Update 13: Fight or Flight

PATCH HIGHLIGHTS:

WHOLE NEW WORLD: Overworld overhaul part one is in!
SHOT FOR SHOT: New establishing shots to set the scene.
ENGINE UPGRADE: We upgraded the our Unity version.
THE HILLS ARE ALIVE – with new music and SFX!
AND MORE!

Phantom Brigade is in Early Access, which means we are actively updating and adding new content based on our roadmap and your wonderful feedback. As a quick note, Brace Yourself Games will be taking a holiday break starting this week. The next Tactical Tuesday update will still occur as scheduled on January 18th, but may appear lighter as we are taking the time to address bug backlog, and make less visible changes!

Changes in 0.14.0-b3016

🦾 indicates changes due to community feedback

Overworld Overhaul

• Brand new overworld gameplay. Enemy patrols and convoys roaming the map can now detect the mobile base and react. Hostile sites will recognize the base at a close enough range and send patrols to stop you.
• World Reset: Due to the changes to the overworld, saves from 0.13.0 will be upgraded to the new overworld.
  • Inventory, supplies, pilots, and units will be maintained
  • The mobile base will be moved back to the tutorial province
  • Any fully-captured provinces will remain captured. Partially captured provinces will be reverted to the enemy and every entity will be hostile again, hope reset to 0. 
  • Any ongoing overworld actions will be cancelled
  • Note: there’s currently a bug where ongoing workshop and repair actions from 0.13.0 are cancelled when loaded. Units will be fully repaired and supplies returned. We’re currently working on fixing this, thank you for your patience!
  • It’s possible that other issues may occur if loading a save from a version older than 0.13.0.

• Convoys & Patrols
  • Convoys carrying supplies and loot from one enemy site to another will run away when in range of the base
  • Patrols that detect the base in range will chase you down!
  • Capturing a province will clear out the roaming enemies
  • Convoys and patrols can appear at different difficulties: Training, Normal, and Elite

• Movement modes: The mobile base now has new movement modes to help chase down or escape from sticky situations. 
  • Stealth: the base uses battery power to lower its detection range and hide from enemies. However, this also reduces the base’s vision range. 
  • Overdrive: the base uses battery power to get a boost of power, increasing its speed. This increases the base’s and the enemy’s detection range
  • Standard: The base travels at its normal speed and can recover battery power
  • Stop: Stops the base in place. The base will recover battery power
  • Combat victories will also recharge the base’s battery
  • New VFX and animations have been added to the mobile base to reflect the base’s movement including sirens, workers on the base, and light camera shake
• Rain gameplay:
  • Rain VFX on the overworld has been improved and cloud speed has been rebalanced
  • Some provinces are now consistently rainier than others
  • Weather intensity is more distinct on the overworld and has effects on player and enemy vision ranges
    
    • Clear: both enemies and the base have full vision range
    • Cloudy: both enemies and the base lose some range
    • Rainy: both enemies and the base lose most vision

• Cloud and Light
  • Fog on the overworld now picks up the sun and colour of the ambient light
  • Day and night lighting is now more distinct on the overworld as well as in combat
  • Added smaller clouds to create smaller pockets of rain around the map
  • Wind blows fog in from the coastlines
  • Snow is now picked up by wind on mountain tops

• Traveling the Overworld: Entity sizes and movement speed has been adjusted to make the overworld feel larger
  • The base’s path is now drawn more directly to the destination

• Other Overworld Improvements
  • Improved performance when there are many sites/roaming enemies revealed
  • Updated UI on Convoys (they now use hexagon markers) to differentiate them from patrols and sites
  • Sites now have unique icons that can be seen over fog and cloud when zoomed out on the overworld, and on hover
  • Updated various event actions to fit into the new overworld (adjusting timers etc)

Establishing Shots

• Every type of map now has a unique cutscene showing the battlefield! (This can be skipped using ESC, Enter, or Space)

Music and SFX

• Brand new Salvage screen music!
• Brand new music layers for stealth and overdrive modes!
• New overheat SFX in combat
• Added SFX to units walking through rain and puddles
• Added SFX to tank weapon servos
• Adjusted workshop music in friendly provinces
• Added SFX to selecting the base in the overworld

Engine Upgrade

• The team has been hard at work updating the version of Unity Phantom Brigade runs on. The upgraded version allows us to continue improving the game! Thank you to all our experimental players for early feedback on this!

Miscellaneous

• Autosaves before combat are now made when you engage a site and updated when you hit “Deploy”, so all changes on units are saved
• Fallback now immediately sends the mobile base back to Mountain Base, no matter where on the overworld it is
• Rewrote descriptions on subsystems, groups, presets, sockets. Please report any typos discovered!
• Added a loading screen when quitting to main menu

Fixed in 0.14.0-b3016

• Fixed unit collision and crashing issues causing making it possible to crash a heavier unit with a lighter one
• Fixed issues with cloud position on the overworld not saving and loading correctly
• Fixed holograms of sites at different levels of intel not displaying correctly
• Fixed an issue where impact dust VFX is exaggerated when mechs are jumping
• Fixed dust clouds remaining on the map after units have retreated
• Fixed shaders on clouds causing holes
• Fixed clouds and fog flashing at specific angles in combat and on the overworld
• Fixed enemy reinforcement landing SFX being out of sync with the animation
• Camera is now centered on the mobile base when the opening cinematic ends
• Fixed misty effects appearing in several cutscenes
• Fixed an issue where convoys can get stuck in place while running away from the mobile base
• Fixed combat atmosphere snapping to high intensity as soon as buildings are damaged
• Fixed a miniscule amount of in-game time passing when moving from the base to the overworld while paused
• Fixed time scrubbing SFX on the timeline in combat
• Fixed damage stats of Solarburst and Sunswarm beam weapons (display in Unit Editing now matches actual damage output)
• Fixed a gap in the cloud cover at the very edge of the overworld map
• Base is no longer invisible when loading a save older than the current version
• Pharma event actions can now be cancelled
• Fixed settlement assets on the overworld not being properly grounded
• “Days” display in combat intro and overworld UI now begins counting from 0 instead of 1
• Village Raids will no longer occur while one is already underway
• Fixed wrong rewards on the Defector event
• Raided Villages are now removed from the overworld if the player doesn’t get there in time
• Fixed audio cue doubling up when cancelling an action on the timeline
• Fixed pilot portrait not updating immediately when units eject
• Fixed Bein parts not receiving metallic textures in some liveries
• Made additional fixes to beam weapons (specifically Glorydog) regarding listed damage output vs actual damage output
• Fixed time unpausing briefly when opening the pause menu
• Fixed time remaining unpaused when opening the pause menu during tutorial
• Fixed convoy holograms occasionally disappearing from the map if they drive out of the radar’s range
• Fixed workshop and base visuals carrying into the virtual background
• Fixed Fallback speed being maintained after fallback timer concludes
• Fixed rain SFX playing too loudly in briefing and when entering combat
• Fixed overworld entities being visible in the sky when exiting the base
• Fixed an error from engaging with a site after quitting to main menu
• Fixed entity selection SFX doubling up
• Retreating from combat with a patrol now properly disengages with the patrol
• Fixed flickering VFX on vents in the Power Plant combat map
• Fixed an occasional exception when entities are destroyed