I will upload it before new build will make it on Monday
Changes in Backer Build 3 (version 0.3.32253) vs Backers Build 2 (version 0.2.25109)
- geoscape with few systems:
- randomized places of interest: phoenix bases (rare giving you soldiers, APC or dropship), havens (abundant, but mostly not interesting, at least not in this build), scavenging sites (less rare than phoenix bases, giving you mission)
- mist and alien bases merging
- vehicles with fuel consumption (acquired with phoenix bases)
- expanse on the map by building refuelling and radar stations
- simple reputation system with 3 factions and individual haven leaders
- basic production and storage system (thing worth noticing here is that everything you bring back to base is repaired for free and magazines are refilled if they were not empty)
- new missions types:
- scavenge - collecting equipment and resources in abandoned military complexes while shooting some enemies, you must eliminate all enemy forces to collect all what is on the map and get mission reward, or you can try to avoid enemies, grab something and evacuate, which will not grant you main 3 resources (mission reward) and items left behind will be lost, but still you will get some new items, take most precious and needed items to backpack and leave the other in boxes as they will be teleported to main base instead of being carried with your squad
- alien base attack (nest and lair) - with destroying crabmen hatchery or killing queen objectives, you can evacuate without any penalty, but surrounding havens will still be in danger, reward is massive reputation boost with all factions, when you eliminate objective you win despite of presence of other enemies
- there is also haven defence which is timed for reaction - but it is similar to BB2 missions, so eliminate every enemy to succeed, it has added few UI elements and is set all in new environments, you can evacuate gaining nothing and losing some reputation, then return later, but remember that the time is ticking - if you succeed reward will be in resources and particular faction and/or haven reputation boost, the lesser challenge to the haven the less reward there will be, you can also steal items from crates, because when you don’t do that items will stay there (I’m not sure if that doesn’t affect reputation or reward)
- new environments on the maps - except completely new alien lairs and mostly new abandoned places, you will also see New Jericho living quarters, and some industrial/science zones
- environment also became more durable, now many objects will withstand quite many bullets, so removing enemy cover is not so easy, ‘welcome snipers on the rooftops’
- addition of team roster and base inventory where you change all soldiers loadouts - each base has its own inventory, air transport (Manticore) doesn’t - you need to put things in soldiers backpacks to transport them between bases
- ability to quick save and quick load the game on the geoscape, and auto save(?) after editing soldier roster
- UI changes:
- solid objects become transparent to help you see enemies and crates and plan your tactic
- there are enemy spawn markers on the maps, so not to surprise player with enemy at his back
- weapon wheel was removed
- most frequently used abilities now have keyboard shortcuts
- after pressing Alt you will see items on the ground
- while aiming now you see the range (only in Armadillo?)
- damage prediction in more accurate? Hard for me to say because I’m not really looking at it maybe with the exception when I’m fighting the queen, but it looks like it is calculating possible damage all the time (question is if it isn’t also calculating it for enemy on haven defence missions, so this is why those maps slow down so much when there are quite many enemies with guns - for some reason health bars of my units are flashing constantly)
- now during attacks we can see damage done to equipment (our and enemy)
- new enemies:
- mindfragger - grabs your soldier in close range and instantly remove control of him, he will act in the next alien turn as enemy, freed soldier sometimes act in the same turn and sometimes need to wait for another turn
- mindfragger egg - spawn mindfraggers, with 2 turn cooldown (1 for prepare hatching, 1 for mindfragger to get used to new environment)
- terror sentinel - after 1 turn cooldown scream causing massive willpower loss for your soldiers, which can cause panic, resets after few (3?) turns
- mist sentinel - after 1 turn cooldown emits mist around itself (mist will reduce willpower for you and boost for aliens with ratio of 1 per turn while standing in it), will reset after 3 turn to emit mist again increasing its range
- hatching sentinel - after 1 turn cooldown triggers all mindfragger eggs in the vicinity to spawn mindfraggers - whole process takes around 4 turns for enemy to prepare (1st turn sentinel is preparing, 2nd turn it send signal to trigger eggs and eggs are preparing, 3rd turn eggs hatch and mindfraggers are preparing, 4rd turn mindfraggers act), probably won’t reset after few turn because another trigger won’t do anything new
- crabmen hatchery - just stands there and wait to be destroyed
- crabmen - they have slightly slimmer postures and it makes them harder to hit, also new mutations and their combinations (new is only spitter head which is more resistant than normal head and don’t grant any new ability, but you can see more combinations of old mutations, there were also small changes in their balance statistics - see below)
- queen - new mutation (new is mist emitter, and spawning mindfraggers from abdomen)
- willpower system changes: now killing enemies and opening the crate gives 2 WP to soldier performing those actions (snipers get only 1 WP for a kill - maybe connected to the range or partial damage?), and losing a soldier takes 2 points from all soldiers, soldiers can have temporarily willpower above their maximum level, enemies also receive willpower after killing your soldiers
- new skills/abilities:
- rage burst - heavy class skill, using massive will points pool he empty full magazine of machine gun with wide or concentrated burst (if you want to kill something tough or swarming group of enemies then this is for you as it is most powerful attack in the NJ arsenal right now)
- rapid clearance - assault class skill, working with automatic smaller weapons (currently assault rifle and defender) where assault using massive will points pool can attack once per turn with 3 bursts without spending any action points (good damage dealer against smaller or less armoured enemies, more precise than rage burst)
- deadly duo - sniper class skill, works only with sniper rifle where using massive will points pool you can make two shots with twice better accuracy (can help eliminate particular body part on distant enemies)
- rally - technician class skill, he can use massive will points pool to restore will to all other soldiers in the team (if you need rage burst, rapid clearance and deadly duo once again, or just recover after terror sentinel attack, this is for you)
- remove mindfragger - mech arm item ability (and because only technician can use mech arm then it is only for technician right now), which help you remove mindfragger from soldier’s head, killing it and not harming soldier
- fire grenade - grenade launcher item ability, you shoot grenade like missile in BB2
- strike - stun rod item ability, just to make the drums of their carapaces and stun them
- escape - ability to withdraw soldier from the map to the dropship available in evacuation zones
- new items:
- phoenix grenade launcher - weapon merging versatility of magazine (a lot of ammo with just 1 inventory slot) with power of grenades and range of missile launcher (actually lower range, but still better than hand grenades), powerful vs small enemies, which can have ripped many body parts with one explosion
- phoenix pistol - similar to new jericho pistol but with more damage to non-armoured enemies and accuracy better than the assault rifle
- phoenix shotgun - really powerful toy in close range which can be used on more armoured enemies compared to assault rifle, less accurate and without return fire or any other special ability or skill assigned to it, but really brings the punch
- phoenix grenade - like new jericho grenade but +1 damage
- phoenix stun rod - melee weapon, can be used only once in a round, but except making some nice damage also stuns the enemy, unfortunately can’t be used on some enemies
- balance changes:
- crabmen torso -1 HP and -4 HP to main pool
- crabmen carapace +3 HP and +2 HP to main pool
- crabmen shield arm -1 armour
- crabmen heavy leg +1 move and -1 HP to main pool (remember this is multiplied by 2 for both legs)
- crabmen machine gun +2 HP and fire with only 4 bullets in burst instead of 6 (return fire still has 3)
- crabmen shield -2 HP
- crabmen pincer do 6 damage instead of 8, but requires less TU (so now crabmen can dash at you and still attack)
- crabmen deploying shield now can also return fire
- so overall crabmen now have 32 variants, which on average have less HP, but may have more Armour
- enemies spawning at the edge of the map don’t attack in the same turn, they can only move a little bit I think
- each backpack now contains only 6 items instead of 15
- sniper has 6 WP instead of 8
- disabling heavy leg now removes 7 move range instead of 6
- heavy without armour now also has 16 move range
- magazines now require as many hands as their weapon for reloading (so two-handed weapons can’t be reloaded if at least one arm is disabled), previously you could have both hands disabled and still reload
- overwatch WP cost change from 1 to 0
- using medkit WP cost change from 1 to 0
- deploy turret now have cost of 50% TU instead of 0%
- exertion is no longer single use per turn and now restores 50% of TU instead of 25%, and 3 WP cost instead of 2 (so now Assault can be really deadly in single turn, with it he can fire 4 bursts, but if he will kill with each burst, and have ammo for reload in the meantime, he can fire up to 7 bursts!)
- our weapons with return fire property now only work in hands of Assault
- overall all NJ weapons got armour reduction from 3 to 2 and boost in HP, so keep in mind that now loosing weapon is quite likely to happen but enemies still need to make some effort to do that
- NJ Machine Gun (NJ-MG Deceptor): damage changed from 3 to 4, bullets in burst from 15 to 10, number of burst from 4 to 5, max ammo from 60 to 50, armour from 3 to 2, HP from 6 to 10
- NJ Missile Launcher (NJ Fury-2): now can be attached only to Heavy’s Armour (and operated only by Heavy), damage changed from 6 to 7, maximum range from 20 to 30, shot takes 50% of TU instead of 33%
- NJ Pistol (NJ-IFHG Iron Fury): accuracy changed from 2 to 3, HP from 4 to 5, armour from 3 to 2
- NJ Assault Rifle (NJ-AR-50): number of bursts changed from 4 to 5, max ammo from 24 to 30, armour from 3 to 2, HP from 5 to 7
- NJ Grenade (NJ G5 Grenade): HP changed from 3 to 8, maximum range from 12 to 10
- NJ PDW (NJ-P1 Defense): is now destructible and has 2 armour and 5 HP
- Automated Attack Turret: weight changed from 3 to 6, has different weapon (or at least looks differently) - from observation I think it is more powerful, something like 4 damage per bullet instead of 3
- NJ Mech Arms (Mech Arm VVA-2): now can be attached only to Technician’s Armour (and operated only by Technician), armour changed from 3 to 2, HP from 5 to 9, repair takes 50% of TU instead of 75% and is repairing 8 HP instead of 10
- Heavy Arms Armour changed from 4 to 3
- Heavy Legs Armour changed from 4 to 3, reduce moving range by 2
- Heavy Torso Armour reduce moving range by 1
- and we can switch armour between soldiers, but it doesn’t have any actual meaning with exception that if you will produce more heavy armour then your team will be slow and hard to kill, but heavy armour with missile launcher can be operated only by heavy, and Technician armour with mech arms can be operated only by Technician
- Armadillo have lost its underside part thus lost 5 HP (actually vehicle lost 11 HP, but it is probably bug), it’s movement range has changed from 24 to 20, its wheels now have 2 armour and 5 HP instead of 3 and 10, turret now has 3 armour and 12 HP instead of 4 and 10 and don’t contribute 5 points to general HP pool, front side now has 12 HP instead of 10, it also has inventory size of 6 instead of 15, and weight limit now is 78 instead of 100 (also changed on some parts but I won’t bother you with this)
- all weapons and equipment are still destroyable, with exception of Machine Gun - after reaching 0 HP it becomes unusable, but remain in our inventory
- bug fixes:
- aiming at your teammates leg no longer highlight both of them
- you can no longer overcome backpack limit by giving items to other soldiers
- it is no longer possible to equip two 2-handed weapons in soldier’s inventory for heavy or technician… but check topic: Backers Build 3 bugs spotted by Yokes
There may be something more, but I don’t have much time because of, you know… life. Definitely I forget about changes in the Queen.