Hello, I've released a small new patch in the publicbeta branch. This one is partly me reacting to feedback from a few people that the mercenaries are making things too difficult in the earlier game stages (the ones that looter bases can sic on you if you go to war with them) - I've reduced the frequency of their raids and made them less well armed. I've also made it possible to surrender to looters and raiders, so hopefully the surrender mechanic is more consistent and understandable to new players. And I've added the ability to pay supplies instead of gold when surrendering. Plus I've added a bit of extra dialog with the extortion squads to give new players a better sense of what will happen if they decide to go to war with them.



The rest of it is bug fixes and small quality of life improvements. I've moved the speech bubble upwards when someone is talking to you, so it's less likely to overlap stuff like combat going on in the middle of the screen. And I've made it so when you run towards a door in a building, with zombies chasing just behind you, you'll get into the door as soon as you are in range of it, without having to waste precious milliseconds turning to face the door. Here's the full list:

• Made it possible to surrender to raiders and mercenaries (note: will not affect raider groups spawned before the patch), and tried to reduce their difficulty a little when your base is at an early stage
  
• Added a hint that you can use Set Zone to stop your community members wandering off in search of food
  
• When entering a building, be a bit more forgiving about getting through the door fast if you are currently under attack
  
• Moved PiP speech bubble a bit further up so it's less likely to overlap other screen elements, e.g. during combat
  
• Fix for character assigned to capture a building and also auto-deposit wood from getting into a loop
  
• Fix for trade screen bug/exploit where pressing left and right mouse button at the same time will appear to duplicate an item and get you extra gold
  
• Fix for bug/exploit where you tell someone to scavenge a building, then switch character before they reach it, allowing the character you switched to to eat/drink stuff in the building
  
• Some fixes for infected weapons
  
• Out Of Sync fix
  
• Crash fixes
  

EDIT - released a follow-up patch with a crash fix, v185

What's this publicbeta thing?

v185 will be in the "publicbeta" branch for a while, before pushing it to the main game. If you want to try the latest features as they come out (and help test them!) it's a good idea to start using this branch. But keep in mind:

• Because it's the bleeding edge it could be less stable
  
• If you want to be able to play online co-op with someone you'll need to be on the same version as them
  
• If you go back from the "publicbeta" branch to the main branch you may not be able to load savegames created on "publicbeta".

To use publicbeta, just right-click on Survivalist: Invisible Strain in your Steam library and go to Properties, then Betas and in the drop-down select "publicbeta".