Greetings Pioneers!

This week we have been busy developing our ecosystem and food chains to really bring each of the planned biomes to life. We would like each environment to have its own hazards and unique rewards; predators, interactive plants and neutral fauna that will react to you and other AI in different ways depending on their fear and aggression levels.

Today we have an update for you, with our first neutral fauna creature, the Vogel. Though named after the German for bird, this little critter can’t fly; it can however, run. Currently there will be no reward for killing the Vogel other than the thrill of the chase. These little bipeds are pretty fast and easily scared.

We’ll be adding rewards for catching the Vogel later on, such as a unique material or energy type. Fauna drops will need further development and balancing so we will most likely introduce them along with more creatures and new items to build/upgrade.

We have also been developing the behavior of the Juggernaut. Too big to smash around as easily as the smaller enemies, the Juggernaut must be tackled tactically, taking out individual limbs to hinder its movement then targeting vulnerable weak spots beneath its hardened exoskeleton. Naturally the Juggernaut will be easier to handle with a friend or two and has been designed with multiplayer co-op interactions in mind.

The Turrets have had a few behaviour tweaks to improve their targeting, allowing multiple turrets to target the same enemy or different enemies depending on the situation (previously if a Turret fired at a target, other turrets would ignore it). We have also increased their rotation speed, allowing them to react faster.

Having tested these tweaks on different save files from the community, we believe it is a big improvement and should allow you to sit back a little (especially in the early days) while your base defences handle things. Please let us know what you think of these changes, especially if they now make things too easy. You should be able to manage the difficulty level yourself by taking out enemy Hives or letting them develop.

Here is the full change list with all the fixes, additions and changes:

Additions

Added our first neutral Fauna creature into the world – the Vogel! This shy creature will run away if disturbed by the player.

Changes and Balancing

Changed the way Hives spawn AI at night so they don’t all spawn at the same time.

We have made a number of tweaks and fixes to the Turrets which should make them much more effective. Please let us know if you have any further problems with them!

Increased the tracking speed of the Turrets.

Made an adjustment to the Turret targeting so that more Turrets can now select the same enemy.

Bug fixes

Fixed crash when Reclaiming the full item of an Energy Turret.

Fixed crash when large structures had been partially destroyed, which could occur when saving the game.

Added fixes for a crash which could occur when quitting the game and returning to the Main Menu.

Fixed a bug where Ikas could sometimes get stuck in the sky whilst trying to attack your base.

Fixed a bug where the Ika could spawn inside of mountains.

Fixed a pathing issue with the Ika which would cause them to fly away to a distant point away from the player.

Fixed bug where Weapon Ammo counts would not update straight away, they now update better including when Depositing or Withdrawing from the Eden Kit Inventory, and when deleting or creating new ammo.

Fixed issue where the Laser Turret wouldn’t fire in some rare cases.

Fixed bugs with multiple UI Scrollbars which would sometimes vanish or not work when dragging with the mouse.

Fixed some UI description typos.

Fixed player’s hand overlapping the Pause menu in some instances.

Fixed turrets sometimes not activating despite enemies being within their range.

Fixed the laser turret sometimes not switching targets until its current target is dead.

The Known issues list and Beginner Guide have been updated for the current version. As always please let us know of any issues and feedback on the Discussions forum and we will endeavor to get back to you and work through any problems. Keep those amazing suggestions rolling in!

Happy hunting

-Team Flix