The Co-op Update
Hi everyone, our second Major Update is out now! The headline feature is co-op, but there are plenty of additions and improvements on top of that – something this post will cover.
Before we dive in, we’d like to say a huge thank-you to all our community members that helped playtest the game. The extra feedback has been invaluable helping us track down bugs and shaping our polish and balancing passes.
First up, some important logistical information:
Steam should auto-update to the latest version, which is 0.7.25563 (this is visible in the bottom-right of the main menu). If it’s a lower number, you can verify your install from the Steam Library and it should nudge Steam into updating.
Your profile saves will carry over (i.e. all your equipment you’ve unlocked thus far), but any in-progress escape run will not – so if you’re in the middle of a campaign and you don’t want to lose any new blueprints you haven’t banked, reach a gate and bank them before switching to the new version. If the game detects you’re trying to load an older save, it’ll give a reminder message in case you want to finish the run and bank any equipment on that old version, which is available as a beta branch (called “0.6.24541 – Major Update 1”).
If you want to back up your profile saves for whatever reason, you can find them here:
C:\Users[Username]\AppData\LocalLow\Fireblade Software\SENTRY\Saves\Steam\[SteamID]
Onto the update itself!
Co-op!
Our guiding principle with co-op is that you should be able to play the game normally and choose to have friends dip in and out of your campaigns as much as you want – and crucially, your co-op partner should take any new equipment they bank into their own campaigns (or other co-op games). We certainly could have chosen a much easier and quicker path, but any other way felt too restrictive and a less fun experience.
Outside of the tutorial, any game – whether a new or existing one – can be opened or closed to co-op. If you’re starting a new profile and want to dive straight into co-op, you can skip the tutorial, although if this is your first time playing SENTRY we would recommend playing through the tutorial first 🙂
You can set a game to co-op via the Co-op Settings menu, which is accessible in the Ship Launch and Pause menus. If you have the game set to co-op, you’ll also see this menu in the Navigator and Ship Overview screens. You can invite friends in the Co-op Settings menu and via the Steam overlay, or set the game to be ‘Open’ so anyone can join.
You can have a co-op partner join at any point outside of combat. Similarly, your campaign isn’t tied to co-op once you start, they can leave any time (or be kicked!) and you’ll continue in Singleplayer (or can have someone else jump in if you choose).
When you press “Launch” on the main menu you’ll be taken to a sub-menu where you can start a new game, continue an existing one or join someone else’s. In the Join menu you can matchmake co-op games marked as ‘Open’ and see the status of any Steam friends.
The equipment handling works like this:
- A co-op partner brings their own Equipment into your campaign. When you gain Equipment from a Supply Beacon, you’ll gain your own items. If your co-op partner banks this new equipment, then they’ll be able to use it in their own Singleplayer or other co-op games.
- This works with the campaign and vessel unlocks too – basically if you would have unlocked it if you were playing in singleplayer, it should unlock through co-op.
- New equipment that is found is only kept by the profile that found it. If a different co-op profile joins, they’ll be given enough resources to spend on equipment unlocks and upgrades so they’re not left behind.
If you don’t have any crew to respawn, then a player will take over the Guardian Cameras that are now dotted around levels. In the future we’d like to add more functionality to these so the spectating player can contribute in some way. Below is concept art of the Guardian Cameras when deactivated, activated and in-use:
In terms of difficulty, you’ll generally find co-op easier than singleplayer – if that’s the case, play Starfarer campaigns over Initiate.
That said, combat will be dynamically harder in co-op through the breach points during a wave. Roughly speaking if a wave would have come from two breach points in singleplayer, it’d come from three breach points in co-op.
Oh – and there’s additional co-op appropriate options to adjust in the Audio Settings menu, like Steam chat, audio device selection etc.
New Levels!
Plus a lot of work on the existing levels too.
First though, let’s cover the three new levels:
Logistics has crane arms moving overhead along the final stretch to the exit. If you shoot these, they’ll drop their contents. The red crates are explosive, while the grey ones will stagger enemies they fall on. The grey ones will also kill any Grubs they hit.
Chasm is dominated by a large walkway over a pit, so get ready to bust out the Vortex Glove and Conveyors!
Storage is split into two levels, with two spawns on the bottom and three up top. They all converge in a large and open central area right before the exit:
Every existing level has had work done on it too. Some may be small revisions, such as providing more places to put Deployables or fixing areas where you could see out of the level.
Others (Mess Hall, The Pit) have also had some routes made only accessible by the player to stop the enemies taking unexpected paths.
Fuel Exchange and Central Processing have received an extensive rework so definitely familiarise yourself with the changes before commencing the first wave.
Fuel Exchange has two routes on one side of the level, with two of the original spawns kept. We’ve made the spawn door ordering in this level more intuitive as well, but it may initially throw veterans!
Central Processing now has five spawns all on one side of the level, so it makes defences easier to manage. We also took the opportunity to optimise the level, so it should suffer less framerate drops than before.
Popular Requests!
There have been several popular community requests that we’ve actioned:
- You now receive the scrap bonus at the start of the Prep Phase and not when the wave is triggered. This should mean no more crazy few seconds placing down deployables when a wave commences
- Rewards during Prep Phases are now a flat rate, so you don’t receive a bonus from triggering a wave early – we like the idea of a special ship that has this modifier, so it may make a return in future if you picked that vessel
- We’ve increased the time between waves spawning, particularly before the first wave
- You now get a flat rate Materials reward for completing a level, so there is no resource penalty for leaking enemies. This was resulting in players who were struggling entering a death spiral – you’re already getting punished by losing system health, so you don’t need the double punishment of losing Materials too
We know there are other areas of friction people are experiencing, and future updates will look to improve/resolve those as we work our way toward full release.
Massive Rebalancing!
We’ve extensively rebalanced several areas of the game, all moving away from our previous releases and more toward our ultimate goal.
This affects the upgrade system, economy and combat although they’re all tied in to one another.
First, the Upgrade system: It was weird that you could start a campaign and immediately upgrade something to be Mastered (or close enough), then only upgrade occasionally as you progressed. Now you work towards the higher tiers, unlocking them in the latter stages of a campaign. This also means that getting equipment you already have from a Supply Beacon but at a higher level provides a better bonus. We’ve also changed it so that you only spend Research on upgrading items, not unlocking them from your Equipment list.
For the economy, you now receive a much greater amount of Materials from combat – and as mentioned above, regardless of performance too. This means that upgrading tends to happen after you’ve finished a battle, which is a more natural point in the flow. Repairing a level is now more expensive, but this is due to the large increase in Materials you receive.
In combat, we’ve tried to increase the intensity and variety across each Sector to feel both more exciting and that there’s a natural step up of difficulty as you progress – matching the player power curve.
Enemies also now have different individual escape costs, which improves two areas: the first was the disconnect between small enemies and large enemies having the same escape impact, now you’ll have to prioritise your targets accordingly. The second was that it’d be rare to lose Convoy levels through escaping enemies, the lack of threat not evoking a sense of attrition across an individual battle or entire campaign.
Combined, all these changes should put you in a position where you have to increasingly weigh up tough decisions over the course of a run.
We’re naturally keen to get your thoughts on these changes! When providing feedback, it’d be handy not just to focus on specifics, but the overall effect too. Holistically, we feel this is a better experience and the right direction to be heading in, we hope you feel the same.
Other Stuff!
Those were the headline changes in MU2, but there are a whole lot of other improvements and additions, some of which I’ll collate here:
Audio:
- New combat music
- All combat tracks now have unique final wave music
- Flame Shot now has unique secondary fire audio and reload
- New sound effect when recycling deployables
- New sound effect for P9M firing and toggling scoped mode
- Added a setting that allows you to choose whether the game mutes itself or not when the game is not in focus
- New sound effect for enemy grenade explosions
- The Storm Warden’s heavy pistol now has its own sound effect
- Suit warning plays when impacted by poison or fire-based attacks
- Bile Hound now has its own pain and death audio
Other Balancing Changes:
- Lowered enemy grenade frequency
- Scrap cost reductions for many deployables
- Gave Thermal Dischargers a buff so they more reliably hit enemies
- Campaign starts now also provide a gear item if you’ve previously unlocked one
- Changed how the level health bar functions, so it’s easier to learn how much a certain enemy will deplete the bar when they escape
- The first sector now includes an extra Supply Beacon
Bug-fixes:
- Enemies will now only get up if they are on the floor (no more getting up in mid-air)
- Options text in the settings menu is now translated
- Fixed it so the pulse pads automatically kill the Giant Slugs
- Fixed the ship launch sequence not appearing correctly on ultra-wide resolutions
- Fixed an issue where the resolution setting would be broken if the value stored in that person’s settings.ini file was not a supported resolution
- If you disabled the crosshair in the user settings, it would break using weapons in scoped mode
Miscellaneous:
- Text files are now shipped as assets outside the build, which allows easier text updating without having to also update a build
- Provided additional max framerate options
- Scrap colour has changed from grey to yellow to match the UI icon
- Upgrade nodes now have custom icons
- Removed the After Action Report letter grades. This was making people feel like they failed and should replay the level, when really the campaign is about battling through the Sector, not perfecting everything. End of level grades will likely make a return in future arcade modes.
- Increased camera speed on chasing ship/missiles. We know this is an area we’ve received lots of comments on and are planning on looking into other improvements for this, we just need to work out a way to convey the information without it being frustrating.
- Miscellaneous optimisations
- Mastered weapons now have different skins
We hope you like the latest additions for Major Update 2! Once you’ve checked it out, don’t forget to leave a Steam review 🙂
We’ll be keeping an eye on our various channels to pick up any feedback or thoughts you may have. While we may not respond to every post, be assured that we read them all and document them for future reference.
While the build has received extensive playtesting by our community, with each influx of additional players there’s the potential for more bugs to be uncovered, so we’ll most likely be doing a follow-up patch to pick up on anything that crops up, plus a few other bits we’d like to squeeze in. The latest translations will also be added as part of this.
Once the patch is done, we’ll switch focus to Major Update 3. This should return to the cadence that occurred with Major Update 1 and we’re very much looking forward to implementing new features that should greatly improve the game.
Thanks for the support!
The Fireblade Crew
