Change Log

= Lance-A-Lot 1.0.0 - 2024-03-03 =
* Fixed 3080 Map.
* Fix for incorrect warning about mod not loading.
* Fix for excessive logging degrading performance.
* Tweaks to ComStar starting list.
* Icon fix for Icarus mechs.
* Workaround for issue with some RTO legend mech events.
= Lance-A-Lot 1.0.0 - 2024-03-03 =
'''
 **** THIS IS A SAVE BREAKING RELEASE. IF YOU WANT TO CONTINUE ON AN OLD SAVE: DO NOT UPGRADE.********
THERE IS NO WAY TO REVERT THE VERSION ONCE UPGRADED. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. ***
*** NEW LAUNCHER REQUIRED; FULL DELETION OF THE CACHE STRONGLY ADVISED; SEE THE SECTION BELOW ***
'''
== Important Notes ==
* It is recommended to read this Change Log on a computer screen with wide layout of the wiki enabled. To use wide layout, press the button on the upper left that says Expand.
* This is a huge update, and even though the crew has tried to test it extensively there will be bugs that slipped through. Make sure to report them on Discord. You can expect frequent patches during the immediate post-release period.
* The size of the release also means this changelog will not be able to cover every little change, or it would be far too long. The changelog will however list all major changes and link to other pages with more details if they exist. More information might be added over time.
* The mod is a labour of love of the crew, created for ourselves and shared to other players as secondary goal. This means the features and balancing changes might not be as you'd want it. If you have constructive feedback we are interested, but if you just want to complain about something not being to your liking, keep it to yourself.
== NEW LAUNCHER / CRITICAL INFORMATION ==
As part of this update the CAB (the collection of all the custom models) has been reorganized to reduce each component in size, hopefully improving the download issues many have reported. The downside is that everyone will now have to redownload not only the RogueTech mod, but also all the custom models again.
 
Due to this reorganization a completly new launcher is also required, which can be found in the #launcher-download channel.
Once the new launcher is started, we strongly advise that following steps are followed to delete the local download cache:
# Download the new launcher from #launcher-download
# Start the launcher and make sure it is version 1.3.12 (check the top bar of the launcher window).
# In the top menu of the new launcher, open the Cache Options drop down.
# Chose the Wipe RT Cache option.
# Once done, chose the Wipe RT Install option from the same menu.
# Now press the Update button and select your configuration options as before.
This is a one time thing, there is no need to repeat theses steps again on future reinstalls unless told so by the RogueTech support team.
== Key Changes ==
<tabber>
|-|Piloting classes=
As it was too easy to build the perfect stall of MechWarriors that can fulfill most roles, a new feature called Piloting Classes has been introduced to RogueTech.
All MechWarriors will be limited on what unit types they can pilot based on their assigned piloting classes. There is a total of 3 primary and 2 secondary piloting classes, where the primary classes can only be obtained as the pilot is generated or created. Secondary classes are in addition to the primary classes. A pilot cannot have a secondary class without the valid corresponding primary class. 
Primary Classes
* Mech Class - Allows piloting of all mechs
* Ground Vehicle Class - Allows piloting of all ground-based vehicles
* BA Class - Allows piloting of Battle Armor 
Secondary Classes
* VTOL Class - Allows piloting of VTOLs; requires the pilot to also have Ground Vehicle class. 
* LAM Class - Allows piloting of LAMs; requires the pilot to also have Mech Class.
Other Piloting Requirements
* QuadVee - MechWarrior needs both Mech and Ground Vehicle class
Note: Quad units, Battle Armor VTOL, Protomech WiGE Glider and other advanced unit types not mentioned here do not require a specific class, they fall under their respective main unit type.
=== Pilot Class Training ===
New events are added to allow select pilots to be trained in an additional secondary class. Not all pilots are eligible. VTOL training requires pilots to already have Ground Vehicle Class. LAM training requires pilots to already have Mech Class. 
An item to start the training event has been added to stores, in a similar way to how Pain Shunt and Neural Implant surgery currently work.
Training is risky and there is a chance for the pilot to die. Training is not instant - it can take anywhere from 6-12 months to complete training and during this time pilot is NOT available for drops or events. Only the Commander and one other pilot may be away training at any given time.
Upon training completion, if no injuries were sustained, there will be an offer to buy the unit the pilot trained on for a fee. If acquired, the MechWarrior will start with a small amount of affinity for the unit.
Note: Due to how events work, it is not possible to train every pilot in the barracks. If an event doesn’t trigger, typically it is due to not enough valid candidates; not enough cash on hand; a pilot already being trained or the pilot being in a cooldown period.
===Career Start & Backgrounds===
To ensure a fair start of a new career, on the career start the starting roster of pilots (including the Commander) will be assigned extra piloting classes as needed to cover all units. 
In the same way, depending on the Commander background selected the Commander might be assigned further piloting classes.
|-|Artillery Rework=
|-|Extended Difficulty Curve=
Unit selection for the enemy lances during combat missions has been reworked from the ground up to extend midgame (medium-heavy) difficulties and improve enemy variety particularly in lategame difficulties. 
* Enemies now scale over the full planetary difficulty range (d1 to d20) with more granularity.
* Adjusted support lance probabilities to fit the new scale.
* Fixed early game lances sometimes being larger than intended.
* Adjusted some contracts to make the enemies you find better match the description.
* Will now see higher difficulties faster, does not mean harder.
* Drop rating value per skull is reduced from 13.5 to 10 million.
* Pilot variety has also been improved at lower difficulties.
* Chance of high difficulty pilot getting the most powerful quirks reduced.
</tabber>
== General Changes ==
<tabber>
|-|Career=
=== Map ===
* New 3075 map - Offline map. Start in the middle of the Jihad, fighting for or against Word of Blake.
* New Online map will be added a later date.
=== Starts ===
* Many starts changed have been changed to use official starting lists, while the more custom starts have been tuned to be of slightly more equal levels to each other.
* LAM and VTOL starts have been removed. 
* Quicsell Clan - New start
** One 'Mascot Mech', either a Corgi CA/CB or an Incorgnito (weighted towards the latter)
** Two Quicksell Clan Lights
** Two Quicksell Clan Mediums
** Some QS Clan and general QS Gear
* Republic - New start on 3081 map
=== Background ===
* Loner background - Assassin quirk has been exchanged for Reckless.
* Officer background - If the Commander has Trueborn Ancestry, they will not recieve the vehicle or VTOL skill from choosing either the AWACS or the Oracle.
* Flight School Instructor - New background. Lootbox will contain one LAM or VTOL. Gives the Commander appropiate piloting class.
* Quicsell Clan Commander - New background.
** One 'Command' Shadowcat and a few bits of QS gear
** The chance to spawn another QS Event occassionally to pay much more money for the chance of getting a 'Good' QS Clan Mech.
=== Difficulty Modifiers ===
* Generous Salvage career difficulty modifier increased from -0.25 to -0.5
* Normal Salvage career difficulty modifier reduced from 0.05 to 0
|-|MechWarriors=
===General Changes===
* Manei Domini pilots now have specific icons.
* Cargo Vroom's deployed vehicle switched back to Ferret 1, The Dook.
===Ronin===
Ronin are meant to be elite, sought-after soldiers, to help reflect this the way to hire and find Ronin has undergone some significant changes. 
Note: Ronin is any pre-defined pilot, i.e. not procedurally generated during the career.
* Some Ronin can no longer be found in the hiring halls and instead must be found through events.
* Some Ronin may require the player to seek them out on specific worlds or territories, others may require the player to have accomplished certain feats before they will become available in the hiring halls or be willing to join the player's crew.
* Some Ronin will not work for the player if the player has employed other ronin they do not get along with.
* Some Ronin will require the player to employ their friends before they will join the player's crew and may leave should that friend leave or die.
* Fired ronin may sometimes return to the hiring halls to be found again 
** Note: experience or skills gained under their former employment will not persist.
As Elite warriors, Ronin may be picky about whom they work for. Should your company become known for unstable employment, or as an extra hazardous employer, ronin may be less willing to offer themselves up for employment to you or may blacklist your company entirely.
===Starting MechWarriors===
The roster of MechWarrior at a career's start now has the following limitations:
* RTO Legends, RT Crew and Manei Domenei - Only one MechWarrior between all three categories can be part of the starting roster.
* Mandalorian - At most one can be part of the starting roster.
* JarnFolk' - At most one can be part of the starting roster.
|-|UI=
* Chevrons difficulty icon type - New selectable settings in the launcher, uses distinct count of chevrons to mark increased difficulty instead of just color changes. Should hopefully make it easier for colorblind players to distinguish the difficulty easier. 
* Tooltips can now be pinned by right clicking. If a tooltip exceeds the height of the screen it can then be scrolled.
* Critical Effects will no longer be listed in the tooltips, as they too often caused the tooltips to overflow.
|-|Salvage=
* Fixed bug with salvage screen sometimes locking.
* Fixed issues with showing wrong amount of salvage slots, now more slots will appear as things are added.
* No longer possible to sell full mechs from salvage screen.
===Unique Mechs===
It is no longer possible to assemble multiple copies of 'Mechs marked as Unique.
During loot selection on the salvage screen if any unit with identical chassis exists in the player's inventory it will instead be replaced by a standard 'Mech of the same chassis-family.
Locations checked for if the player has the Unique 'Mech includes:
* Active 'Mechs 
* 'Mechs being readied 
* Full chassis in storage 
* Previously selected full unit of the same 'Mech
When readying an Unique 'Mech from storage the same checks are performed.
Note: Even if a player has an Unique 'Mech it does not prevent the AI from fielding one or more copies of the same 'Mech, the restriction is only for players.
|-|Contracts / Flashpoints / Lances=
=== Contracts ===
* Duels and Solaris contracts will no longer generate ambushes.
* Birds of Prey - Reduced number of enemy VTOL.
* Peer Review - Turret lance unit selection will now be dynamic.
* Reproducibility Crisis - Turret lance unit selection will now be dynamic.
=== Flashpoints ===
* Thunder Rift (Birth of a Legend FP) - Opposing Force lances changed to manual unit selection to prevent huge difficulty swings.
* Disabled Necromo Nightmare Flashpoint again. It will return next halloween.
* Fix for Solaris 7 championship not starting as intended.
* Added wider unit selection for Solaris flashpoint contracts.
=== Lances === 
* IndustrialMechs should no longer spawn in Lunar or Martian environments.
* Kill Team units should no longer appear as normal lance units.
* Unit selection for lances will now consider technology level, rarity and other traits, making more common units likelier to appear.
|-|Events=
* Fixes to the Superheavy Contract unlock events. Choosing to wait 180 days will now trigger the event exactly 180 days later.
* The Epsilon MRB Authorization Upgrade Available' event to unlock Superheavy missions is now available after 100 missions and the Omega MRB Authorization Upgrade Available event to unlock Superheavy Hunt contracts event is available after 200 missions.
* LetsTacoBoutThis - Adjust event spawn requirements and results to allow for more even distribution of chance for successful Jelly Roll Taco.
* Isorla Bondsman - Rewritten opening events to disable gaining the bondsman pilot if there are not enough barracks spots available on the Argo.
|-|Equipment=
|-|Weapons / Ammunition=
|-|AI / Combat=
=== AI ===
* AI will now consider optimal firing mode and ammunition to use before firing. 
** Note: Some performance issues remain, if an AI unit has a lot of different types of weapons and each with many firing modes, the game can seemly freeze for periods of time. It should eventually resume however. This will be fixed post-release.
* AI will now be aware of minefields and incoming artillery strikes.
* Movement calculations for very fast AI units have been optimized.
=== Combat ===
For some time (in some cases a very, very long time) certain modifiers have been configured incorrectly within RogueTech. This has now been corrected, meaning a lot of negative and positive effects will now apply in a different way than before this release. Due to this there might be future balancing changes if some effects are too powerful.
The modifiers affected are:
* Sensor Distance Modifiers
* Visibility Distance Modifiers
* Stealth
* Mimetic Armor
==== Stealth ====
In addition to fixing the modifiers for Stealth and Mimetic Armor some other changes were introduced.
* Stealth systems have only had minor tweaks, mainly they will now follow their originally intended values.
* Most Mimetic effects now decay faster, with the default decay beeing one level per 2 hexes moved.
* To make Chameleon LPS more unique/stand out, it now provides one of the worst signature reductions, but instead has the largest To Hit defensive modifier (i.e. harder to hit the unit with Mimetic Armor).
 
==== AI Pilots ==== 
 AI Pilots have been tuned down slightly:
* Reduced Brace to Fire reduction bonus by 50%
* Removed several bonus effects for Difficulty 11 and 15 pilots as well as Superheavy pilots.
* AI pilots now have a significantly lower chance to start combat with very powerful skills such as Air Strike and always Breaching Shot.
==== Other Changes ====
* Squad Units (BA, Protomech and Ultralights) will now have their size difference modifier based on the individual member tonnage.
** Minimum limit for modifier calculation is 20 tons, any unit below that still calculates at 20 ton.
* VTOL units now have a different size modifier factor, meaning a VTOL unit calculates the size modifier as if it was 67% heavier.
* Both TAG and Narc targetting painter effects will now properly expire with movement instead of lasting forever.
* Heat damage to normal damage conversion for vehicles, turrets and buildings reduced from 2:1 ratio to 1:1 ratio.
* Fixed inconsistency is hex size between mods, a hex is now always 25 meters in length.
* Firing large weapons (Brace to Fire mechanic) no longer gives a direct chance of immediate knockdown unless braced. The weapons will instead apply instability damage to the firing unit, causing it to possibly go unsteady. 
** All weapons and equipment have been changed to list the instability they add.
** See wiki page for further details: [Brace_to_Fire]
* Anti Battle-Armor swarming attacks have been tweaked:
** Roll
*** Base success chance reduced from 55% to 45%
*** Damage done to swarming unit reduced from 200 to 60
*** Initiative penalty increased from 11 to 15
** Swat
*** Base success chance reduced from 33% to 25%
*** Max success chance limit reduced from 95% to 90%
*** Success chance bonus from Piloting skill increased from 5% to 6.5% per level
*** Damage done to swarming unit reduced from 100 to 50
*** Initiative penalty increased from 8 to 10
|-|Star Systems=
* Project Terraform - Some Jump Point systems have had more biomes added to them beyond Lunar and Martian, allowing for more types of contracts and battle maps to appear on them.
* Added Superheavy Industry tag to the following planets:
** Fagerholm
** Fletcher (CC)
** Galax
** Ishtar
** Kuzuu
** Mechdur
** Syrma
** Tallmadge
** Tyrlon
** Umka
** Ward
|-|Other Changes=
=== Repairs ===
* Post-combat repairs will now repair broken components automatically.
=== Affinity ===
* Left-handed Specialist - New affinity, +2 Left Arm Mounted Accuracy, +1 Piloting, + 1 Gunnery, haciwara and wulfen prefabs
* Missile Defender - Changed from +1 AMS Damage, -10% Missile Damage Taken to +25% Increased AMS Accuracy, -10% Missile Damage Taken
* Missile Defender II - New affinity after 110 missions, +1 AMS damage.
* Smart Warheads - Reduced from +2 to +1 missile evasion ignore.
=== Shops ===
* Superheavy Weapons and Equipment will now start appearing in shops after 3 in-game years.
* Available Battle Armor units, weapons and ammunition have been tweaked following the changes with the new Squads 2.0 system. 
=== Quirks ===
* Advanced Missile TTS - Reduced from +2 to +1 missile evasion ignore.
=== RU Localization ===
The russian localization has had several updates, as usual big thanks to ENOVA for this project.
</tabber>
== Unit Changes ==
As there have been over a thousand tweaks and fixes on units, not all can be listed here. This list should however cover most of the noticeable changes.
<tabber>
|-|Mechs=
|-|Vehicles=
|-|Squads 2.0=
{{#tag:tabber|General Information=
Squads is the framework RogueTech already uses to represent Battle Armor, ProtoMechs and Ultralight 'Mech squads. The framework allows defining a unit in the game to consist of several members that share the same internal systems.
The following key traits are consistent for all squad units:
* All members of the squad share the same systems configuration. This include equipment such as armor, structure, engine, etc. Due to this the systems are always fixed.
* Since systems are shared, they can not be critically hit or destroyed on an individual squad member. They will continue functioning for all still alive members of the squad until the whole unit is neutralized.
* The Squad units are immune to heat and stability damage, and can never shutdown. They are instead considerably more vulnerable to Through Armor Damage.
* All weapons are fixed for Mech Squads and ProtoMechs for balance reasons. Battle Armor allows changing weapons. All types allow switching ammunition and modifying armor amounts.
In this release the Squads framework is being expanded to both allow better implementation of the units as well as making the capabilities of these types of units easier to understand for players.
Some of the key features are:
* Squad Units can now have proper quirks, armor and structure like standard 'Mech units already do. They are displayed just like for other units within the Mech Lab, but are not visible in combat due to technical limitations.
* In combination with the feature above, special chassis traits such as Quad, WiGE or VTOL are now handled by a new item slot, thus freeing the Quirk slot.
* A new display section in the mech lab on the top right side for displaying the shared internal systems of the units.
* The introduction of Specialist equipment, to represent non-critical systems that each member of the squad would have but the benefits does not stack or have to be equal for all squad members. E.g. ECM, C3, MASC/Supercharger, Sensors and more. 
** Note: These are fixed and can not be changed for balance reasons.
* Allowing customization by players of the ammunition loadouts for all squad unit types.
* Weapons that use external ammunition boxes are only able to use boxes from the same location. This means that even if a some member has the correct ammunition, not all members of the unit can use it. No warnings about this fact appear in the Mechbay.
|-|Other Units=
UAV
* Gremlin UAV - New 0.5 ton UAV, armed with a BA Light TAG and a droppable Thumper shell.
* UAV Compartment - Default UAV's quirk changed from Improved Comms to Missile Jammer as intended.
* UAV informative text improved to clarify that Beacons don't need to be equipped.
* Updated UAV traits to make them easier to understand (hopefully).
Turrets
The following Turrets will no longer have their ammunition switched to other types pre-battle (Shell Shuffler):
 * Clan Mortar
 * Mine Turrets
 * Pirate Rotary Chem
</tabber>
==Older Releases==
Changelogs for older releases can be found in the Change Log Archive