If your older saves load with the team at 0 health, visit the medbay and get patched up!

Elemental Madness has arrived.

An elemental damage system has been bubbling beneath the surface of StarCrawlers for a while and now it’s ready to burst forth in all it’s zapping, burning, melting, devouring and terrifying glory. In addition, we’ve added a Combat Log, new twists to Challenge & Hardcore difficulties, and tons of improvements to class abilities, weapons, armor, shields and accessories. Dig in!

Elemental Damage

Class abilities can now deal basic Physical damage, elemental damage (Energy, Fire, Chemical, Nanite or Void). multiple types of elemental damage, or channel the element of your equipped weapon. Most generated weapons will deal Physical damage, but rarer and high-level items can deal elemental damage. Mobs also deal elemental damage with some of their attacks and the power of elemental attacks from mob abilities grows as they level.

Elemental Resistances

Elemental damage is absorbed by Barriers and Shields as normal, but pierces Armor. The block power of Armor has been increased to serve as a superior defense against Physical attacks, and the absorption power of Shields has been slightly reduced. When facing elemental damage, you’ll want to stack resistances to reduce the incoming damage to manageable levels. Armor, shields, accessories, item upgrades and class abilities can all contribute to resistances. Similarly, mobs have natural resistances to some elements and have gained abilities to boost resistances.

Classes

There have been significant changes to the class trees to incorporate the new elemental damage system. All classes abilities that deal damage now deal either Physical, Energy, Fire, Chemical, Nanite or Void damage. Some classes will see further abilities updates and changes as we test the new system and receive feedback.

Soldier

• Reduced max effectiveness of Meat Shield to 20% damage reduction and increased base damage slightly.
• Defiance now reduces damage if the enemy is Taunted to attack the Soldier.
• The cooldown on Juggernaut has been increased to 8 turns.
• Bouncing Betty no longer drops bomblets at Rank 3 if the Soldier has been killed.
• Rocket Strike max damage slightly reduced and no longer pierces Armor as it now deals Fire damage (which bypasses Armor).
• Hellfire Salvo damage slightly decreased and now randomly attacks the battlefield instead of random mobs, making it more chaotic, but guaranteeing a hit if a rocket lands near a mob. This make Hellfire Salvo more effective against multiple enemies and less deadly against a single target.
• UXO now tosses out extra Bomblets when activated, removing the requirement that Bomblets are already deployed to use it.
• Boom King at Rank 3 now also causes targets damaged by your Bomblets to take increased damage from Fire attacks. This effect stacks.
• Bonus damage taken by enemies hit with a Heavy Weapon in Overwatch reduced to 5/7/10%.
• The max damage of Hotstreak has been reduced to 200% weapon damage and the Time Unit cost reduced to 25% of weapon speed.

Force Psyker

• Mirror Prism now deals damage to all enemies when it manifests. Shatter damage dealt to the Force Psyker is converted to Energy damage.
• Spirit Armor now provides passive elemental resistance to allies in combat and heals the Force Psyker when taking Energy damage at Rank 3.
• Purifying Prism no longer damages the Force Psyker but instead deals damage to enemies when it absorbs a debuff or stun effect or shatters as Rank 3.
• Barrier Prison now attempts to Stun the target each turn and deal weapon damage.
• Spirit Link now grants resistance to all enemies when a Barrier absorbs elemental damage.
• Fists of Fury (Rank 3) now increases Energy damage taken by the target.

Void Psyker

• The damage of Overload has been reduced as it now deals elemental Void damage.
• The damage on Cannibalize has been slightly reduced.
• The damage of Shadowbolt / Voidbolt has been slightly reduced and the energy requirement to convert to Voidbolt has been reduced to 30.
• Torrent (Rank 3) now increases Void damage taken by the target.
• Void Storm now strikes randomly across the battlefield and deals increased damage.
• Ascendance (Rank 3) now grants Void resistance to your allies if you Overload and makes the Void Psyker immune to damage from Overload.

Prototype

• Reduced Time Unit cost of Thunderclap.

Engineer

• Junker no longer Taunts but can explode to deal Chemical damage and increase damage taken from Chemical attacks.

Hacker

• Virus: Mindmelt no longer stacks damage with each use but instead reduces the Nanite resistance of the target.
• The explosion damage of Corruption has been reformulated to grow based on weapon damage.
• Virus: Hotlink no longer provides Haste but instead deals damage based on your weapon element and grants team resistance to the same element.
• Timed Release no longer regenerates shield but instead increases the duration of Optimization tree effects and grants a chance to refresh them automatically. At Rank 3, team damage grows with each turn the Hacker takes.
• Fixed an issue with Scramble that could upset the orderly progression of the timeline.
• Fixed an issue with Root Hack that could prevent enemies from acting on their turn.

Difficulty

• On Standard and higher difficulties, leveling up no longer heals to full but instead maintains the current health percentage.
• On Challenge Difficulty, characters will not heal automatically at the end of a mission but can skip a mission, visit the medbay, or use a medkit to heal.
• On Hardcore Difficulty, characters must visit the medbay or use a medkit to heal.
• On Challenge and higher difficulties, killed characters have a chance to incur a Grievous Wound after being revived. The severity of the wound increases with each death.
• On Hardcore Difficulty, Grievous Wounds are permanent.

Enemies

• Mobs now have base resistances to elemental damage that scales with their level.
• Mob special attacks now deal elemental damage that scales with their level..

Items

• Armor now only blocks Physical (basic) damage and its effectiveness has been increased for both mobs and players.
• Shields and Barriers continue to absorb all types of damage and their effectiveness has been slightly reduced.
• Weapons can be generated with a chance to deal elemental damage with their standard attack.
• Armor and Shields can be generated with a base resistance to elemental attacks.
• Upgrades for Weapons, Armor and Shields can improve elemental damage & resistance.
• Siyama has begun producing weapons that deal Energy, Fire and Chemical damage.
• Zeus has begun producing weapons that deal Nanite damage.
• Foxkin has arrived as a manufacturer of fine weapons, armor and shields.
• Weapons now have additional generated names.

UI

Combat Log added to combat and currently displays:

• All damage absorbed by barriers.
• All damage absorbed by shields.
• Physical damage blocked by armor.
• Health damage taken.
• Additional information will be added in future updates and the ability to toggle visibility for different display types.

Fixes

• Fixed an issue where events in the hub would not lock some menu controls.
• Fixed Crew Status close button overlapping enemies and confusing the UI.
• Fixed issue that could cause Battle Icons to not display health bars / numbers accurately if there was a large volume of incoming damage.
• Fixed an issue with Soldiers Weapon Specialist that could prevent cooldown resetting on kills.
• Fixed an issue with the mission Dumpster Diving which could halt combat.
• Fixed an issue breaking the contact event for Chimera BioPharma Solutions.
• Fixed an issue that could cause accessories to not load updated stats.

Coming Next

• Now New Story Mission!
• More friendly faction contact events.
• More cool stuff!

[ 2016-06-04 00:19:09 CET ] [ Original post ]