Update 1.6 - The Task Update

Date: Sun, 16 Jun 2024

Genre: Action, Free to Play, Indie, Strategy
Developer: Geoff 'Zag' Keene
Release Date: Fri, 12 Jun 2020

The Task Update has arrived! The Company has identified several more tasks that Spacemen need to complete before escape! Along with the return of Duress, this update features dozens of bug fixes, quality of life, and balance tweaks to you-know-what. Let’s get our hands dirty, shall we?

Tasks Tasks Tasks

This update sees the addition of 7 new tasks. Some of these tasks, like Landing Pad Debris, will be present every round, but most other tasks will be randomly chosen at the start of the round.

"WHAT ARE THE NEW TASKS?!" we hear you scream. We've got you covered:

TAKE OUT THE TRASH:
After clearing Landing Pads, a Debris Bag will be created. This bag must now be taken to the Trash Compactor, turned into cubes, and then launched into space via an Emergency Mass Ejector.

PROTECT COMPANY DATA:
The Company has a lot of information that shouldn’t fall into the wrong hands. Destroy all The Company’s servers in the facility to ensure our data is safe and secure.

INTERGALACTIC PRESS CONFERENCE:
Conduct The Company’s press conference, assuring all interested worlds that everything is fine at the facility and anything they might be hearing about it is not true and/or in fact, a GOOD thing.

EAT THE LEFTOVERS:
There’s people (or something similar to people) starving on Plurflesnop. On the off-chance they might get a hold of it, you need to EAT all the leftovers. We spent good money on those meals!

INSURANCE ESTIMATE:
Our insurance agents ask that before you scuttle to the shuttle, please conduct a quick scan of the facility with the Facility Scanner. Upon completion of your scans, launch it into space via the Emergency Mass Ejector.

CLEAN OUT LOCKERS:
Clean out the lockers. Employees keep leaving their stuff in there and it’s just become untenable. Seriously. We’re very disappointed in all of you.

SNAIL MAIL:
The mailbag is... It's just so heavy. It's really heavy. Take it to the Emergency Mass Ejector, eventually.

Along with all of that, Tasks now have a new progress bar in the top-left. You can still access the tasks in full by holding TAB during a round.

Duress Grand Re-Opening

An old favorite, reborn! The brand new remake of Duress is here! Venture aboard A7-PDLC, one of The Company's older asteroid facilities. Ride aboard trams and wander through its weaving walkways to uncover the secrets hidden within these twisting halls.

All Aboard!

To mark the re-opening of Duress, this helmet unlocks for anyone who completes the Duress-specific Tram Station achievement; All Aboard!

Some Noteworthy Changes

There were a few big changes this update that don't fall under any specific category.

NECRONAUT HITCH FIX: We’ve fixed the Necronaut tentacle physics causing hitching when the skin is used, especially by Monsters using the Decoy Perk.
RANK RESET ISSUE: We've migrated Player Rank and XP to use Steam Stats instead of a local save. This should resolve issues with Spacemen having their rank reset sometimes.
SHOVE BALANCING: We've drastically reduced shove velocity if the person is airborne, since zero friction means they go flying. This means shoving is now a lot more consistent in terms of how far the character goes.
KILLER IDENTITY: Spacemen are now informed if they were killed by the Monster or Traitor upon death, for better situational clarity.
DECISION TIME: Many changes to timing and pacing of the warmup (loadout selection) screen. Players are now given several more seconds to choose their role after learning which role they were given.
THIRD PERSON HEALTH STATION: Health Station usage now zooms out to the third person rotating camera like other similar activities, giving players better situational clarity.

Kema Optimization

You know that fun feature where sometimes it feels like you’re playing on a potato? Heck, maybe you're playing on a potato all the time. Well, we’ve optimized tons of stuff to make the game much less potato-like! That tons of stuff includes many optimizations to textures, particularly ones used on Kema, which drastically reduces VRAM requirements on that map and others. Those running on lower-end PCs should now be able to enjoy this map and see performance improvement overall. We did a lot of other optimizations as well and we hope all our changes manifest in better framerate for all the good space people.

Monster Improvements

We made several fixes to The Monster, including some perks that weren’t quite working properly or had some bugs.

CROUCH EXPLOIT FIX: The Monster can now claw swipe Spacemen from certain (reasonable) angles while they are crouched.
VENT EXPLOIT FIX: Monsters can no longer enter vents during Evolution sequence.
RAPID EVOLUTION: Drastically reduced the cooldown between Monster Evolutions if there are multiple Evolution steps available in a row.
Extended Monster Evolution (stage 2 and 3) now takes 4 seconds, down from 5 seconds.
QUIETER EVOLUTION: Extended Monster Evolution is now quieter so you can be a bit more sneaky.

Traitor & Traitor Perk Changes

We've made multiple improvements to Traitor quality of life. Let's go through 'em!

QUICKER HACKING: The Traitor's B.R.I.C.K. Device now takes 3 seconds total instead of 5+
The Traitor can now begin moving after 1.2 seconds before the hack animation completes.
HAYWIRE BUFF: Haywire now adds visuals and audio to Security Bots and permanently makes them enemies of Spacemen and will no longer complete tasks. They will now also sometimes lock doors or throw grenades, as old Security Bots used to. Haywire Bots will now also have much higher accuracy.
LESS COMBAT ORIENTED: Traitor health reduced another 10 HP across the board.
HELPFUL WAYPOINTS: Added a tiny waypoint on the Traitor's translocator device, only visible to the Traitor.
Put a big fat waypoint on Traitor Man Traps once deployed (visible to both of the antagonists) so they don't step on them as often.
VENT HACKING: Traitor's can now hack Vents in order to make them do a closing animation and sound, as a distraction.
BETTER GADGET TRACKING: Traitor Translocator count now shows on the HUD in the same way that Man Trap count shows on HUD.
Translocator Destroyed message is now a large text popup, instead of using smaller warning text, to make it more obvious when a Translocator is lost.

The Man Trap Meta & Traitor Soldier Changes

As the Traitor Man Trap Meta has become... Well, a problem, we have made some tweaks to this deadly combination. The Traitor is not intended to be a murder-machine, so alongside the slight reduction in Traitor HP, we've also adjusted Man Trap/Soldier Perk values quite a bit.

BULLET RESISTANCE: Spacemen (not Traitor, not Monster) now take 75% less BULLET damage while trapped in a Man Trap.
LESS MAN TRAPS: Reduced the number of Man Traps that can be deployed from 4 to 2.
COOLDOWN CHANGE: Man Trap cooldown has been increased from 5 seconds to 6.
BACKPACK TOO BIG: Traitors with Soldier Perk can no longer use vents. The backpack is too bulky to fit.
BUG FIXES: To fix the issue of throwables not deploying and preventing the Traitor from deploying more, Traitor throwables now auto-destroy after 6 seconds if they fail to deploy for some reason within that timeframe.
Traitor can no longer place multiple traps on the same spot by using an exploit.

Ghost Changes

We made a few minor changes to Ghosts as well.

Ghosts can no longer re-seal samples that were unsealed by the Traitor.
Ghosts now have a 1 second cooldown on their left-click attack, which they can use to deal damage to certain electronic devices.
Ghosts can now attack Company Servers in order to deal damage. It is, however, very slow.

Tribunal Tweaks

We’re always listening to community input and some will be happy to hear that we’ve made a couple changes to the Tribunal to make it a tiny bit less invasive.

Airlocks and Vending Machines can once again be used during a Tribunal.
The Traitor is no longer punished via Employee Point reduction for not visiting the Tribunal to vote.
Late-joining Spacemen are no longer punished via Employee Point reduction if they joined within 2 minutes of the end of the Tribunal voting period and fail to make it to the Tribunal in time.

New Cosmetics

For our already max-rank Spacemen, you should simply receive a bunch of new stuff in this update, right away. Consider this our gift to you for all your hard work out there. For everyone else, keep on ranking up and you'll get the new rank-unlocked items as well!

Error!

Maybe time to do a hard restart. The BSOD Visor, with two available variants, is unlocked for everyone at Rank 40.

Marauder Helmets for All

The Marauder Helmet, a more-armored spinoff of the beloved (but mostly unobtainable) Roughneck Helmet, is now freely available to everyone at Rank 40.

Brainsucker

Say hi to your new best friend, the Brainsucker. Unlocked at Rank 40, this little guy will stick to you like glue, it just likes you that much! You might even like it too. You might not even have a choice.

“Yeah, it just showed up one day. I don’t know where it came from but I’m pretty sure it’s harmless and just wants galactic peace and happiness for all of you bone bodie- I mean us.”

Of course, since the game is free, we also want your money I guess, so we added some store items as well.

Tired Visor

Did you forget to stop by the coffee maker before your shift? Then the Tired Visor is for you! This animated visor is now available on the Item Store.

Exalted Weapon Skins

Show off your inner Company shareholder with these gold plated weapons. You can find the Exalted Weapon Skins now on the Item Store.

There are a few more items we've added...

NEW HELMET: BRIGADE Cell-C variant is now available for those who have unlocked the Achievement FOR THE GREATER GOOD. Unlike the original BRIGADE helmet, this helmet colorizes with your identity color.
NEW VISOR: Bubble Visor! Art submitted by Seagraey (ages ago!) this animated visor is available for everyone at Rank 20.
NEW COUNTRY ITEMS: We've added visors and nameplates for Romania, Guatemala, and Croatia, available on the Item Store.
TONS of new Sprays and a few nameplates were added from the community. Most of them are unlocked through ranks. Check those menus to find all the new stuff!

Skin Variants Unlocked!

As a huge bonus, certain skins/suits on the Item Store (or owned by other means) have Skin Variants available now, unlocked at certain ranks for owners of the skin/suit.

Valkyrie Suit available at Rank 20, for anyone who has the Amazon Suit
V2 Monster Skin available at Rank 20, for anyone who has Blood Machine Monster Skin
Black Market Monster Skin available at Rank 30, for anyone who has Blood Machine Monster Skin
Bone Dread Monster Skin available at Rank 20, for anyone who has the Nightmare Monster Skin
Flesh Torment Monster Skin available at Rank 30, for anyone who has the Nightmare Monster Skin

Big thanks to Origin PC!

Origin PC hooked us up with some beastly gaming laptops, and we are blown away with the performance on these machines. As a big thanks, we've added some of their crates and PCs to almost all Shapeshifter maps, because we are SHAMELESS. Feel free to take cover behind these chunky Origin crates, they're tough as nails - they can take it.

Full Patch Notes

For more bug fix info you can check out the FULL PATCH NOTES for more details and all other changes.

Join us over at Deep Field Games!

You can also always follow Unfortunate Spacemen and Deep Field Games on Twitter for more frequent info drops, and drop often we do.

The in-game Discord links have been updated to Deep Field’s new Discord server. Come join in if you haven’t already, we’re always looking for more recruits.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/408900/Unfortunate_Spacemen/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1349010/Unfortunate_Spacemen__Death_Proof_Edition/

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