MAJOR Survivor Mercs update for 1 March 2024

Commanders! They say Evolution means survival of the fittest.
So, get fit to survive M.E.G.A. Corp.'s private robot horde, and show their bosses who's really boss!

Update 0.9.9, codename "Evolution", massively changes how you research Commander traits and choose your squad-leading clone for the next Operation.

Genome Lab 2.0

Say goodbye to randomness when researching new Traits!

Your science and engineering team had a breakthrough in genome editing. The new Genome Lab offers clear research paths for new Traits. Work your way towards desired Traits and see the specific effects of each Trait alongside its research requirements.

You need DNA and Blood Diamonds to research advanced Traits. Intel suggests you hunt down these (mini)bosses and save your looted DNA by extracting.

The advancement in genome research led to the discovery of various new Traits and how to combine them for improved Commander clones. As a consequence, your science team purged the database of old Traits and incinerated all prior clones.

You may want to consider installing an ethics committee - if they accept Blood Diamonds as payment.

Anyways, your new clones come with more interesting Trait combinations that lay the groundwork for better synergy effects and squad-build variety.

❗❗IMPORTANT NOTE❗❗
When you return to your Bunker after update 0.9.9, your researched traits and pre-existing Commanders will be wiped, and you will receive Blood Diamonds and DNA as compensation.

This is unfortunately a necessary step to keep your savegames intact and prevent broken Commanders.

We would encourage you to delete your old savegame and start from scratch, but we want to leave the choice to you!

Configure your Commander Clones

in addition to the new Genome Lab, you can build the Gene Synthesizer room. It allows you to configure your Commanders by pre-selecting desired Traits before cloning them. Of course, this only works for Traits you already have researched.

Upgrade the Gene Synthesizer to pre-select 2 or even all 3 Traits. But be aware that these configured clones require more DNA than your random clones!

But your researchers found a way to retrieve more DNA for each Trait you bring to an Operation for the first time. Sometimes science really feels like magic!

The Traits have been recategorized to enable more reasonable Commander clone configurations:

• The first category mainly defines stats for your Commander itself. Most damage-related modifiers in this category also apply to the Commander only.
• The second category affects primarily the Mercs and your whole squad.
• The third category changes your abilities, adding or overriding your default Dash.

❗❗IMPORTANT NOTE❗❗
Your DNA balance is reduced upon returning to your Bunker after update 0.9.9 to align with the balancing changes and research system.

Armor System & Armored Enemies

Don't you hate getting perforated by those pesky sentries? Another extraction foiled by a rogue Peashooter? Looks like you need some Armor!

Your Commanders now use Armor alongside Traits, Gear, and upgrades to modify that attribute. Armor will not only reduce the kinetic damage you take, it can even mitigate it completely. And it will reduce the impact of negative status effects.

Unfortunately, your engineers aren't the first to discover this marvel of technology.
M.E.G.A. Corp. started deploying new armored foes, too, and upgraded existing units with Armor. Intel suggests you can penetrate their armor with strong piercing attacks. But there may also be other ways to bypass their armor or damage the enemies who seek cover behind the tanks.

Future updates will bring more armored enemy variants. And your R&D team is working on ways to weaken your enemies' armor.

Performance Improvements

Optimization and balancing are fickle tasks. We investigated the biggest culprits that are causing performance drops, and are shipping a first batch of improvements with this update.

The XP dogtags should no longer degrade performance on crowded screens, and we optimized bits of the physics system to stabilize fps.

Spawning enemies, objects, projectiles, and objectives is a bit faster, reducing the lag spikes during a run. But there's still more work to be done on that. The main bottleneck at the moment is your CPU, but we're still looking at improving the rendering performance, too. We're not at stable 60 fps, yet, but we're getting there step-by-step with each update!

UI Improvements

As the game is evolving, so is the UI. You hopefully start noticing various improvements and fixes in different menus, together with various new UI elements.

The Operation Details provide more details and a better overview. Plus: you can finally click on the map to select an operation 😲

The room upgrade menus look nicer and help you grok more easily what resources you need for an upgrade.

We started adding more UI animations and better visuals, but these are just the beginning to make the game feel juicier! We have some more improvements in the pipeline to make the full game loop feel just so much more engaging and rewarding.

Luck and Multi-level Upgrades

Your Commander also have a Luck stat now. More luck increases your chance to get two-for-one or even three-for-one upgrades for the generic stat upgrades during level-ups. Luck is meant to play a more important role in the future, so this is just a first step.

All Additions, Fixes, Adjustments & Improvements

• Research Traits progressively in the new Genome Lab by spending DNA and Blood Diamonds.
• See more details about each Trait and which stats it will affect.
• Sorted Traits into new categories and replaced multiple ones with new, more interesting variants.
• Traits generally have a much more noticeable impact. In turn, generic stat upgrades have been reduced.
• Changed the descriptions for Traits for more context and flavor.
• Added a new room, Gene Synthesizer, to unlock the configuration option for Commanader clones.
• Choose any researched Trait before cloning a new Commander by spending additional DNA.
• Commanders have Armor to reduce or mitigate damage and reduce negative status effects.
• Enemies also use Armor, indicated by a different HP bar and an armor icon.
• Piercing counters Armor, but is reduced when hitting obstacles or Armor.
• Buildings are now less easily penetrated, and projectiles with low Piercing stats get blocked even by small obstacles.
• Added Piercing upgrades to the Weapons Lab room.
• Changed the Gym room to grant smaller bonuses to Armor at various levels.
• Added Kevlar Vests as Gear to grant Armor in exchange for Movement Speed.
• Removed Nuclear Powercells Gear to reduce confusion around "tech" damage type. This will be reintroduced in the future with a better UI to explain the various damage types and status effects.
• Replaced High-Tech Bullets Gear with Uranium Bullet Tips to provide a different way to increase your piercing with projectiles next to Full-Metal Jacket bullets.
• Fixed various instances of stat modifiers affecting more than the intended damage types or Mercs.
• Added armor to many enemies and all mini-bosses and bosses. Adjusted their HP to balance out the armor buff. Icons on the HP bars indicate armored enemies.
• Renamed minibosses to "Elite <Name>" due to lots of feedback from players who were confused by the S.F.U. (Special Forces Units) naming.
• Fixed Sidewinder homing missiles still flying further and dealing damage after impact. Also reduced their damage in exchange for stronger knockback.
• Airstrike ability creates a wider and deeper corridor to be a more viable option in exchange for your dash.
• One-Man Army rifle uses bursts, as originally intended, and no longer deals the shotgun scattershot at higher levels.
• Reduced the complexity of dogtags for a notable performance increase. The collection VFX does no longer stack when picking up multiple dogtags. The sound FX for this should now also no longer overshoot.
• The level-up notification is now appearing above your Commander, not at the top of the screen.
• Fixed an issue that could cause Priest's "Holy Shield" to not work as intended.
• Fixed an instance of stats for the One-Man Army skill trees not showing up.
• Fixed some Mercs blocking the Commander.
• Changed the reticles and markers for Nubetube, Minefield, and Hogshead to make it easier to distinguish them from one another.
• Optimized shadow rendering to improve performance and reduce memory footprint.
• Adjusted physics simulation to improve performance and prevent lag spikes.
• Fixed UI masks that were preventing automatic batching and degraded UI performance.
• You can no longer pause the game in the end-of-run screens, potentially locking yourself up in these menus.
• Fixed an instance of your carry capacity not updating correctly and showing misleading info.
• Fixed two cases of crashes based on player reports. Thank you!
• Replaced multiple low-res sprites with high-res variants and added more color coding to various menus.
• Improved the stats & attributes list for your Commanders to show more info dynamically.
• Commander HUD elements now always render in front of any other elements like enemy HP bars.
• Added outlines to keybinding icons to improve their readability on low contrast backgrounds.
• Added Luck stat to Commanders, giving you a chance to get 2-for-1 or 3-for-1 level upgrades for generic stats.
• Fixed an issue where your Storage inventory could break when leaving the menu with unsold items in the "sell" tab.
• Operations Menu now shows more details about the bosses and the components you can find on the map.
• Stats are now generally color-coded to improve readability and provide context if something is "good" or "bad". Using green and red at the moment. We are already considering adding Accessibility Options to make these features more inclusive.
• Fixed an issue with loot definitions preventing certain minibosses from dropping the desired loot amount and loot types.
• Fixed various instances where buttons did not play feedback sounds.
• Room upgrade popups now show an image of the room, plus icons for the required components.
• Added various UI animations to improve the feedback, e.g. when selecting an upgrade.
• Increased base price for Zombie Ray room to make it a mid-to-late game upgrade as intended.
• Adjusted multiple German translations to use more commonly-known English terms since various translations felt off.

Moving Forward

This is our third major Early Access update for Survivor Mercs.

More are coming, so make sure to "Follow" the game to be notified when the next Early Access Roadmap Update drops Soon™.

As mentioned in our last Roadmap News, we are currently looking at these features:

⏩ More synergies and squad-build options between Commander, Mercs, and Gear, specifically:

• proc effects, e.g. things that happen "on crit"
• combine status effects to trigger other effects
• adjust projectiles of certain damage types to behave differently

We plan to overhaul the skill trees and upgrades for Mercs and Gear. Our goal: less boring stat upgrades, more interesting choices. What if Operator's drone could shoot lightning bolts like Spark and become a more versatile crowd-control unit? Or if Deathstar could focus his lasers? Could Chemtrail or Scorch fill their tanks with other hazardous substances?

We're also testing new Commander classes and weapons, specifically with new status effects in mind.

⏩ A new _Airlift _room will allow you to save some loot instead of extracting.
We want to give you more choices around the Extraction mechanic because we're considering new, epic loot which in turn allows you to...

⏩ ...adjust Merc weapon load-outs to create more nuanced squad builds.

⏩ Play new Operation Types like Elite or Endless runs to get rare items and achievements.
We are testing different ways to integrate new Operation types into the game and will share more details about that in the future.

⏩ Enjoy a more polished UI, better performance, and configure your input mappings alongside other improved settings and options.

As always, we're also looking into adding new maps & bosses, enemies, Mercs, and other content as they fit in with future updates.

We appreciate every one of you who is already supporting us in this early stage of the Early Access.

Please don't forget that the game is still under development.

Again, even after this update you'll still see some rough edges and bugs here and there. The balancing is a constantly ongoing process, and will change more over time. We try our best to keep your savegames intact, though!

Some things may still not be fully self-explanatory. But this will improve step-by-step with every new update.

We hope this update proves once more our dedication to listening to you and building Survivor Mercs into an outstanding game. Please, help us grow the community with a positive review and participate in the development by leaving your feedback, insights, and ideas on our Discord server.

Let's make a great game, together ❤

Lock, load, and loot, Commanders!