Hi Gamers!
Huge update incomming ːsteamthumbsupː
Mid-game: enter mid-game. Explore offworld planets, bring home loot, neutralize or capture enemies, research and workshop.
Tons of new content for mid-game: all faction members of Mercom, the Raiders, and the Minotaur Rebels can be encountered. Brute hunters can be unlocked as well. Finally, the Science Chumps also have managed to develop Earth's own powerful (well more or less) weapons. For more peaceful solutions there is also a cattle prod now. Also added a bunch of new workshop recipes and research projects. The latter will also develop mid-game story.
Random encounters can spawn now (currently 1).
Overhaul: DRM mechanic simplified. Alien weapons usually despawn if the owner dies. You can stop the despawning if you just knock out the enemy. This leaves behind a locked weapon. The Chumps certainly will be able to figure out ways to overcome the lock.
Balancing: electricity damage was way to overpowered. It does much less health damage now.
Extra or bonus mission rewards, and possibly punishments...
Diversified "protect faction" quest: support (neutralize 1 enemy), protect (50% must survive) and save (100% must surviv).
Chumps can learn from researching and workshopping.
Performance boost for animation files: much smaller footprint, less draining on fps and faster loading.
Speaking of which: Tactical game loading time down by 20%.
More animation variety: all NPCs can use the full pool of player animations. 'Big guys' have their own animation subset.
A bagillion of bug fixes including two super rare RNG bugs and one soft-lock. Game is much more stable now.