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Surviving the Aftermath - Dev Diary - New Alliances DLC

Greetings survivors!

“New Alliances” is here and we can finally share more details about what it means for Surviving the Aftermath. We’ve already teased its contents a bit, so let’s dig deeper into what makes it special. Society requests, alliances and federation add a fresh dimension to societies, while roaming bandits, covert missions and a new powerful Rival faction challenge you in new ways.

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IMAGE: Keyart

New Alliances adds a new, more dynamic layer to the world map and how you interact with societies. Instead of just having nice trade partners, you can now befriend and eventually ally with them with the ultimate goal of creating a federation! To do this, you must help your soon-to-be allies by completing requests and assisting them against various threats in the wasteland. But if making friends isn’t your thing, you can raid their convoys for resources or have your specialists complete covert missions inside the societies to steal loot, science points and other benefits. But note that you’re not alone in your ambitions, as a mysterious Rival faction has taken an interest in your part of the wasteland.


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IMAGE: Build request

Forming a federation and solidifying your status as its leader will take some time. Once you’ve met the first societies, a new society depot building becomes available. It allows you to construct helpful buildings inside societies to raise their population, protect them from bandit raids or provide alternative sources of science points and silver. You can construct these buildings for a society whenever you want, even if they haven’t specifically sent a request for them. In addition to building requests, societies might also ask you to hunt bothersome animals, deal with dangerous bandit forts or loan one of your specialists to them.

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IMAGE: Federation screen


Each completed request gives you rewards and brings your two colonies closer. Once you’ve gained enough reputation, they’ll offer to ally with you and share their secrets after you’ve built their embassy in the colony. These unique, society-specific benefits range from nuclear power plant blueprints from Chemville to extra action points for every specialist from Dead Creek. Discover all the perks in the new federation status screen and choose which ones you want the most! New Alliances features eight new reward buildings and 13 permanent bonuses for your colony.

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IMAGE: Part of the rival illustration with failed request

But as you encounter more societies while still dealing with all the hardships of catastrophes and bandit assaults against your own colony, you’ll be forced to decide who to help and who’s plea for aid goes unheard. Each failed request pushes them closer to your Rival, who will turn them against you! To end their influence in the wasteland, you must create a strong federation with your closest allies.

To form the federation you must get the majority of the wasteland’s population on your side. Raise your allies’ population by constructing shelters and food production facilities while embarking on propaganda missions to draw people away from hostile societies. Once the majority has been achieved, you’ll be rewarded with sharing the spoils of war your Rival left behind along with other benefits.

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IMAGE: Successful covert mission end screen

Another major aspect in New Alliances involves a bit more shadier tactics. Your specialists can now embark on four different types of covert missions against other societies for various benefits. You can for example steal science points for your research via espionage with your scientists or sabotage Rival operations with scavengers to reduce their influence. Different specialist types have a higher chance to succeed on these missions, so pick your operative carefully as failure means a big drop in reputation and a potentially lethal escape from the rather offended society.

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IMAGE: Anti-covert mission buildings

But be on your guard as these covert missions can also be used against you. Both your Rival and other societies can infiltrate your colony to steal, disrupt your research or even set off explosives! To combat this, unlock protective buildings like anti-propaganda towers and surveillance vans from the new tech branch and have them staffed at all times. The more workers you have stationed, the greater the chance you’ll prevent anything bad from happening and maybe even uncover the culprit in the process.

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IMAGE: Roaming animal

The world map is also more active than ever before. You might spot a herd of deer roaming around looking for food or a group of bandits searching for prey. Hostile units might chase your specialists who are moving on foot or decide to take over your world map outpost, halting its operations until you clear them out. For best protection, have a fleet of capable vehicles on hand at all times, as the bandit hordes are unable to catch a fast-moving car with all your scavenged loot inside. As the game progresses, you’ll start seeing more powerful Rival troops on the world map. Approach them with caution (and several specialists).

The base game is also receiving an update with a number of quality-of-life improvements, user interface additions and bug fixes. Most notably the main quest now has mid-quest rewards, permanent effects are now visible in the Statistics screen so you can see which affect your colony, and a toggle for faster world map animations has been added to the Settings menu. Check all improvements and fixes from the Changelog: Update 4 link below.


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IMAGE: Colony beauty shot

We hope you’ll jump in and discover all that the New Alliances DLC has to offer in terms of new buildings, tactics and decisions. There’s a lot to play around with from deciding who to help and who to hinder, and which powerful rewards to go for. So prepare yourself against bandits, rivals and sandworms alike to unite the wasteland!

As we’ve mentioned before, New Alliances will be released for PC platforms first while we continue working on the console counterparts, so stay tuned!

Surviving the Aftermath: New Alliances is available now on Steam and Epic Store. It is also included as a part of the Ultimate Colony Upgrade with more DLC to come later.

General
  • Added Main Quest rewards.
  • Gather enough Main Quest knowledge to unlock new modifiers that improve your colony, or alternatively, choose a resource reward instead.
  • Each knowledge type (Life Support, Medicine, Defense and Ecosystem) gives different rewards.
  • Added a new Global Effects tab in the statistics menu:
    • Other: displays modifiers that affect the whole colony.
    • Custom game settings: displays the chosen custom game settings.
  • Added a setting for faster World Map animations.
    • Increases the animation speed of World Map actions, such as specialist movement.
  • Changed the way that other societies spawn in the World Map.
    • Societies now spawn randomly to improve gameplay variation.
    • Previously certain societies always spawned in the World Map, such as Lushton.
  • Added the New Alliances DLC banner to the Main Menu.
    • The banner is visible for players that do not have the New Alliances DLC.
    • The banner changes to a DLC toggle button for players that have the New Alliances DLC enabled.

Gameplay
  • The carrier bringing the last resource to a construction zone should now start constructing the building.
    • Previously a random worker would start constructing the building.
  • Defeating bandit camps in the World Map now gives resource rewards based on the location.
    • For example, defeating bandits in a research location will reward the player with science points.
    • Defeating bandit sectors gives a currency reward.
  • Notifications that have many targets can now be selected multiple times to go through all the affected targets.
    • Affects all notifications, such as “constructions finished” and “colonists are injured”.
    • Previously, clicking on the notification moved the camera to the first affected target.
  • Research queue now takes the active research into account when choosing its path. This should make the research queue work much smoother.
    • The top row was prioritized before. This change fixes the issue where a tech has been researched on the bottom row and it would still queue techs through the top row.
  • Low HP colonists will now visit Medical Tents or Field Hospitals to heal themselves.
    • Colonists often had very low health that caused unintended deaths caused by hunger, malnutrition etc.
    • Guards are now more effective as they will heal themselves if their health drops low enough.
  • Critical conditions from workers in entertainment and sanitary buildings are not instantly removed anymore.
    • Building many saunas or entertainment buildings reduced the amount of conditions given to colonists in different situations.
  • Specialists can now be commanded to move to the exact same location as the previous specialist.This was mainly an issue on a controller.
  • Removed camera centering when exiting specialist menu while using a controller.
    • Previously, the camera moved to the player’s colony when the specialist menu was exited.
  • Added a notification when finding a new building in the colony view. Mainly affects the Cold Rush scenario right now.
  • Percentage bonuses from techs now stack cumulatively. Only the latest percentage bonus was active previously.
    • Main quest gives percentage rewards that affect the whole colony. This change was added so that the rewards can stack with all other percentage modifiers e.g. building durability.

Graphics
  • Polished the Society Menu.
    • Removed unnecessary society introduction texts.
    • Added “Trade offers available” text.
    • Added reputation text and icon.
    • Other smaller image, text and icon changes in different society menu panels.
  • Polished all World Map panels.
    • Increased the size of World Map panels and the texts in them.
    • Made the Society panel more concise.
  • Improved textures for Wind Turbine, Food Storage, Tent, Emergency Shelter and Trapper.

Balance Adjustments
  • Added resource rewards to the early stages of the main quest.
    • Rewards have been added throughout the main quest to make it more compelling to do.
  • Hungry colonists now seek food when hunger is at 20%, was 10% previously
    • We received many comments about colonists dying from hunger, even though there was plenty of food available in the colony. This change should reduce the times random hunger deaths happen.
  • Tired colonists now seek shelter to sleep in when tiredness is at 20%, was 10% previously.

Bug Fixes
  • Xbox only: fixed an issue that caused Wind Turbine, Lightning Rod, Lightning Tower and Martian Wind Turbine to be unrepairable when the Ultimate Colony DLC was active.
  • Fixed an issue that caused the colonists to run in place and the game would reset to day 0 when loading a save where a building has just been destroyed before saving.
  • Changed the wording for “wasteland biome” in multiple languages in the main quest. This caused misunderstandings in the main quest step that required an outpost to be built on the wasteland biome.
 
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Is there a ballpark timeline for when the DLC will be available for console? Looking forward to trying out all these new features!

Hey,

The plan currently is to release the New Alliances DLC for Xbox and Playstation some day in August. The update to the base game is released at the same time.

- Kalle
 
So there is no way to permanently pacify an area on the world map to get rid of bandit patrols in the area? (destroying bandit hives or something like that?)
 
Don't know if you guys still take suggestions, doubly so as you passed 1.0, but a long time ago, I played a game of which one of the many features was to build a turret tower. Could mow down a lot of zombies. The game was Rebuild 3 in case anyone asked. Bet the Guardposts could be upgraded to this, have a gunner in the shack.

Other than that, looking forward to trying the update!
 
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I have a question: is the update save-game compatible? :3
Love all what I see, really really love it! Keep up the good work!

Hey,

Sadly, the New Alliances DLC content is not enabled in old saves. All saves are still playable though, but you need to start a new game if you wish to play the New Alliances content.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

- Kalle
 
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So there is no way to permanently pacify an area on the world map to get rid of bandit patrols in the area? (destroying bandit hives or something like that?)
Eliminating bandit camps (the ones in the middle of the large red sectors) reduces the likelihood of roaming bandits but does not completely eliminate them. In addition to razing the camps, using vehicles will greatly reduce your unwanted encounters with these patrols.
 
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Hey,

Sadly, the New Alliances DLC content is not enabled in old saves. All saves are still playable though, but you need to start a new game if you wish to play the New Alliances content.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

- Kalle
Oh please, it's not an inconvenience at all, it was to be expected :)
Well, this means I will just need to start a new game :D let's do this >:3
 
Hey,

The plan currently is to release the New Alliances DLC for Xbox and Playstation some day in August. The update to the base game is released at the same time.

- Kalle
Does this imply the switch won't be seeing the update or that it'll be coming later than that?

This game has quickly become one of my favorite city builders and I'm looking forward to see where it goes from here.
 
I'm not far enough to have capped out my society building slots, but given that I can't replace society buildings and building a building is a frequent society request, will a society that has all building slots full stop sending building requests and pick a different type? What about a society that has three buildings and where I don't have the 500 reputation to unlock the remaining building slots?

I did notice I can get requests to build buildings that I haven't researched the tech for yet, but I assume that's part of the challenge. But I am wondering if the request system is going to offer me impossible requests at some point.
 
I'm not far enough to have capped out my society building slots, but given that I can't replace society buildings and building a building is a frequent society request, will a society that has all building slots full stop sending building requests and pick a different type? What about a society that has three buildings and where I don't have the 500 reputation to unlock the remaining building slots?

I did notice I can get requests to build buildings that I haven't researched the tech for yet, but I assume that's part of the challenge. But I am wondering if the request system is going to offer me impossible requests at some point.
Societies should stop sending any build requests after they're capped. If this still happens, do let us know. Some requests will be very difficult to fulfil by design as societies don't really "care" how you're doing, they just need stuff done. So them asking for a hospital when you're nowhere near researching or dealing with bandits without good fighters it is a possibility. The requests shouldn't, however, be totally 100% impossible like the example above.
 
Hey,

We're still aiming for an August release on consoles. The PC patch is released at the same time with new achievements, bug fixes, balance changes and QoL improvements. The console version will have these from the get-go.

- Kalle
 
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Hey,

Sadly, the New Alliances DLC content is not enabled in old saves. All saves are still playable though, but you need to start a new game if you wish to play the New Alliances content.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

- Kalle
@DebbieElla why does it not work on old saves? (my apologies if I am misspelling anything my phones spellcheck/autocomplete is having issue) surviving Mars DLC was able to work with old saves (until below and beyond came out) I want to try the new stuff but I am in the endgame and it wouldn’t be a big deal except surving the aftermath for console has no mods so it will take forever to get to where I am because of that. if it had mods I would be okay, the biggest worry is if I have to do this for every DLC then tell me now. @Kalle_ifs
 
@DebbieElla why does it not work on old saves? (my apologies if I am misspelling anything my phones spellcheck/autocomplete is having issue) surviving Mars DLC was able to work with old saves (until below and beyond came out) I want to try the new stuff but I am in the endgame and it wouldn’t be a big deal except surving the aftermath for console has no mods so it will take forever to get to where I am because of that. if it had mods I would be okay, the biggest worry is if I have to do this for every DLC then tell me now. @Kalle_ifs
The New Alliances content affected so many different aspects of the game that it would've been a nightmare for us to make it work with old saves. But don't worry, the next DLC should be playable with old saves, and hopefully the DLC after that as well. Our aim is to make sure that new content is available on old saves, but sadly we weren't able to do so for the New Alliances DLC.
 
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The New Alliances content affected so many different aspects of the game that it would've been a nightmare for us to make it work with old saves. But don't worry, the next DLC should be playable with old saves, and hopefully the DLC after that as well. Our aim is to make sure that new content is available on old saves, but sadly we weren't able to do so for the New Alliances DLC.
I appreciate that although i have a few bugs/issues (will post in correct area eventally)