First post-release patch & plans for more content in the future
Survivors!
It’s only been a few days since Judgment emerged from Early Access, and oh, what a time it has been. We’ve seen an explosion across global media, with numerous youtube videos and twitch streams from around the world. It’s been a pleasure and a privilege to see so many people enjoy our game. Thank you for that.
Of course, the Apocalypse waits for no man. Today we are releasing our first post-release patch, which includes bug fixes of the most glaring issues that you reported just after release, and a few other improvements that were easy and relative risk-free to make. Below you can also read a bit more about our future plans for Judgment.
Here are the two main issues that were fixed. A list of other smaller improvements can be found at the bottom of the post.
This was such a small bug, a simple debugging toggle that we accidentally left on. But with such huge implications. The chance to hit, for both demons and survivors, was +50 than what was displayed. The implications of such a bug are huge:
The minimum hit chance of 20% suddenly became 70%, making high evasion rather useless.
The maximum hit chance was 50% instead of 100%, because 50+50 gives you 100% hit rate. Any additional points spent in accuracy that increased the hit chance above 50 were wasted.
Everyone was hitting much more often, dealing damage much faster, making melee and tanks much less useful, and making weapon range an OP stat, because too much damage was dealt before closing in the distance.
High accuracy weapons and accuracy improving skills were mostly wasted.
Automatic weapons were OP due to high attack rate AND high hit rate.
Cover, which increases both accuracy and evasion, was much less useful than it should have been.
The penalty penalizing ranged against melee, accuracy penalty at night - all didn’t work as planned.
So we fixed it. But that wasn’t enough. This bug was introduced a month ago, so all our balancing tests were done with it. That meant we had to redo them - and that’s what we’ve been doing mostly, for the past 48 hours since we found this issue. And as expected, some things were off. Evasion and tanks suddenly became OP. So here’s what we had to change:
Evasion bonuses from skills and items were lowered a little bit.
The minimum hit chance was increased from 20% to 30%.
Accuracy of all weapons and all enemies increased by 20%
These fixes make Fallen Angels and Morax a bit less OP than they were, specially against tanks, who are now useful against them once again. But fighting against such enemies with high range still requires a change in tactics compared to the lower tier, lower range enemies.
Kidnapped Survivors bug
There was a bug in the campaign mission where survivors were kidnapped. As soon as you reached this point in the campaign, 2 survivors were removed from your base. If these survivors happened to be in a task force, they were NOT removed from the task force. This caused issues, especially if you sent that same task force to rescue these survivors, and then ended up having the same survivor twice. There was a workaround, you simply had to remove the kidnapped survivor manually from the task force, but now it won’t happen any more.
Note: If you have a save with a kidnapped survivor in a task force, you will still have to remove them manually. The fix will prevent it from happening again, but not fix saves after the bug happened.
Plans for the future
We also wanted to take this opportunity to give you some insights into our future plans and roadmap. We have been asked several times what we are planning to do post-release. Let us be clear that, the development of Judgment’s has not ended. This patch will not be the last one, and in the future we do plan to add more content/mechanics, not just fixes.
Our next patch, unless anything urgent comes up, will be a few short weeks from now. During this time we plan to focus on community suggestions, work on quality of life improvements, balance changes and UI fixes based on player feedback. That is our main focus right now.
Following that, we will start working on a larger update that will include more new content and maybe even mechanics. We’re playing with the idea of other game modes, in addition to campaign and sandbox, but no promises since we haven’t thought it through yet.
In the meantime, you can keep yourself up to date following us on social media, or joining our rapidly-growing Discord server.
Other Fixes
Warnings will now be shown in the world map as well.
Geologist moved to tier 3 research. Waiting for tier 4 before you could search for stones and clay was too much, since you could run out.
Geologist no longer needs bricks, since without geologist you can’t find more clay/stone to make bricks, if you ever run out.
Companion farms now provide more wheat and vegetables, so a single companion farm is more efficient than 1 wheat and 1 veggie farm. It’s still less efficient than 1 wheat or 1 veggie if you only need that.
Abilities time to cast now displayed more accurately, with decimal points.
Taskforce management edit members button now shows + and - instead of just +, so it’s clear you can use that to remove survivors as well.
Some event rewards tweaked so the reward better fits the game stage
Added demon scales and hell essense to loot in some tier 4/5 scavenge locations (mostly churches).
Defenders can no longer start with the weak trait.
Language mods no longer disable achievements.
Some fixes to Russian translation.
Judgment is upon us - Full release available now
Survivors!
We never thought so many people would be eagerly awaiting Judgment day, but here we are. Almost three years in the making, over two years in Early Access, Judgment: Apocalypse Survival Simulation 1.0 is now on Steam!
The full version is, by far, the biggest single update we have ever released. The update pretty much doubles the amount of content in the game. If you are new to Judgment, you will be happy to hear that for the next week, to celebrate the launch, anyone that purchases the game will get our soundtrack for free.
Why release now?
Originally, we planned to spend half a year in early access. It’s been over two years now, and that time has been very productive. We released ten major updates, received priceless feedback, and had ample time to listen, implement and polish the game. Thanks to our postponing of the full release by another half-year after we were almost ready, we also had enough time to properly balance and debug all the new 1.0 content without being pressed for time. At this stage, we believe it is mature enough to be considered a full game, and no longer in alpha.
What’s next for Judgment?
Saying that we consider Judgment a full game does not mean we have nothing left to add to it. We still have a huge backlog of stuff we want to see added, and we do plan to work on it post-update.
Rest assured that we will be listening to your feedback and fixing or improving as needed. We also have at least one content update planned, with more random events, enemies and items amongst other things. Some cool new mechanics are also being considered, as well as additional game modes. I Can’t promise anything at this moment, but we do plan on adding to Judgment. How much and how often will also depend on our financial ability, which in turn depends on how well the full version sells.
As we work on these updates, we will also start brainstorming our next project. Judgment is our first game and we learned a LOT along the way. We have leveled up working on it, and are now eager to proceed to the next world. An open world, a blank slate, in which we can use all that we have learned to create a great new experience.
All right, you’re probably dying to hear all the details about the full release update, so let’s dive right in.
Story - Based Campaign
The main feature of 1.0 is the campaign. Its story stretches over 5 episodes, complete with new scripted missions and new maps, cutscenes and multiple endings.
Note that this is not an expansion of the placeholder campaign that we had during Early Access. This is a whole new thing. The beginning may seem a bit similar, since after all there’s are the basics of setting up camp and surviving, but very quickly it becomes something altogether different.
Sandbox Mode
For those that do not want to follow the campaign’s storyline, we also introduced a new sandbox mode. There is no story or campaign missions, simply build, explore and survive for as long as you can. You will be able to unlock all technologies, objects, rituals, and equipment, just like in campaign mode.
Late Game Content
As detailed in our last dev diary, the full release adds two additional tiers - with new weapons, technologies, armor, equipment, enemies, rituals and more. This effectively doubles the amount of content, while adding many fresh challenges.
Additional Changes
While the core of the update is our campaign and new content, every update to Judgment includes a whole range of bug fixes, quality of life improvements and features. The list below is only partial and highlights the biggest changes:
Official support for French.
Community-made translations to Spanish, Russian and Italian.
The World map is 2.5 times bigger and includes two new biomes: Savannah and Tundra.
Additional professions that add increased diversity to your survivors.
Survivor level cap increased to level 10, with levels 5 and 10 granting double skill points, so you can max out 3 different skills.
More low-tier weapons and armor.
More random events.
A 64-bit build.
Additional music tracks, and various graphic improvements.
A short introduction battle that gives a small taste of mid-tier combat early on.
New special survivors for you to discover.
Old saves and mods
Old saves from the EA version, unfortunately, will not work with the full version. You can still use the Beta Branches tab in Steam if you want to continue your EA game. Right click the game in your library, select the beta branches tab, and in the drop down select Alpha 15.1.
We couldn’t have reached where we are without your continued support, feedback and kind words. But now we need your help again - to spread the word about Judgment! If you are interested in helping, please check this page for what you can do.
Judgment OST Released - Free for a limited time
Survivors, are you as excited as we are? Only one week until full release!
In the meantime, we wanted to tell you that we hear you loud and clear – time and time again you indicated how much you enjoy Judgment’s music. So, we are happy to announce that in conjunction with the full release, we are also releasing the full original soundtrack. But that’s not all! As a thank you for your continued support, anyone who bought the game during Early Access, and who will buy the game in the week following the full release will gets it for free!
The soundtrack DLC will be automatically added to the account of all players who already own the game and those who will buy the game during the free period. No action is required. You can read more about Soundtracks and Steam.
In the last few months we have worked closely with Alon Kaplan, our composer, to create several new tracks that will be featured in the game, some of which you haven't heard yet. Those include a new ‘night’ theme, a new day theme and music that will be used in the campaign cutscenes. The soundtrack also includes a bonus track – the original opening score for the game when it was just released in Early Access, that has since been removed.
Alon has composed for over seventy video games, tv shows and movies, and we couldn’t be happier with the work he has done for Judgment. You can check out more of Alon's work.
Alon’s original work captures the tone of the Apocalypse perfectly – the down-to-earth and hopeful themes of the survivors, told by jazz and guitar elements, combined with the more subdued and dark themes that represents the world around them. We can’t wait to hear what you think of the new tracks, and we hope you will enjoy the OST while you're waiting for the full release.
Full track List
1. Main Theme – 2:01
2. Surviving Another Day – 2:30
3. Shadow of the Day – 3:17
4. Lost Echoes – 3:25
5. Dark Whisper – 1:15
6. A Night in the Forest – 1:23
7. This is Our Story – 1:54
8. Battle Music (Remix) – 2:14
9. Bonus Track: The Start (Deleted Track) – 1:26
The Apocalypse is coming! Full release announcement
Survivors!
Oil your firearms and stretch your bowstrings. Ready your med-kits and open your food caches. The apocalypse is coming, and it now has a date.
For several weeks now, we have hinted, insinuated and whispered rumors. Now, after we have consulted oracles, seers and books of prophecies, we know the exact day the world will end.
Judgement day is coming – on the 3rd of May.
We are very proud to announce that the full version of Judgment: Apocalypse Survival Simulation will officially be released in a few short weeks. Two years ago we released Judgment on Early Access, and we truly feel we are ready now – and eager to show you everything that we have planned.
The full release version is going to include a full story campaign, complete with cut scenes, that will let you delve into the mystery of the demon invasion – and try to find a way for humanity to survive it.
That’s not all! The world of Judgment is going to be much bigger, with huge world maps 250% the size of the previous maps that include new biomes, tougher demons, many new items, new rituals to perform, and new random events for you to discover. We will also include an official French translation, sandbox mode, 64-bit native version and a whole range of quality of life improvements and bug fixes. Community supported translations to additional languages that are integrated into the game are planned as well - see our previous announcement.
The full release update is going to be our biggest update to date, but you know us – we aren’t done yet. We already have a few content updates planned, and we will keep working with the community to improve the game after the full release.
See full release announcement: https://steamcommunity.com/games/455980/announcements/detail/2856847422533231229
Survivors, we come bearing news.
Surviving in the apocalypse is hard enough as it is, so we want to make it a little bit easier. We want you to be able to survive (or try to) in your own language.
Official Translations
In the rapidly approaching full release, we will be adding official support for the French language, in addition to the existing official translations to German and Chinese. Special thanks again to those who helped support these languages before we created official translations - ZombieKingdom (Chinese), and Senhar (French).
Integrating Community Translations
In addition, we are working with modders that created the Spanish, Italian and Russian languages, to integrate their translations directly into the game, so you won't need to download the mods from the workshop. Special thanks to Nivaska (Russian), Darth Vader (Italian) and Siodog (Spanish).
If any of you want to help translate to additional languages, please drop us an email to contact@suncrash.com, or come chat with us on our discord server. I would also like to thank all our other modders, that added cool game modes, languages, and other improvements to the game.
We are especially excited to offer the upcoming campaign story in so many languages. Can't wait!
Dev Diary: Designing Endgame Equipment
Welcome survivors, to another Judgment dev diary.
In our last diary I focused on the new professions that will be introduced in the full release. Today I want to continue this trend by talking about endgame weapons and armor.
In Judgment, most weapons, armor, and accessories are gated behind tier-based research that requires unique research materials. These materials, in turn, are most commonly found in the outside world, protected by higher-tier enemies - so you need to defeat tier 3 enemies before you can unlock tier 3 research. Acquiring the necessary research materials and advancing to the next research tier is one of the more challenging milestones in the game..
The current Early Access version includes the first three tiers. The release version will include new items in existing tiers and two additional tiers, essentially doubling the amount of content in the game. These are accompanied by new, more dangerous foes, the very lords of hell, but I will write about those in a future dev diary. For now, I want to discuss your tools for fighting those demons.
New Weapons
The task to design new weapons for the full release was twofold. It included both coming up with convincing and interesting weapons, but also finding ways to fill up holes we had in our previous weapon roster.
Many of our survivors have starting skills that provide benefits when using certain types of weapons such as bonuses to pistols, tech weapons, automatic weapons and such. However, some categories didn’t have enough useful weapons to complement them.
Finding suitable weapons to fit into the previous three tiers had been fun, and resulted in some cool new weapons such as the Holy Preacher and the Witchbane - new lower tier occult weapons.
The main task, however, was designing endgame weapons. The goal here is not just to make more powerful and interesting weapons – but to slowly add more tactical options as the player progresses in the game. The lords of hell can not be defeated by sheer brute force - it will also require the cunning application of abilities and powers. Higher tier weapons do not rely on more damage alone, but also on stronger and more diverse effects and abilities.
Some of these new weapons are simply a linear progression of weapons you already know – the Sniper Rifle leads to the 50-Caliber Rifle and finally to an advanced, tech-based sniper rifle that fires guided projectiles and offers incredible range and accuracy. Similarly, the Coilgun will be replaced by the mightier Railgun as you advance in the tiers, then by a Laser Rifle and a Beam Cannon – all adding increasingly powerful focused shot abilities.
Other weapons offer far more interesting options. The tier 5 Bazooka has low fire rate and accuracy but is buffed by an incredibly powerful splash damage effect that makes it a superb weapon against tight groups of demons. The Minigun will quickly dispatch hordes of low-health enemies such as hell hounds, but will prove less effective against more robust opponents. The Incinerator and Acid Gun will deal splash damage that applies a burning effect, reducing the armor of the demon horde and softening them for an effective long-range attack.
It was also a chance to add weapons that had some interesting and unorthodox inspiration, including allusions to theology, such as the the Angelic Arbalest, a divine bow forged in heaven. Another interesting creation is the the Acid Gun, a steampunk-esque invention hailing back to the days of alchemy, now crafted with advanced technology.
Powerful new Armors
Adding additional armor choices had been a somewhat more challenging task, so I focused on the end goal – adding armors that aren’t just better, but also open new tactical options and active combat abilities. Thinking about what sort of abilities I wanted to be granted by the new armor pieces helped me, in turn, come up with the armor choices themselves.
So, in tier 5, you will unlock the Combat Suit that gives a temporary buff to damage while the Rocket Suit gives a significant boost to movement speed. Unlike the Holy Armor in tier 2, a Paladin’s Vestment does not grant the active bless ability, but has a bless aura that allows the champion to lead troops into battle. The Armor of Souls is a new dark armor that grants a passive buff to damage, while Gaia's Wrath is an incredibly rare and powerful nature armor that can make its wearer nearly invulnerability to damage, temporarily, at the cost of speed.
In conclusion, the full release comes with dozens of new weapons and armor – we only touched a fragment of what we plan to include. Keep following our dev diaries for more insight into the new content coming in the full release and our thought processes designing it.
Dev Diary: New Professions
Greetings, survivors.
As we get closer to the day of Judgment (pun intended), we feel it is time to highlight some of the content you can expect to see in the full version. You will be facing enemies that are far more dangerous and powerful than you ever have before – but you will also have access to a whole range of new equipment, rituals, research options and more.
Today, we would like to talk about the strongest weapon in the game – the survivors themselves. More specifically, the new professions that will be added in the full release. Designing and implementing them has been a tough, but rewarding, challenge.
The design task called for three brand new professions that will complement the previous roster for a total of nine professions. In addition, the Defender profession needed work – it was originally added on a whim without a proper design process, and ended up feeling like a copy of the Fighter profession with different level-up skills.
A profession in Judgement is composed of two main elements – a pool of unique, profession-specific starting skills as well as eight level-up skill paths. Every survivor receives one random profession-specific starting skill – those often represent the survivor’s background before the apocalypse and can be anything from ‘scientist’ to ‘ex-cop’. In addition, as a survivor gains experience and levels up, they can advance in any of the eight skill paths available to their profession.
Adding new professions to Judgement is not an easy task. Due to the random nature of the game, there are certain requirements:
Every team of survivors needs to be at least semi-functional, so even if you have a starting team of all fighters or all engineers, you still won't be at too big of a disadvantage.
Starting skills, which are the only random element here, need to be relatively powerful so that players have to adapt to the situation instead of using the same strategy every playthrough.
All skill paths must be well divided across all professions, so you will always have a reasonable chance to have at least some survivors that are good at critical tasks, such as research or farming.
All skill paths must be well represented so that there is no dominated strategy (a strategy that is always worse than the alternatives) and all upgrade paths are viable. This includes making sure there are adequate starting skills that can complement all skill paths of a given profession.
So, the new professions must be distinct enough to be interesting, while maintaining the general balance of the game, not being too powerful as to make the game too easy, or too unique so that not having this profession/skill would put you at a disadvantage. Obviously, they also have to fit the thematic style of Judgment.
With all of that in mind, we first approached the task by trying to identify where our previous roster was lacking in terms of popular and important skill paths that weren’t common enough. The first thing we realized is that we needed more professions that are good at research, both science and occult - and from that, we came up with the Academic.
The Academic is best described as an interesting mix between the engineer and the priest professions, which will makes it highly desirable to most players. Not only for its proficiency in research, the Academic will also be sought after for its access to two of the most important production skills in the game – crafting and farming.
From a thematic point of view, the academic provides a chance to include a whole range of interesting backgrounds as starting skills, such as mathematicians and necromancers.
The next profession, The Artisan, went through several revisions before we were happy with it. The original plan called for the artisan to be one of the most useful jack-of-all-trades camp followers, excelling in many of the various production skills.
The result, however, was that the artisan felt a bit too lopsided and often too similar to the Engineer. Going back to the drawing board, we ended up designing the artisan to be a different sort of jack-of-all-trades. It combines two important production skills - crafting and gathering - along with mining, making sure the artisan itself has access to most of the fundamentals that are needed to keep your industry working efficiently. The rest of the skills include some of the more standard weapon skills, such as pistols and rifles, in addition to defensive skills that boost resistance and health. The result is a useful camper that can also protect your base when needed.
The Artisan starting skills also fit the world of Judgement, where survivors had real lives before the invasion - those would be dock workers and oil miners, factory workers and laborers.
The third and final profession we added, the Scout, is a small departure from the other professions in that it has access to a new skill path unique to this profession: scouting. Scouting is the only skill path that can benefit an entire task force.
Scouting can give your task force benefits such as faster travel speed and longer vision, and can even offer bonuses to the scout’s attack range. Since the scout also has the marksmanship skill path, these survivors have the potential to get a total of +2 to their weapon's range – a truly interesting combination.
The scout differs from the survivalist by having less defensive and offensive skills, but more weapon skills. It’s also the only profession other than the fighter and defender that can specialize in automatic weapons.
The Scout's starting skills are also varied, ranging from trained rangers to hobos.
Finally, the Defender was significantly reworked. The defender has fewer weapon skills than the fighter now, but can access all four defensive skill paths, including a path specializing in melee and a new skill path that increases a survivor’s armor values. In addition, the defender is an archetype that comes loaded with starting skills that complement its defensive capabilities and give various benefits that help it avoid damage and allow it to withstand more punishment, such as the SWAT officer that gets a bonus to protection from cover, the bouncer, and a bodyguard that takes less damage from all attacks.
The result is that the fighter tends to be a better all-around soldier while the defender is your ultimate front-line tank. All in all, we think this profession serves its purpose a lot better now.
I hope you enjoyed this short sneak peek into our thought processes and what you can expect to see in the release version – more options, more possibilities, and more combinations.
As always, we welcome feedback and would love to hear your thoughts.
Dev Diary: Traders
Greetings survivors, and welcome to the second installment in our dev-diary series. Today, we are going to focus on the trader algorithm improvement that was introduced in Update 15.
We initially released the trading feature in Update 13. For the first time in Judgement, trading allowed players to engage in economics, selling surplus items and purchasing rare resources or powerful equipment that would help them battle the demonic horde.
While the feature was well received, the overwhelming feedback was that most items sold by the traders were either useless or too expensive. So expensive, in fact, that many players didn’t bother with the trading mechanics at all.
Trading was meant to be a secondary channel to receiving certain necessary goods. Getting a trader visit was supposed to be an event players looked forward to, and one of the biggest rewards for being in good relationships with neighboring settlements. Clearly, we wanted traders to be useful.
Trader prices were designed to be high, so that this route is actually secondary, and only used occasionally to get higher tier equipment. The main progress path was still to be achieved through research, crafting and scavenging. Getting higher tier equipment is one of the more challenging milestones in Judgment, where players need to get higher level research resources while still using lower level equipment. If players could easily buy their way to the next tier, that challenge would be lost. So, how do we make traders meaningful and useful, without breaking the balance?
Traders v2.0
The first step was to clearly identify the problem. The core problem, as we saw it, was not necessarily that the prices were too high, but that players had nothing they really wanted, such that they would be willing to pay the high prices, being offered to them. Players often got lower tier gear and resources, those that they could already craft themselves, and were unwilling to pay high prices for them.
Once we identified the issue, we attacked it on three fronts. First, we increased the selling price of equipment. It is now sold at 25% of the buying price, as opposed to 10% before Update 15. This would make it a bit more feasible to get enough scraps for an upgrade by selling lower tier equipment.
Second, we added some new items that are helpful, but not absolutely essential (as opposed to higher tier equipment), that can only be obtained through traders. You can find journals that will let your survivors learn new skills, gain experience, or even reset their skill points.
The third part of the solution was the most complicated one - a new algorithm that is meant to predict what the player might really be interested in buying, and offering some of these items at the traders.
Originally, the items a trader offered were a random selection from the items in a given tier, that was based on the current day in the game. This meant that when a player progressed faster than the demons, they would be offered useless, low tier equipment. If they advanced slower and were at a disadvantage, they would get very expensive high level equipment that they could rarely afford.
Desirability Calculations
To improve that, we designed the algorithm from scratch and came up with an important variable: Desirability, our way to try and gauge how much a player would desire to obtain an item, at their current state. Every item that a trader might offer is analyzed, and then every trader offers at least a few items with very high desirability.
So how is desirability calculated? Let’s take a weapon as an example. Clearly, players would love to get their hands on a weapon that is better than anything they have, so all weapons that are one tier above the player’s current research tier get a bonus to their desirability. They are also less likely to want to spend a lot of money on weapons that they can make themselves, as it is more cost-effective to craft them. Weapons get a penalty to desirability when a player has the research required to craft them, and an even bigger penalty if the crafting station and resources are available.
Similar calculations are used for raw materials. If a player has none of this material, and the material’s tier is in line with what we assume the player needs to make their equipment, they get a boost to desirability. However, if a player already has a large stock of this resource, or can craft as many as are needed, there is a penalty.
The result is a system that tries to ensure that every trader offers the player some equipment they could really use (and usually not get anywhere else), and some materials they are currently lacking.
So far, our data and player feedback shows a major improvement. Traders are now actually used to upgrade equipment and get other unique items, but only so much that they provide a helping hand towards reaching the higher tier naturally so that players can craft their own higher tier equipment. This is exactly what we were aiming for. Feel the higher tier fights are too difficult? Then spend some more time on your base economy, sell a few lower tier resources and equipment, then buy a single piece of higher tier gear which can make the difference between victory and defeat, when scavenging for those pesky research kits that you need to craft your own high level equipment. Or maybe just buy that first research kit directly.
The traders algorithm is also moddable, modders can tinker with the bonuses and penalties to desirability, how many items a trader offers, and how many of these items are of high desirability.
Have your own insights and ideas on the traders’ mechanic? Let us know!
Update 15.1 - New Level-up System
Survivors,
Our latest update, 15.1, breaks away slightly from our usual pattern of releasing a major update every few months. However, we felt it was important to put the changes and upgrades in this update in your hands as quickly as possible.
15.1 introduces a few small improvements, and one total overhaul to our level-up system – with the intention of giving you a lot more flexibility and control over how you develop your survivors over time.
A full list of changes can be found at the bottom of this post.
New level-up system
Existing players are familiar with the old leveling up system. After gaining a level, players will be able to select one out of three skills. Those skills were selected at random from a pool of skills when every profession has a slightly different pool to choose from. The original goal was to offer a lot of randomness and replayability – even two survivors with the same profession will end up very differently because they will have different options and paths to level up and customize themselves.
The result, however, was underwhelming – it created a great deal of imbalance between survivors, as some could specialize while others ended up being a weaker jack-of-all-trades. At times, players reported they felt they had no ‘right’ choice as they didn’t want any of the three skills – and were just leveling up so they could get to the next. It also made balancing a lot harder, especially as it was harder to predict when players would unlock key skills, such as those allowing the use of rare and powerful weapons.
The new system does away with all of that – while preserving the core balance of the old system and all the old skills. However, instead of a random pool of skills, all the skills have been arranged into fixed, linear categories, or branches. Every profession has access to 8 (out of 23) of those branches. So, for example, an engineer will have access to the construction, crafting, evasion, mining, quarrying, research, tech weapons and tools expert branches.
Every time a survivor levels up, they gain a skill point they can then invest in any of the skill branches. In total, survivors can learn up to 4 skills at every branch, with the final skill often being a ‘capstone’ skill and offering very strong abilities, unlocks or even specialization options. The final point in every category, and sometimes earlier, offer more than one option, allowing for even more customization.
It was important to us that we keep the element of randomness and replayability, however, so all survivors will still have their own random starting skills, that can have a very significant impact on gameplay and your decision on how to level up and customize your survivor – and whether you want to make them a highly specialized powerhouse, or well-rounded characters that can help in many different aspects of the game.
We also increased the maximum skill points from 6 to 8 (levels 5 and 6 provide 2 skill points each), so any survivor can end up unlocking two capstone skills.
The result, we feel, is more intuitive and transparent and offers a lot of room for future modability and expansion. Early feedback has been very positive and we’re very excited about the future of this system
Efficiency
This update was a shorter one, but we did get a chance to add some usability and quality of life improvements that you requested and weren't too big.
One of these is a neat new stat called "Efficiency", you can see it for every survivor in their skill window, or for the entire colony in the Colony Management window. This stat shows how much work gets done relative to the time spent in the base. So if a survivor has no bonus or penalty in crafting, and they spend 18 out of 24 hours crafting (the rest is spent on traveling from place to place), then they have a 75% efficiency (they got 18 man hours of work done in 24 hours). If the same survivor had a +50% crafting speed, then their efficiency would be 112% (27 man hours of work in 24 hours). This stat is a good indicator for how efficient your base economy is.
Other Changes
Other usability changes include showing more information about rituals, showing how long until an effect expires, making Night Howls give a warning before you are attacked, and a few others.
Previous Saves
We made the extra effort to support old saves, so you can load old saved games, however your survivors will lose all the level-up skills they had. Instead, they will get skill points according to their level which you can use to purchase skills using the new system.
Mod Support
The new level up system is fully supported and the Modding Guide was updated. However, older mods that define level-up skills using the old system will not work properly. We expect the game will still work, however, all the changes in this area will not affect the new system. See the Backwards-Compatibility breaking changes.
Full Change List
Mechanics: New level-up system in which survivors that level up get skill points that they can choose which skills to improve from 8 options, that differ per profession. Some skill levels allow choosing from several options.
Usability: Added Efficiency display per survivor and for the entire colony, that measures how much work they perform relative to time spent in base
Usability: When hovering an unlocked ritual in the research info window (press right click on a research subject), you now see what altar the ritual is cast in.
Usability: When hovering a ritual, you now see how long the ritual effect will last and the exact bonuses of the effect.
Usability: Active effects (such as those created by rituals) now show how long until they expire when hovering their icon.
Balancing: Night howls random event now has a warning before the attack on your base, just like regular base attacks
Balancing: Settlement related events happen less often
Balancing: Settlement help requests now give bigger bonuses to relationship when successful and lower penalties when failed.
Balancing: Close Encounters now guarantee at least 2 tiles between survivors and enemies.
Balancing: Made tier 2 melee enemies a bit stronger, and possessed a bit weaker.
Content: Replaced the hellgate combat map with something much nicer
Content: Added new special skills that do more than improve stats, such as a skill that lets survivors sometimes craft items for free, or get double yield when mining a single resource.
Modding: Translation mods (mods that modify Texts and Help files alone) are now eligible for achievements.
Fixed bug: Ancient Manuscript would incorrectly give science research points instead of occult.
Fixed bug: When using the Mutate Soul ritual, survivors will no longer lose the skills they earned by reading books.
Fixed bug: After editing task force members the info window in the bottom left did not always update immediately.
Fixed bug: Game will no longer break when a survivor has more than 6 combat abilities.
Fixed bug: Fixed mouse-hover feedback on flag icon in the title screen.
Fixed bug: When enabling "approve actions", research costs will no longer be removed even if you choose not to approve.
Fixed bug: Sometimes tiles appeared as if they were within enemy vision range but would not aggro when a survivor stepped into them.
Fixed bug: Hovering over the "Manage" button would show the "Priorities" tooltip.
Patches
Feb 17 - Fixed a bug in which performing a ritual that creates an effect (like rain dance) while the effect was already active from a previous ritual would cause the game to freeze when the effect expired.
Feb 20 - Fixed a bug in which opening a cage in rescue missions would not spawn a survivor in the edge case of getting a survivor that has a penalty in one of the tasks, and all other survivors in the game have that same task disabled.
Update 15.1 on beta branch - New level up system
Survivors,
Usually we release larger updates farther apart, but we're making an exception. There's been an issue that's been bugging many of you (and us) - which is the level up system.
So here we are with patch 15.1 in the beta branch, which improves several smaller issues, but the main change we want to test ASAP is the new level-up system for survivors.
The full patch notes of this update will be published when the update is released on the main branch.
Reminder: To play on the beta branch, right click the game in the steam client, select properties, and then select "beta" from the betas tab.
German and Chinese translations have been added and the the latest build is fully translated to these languages.
New level-up system
The "choose one of 3" system that works rather well for X-com, was feeling a bit out of sync for us. Many of the skills are just stat improvements, and not game-changing abilities, plus we have so many different skills in our game, that it just doesn't work like that.
So we changed it. Now, every level you will get a skill point, that you can use to improve one of 8 skill categories. The more you improve in the same category, the better the rewards, and at tier 4 of each category you get some special skills, more than just stats in most cases. In some cases, you may even select one of several skills when improving a category, allowing for even more customization.
Which categories are available depend on the survivor's profession, and now you can choose any of those to improve, without any RNG limitations. But it was still important for us to have a random element, because part of the challenge is to make the best of what you get, and not just use the same winning strategy every time you play. For that reason, we kept the starting skills, which tend to have a very large impact, larger than most level up skills.
We left the level 6 limit for now, and will probably increase it in the full release, although levels 5 and 6 give you 2 skill points, for a total of 8 skills you can choose, allowing you to max out 2 categories per survivor.
We hope you like it, let us know what you think.
Previous Saves
We made the extra effort to support old saves, so you can load old saved games, however your survivors will lose all the level-up skills they had. Instead, they will get skill points according to their level which you can use to purchase skills using the new system.
Mod Support
The new level up system is fully supported and the Modding Guide was updated. However, older mods that define level-up skills using the old system will not work properly. We expect the game will still work, however, all the changes in this area will not affect the new system. See the Backwards-Compatibility breaking changes.
