The major 1.0 release is finally here, bringing tons of new content, unlocks, improvements, fixes, and changes! Since this is planned as the final update, I wanted to make it worthwhile and include as much as possible to push Space Mercenary Defense Force to the best it can be. Thank you for playing the game and I hope you enjoy this update.

The primary focus of this update is the new Challenge Invasions, unique challenge runs with gameplay modifiers to overcome. Customise your build to best suit each challenge and try to save the planets from the invading aliens! Complete challenges to unlock additional planetary systems featuring increasingly difficult modifiers and complete all challenges in a system to unlock that system’s bonus challenge! There are 3 planetary systems with 5 challenges each for a total of 15 Challenge Invasions to conquer!

The next major addition of this update is ship customisation through skins. All 9 ships have a base skin and 3 additional skins to unlock and purchase through playing. From re-colours to new patterns and full sprite changes, these new skins provide bonus late-game objectives to complete and save up your credits for!

Also introduced are 3 new threat events increasing the total to 6. You can no longer encounter the same threat event twice in a row, even between runs. The new threat events are:

• Pulsing Solar Flare
• Shooting Star Attack
• Accelerated Meteor Shower

All threat events have been balanced to occur slightly less frequently over their duration.

After unlocking something in-game you will now be prompted, upon returning to the menu, with information on what has been unlocked. E.g: Celestial Modifiers, ship perks, ship skins, bonus Challenge Invasions, Challenge Invasion systems, and Turbo mode.

The ship’s turret fire rate has been reworked to be calculated in rounds per second (rps) and all turret fire rate upgrades now show specific stat info on their rps increase or decrease. This means that the ship turret fire rate will no longer scale disproportionately as you acquire more upgrades. Turret damage upgrades now also show how much they affect your damage as a percentage value and all turret upgrades have been tuned to improve overall balance in deciding between branch choices.

Several Astral Upgrades have been altered and rebalanced to improve build customisation and upgrade decisions. Also, some upgrade costs have changed, and some upgrade stacking amounts have changed.

• Changed on exp pickup upgrades so that they now stack a specified amount of times.
• Added an on-screen indicator for the exp pickup upgrades when they are active.
• Added an on-screen indicator for the level up beacon upgrades showing how close it is to being deployed.
• Changed ‘Turret attack speed on exp pickup’ to increase exp radius on exp pickup.
• Changed ‘Turret damage on exp pickup’ to decrease ship size on exp pickup.
• Changed turret attack speed beacon to provide module charge rate instead.
• Changed how level up beacon upgrades stack – now remaining at being deployed every 3 levels but increasing the beacon’s radius with the upgrade level.
• Changed the turret shot and hit upgrades so that they can now be upgraded a second time.
• Changed ‘Heal on boss spawn’ to spawn an HP pickup every 7 minutes.
• Changed ‘Deal bonus damage to bosses’ to spawn a magnet pickup every 5 minutes.
• Changed ‘Spawn an HP pickup every 500 kills’ to spawn a coin flip chance event every 800 kills.
• Changed ‘Spawn a magnet pickup every 250 kills’ to spawn a wheel spin chance event every 1000 kills.
• Changed ‘Gain an extra life on death’ to heal to 1HP the first time you would receive lethal damage.
• Lowered ‘Defensive modules charge 25% faster’ to 20%.

The following Celestial Modifiers have been changed:

• Scorpio – replaced ‘enemies lose -10%HP’ with ‘encounters grant double score’.
• Capricorn – changed to ‘a second threat event occurs, threat event duration is -15 seconds’.

A ship’s perk is no longer required to be unlocked before you can select a perk for that ship. This means that you can equip any unlocked perk on any ship. The locked perk sprite has been changed to a question mark indicating that you can click it.

• Improved the click & drag functionality for Celestial Modifiers and level up upgrade trees – added sliding physics upon releasing and no longer accidentally clicking the selected button while scrolling past it.
• Improved Astral Upgrade description text size scaling.
• In Astral Upgrade descriptions removed brackets and added colour to key values and costs.
• Improved hover and selected button clarity in the ship hangar.
• Removed interactable elements in ship module slots and level up upgrade trees for clarity.
• Fixed and improved game over screen equipped module name box sizing and text scaling.
• Changed the colour of upgrade tree hover info names for more visual clarity.
• Changed the colour of synergy module names for visual clarity.
• Added an extra period to threat event icon ancronyms.
• Improved threat event warning text typing effect so that it remains a constant size for longer texts.
• Added a glow effect to the main planet.
• Added credits for the new key art.

• Added 7 new achievements for Challenge Invasions and 3 new achievements for skins.
• Added ship turret damage and fire rate stat multipliers to balance acquiring additional upgrades relative to their starting values.
• Made imbued enemies give double exp.
• Removed certain encounter tasks to improve consistency and quality of encounters:
  • Removed “Retrieve enemy parts to charge the conduit” AoE encounter task.
  • Removed “Retrieve & deliver parts to the marked locations” Escort encounter task.
  • Removed “Defeat the invading wave of enemies” & “Defeat the empowered enemy invaders” Combat encounter tasks.
• The Praetor’s ship perk requirement now counts all chance event payouts (coin flip, wheel spin, slot machine) instead of just slot machines.
• Altered the Praetor’s ship perk to affect all chance event payout odds.
• Made miniboss HP scale as the game progresses.
• Decreased the Off World Targeting explosion radius so that it is within the size of the targeting reticle.
• Improved how ‘on hurt’ upgrades work, improving consistency and fixing issues with Shield Generator and Armoured Charge interactions with other upgrades and damage sources.
• Decreased the poison cloud effective area to make it clearer where is safe vs. where you will take damage.
• Improved the mini in-game wheel spin preview animation.
• Reworked one of the final boss’ attacks to be more readable to improve dodgeability.

• Synergising modules have a greater chance to show up vs. other modules.
• If you have empty module slots, you have increased chances to be offered upgrades to equipped modules.
• Added 2 new utility upgrade trees, an HP/size tree and a chance event tree.
• Heavy Armour upgrade has been moved into the new tree and replaced with Giant Armour.
• Removed ship size increase to Amour Impact Redirection.
• Rebalanced turret upgrades:
  • Turret damage upgrades provide slightly lower damage values.
  • Turret fire rate tree upgrade values are slightly increased.
  • Turret rebalance branches (dual barrel tree) stat increases and decreases are lowered and normalised.
  • Turret shot speed upgrades are lowered.
  • Moved the Dual Barrel turret upgrade to appear later in the upgrade tree.
  • Changed laser upscaling upgrade to deal up to +50% damage at max range.
• Made changes to how subsequent module fire rate upgrades affect the number of shots per second so that they are no longer disproportionate.
• Added a branch to Mine Deployment Module for the vortex upgrades vs. exploding mines.
• Changed Mine Deployment upgrade icons to use the new mine sprite.
• Added deployable life timer bars to Mine Deployer mines and Hull-Piercer drills.
• Changed Armoured Charge to count as a Melee module and made it Defensive.
• If you have both Armoured Charge and Portable Shield Generator modules equipped and active, the one most recently acquired will activate first instead of both together.
• Made Portable Shield Generator no longer prevent poison damage.
• Increased Shotgun Blaster damage.
• Changed Missile Launcher barrel synergy to only apply to the first shot of a burst.
• Lowered the fire rate and active time of Banana Skin Deployer bananas so that not so many remain active at once.
• Changed Vamp Scythe HP charging so that it no longer only counts swipe kills.
• Added more info to Vamp Ray as to how much the max required charge increases or decreases with its upgrades.
• Buffed Ice Cream Cannon’s stats by increasing its fire rate and damage for all flavours.
• Buffed Fireworks Launcher by increasing its base damage, and increasing Explosive Tip’s damage and Improved Formula’s radius increase.
• Added II numerals to Turret Optical Enhancements and Turret Barrel Rifling upgrades in the dual barrel upgrade tree for more clarity between upgrade icons.

• Fixed looping audio continuing to play while paused or levelling up.
• Fixed some looping audio no longer continuing after pausing/levelling up.
• Fixed perks not visually updating their progress and only updating upon restarting.
• Fixed imbued enemies not resetting their colour.
• Fixed imbued enemy exploders not exploding sometimes.
• Fixed Fuel Leak’s fire effect having a green aura.
• Fixed skull effects (damage to all non-boss enemies) not dealing appropriate damage to overhealed enemies i.e. imbued enemies.
• Fixed an issue during the final boss death animation where it could remain white from the damage flash effect.
• Fixed an issue where the laser twin boss sparking effect remained when returning to the menu while its active.
• Fixed an issue with laser twin bosses if they get ionised and separated on different sides of the screen, affecting certain attack patterns.
• Fixed an occasional menu issue where the ship’s jet flame particles would flicker.
• Fixed an issue during the death animation when close to the edge of the playable area where it would zoom into the centre and not onto the player.
• Fixed the Beam Sentry homing synergy so it no longer flickers and is smooth.
• Fixed Fork Stabber visual issues with ship scaling.
• Fixed bug with displayed HP when returning to the menu while Armoured Charge’s armour is active.
• Fixed the Area Select paint bucket synergy creating buckets in the incorrect position.
• Fixed targeted burst modules not remaining at max charge when no enemies are in range e.g. Missile Launcher with the burst upgrade will now remain at a yellow max charge bar instead of misfiring.
• Fixed the Sprinkler Sentry ice cream synergy where it would not create ice cream scoops.
• Fixed E.T. Paralyser scaling issues with ship size and hitbox width.
• Fixed Area Select’s visual area staying on screen when returning to the menu while it is being drawn.
• Fixed Cross Contamination achievement not unlocking properly.
• Fixed issues with not being able to access Steam interactions.
• Fixed having the game paused after the death animation ends causing issues with the game over screen.