Another day, another push of new content. Today in the New Boston zone we're further raising the bar for enemy variety with 4 new enemies paired with all new capabilities to throw buffing and healing (for now) grenades. This also starts to push the street factions into more distinct directions and improves enemy and enemy Talent scaling throughout the set. Maybe you're just settling in to how Wildfire and FireCOM mixed up the battlefield - well now welcome F-Duster, Patchmax, Bulwark and the E-Medic! If you're enjoying the pace of updates and the way we are keeping Early Access interactive and exciting, please take a moment to leave a review. There is no better way that you could thank us for our work.

New Enemy Abilities

So enemies can now throw grenades! This is exciting upgrade for them and giving them a lot more future potential to do cool, dangerous and just awful things. We've opted to start with nice things! Enemies can now toss grenades that target and heal everyone (mercs or enemies) near the impact point, just like your own Medi-Cloud items. In addition, enemies might also throw a buffing grenade full of noxious combat stimulants that can power you up good for the fight at hand. We'll let friendly grenades fly for a bit before we let them throw the boom-boom kind. Time to adjust your team to new realities of warfare in the depths of New Boston, 2231.

3 Enemies for 3 Street Gangs

The release of 3 new enemy types - the Fenian F-Duster ("Fairie Duster"), the Los Zagales Patchmax and the Blue Ox Bulwark - buffs the ranks of the street gangs with exciting new street chemists who mix and match their designer stims to push their soldiers to the limit. The Los Zagales Patchmax delivers a powerful stimulant that raises Action Points, Move Speed and Initiative (while reducing Evasion) giving these street warriors the edge they need to get the jump on you or your crew. The Fenian F-Duster delivers a bear-style stim which raises Accuracy and Critical Rate. This Redmist drives the Fenian fighters into a frenzy and makes the much more dangerous. If you see one of those F-Duster bombs go out, make sure you neutralize its targets before they start unloading on you. The Blue Ox Bulwalk hurls defensive stims, keeping their paramilitary forces on their feet in the fight even if they are taking a massive beating. The Hardmist seeps into their brains and bodies, helping them soak up to 40% more Damage, increasing their Cover Bonus but reducing their Move Speed. We're excited to see the factions stepping out in separate directions with this update and this came along with some adjustments to the underlying data model and code supporting enemy selection which is going to make it easier for us to make more faction variations in the future with less cost.

New Corp Enemy Type

Within the corporate tiers, we've added a new E-Medic enemy type who is tasked with trying to buff and healing their corporate soldiers. Their medium-ranged N-Stim can heal targets with 5m of its naon-cloud release point. From the backlines, firing a heavy Revolver, these E-Medics can be dangerous in their own right but We've also upgraded the KEMCO corp's KEM Doc enemy who carries a shotgun and a medkit that could be used at 2m. This upgrade allows the KEM Doc to also throw a more limited set of N-Stim healing grenades.

KEMCO Scaling

Speaking of KEMCO, we've completed another pass of pushing different enemy sets to have better scaling properties. Now KEMCO's forces have joined the fun and are able to effectively scale like most of the other factions with new weapon and armor upgrades, upgraded Talents and more.

Overwatch Tuning

Exactly what mix of enemies have the Overwatch Talent is a pretty important balance factor within the game, so we will keep improving and tweaking this. The addition of these 4 new enemies who don't Overwatch will help as well and we've made some other minor tweaks to the exact charge counts and recharge rates for enemies' Overwatch Talents throughout the list.

Corporate Captains Heal

Some corporate captains have been granted a medkit carry and can now heal themselves if they aren't taken out fast enough.

v1.8.71 - #134: Drifting Hype Clouds - 8/29/2024

- Added new friendly grenade enemy abilities - healing clouds and buffing combat drug clouds - Added F-Duster (Fenian), Bulwark (Blue Ox) and Patchmax (Los Zagales) enemies who each buff in different way - Upgraded corporate combat medics in multiple factions to throw short range healing cloud grenades - Improved scaling for all KEMCO corporate personnel and guards, added healing abilities to KEM Doc enemy type - Further improved balance of Overwatch availability in enemy Talent mix - Some corporate captains gain ability to use a medkit during combat - Fixed bug where camera would stop following AI after using Skip Enemy Turn a few times - Fixed some causes of the freeze on during map missions