✅ Source verified via Steam Community
- Patch Title: Update 1.2.5: General Update
- Patch Release Date: April 2, 2024
The developer of After the Collapse has released a new update for the game on April 2, 2024. Here are the new things that you should expect to see or change on this new update. This information was curated directly from the official announcement on Steam.
Hello!
This is a mid-sized update with no particular theme. It is compatible with existing saves and mods, but due to changes in the way damaged weaponry is handled, you may need to redo your weapon and armor maintenance stations’ queues. This short article details the main changes while the change-log at the bottom lists every single change, as usual.
Enjoy!
Combat AI
Your survivors (and relevant enemies) can now automatically switch between melee and ranged weapon based on the situation. It takes into consideration the ammo left in the ranged weapon, the DPS, and range of each weapon before taking a decision. For instance, they’ll still use their shotgun at point blank, even if they also have an axe, but they will likely switch to said axe if they are just wielding a pistol, or if they need to reload.
On top of that, if you order a survivor to attack a door or a window to breach into a building: if the survivor is within 5 tiles of the target it’ll attack with melee (saving ammo); if they are farther away, they’ll assume you don’t want to take any risk and will just shoot at the target.
Reworked Damaged Gear System
It’s something that, as a user, you will barely notice, but which is making my life a lot easier. Until now, each time I added a piece of gear to the game, I’d also have to add a “damaged” variant for the piece, add a file for the repair recipe, and finally alter the relevant maintenance station file to add said recipe. And, everything being manually added, prices and values didn’t match up properly. It also contributed to increasing load times (3 data files to load per piece of gear instead of one).
Now, while the older system still exists to handle special cases (and for backward compatibility) it’s no longer in use. Damaged gear is handled and generated automatically based on information added to the weapon and armor files.
In practice for you:
- More gear can be repaired and looted in their damaged state.
- Repair/Selling price have been standardized (damaged gear is half the value of the intact variant).
- Repairing high tier gear cost more weapon/armor pieces (early gear is mostly unchanged).
Misc Changes and Notes
There are a lot more minor changes (see below), but nothing really worthy of a paragraph-long explanation, the 1.2.x branch is in a good place content/stability-wise. So, unless there’s a big problem with 1.2.5, the next patch will be a major content update.
Cheers!
Full Changelog
Artificial Intelligence
- When forced into melee, survivors (and their enemies) will assess if it’s better to switch to their melee weapon or not.
Game Balance
- Increased the rate of fire of many melee weapons (the ones you build, animals are unchanged).
- Dead trees don’t burn, giving forests a chance to regrow.
- All weapon and armor repair recipe costs have been edited (better gear needs more parts).
- The connected grow lamps now cost a bit more resources to build than the non-connected ones.
- In Story Mode, Act 1, the AI factions expand less quickly and less far (playing wake-a-mole with enemy outposts is a bit much to ask of a new player, only apply on new game).
New Content
- Added giant anthills, an ant spawner, commonly found in caverns.
- Added mercenary helmet (similar to military one) and bulletproof vest to loot, trading tables, and Neo Roma guards’ gear.
- Added repair recipes and damaged variants to Mark One rifle, 30cal MG, PAS-25, mercenary outfit, and military gas mask.
Game Engine
- When the camera is zoomed out, agents no longer drop shadows and grass is hidden to help with FPS a bit.
- Minor optimizations to dynamic lighting, rendering in caverns and sewers should be faster.
- Damaged variants of most firearms and armor pieces are dynamically generated. It leads to more recipes being available, and their repair cost to make more sense.
Graphics
- Added hit animations to many melee attacks.
- Better looking barbed wires, egg containers, power generators, and other misc items.
- New textures for the riot police and spec-ops helmets.
- Traits and wounds causing a loss of health make the survivor to drop blood on the ground.
- Pigs and cows get a shadow, like other large animals.
- New separate textures for the food, ammo and gun crates found in various buildings.
World Generation
- Room dimensions (in buildings) are more strict, coupled with new building generation method, give better layouts.
- Improved biome generation, allowing to spawn some (but not too many) critter spawners in the underground layers.
User Interface
- The ‘Repair’ keyboard shortcut key becomes ‘Misc Commands’ and opens the sub panel at the last used position (can still auto select repair by tapping twice).
- Removed experimental flag from the Arakan faction archetype, added warning to tool-tip / info.
- Renamed the scientist’s camp unlocking the robotic path from “Encampment” to “Scientist’s Camp” to distinguish it from traders.
- Added proper “housing” info (pasture, category and owner) to the animal tab in the Population menu
- Removed comma in Cannibal and Mutant name generator as it looks weird with the game’s font (will only work on new characters in existing saves.)
- Added button to general settings to mark all contextual game tips as read (so they don’t popup).
- Standardized some more menus + many small tweaks i didn’t keep track of.
Bug Fixes
- Rare ‘Mushroom’ underground biome could spawn with way too many carnivorous plants.
- The melee attack animation was missing for black ant soldiers.
- Using the mouse wheel over health/mood bars would change their value (cosmetic only)
- Banishing people, and sending them to expeditions, wouldn’t clear all their assignments properly.
- Prisoners, in combat, were confused by the concept of stairs.
- Some low level entity update timing issues which may have wasted CPU cycles and botched animations.
- Minor issues with weapon hit animations.
- Right clicking an item in the ‘Build Menu’ would disable mouse scrolling until menu is re-opened.
To learn more about this new update, check the official source mentioned above.