“She may be little, but she’s pretty clever. Plus, bonus points for being the closest thing our Digital Air team has to a Jedi…” Shinua Ryujin - South Korean Digital Air Superiority Squad
The Raptor is one of our game’s 8 new incredible Champions coming in the highly anticipated Upload patch early next year!
Armed with a plasma leash that also doubles as a healing beam, it's a small and nimble craft that’s built for stealthy support as well as wrecking mechanical faces at a moment’s notice if given the chance.
The coolest part about this strategic dual-purpose weapon is that it latches onto targets and follows them, making aiming a secondary necessity - just be sure you’re in range and tracking your target in front of you to make it work. Similarly - the healing beam, when pointed at allies, provides a critically consistent health recharge, making it one hell of a support healer for a two-pronged rush on the package.
Just be careful, because while the Plasma Leash doesn’t use the typical ammo on the battlefield, it does run off the same power that is critical to your boosters - use ‘em too much and you won’t be able to get out of dodge when you need to the most!
But don’t fret too much as the grenade can work in a pinch to launch in front of you, or drop below you for ground cover or a quick burst of damage in a firefight.
There are two final tricks up the Raptor’s sleeve - the enemy-annoying radar scrambler, and the Force Push. If you need to get away from a heated battle in one piece, the scrambler will do the job, making it hard for enemies to track you around buildings as you speed away.
But the real star of the show for the Raptor? It’s got to be its long-cooldown multi-target-slapping Force Push. This is the ultimate “I need an adult!” button and works extremely well when defending the package during Upload matches. It emits a massive electromagnetic pulse that pushes all surrounding enemies away from you - and if they hit the buildings and walls around you? Chances are they’re gonna have a bad time.
We look forward to revealing more of our new Champions in the weeks ahead, but for now, stay tuned to our social channels on Twitter, and join our Discord to take part in the latest playtests!
Say Hello to the Sky Reaper
“It’s hard to argue with a missile screaming down your six.” - Sky Reaper Pilot, Johan Lahiri - Swedish Digital Operations Force
The Sky Reaper is the first of eight new champions we want to profile for you all. When Upload launches in the coming weeks, eight new “Champions” will take place of our existing drones, so we wanted to make sure we lay out what you can expect from each.
The Sky Reaper is probably the most straightforward of our champions - something akin to your “Assault” class in a lot of shooters, but then again - not a lot of shooters have to worry about 360 degrees of attackers and flying at high altitudes through a dense cityscape, but you get the picture.
The Sky Reaper is sort of our “Everyman” champion, with decent flight handles, good armor, and his machine guns and homing missiles are very effective even if they’ve got a long reload time. It’s a thing of beauty to find a good corner to camp on while defending the package, peak out, fire a missile, and watch it go to work on the attackers. Just remember - there’s a long wait between uses, so you’re going to rely on those machine guns to keep you safe between the missiles.
What happens when you need to go on the defensive? The Sky Reaper comes equipped with a limited use timed invulnerability module (think super-charged shielding) that lets you get out of dodge in a hurry. And to help the team, you also have a healing bubble skill that allows you to keep your team and yourself alive while defending the package.
And of course, last but not least - the good ol’ smoke screen. Pop this beauty when you need to hide from attackers, or if you just want to set up the perfect ambush around a chokepoint.
With all these tools at its disposal, it’s hard to believe the Sky Reaper is just one of eight unique champions coming to the game with the Upload content drop. Stay tuned for more details on the remaining seven in the weeks to come.
Introducing Codename: Upload
This year sure has flown by! We just celebrated the one year anniversary of Drone Strike Force’s launch for Early Access here on Steam. We want to thank each and every one of you for not only your interest in our game, but also the fantastic feedback and thoughts you’ve all given as they’ve helped us shape and refine the game into what we have coming in our upcoming massive update. This is just the beginning of the major changes we have coming to Drone Strike Force in the near future. There are many more changes than this to come, but we’re not quite ready to share all of them yet. Just know - things are about to get crazy.
We’ve been toiling away at a new game mode, the new Champions, and a whole slew of other fixes we’re going to talk about here, and that means this massive update is taking a lot longer than originally intended. That said, one thing we’ve been working on should help speed up our communication with you on a more regular basis! We hired the inimitable Lindsey “Insert Cool Name” as our new Community Manager, and she’s going to be helping out on social media, Discord, and here on Steam to make sure we code monkeys keep you more apprised of what’s going on behind the scenes.
Lindsey, take it away!
Hi everyone! Really happy to be here and to be a part of the team at Odisi working on Drone Strike Force. I’m so excited to be working with the team on this game, and there are so many awesome things coming down the pipeline. I can’t wait to be able to share them with you all! I’ve been a gamer almost my entire life, owning over 15 consoles and spending thousands of hours on hundreds of games over the decades. I can easily say that gaming is baked into my DNA at this point, and that passion is why I love working in this industry and engaging with fellow gamers. I look forward to getting to know you all – and I sincerely hope you enjoy all of the amazing new additions to the game that we’re hard at work on.
Drones Become Champions:
In the upcoming milestone update, we’ll be converting our existing Drone system to a collection of eight “Champions” - think of these like heroes or classes in other competitive shooters. We showcased the Megadon and the Cyclops in our last update, but in the coming weeks we’ll be deep-diving into each one of the Champions and what makes them unique and how they help their team in the skies. We’ve got a load of new skins for all the Champions coming into the game in the future. Take a look at one in the screenshot below!
Upload - The New Game Mode:
Our new game mode, Upload, continues to come along amazingly. So much so that we’re positive it’s going to be the main game mode when we finally unleash it to the world later this year.
We teased Upload recently on our Discord channel when we dropped a trailer on YouTube, giving just a taste of what’s to come. This game mode will streamline all matchmaking into one mode for now, as we feel that it’s the most exciting and competitive of all the current modes.
In addition to Upload, thanks to a lot of iteration and dedication our team has developed an upgraded flight model and a new game mode designed to take full advantage of the aerial aspect of our combat. Strap in, because this is a lot:
Upload Details:
There is a Data Cache located at the center of the map.
Attackers need to pick it up and bring it to one of two Upload Zones.
The longer the Data Cache is in the Upload Zone, the more points the attackers score.
Defenders can destroy the Champion carrying the Data Cache to make it fall to the ground.
Players on both teams can use the new Grappling Hook [by pressing G] to drag a loose Data Cache towards them - causing havoc for the opposing team.
Teams will take turns being Attackers and Defenders. The highest score wins at the end of the match. The number of rounds in each match is still being finalized.
Each player has one respawn per round, so tactics and coordination are essential to victory. If a team is completely destroyed during a round, the standing team automatically wins the round.
Aerial Combat Improvements:
Check Your Vector - Navigate and Aim with six degrees of freedom to strike foes from above or below. Holding right-click allows you to aim with 360 degrees of motion, but only for a limited time.
Watch Those Corners - Collision damage from buildings and other obstacles means pilots have to choose between speed and danger. Skilled pilots will be able to thread their way between buildings at high velocity.
Control The Skies - Altitude is a valuable asset; climb when you can and dive when the time is right.
Precision Strikes - Enhanced gun play makes accurate pilots all the more dangerous.
More Notes and Changes:
New Map - Fjords, a snow and ice based cityscape with a communications tower at its heart where the Data Cache resides.
Refactoring matchmaking - Generating matches is much more flexible now. A Match can be generated from various ongoing skirmishes. You can even earn XP in skirmish mode. No more waiting to play!
Hit recognition - Our resident programming wizards have worked hard to update our core systems to improve all hit recognition, making sure all hits are accounted for properly.
Drones Go Boom More - Balance has been tweaked to reduce overall HP while damage has been generally increased. Get rekt.
A New Armor System - All Champions now have armor that can regen, giving them a shield overtop their normal health pool. This does not affect their ability to get rekt.
We hope you’ve enjoyed these details as much as we’ve enjoyed sharing it with you. Be sure to stay tuned because we have so many more surprises and announcements in store as we ramp up to releasing our MASSIVE update to you all.
It will be, quite literally, a game changer.
If you aren’t already following us on Twitter, you definitely want to make sure you are as we’ll be sharing a lot of details through there about the Champions, Upload, and so much more!
Development Update - Drone Champions and Package Run!
Good morning, pilots!
We’re getting really close to go-time with both our Package Run mode, and all the major changes we outlined in the last letter. But today, to tide you over, we wanted to dip into just how all of these changes will manifest in the game and what we’re doing to make them as fun as possible.
We’ve been testing internally the new Champion drones and the Package Run, and we have to tell you - it’s just about the most fun Drone Strike Force has ever been. We’ve had friends from around the industry join us, and they all say the same thing. We know it’s been a long wait since we’re a small team, but trust us when we say it’s going to be worth it!
Now - onto the details!
Bots: The Bots in DSF are getting better by the day! Each individual bot is now more aggressive and can select an optimal weapon for engagement. We are now testing getting the bots to work together in Patrols. So while each bot might be more difficult to take down, soon they will be working together creating an interesting challenge for the player!
Once we push this out to Production, we will implement some experience gain for defeating bots to help Players progress no matter what they’re doing. This could be the basis potentially for some more PvE oriented content such as Players vs Swarms, as well as other PvP Game Modes that treat Patrols of bots more like Minions where the bots could potentially assist in Game Mode objectives and even be given commands by Player operated Drones.
Magazine and Reload: In internal testing and QA! This is a big change to our systems, and really adds a new and meaningful layer to the gameplay. Shooting is not constant or spammable anymore, it requires timing and more precision. This will allow us to include variants of weapons and opens a clear pathway for interesting progression based options.
Package Run: This started out as, “wouldn’t it be fun to do Capture The Flag (CTF) with drones?” Now, the mode is best described as (American) Football with one flag CTF and it's not a flag but a delivery package. And it's tons of fun!! We are still refining all the details, and will start involving some of our community to help test it out soon!
We are also in the process of testing Package Run game mode in other maps. One of those maps is still in greybox and unreleased while the others, Players may have seen from the other Game Modes.
Champions: We want to introduce to you our first two descriptions of the new Drone loadouts, 6 more unique Champions on the way!!
Megadon: Sporting a huge Storm 99 gatling gun that is a BOSS! Firing slows the Drone down but it lays down the law. The Megadon has the most HP by far and the Shield Barrier has more HP than the drone itself! Pop some heals and cook up some drones with the super fun Incendiary Grenade. The Megadon might feel a bit slow flying, but it is very responsive and its boost has rockets on it that burn out easily but rockets you forward super fast!
Cyclops: This is a sniper with a twist. Well, it's a flying sniper. The Olympus Rail Gun is a super accurate weapon, you hit what you see. But being a Rail Gun it needs to charge up. You can snapshot but the downside is that it will do less damage. There's no falloff damage however and damage scales up significantly the longer you hold zoom down up until a max damage that delivers the highest alpha with deadly accuracy.
These are just 2 of the brand new Champion Drones that will take over the existing drone class based loadouts when they’re ready to go live. This makes diving into the game and picking a playstyle far more interesting and meaningful than before. It’s like each drone has a real personality and unique playstyle. We cannot wait for you to try them out!
Until then - fly straight, and shoot straighter!
Producer’s Letter - BIG Things Are Coming
Hail, Sky Captains!!
It has been a while since we chatted about the state of Drone Strike Force, and what’s going on behind the scenes. But that doesn't mean we haven’t been working hard! In fact, that’s probably the best reason I could give you for how quiet we’ve been. We are taking many lessons during this Early Access period and trying to steer the game in a direction that is more rewarding for our existing players and the thousands more we hope to have join us at launch. We are eternally grateful for all the amazing feedback we have been getting on our Discord server from all our players. So, without further ado, let’s go through some of what we’ve been toiling away with the following main goals in mind….
Creating Unique Gameplay for Each Drone
More Meaningful Decisions in the Garage
More Incentives for Team-Based Gameplay
Loads of New Content!
FIRST UP - BALANCE!
Sentinel Class Flight: We are balancing flying to tease out a more unique feel for Sentinel’s flight. Tweaking the balance so heavier drones feel a little, well, heavier. While buffing in other areas to compensate. Thanks to the hard work of our amazing engineers we have a lot of variables in our flight systems to tweak.
Storm 99 and Predator: We are also working to balance out Storm 99 and the Predator to ensure there is proper differentiation between them, and unique instances where it is of benefit to use one over the other. Making sure there is a meaningful reason to choose one as opposed to the other for your load out. We are taking a pass at all of DSF's weapons with this in mind, as well as while we design new ones.
Olympus: We developed and are testing a system for the Olympus that allows it to charge up over time when in zoom. This way you can decide to go for the lower damage quicker snapshot or wait for the higher damage to kick in and take that one.
System Changes
Discoverability Changes: We have made some interesting changes to the discoverability mechanic that we are testing. We feel these changes are so far inducing more team based game play and hope that our community will notice an improvement when creating tactics with your teammates.
Magazines and Reload: We have started work on a new system to decouple ammo from energy. We feel this has a lot of potential to create more interesting variations of weaponry by liberating ammo and reloads from energy and therefore boost. While potentially something like our LWS laser armament could still use energy, we will be able to create more balanceable varieties of weaponry going forward. Generally, we found having energy and ammo systems linked to one resource as a source of friction. It was not easy to tell when your weapon was out of juice, and there was no way to force a reload. The end result was a player was incentivized to disengage from combat and recharge energy instead of just jamming a new magazine in quick to reload and start shooting again.
Skirmish and Matchmaking: Our engineers have been hard at work ensuring our matchmaking system is more polished. Skirmish was a big introduction to our matchmaking system and we had a lot of work to get it into a more polished state! Stability and reliability are continuously improving and we hope to push out those improvements as soon as possible.
Bots: We have also been improving our AI on the skirmish bots to make sure they provide a more rewarding experience so players can test out their drones while in the matchmaking queue.
New Content
New Game Mode - Package Run!
This is almost ready! We are polishing some final touches on the design of the mode to ensure balanced gameplay. We are having loads of fun playing it internally and cannot wait to share it with our community!
Preset Builds: We also wanted to let everyone know we are experimenting with preset loadouts that are super fun, unique, rewarding and tactical. The key criteria are under the same framework presented here, more unique gameplay experiences, more team based dynamics, new content and meaningful decisions for the player. We may run a playtest with our community in the coming months as these become more polished to get feedback.
It’s all just another step on the road to launch, and we hope you’ll enjoy all the changes and additions we’ve been working on. We will announce soon when they go live!
Thank you for all the support!
Play with the Devs!
Hello everyone.
Now is your chance to play with the Drone Strike Force dev team with full matches and tons of fun!. The next session will start this Friday at 3 PM EST.
Remember that you can also participate in the Play with the Devs event with the Free Trial version and post your live streaming on our #streaming-videos channel on Discord.
We hope to see you all, and enjoy DSF!
Play with the Devs Event
Hello everyone. We started experimenting with Play with the Devs for the past 2 weeks with superb results so we decided to make this a weekly event moving forward.
Now is your chance to play with the Drone Strike Force dev team with full matches and tons of fun!. The next session will start this Friday at 2 PM EST.
Since this Friday is also right in the middle of the Steam Thanksgiving sale, we decided to give you some nice Black Friday upgrades. Starting from today and until December 26, Drone Strike Force will be on sale 50% off. Not only that -- you'll be able to earn bonus XP during the Steam Thanksgiving sale, making this Play with the Devs a really special event.
Remember that you can also participate in the Play with the Devs event with the Free Trial version and post your live streaming on our #streaming-videos channel on Discord. We hope to see you all this Friday, and enjoy Thanksgiving!
Introducing the Wingman Program
Greetings Pilots!
Do you have friends you’d like to share the friendly skies of Drone Strike Force with? Refer them to the game as your Wingman, and we’ll give you up to THREE free Platinum skins!
For each friend you refer, you’ll be granted one Horus skin: first the Raptor 1000, then the Sky Reaper and finally the Megadon M9X.
Your friend can play the full retail version of Drone Strike Force or the free trial and they’ll still count as your Wingman. To get credit for referring a friend to the game, ask your Wingman to click the “Referral” button in the bottom-right corner of the main menu and give you the code listed there. Then you can click “Claim Referral” and enter your Wingman’s code. Boom! We’ll unlock the Horus skin you earned as thank-you for helping grow the Drone Strike Force community.
Fly safe, pilots!
Earn Double XP and Credits during weekend happy hours!
Greetings Pilots!
This weekend, we’re continuing our tradition of Drone Strike Force Happy Hours where you can earn double XP and credits for each game you play! Here’s the play schedule:
Weekend Happy Hours help to concentrate the Early Access community during peak hours for quick matches, high competition, and extra fun. Bring your friends, unlock new drones and perks quicker, and enjoy!
-The DSF Team
Two hours until Double XP and Credits!
Greetings Pilots!
Happy Hours start in two hours! Earn double XP and credits for each game you play this weekend during the following time window:
We’re looking to do this every Saturday and Sunday from now on, so bring your friends, play some games, and let us know how we can make this event even better!
