Dev Diary #23 - New Alliances DLC
Greetings survivors!
“New Alliances” is here and we can finally share more details about what it means for Surviving the Aftermath. We’ve already teased its contents a bit, so let’s dig deeper into what makes it special. Society requests, alliances and federation add a fresh dimension to societies, while roaming bandits, covert missions and a new powerful Rival faction challenge you in new ways.
IMAGE: Keyart
New Alliances adds a new, more dynamic layer to the world map and how you interact with societies. Instead of just having nice trade partners, you can now befriend and eventually ally with them with the ultimate goal of creating a federation! To do this, you must help your soon-to-be allies by completing requests and assisting them against various threats in the wasteland. But if making friends isn’t your thing, you can raid their convoys for resources or have your specialists complete covert missions inside the societies to steal loot, science points and other benefits. But note that you’re not alone in your ambitions, as a mysterious Rival faction has taken an interest in your part of the wasteland.
IMAGE: Build request
Forming a federation and solidifying your status as its leader will take some time. Once you’ve met the first societies, a new society depot building becomes available. It allows you to construct helpful buildings inside societies to raise their population, protect them from bandit raids or provide alternative sources of science points and silver. You can construct these buildings for a society whenever you want, even if they haven’t specifically sent a request for them. In addition to building requests, societies might also ask you to hunt bothersome animals, deal with dangerous bandit forts or loan one of your specialists to them.
IMAGE: Federation screen
Each completed request gives you rewards and brings your two colonies closer. Once you’ve gained enough reputation, they’ll offer to ally with you and share their secrets after you’ve built their embassy in the colony. These unique, society-specific benefits range from nuclear power plant blueprints from Chemville to extra action points for every specialist from Dead Creek. Discover all the perks in the new federation status screen and choose which ones you want the most! New Alliances features eight new reward buildings and 13 permanent bonuses for your colony.
IMAGE: Part of the rival illustration with failed request
But as you encounter more societies while still dealing with all the hardships of catastrophes and bandit assaults against your own colony, you’ll be forced to decide who to help and who’s plea for aid goes unheard. Each failed request pushes them closer to your Rival, who will turn them against you! To end their influence in the wasteland, you must create a strong federation with your closest allies.
To form the federation you must get the majority of the wasteland’s population on your side. Raise your allies’ population by constructing shelters and food production facilities while embarking on propaganda missions to draw people away from hostile societies. Once the majority has been achieved, you’ll be rewarded with sharing the spoils of war your Rival left behind along with other benefits.
IMAGE: Successful covert mission end screen
Another major aspect in New Alliances involves a bit more shadier tactics. Your specialists can now embark on four different types of covert missions against other societies for various benefits. You can for example steal science points for your research via espionage with your scientists or sabotage Rival operations with scavengers to reduce their influence. Different specialist types have a higher chance to succeed on these missions, so pick your operative carefully as failure means a big drop in reputation and a potentially lethal escape from the rather offended society.
IMAGE: Anti-covert mission buildings
But be on your guard as these covert missions can also be used against you. Both your Rival and other societies can infiltrate your colony to steal, disrupt your research or even set off explosives! To combat this, unlock protective buildings like anti-propaganda towers and surveillance vans from the new tech branch and have them staffed at all times. The more workers you have stationed, the greater the chance you’ll prevent anything bad from happening and maybe even uncover the culprit in the process.
IMAGE: Roaming animal
The world map is also more active than ever before. You might spot a herd of deer roaming around looking for food or a group of bandits searching for prey. Hostile units might chase your specialists who are moving on foot or decide to take over your world map outpost, halting its operations until you clear them out. For best protection, have a fleet of capable vehicles on hand at all times, as the bandit hordes are unable to catch a fast-moving car with all your scavenged loot inside. As the game progresses, you’ll start seeing more powerful Rival troops on the world map. Approach them with caution (and several specialists).
The base game is also receiving an update with a number of quality-of-life improvements, user interface additions and bug fixes. Most notably the main quest now has mid-quest rewards, permanent effects are now visible in the Statistics screen so you can see which affect your colony, and a toggle for faster world map animations has been added to the Settings menu. Check all improvements and fixes from the Changelog: Update 4 link below.
IMAGE: Colony beauty shot
We hope you’ll jump in and discover all that the New Alliances DLC has to offer in terms of new buildings, tactics and decisions. There’s a lot to play around with from deciding who to help and who to hinder, and which powerful rewards to go for. So prepare yourself against bandits, rivals and sandworms alike to unite the wasteland!
As we’ve mentioned before, New Alliances will be released for PC platforms first while we continue working on the console counterparts, so stay tuned!
Surviving the Aftermath: New Alliances is available now on Steam and Epic Store. It is also included as a part of the Ultimate Colony Upgrade with more DLC to come later.
Changelog
General
Added Main Quest rewards.
- Gather enough Main Quest knowledge to unlock new modifiers that improve your colony, or alternatively, choose a resource reward instead.
- Each knowledge type (Life Support, Medicine, Defense and Ecosystem) gives different rewards.
Added a new Global Effects tab in the statistics menu:
- Other: displays modifiers that affect the whole colony.
- Custom game settings: displays the chosen custom game settings.
Added a setting for faster World Map animations.
- Increases the animation speed of World Map actions, such as specialist movement.
- Changed the way that other societies spawn in the World Map.
- Societies now spawn randomly to improve gameplay variation.
- Previously certain societies always spawned in the World Map, such as Lushton.
Added the New Alliances DLC banner to the Main Menu.
- The banner is visible for players that do not have the New Alliances DLC.
- The banner changes to a DLC toggle button for players that have the New Alliances DLC enabled.
Gameplay
The carrier bringing the last resource to a construction zone should now start constructing the building.
- Previously a random worker would start constructing the building.
Defeating bandit camps in the World Map now gives resource rewards based on the location.
- For example, defeating bandits in a research location will reward the player with science points.
- Defeating bandit sectors gives a currency reward.
Notifications that have many targets can now be selected multiple times to go through all the affected targets.
- Affects all notifications, such as “constructions finished” and “colonists are injured”.
- Previously, clicking on the notification moved the camera to the first affected target.
Research queue now takes the active research into account when choosing its path. This should make the research queue work much smoother.
- The top row was prioritized before. This change fixes the issue where a tech has been researched on the bottom row and it would still queue techs through the top row.
Low HP colonists will now visit Medical Tents or Field Hospitals to heal themselves.
- Colonists often had very low health that caused unintended deaths caused by hunger, malnutrition etc.
- Guards are now more effective as they will heal themselves if their health drops low enough.
Critical conditions from workers in entertainment and sanitary buildings are not instantly removed anymore.
- Building many saunas or entertainment buildings reduced the amount of conditions given to colonists in different situations.
Specialists can now be commanded to move to the exact same location as the previous specialist. This was mainly an issue on a controller.
Removed camera centering when exiting specialist menu while using a controller.
- Previously, the camera moved to the player’s colony when the specialist menu was exited.
Added a notification when finding a new building in the colony view. Mainly affects the Cold Rush scenario right now.
Percentage bonuses from techs now stack cumulatively. Only the latest percentage bonus was active previously.
- Main quest gives percentage rewards that affect the whole colony. This change was added so that the rewards can stack with all other percentage modifiers e.g. building durability.
Graphics
Polished the Society Menu.
- Removed unnecessary society introduction texts.
- Added “Trade offers available” text.
- Added reputation text and icon.
- Other smaller image, text and icon changes in different society menu panels.
Polished all World Map panels.
- Increased the size of World Map panels and the texts in them.
- Made the Society panel more concise.
- Improved textures for Wind Turbine, Food Storage, Tent, Emergency Shelter and Trapper.
Balance Adjustments
Added resource rewards to the early stages of the main quest.
- Rewards have been added throughout the main quest to make it more compelling to do.
Hungry colonists now seek food when hunger is at 20%, was 10% previously
- We received many comments about colonists dying from hunger, even though there was plenty of food available in the colony. This change should reduce the times random hunger deaths happen.
Tired colonists now seek shelter to sleep in when tiredness is at 20%, was 10% previously.
Bug Fixes
- Xbox only: fixed an issue that caused Wind Turbine, Lightning Rod, Lightning Tower and Martian Wind Turbine to be unrepairable when the Ultimate Colony DLC was active.
- Fixed an issue that caused the colonists to run in place and the game would reset to day 0 when loading a save where a building has just been destroyed before saving.
- Changed the wording for “wasteland biome” in multiple languages in the main quest. This caused misunderstandings in the main quest step that required an outpost to be built on the wasteland biome.