Survivor Mercs News

Commanders, we're truly grateful for your detailed bug reports on a troubling issue in our latest major Early Access update 0.9.12 "Storytime".

You weren't able to unlock Commander Weapons because the room building was broken if you tried to build a room that in turn would unlock a new weapon. Although the rooms appeared under certain conditions like building a new empty room slot, the unlocks weren't correctly registered.

This was a tricky thing to fix but thanks to your detailed reports, we found the issue much quicker than otherwise. Thanks you, Commanders!

Apart from getting the weapon unlocks & room building to work again, we also fixed a layouting issue with Mammoth who was covering part of the dialogue text.

Currently known issues we are investigating and working on:

• You can still equip "no weapon" by canceling out of the weapon selection window/list. This will be fixed in a future patch with a dedicated "unarmed" option for your Commander.
  
• Trying to capture the Extraction Point at just the right "wrong" time can get you stuck in the current run with only an option to abort the operation or restart the game. We're work on a fix for this with high priority.
  
• There may be a new way to get PhenX to glitch out of his arena (after we fixed others before).
  
• The game's performance can potentially degrade heavily when playing at very high screen resolutions (UHD+), please lower the resolution to a maximum of 1440p if you encounter this. We are still trying to find the root cause of this problem.
  
• Menus may sometimes scroll erratically when the game falsely selects a UI element at the top or bottom, e.g. in the Bunker menu or the Awards room (anywhere you have scrolling lists). We already identified the root cause within the automatic input device detection and fixed some cases of that, but few occasions remain erratic.
  
• The distortion effect from black holes can erase various markers around explosive barrels and mines, making it hard to spot them in certain circumstances.
  
• In certain situations, you can already substantially damage a boss between its spawn cutscene and the dialogue popup.
  

As always, join our Discord or post to the Steam forums if you encounter any issues or want to leave some feedback!



Lock, load, and loot, Commanders!

In honor of our first story quests being implemented into Survivor Mercs, we want to hear your best Commander Comebacks in a good ol fashioned Smacktalk Smackdown! What would YOU say as winning dialogue to our salty post apocalyptic bosses? There’s nothing quite like vicious mockery, so join us Commanders and let’s tell that M.E.G.A corps to choke on our dust.

Post your Commander’s Comeback to the Survivor Mercs Community Events Forum in the Wandering Wizard Discord and use the tag “Commander Comeback” to participate!

Submission Rules:

• Post your Commander Comeback to the Survivor Mercs Community Events Forum in the Wandering Wizard Discord
• Be sure to tag the post “Commander Comeback”
• React to other submissions to support your fellow Commanders
  
• One submission per user
  

Commanders, meet the bosses in this smaller-yet-major Early Access update!

Update 0.9.12, codename "Storytime", primarily lays the groundwork for the next major update. BUT it also introduces the lore of Survivor Mercs and why you fight M.E.G.A. Corp.

Meet the Bosses of the different subsidiaries, uncover their secret to eternal life, and feel twice the joy when crushing their ridiculous robot monstrosities in battle!

The various improvements under the hood show up, for example, in a more streamlined menu flow to start the battle and unlock conditions (read: mission preparations) for the Commander Weapons.

And, of course, it's Spooky Season, so we're back with some Halloween-themed content. Make sure to check that you have "seasonal content" enabled in the Settings.



[hr][/hr]
[h2][color]⚠ SAVEGAME NOTICE ⚠[/color][/h2]

This update adds various dialogues and new unlocks to the game. If you continue playing with an existing savegame, you are potentially not experiencing all of the new content.

We built a better system for the "savegame reset" prompt when starting the game for the first time after an update. Now you will only see the warning if your savegame is from version 0.9.10 or earlier.

We still recommend and offer you to reset your savegame in the Settings menu.

If you do reset, you will start fresh and a backup of your last savegame is created in your local game folder.

You can find a guide on how to restore savegames from older game versions here: How to access & restore savegame backups (Steam Forums)
[hr][/hr]
Let's get into the details of Update 0.9.12 "Storytime":


[h2]It's Storytime![/h2]

M.E.G.A. Corp. - Maximize efficiency, globalize anything.

This is your target, Commanders. M.E.G.A. Corp. operates with multiple subsidiaries all around the globe. Intel identified three primary branches:

1. GLXY Inc. building a massive spaceport in the desert - CEO codename "PhenX"
   
2. Fraxxoil Inc. drilling for oil in the arctic - CEO codename "OilRig"
   
3. aniXss Inc. operating a giant waste plant - CEO codename "GrfitLift"
   

Destroy the facilities and any projects you find. Prepare for heavy resistance. M.E.G.A. Corp. mass-produces various robot and cyborg security forces to protect its premises.

Your assistant, "Conduit", is a skilled helicopter pilot. She will drop you into battle and supply reinforcements upon request. If things go sideways, she can extract you and your squad from battle.

Hire mercenaries to aid you in your fight. You have access to prototype technology that let's you and your Mercs control clone replicants. A research facility allows you to decode more genome sequences to configure more versatile clones for yourself.

Make sure to loot anything you find on your operations. Your outfit needs to procure supplies from the black market, and upgrades to your bunker HQ require different components you may only find in the enemies' facilities.

We only have incomplete intel on the inner workings at M.E.G.A. Corp. Rumor has it that the bosses found ways to "upload" their personality and memories into some sort of networked cloud computing system to create digital twins for infinite replicants.

Good luck out there! Let's give the power back to the people.


[h2]Meet the Bosses[/h2]
Your fight against M.E.G.A. Corp. is now framed by story missions featuring the bosses of the subsidiaries you're attacking.



This update lays the groundwork with a first set of introductory missions and lore pieces. You will meet the bosses who pilot the machines you're facing at the end of every Operation.

These missions & dialogues are only the very start. More will follow with the next update(s), introducing also the Mercs and framing the action around additional maps and new operation types. Our goal is to tie most of the progression & unlocks into missions with some light narrative framing, revealing more lore and character background as we approach the v1.0 launch of the game.

While this update focuses on the current bosses, here's an additional glimpse at the coming Merc character illustrations:

A PERSONAL NOTE:
Last month, our lead artist, Felix, left the team to finally pursue his passion to become a school teacher. This didn't come as a surprise, and we remain friends and wish him all the best - he's going to be a great teacher and mentor!

Unfortunately, finding an adequate successor took longer than intended, but we're super happy to welcome Allan into our team.

He is now shaping the future look of our character illustrations and general art direction.

The new illustrations you're now seeing in the game are not fully polished yet. But we wanted to make sure you meet the Survivor Mercs cast how we and Allan are envisioning them. So expect not only more but also improved illustrations with every future update.

[h2]Improved Menu Flow & Ops Menu[/h2]
Along with the introduction of the M.E.G.A. Corp. subsidiaries and bosses, we started revamping the menu flow in preparation for the next major update.



You will now follow a more streamlined process to head into battle:

1. Configure and select your Commander clone.
   
2. Pick your destination and Operation type.
   
3. Start the operation.
   

The map & operations menu offers more details and narrative flavor, including some info about the corporate target, boss, and minibosses.

With the next update, these menus will evolve further. We'll introduce a whole new structure for the maps & operations with multiple stages, The stages will add much more variety to each run, including dedicated mission objectives, and separate the action and tactical squad building to improve the general game flow and experience.


[h2]Unlockable Weapons[/h2]
With update 0.9.11 "Arsenal" your Commander clones received weapons to grant you more control over your squad and enable new tactics. In this update, you'll start with the Leafblower and SMG as default weapons. The other weapons are unlocked by expanding your bunker.

(can you guess that weapon?)

Your weapons are now listed in the Armory. This change is also serving as foundation for the upcoming update(s). We are planning to introduce new weapons you can unlock via missions. So, currently we're overhauling our underlying engine systems for missions & weapon configurations to allow for more complex synergies and squad-building tactics with more versatile Merc skills and Gear items.


[h2]Community Translations[/h2]
When we introduced the new languages with the last major update, we considered them a work-in-progess without final proof-reading. You, Commanders, know the game better than any translator. So, we want to invite you to support us by directly improving the translations.

We are going to offer the translation files publicly as part of a Community Translations Project.

You gain exclusive access to that project via our Discord server to improve translations or even add completely new languages to the game. In turn you will receive exclusive benefits, e.g. access to playtest versions and a direct channel to our dev team.

We'll sharing more details on Discord soon - let us know if you would be interested in participating!


[h2]More Additions, Fixes, Adjustments, Improvements & Details[/h2]

• New multi-speaker dialogues for bosses and Conduit.
  
• Savegame Reset warning popup no longer appears with every major update if your last version is fully compatible.
  
• Maps no longer need to be purchased but are automatically available once you unlock them.
  
• Fixed resolution and rendering of various UI elements for better legibility and fidelity.
  
• Fixed a hidden stat with Spark that caused him to become too strong, firing much faster and further than intended.
  
• Various minor balancing adjustments to Critter, Hail, Chemtrail, Reaper, Scorch & Shredder.
  
• Fixed various incorrect icons around Commander Weapons.
  
• Changed various environmental assets to 3D objects.
  
• Various fixes to enemy and object spawning code to prevent errors.
  
• Fixed various typos in EN & DE.
  

[h2]Known Issues[/h2]

• The game's performance can potentially degrade heavily when playing at very high screen resolutions (UHD+), please lower the resolution to a maximum of 1440p if you encounter this. We are still trying to find the root cause of this problem.
  
• Menus may sometimes scroll erratically when the game falsely selects a UI element at the top or bottom, e.g. in the Bunker menu or the Awards room (anywhere you have scrolling lists). We already identified the root cause within the automatic input device detection and fixed some cases of that, but few occasions remain erratic.
  
• Automatic input recognition is still causing some nuisance with the mouse cursor sometimes interfering with controller input and vice-versa.
  

[hr][/hr]

[h2]What's Next? - Upcoming Playtest[/h2]
[color]Commanders, we call for your support![/color]

The next update is introducing some massive features to the game. Although we trust our game dev guts, your experience is what matters the most!

We want to gather your feedback on the new map & operations stage structure, major UI improvements, and the new weapons system and squad-build options - before fully releasing that update.

Here's a mockup of the ingame HUD as an example of what we're working on:



So we will be running a Community Playtest very soon to gather your thoughts on the new features.

To participate in the playtest, please join our Discord server and follow the information there (when it becomes available) to request access. You need to own the game to participate. The playtest will be time-limited and if it works, we'll look into running more such pre-release playtests in the future.

[hr][/hr]
[h2]Moving Forward[/h2]
"Storytime" marks our 6th major Early Access update for Survivor Mercs.

There is much more to come in the next two months and early 2025, so "Follow" the game to be notified when the next Early Access Roadmap Update drops Soon™.

Our plans for the next updates include:

⏩ more emergent synergies and squad-build options between Commander, Weapons, Mercs, and Gear, specifically:

• additional proc effects, e.g. things that happen when combining different status effects
  
• adjustments to dashes, projectiles, or attacks to behave differently
  

⏩ Map & Operations overhaul to provide more varied challenges, new Objectives, and better tactical and strategic squad-building

⏩ a visual overhaul to improve UI, readability of the action, and immersion in the game, including high-fidelity illustrations for more characters

⏩ more Story Missions framing your operations and fight against the M.E.G.A. Corp. goons and highlight the Mercs' personalities.

⏩ better performance and settings for input mapping and other accessibility options.

And, of course, we're getting closer to adding new maps & bosses, enemies, Mercs, and other content.
[hr][/hr]
Commanders, we are really grateful for every one of you who is supporting us with input and feedback during Early Access.

[color]Please don't forget that the game is still under development. All your feedback helps us make a better game and iron out some of the remaining rough edges, imbalance, and bugs![/color]

We hope this update gets you as excited as we are for the future. We are dedicated to listening to you and building Survivor Mercs into an outstanding game. Please, help us grow the community with a positive review and get involved in the development by participating in our community projects, and sharing your feedback, insights, and ideas on our Discord server (or the game's Steam forums).




Let's continue making a great game, together ❤

Lock, load, and loot, Commanders!

Commanders, we want YOU!

We are releasing multiple major updates over the next months and are looking forward to getting you involved more & earlier in the development!

[h2]Updated Roadmap[/h2]
We published the newest roadmap, reflecting some adjustments in the upcoming updates.

[expand]{[/expand]

We are currently working on 3 major feature blocks for the game:

1. Story Missions
   
2. Map & Ops Variety
   
3. Synergies 2.0
   

These things will be rolled out over the course of the next 3 updates. As all three of these feature blocks introduce new content with major changes & additions to functionality, we are starting with a smaller update to introduce parts of the UI rework and basics for the story missions.

Next, we aim to prepare a closed community playtest for the Map & Ops overhaul and the improved Synergy System to collect your feedback before officially shipping these in the following update(s).

The updates after that are expanding on these systems and content. So let's explore these things in some more detail:

[h2]Story Missions & Lore[/h2]
It's getting personal! You will finally meet the bosses of M.E.G.A. Corp.'s subsidiaries and uncover their secrets to eternal life. And you'll learn more about the Mercs and why they chose to fight at your side against the evil M.E.G.A. corpos and their robot legions.



The Story Missions around the bosses unlock new maps and operations, and the missions around your Mercs will unlock new weapons, Gear, Mercs, and Rooms.

The introduction of story missions will be integrated into a better, streamlined flow to start a battle:
Instead of picking a clone and map/operation separately, you'll be guided through these steps from a single point-of-entry in the Bunker HQ menu:

1. clone & equip your next Commander - no specific changes here apart from UI improvements
   
2. pick one of M.E.G.A. Corp.'s subsidiaries on a global map to attack a specific boss - instead of a map, you'll choose a corporate target, but we will retain the different biomes, of course
   
3. select an area where the corporation operates to choose your Operation Difficulty - you'll unlock more areas progressively
   
4. meet the boss if you attack an area for the first time - a short dialogue introduces the boss and starts the next story mission or side mission
   
5. hitch a ride on Conduit's helicopter into battle
   

(current WIP shot)

This new flow is intended to improve accessibility and expose more of the game's lore and characters. It will also allow you to gather additional information about enemies, special objectives, and mini-bosses - something that is even more helpful once you get to play the new map & ops stage structure.

[h2]Map & Ops Stages[/h2]
Right now, each Operation is a 20-minute run where you manage everything all at once. This is sometimes overwhelming, and also limits the gameplay variety.

The new system breaks the Operations up into multiple, branching stages to fight your way to the top where the boss awaits.

Each stage offers a different challenge, focusing on the frantic action of fighting the robot horde and capturing objectives. Your primary goal is to survive, collect XP & loot, and extract.

Instead of ending the Operation, each Extraction takes you back to your Choppa. Now you can focus on building and upgrading your squad by spending your level-ups, and managing your loot. Then pick your next stage from 1 or 2 choices, or extract for good.

Each stage is progressively becoming more difficult and may reveal a persistent modifier like increasing enemies' HP, speed, damage, etc. The conditions for the extraction may also vary, ranging from a countdown to a lethal artillery barrage to capturing specific objectives or defeating a number of specific enemies.

Overall, the new stage system offers more variety, tactical depth, and meaningful choices.

As this is a substantial change to the core of the game, we aim to playtest that with you, Commanders, to catch issues and collect your feedback before putting it live.

We are really excited about this change and believe it will massively improve the overall experience by making every operation truly different from the last one. Rest assured, though, that it is of utmost importance to us to keep the essential core of the game intact!

We are hand-picking community members for the Playtest of Survivor Mercs. Apply now on our Discord server if you want to join!

We aim to start the Playtest small and expand it over time with more Commanders as we learn and improve. The first round will start in the upcoming weeks.

The new Map & Ops Stages will also come with more Operation Difficulties. Harder runs offer more Stages and take longer to complete, offering more challenges and random events, and tying into the Missions with stages specifically build around mission objectives.

[h2]Weapons & Synergies 2.0[/h2]
With the introduction of the Commander Weapons in the last update "Arsenal" (0.9.11) and with the new Map & Ops Stages, you get more tactical choice and squad-build depth than ever before. The only thing that's missing, is a more versatile system to modify and combine Traits, Mercs, Gear, and Weapons.

This is the focus of the Weapons & Synergies 2.0 feature!

Currently, our underlying engine is limited to modifying & scaling stats and enabling certain special features like procs via skill trees. The new system enables more complex configurations of weapons and abilities. We want you to modify and change the behavior or type of weapons, attacks, and abilities to discover completely new synergies between the different elements of your squad build.

We aim to add more interesting modifiers, e.g. "all bullets deal fire damage" or "rifles shoot bolts instead of bullets", and create more creative procs, e.g. "poisoned enemies explode when set on fire".

These changes will roll out gradually with these upcoming updates, likely alongside new Gear, Weapons, Mercs, and Traits. We'll drop more details as we make progress. Some of these changes will also be available in the upcoming Playtest.

[h2]Polishing UI & VFX[/h2]
As we are nearing completion of the fundamental game systems, we are dedicating more time and resources to improving the audiovisual fidelity of the game.

You will start seeing these changes gradually appear over the upcoming updates, supporting both the lore and storytelling, and improving accessibility and clarity of various menus and UI.

Aside from the high-res illustrations for the various characters, we are improving the rendering tech & shaders for visual FX and re-creating various menus in our "pixelpunk" style. Maps and enemies receive additional polishing and all of these changes are made alongside performance improvements.



[h2]Settings, Community Translations, Input Remapping[/h2]
We strive to make the game enjoyable by any Commander.

Please post your wishes for settings and features you would like us to implement in this forum thread:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/2141520/discussions/0/4299321616496946128/


Once the new Map System is available, we aim to dedicate more time to settings and options like input remapping, and many more.

With the last update we also introduced many new languages, offering the game in 14 languages now. But we know the translations are not the best.

Therefore we want to invite you and the community to improving the translations with us by offering direct access to the language files. If you would be interested in getting involved - maybe even with a language we don't have yet - we'd be happy to hear from you on our Discord server.

We are currently evaluating two different ways to handle the Community Translation Project. Stay tuned for news about that soon.

[h2]Other Improvements & Closing Thoughts[/h2]
The "Battle Plan" shows many more improvements and features. In this news post, we wanted to highlight the immediate features and content coming in the near future with the major updates "Storytime" & "Pathfinder". We'll share more detail about the other roadmap items as we continue our Early Access, we're already excited to talk about some of the other things we're working on.

Join the discussion on our Discord server and let us know what you are most excited about. We hope to find some of you to participate in our community events and contribution projects:



Lock, load, and loot, Commanders!

Commanders, we appreciate your detailed reports on various issues you encountered after our latest major Early Access update 0.9.11 "Arsenal".

Thanks to these reports, we were able to fix multiple problems and improve some aspects of the game, including:

• Fixed irregular cases of GriftLift not reacting to the lasers. It should now be taken down correctly, but the lasers don't deal additional damage to it. In turn GriftLift has slightly less HP. We are working on a better solution, but for now the bossfight should no longer break completely.
  
• Enemies should no longer spawn and appear in the boss arenas (apart from the intended enemy waves).
  
• You can no longer dash out of OilRig's arena.
  
• OilRig is no longer invincible between phases 1 and 2.
  
• PhenX' minions deal damage in a slightly smaller radius.
  
• Mammoth uses an improved collider setup to push other characters.
  
• The "bloodthirsty" Trait is applying the Bleed DoT correctly again.
  
• Mercs no longer collide with each other, reducing the instances where Mercs may get stuck in tight spaces.
  
• Priest shows the correct aura VFX based on her specialization.
  
• Commanders no longer show the healing VFX when Priest is specialized into Crusader.
  
• Airstrike cooldown is now correctly decreasing with improved Objective Reveal Range.
  
• Shrapnel should correctly work with Airstrike weapon.
  
• Fixed an issue with incorrect skill tree requirements on Operator.
  
• Improved blocker radius for objectives during map generation to prevent sentries from spawning inside of obstacles.
  
• MVP Awards are granted correctly now when fully leveling up a Merc during an Operation (not one level-up too early).
  
• VFX for the "slow zones" should now be less distracting.
  
• Improved behavior of gamepad controls with better deadzones to prevent some input glitches.
  
• The "Switch Operation" button no longer shows for the Bootcamp map.
  
• Fixed an issue with the VFX & animation for the "Sonic Boom" pickup.
  
• Fixed an issue where clicking on an empty area in the Operations menu could block your input for a few seconds.
  
• All "on/off" stats should now show checkmark symbols consistently.
  
• Gear items show with an icon if they affect the Commander or the Mercs/Squad.
  

We also improved some aim markers and damage zone indicators. The extent of AoE attacks shows up more clearly and various markers no longer scale into a pixelated mess. This is a first part of various upcoming improvements for VFX, HUD, and UI, in our pursuit of taking the visual fidelity and readability of the action to the next level.



Currently known issues we are investigating and working on:

• You can still equip "no weapon" by canceling out of the weapon selection window/list. This will be fixed in a future patch with a dedicated "unarmed" option for your Commander.
  
• Trying to capture the Extraction Point at just the right "wrong" time can get you stuck in the current run with only an option to abort the operation or restart the game. We're work on a fix for this with high priority.
  
• The game's performance can potentially degrade heavily when playing at very high screen resolutions (UHD+), please lower the resolution to a maximum of 1440p if you encounter this. We are still trying to find the root cause of this problem.
  
• Menus may sometimes scroll erratically when the game falsely selects a UI element at the top or bottom, e.g. in the Bunker menu or the Awards room (anywhere you have scrolling lists). We already identified the root cause within the automatic input device detection and fixed some cases of that, but few occasions remain erratic.
  

As always, join our Discord or post to the Steam forums if you encounter any issues or want to leave some feedback!



Lock, load, and loot, Commanders!