Update 8: Caches to Ashes

PATCH HIGHLIGHTS:

THE FIRE AND FLAMES: Make more map mayhem!
ALL OF THE LIGHTS: Lights improve visibility to mechs in combat.
MAJOR LASERS: Renovate obstacles with the Ultra Heavy Beam Weapon!
CAN BUY ME LOVE: Salvage and looting are revamped… 
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. We update Phantom Brigade on the third Tuesday of every month. You can expect the next major update on Tuesday, August 17th at 11:00AM PT. See the full patch notes below!

Changes in 0.9.0-b2217

? indicates changes due to community feedback

Something in the wind…

• Added combat atmosphere: Watch the environment get darker and smokier as the map takes more damage

Light Up!

• ? Silhouettes: Units will now emit a glow to improve visibility on the map, this can be disabled along with other combat UI using Num (-)
• Spotlights: Mechs now a head light that illuminates the area in front of them at night
• Eye flares: Mech eyes now flash right before they attack

• New Ultra Heavy Beam Weapon BMH Solarburst! These spawn randomly on units of all branches, similar to the Vulcan.
• Like other beam weapons, beams from the Solarburst can be deflected with shields. It also adds to cumulative beam damage.
• The BMH Solarburst Emits a five-second beam so strong, it can cut whole buildings in half. Extremely difficult to rotate while firing due to gyroscopic interference so mechs must move to stay on target.

New salvage and combat summary UI

• New salvage screen! After winning combat, you must now carefully decide how to spend your salvage budget. 
  • The more enemies you defeat, the larger your salvage budget is.
    • Mechs +30
    • Tanks +10
    • Elevated tanks +20
    • Turrets +10
  • You can choose to salvage, dismantle for supplies, or skip salvaging entirely to avoid cluttering your inventory. Some parts will be more expensive than others to salvage so choose wisely!
  • Surrendered or ejected units will have a lower salvage cost on their parts than destroyed units will.
  • Some sites drop rewards that are free to salvage including (but not limited to) convoys, caches, and outposts
  • Destroyed parts of friendly mechs can also be salvaged using an “emergency” budget
  • Salvaging broken parts on intact friendly units will equip them back to the unit that lost them automatically
• As such, salvage no longer takes time on the overworld and once a site is salvaged, it can’t be returned to. Saving on this screen is no longer available and autosaving occurs after salvage has concluded.
• A new tutorial has been added to take you through the UI the first time you salvage on the new screen.
• Added SFX to skip, dismantle, and recover sliders as well as selection of parts of different rarities
• Group information window (in the bottom left hand corner of the new salvage screen) includes the status of the unit and its pilot
  

Updated Part Quality

• We’ve updated the colours and quality of salvagable parts. Quality determines how often the part drops as loot, how many subsystems are unfused, and the performance of subsystems that are present in the part’s hardpoints. These are: 
  • White – Common
  • Green – Uncommon
  • Blue – Rare

KA-BOOM!

• Added explosions and SFX to heavy damage done on buildings at once, such as level damage done by the new Ultra Heavy Beam Weapon
• Added ambient SFX to destruction on combat maps to match new combat atmosphere

Analytics

• We’re now using Unity Analytics to learn more about how Phantom Brigade is being played. This information includes user ID, location, session length, number of sessions, and game progress (such as where in the game a player has quit and what provinces have been captured)

Miscellaneous

• ? Added an indicator to armor in list views to show what part they belong to (upper, lower, arm)
• Tooltips now appear after a one second delay to reduce noise on lists
• Improved confirmation UI in various parts of the game
• Movement actions that span into the next turn are now drawn as a continuous action instead of separate ones
• Added a failsafe to loading a game in the middle of a salvage from 0.8.0 or earlier
• Added a fix to clean up Battlefields on the overworld when loading saves from versions earlier than 0.8.0
• Shields are now much less effective against thermal, stagger and concussion damage. When the shield is up 50% of heat, 80 % of stagger and 25% of concussion, damage gets through the defense.
• “Investigate” on War Memorial event now guarantees intel on a new site 
• Lots and lots of bug fixes!

Fixed issues in 0.9.0-b2217

• Fixed weapon firing before fully unholstering after a melee strike 
• Fixed buggy animation when mech is only equipped with a secondary weapon
• Fixed foot plant animation being out of sync with SFX
• Fixed beams not inflicting impact damage
• Fixed If a mech has a primary two handed weapon and the right arm is broken, mech will keep left arm in holding pose
• Fixed an issue causing units to disappear from the list when combat limits units to two
• Fixed Workshop event not triggering at the correct amount of supplies gained
• ? Fixed units being able to walk through some parts of terrain on forest map
• Removed placeholder text from Hit & Run retreat conditions
• Fixed elevated tanks disappearing when they’re destroyed
• Fixed liberated POI showing mission type, branch, and difficulty
• Second part of War Memorial event now triggers automatically after exiting combat in the first part
• Fixed Cannons or MG Turrets being salvaged from tanks from caches
• Fixed melee attacks launching turrets into the air
• Fixed enemy units occasionally entering combat on the capital without weapons
• Unlocking abandoned site and salvaging War Memorials now grants rewards
• Fixed some unit parts not disappearing when destroyed (such as the tops of turrets floating)
• Fixed SFX on long-presses in various parts of UI including on the dismantle and scrap buttons in the inventory views
• Fixed position of beam effect being too far into the body of the weapon

And for those playing in Experimental…

• Fixed concussed units recovered from victories not being playable in the next encounter

YOU CAN FIND THE FULL LIST OF KNOWN ISSUES HERE.