulse secondary projectiles are now affected by most anything that would alter size, homing, velocity, and so on (including Cloaking, Charged Shot, Skirmish, etc.)

Pulse secondary projectiles are now affected by Splinter Shot

Pulse was double-dipping modifiers to blast radius. This is no longer true. The base size has been made larger to compensate, especially the outer ring, which is now considerably larger

135 x2 -> 180 / 90 Pulse base damage. This means that the inner ring now deals twice as much damage as the outer ring (66.67%)

Pulse shards are now smaller and deal 50% of the damage of the inner pulse

Gear Balance Changes

Vortex has been made more consistent with other weapons

Vortex base damage has been reduced ~10%

Shields, apart from Bastion, have had their cooldown made faster by .5 seconds

Shields with cooldown are now more resistant to having their cooldown reduced by damage

Helix shield spawns 3 orbs at a time instead of 2. A full rework of this shield is pending

+3% -> 2% total construct assembly speed per downed construct for Engineer body's innate ability, Priority Zero

90 -> 100 Halo shield durability

135 -> 130 Bastion shield durability

90 -> 85 Research body hull strength

-10% -> -15% Research body shield durability

80 -> 90 Courser body hull strength

Other Balance Changes

Essence Sap max hull rate recovered 6% -> 5%

Antimatter Rounds base and scaling self-damage has been reduced slightly

+30% -> 25% total bonus for Singular Strike

Apex Machinery malus for construct assembly time +100% -> +70% (this is a buff). Bonuses to constructs 25% -> 30%

Tactical Link is now a binary buff. If you're in the radius of an Advanced Construct, you and that construct have 8% hull damage resistance. It works on Bastion, even though it does not display a radius

Player and drone projectiles don't collide with dead objects anymore. This makes a difference with weapons such as Flak which fire many projectiles at once

Loaded Mines now uses a different formula for calculating how many projectiles it should create. It works similarly to the Wild Mod, Death Blossom. Projectile count scaling and a projectile floor results in roughly the same power level for heavy weapons and a stronger result for high projectile count or high rate-of-fire weapons

Loaded Mines now varies the speed of projectiles with most weapons

Weapon recoil is now an additively stacking property

Burnout Reactors no longer increases the damage of Self Destruction. Adding the ability to scale with burn damage is more than enough

The mechanic which governs how much shield effect and radius is lost based on how many constructs it is spread across has been made less generous

Capped player speed at 75 pixels per second

The enemy boss, the Seraph, has had the damage on its orbs and Tesla mine reduced

The enemy boss, the Spitfire, now summons Pulsar enemy adds

June 27, 2019

Major Features

Increased the maximum Account level to 59

Added a new super mod at Account Level 54: Displacement

Added a new super mod at Account Level 55: Burnout Reactors

Added a new super mod at Account Level 56: Singular Strike

Added a new super mod at Account Level 57: Barrage

Added a new body gear at Account Level 58: Courser

Added a new challenge mode at Account Level 59: Mayhem

Changed the default windowed mode size to 1440 x 810

Nova Drift received a huge overhaul to the way text and descriptions are handled. It is now very easy to maintain, write, and translate. The stage has been set for international localization!

‌‌Balance Changes

2% -> 1.5% Essence Sap recovery

Self destruction has had its scaling adjusted, and now hits once instead of twice

Most instances of weapon blast radius scale less from damage

Vortex now scales with rate of fire modifiers, and has had its base charge rate reduced proportionately

Vortex can now be used with Burst Fire, with a behavior identical to Burst Fire Charged Shot with other weapons. As a result, it also works with Barrage. Folded its firing logic into the standard script

Flak now has a slightly improved range, and waits a moment to begin degeneration. Its spread has also been reduced slightly

Siphon's base shield radius has been slightly increased

Purge now uses 100% of an enemy's ignite instead of 75%

Drone movement speed 5 -> 6

+25 -> +30 Rapid Reconstruction base hull

Flak waits additional frames before degenerating, making it more resistant to size-reducing effects

Version 0.21.6

June 4, 2019

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Major Features

New Gear and Mods:

Added a new Body Gear: Viper

Added a new Weapon Gear: Dart

Added a new Shield Gear: Siphon

The Efficiency and Thruster trees have been restructured and have become three trees, with four new mods. The trees are now called: "Kinetics, Efficiency, and Movement"

Added a new mod: Kinetic Boost (tier 1 Kinetics)

Added a new mod: Blink (tier 3 Movement)

Added a new mod: Conversion (tier 2 Efficiency)

Added a new mod: Regression (tier 3 Efficiency)

Aegis, Celestial Lance and Emergency Systems moved to the Kinetics tree

Blink replaces Emergency Systems in the Movement tree

Conversion replaces Celestial Lance in the Efficiency tree

Gemini Protocol becomes a tier 2 mod in the Efficiency tree, replacing Aegis

Regression becomes a tier 3 mod in the Efficiency Tree, replacing Gemini Protocol

Rebirth and Magnetism have been removed from the standard mod pool (they are slated to possibly become Wild Mods)

Base magnetism has been increased to compensate for the loss of the Magnetism mod

Ally takes the place of unlocking Magnetism

Kinetic Boost takes the place of unlocking Rebirth

Dart, Viper, and Siphon shield are unlocked at Account Level 51, 52, and 53 respectively. You will need to play a bit to earn them

Other Major Features:

Enabled Steam and game screenshots with F12. The game will add your screenshot to your C:\Users\USER\AppData\Local\NovaDrift\ folder (not ideal, but it's a temporary solution) Steam screenshots are kept on your profile

Mouse, Keyboard and Gamepad now cohabitate without changing the settings. If you want to use the mouse or gamepad, just start moving it. Keyboard controls resume if you stop moving the mouse or gamepad stick. If automatic mouse aim detection is interfering (or you have a track pad) you can disable it in settings with "Disable Mouse Aim Detection"

You may now cancel an upgrade at any time. If you do, you will be offered the same mods as the last time when you do upgrade

If you do not cancel your upgrade, rerolls and successive levels will never show you the same mods in a row if it can be avoided

Added new sfx for big bosses approaching, the player's launch, Dart, caustic Barrier, Venom Strike, and Siphon

Minor Features:

The score menu now accepts up to 16 characters, like its 1990

Calibrate has new artwork

Added a colorful, more noticeable aim-scope

Mouse controls now uses a proportional derivative controller

Lowered the base friction of the player about 5%

Updated the pause readout. It now shows your DPS, which also has a section for the DPS assuming all projectiles hit. It also calculates doubled projectiles (Torrent and Blaster) and burst fire in the equation. It does not consider secondary effects or projectiles from weapons, such as Dart's burn or Grenade's cluster munitions

You can now hold control to add larger increments in the debug wave interface. Hold Ctrl for +/- 10 waves at a time. Hold Alt for +/- 100 waves at a time

Balance Changes

Sanctuary's recovery now scales with shield durability. The result is about 30% better at very high durabilities, and about half of what it was at the lowest durabilities

Hullbreaker now must face its target to penetrate (Just as Viper must face its target to deliver Caustic Barrier)

The sub-ability of Omnishield which enables a partial shield cooldown when you've taken damage during an existing shield cooldown has been made a core ability, at a lesser power level. Taking Omnishield now doubles the effectiveness of this ability

Shield Size now scales visually with both your base ship size and ship size modifiers, including Bastion size and distance from your nose

-15 -> -10% body size modifier for Streamline (in light of the addition of Regression)

Purge has been reworked. The formula has been adjusted to properly consider the individual duration and potency of each burn instead of multiplying everything together. Purge's size now uses a square root value to prevent it from growing out of control. Using purge now results in 75% of the damage you would have dealt, had the damage over time been allowed to run its full course

Warp Strike continues to have far too much sway over the balance of the game, so I've dealt with it in a different way. Its damage penalty now applies only to projectiles which have screen wrapped. These projectiles deal -35% damage. It is still very powerful

Warp Strike penalty now deals you 5 flat damage to hull and shields in addition to 15%. This cannot reduce you to below 1 hull and shields

-10% -> -12% rate of fire for Warp Strike

Barrier has been reworked. The new rules are: Barrier removes damage to your shields exceeding 35% of your maximum shield durability, up to a limit of your maximum shield durability

-50% -> -30% Rocket Drones fire rate penalty

+25% -> +30% drone hull from Reinforced Drones

7 -> 6s Drone Assembly time

-90% -> -85% Omnishield hull penalty (this might limit the insanity of self-triggered retribution mines builds)

+50% -> +45% architect bonuses

1s -> .75s Emergency Systems duration

10 -> 12 iFrames for collision on Non-hullbreaker bodies

-10% -> -15% projectile size for Convergence

Burst Fire has been reworked. It now adds a flat delay between burst fires (.04 seconds) and a general +20% increase to rate of fire. The result is that mod has different values for different loadouts. Generally speaking, it is now slightly detrimental for very fast firing weapons, and efficient for very slow weapons. Middling weapons like Dart benefit reasonably well from it. The rate of fire increase also benefits things like Charged Shot, Salvo, and Loaded Mines, etc. The pause readout will show you the effect on your DPS for your particular set up. I realize this has strange implications for a few things, which can be addressed moving forward

Incendiary Strike no longer has a rate of fire penalty

Blink is now a prerequisite to Warp Strike instead of Guidance (This seems more thematic to me, and adds an effective higher mod count requirement for builds that really want to push weapons to the limit)

Calibrate rate increased slightly

15 -> 18 Antimatter Rounds damage bonus

Antimatter rounds deals 5% less self-damage

Antimatter Rounds self-knockback reduced considerably

Corrosion deals +10% base damage

-15% -> -10% weapon damage for Corrosion

Saturation Fire is now considerably better at reducing weapon spread

Bug Fixes and Optimizations

Myriad syntax, text, and UI improvements

Optimized texture atlas

Optimized homing code

Optimized discharge code

Optimized trails, it is also now possible to taper and use multiple colors in jet trails

Fixed Scion projectile origins

Fixed a bug with splinter strike where it was improperly inheriting size modifiers from whence it came

Fixed a bug where you couldn't detonate your Bastion with Hidden Power Architect on gamepad

Fixed a freeze with the gamepad with Architect Bastion under weird settings circumstances

Fixed another gamepad freeze related to construct selection

Fixed a bug with Volatile Shields excluding the initial target

Fixed a problem where partial cooldowns didn't work at all with Omnishield

Fixed a problem with reroll powerups being deleted

Split shot now degenerates properly

Fixed a bug where Turret utilized Rocket Drones explosions

Fixed a bug where parts of Station Omega could be Terminated

Fixed Antimatter Rounds text exceeding its bounding box

Overseer now properly displays itself as a prerequisite to construct Super Mods

Fixed a crash with Blade's artwork

Clarified and corrected a few achievements

Fixed Stealth jet stream alignment

Fixed a crash relating to trails and Blade Drone

Fixed a bug with infinitely wrapping Warp-Strike Railgun projectiles

Fixed some incorrect tags on descriptions.

Elite chance is now correct if you teleport using debug cheats

Version 0.20.11

May 8, 2019

We've successfully migrated the game from GameMaker Studio to GameMaker 2! This is a huge leap forward in stability, portability, support, and performance. Additionally, we can now compile to Linux and OSX using the native compiler, and its a step closer to console ports!

Naturally, with an engine transition comes different problems for different hardware configurations and software. I can say with confidence that more people are now able to play on this version than than before, but some people did encounter new problems. Most of them have easy solutions, such as restarting, disabling third party software, white listing on antiviruses, or reinstalling. Problems with OBS can be solved through OBS configuration settings. Failing that, please contact Chimeric directly with problems:

Email: chimericgames@gmail.com

Discord: https://discord.gg/Zp2MkPJ

Construct Balance Changes

Made a large revision to how construct rate of fire and assembly speed modifiers are applied. Modifiers now actually do what they say they do. Previously, a large amount of this was misleading and resulted in the critical mass of construct power we saw in the previous patch

Constructs now aim at targets using a PD (proportional-derivative) controller. It gives aiming some ease in and ease out (Its smoother in appearance)

The Engineer and the Architect have been further balanced. While there may appear to be a huge defensive gap between them, this comes as a result of the comparatively huge "effective defense" increase of spamming constructs everywhere. Additionally, Architect's overlarge size has been considered

90 -> 85 Engineer base hull strength

-10% -> -15% Engineer shield durability

40% -> 50% Architect construct bonuses

115 -> 120 Architect base hull strength

Overclock now ramps up-- and back down-- more gradually

+50% -> +40% total rate of fire increase from Overclock

180 -> 150 Ally hull, back to their original hull values (to compensate for their enhanced functionality)

Ally basic weapon rate of fire 3/s -> 2/s

Overseer has lost its generic 10% increase to assembly speed, but retains the scaling aspect

Shielded Constructs +10 to base hull becomes +5 to base hull and +5% hull strength

Amp shield's effect now fully benefits shielded constructs, gaining additional benefits from being near hazards. Note that this works for Blade Drone

25 -> 22s Turret assembly time

32 -> 30 Ally assembly time

8 -> 7s Drone assembly time

Turret hull strength 70 -> 100

Pursuit formation drone speed 2.5 -> 5

Gear Balance Changes

Research has been overhauled, and no longer provides an experience bonus. It turns out this benefit was mostly illusory anyway, due to the nature of the exp curve. Instead:

Research now allows you to banish mods from the mod pool by spending a reroll

Research no longer gives you double rerolls

70 -> 85 Research base hull strength

-30% -> -15% Research shield durability

Added a banish tutorial element / button

Torrent has been overhauled, and is now handled as a "twin" projectile, like the default Blaster. The following changes make it less "spammy" and more performant, while remaining effective with greater damage and more useful bullet positioning

Torrent spread now affects pairs of Torrent projectiles, and not individual projectiles. This results in a more aesthetic and useful spread, especially at very high projectile counts, or when used with spread-reducing mods

8 -> 3 x 2 Torrent projectiles

16 -> 20 Torrent damage per projectile

5.25 -> 4.25 Torrent velocity

Torrent projectiles degrade more slowly, but also start slightly less large. They are overall more persistent.

Targeting rate has been accelerated for fleeting projectiles which degrade (Torrent, Flak, and especially Pulse secondary projectiles)

65 -> 75 Grenade base damage

10% slower Grenade base fire rate

Grenade proximity detonate radius 25 -> 20 (trying to find the right balance between utility and allowing the enemy inside the blast radius)

Grenade clusters have ~5% more range

16 -> 17 Split Shot base damage

11 -> 13 base spread / projectile for Railgun

6.75s -> 7s Amp shield cooldown (Still tier 1, but tied with Warp)

7s -> 7.5s Default shield cooldown (Still tier 2, now tied with Halo)

18% -> 15% velocity and spread improvement for the Assault body

Balance Changes

Changed the way Blast Radius works for non-blast innate weaponry. The added splash damage now ignores the original target (As a result, Blast Radius no longer results in Corrosion getting double the stacks for such weapons)

Blast Radius no longer decreases the damage of the initial hit at all

Splinter projectiles now exclude the original target as well. Screen wrapping projectiles are able to hit once again. This also helps with Torrent's corrosive tyranny

Corrosion spread works differently now. When an enemy with corrosion stacks dies, it adds stacks equal to its hull times .02, and then divides the stacks evenly across all targets in its radius

Corrosion radius increased 160 -> 175

Corrosion base damage per stack .02 -> .035

Corrosion decay rate factor per duration .92 -> .85

TL;DR Corrosion changes: It's less extreme with spammy weapons, and less bad with heavy weapons. Blast radius matters far less for optimizing it. Its worse at single target damage and better at proliferation and clearing, though it no longer proliferates out of control

Hidden power, regenerative shields, and several upcoming Wild Mods now use a new percentile modifier to regeneration rate instead of adding a flat rate like other regeneration mods

12 -> 15% Convergence velocity and rate of fire penalty

+50% -> +75 weapon spread increase from Convergence

0 -> +10% weapon spread from Homing Strike

Rancor's charge boost has been reduced considerably

25% -> 20% total damage boost for Blitz

-18% -> -20% hull and shields for Apotheosis

4 -> 3 base rerolls

35% -> 30% of your shield cooldown for Emergency Systems' minimum duration

9000 -> 9001 singularity damage per second to enemies, as per request

Seraph boss warp blast radius increased

Scion boss accelerates after spawning a black hole

Scion are now immune to the pull of black holes

Scion spawns Beamcasters slightly more often

More hull for Pulsar, Spitfire, Scion, Tesla Mine, and some Warbringer parts

Pulsars and Wardens enter with less speed

Less hull for Constructor Barrier-Drones

Champion Serpents turn less quickly while firing their laser

Enemy speeds and chances to become elite or champion above wave 100 advance faster. This is a temporary solution until stronger enemies and uber bosses are added

Set a new, more consistent precedent for Splinter Shot's projectile count and power levels

Additional Changes

The game settings now have a new toggle for controls style: Analog and digital. Digital is how it previously worked. Analog lets you get a little ramp up on keyboard, and on Gamepad it utilizes the stick sensitivity. Analog controls allow finer aiming, but take some getting used to

Added a few more tips to the game over screen

The Warbringer music "Ares" has been updated

Random asteroid adds are 10% more frequent

Comets spawn with greater position variance

Dozens of optimizations and improved game structure

Toned down the brightness of the red sun background element which was causing visibility problems

Hidden Power and Mastery now have more useful descriptions

Bug Fixes:

Thanks to the engine migration, the game no longer crashes at restart or game end!

Interceptor's bonuses were accidentally applied in Integrated Weaponry instead of Interceptor, this has been fixed

Turret no longer cease fires at very high rates of fire

Fixed a Blade blast radius interaction crash

Fixed a problem with Scion and the temporal effect

Fixed a problem with Terminate proccing over and over on Station Omega (and actually potentially healing it!)

Rapid Reconstruction no longer blocks Emergency Systems from being selected

Fixed a crash with emergency systems being unable to find a dead player

Retribution no longer bypasses Architect's one construct limit rule

Fixed a bug with Railgun blast radius scaling from damage for both the base size and the growth rate

Fixed a problem with Splinter and Homing Strike projectiles escaping the screen boundaries

Fixed massive slowdown encountered at very low fire rates with Discharge. This is also a general optimization to Discharge

Blade splinters can no longer be an emitter for discharge using Shielded Constructs

Rewrote the high score save system, fixing a problem with saved scores being scrambled or misrepresented. Unfortunately, we cannot restore previously corrupted scores

Removed the Early Access buttons until we can prevent the game from being flagged by antiviruses for opening links

Fixed a problem where the player could be deleted if you paused during a certain time inside a black hole (!)

Fixed a problem with the pause menu being invisible at a certain time while inside a black hole

Players inside a black hole are invulnerable to further damage from other sources once they've entirely lost control

Hives should no longer get stuck off screen

Fixed dozens more caused by the transition from GameMaker 1 to 2. Too many to list

Nearly completed the upcoming changes in the following mod trees: Movement, Energy Manipulation (formerly Efficiency), and a new tree, Kinetics. This change includes restructuring of these trees, and four new mods: Kinetic Boost, Blink, Regression, and Conversion. These changes are coming soon

Made some progress on the upcoming Wild Metamorphosis game mode and Dart weapon. 7 Wild Mods have been completed.

Created an upcoming Super Mod: Barrage

Coming soon™: Directional facing controls as a third option for Analog and Digital control styles

Version 0.19.0

April 6, 2019

This is a very aggressive batch of changes. Expect various tweaks to these values as we play test over the next few weeks, and probably a hot fix or two.

General and Quality of Life Changes

The game has been zoomed out 5%, providing more room to maneuver. This feels right to me, but the change has a lot of subtle effects on game balance, so overall difficulty is something to observe moving forward. (Dynamic zoom is planned for the future.)

The Settings menu now asks for confirmation before wiping your progress or high scores.

Some of the faster enemies enter the arena with less initial speed. This, combined with the previous change, should make getting blitzed from off-screen somewhat less of a concern.

Added an early access popup menu to the game providing useful links and information for new players.

Burn damage numbers will display your burn damage over 1 second if you have "Show Damage Numbers" turned on in the settings.

Salvo missile stockpiles now have a graphical HUD element.

Experience orbs from enemies scatter a bit depending on the size of what spawned them.

The default values for settings have been changed, defaulting to "Auto Deploy Drones" and "Show Enemy Hull Bars".

Windowed mode, when toggled from the Settings menu, sets the window to a 16:9 aspect ratio instead of scaling from your monitor dimensions. More dynamic options are planned for the future.

Added a better "finder" for when you screen wrap. There is much more work to do regarding player visibility.

You won't lose your experience orbs as easily during the Scion boss fight.

The Warbringer now has its own boss music: "Ares."

Salvo jet trails have been optimized, and now are also included on Salvo Splinters. Drone Rockets also now have jet trails.

The OSX version of the game can now enter debug mode.

Game controls are now displayed longer.

The Game End menu now displays your damage taken and highest damage dealt.

Confirming your Upgrade with "fire" no longer fires your weapon.

Continued to reduce the most excessive screen flash and blending cases.

Further preparations for the engine switch to GameMaker 2 have been made.

Various optimizations, particularly to jet trails, projectile targeting, Essense Sap, and constructs.

Game Balance: Constructs

Drones and Allies now lead targets with their weapons, and are far more accurate as a result.

Drones and Allies try to stay outside of the radius of their targets.

Drones and Allies attempt to avoid hazards slightly.

Allies with Integrated Weaponry have a less severe rate of fire penalty for your weapon, (potentially achieving very high values with Overclock, Architect, and other construct rate of fire boosts).

Drones and Allies are better at multitasking. Defense Drones can target in Rampart formation, and Guardians can fight while approaching a healing target.

Constructs have smoother transitions when moving between formations and targets.

Elegant Construction now has +.4% total construct assembly speed per your level.

Overseer now has +10% faster construct assembly speed in addition to its construct count scaling element. Additionally, its slowing debuff has been increased from -2% -> -2.5% per standard and advanced construct assembly total.

+18% -> 20% hull damage resistance for Shielded Constructs. It now also has +10 base hull.

Apex Machinery now has +15% shield effect power.

110 -> 115 architect hull.

In light of changes to assembly speed, 12 -> 14s Bastion Shield base assembly time.

Game Balance: Self Damage

Siege Weaponry has been revamped. It no longer damages you until you've fired twice in succession. It now uses a different formula for dealing self-damage independent of when you fire, meaning it is equally aggressive regardless of your rate of fire or chosen weapon. Additionally, the rate of fire curve has been reworked, providing large increases up-front and tapering off over time.

Saturation Fire now fully replaces the calibrate effect, calibrating while you're ramping up siege weaponry and granting reduced spread, increased velocity, and increased targeting at a reduced value compared to standard calibrate.

Antimatter Rounds has been adjusted. The flat self-damage it deals has been increased. This mod is potentially extremely strong, and was designed to be a balancing act of value between rate of fire, projectile count, and DPS. As a result, its less "safe" on very rapid fire weapons.

Antimatter Rounds is less exploitable by Salvo, which now uses a modified formula to compensate for the fact that its base cost is almost entirely circumvented by the stockpile mechanic.

Weapon self-damage that scaled with your adjusted rate of fire now scales with your weapon base rate of fire.

Previously, a bug existed where your self-damage resistance didn't work on Siege Weaponry and Antimatter Rounds. This has been fixed.

+5% self-damage taken from Celestial Lance.

25% -> 20% self-damage resistance for the Stealth body gear.

Self-damage resistance for hull and shields are now displayed on the pause menu.

Drones with your shield receiving self-shield-damage hits (discharge) now properly create Helix orbs on them instead of you.

General Game Balance

Temporal Shield's shield effect has been reworked. It is now integrated better with the global enemy speed increases over high waves. Additionally, Elites, Champions, and Bosses resist the effects in more consistent ways.

The Stealth body gear now gains +20% total weapon damage from breaking stealth.

Channeling 2% -> 1% total shield effect per armor stack. As a multiplicative effect with a max stack of 50, this was way over tuned.

Knockback Resistance now also resists any recoil from weapons and mods.

Certain enemy powers were hit too hard by the inclusion of i-frames. To compensate, Scatterdrone, Pulsar, and Seraph bullet damage has been slightly increased.

-15% -> -18% hull and shields from Apotheosis.

-80% -> -75% hull and shields from Last Stand's reincarnation. The explosion damage has been increased greatly, and you have three seconds if i-frames after being reborn.

15% -> 12% Terminate "cull" threshold.

20% -> 25% Blitz bonus on full hull.

-10% -> -15% rate of fire for Splinter. Splinters deal slightly more damage. This change was made to improve performance and reduce screen clutter.

Splinter is now more generous with submunitions, for instance allowing Grenade more clusters per splinter.

Hullbreaker's recovery rate bonus now works on Sanctuary, as it should (hooray?) And text describing this bonus has been made more consistent.

115 -> 120 base hull for Battery.

Vortex is now able to trigger Terminate.

Rancor has been toned down considerably. It's still very potent.

Warp Strike no longer reduces your hull and shields. Instead, it has a new drawback: Screen wrapping yourself removes 15% of your current hull and shields. Removal can't be mitigated and doesn't count as a hit. Warp Strike is incredibly powerful; My hope is that this change makes choosing it more situational and less of an auto-choose for weapons like Salvo.

Singularities pull harder (affects everyone), and the player is slightly less resistant to the effect than they were.

Bug Fixes

Windowed mode should now properly center on game start.

Improved various syntax to be more accurate and consistent.

Fixed a crash relating to Blade and Splinter Shot.

Fixed a crash relating to Architect detonating Bastion Shield.

Fixed a crash while toggling constructs with Architect and Shielded Constructs while using a gamepad.

Smarter selector system for selecting constructs on gamepads.

Fixed several instances of the mods claiming they unlocked the wrong mod next.

Gamepads can now be detected being plugged in or unplugged if the game is paused.

Fixed the broken link to the Leaderboards from the Settings menu.

Fixed several cases of songs playing mono when they should be stereo.

Fixed some memory leaks relating to jet trails.

Fixed a bug where your self-damage resistance didn't work on Siege Weaponry and Antimatter Rounds.

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