Steam Marines v0.8.5a is out! news

Hello, everyone.

It's been over a month since the last build - we all need some more steam marine on robot action! Without further ado:

Engineer Class

The Engineer isn't just there to fix some pipes or tell you to reboot your 'puter. The submachine gun has a large magazine, even larger than the Support, and it fires a four round burst. Together with the talents Active Targeting and Tech Upgrade the Engineer could potentially be the highest single target class with a plasma weapon!

Brainien! Perks!

Perks allow you to customize you marines in one more way. Survivors don't get perks! But your Grenadier might want "Fire Hazard", allowing him to use a Hulk Suit's flamethrower for only 1 AP. Or maybe your Engineer wants "Tech Monger" to scrounge more precious weapon mods and Med Stims for the squad.

There were 35 starting marine squad combinations before v0.8.5a. There are a lot more now.

A new-and-improved Brainien is the Medical Deck boss now. Try punching his squishy, pink butt. Something good might happen.

Last but not least...

New AI changes! Oh snap. Let's just say Scouts are butts and you may want to turn the AI Delay in the game options menu down to 1...

You can find the full changelog on the official forums, the Steam Marines Steam discussion forums, or below.

Thanks for reading and happy robot hunting!
Mister Bums

Steam Marines v0.8.5a Changelog

-------------------------------------------------
New/Changed Features
-------------------------------------------------
Added sight range maximum hard cap of 6 tiles. Done for both game balance and performance reasons.
Vertical sync set on by default. This is primarily to help on machines not handling uncapped framerate very well.
Leader, Scout, and Grenadier class weapon damage slightly lowered.
Support class weapon damage increased to account for enemy armor changes.
All marine class weapon range and accuracy ranges rebalanced.
Torgon units have reduced armor ranges.
Engineer Class added. Able to be taken from the squad creation screen on new game. Able to be found as survivors and recruited in-game.
Re-implemented chests with armor and weapons. Stats are randomized and scaled by deck/level. There may be rare surprises. No “named” gear yet!
The Revenant now drops more loot on death.
Brainien is now the official Medical Deck boss. Tough. Unfair. Loot pinata.
Implemented rare item “Med Stim”. Increases max health and action by 1 and fully restores health and action.
Laser Mods, Plasma Mods, and Med Stims can now be randomly found in Alien Merchant inventories.
Ammo Crates now grant all squad members 1 to 3 magazines instead of 2. The marine who uses the Ammo Crate still gets a free reload.
Common enemies now drop Canteens and Ammo Crates in addition to Grenades.
Common enemies have a slightly smaller chance to drop items on death.
Marines can always fire ranged weapons through portholes.
Scrolling Event Log is back. Default key “S” toggles it on and off.
Squad Info screen is back. Displays max health, full weapon and armor stats, et cetera.
Move auto-action priority changed; moving into a tile with an Alien Merchant and an enemy unit will prioritize meleeing the enemy unit instead of triggering Alien Merchant trade.
Grenadier class talent “Pincer” cost reduced to 2 AP.
Support class talent “Point Blank” cost reduced to 2 AP. Now does normal damage and shreds half of target armor.
Support class talent “Hail Mary” cost reduced to 2 AP.
Marine perks added to Squad Creation screen.
“Sweeper” Perk: Laser Sight grants +2 damage. Cycling attachments costs 0 AP.
“Spotter” Perk: Grants +1 experience per enemy if actively spotting. Only boosts the experience of the marine who has the perk.
“Fire Hazard” Perk: Using a Hulk Suit's ranged flamethrower only costs 1 AP. This is probably overpowered. Have fun before I nerf it.
“Tech Monger” Perk: Grants a +10% chance to find high tech loot in lockers.
“Close Combat” Perk: Ranged attacks have a 100% chance to hit adjacent targets.
Added marine perks to mouse over tooltips.
Survivor marines do not come with perks, but they can come with weapons with special effects. Survivor marines may come with Laser and Plasma weapons already equiped.
Monster AI altered; less aggressive in encircling marines, but pursues marines over longer distances.
A marine in a Hulk Suit using a Hulk Suit does not get another max health extension. Instead health is just restored to the max modified by the previous Hulk Suit. Armor rating does continue to stack. Getting killed resets health to pre-Hulk Suit max value.
Alien Merchants now have an 8% chance to randomly spawn rare items in their fourth inventory slot, up from 5%.
You can no longer manually reload a marine's weapon while he/she is wearing a Hulk Suit.
“Inferno”, “Frozen”, and “Acid” random generated weapons make a return. Cannot be found on the Command Deck.
Added manual frame rate limiter using $Pref::timeManagerProcessInterval in the main.cs file.
Vertical sync can be enabled/disabled manually in the main.cs file.
Changed level and current run score calculation. It is harder to get the top progression grades. Losing marines and taking too long on a given level is punished more severely.

-------------------------------------------------
Bug Fixes
-------------------------------------------------
Fixed some texture issues in D3D mode.
Fixed some Hulk Suit/Guard Mode issues.
Shortened marine fire projectiles to prevent looping on longer range shots.
Fixed input locking bug with unit movement being passed bad direction parameters.
Fixed marines not being able to face in a direction with 0 AP when facing should cost 0 AP.
Fixed the Scoped talent tooltip to state the correct AP cost.
Fixed bug where multiple Leader marines led to higher item spawn chances.
Fixed alien merchant rare item spawn chances.
Lasershot properly updates health numbers of affected units.
Adding stat/skill points properly updates health and action numbers of affected units.
Floored max health when a marine's Hulk Suit is destroyed.
Fixed input locking due to random weather effect.
Fixed New Game Plus counter so it tracks cleanly between a NGP fail run and a new game.
Fixed current level/run score calculation involving New Game Plus.
Fixed survivors not being able to be Engineers.
Fixed survivors setting Strength stat properly on spawn.
(Mostly?) fixed enemy unit floating health text popping up through fog of war.
Fixed Hulk Suit use/destruction health resets.
Fixed the fourth marine character (Support slot) rarely having talents erased on new level.
Fixed survivor perk script error.
Fixed enemy unit tooltip range parsing/conditional.
Fixed Guard Mode projectiles coming from the selected marine rather than from the Guarding marine.

-------------------------------------------------
Notes
-------------------------------------------------
Added support for older video cards and better support for integrated Intel/ATI cards.
Stripped gender pronouns from survivor description screen.
Cleaned up Hulk Suit animations for each class.
Squashed some benign warning messages displayed in the console.