Phantom Brigade Update #2 | Show 'em Who's Boss
major updatePhantom Brigade · published
Hello Brigadiers! I hope you're ready for what's in store for patch 1.2.0. We have a whole bunch of updates to show you, but the star of this update is BOSS BATTLES. Take on these massive constructs to liberate a province and gain unique rewards!
With this update, while older saves will continue to load, we recommend starting a new campaign to take advantage of loot offered by bosses in every province. Older saves will preserve fully liberated provinces, units, pilots, and parts, but all parts will be regenerated, potentially altering perks. All quests and base memory will also be reset.
Without further ado, let's get into the details!
Changes and New Features
▲ - a buff was applied
▼ - a nerf was applied
⮂ - a tradeoff occurred
🦾 - a change was made based on community feedback
New bosses & updated contest mechanics
- You now need to defeat a massive enemy boss to liberate a province.
- Provinces host different bosses, revealed once you deplete the enemy war score.
- The bosses possess unique weapons and abilities, such as air strikes, split missile barrages that circle cover, proximity fuse cannons, and shockwaves that crash units that get too close.
- Mech weapons based on some of the boss armaments are available as rewards upon victory.
🦾 New & changed scenario types
- Convoys:
- Ambush (new): Intercept enemy tanks or mechs carrying cargo before they escape to a retreat zone. Rewards scale based on the number of units you intercept.
- Raid (changed): Prevent enemy aircraft from taking away the cargo. Disrupt their approach by staying close to targets. The scenario can no longer be completed by simply eliminating every guard and ignoring the objectives.
- Assassination (new): Eliminate a high-ranking enemy officer, but expect complications: targets like these might try to escape or have something up their sleeve.
🦾 New combat maps
- New airbase map (encountered with military POIs)
- New farm map & 2 new natural terrain maps (encountered with convoy, patrol, farm POIs)
- 4 new boss facility maps (encountered in boss fights)
- Some of the maps include bodies of water cooling down the units entering them.
New weapons
- New armor set, Hakobu: a specialized light armor preferred by the logistic corps of the invasion forces. Rewarded from the higher tier objectives in the convoy ambush scenarios.
- New weapons rewarded after boss fights:
- ML-X4 Scythe: Experimental missile launcher. Pincer trajectory allows missiles to bypass cover.
- ML-X9 Hydra: Experimental missile launcher. Splits shortly after launch, releasing a swarm of missiles independently selecting targets.
- AR-X4 Prism: Experimental auto rifle. Each round packs a small amount of solid propellant, enabling a mid-flight course correction.
Quality of Life
- 🦾 New tutorial step: At the end of the tutorial players will be shown the workshop and how to construct mech frames. Quick-started games will now begin with a 3rd mech frame under construction.
- 🦾 Added ability to view the replay for the final turn of combat. Most of the combat UI now remains available after the final turn.
- 🦾 Improved prediction to also include more information about moment-to-moment dangers in the upcoming turn. This includes holograms for upcoming splash damage zones, projectiles with direct flight paths, and guided projectiles with indirect flight paths (the latter gets an approximate prediction focused on arrival time, not a full simulation). The prediction can be disabled in the options menu.
- Added an event log to combat. All comms messages and unit updates are kept in a log on the top left of the screen. You can adjust which messages are displayed at any time. It can be disabled from the options menu.
- Added new gameplay options:
- 🦾 Time from paths - this will allow you to select if hovering over a unit path will scrub the timeline to that point. You can either set this feature off, to only affect selected units or to always be on by default (how it worked before). This can help in busy scenarios with multiple intersecting paths.
- 🦾 Reset time on inactivity - This can be toggled on or off. When on, after a short period of inactivity, the timeline will reset from scrubbing.
- 🦾 Always show target details - This can be toggled on or off. When on, the targeting details that usually only appear while holding CTRL will always be displayed.
- Show Damage Numbers - This can be toggled on or off (on by default). When on, damage numbers appear above units when they get hit.
- Show Event Log - This can be toggled on or off (on by default). When on, the event log will be available in the top left during combat.
- Display Attack Cones - This can be toggled on or off (on by default). When on, it will display effective range and scatter of unit attacks in an upcoming turn.
Other
- Improved vegetation rendering to reduce visual noise and improve blending with terrain. Improved some vegetation models.
- Fights at high elevation have a chance to take place with snow on the ground and snow replacing rain.
- Improved how all transparent effects render against fog and sky. Low angle shots of smoke, explosions, missile trails etc. now render correctly. Moon, stars and the debris ring are now properly visible in the sky.
- Improved beam reflection mechanics. Powerful beam attacks are now harder to deflect. It is no longer possible to reflect a beam 180 degrees straight back at the attacker.
- Added a way to upgrade your equipment level. If your workshop level (increased based on the average level of your squad equipment) is higher than the level of a given part, you can upgrade its level.
- Visit the inventory and select the part you'd like to upgrade. The upgrade button will be available above the level readout.
- The upgrade costs resources based on the quality of the item. The costs increase exponentially depending on the number of times you upgraded a given item. An item can only be upgraded up to 3 times. Check the tooltip for the breakdown of these details.
Bug Fixes
Quality of Life Fixes
- 🦾 Reworked the timeline action dragging based on community suggestions. Dragging actions on the timeline no longer triggers crashes under certain conditions and no longer allows you to break the upper limit on action start time. Dragging actions have improved performance.
- 🦾 Added generators to all military bases. Garrison sweep scenarios will now allow for destroying generators to disable turrets.
- 🦾 Fixed the PLS Curve being very difficult to score hits with
- Fixed missing alarm towers on all maps utilizing them (settlements & military bases).
- Fixed saving and loading the game with 0 liquid fix refilling liquid fix.
- Fixed scatter increases from movement not getting correctly applied to weapons that can have variable scatter.
- Fixed reflecting beam damage with shields still applying damage to the mech and not just the shield.
- Fixed the enemy mechs receiving mixed armor sets. Every enemy now generates one consistent armor set per unit.
- Fixed a bug causing incorrect placement of objectives and enemies relative to the player squad when entering combat.
- Fixed patrol reinforcements appearing in some scenarios they were incompatible with.
- Fixed mechs and tanks being unable to aim up or down in some circumstances.
- Fixed mechs not aiming to the right point when using certain weapons.
- Fixed guided projectiles causing memory allocations every time a new projectile was created.
- Fixed area of effect explosions failing to detect more than 10 targets at a time.
- Fixed area-of-effect explosions being able to apply orders of magnitude more damage depending on a number of intersecting targets.
- Fixed some projectile effects being unnecessarily split into multiple pools, increasing memory use and leading to lower maximum number of visible projectiles.
- Fixed the unit targeting mode getting stuck on the first hovered unit in certain circumstances.
- Fixed excessive fog in the prequel tutorial mission.
- Fixed projectiles with proximity fuses not detonating on approach to secondary targets.
- Fixed automatic victory (on the elimination of all enemies) and defeat (on the elimination of all player units) conflicting with mission objectives, e.g. a victory occurring despite spawned reinforcements.
- Fixed ability to clear input bindings for critical actions, locking up the game (keyboard confirm/cancel and primary/secondary mouse click). Attempts to clear these actions would be ignored.
- Fixed player mechs not targeting elevated tanks in the folded state.
- Fixed movement scatter disappearing from weapons if certain operations were performed during mech customization.
- Fixed exit from unit editing not bringing you back to the squad briefing screen
- Fixed some overworld events repeatedly triggering
- Fixed cases where units could not be inspected or targeted in combat despite the overlay UI suggesting otherwise
- Fixed the difficulty settings not being applied upon starting a new campaign.
- Fixed the player units not being controllable in the concussion tutorial in certain cases.
- Fixed localized mods always loading the last language.
- Fixed missiles overestimating the speed of their targets, leading to overshooting.
- Fixed missiles occasionally targeting a point behind the launcher, leading to them spinning out of control.
- Fixed salvaged mech frames being stuck in repaired state.
- Fixed units randomly crashing when part of a level was destroyed anywhere on the map.
General Fixes
- Fixed close combat squads sometimes featuring load-outs that were geared towards long-range combat
- 🦾 Fixed the pilot pod being positioned incorrectly on the Elbrus armor set.
- Fixed the ore decals being rendered incorrectly, interfering with collision prediction visuals, grass, and some effects.
- Fixed the turrets spawning with a pilot inside.
- Fixed weapons firing sideways in cases where the barrel wasn't aligned to the target direction.
- Fixed several unused or misconfigured units having a low chance of spawning in generic enemy squads
- Fixed terrain smearing past the playable area when TAA or motion blur is enabled.
- Fixed glass and water appearing through the fog.
- Fixed hidden, escaped, or intact enemy units being available for salvage.
- Fixed level damage not being reset properly when loading a briefing save and re-entering combat.
- Fixed battle sites awarding reputation when Home Guard units die.
- Fixed tanks in the prequel scenario appearing too early.
- Fixed enemy tanks not properly displaying their livery colors.
- Fixed destroyed units not allowing damage to pass through.
- Fixed retreated units being able to execute actions.
- Fixed combat dialog continuing to affect audio after combat is concluded.
- Fixed a number of issues in the second tutorial scenario, restoring missing dialog, clarifying objectives, and preventing early victory.
UI Fixes
- 🦾 Fixed ability to get negative scatter values on weapons.
- Moved the Replay button above the Execute button to fix issues with overflow in localizations and overlap with other UI elements.
- Fixed using the mouse wheel to scroll the upgrade screen moving the camera diagonally instead of up/down.
- Fixed ability to bind multiple actions to the same key.
- Fixed scenarios incorrectly stating that you cannot retreat from a battle site.
- Fixed rare rounding error that led to mech parts sometimes appearing destroyed in the UI when they still had 1 HP left.
- Fixed text on time control UI during combat being misaligned in some localizations.
- Fixed stagger value being shown as a percentage in turn summary.
- Fixed Radio for help tooltip stating that reputation would be re-gained if home guard units survived.
- Fixed blur effect not applying correctly on ultra-wide monitors
- 🦾 Fixed clicking on the parent part of a module closing the info window for the parent part after selecting a module.
- Fixed the subsystems appearing instead of parts when filtering options during mech customization after a prior visit to the inventory screen.
- Fixed the unit path indicators becoming obscured by transparent surfaces.
- Fixed outlines not appearing in some contexts when hovering over units in combat.
- Fixed blurry texture filtering on roads in combat maps.
- Fixed salvage screen rarity holograms being incorrectly rotated on some armor pieces.
- Fixed the action bar in the prequel scenario not appearing in the timeline tutorial if the preceding dialog was skipped.
- Fixed action cooldowns not updating when customizing player mechs.
- Fixed hover over dash actions failing to display appropriate range preview.
- Fixed clicking on a selected item a second time closing its info card.
- Fixed info banners on equipment that display if it is an upgrade/new in salvage screen ignoring anything currently equipped to mechs.
- Fixed the battle-site timer in the initial tutorial not being synched to the objective timer on the overworld.
- Fixed enemy pilots in the capital battle all being listed as Trainees.
Known issues
- All audio except for cutscene audio will sometimes not play.
- Tooltips can flow off the sides of the screen in some circumstances.
- Occasionally destroyed mechs are flung around the map after viewing replay mode.
- On launch, it seems audio is occasionally not playing on the main menu and in gameplay except for cutscenes. If you do encounter this please relaunch your game.
- There is a chance of the province liberation event being interrupted by other post-combat events, meaning the opportunity to participate in the parade is not given to the player when the province is won.
- Some events do not end correctly - this could be caused by playing with an older save file.
- Sometimes patrols can get stuck behind the mobile base without engaging in combat. This can be resolved by entering liberated territory briefly.
- Performance issues are common.