This thread will be used to share game updates, patch notes, and other game announcements. The topic is currently set to read-only, but feel free to leave your opinion/ feedback in the [suggestion thread](https://www.kongregate.com/forums/1059934-area-raiders/topics/1861133-your-suggestions-ideas) or other related section.. or open a separate thread for more specific topics. We hope that you'll enjoy playing the game, we'll try to do our best to develop it further with some extras for you guys. The best way to support our efforts is to rate the game. We'll try to do our best to improve the game's quality further and to add some interesting twists you won't expect.. Let this be enough words, need to go back now to finish some urgent tasks that need to be smashed now! :P But, do expect first updates in the next days!

*Here are our first updates on Area Raiders:* - site whitelisting/ prevent 3rd party added - some text changes/fixes on animation - BuyOCD added as buy amount option - Transparent background on all popups (available now from Settings) - Area 51 special bricks added - First balance changes: MP gain MXes increased from 1.05 to 1.08 for all units that had 1.05, Base MP gains increased for most units, HP cost MXes reduced from 3 to 2 (This should make progress a bit faster and more enjoyable. We will do more in-depth balance changes soon as well!) Please make sure to refresh the game (in case you have the game opened once we pushed an update) to see all the changes in the game. Hope you like the updates, we can't wait to release more in the upcoming week!

**Here's a summary of today's game update:** - go to new level animations and sounds effect added and previous animated texts corrected, - sound and background music added, - settings added for sound as well as scroll and scroll arrow, - progress bar for aliens rescued added, - stats design fixes, - max area reached fixed If you have been playing the game during the update, please make sure to refresh the page (f5) to see all changes properly! Have fun :)

Todays update adds a feature that allows you to convert saved aliens into free skills. The feature can be found in the PRESTIGE section. If you have been playing the game during the update, please make sure to refresh the page (f5) to see all changes properly! As always, have fun :)

**Todays update includes:** * When transparent popups are enabled, some underlying info is removed for a better experience * Bugs that cause the game to freeze and did not allow to proceed were fixed/removed * Various performance updates like separating the tower shots from raiders totally and therefore speeding the main logic-loop that makes the play faster and with lot fewer stops * The Brick size was also changed (bricks are bigger now), so raiders will now have fever objects to destroy in every area….

Yesterday, we were fully working on the game perfomance/ improvements, but we still found out a few more issues today, that has now been fixed and should improve the performance of the game, especially for those that haven't been able to play the game after area 30/40 where the game starts to become laggy (for some).. Our latest updates on game performance should fix most of the issues there. We'd love to hear back from you in case you still found a specific issue on that topic. **Here is the game update of today's development/fixes:** * Fixed bug that didn't remove tower shots properly * Quadrant tracking for bricks added to improve performance * Savings process was optimized as well and the saving note added for better flow understanding We're now moving forward to adding new tower bullet types and adding special abilities of the characters/ raiders. Hope you enjoy the game for now! We can't wait to release new stuff in the following days. We'll also be starting to work on some additional gameplay/ content very soon, so you'll all have more to aim for, unlock… & enjoy! :)

We've done a **balance update** today, changing the following things: Increased HP, DMG, and MP gain multipliers for most units, to increase MP gain, but also for units to scale better with their costs when they are first introduced. Also units have certainly different multipliers, so that i.e. when introduced a new unit might be better in all stats, but after a while, a certain lower tier unit could overtake it in a certain stats after many upgrades.

We've rolled out a bunch of updates over the past few days, plus in the next couple of days we'll let you know what our next big update & expansion for the game will be about ;) - fixed an issue where temporarily all bullets were “railgun bullets”, passing through all units, sorry about that, they were not supposed to be release yet then tsk tsk - fixed an issue where “quadrant optimization” was causing units to pass throught bricks past Area 50. This has been fixed, and these optimizations will now apply from Area 1, helping improve performance! - Major improvements of balance & progression were done -> faster MP gain, cheaper HP upgrades. Also made each new unlocked unit MUCH more significant when it's first unlocked. Progression should feel much more natural now - Improved “Tower scaling” relative to unit HP, now you can actually get units to have more HP, but not at a pace where it completely dwarfs tower damage at later stages. The new bullet types also help with this. We will keep improving the balance of this. - Added new types of tower bullets – Explosive bullets (introduced at Area 20), Rail Gun bullets (introduced at Area 40), which damage multiple enemies and scale in difficulty - Added first unit abilities (unlocked in prestige skills) – Anti Vaccine kids get splash damage and Gamers Get cloaking/invisibility, being able to avoid enemy bullets! - Fixed an issue with game load, that will check if localStorage is allowed, and prompt you to enable it - Fixed some weird pricing/stat bugs, such as Unit HP changing drastically when buying it - Other massive game performance optimizations were done as well, which should make your game run much smoother We also realize that when game saves or calculates idle time at late stages, it might freeze the browser for a second or two, which we will try to rework and optimize this week as well, as it's pretty annoying. More massive balancing improvements will be done as well, with an upcoming big update, more about that in the next couple of days :)

We've deployed a smaller update today: - Fixed an issue some users had sometimes, where the game would block on load. - Done several optimizations to make game run better: bullets will clear when they pass all units, capped firing speed on tower, as it was shooting up to 300x times per seconds at late stages These should help especially at late game - we also changed the way saving works, to be in chunks, to not block main browser thread. We hope to be able to apply a similar solution to bigger idle calculations and loading the game. *Requires a refresh for these changes to take effect

Feel free to follow current WIP on the biggest update of Area Raiders so far: https://www.kongregate.com/forums/1059934-area-raiders/topics/1865714-working-on-a-bigger-update-goals-new-feature-more-gameplay?page=1#posts-13260396

The new massive update was just pushed live! We'll provide all details of it very soon (it adds/changes a lot), just wanted to give a heads up to any first checkers to be aware of it ;)

Feel free to read more about the latest massive Update we released yesterday (see what's all new and what is waiting you at late stages as well): https://www.kongregate.com/forums/1059934/topics/1865714?page=1

A few hours back we pushed some fixes and improvements to the game. We are now adding Quality Of Life (QoL) features (more coming in the following days/ weeks)… - ''Buy all'' feature was added to Upgrades- allows you to purchase one upgrade of every unit type in one click (taking x1/x10/x100/OCD/MAX type of buying into consideration). Can be found just below the names header - The Energy-shield display issue was fixed- 'regenerates in' now show unavailable when destroyed - Opening conditions bug was fixed and eval function removed - Additional game analytics added to improve player experience

Here's a list of what's been added to the game today: - Extra baggage skill has been added in prestige section. It allows you to upgrade units so they can carry multiple aliens in a single swoop - Prestige req reduced by half, essentially speeding up gain of prestige points by 30% - Some skills improved:Extra furry - increased from 20% to 30% (per point) - Calisthenics - increased from 10% to 20% (per point) - Helmet upgrade - increased from 30% to 50% (per point) - Black Friday - increased from 50% to 100% (per point) - Alien Shield - HP increased from 10% to 20% (per point) - Boosts from Skins were slightly increased (applies to those who already bought as well) - Welcome note has been changed to include more usefull info on how to start the game - Unlocks sections (tooltips added) - question mark has been added in header so you can open the info popup directly and get the most needed information - Max_arctic area reached added to Kong's statistics In the upocming days we'll try to take some more time and write down on what all is still coming up to Area Raiders in the following days and weeks! Stay tuned ;)

We just pushed another game update: - Raider speed upgrade bug fixed - New 'Convert aliens to skills' button and icon added - Alien Icon changed on Unlocks - Sound preferences moved to the top of the settings - Aliens rescued widget invisible bug fixed - Game instructions updated

Hey all! Here's the list of the latest updates on Area Raiders, hope you guys are enjoying the updates - OCD setting added for 5 and 10 - Savings issue fixed - Display optimizations - Missions on Unlocks pending prestige points issue fixed - Raider attributes data added in Spawn upgrades section pssttt: another bigger update is coming to the game! Hopefully, we'll manage to release it by the end of this week! The update will feature an Alien Time Machine Capsule being added to the game, on top of some other activities and options. Mainly we'll be adding some activity boosters, which will reward you more for an active playstyle, as well as gain materials to power up the Alien Time Machine! We can't wait to release this update as it should help us reach the long-term goals with this game, to make a fun idle, alien-themed game our players will enjoy playing for months and some for years as well! We dedicated a lot of time to this game, so hopefully you guys noticed how the game changed from its initial release!? We are doing our best to further improve the rating of the game and its quality and excitement, and also willing to further hear your feedback! That surely helps us focus and further improve the game. Thank you all for playing and supporting us further!

Interested in what we are doing currently? **We're working on two new features** that will encourage active play, as well as reward you when coming back from idling, and just generally speed up the gameplay a bit to make it more fun: - Spaceships will roam above areas randomly, which you'd be able to click to receive a fat boost of MP, or even Alien Shards! *( don't worry if you prefer to idle more - the most rewarding spaceships will make sure you collect them before shooting off back into space!) - We'll soon be introducing the Alien Shards (store a lot of energy, which can be used to power advanced technologies) - New mini-game is coming up: Use Alien tech to build a Time Machine! Time Machine can be powerred by Alien Shards to boost you in the future! - Both of these features will make game more fast-paced for both new and existing players, so make sure to check it out! - if all will run smoothly we'll be giving out additional Alien Shards on the first day – will let you know about that for sure - completely changing the UI of the game and finally making it more user-friendly (also giving those players that would rather stick to the classic view a setting to be able to play it further via that way though- mobile UI/legacy UI) - design changes and some other visual bug fixing - working on animations of UFOs and Time-Machine triggering We are smashing the latest bugs and finalizing all that stuff above, tomorrow is a testing day and hopefully we can go Live with this update this Thursday, Nov 28th!

(As we promised) – the Time-Machine update with UFOs has been released today! **Really short summary:** * UFO spaceships added * Time-machine created * completely new UI with side-menu integrated * Upgrade section now showing actual difference buying will do * zoom indicator added * initial prices of all raiders reduced by half * initial cost of first skill reduced from 10 to 1 Prestige Point * price reduction in MP gain, prestige skills * online saving added * a bunch of bugs and display issues fixed * some additional performance optimizations were done * pretty much all sounds reduced in volume as they were quite annoying Now, complete the steps and Build-up your Time-Machine, it worth it (you'll see)! Feel free to read more about one of the biggest updates of Area Raiders here: https://www.kongregate.com/forums/1059934-area-raiders/topics/1875801-time-machine-with-ufos-update-is-now-live

** We just pushed another game update:** * Fixed bug where documents wouldn't be created sometimes * Fixed bugs where catch rate wouldn't properly refresh live * Change formula of catch rate to not be as punishing if forgetting about popularity (square root of popularity taken). New formula:CatchRatePercent = Math.min(1, sqrt(popularity) hackers /1000) 100; * Reduce all skill cost multipliers, as consensus from players was that they're not unlocked frequently enough. Super-late gamers might now have extra skills they can't use, but we'll soon be adding way more :) * Prestige skill cost MX reduced from 10 to 5 * Convert aliens skill cost MX reduced from 5 to 2 * HPcost MX reduced from 1.4 to 1.35 for all units

Here's new game update. Make sure to refresh the game (if you have it opened for more hours straight), to see the changes properly: - prestige point skills cost bug fixed, where prices weren't properly separated. Make sure to CHECK YOUR ARCTIC skill costs as you should be able to buy them much cheaper/properly now :) - idle time & time warp MP gain now added based of calculated gains (more accurate gains, as they were too low before) - fixed bug where idling could progress your raiders area much more than active play. With the above change it will now also always give correct(more) MP, instead of it being drastically lowered if not much time was replicated for big idle times - splash range mutations display fixed as it broke it - starting arctic area bug where it sometimes gave tons of starting MP fixed - fixed a bug where switching between nevada/arctic left a tab marked as active when it shouldn't be - fixed a bug where time warping would not take into account potential idle time of the area where you were not in for a while - pending upgrades notification bug fixed - unlocks currencies now have a hover tooltip with basic information provided - text font changes to make some texts more readable - units spawned counter gets colored red when reaches maximum e.g. 200/200 - UFO reward MP boosts have doubled - unlocks currencies design changes - unlocks upgrades (seen after new area revealed) prices halved

The new game update contains: - Pending Prestige tab notification bug has been fixed so you now know when you can convert aliens to skills. - Aliens raider type has been changed to Super freaks, - Alien and Alien Tech in Unlocks have been changed to Uber Geeks and Sci-fi tech - Since MP gain is the most imporant metric it's position has been moved from the last to the first in Upgrades/Spawn section. - Multiple design/font improvements to make texts more readable. Make sure to refresh the game to see the changes properly.

Update 15th December: We've changed the way online saving works, as some users had issues of lost saves or overwritten saves. Before the game forced online load when refreshing the game, which could set you back if recent online saves failed. Now the game will always read game data from browser storage, but still save online every 10 minutes. You can choose to save online more frequently if you wish as well. If for example you reset or overwrite your current game save, you still have time to load the previous online save, which is cool as well! This should solve the various saving/progress loss issues some had :)

**Update 16th Dec:** Buffed a lot of skills: Extra Furry increased from 30% to 40% per skill Sharper Selfies increased from 50% to 80% per skill Super Freaks Shenanigans increased from 100% to 150% per skill Bulking Season increased from 20% to 40% per skill Headbang increased from 30% to 50% per skill Trolling skills increased from 50% to 100% per skill Elder Wand increased from 100% to 200% per skill Splash Mutations increased from 20% to 40% per skill Calistenics increased from 20% to 30% per skill Helmet upgrade increased from 50% to 80% per skill Super Freaks Shield increased from 20% to 50% per skill Prevented a bug where some users somehow got negative alien/sci-fi tech. If anyone still has negative tech, please contact us and provide us with a save file so we can fix it for you :)

Latest update is a stats one. Media points stat was getting too large so we have produced a new one that uses a log function to make it more contained.

One of the biggest updates to date has been released! We've posted more details about the Weapon City Update here: https://www.kongregate.com/forums/1059934-area-raiders/topics/1887472-the-weapon-city-weapons-update?page=1#posts-13319514