Update 34: Modest Expectations

Update 34: Modest Expectations
Previous Update 33 New Frontiers	Next Update 35

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Hello, Miners! We’re back with a modest update for you! Work is proceeding apace for the longer-term goals included in the upcoming Update 35, but with Update 34 we want to sweeten the long waiting time a bit. We got new Elite Enemies for you, the possibility of double Warnings on missions, two brand new Warnings to add to the mix, a lot of weapon tweaks, and more to keep you busy! It’s time to dive back into the depths of Hoxxes and face the new dangers!

— With Love, The Ghost Ship Crew

Official modding support has been postponed and will release in "Update 34.5". More details available [here]

Update 34: Modest Expectations was released on April 22nd, 2021.

Version: 1.34.52538.0

Update Changes

Elite Enemies

Elite enemies are tougher, faster, more dangerous versions of the standard bugs that you already know and love (to kill). They have a small chance of appearing in regular missions at Hazard Level 3 and above, so consider it a special occasion when you encounter one!

New Warnings

New dangers have been discovered in the caves!

Elite Threat

Missions with this Warning will have a sure-fire chance of you encountering elite enemies.

Swarmageddon

A tsunami of swarmers awaits you in the mines. Bring plenty of pesticide and bullets!

Double Warnings - Double the Fun

An innovation committee assigned by management has tried to answer the following question: ‘What novel and unique new initiatives can we introduce to boost company profit?’ After many ideation sessions, workshops, and off-sites, they finally have the answer: Missions with two warnings instead of one!

Gather a team of fellow miners and try your hand at this extreme challenge. Prove that you are the toughest among all miners and that you eat regular Single Warning missions for breakfast. Rock and Stone! NB! Missions with double warnings are deemed so challenging that they have been excluded from Deep Dives and Assignments.

Controller Mapping

Are you frustrated with the current controller bindings? Do you feel that your mining performance could improve if you could just map the actions differently? Do you want more from your controller experience? Have we got some news for you! With the new option to rebind actions on your controller, you can finally get the unique layout that is just right for you.

Improved Bullet Tracing

How shooting is handled in terms of networking has been remarkably optimized. The result should be a more instantaneous response when firing projectiles. And projectiles now use much less bandwidth!

Save Game Profiles

Now you have the option to manage different save game profiles if you’re playing with mods (or for any other reason of your choosing) so you can have a separate save for messing around. This feature was originally planned as a part of a larger modding support solution for this update, but we decided to postpone it and release it separately later. We are planning a more comprehensive and improved solution for letting mods into the main game and we will reveal more details as this project progresses. Stay tuned!

Note: We discovered an issue with the save game profile feature right before launch, we have disabled the feature for now but will enable it as soon as we introduce a hotfix for this.

Weapon Tweaks

The lads at R&D have been hard at work improving the balance of the weapons, overclocks, and mods in the game based on . Here are the changes:

BRT7 Burst Fire Gun

• Increased damage of base weapon
• Moved some of the bonus of the Disabled Safety mod to the base weapon
• Lowered the bonus of the Disabled Safety mod slightly
• Decreased the ammo penalty of the Experimental Rounds OC
• Changed the damage penalty of the Micro Flechettes OC from a percentage to a set value

BRT7 Electro Minelets OC

• Significantly extended the electrocution duration
• Decreased damage penalty
• Increased the magazine penalty
• Extended the minelet lifetime

Bulldog Heavy Revolver

• Moved some of the damage bonus of the Increased Caliber Rounds mod to the base weapon 5
• Moved some of the damage bonus of the High Velocity Rounds mod to the base weapon 5
• Moved some of the bonus of the Hollow-Point Bullets mod to the base weapon 0.15
• Greatly increased the chance of Chain-Hit OC triggering
• Significantly lowered the damage penalty of Volatile bullets OC
• Lowered the ammo bonus of Six Shooter OC
• Lowered the rate of fire bonus of Six Shooter OC
• Increased the max possible damage bonus of Homebrew Powder OC
• Lowered the min possible damage of Homebrew Powder OC
• Changed the Homebrew Powder OC classification from Clean to Balanced
• Slightly decreased the ammo penalty of Elephant Rounds OC

M1000 Classic

• Increased base weapon damage
• Decreased the base weakpoint damage bonus
• Decreased the bonus of the Hollow-Point Bullets mod
• Moved some of the bonus of the Fast-charging Coils mod to the base weapon
• Moved the Hardened Rounds mod from T4 to T2
• Increased the range and power of the Focus Fear mod
• Changed the ammo bonus of the Minimal Clips OC to a % clip size bonus
• Decreased slightly the ammo and charge speed penalties on the Supercooling Chamber OC
• Changed the damage penalty of the Hipster OC from a % to a flat value to allow a high damage build to hit certain breakpoints and increased the ammo bonus a bit
• Tweaked the crosshair to help with focus shots and hipshots

Deepcore GK2

• Lowered the damage penalty of the Electric Reload OC and significantly extended the duration of the electrocution effect
• Lowered the recoil penalty of the Overclocked Firing Mechanism OC
• Increased base ammo slightly

Experimental Charge Blaster

• Rearranged some of the mods to provide more interesting choices
• Moved the Reactive Shockwave mod to T4
• Moved the Expanded Plasma Splash to T4
• Moved the Heat Shield mod to T2
• Improved recoil recovery a tiny bit (community request, you know who you are)
• Significantly lowered the heat generated when shooting charged projectiles on the base weapon
• Lowered the base charge speed slightly
• Cleaned up the weapon’s stats list in the equipment terminal
• Added a % damage bonus and increased the effect radius penalty on Flying Nightmare
• Heat Pipe OC now penalises charge shot heat instead of normal shots
• Lowered the charge shot ammo penalty on the Overcharger OC and changed it from a % to a flat value
• Lowered the damage penalty of the Persistent Plasma OC, increased the damage dealt by the plasma field and added a small slow effect to the field

Breach Cutter

• Increased the speed bonus of the Improved Case Ejector mod
• Increased the damage dealt by the plasma field from the Explosive Goodby mod and added a slight slow effect to any enemy caught in the field
• Removed the ammo penalty from the Inferno OC
• Reduced the damage penalty of the Spinning Death OC

Stubby Voltaic SMG

• Reduced the base recoil slightly

Stubby Turret Arc OC

• Increased the max distance allowed between turrets for the arc to connect
• Increased the damage of the arc
• Increased the slowdown of the arc
• Extended the duration of the arc
• Expanded the area around an electrocuted turret where enemies can get electrocuted
• Turret Arc now deals significantly less FF damage and no longer slows down players

Stubby EM Discharge OC

• Increased the discharge damage
• Extended the range before damage begins to fall off
• Lowered friendly fire damage significantly
• Reduced the damage penalty of the OC
• Changed the electrocute chance penalty to a small magazine size penalty

Subata 120

• Increased the spread per shot bonus of the Recoil Compensator mod
• Reduced the Rate of Fire penalty of the Tranq. Rounds OC
• Increased the proc chance of the Chain Hit OC

Zhukov NUK17

• Added a weakpoint damage bonus to the base weapon
• Moved some of the ammo bonus from the T4 Expanded Ammo Bags mod to the base weapon
• Reduced the base spread slightly
• Increased the spread reduction provided by the Better Weight Balance mod
• Changed the damage penalty on the Custom Casings OC to a RoF penalty
• Increased the chance to create a cryo minelet with the Cryo Minelets OC and reduced the particle system a bit, which should help with both performance and visibility

Jury-rigged Boomstick

• Upgraded the T3 Stun mod to also improve the chance to stun and add extend the stun duration even more
• Fixed the stats not displaying the stun chance as a “Per Pellet” value
• Lowered the penalty on the Shaped Shells OC and increased the accuracy bonus

Cryo Cannon

• Slightly increased the bonus provided by the Improved Pump mod
• Changed Perfectly Tuned Cooler OC to a balanced OC giving it small Chargeup Time and Pressure Regain penalties, also renamed it to “Tuned Cooler”.
• The Ice Storm OC now has an extra damage bonus against frozen targets but comes with a slightly larger ammo penalty

CRSPR Flamethrower

• Improved the chance of the “It Burns!” mod to cause fear.
• Moved some of the damage bonus of the Unfiltered Fuel mod to the base weapon
• Added an ammo bonus and a small reload penalty to the Compact Feed Valves OC
• Increased the damage and RoF bonuses of the Face Melter OC and replaced the ammo penalty with a range penalty and replaced the movement speed penalty with a tank capacity penalty

DeepCore PGL

• Extended the range at which damage fall off starts and reduced max damage falloff significantly
• Increased the damage bonus from the HE Compound mod
• Decreased the ammo bonus from the T2 Expanded Ammo Bags mod
• Moved the High Velocity Grenades mod from T2 to T3
• Added a small % explosion range bonus to the Proximity Trigger mod
• Increased the damage penalty from the RJ250 OC and added a high reload speed bonus and a large % ammo bonus
• Increased the ammo bonus of the Compact Rounds OC

Lead Storm Powered Minigun

• Reduced the cooling effect of the Cold as the Grave mod
• The Aggressive Venting mod now significantly reduces the time it takes to recover from an overheat
• Moved some of the bonus of the Improved Platform Stability mod to the base weapon
• The Magnetic Refrigeration mod now also significantly reduces the delay before cooling begins
• Fixed a bug where the small delay between shooting and cooling was not actually happening
• Reduced base stun chance
• Added a stun chance bonus and increased the stun duration bonus on the Stun Duration mod also renamed it to “Improved Stun”
• Shortened the base spin-down time and increased the bonus of the Magnetic Bearings mod, also the mod now properly affects how long the gun stays accurate
• Increased the ricochet chance significantly and extended the max ricochet distance a bit for the Bullet Hell OC
• Leadstorm OC no longer disables stun but instead just significantly reduces it’s viability so now the Improved Stun mod can actually affect it

Thunderhead Autocannon

• Reduced the damage bonus of the Feedback Loop mod
• Increased the RoF bonus of the Improved Gas System mod
• Moved some of the bonus of the Lighter Barrel Assembly mod to the base weapon
• Increased the direct damage penalty and slightly reduced the effect radius bonus on the Carpet Bomber OC
• Reduced the direct and area damage penalties slightly, extended the effect radius and increased the chance to apply the toxin effect for the Neurotoxin Payload OC
• Replaced the reload speed bonus with a “rate of fire growth speed” bonus on the Combat Mobility OC

Warthog Auto 120 Shotgun

• Reduced the bonus of the High Capacity Magazine mod
• Very slightly increased the bonus of the Expanded ammo bags mod
• Very slightly reduced the ammo bonus of the Minishells OC
• Reduced the ammo bonus of the Light-weight Magazines OC

Warthog Turret Whip mod

• Reduced the ammo cost of triggering the effect
• Increased the projectile speed
• Increased damage
• Increased the damage radius

Driller's HE Grenade

• Increased damage
• Reduced damage fall-off
• Expanded the max damage area a bit
• Increased the grenade count

Misc

• Fixed pathfinder related crashes
• Fixed crash when you join a game
• Fixed Promotion Terminal not always displaying the selected character
• Fixed issue with bosco terminal not closing correctly when using controller shortcut
• Fixed droppod can land too close to Machine events, prevent mission completion.
• Fixed being unable to unlock perks by pressing E
• Fixing a bug, where you could cancel the join process, even though you could not.
• Fixed case of tunnel not connecting correctly to the next cave.
• Fixed case where the escort oil canister moved to level start when client with bad ping picked it up
• Fixed a case where you could get extra secondary objective items with certain warnings (Shield Disruption).
• Attempt to fix gunkseed in 0,0,0
• Tried to fix a latejoin issue relating to bosco carrying gems.
• Tons of minor UI tweaks on fonts, spacing, and styling
• Space Rig mesh tweaks
• Wardrobe sound mix tweaks.
• Improved Well placement in Refinery Mission. Less chance to miss placing a well.
• Reduced how aggressively refueling requirements scale based on the number of players in Escort missions
• Increased the average DPS of the Fire DoT a bit and also made it a little more consistent.
• Slowed down slightly how quickly a player can change directions on the zipline
• Increased zipline base angle and the bonus of the Upgraded Connection Joint mod
• PGL grenades and Platform Gun projectiles now inherit the character’s velocity making it easier to use them while falling or otherwise moving at great speed
• Made walking enemies that can shoot more likely to target players on ziplines
• Grass now moves when the dwarves walk through it.
• DX12 enabled by default. If you have issues running DX12, you can still change it to DX11
• Made a large amount of strings easier to translate
• Fixed UI issues in bar order menu, added Unfreeze UI to HUD when frozen by Wormhole Special beer
• Minerals mined with explosions now get a distance proportionate force applied to them so they don’t just plop down.
• Stay up to date with the brand new news feed ticker added to The Mineral Trade
• Steeve’s Healthbar now also shows the player name of the Beastmaster

Post Update Hotfixes

Hotfix 1

23rd April, 2021

Hello Miners,

We have fixed some crashes related to joining games, as well as some other nice fixes before the weekend.

Note: Some people are crashing when opening the game, if you are experiencing this, try to run the game with Dx11 instead of Dx12 (which is now default)

Add "-dx11" to the launch options by right-clicking the game in your Steam Library > Properties > Set Launch Options

With Love,
The Ghost Ship Crew

• Fixed a Bosco related crash.
• Fixed a bug that caused Magma Core Earthquakes to make spikes not holes.
• Fixed a bug that caused music to play after it was supposed to stop.
• Fixed a bug that made music play double in the Mission End Screen.
• Fixed a bug that made projectiles’ position look wrong for clients.
• Double Warnings should no longer be part of assignment missions.
• Enabled Save Slot function under the save menu.
• Rearranged Yes/Cancel buttons in The Shop buy prompt back to the order it was before the update
• Fixed issue with projectiles having weird velocities on clients.

Hotfix 2

27th April, 2021

Hello Miners,

We have been hard at work finding out what direction up, down, left and right is for projectiles, and we have at least figured it out 64%! More to come...

Also included are a bunch of misc fixes to everything from enemies to the way minerals are calculated.

With Love,
The Ghost Ship Crew

• Fixing a bug that caused you to not be able to join the game of someone who has just changed their savegame.
• Fixed Reconnecting in Deep dives revives a downed player
• Changed "X out of X savelots left" to "X out of X saveslots used"
• Increased font size of bar menu prices
• The message saying Crates and lost packs are empty, will now specify which type of items there are no more of.
• Fixed "Hyper Propellant" PGL overclock no longer displays unique particle effects after Update 34.
• Refactoring to the joining, as to fix DRG-1650, where it joins, even though you cancelled joining.
• Fixed UI text strings not marked translatable
• Fix golden loot bug particles and light would turn off after death.
• Attempted to fix a bug related to Loadouts for pickaxes, where the chosen loadout would not be shown in spacerig or mission. (Note: There’s still a bug that causes pickaxe parts not to update in the spacerig after changing loadout (we’re working on it!) - it will show correctly once you are in mission )
• Fix BRT pistol tracers starting too far back.
• Fixed Bulldogs default weak point damage not showing in stats
• Fixed Minehead landingzone using old model
• Fixed Minehead carving area on landing being slightly too small
• Rework Ebonut networking logic to hopefully fix issues for clients.
• Glyphid slasher missing voice line fix
• Tweak Autocannon Impact Explosion sound
• Projectile fix for projectiles fired by server but owned by client.
• Fixed Bosco not being able to mine escort laser crystals
• Fix beer effects lasting forever after swapping character in terminal
• Fixed Spinning Death Particles seem to hang around in wrong spot
• Fixed running text marking active mutator in miners manual, not working in caves (solo only)
• Fixed Goo bomber's goo doesn't fall to the ground
• Fixed endless-audio bug in Deep Dive terminal
• Changed the Hero Enemies milestone text in the terminal to elite threat.
• Hiveguard vulnerable state rock attack replication fix
• Improved Droppod collider
• Resource counters in the space rig menu topbar now round values down rather than up, to avoid confusion when buying items and the resource bar says the player owns 30 Umanite when he/she actually owns 29.3 for example.
• Fixed Spitballer not being able to shoot after being frozen.
• Fixed Spitballer weak points not showing frozen material

Hotfix 3

29th April, 2021

Hello Miners,

With Update 34 we introduced a new enemy modification system that allows us to change some of the base properties of an enemy such as movement speed, health and damage resistances. With this we created the Elite variants of many of the foes you can encounter in the caves of Hoxxes. These Elite enemies are mainly encountered when playing missions with the Elite Threat warning but can also occasionally appear in the base game as well.

Since their introduction we have received a lot of feedback from you and we are continuously working on the system and tweaking the Elite enemies based on your feedback and our own playtests. As always, this is an ongoing and iterative process and we will continue working on this until it feels good. Your constructive feedback is an integral part of this process so thanks, and keep it up!

One of the things we have realised is that we need to more clearly communicate what we are trying to achieve with the Elite Enemies. The intention is not to create new enemy variants such as the Oppressor or the Glyphid Slasher and Guard but to instead modify the existing enemies in a way that can occasionally disrupt the flow of combat. Rest assured that we will continue to make new enemy types and variants, the elites are not intended to replace that.

Elites are designed to run with the pack and push through the players defence, or present an immediate and un-ignorable threat, or to displace the players forcing a momentary change in position and tactics. This is not possible without making them harder to kill. We want them to be the last ones standing, the bug heroes going toe to toe with the dwarves (if only for a little while). To do this they need time in which to make their presence felt.

ELITE CHANGES WITH HOTFIX 3
That said we were scaling Elite health a bit too aggressively and we have with hotfix 3 reduced the health scaling with a factor 0.2 for Hazard 4 and 5. Furthermore we have removed the Oppressor as an Elite, since we felt it didn’t really work.

ELITE CHANGES IN UPCOMING HOTFIXES
We are right now developing more ways in which we can improve Elite survivability besides just increasing health. We are looking into enhancing the strength of each Elite enemy such as unbreakable armor for Grunt Guards and Praetorians, and giving Mactera Spawn more evasiveness. Likewise we are expanding the ways in which we can modify their behaviour and attacks so that they bring a bit more to the fight while still being the same enemy at the core, and balancing the elemental resistances and temperature scaling to not break builds focused on elemental weapons and damage.

We’ll have more tweaks and changes in the upcoming hotfixes and look forward to hearing what you think. Together we forge tomorrow. Rock and Stone!

With Love,
The Ghost Ship Crew

• Fixed a bug that made Platform Gun Platforms carve into terrain, ejecting minerals. (So changed it back to the way it was in U33)
• Fixed a bug that caused Ice Platform Plants in Glacial Strata to carve into terrain.
• Fixed Ebonuts being in wrong state if joining a mission after some of them have been collected
• Fixed a bug that caused the impact sound from the Drillers axe to multiply for Clients
• Fixed issue with wave music sometimes not stopping correctly.
• Fixed enemy waves able to trigger while fighting dreadnought in deep dives.
• Reduced Elite Enemies health scaling on Hazard 4 and Hazard 5.
• Removed Elite Oppressor.

Trivia

• Update 34 was originally called "Bits N' Pieces" on its first announcement. This was changed on March 7th, 2021 to "Modest Expectations" when its release date was announced.