Demo Patch 1.6: Play Engagement with Friends

Demo Patch 1.6 "Play Engagement with Friends"

I could not have asked for a better community, and for that I want to present to you the biggest patch since 1.1, 1.6 Play Engagement with Friends, and the latest build ready for the Steam Next Fest.

Local co-op, Six new modules with their evolutions and mega evolutions, eighteen new features you can switch on and off one by one, an interface rebuilt for the Steam Deck and controllers, Daily leaderboards, and a long list of fixes from the forums!!!

NEW FEATURES Each new feature has its own switch in Options, Gameplay, Features. All but two are on by default; the relay station and tactical command start switched off. A switch takes effect at your next launch. Some of these are highly experimental, although I did do my best to try to playtest them all a bit. Please expect a 1.6.1 patch tonight or tomorow targeted at fixing anything I missed and apologies if there are any bugs. Now enough yapping, what's new?!

FLAGSHIP CONTROLS

- Module overdrive: press 4 to push your lead weapon past its limits for a few seconds. Hold it instead for a point defence burst that shoots down incoming seekers and rakes nearby fighters. A meter on the reticle shows when it is ready. Expect this to be developed further with a consequence to overdriving a module in the future.

- Damage control and brace: press - to send the repair crew to a knocked-out module or system. It works twice as fast on that one and slower on the rest. Leave it on AUTO and the crew picks for you. Press ` to brace the hull for 3 seconds of reduced damage. A BRACE NOW prompt names the blow that is coming. Ruth Calloway can hold both orders as a Bridge Crew station, she's just that good.

- Lockable subsystems: lock a heavy ship and press target ahead again to step the lock through its engines, gun batteries, hangars and shield emitters. Your spinal gun and torpedoes wear a locked part down fast, and a broken part changes how the ship fights. Spinal guns now have further use than just bosses, let me know how this feels, I expect this one to need some further polish.

- Tactical command (off by default, turn it on in Options): tap or hold Enter (pad: LB and RB together) to slow the fight to a crawl and pull the camera back. Click a hostile to focus your wing on it, or open space to set a rally point. A meter keeps it to short bursts.

YOUR FRIENDS, YOUR WING, YOUR FORMATIONS

- Wing formations: press 9 to cycle loose, picket, ring, hammer and wall. Each is a trade: wall soaks for the flagship, hammer kills fast and risks escorts. Formations are yours to call; the autopilot leaves your choice alone.

- Couch co-op wingman: a second player flies an escort beside you. Plug in a second pad or keyboard and press Start on it, or press Numpad Enter to play on the numpad. Player two salvages, rescues pilots, tows crates and paints targets for your guns, and has their own HUD, camera framing and button setup. Until someone joins, the numpad and your pad work exactly as before. This feature is highly experimental, expect online co-op soon and more content as this one took me quite a bit. I want to truly apologize if there are any game breaking bugs that prevent you from playing with your friends, I will get any bugs fixed here asap.

- Wing emblems: design an emblem in the drydock (shape, charge, two colours and a squadron code), plus nose art and escort paint. It is painted on every flagship, escort and the pennant. Purchases cost scrap and show in the Ledger.

THE HOLLOW AND THE FIELD

- Late Hollow: after ten minutes the Hollow can now bring three new threats, each with a visible formation to figure out how to counter. Shepherds, Burrowers and the the Tide await challengers.

- The Hollow adapts: from minute 5 the Hollow grow plating against the weapon family that deals most of your damage. Broad builds meet fewer adapted ships.

- Derelict hulks: dead frigates and capitals leave burning hulks that drift through the fight for up to a minute and a half. They are cover too! Bolts, missiles and beams from both sides stop on them, and turrets wait for a clear line instead of firing into the plating. Strip one with tractor beams for salvage, and watch for the ones that stir: some Hollow hulks leave behind broodlings if not fully destroyed.

- NEW EVENT: Station defence (off by default, turn it on in Options): a Concord relay station stands near the start of a sortie. Raiders go for it; keep it standing for a bonus at the relief, and dock with it between 7:00 and 10:00 for a free refit. Losing it does not end the run. Not in boss rush. For balance reasons, this event by default for now.

- The Long Lost Rival: a named renegade captain hunts you at 7:00 in sorties and Endless. If it escapes, it comes back next run tougher, wearing an answer to whatever you damaged it most with. Kill them for good and its sigil can be added on your bow.

MODE CHANGES

- Endless sector jumps (Endless only): every 10 minutes the fleet jumps to a new sector. Pick the next sector and its condition from the cards; each jump raises the score multiplier. Hollow that were fighting you follow you through. Endless has its own leaderboard. Leaderboard changes may require some steam backend, hold please if not immediately available.

- Daily rival (Daily only): a rival captain flies a leading build from yesterday's Daily board against you at 8:00, scaled to a fair budget. Experimental feature: Maybe you'll see me out there, this was really fun testing with friends, but I will need to see how it holds up online with real players, this may be removed in the future if it does not work out (EG: Too many cheater builds).

- Type B Flagship layouts: at mastery 5 a flagship can sail an alternative layout, picked on the flagship card in the drydock, which lists what changes are available. Each one changes gameplay and the yard fit (the Vigil's Escort Tender, the Bulwark's Broadside and four more).

SEEDS, SHARING AND MEMORY

- Run codes and replays: every debrief has a Share block with a short run code and a replay file. In the drydock, FLY CODE flies someone's code as an unranked practice sortie, and WATCH REPLAY plays a replay file back and checks it played exactly. Codes carry the features the run was flown with; co-op replays carry player two. Very useful to me for bug testing and hunting, was requested by friends as a public option.

- Collection board: a tile for every module, evolution, ship and enemy, each with its own challenge, plus secrets that pay cosmetic paint tints and pennant marks. Open it from the title screen or the codex.

- The Register: a story that remembers your runs. Entries unlock from what you do, black boxes drop from elites and won field events, and your officers add their own lines. Open it from the title screen or the codex. Experimental feature: The story is due a substantial rewrite, please do not consider what you see now for the story as final.

NEW MODULES

- Scatter guns (small): short-barrelled guns that throw a cone of flechettes. Murder at close range, wasted at long range.

- Ion repeater (small): it barely scratches plating but strips shields fast, and a ship it keeps hitting is ion-locked. Its guns fall silent and its drive slows for a moment. Bosses never lock, but they still lose their shields.

- Gyre drones (small): blade drones circle the flagship. Anything small that flies into the ring is cut apart, and seekers that cross it are knocked down.

- Plasma mortar (medium): lobs shells of plasma into the thick of a pack. They burst into fires that burn everything inside, capital ships included. Unlocks when you destroy 250 Hollow in one run.

- Shock plating (hull): charged plates answer whoever shoots the flagship from close in, and from level 3 they burn off latched lampreys and boarders. Unlocks when you destroy 3 elites in one run.

- Scythe beam (heavy): a broad beam that sweeps an arc across the enemy line instead of holding on one target. Unlocks when you reach level 20 in a run.

NEW EVOLUTIONS

- Splinter Rounds (Scatter guns with the Flak battery): a flechette that kills a fighter or corvette bursts into splinters that strike the craft around it.

- Ion Cascade (Ion repeater with the Tesla coil): when a lock takes hold, it leaps to the nearest hostiles and locks them too.

- Vortex Ring (Gyre drones with the Tractor array): the tractor drags fighters and seekers onto the blades, and the ring runs wider.

- Thermite Rain (Plasma mortar with the Flare battery): every shell breaks into a short line of fires, and every fire burns longer.

- Lightning Rod (Shock plating with Armour belts): discharges reach any ship that hits the flagship, near or far, and hit harder.

- Reaping Arc (Scythe beam with the Lance beam): each charge sweeps there and back, and anything the beam leaves badly hurt is cut apart outright.

NEW MEGA EVOLUTIONS

- Blackout (Ion repeater and Tesla coil): an ion storm breaks over the flagship, locking every hostile in reach and walking lightning through the pack.

- Maelstrom (Gyre drones and Tractor array): the ring flares out across the field and back in a single sweep, cutting everything small it passes and pulling salvage home.

- Sunbreaker (Scythe beam and Lance beam): a fused beam twice as long sweeps a full circle round the flagship.

- Inferno (Plasma mortar and Flare battery): a creeping wall of fire walks out from the flagship to the thickest pack.

SECOND EVOLUTIONS Each new module can evolve one of two ways.

- Flayer Rounds (Scatter guns with Armour belts): the guns turn on frigates and capital ships, and every flechette flays the plating so the target takes more hull damage from everything.

- Ion Breach (Ion repeater with the Heavy battery): a lock holds longer and burns the target's shields out until it lifts.

- Ward Ring (Gyre drones with Shield domes): the ring pulls in tight round the hull, its drones catch enemy bolts that cross it, and every bolt they catch feeds your shield.

- Clinging Fire (Plasma mortar with the Sensor mast): each shell leads its own ship of the pack, and a fire that lands on a hull sticks to it and burns hotter.

- Galvanic Skin (Shock plating with the Repair gantry): idle plates arc into nearby hostiles, every discharge mends the hull, and a kill readies the plate again. - Pendulum Arc (Scythe beam with the Reactor spur): the beam swings from pack to pack without stopping and recharges only once nothing is in reach.

DAILY LEADERBOARDS

- On Steam, every Daily run posts its score to that day's board and to an all-time Daily board. The Daily screen shows the top scores, your rank and the scores around you. Leaderboard changes may require some steam backend changes from me and may not be available immediately.

STEAM DECK AND CONTROLLER OPTIMIZATION

- Bigger text everywhere. The smallest menu labels are now 13.5 px and the controller legend at the foot of every screen is 14 px, so every character on a 1280x800 Steam Deck screen is at least 9 pixels tall.

- The flight HUD draws a little larger on 800p screens and its smallest text went from 12 to 13 px.

- Every tooltip can now be reached with a controller: stat names in the drydock, hardpoint chips and module rows in the pause screen, campaign map nodes and fleet chips, shop icons and crew commendations. Move onto them with the d-pad to read them.

- With a controller in hand, the control in focus wears a thick amber ring so you can see where you are from arm's length.

- Typing with a controller: pressing A on a text field (the save code import) opens Steam's on-screen keyboard when you play through Steam on a Deck or in Big Picture. Anywhere else an in-game keyboard opens (A types, B deletes, X adds a space, Y switches case, Menu closes it).

- "Click twice to confirm" reads "Press A twice to confirm" when you are using a controller.

- Steam Deck stick layout: on a Steam Deck the right stick now aims and the left stick rolls and sets throttle by default. If you have ever saved a stick layout in Options, yours is kept. Other controllers keep the classic layout.

LAYOUT

- The drydock's launch bar always stays on screen at 1280x720 and 1280x800; the flagship column scrolls when it runs long.

- Yard paint prices are easier to read, and the BUY bar for a previewed paint scrolls into view.

- The end-of-run wishlist card's buttons match the rest of the game.

- The auto-pick selector no longer runs over its label in the drydock and the pause screen.

- A fourth or fifth refit card stays on the row at large interface scales; if the hand still runs long, the row fades at the bottom with an arrow and scrolls.

- On short screens with a big wing, the escort list folds to its header instead of covering the objective box.

FORUM FIXES AND CHANGES

- Custodians in the melee: every Custodian now carries its hex bracket and a CUSTODIAN tag within 2.5 km, shows as a hex on the radar and wears a white-gold rim at range. A Custodian breaking throws a hard-light sigil you can read from afar, and the feed names who broke whom (for example CUSTODIAN USHER BROKEN BY OAKE). Tags are on the list to further polish in the future Thanks mr.Tribble.

- The pause screen now shows your mega evolution: what it joined, what its strike does in real numbers, and the damage it and its two modules have done this fight. Thanks mr.Tribble.

- The pause screen now lists every escort's damage and damage per minute this fight. Thanks mr.Tribble.

- Detailed ship data. Every flagship and escort page in the codex now lists the real numbers: hull, shield and recharge, speed and helm, the spinal gun's damage, rate, DPS and range, the torpedo rack, flares and hardpoints. The pause screen adds a live ship panel showing what your refits and modules have done to those numbers this run. Thanks mr.Tribble, Namarus and Irungol for the reports and suggestions.

FIXES

- Campaign start sheet: picking a heat, starting module, wing or flagship no longer throws the sheet back to its top. Thanks mr.Tribble.

- Campaign charts: the Lamplighter's hidden anchorage could put a repair stop right beside another repair. It now skips a fight next to a repair, and says why when it cannot place one. Thanks mr.Tribble.

- Radar key in the Veil Storm: the scope was stuck at 2 km there whatever the radar key said. The storm now halves each radar step (1, 2 or 4 km, default 2 km), and the feed line names the range the scope actually shows, sensor refits included. Thanks Namarus:

- Skipping cards by accident: K skips the refit cards and also targets the nearest boss, so stepping through bosses could skip a level-up that landed under the key. A skip key that is also a flight key (and B on a controller, whose hold targets bosses) now waits until the cards have been up for a moment, and a held key never skips. Your key bindings are unchanged.

- Hive Racks: a micro-missile whose target died (often to another gun) turned straight back to dock, so most salvos flew back at your own flagship. It now hunts the nearest enemy within 1.5 km first, and flies home only when nothing is left in reach or it runs out of fuel.

CHANGES

- Callsigns on the battlefield: wingmen with a callsign are now called by it on their plates, edge markers, contact callouts and the target panel. The roster and pause screen still show the name and the callsign. Suggested by Irungol.

- Launch menu in two halves: the drydock's settings are now grouped under THIS SORTIE (mode, sector, heat, Hollow pilots, contracts, starting module and starting wing) and YOUR COMMAND (drydock upgrades, doctrine, bridge crew, wing pilots, commissions, auto-pick). Nothing was removed. Suggested by Irungol.

- Ship mastery from the drydock: the flagship card shows its mastery level and progress, and names the next perk on hover. Click it, or press M, to open that ship's mastery page. Suggested by Irungol.

- Starting module and wing cards: hover a starting module (or move to it on a controller) to see what it does and its numbers at the level it launches at; hover a starting wing to see each ship, the command it takes and any free ships launching with it. Suggested by Irungol.

- Slots on the refit screen: the header now lists every free hardpoint kind (S, M, L, bay, hull, aft, mast), including wells re-rigged by a cradle, and a system card says when its next mount has no free slot. Suggested by Irungol.

- Camera options (Options > Accessibility, both off unless you turn them on): One continuous camera zoom lets the mouse wheel (or View + right stick on a controller) pull the flight camera back and carry on into the strategic view. Free look stays where you let go keeps the view where you left it while you steer; a free look without moving the camera recentres it. Your key bindings are unchanged. Suggested by Irungol.

BALANCE

- Campaign difficulty: the Hollow's threat clock now carries upward through the campaign (150 s an act, 20 s a column, 60 s more on an elite node) and elite nodes field 20, 30 and 40% elites by act. Measured on whole campaigns, heat 5 went from 90% wins to 47%, so campaign heat now matters. Suggested by Peorte.

- Torpedo battery: it now also fires on Carapace gunships, the heavy fighters that do most of the damage to a flagship. Before, its racks sat idle most of the fight. - Armour belts, Repair gantry and Shock plating: each now takes one hull hardpoint at every level, so any two of them can stand together, and Fortress Belt, Lightning Rod, Galvanic Skin and the Ironclad mega can be built on every flagship with two hull hardpoints whatever order you pick them in. Before, a second belt, gantry or plate took the other hull hardpoint and closed them for the run. The one belt now plates both flanks from level 2, and the one plate answers both flanks from level 2, reaches more attackers with each discharge and recharges faster, so neither is weaker for it.

- Flare battery: the pods now also burst when hostile fighters hit the flagship, and while the flares burn they screen her, cutting fighter fire by 25% at level 1 up to 50% at level 5. Chaff Curtain and Magnesium Screen go off more often as a result. - Gunline: only escorts that cost command count against its limit of three. Free escorts (the Reserve wing, the Harrow's ready wing, Carrier group escorts, rescued ships over the cap) no longer switch it off, so a two-escort start with the Reserve wing keeps Gunline at launch.

- Tractor array late in a run: with derelict wrecks now part of the game, the tractor array strips derelict hulks faster, which gives it a job once its salvage bonus stops mattering.

VISUAL POLISH

- Thermite Rain: a volley of fires no longer melts into one white blob. Each fire keeps its own hot core and flame tongues, with smoke between neighbours. - Scythe beam: the swing is one smooth sheet of light instead of a fan of stripes.

- Gyre drones: the drones stay racked until the flagship clears the yard cradle, and the ring cuts nothing until they are out.

ALSO NEW BUT NOT FORGOTTEN (Okay I did forget a little)

- EXPERIMENTAL TRANSLATIONS: German, Spanish, French, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian and Simplified Chinese. Some of the new features below are still English only. Please expect the translations right now to be sloppy until I can hire full localizations for everything.

- Twelve new achievements, one for each new evolution.

- Codex pages for every new module, evolution and mega evolution, with their real numbers.

- Turret pellets now spread in a true cone when a target sits straight off the mount. Before, flak, point defence and the like could throw a flat fan instead. That brings the game to 31 modules, 41 evolutions, 15 mega evolutions and 42 flagship refits.

Have fun out there, and please do not hesitate to report any bug reports to the forums, I will get them fixed as soon as I can! Thank you all for playing Engagement!!!