The Hazards and Crew Update

Hi everyone, our next Major Update has been released and there’s a bunch of new systems which improve the variety and replayability of the campaigns, along with some changes to existing systems which lift the entire experience.

I’ll cover everything in detail below, but first I wanted to extend a huge thank-you to all our community members that helped playtest the beta branch updates we’ve been releasing. The feedback has once again proven invaluable in tracking down bugs and providing data to help shape our balancing and polish passes.

As always it’s worth covering some important logistical information regarding the update:

Steam should auto-update to the latest version, which is 0.8.26678 or later (this is visible in the bottom-right of the main menu). If the version number is lower, verify your install from the Steam Library and Steam should update.

Your profile saves will carry over (i.e. all your equipment you’ve unlocked thus far), but any in-progress escape run will not – so if you’re in the middle of a campaign and you don’t want to lose any new blueprints you haven’t banked, reach a gate and bank them before switching to the new version. If the game detects you’re trying to load an older save, it’ll give a reminder message in case you want to finish the run and bank any equipment on that old version, which is available as a beta branch (called "0.7.25599 - Major Update 2"). Some of the changes we’ve made could mean moving back and forth between previous versions and this could introduce bugs though, so only go back if you really have/want to.

If you want to back up your profile saves for whatever reason, you can find them here:

C:\\Users[Username]\\AppData\\LocalLow\\Fireblade Software\\SENTRY\\Saves\\Steam[SteamID]

Now that’s covered, onto the exciting bit – the new stuff:

Crew Menu!

Crew were previously just a numbered resource, whereas they are now characters. Characters whom you can rename, equip with armour, revive deceased ones and swap to new uniforms (aka skins).

Armour can be purchased with the materials resource and replenished as it gets depleted through combat. Or you can forgo it if you’d prefer to spend materials on something else – or are hardcore enough not to need it :)

This means armour is no longer a piece of Passive Gear, and as we’ve also given the Jump Jets as a default player ability means only the Bandolier remains. Passive Gear is being phased out for a replacement system with much greater depth and gameplay possibilities that’ll come in a future update.

You can also now spend research to revive a deceased SENTRY, which is a benefit to those who have been losing campaigns due to running out of crew. It’s also helpful to those in co-op who have one crew member and don’t want their friend to be in spectator mode until they find a crew pod on the map.

There are now a variety of uniforms you can switch each SENTRY to. You can get additional uniforms in two ways: unlocking a new vessel (each one comes with its own uniform) or by collecting the rescue pods. In future we’ll add more ways to get uniforms.

Uniforms are banked in the same way as equipment, and in co-op all players get access to the uniforms from both players while they're in a session together.

The crew names are generated from both a default database and one with names provided by newsletter subscribers. There’s the option to rename them if you want to