Beta 11 X3 Prerelease - Mechanical Renaissance

"Mechanical Renaissance." I've come up with what will probably be the official name of Beta 11 once it releases, and today we've reached yet another milestone on the road towards that goal!

The new utilities I wrote about in the latest blog post (pw: "machinesense"), so I won't repeat that stuff here except to remind that now you can try out the new Machine Analyzer, Structural Scanner, and Trap Scanners.

Dirty Datajack mechanics have finally been updated, the details of which I'll leave for you discover if you didn't hear about them already. That part was a holdover from the original placeholder bothacking system, so it was only a matter of time before they were either removed or got a new purpose, and I'm always a bigger fan of the latter approach when possible ;)

At this point the storage and propulsion changes coming to Beta 11 are no longer "experimental," so I've gone through and made additional adjustments based on that knowledge, including reworking a number of the robot loadouts that were kind of in flux during X1/X2. With storage numbers set to continue as they are, the largest storage units have had their mass reduced a bit to make them a tad more feasible (although as intended they're still out of reach for most builds).

EM Gets Interesting

One of the big highlights to X3 is the EM damage update.

EM has always been extremely effective in most cases and therefore due some kind of adjustment, but there were a lot of options I'd considered and none of them perfect. Then more recently I did come up with an idea that at least aligns with my desire to add more trade offs to EM rather than just outright nerf numbers or some equally harsh approach. (I technically also nerfed a few EM numbers, but it wasn't much, just some necessary changes to fix outliers set a long time ago without enough context.)

Now EM is generally still just as effective as it used to be, but there are side effects to take into consideration. Most noticeable will be the fact that salvage from corrupted robots is also Corrupted.

Destroying a robot via system corruption ensures that all of its salvage is also Corrupted, while a corrupted robot destroyed via other means will only maybe have some Corrupted salvage.

The CORRUPTED state remains on the part unless repaired at a Repair Station.

OR you can choose to attach the part anyway, in which case integrating it with your system adds the part's corruption to your own, and may have other side effects, but the part itself will then be normal.

Some Corrupted parts in inventory:

Corrupted parts found via search:

Essentially this change delays the usefulness of salvage obtained from corrupted robots, possibly requiring Cogmind to wait until there's an effective way to clear it and putting pressure on inventory space in the meantime if it's a part otherwise intended to replace or upgrade something currently in use. Or if it's worth it at the time (or necessary!), just bite the bullet and attach it right immediately :P

Probably one of the more chaotic changes to EM is that AOE spectrum effects are now applicable to Cogmind as well, so point-blank EM launchers might not be quite so safe an option anymore (although still quite effective if you really really need to...).

That won't come into play all that often considering how Cogmind is almost the only user of AOE EM weapons, and while some traps and machines could be problematic if unprepared, even there the chances are not incredibly high for coverage reasons.

As I believe I've mentioned before, I'll be talking more about the rebalance in upcoming blog posts, probably starting with storage and propulsion changes, to be followed by damage types.

Changelog

The full changelog included within has been updated as usual, but here's a list of the changes since the last prerelease:

• NEW: Machine Analyzer (processor)
• NEW: Trap Scanners (device)
• NEW: New type of unique drone bay
• NEW: Dirty Datajack redesigned with new stats, effects, and lore
• NEW: Structural Scanner identifies cells behind visible solid cells
• NEW: Phase Generators also scramble all structural and terrain scanning effects
• NEW: DISPOSABLE and UNSTABLE weapons also append remaining uses to name while in inventory, or on open info page
• NEW: Cogmind power sources susceptible to EM-induced chain reactions from AOE sources
• NEW: Power Shielding protects power sources from EM-induced chain reactions
• NEW: Option to have Machine Analyzer log more than interactive machines (advanced.cfg: machineAnalysisLogsNoninteractive)
• NEW: Shortcut to order all visible controllable Mechanics to initiate repairs (o -> r)
• NEW: Robots corrupted by EM damage drop Corrupted salvagable parts, which cause side effects when attached
• NEW: Integrated Mediator may now also prevent negative effects of attaching Corrupted parts
• NEW: Scoresheet includes data on Corrupted Part use
• NEW: Manual section "Salvage" (under Combat) expanded to describe Corrupted parts
• MOD: Terrain Scanner animation only plays on locations where knowledge has changed from before
• MOD: Terrain scanning animation no longer plays over interactive section of a machine
• MOD: Structural Scanner no longer identifies unstable machines
• MOD: Command Fork RIF ability description explicitly states matching Relay Coupler requirement
• MOD: Hauler/Recycler base inventory capacity reduced (total capacity either remained the same or increased)
• MOD: Humpback mass reduced to 200
• MOD: Cargo Storage Unit mass reduced to 140
• MOD: Adjusted stats for all non-basic ECM Suite variants
• MOD: Electromagnetic launcher ranges decreased by 2
• MOD: Shock Bomb Launcher spectrum changed from NARROW to INTERMEDIATE
• MOD: Increased damage falloff of Adv. EMP Blaster and Tesla Bomb Launcher
• MOD: Critical resonation detonations use different log message and color when involving Cogmind
• MOD: Reverted several temporary robot propulsion/power loadouts to Beta 10.2 state
• MOD: Asb. Suspension Frame stats updated
• MOD: Asb. Alloy Leg penalty reduced
• MOD: Repair Station item list no longer uses "[broken]" suffixes since part name includes status as a prefix
• MOD: [Player 2 mode] Reduced upper limit on Player 2 AI desired overweight multiple 
• FIX: Projectile collision issue caused multiweapon volleys to sometimes be less effective at hitting the intended target [aoemica]
• FIX: One Zion NPC dialogue '?' marker for a particular encounter was still appearing in the wrong color [R-26 Lightspeed]
• FIX: Mobile Refinery could be used to create infinite matter under a particular circumstance [JackNine]
• FIX: Scoresheet final heat description was always Cool, regardless of heat level
• FIX: Volley range visualization terrain destructibility coloring could reveal hidden and phase doors
• FIX: Mobile Refinery could not convert debris already under current location when activated
• FIX: Item lists with dynamic abbreviated prefix fading did not consistently handle it in combination with the new Broken prefix

Example of use counts appended to disposable item names that didn't have them before:

Get Beta 11 X3

On Steam, Beta 11 X3 is located on the new beta branch "beta_11_x3" accessible with the code "MechanicalRenaissance", or if you don't have Steam and bought through FastSpring and would like to try the DRM-free version, send me an email at gridsagegames@gmail.com to be added to the Beta 11 cycle notification list. (Anyone already on the list will receive an email with a new link.)

Saves are not compatible with previous releases.

There's always the chance of another one or two small updates this week (for example if something goes wrong), which will be otherwise unannounced except to append a notice to this announcement on Patreon, and via an announcement on the #patron Discord channel.