SCE Protocol

IMPORTANT: This mod pack has unfortunately been VERY SPARSELY TESTED despite its ~year of careful development! So expect bugs or bad/un-fun/unbalanced systems, and please bring them up! That said, this mod pack IS meant to be somewhat challenging, but I promise: There are dozens of ways to deal with just about any difficulty you can encounter, and failing that: There are systems in place to detect and correct soft-locks/death-loops.

Anyway, changes from the "Experimental" version now:

UI & Quality of Life

• On-screen player effects icons moved/disabled to avoid blocking the on-screen clock, which players felt looked messy
• Middle-click should now sort whichever inventory your mouse is hovering over—in more cases than before, at least
• Free furniture items excluded from the "Claim All" button. No more inventory spam
• Game now pauses when the Quest screen is open in single-player so new players have time to read and learn the mod pack
• Night brightness increased: Dark, but no longer a wall of pitch-black-ness to the point some play-testers thought it was a glitch
• Atlas minimap replaced with Xaero's Minimap (no more carrying an atlas or feeding it paper; less friction)
• Personal settings/options should now persist between updates

Quests & Progression

• New Minecolonies and Getting Soldiers quest chapters added
• New (mandatory) tutorial quest added for navigating quest chapters
• More quests visible from the start, even if not yet completable
• Final Chapter 1 quest updated to better summarize the game's goals
• Quest added for getting steel via midnight mob drops
• Gutted the "Road to Steel" chapter in favor of letting players discover options naturally

Medical Items

• Medical Kits, Suture Kits, and Clean Rags now ACTUALLY clear infection
• Bandages and Rags applied BEFORE infection now prevent it
• Splints added to medical drop box pool

Economy & Drops

• Coin stack size increased to 999. Big munny
• Exchange rate finalized (for now, lol): 1 Coin = 20 XP
  • Coins can now be exchanged for XP
• Most vanilla ores removed from the currency exchange to prevent economy exploits
• Corpse Maggots, Corpse Flies, and some other smaller, insignificant mobs no longer drop coins
• Pillagers, humanoid soldiers, and "infected" Spore mobs now drop coins
• Freebie coins increased from 10 to 30
• Several market prices adjusted; some early unlocks reduced in cost
• Freebie Military Market items added to introduce new players to the POWER of the MARKET

Combat & Balance

• TacZ gun damage to players reduced to 70% (down from 80%)
• Vertical recoil on TacZ guns reduced from 2.0x to 1.5x
• Caustic Missile gas spread reduced by 10 blocks total (unless I messed it up)
• Precision Medicine no longer restores hunger/thirst. Bye-bye, "everything Tactic."
  • Now it just heals, gives some night vision, and does some dmg to undead mobs
• Mobility Boost cost reduced to 18 XP
• Silverfish, Maggots, and Flies can no longer equip weapons or armor
• Mob damage multiplier has been removed
• Mobs can now steal from chests players have opened! Protect your stuff!
• Emeralds moved from "Legendary" to "Epic" tier in the market
• Hordes moved to dawn (5:30am) instead of night; can still be skipped by sleeping

Spawning & Phases

• No hostile mobs spawn before Day 1 anymore (except from spawners/structures; Sculkhorde and Warium mobs exempt)
• All hostile mobs suppressed at night in favor of Horrors (~6pm–5am)
• Villagers no longer spawn in vanilla villages after Day 15
• Mob spawn variety increased (may regret this later)

Spore System

• Spore Inhibitor reworked: Now suppresses spawns in a 100-block radius around the activating player for 1 in-game day—rather than globally for 5 days
• New "critical mass" system: If players die 3+ times in 3 minutes while 400+ Spore exist, all Spore are wiped as an emergency reset
  • Emergency resets apply temporary XP loss, debuffs, and disable Tactics briefly as a penalty (will need testing and tweaking, I'm sure)
  • "Days-survived-without-an-emergency-reset" counter has been added, as well as the number of resets you've undergone.

Rescue Events

• Random rescue events now trigger every ~2–3 hours (I hope, lol; haven't noticed them since I stopped debugging it)
  • Timing will VERY LIKELY have to be adjusted
  • A soldier NPC spawns underground within 300 blocks of a player
    • Is highlighted once within ~40 blocks
  • Players must locate and escort the NPC to a surface extraction point for a reward

Structures & Items

• Structure-spawning items now disappear from inventory after use (no more borderline creative mode)
• Emergency Escape Hatch Tactic added: Drops a rope and clears a vertical shaft
• Android Squad added to the market
• New Farm pop-up structure added
• Field Fortification Kit updated and the bunker inside renamed
• Starting chest updated with more useful early-game materials (insulation stuff)
• Players now spawn with leather leggings and boots to help with temps early-game

Bug Fixes

• Fixed spawn damage bug on first Overworld join
  • Fixed teleport bug sending players to old bunker coordinates
• Fixed cage items triggering Captures on multiple mobs simultaneously
• Fixed Spore progress bar failing to initialize upon first entry into Overworld
• Fixed broken ramen and other recipes (rip yummy-ness)
• Fixed pop-up structures vanishing when interacting with blocks nearby
• Fixed Tactic supply drops breaking on snow and other soft blocks (cannot believe this was a thing for as long as it was)
• Fixed Mobility Boost costing 120 XP instead of the intended amount
• Fixed Goat Man contextual tip not triggering on first encounter
• Fixed invisible "Simple Pop-up Bases" quest
• Reverted Hardcore Torches recipes following mod removal
• Re-enabled Hordes (had been disabled for an unimplemented idea; in fact, you can still see the unfinished remnants of the idea via the "Hordes" chapter, lol; will fix/remove later)