Dev Log 56: Experimental Branch with Version 1.0.3.13

Hi guys, we are releasing a new major update of the base game on the experimental branch. If everything goes as planned, we'll be releasing it to the main branch as well soon.

To play experimental branch on Steam, you right click the game in your library and go to "Betas" tab. To do so on GOG, you select the game and choose More->Settings. Make sure you don't override all your live version saves just in case something goes horribly wrong.

We have new creatures, items and feats.

Here are the full patch notes:

Interface

• You can now configure transparency of transitions (also increased the default transparency)
• Objects that transition you between areas (transition that requires loading) when you use them should not display the transitioning cursor
• Added transparency to NPC health/psi/shield/cast bars on the map

Items

• Added new high-energy battery type
• Increased the weight of the fishing rod
• Removed cooldown for placing fishing rods
• Increased the damage and critical damage bonus of Quake
• Significantly increased the value of a lot of unique items (mostly weapons)
• Nerfed Power Fist
• Increased the max stack size of scraps to 999
• Trapper's Belt will now increase Traps skill by 15% (up from 10%); it will no longer reduce trap arming cooldown
• Added two new belts that augment chemical pistol attacks
• Regenerative Mixture will now be affected by game difficulty
• Special bolts affected by Elemental Bolts feat will now display the modified damage in the tooltip
• Reduced the infused leather quality slightly overall and also added diminishing returns when making infused leather above 100 quality
• Infused siphoner tabi boots will now give immunity to slow instead to immobilization
• Junkyard surprise can no longer increase perception, will or intelligence
• The following items will have their max stacks increase to appropriate amount: .44 Explosive Round, 8.6mm Incendiary Round, 12.7mm Contaminated Round, 7.62mm Micro-shrapnel Round, Corrosive Acid Vial, Incendiary Vial,
• Halved the move and shoot and action point cost penalties when attaching bipods to assault rifles (not applied retroactively)
• You can now use High Efficiency Energy Converter to reduce the energy cost of firing energy pistols
• Energy Pistols now have two enchancement slots when crafted
• Plasma pistol damage increased by 25%
• Laser pistol base action point cost changed to 15 (down from 22)
• Laser pistol usage energy cost reduced by 20%
• Changed the base value of psi boosters to 275 (down from 350)
• Changed the maximum duration of throwing net entanglement to 3 turns (down from 4)
• Increased the amount of EMP dischargers generated as loot/merchandise
• Changed the number of unsaturated psionic catalyst required to craft a psi booster to 3 (down from 5)
• Fixed the armor description when crafting riot gear and tactical vests from super steel sheets (will not be applied retroactively to the already crafted items)
• Changed the psi regen reduction of Mushroom Brew to 30 (up from 1). The previous value was geared towards non-regenerating psi pool of alpha version.
• Fixed incorrectly set impact speed of unique assault rifles (raised from medium to high, as should be the value for all assault rifles) and corrected the lack of move and shoot precision penalty for those guns
• Fixed Jawbone lacking move and shoot precision penalty (now set to 15%) as well as close quarters precision penalty (now 10%)
• Fixed low durability of armor worn by Tchortist rassophores and recombinants; only applies to npc armor (armor in the player's possession will remain unchanged)

Creatures

• Increased Coil Spider psi points and psi regeneration
• Coil Spiders now have darkvision
• Added Greater Coil Spiders
• Added a new machinegun turret to replace the regular auto-turret in certain places and on certain difficulties
• Increased dodge and evasion of burrower spawns, but also increased their susceptibility to AoE attacks
• Dogs will now attempt to bump you out of stealth when the detection gets into ALERTED state, just like human NPCs (on normal difficulty or higher)
• Added a stronger version of psi beetle
• Increased crawler attack damage a bit; they also regenerate health now (even in combat) and have dark vision
• Added a stronger version of crawler
• Added stronger version of mutants Hunchback mutants

Mechanics

• Added the global map
• Added DOMINATING difficulty, mechanically it inherits the modifications of hard difficulty and also increased NPC health by 50% and skill levels by 30%.
• Changed the way hit change display handles oscillating lighting or otherwise dynamic lighting. This also should fix some anomalies like the hit chances changing when saving/loading or transitioning.
  
• Removed cooldown for arming traps
• Removed cooldowns from lockpicking and hacking
• Reduced the time it takes for the game to yield the control back to the combatant after he kills the target; it doesn't wait for scrolling text and sounds to end now
• Hostilities will now instantly be triggered when you've been detected lockpicking (instead of at the end of the action)
• Increased the damage of chemical pistols by 50% (will be applied retroactively on exisiting items)
• Ground fire will now remove cryogas
• Starting pickpocketing (opening the pickpocketing window) will now require a certain amount of pickpocketing skill depending on the target's detection so not every character can inspect any NPC's inventory (without killing them!)
• Targets will no longer be able to block (in regular way) if stunned, incapacitated or frozen
• You can now unload chemical pistols
• As long as you haven't been fully detected by a NPC, that NPC's  detection will be reduced back to zero when you get back into an area where you've been sneaking
• Uncanny Dodge will no longer work while you're stunned or incapacitated in some way
• Dirty Kick will now be subject to Uncanny Dodge and other special defense mechanisms
• You can now root turrets (which makes them susceptible to acidic entanglement)
• On normal difficulty and above, transitioning between areas (red transitions) will now cost action points
• Improved NPC pathfinding slightly
• Primary non-mechanical damage (not caused by on-hit effect) on melee weapons will now scale with weapon skill (like the bio damage on The Claw), but will no longer scale with strength
• On hard difficulty EMP will drain energy (and subsequently deal damage to the holder) from all items in the inventory (not just equipped ones)
• Reduced the ranged weapon precision reduction from low light slightly
• Antidote will now randomly choose the order of poison removal, instead of going in the order they were applied

Tweaks                   

• Turn-based mode will no longer automatically end at the end of the turn if there are incapacitated enemies near
• Reduced the alpha on energy shields
• Removed the movement animation reseting when rapidly clicking (there's still a very slight stutter if you click very fast, though)
• You cannot change armor suit while in stealth or while stealth is on cooldown on hard difficulty or above
• Turrets will now drop aggro faster
• Getting additional burning damage will reset the burning debuff remaining time
• New combat taunts for military personnel

Psi

• You can now cast Cryokinetic Orb on any non-obstructing tile (such as water and other regularly non-traversable tiles)
• Improved the shard distribution of Cryokinetic Orb on impact
• Changed the range of Frighten psi ability to 5 (up from 3)

Feats

• Steadfast Aim strength requirement changed to 5 (down from 6)
• Cooked Shot special chemical pistol AoE attack with radius of 1
• Three-Pointer Changed Throwing skill requirement to 50 (up from 45); The crit chance will now scale by 1.5% per ten throwing skill points above 50, instead from dexterity
• Doctor will now also work with Regenerative Mixture as it should
• Expertise changed the max bonus to 20 (down from 25)
• High-Technicalities increases damage with energy pistols by 7% for each point of intelligence above 5

Quests/Maps

• Because of the global map, some areas had to be added and some had to be reorganized (especially around the starting cave areas) in order to achieve geographical consistency
• Added a number of possible random events around the world
• Reworked a lot of encounters to scale with game difficulty (from easy to dominating). Normal was mostly kept as it is, but some encounters (typically mid-late and late game ones) were made more difficult on that level.
  
• Reworked the Free Drone's final mission debriefing dialog with Trenton in order to better handle a certain optional outcome
• DC mindreading will now take into account the number of killed Faceless, which will have negative effects of varying degrees depending on that number; however, kills during certain story-related events where combat is unavoidable will not be counted
• Expanded the Hanging Rat bar and added a base ability check

Bugs

• Corrosive acid bolt crits will now multiply the acid damage done just like the regular acid ones
• Focus Stim will now properly display duration in the item description
• Fixed the Crippling Strike tooltip
• Fossilized Egg Oddity max studies changed to 3 as it should have been from the start
• Spore Turrets marked as ribles, kneeless and immune to critical hits
• Fixed the bug that caused NPCs to not properly react to being alerted (orange eye) to player's presence
• Fixed spelling errors in special ammo hit effect descriptions
• Fixed the bug that caused Eviscerate to do less damage than stated
• Fixed the rounding error with Critical Power feat
• Fixed a sneaky bug regarding status effect stacking
• Black Dragon poison icon fixed
• Fixed the bug that would sometimes cause player to become undead during cutscenes in which he unpredictably dies (this will apply retroactively, RIP)
• Fixed the 8.6mm Incendiary Rounds (they weren't igniting)
• Jookhela should now be immune to stun and incapacitation like the rest of senior raties (will not update for those who already encountered him)
• Removed Gauntlet advertisement from DC
• Crawlers and other NPCs should no longer unwittingly bump their own kind/faction out of stealth
• Suppressive fire will now only be applied to enemies, as intended
• There was a mess up regarding player's increased chance to get critically hit. Contrary to what the game has been saying, there is no universal to-get-crit (TGC) modifier, instead it only applied for weapon and unarmed attacks, which made things like Psychostatic Electricity rather useless. I've now added psi TGC modifier, so recklessness and psychostatic electricity will now apply to psi abilities as well. Everything else will only work for unarmed and weapon attacks. Tooltips have been updated to reflect this.
• Thought control psi abilities can now be properly centered onto non-traversable (but penetrable) terrain
• Disruptive Field will no longer get bugged out by Locus of Control
• You will no longer hear the sound of NPCs stealthing when you enter an area for the first time, unless you can see them already
• Swapping between two energy weapons while recharging the current weapon will now properly cancel the action
• Fixed the bug with plasma sentry when leaving the area while it's deployed in cannon mode
• Fixed an issue with player's house containers (lockers, shelves, etc.) wherein the items from upgraded or changed containers wouldn't transfer to an always-present shelf in the northeastern corner of the ground floor
• Fixed certain quest notes not being set as completed/failed properly
• Fixed a number of skill checks that used base instead of effective required value or had no value set at all
• Fixed Sneaky not registering the death of one important npc
• Expanded or reworked certain parts of npc dialogs (some more, some less) and also added a few new skills checks to some
• Replaced a few windows in fo_prison with solid walls so that the cameras inside the cell block can't see inside the security room. This was done to prevent the cameras from dispatching all the guards into the room even if the player had been granted access to it
• Fixed a minor issue with a certain Hathor Mine-related cutscenes
• Various minor map and dialog fixes

Have fun with the new stuff and please stay patient as we continue to work on the Expedition DLC.

Report any bugs you find on the forums and make sure you specify which version you're playing.