Random Encounters
You will now encounter random NPCs in your travels. These can vary from helpful -- such as giving you free items, to useful -- such as traveling traders, to downright hostile -- such as pirates. To trade with NPCs, simply drag the items onto them. A full, proper trade interface will be added in a coming update. And speaking of trades, neutral NPC outposts and traveling traders will now buy your items of quality +1 or higher -- just in case you are short on credits.
Raids
While the NPC outposts added in the Part 1 of the PvE update are still there, you can now expect the previously docile non-player factions to be far less... welcoming... to you taking their territory and outposts. You will be subject to retaliation strikes after capturing outposts, and your own outposts will also be periodically raided by enemies. Be sure to protect them by building meaningful defenses! Just keep in mind that as you defeat more and more raids, they will get progressively more challenging, with proportionally better loot! And yes, you can even issue a challenge to effectively summon a raid to your outpost manually, if you so choose.
Here's a video of one such raid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-7HI5bxmTo
Skills
To help you combat the new threats, you will now have access to a fairly extensive number of skills at your disposal. Certain skills are innate, such as the ability to repair, capture outposts and use hydraulics, while others are granted by items. All weapons have different special abilities you can use to increase their damage for a short time, but don't expect to find them available to you unless you install proper computers into your vehicle's internal slots.
The unique thing about skills in Sightseer is that they don't have fixed cooldown timers. Instead, all cooldowns are "soft". They won't prevent you from trying to activate the skill again -- but chances of it succeeding are based on the remaining cooldown time. As an example, if you have 3 seconds remaining of a 10 second cooldown, there is a 30% chance that activating the skill will simply fail, resetting the cooldown and possibly wasting resources. This makes it possible to risk activating life-saving skills early (such as in-combat repairs) if you happen to be close to death anyway and have nothing to lose.
As an extra bonus, certain skills can even completely change the feel of the part itself, such as one of the Railgun's skills allowing you to instantly fire off a shot instead of waiting for it to charge, sensor jammer's Electromagnetic Pulse disabling all hostile weapons in the area, or the scanning pulse on the externally mounted (non-prototype) radar instantly identifying everything in range.
Threat System
The game now features a proper threat generation and management system, with threat reduction or increase coming both from skills and items. This makes it possible for players to assume certain roles in combat, such as a "tank" and "dps", protecting others by pulling aggro as needed.
Healing Role
There is now a new weapon type in the game that shoots regenerative projectiles that effectively heal your target. This finally fills the previously absent "healer" role within the game. Be sure to pair this weapon with Mk3 combat computers that provide hull regeneration as they can greatly improve the weapon's functionality.
Redesigned Tech Tree
The technology tree has been redesigned to offer faster research early on, as well as sooner access to early land vehicles such as Puma and Cobra. Coupled together with the increased chance of finding vehicle wrecks out in the field this should make getting out of the Scarab take less time.
Weapon Progression
Tier 2 and 3 weapons have been added to the game, greatly boosting the possible damage output. Also note that certain skills, such as Volley that instantly fires all weapon barrels, mix very well with certain weapons that have more barrels! Tier 2 and 3 weapons can't be crafted manually -- but can be both found as loot in outposts as well as during raids and random encounters.
New and Redesigned Vehicles
Many of the vehicles have been re-designed, giving them a clear role. For example, the LV-01 has gained a built-in dome shield and now features 2 power generator slots as well as the highest shield regeneration rate per point of power of any vehicle, while the Interceptor is now the fastest flying vehicle (not counting the rare Shuttle, of course). Be sure to check out all your favorite vehicles, as they may now be different! In addition, two new vehicles have been added (3 if you count the Shuttle that was added some time after the Part 1 update) -- the fearsome Firebrand, a direct upgrade to the Meerkat offering more firepower and superb agility, as well as the earliest available ship -- the Cutlass.
Mac OS and Linux Support
This update brings full Linux support (no more broken water!) as well as makes the game available for OSX. Thank you all for your patience. :)
If you are interested in the full patch notes, you can find them in their usual place (tinyurl.com/p5notes).
Last but not least, I just want to extend a big thank you to all the players who have been testing out this update for the past few weeks on the development branch on Steam. Without your feedback and bug reports, this update wouldn't be possible -- so thanks!!
Neil and I hope you guys will like this update, and if you have any feedback, please drop by our Discord! Also, if you happen to find bugs. Just let us know. We'll squish 'em for you. Promise!
-Michael "ArenMook" Lyashenko
