Introducing the Battle Archive - Early Access Update #12

Our new metaprogression system is live for everyone now!

We have had some chunky updates before, but this is probably the biggest change to the game yet. Rogue Command moves from a more roguelike oriented progression system to a roguelite system. This means that you unlock ways to actually gain strength between your runs, not just new stuff to add to the pool.

HOW DOES IT WORK?

The battle archive allows you to invest archive tokens into a huge tree of different upgrades. You gain tokens for every profile XP level and for every new ascension you beat. Assigning points is super easy:

You left click to assign, right click to unassign. Shift buys or sells the whole stack. And if you want something that is further along the tree it will automatically buy the nodes you need to get there.

This makes experimenting with different loadouts super easy. Adding a couple of armor stacks for example really helps making your turrets more of a reliable backbone.

WHY ARE WE INTRODUCING THE BATTLE ARCHIVE?

I have said a lot about that in the last post, when we announced the feature. The most important reason is that we really think it makes the game more fun and more motivating to conquer. The additional layer of tinkering and experimentation really underscores what Rogue Command is all about, coming up with the most bonkers builds and especially those that support your playstyle.

SUBJECT TO CHANGE - LET US KNOW HOW IT FEELS!

Please note, that the Battle Archive might still change significantly. Nodes might be removed, costs might change. Getting the balance right on this is going to take some time and most importantly your feedback.

BATTLE ARCHIVE AND BALANCE - HARDER IS MORE FUN, RIGHT?

The game has been rebalanced from scratch as well. We took a lot more time to actually play test the game ourselves with and without battle archive updates and have really ramped up the difficulty.

Really significantly this time.

Balance is maybe the most important thing we want to focus on before going out of Early Access. For me (Mario) personally, this is the most fun I've had with the game. But I am very aware how skewed my perspective is on this, so please let us know how it feels for you.

Also please do not hesitate to adjust the base difficulty if you feel the game is too hard now, that is why the option exists. The description for the Engaged difficulty was not quite correct, but it is now.

NEW HOTKEYS

Another really great addition are some new hotkeys. From F1 to F5 you now have a set of choices to select:

• F1: all visible combat units. I find myself using this all the time. Often you want to just have the army you can see.

• F2: still selects all combat units all over the map. When you want to go for that all in attack... or desperately need everything to come back to defend...

• F3: Select all harvesters. Again something I use all the time to trigger the harvester skills, really handy.

• F4: Select idle harvesters - while the harvesters usually seek their next patch on their own, sometimes you might accidentally send them somewhere else or forget to deploy the Core Harvesters (cough, cough, not that I ever do that...).

• F5: Select all buildings with active abilities. This makes going for the super weapon type buildings a lot more fun.

These new keys currently do not have UI elements associated this will likely come later down the road.

HEAT LEVELS UPDATE

Heat levels have also been updated and are a lot harder. Feedback we have gotten indicated that it felt like too much of a slog to get a point where it becomes really hard and therefore we ramped those up as well. This might very well mean that if you have gotten deep into the Heat levels, you will have to find your sweetspot somewhere lower.

Heat overall is still a bit weird. The idea of an endlessly scaling monster is scary from a game design perspective, since there is nothing we can do to make this balanced at all. We know a lot of people still really enjoy the punishment, but please be aware that there is no guarantee for the heat modes to be beatable beyond the single digits.

BUGS!

As always we also have a huge list of bug fixes. I am not completely sure, but I think this might be the longest list we ever had... It was a lot of work to even put together from the backlog. So I thought I'd just mention that we are also always working on that front.

BETA BRANCH UPDATES

If you want to get all the updates early and help us test out the new changes, you can switch your game to the Beta branch in your Steam library. Right click -> Properties -> Betas and select the beta from the dropdown menu.

See the full list of changes below.

FULL CHANGELIST:

Version 0.8.69

GENERAL CHANGES:

• BATTLE ARCHIVE: Added permanent roguelite progression element, that allows you to assign points earned every XP level to a big number of different improvements.

• From now on it is not allowed to place buildings within skill range of Builder Bases

• The building buttons of the engineer now are deactivated if the building is too expensive

• Algorithm that centers camera on selected entities now centers on centroid of biggest cluster (instead of centering on centroid of all selected entities)

• Added skill description for PCX Crystal Cleaner

• Changed how some spawned objects that should not block the path are placed

• adjusted HP bar segments for grown HP values.

• New hotkeys: select combat units on screen, select all harvesters, select idle harvesters, select buildings with an active ability

• Combat engineer now will also be selected when selecting all combat units or all combat units on screen

• The settings and the profile folders containing the savegames will now be saved in %userprofile%\\AppData\\LocalLow\\Feneq\\Rogue Command\\ instead of directly in the game directory (to prevent write protection of these directories by ransomware protection software)

• Now the profiles can be fully reset or only the tutorial and story intro can be reset

BATTLE ARCHIVE

• Added some new nodes and replaced some that had more “hack-like” functions.

• New range node

• Many changes to cost balance

• Changed amount of tokens gained per heat level to 5

• Corrected spawn HP node description.

• Corrected phrasing on Universal shields node.

• Fixed a couple of descriptions and adjusted some costs and values.

• Changed the balance on a lot of nodes

• changed some upgrades to specific to non-turret buildings.

• New node: Turret Range

• Shift-click now works correctly

BALANCE:

• This patch completely rebalances the game. The overall base difficulty is a lot harder. 

• Changed rich crystal buff to a percentage increase.

• Exciter Beam Cruiser no longer attacks automatically while moving. 

• PCX Tank (the big one) has gotten a roof machine gun. 

• Machine Gun Turrets have been buffed quite a bit

• All support Tank specialist hack upgrade effects now apply to all allies and are stackable where applicable. But duration is reduced.

• Monster Mode Ray is now consumable

• Mantis Mech Bad Table Manners effect now occurs on a slight delay and therefore will effect the target area of the teleport, not the are around the origin location.

• Ascension enemy value scales increased

• Heat enemy values increased significantly

• Some minor adjustments to some enemy units. Still mostly making them stronger.

• Slight nerf to Armored Harvester.

• Adjusted the effects of some drops.

• Raised minimum needed distance for AI Buildings from player start.

• Chests can no longer be damaged

• PCX Roof Turrets on Builderbases attack cooldown slower

• Increased the difficulty changes per Heat level.

• Further changes to make some enemies stronger.

• Reduced hover harvester income rate and capacity

• Rich crystals now raise the harvest rate of harvesters that are working on them.

CONTENT:

• New Unit: Rocket Swarmer

• New Upgrade: A Little Better

• New Ancient Building

• Better death effect for PCX Dragon Bug

• New Drop: Beast mode ray - non consumable weaker version of monster mode ray.

BUG FIXES:

• Show damage of Bombs on Card again

• Fixed: Extra Cargo from Battle Archive: it now does not give additional harvester(s) + refund any more

• Better way to handle pathfinding between building corners and cliffs

• PCX Builderbase turret role added

• Fixed resilient growth hack not working correctly

• Spider Spawns, Bomb Creeps and some mines can now trigger crit damage

• Correct node logic behind the new building nodes from 0.8.67

• Added missing supporter role on some buildings that also use skills.

• Don't set rally point for ai buildings

• Fixed exceptions thrown by the PCXTank card

• Spawn walker HP boost for spiders works as advertised.

• Removed broken hack “Confusing panic”.

• Added harvester role to crystal dust catcher.

• Fixed CF Backpack not triggering correctly.

• Fixed Armor Shred Meta Node not being able to stack.

• Combat Engineer HP raised.

• Missing Cost and skill type fixed on boulder turret

• Fixed Engineer death stun and PCX Prison stun not working on shielded units

• Better obscurance for background when deck view or single card view are open

• Ancient Blessing meta node should always work now and the tower is selectable.

• Fixed certain bullet hits triggering their hit event twice. 

• PCX Tank roof turret also affected by stun/slow.

• Fixed PCX Crystal Cleaner passive not working correctly

• Fixed Ranger Turret Critical effect not working

• Fixed Factory Death Defender meta node can no longer trigger specialist factories.

• added visual confirmation for Data Pod event unlock.

• Fixed: reroll button wasn't clickable if disabled because of no-more-items-to-show before

• Only present upgrades in shop that have a viable target

• Rush Beacon teleportation now works as expected

• Melee units could have had trouble approaching their targets in the last update. This is now fixed

• Fixed some of the cases where units could get stuck on the map

• Fixed situations where enemy bases don’t spawn properly

• There were situations in which the MG Truck never hit its target. This is now fixed.

• The egg hatchlings of the Swarm Walker specialist now spawn at the correct positions (and not where the egg was injected), the eggs fire at the correct targets and maybe some more related bugs with other skills are fixed now

• The possibility that units get stuck between buildings (or obstacles) and cliffs should now be smaller

• Fixed (rare) exception that could occur if ai has building on the map border

• Prevent clicks on the frame of the minimap to control the camera

• Small Healing Spire now shows effect range when building or when selected. 

• Smart Grenade Marine shows impact are for skill

• DropButtons can no longer be clicked when deck overview is opened

• Rush Beacons and Extenders can receive veterancy

• Defender Tank status effects will also be applied to the roof turret

• Fixed size of smart fire from Fire Mech Skill

• Fixed lighting in Intermission screen deck view

• Fixed Rush Beacon extender missing Spawn role

• Fixed sound playing when viewing weather tower in database

• Fixed CF Burners not targeting correctly in many cases especially towards higher ground targets.

• Fixed Fresh Air Hack being linked to wrong Hack

• Fixed Buckler Mech not being able to attack when attack speed got too high

• Fixed XP Level 26 containing too many unlock items, so the list would overflow

• “Specialist Lost” Warning no longer displaying when temporary spawn versions of the specialist dies.

• Fixed Buildings not displaying status effect icons below their HP bar

• CF Backpacks should no longer spawn anything when the player was the origin.

• Drop Texts for Armored Production and Favorite Toy now specify if they can stack.  

• Monster mode and Beast mode ray clarify stacking rules as well.

• No more battling for origin of card value change between difficulty, ascension and heat

• Prevent audio spike in main menu after splash screen: start background music only after volume is set

• Increased text size of some elements of the in-game menu map info widget and the run results screen to prohibit vanishing of the character "i" in full hd resolution

• Prevent PCX Corrosive Detachment from building second PCX Base Control

• Clamp volume settings between 0% and 100% to prevent loud audio if these settings get corrupted

• Fixed differences between values in card view and entity stats widget

• Start game clock only after the player clicked on the start button

• Melee units that got a higher weapon range through upgrades or relics might have stopped too far from target units to attack them. Now they will always try to get close to them independent of their weapon range.

• Fixed: If Engi died while moving out of the way of a called down building he wasn't able to build any more

• Duplication Ray can no longer target Engineers

• Upgrade reward: don't present upgrades that can not be applied

PERFORMANCE:

• Added preloading of SpiderSpawns and RoboZombos to avoid stuttering when spawning larger groups of them

• If a bunch of units target an unreachable unit or building the performance should be much better now

• Prespawn Bomb Creeps

CRASHES:

• Changed some memory management stuff to reduce crashes

MOD SUPPORT

• Added missing harvesters to exampleEntityBalancing.tsv

• Put Mod directory directly in Rogue Command directory to avoid problems with cloud saves (and to make it independent of the chosen profile)