Published by The Oracle in the official Discord
Hello fellow UPL Commanders. The 1.4 version is undergoing some final updates and testing. The Missions Clean and Sweep, Gatekeepers, and With a Whimper are in the middle of balance testing for difficulty. All other missions for the normal difficulty have been updated.
- The balance changes for units are 100% in-game and ready to go, including new abilities like the Infantry Personal Med-Kit.
- New voice lines, dialogues, and mission changes noted in the incoming-updates are otherwise complete sans a few items also in Clean and Sweep.
- More succinctly, we are expecting launch this week.
What’s Next?
Version 1.4 will be the last major update to Part 1 except the occasional bug quash if bugs are still found as the community plays through. Otherwise what’s on the docket is Part 2 (which will now boast 11 missions instead of the original planned 7, plus an epilogue). This is not 4 missions more of content, but rather us taking community feedback seriously regarding mission length, and updating various missions accordingly. We do commit to everyone that these changes will not affect the narrative or vision of the campaign.
Difficulty Slider
After receiving overwhelming feedback regarding campaign difficulty (and lack of player accessibility as a result), we will be introducing a difficulty slider in the 1.4 release. The slider will be:
- Hard (Current difficulty, no changes)
- Normal (New difficulty, with ~40% the number of enemies appearing in waves in high density maps and lower strength waves overall, ~1/2 preplaced enemies, more harvestable resources, and the hard coded benefits that Blizzard provides at this setting)
While the current difficulty of the campaign can be considered brutal+ from a challenge perspective, it is not ‘Brutal’ proper as actual Blizzard brutal has extra damage modifiers for enemies that will render the campaign unplayable in its current form. A difficulty selector will appear on the launcher and restart screens.
As a result, 1.4 will require a couple extra days to push out. Note that this isn’t an optimized difficulty and will lack player testing, meaning it does run the risk of being too easy at times for casual players. Hopefully not as encounters are not eliminated, just the size of enemy waves, but we will watch feedback closely in case the pendulum swings the other way.
Personal Med-Kit
We have good news for UPL Commanders, the Personal Med-Kit is being upgraded as follows:
- All standard infantry units can now take advantage of the Med-Kit (it was just Combat Infantry, Incinerators, and Mortars previously)
- The kit requires no energy and now has a three minute cooldown (vs one-time use before)
It is expected that commanders can use the kits as a boost to infantry durability in the field, and after use, the infantry can be removed from the frontline until a new kit is supplied to them, or swapping troops out of Nightjars and Solitaires while they’re waiting for a new kit. We are excited to see how this equipment will allow commanders to viably utilize large arrays of infantry offensively. The Personal Med-Kit is launching with version 1.4.
Comm Station
As we roll up on moving version 1.4 into production, don’t forget to try out the Comm Station. The building boosts the speed of production structures and damage output of Nightjars and Solitaires, to name a few. It does cost a bit of energy to use, but we believe you’ll find that more than worth the benefits.