This update continued with some quality of life improvements in the game, specifically around giving players more information about what is happening in the game so that they can make better choices. I've also gone in and made balance changes to some enemies, tech and mods.

The two big changes this release are 3 new Arcane Cores in the game and some rebalancing of existing cores to improve their usefulness and a complete rework of the settings / options menu to better split out and explain some options (including adding new ones).

Once again, if you are playing Vactics and have spare time I have a couple of requests:

1. Tell a friend and tell a stranger. Word of mouth is the main way that I have for Vactics to find people who might enjoy the game.
   
2. If you are enjoying the game, leave a review. These are really helpful for letting Steam inform other players that Vactics is cool as well.
   
3. If you have any things that aren't working for you, make a post on the forum or use the in-game feedback button. I'm keeping an eye on these and will try to help if you are having any difficulty.
   

Thanks to everyone who has been playing, giving feedback and leaving reviews. I really appreciate it.

Release #3 will be looking at continuing this kind of work as well as more planning behind the scenes for the bigger features I want to tackle in Early Access. Also just flagging that my output might be reduced for the next release as I've recently contracted COVID-19. I'm feeling well but I will be resting for part of this week I can recover as soon as possible.

Cheers,
Gerard / The Lemur Conspiracy

Client Versions

Early Access: #0.200.3763
Demo: #0.200.3763

Changes

• Gameplay Balance: increased the drop rates of Arcane Cores in levelled up districts in the campaign, once they are unlocked.
  
• Gameplay Balance: improved the logic that determines the city map layout to increase it's variability.
  
• Gameplay Balance [Escalation Protocols]: rebalanced some thresholds for when certain escalations will appear in levelled up districts during the campaign.
  
• Gameplay Balance: buffed the behaviour of the Push tech. It will now cause damage to enemies that collide as a result of it's movement.
  
• Gameplay Balance: buffed the Speed Reserves Arcane Core, it now reduces skill cooldowns by 3 instead of 2 when mech power is at warning levels.
  
• Gameplay Balance: changed how Death Decoys Arcane Core behaves. It now places a single decoy where each enemy is killed.
  
• Gameplay Balance: changed how the Travel Decoys Arcane Core behaves. It now places a single decoy at the starting position of a mech move.
  
• Gameplay Balance: Dasher Vactics have been moved up in the turn priority and will now take actions before Ranged, Grappler and Shielder Vactics.
  
• Gameplay Balance: decoys will no longer destroy a Vactics if they are placed on the same tile. This was previously possible if the Target Vactics tech mod was active with Decoy tech.
  
• Gameplay Balance: fire tiles placed by the Fire Aspect tech mod will now also destroy buildings.
  
• Gameplay Balance: magnets can no longer be targeted by the Freeze tech, as it wasn't doing anything anyway.
  
• Gameplay Balance: removed the Aggressive tech mod from the Push tech, as that behaviour is now always active for Push.
  
• Gameplay Balance: Shielder Vactics will no longer target other Shielder Vactics, prevents situation where a group of them would be shielding each other every turn and slowing down the game.
  
• Gameplay: when beginning a new campaign run the player is now automatically launched into the first district, removing the need to navigate the map to it every run.
  
• New Arcane Core: added Armored Core that reduces amount damage taken from enemy attacks.
  
• New Arcane Core: added Clear Landing, that pushes enemies away from player spawn position.
  
• New Arcane Core: added Rapid Deployment that prevents enemies from taking a turn after the player spawns in.
  
• Options: added new game option to toggle input shortcut elements on/off in the UI.
  
• Options: added new option to speed up the mech loadout and upgrade sections of the game.
  
• Options: full rework of the options / settings screens in the game to divide all the elements into their own categories and add additional tooltips explaining what some options do when modified.
  
• Options: reworked the fast transitions option to make it even more speedy.
  
• UI: added new codex entries for the districts in the game with flavour text.
  
• UI: added new element to the campaign map screen to show the current energy level of the mech.
  
• UI: improved some messaging clarity in the Daily District leaderboards.
  
• UI: reworked the layout of the gameplay screen and updated some elements so that the player can tell how much progress they have currently made through the active district.
  
• UI: tech cooldowns are now shown in their descriptions to help the player with selecting tech and tech mods to install.
  
• UI: updated some text around Escalation and Tech Mod descriptions to give more clarity to the player.
  
• UI: updated the description of the Push tech to include the number of tiles an enemy will be pushed when targeted by the tech.
  
• UI: updated the game over screen so that the player can view high scores via a statistics button instead of having a button be on the new high score element.

Bugfixes

• Fixed bug where enemies dragged into fires by a magnet effect were not counting towards the players combo.
  
• Gameplay: Fixed issues with Grapple Enemies where they might pull an invalid enemy target towards them when hacked by the player.
  
• Gameplay: Prevent cases where the Control Tower landing would trigger the explosion effect of the Volatile Structures arcane core
  
• UI: Fixed issue with Arcane Core UI element where it would not update it's visual state when no longer selected during gameplay.
  
• UI: Updated the statistics panel to be scrollable to prevent the text being shown from getting reduced to an unreadable size

Note: Any relevant fixes and improvements will also be in the updated client for the demo version of Vactics.