Game updates/2019-01-15

Update - Tyranids January 15th, 2019
"They come from between the stars, a god of hunger made flesh, to harvest the galaxy of life."

- Inquisitorial Xenologist, Darnye Gotopo

This update adds Tyranids to the world of Gladius Prime -- a new fully-featured faction with their very own unique playstyle and storyline. To bring the existing factions more in line with each other and improve gameplay, it also contains a wide array of balance changes as well as many atmospheric additions, AI improvements, bug fixes and Steam achievements.

New Faction (Tyranids DLC)

 * *Tyranids - The Great Devourer*
 * *Initial Challenge:* **Hard**
 * *Biomass:* Food and ore resources are replaced by a single biomass resource.
 * *No Energy:* Influence is used for building maintenance.
 * *The Ravening Swarm:* Cities are more restricted in size, but less penalized by quantity.
 * *Reclamation:* Production buildings can reclaim units to regain biomass and production.
 * *Feed Upon The Planet:* Cities and Malanthropes consume tile biomass and strip the ground down to bedrock.
 * *Prey Adaptation:* By defeating and consuming enemies, Tyranids evolve better ways of beating them next time. Enemies defeated in the area of a Malanthrope generate research points.
 * *Instinctive Behaviour:* Units outside the range of a synapse creature revert to their instinctive behaviour until contact is re-established. Whilst in range of a synapse link, units are immune to morale effects. The Hive mind's attention can be focused to temporarily override a unit's instinctive behaviour.
 * *Poisoned Weapons:* Many weapons do additional damage against infantry units.
 * *Acid Blood:* Many monstrous creatures cause melee attackers to take damage.

New

 * Added Tyranid music.
 * Added unique barks for the majority of units instead of having all units of a faction share the same ones.
 * Added several pieces of new flavor text scattered throughout the game.
 * Show names of quest bosses above their icon.
 * Added 55 Steam achievements.
 * Added display of total Tyranids killed on Gladius to the menu screen.
 * Added new outpost captured sound.
 * Added new sound for Neophyte Hybrid's Return to the Shadows ability.
 * Added chat notification sound.
 * Ruins of Vaul can now give Vaul Sentries as rewards.

Balance

 * Increased height level for headquarters and flyers used for sight and line of fire.
 * Shaken now reduces the accuracy by 17% (from 25%) and increases the damage by 17% (from 0%).
 * Broken now reduces the accuracy by 33% (from 50%) and increases the damage by 33% (from 0%).
 * Added Fleet trait to Canoptek Scarabs, Catachan Devils, Kroot Hounds and Lord of Skulls: +1 movement.
 * Added Poisoned trait to 'Urty Syringe: increased damage against infantry units.
 * Added Pinning trait to the Hades Gatling Cannon and Shockwave: prevents infantry taking damage from doing overwatch attacks for a turn, decreases movement by 67%, decreases accuracy by 50% and increases ranged damage reduction by 17%.
 * Added Infiltrate trait to Catachan Devils, Kroot Hounds and Scout Bikers: prevents overwatch attacks.
 * Stealth trait now increases ranged damage reduction by 17% instead of preventing overwatch attacks.
 * Reduced Smash trait min armor penetration from 10 to 6.
 * Hammer of Wrath upgrade now also grants Hammer of Wrath for a turn to units using the Jump Pack ability.
 * Heavy Weapon trait now reduces accuracy by 50% after moving instead of fixing it to 2, allowing buffs like Aura of Discipline, Signum and Ammo Runt to affect it.
 * Smoke Screen is now a free action.
 * Increased Summary Execution regained morale from 2...6 to 3...9.
 * Increased Iron Will regained hitpoints from 50% to 100%.
 * Changed Labour Corps resource output from 6 influence to 4 ore and 2 influence. This should give Astra Militarum a better opening.
 * Reduced cost of Astra Militarum city edicts from 40 influence to 20.
 * Reduced cost of Bullgryns by 25%.
 * Reduced Fortress of Redemption cost from 40 to 20.
 * Increased Necron ore starting resources from 25 to 50. Necrons were accidently starting with 25 less resources than the other factions and forced to commit heavily to ore too early.
 * Increased Concussion accuracy from -20% to -25%.
 * Increased cost of Monolith by 50%.
 * Increased cost of Obelisk by 50%.
 * Increased armor of Land Raider by 2 and cost by 50%.
 * Increased cost of Gorkanaut by 33%.
 * Reduced Gorkanaut Rampage attacks from +1 to +50%.
 * Reduced cost of Gargantuan Squiggoth by 33%.
 * Reduced Channel Mental Emissions research from +6...+18 to +3...+9.
 * Reduced Cybork Implants damage and damage reduction from +10%...+30% to +3%...+9%, reduced cooldown from 3 to 1.
 * Reduced Experimental Procedure damage and damage reduction from +50% to +25%.
 * Reduced Extra Bitz upkeep from -25%...-75% to -10%...-30%, reduced radius from 4 to 3.
 * Reduced Prophet of the Waaagh! radius from 4 to 3.
 * Reduced Might Makes Right from 4 to 3 influence per combat per upkeep.
 * Changed Warpath from +1...3 attacks to +20%...+60% attacks, reduced cooldown from 3 to 2, reduced duration from 3 to 2.
 * Changed Skyfire weapon accuracy against flyers/ground to +33%/-33% from +2/-2, and non-skyfire weapons against flyers to -33% from -2.
 * Siren Caster artefact now grants +5 instead of +3 loyalty.
 * Increased Enslavers experience value from 2 to 3.
 * Outpost's ranged damage reduction now works on all units, not only allied.
 * Increased Shelter Compression population limit increase from +1 to +2.
 * Clear tile restores a tile to its nominal climate (removing bedrock).
 * Reduced the number of enemies spawned for the last Astra Militarum quest. It was a too hard considering the turn limit.
 * Enemies spawned by quests now have higher rank as well -- randomized and based on the tier of the quest.
 * Disabled healing, movement and sight artefacts until better solutions can be found and implemented.

General

 * Defeating a player now transfers his units and outposts to the closest undefeated ally and only become neutral if there are no undefeated allies.
 * Economy graph now shows resource output instead of building cost.
 * All trait effects are now processed before trait durations.
 * Hero units no longer gain titles.
 * Random faction no longer considers other random players and is now truly random.
 * Melee weapons now have a specified range of 1; the Melee trait restricting their range.
 * Improved CPU performance when units move.
 * Improved audio synchronization.
 * Improved ground decal rendering.
 * Configuration is now logged on application start.
 * Updated localization files.

AI

 * Restored AI troop variety.
 * AI now prefers to put buildings that don't benefit from the bonuses of a given tile on tiles that have the lowest bonuses of other things it also might need.
 * AI no longer orders a unit to heal which is already healing, unless it's position is no longer safe. This prevents unnecessary interruption of healing.
 * New way to analyze healing spots without using pathfinding for faster turn-processing.
 * AI will now research loyalty buildings before it needs them, so they are available when required.
 * AI no longer considers its own wounded units when it comes to combat strength calculations so it doesn't overestimate themselves.
 * AI will now base the unit type it will focus on based on the availability of resources. So for example if there's a lot of food but few minerals an Astra Militarum AI will focus on infantry. Support and air production buildings are not treated by this system as they are not available early on. Instead the AI will just add those in a ratio with their other unit production buildings.
 * AI can once again build the construction building without requiring a certain amount of loyalty.
 * AI will now first fix resource problems before getting population, expansion or construction in addition to unit production buildings.
 * AI shall no longer move squishy units like Devastators in an overly aggressive manner.
 * AI will now only perform the aggressive move style when they think their army is at least 50% stronger than that of the enemy.
 * AI should now ignore enslaved units when it comes to how they position their units.

Bug Fixes

 * Fixed checks if a unit can attack not always considering a weapon's targetting conditions and accuracy 0. This fixes Doomsday Ark being able to fire at enemies at range 3 after moving for 0 damage.
 * Fixed Psycheneuein kills spawning units for the wrong player.
 * Fixed please wait message triggering when a hero that can't act is deselected.
 * Fixed being able to change research in the enemy's turn.
 * Fixed being able to use actions in the enemy's turn if they have already begun targeting.
 * Fixed outpost trait not appearing for non-host players in multiplayer.
 * Fixed weapon upgrades not showing for non-host players in multiplayer.
 * Fixed feature durations not updating for non-host players in multiplayer.
 * Fixed passive traits not working on world generation before a unit is moved or turn ends.
 * Fixed passive actions that increase in radius with level not applying to new affected tiles before moving when leveled.
 * Fixed auras not working properly when multiple affect the same tile but from different players.
 * Fixed auras not working properly when multiple affect the same tile and one is removed.
 * Fixed non-stacking trait priority to prioritize higher rank traits.
 * Fixed non-stacking traits not being kept disabled on the unit in case the trait becomes stronger or a prevailing trait disappears.
 * Fixed morale bar not reappearing when Fearless trait is removed.
 * Fixed morale not being restored when Fearless trait is removed.
 * Fixed traits marked as always visible not always being shown on weapons.
 * Fixed action tile highlights showing up on unsighted tiles.
 * Fixed Space Marines getting outpost constant boni twice when controlled by Fortresses of Redemption.
 * Fixed Jokaero Digital Weapons item being usable on targets out of line of sight.
 * Fixed Flame Breath not applying Soul Blaze.
 * Fixed Traktor Kannon not applying Slowed.
 * Fixed crash that would sometimes occur when starting a game with random colors.
 * Fixed cinematic subtitles sometimes stretching outside the screen.
 * Fixed several typos.
 * Fixed Data/Audio/Mixer.xml being overwritten with Windows style line-endings on game quit, invalidating Steam's stored file.

Wiki Notes

 * Version 1.2.0
 * Saved games from previous versions are not compatible with this version.