Rockets and Missiles will no longer have shields if they are used in a player's MES config.

⚔🔝 - Mechanism to Activate Boss Mode

Now when the player is in a hot war with Fire Clan (no pun intended), points will be accumulated towards enabling the boss aircraft carrier spawn. 100 points are needed to allow for a boss encounter. When this is achieved, within 3-4 minutes, a message will appear on screen where Fire Clan challenges the player to a bigger fight.

Compromising remote controls on some grids will accumulate boss points.

* Basic patrols and bombers - 1 point

* Passive stations - 5 points

* Fighter stations - 10 points

* Cargo Ships - 10 points

* Battleships - 10 points

* Aircraft Carriers (i.e., Swarmers) - 25 points

With this update, compromising the boss carrier grid's remo control will broadcast a message declaring the player the victor, and reset the Fire Clan state to the original cold war.

🔝⚔ Final Boss Encounter

The final boss will involve a large aircraft carrier, squads of air defense fighters, waves of ground strike fighters, waves of heavy bombers, and a couple of battle cruisers.

Different targeting profiles are used throughout the types of spawns, which can result in a huge battlefield affecting many player and NPC targets at once.

The aim is to strike a balance between sim speed and difficulty due to number of simultaneous attackers. Currently, sim speeds can be negatively impacted at peak moments in battle. I aim to refine this over time, but for now, prepare for a challenge in tactics as a well as a challenge to the CPU.

Combat phase is required, and a player must be within 3km of a very strong grid or group of strong grids.

The typical boss GPS will spawn, and when approached, will spawn the carrier anywhere from ~3 to ~7km away.

Note at this time the mechanism to play through the hot war and activate boss mode has not yet been implemented (see Metal Clan patch notes for reference). To manually allow for the boss spawn, enable the following sandbox booleans via MES admin commands:

FireClanWar (true)

FireClanBoss (true)

The mechanism to score boss points and enable the boss encounter will be released soon. This will move Fire Clan from alpha development to beta development.

Updated mod thumbnail image, linked lore-guide to workshop description, boss encounter in testing phase and soon to be released!

⚔ Mechanism for War Mode

When players are in cold war with Fire Clan (the default state at start), destroying some of their cargo ships, carriers, and stations will provoke Fire Clan into war.

In war mode, more difficult encounters will spawn which have better loot.

Cargo Ships and Fuel Outposts will add significant points to the war status. The Fire Lift will add a low number of points. After destroying two carriers, the player can expect a message within 3 minutes that Fire Clan is ready for war.


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TBD are boss points when in war mode, which will allow boss spawns. Defeating a boss will reset to cold war state. Once a boss encounter is released, Fire Clan will move from alpha to beta testing phase.

🛳 New Cargo Ship Prefabs for Cold War and Passive Phase

-> Carbonized Biomass Transport
-> Biofuel Transport
+ aggressive range significantly reduced

➡ New Hot War and Passive Phase Cargo Ship Behavior

The previous prefabs for cargo ships, the Blowtorch and Flamethrower, are now available once player is at war with Fire Clan. They spawn during passive phase and fly to despawn cords like normal cargo ships. They can potentially have more escorts than in cold war mode, use more drones when attacked, and become aggressive at a more distant range than with cold war cargo ship spawns.

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The loot from cargo ships is typically better than from other grids. In cold war mode, these encounters will provide a greater chance of going to war with Fire Clan than other encounters. In hot war mode, they will provide a greater chance of spawning a TBD boss encounter.

💰⬇ Loot for Cold War spawns has been reduced; basic ores and components instead of advanced.

(copied and reformatted from Metal Clan patch notes...)

==== Phase-In of New Advancement Mechanics

Today's release is the start of developing the advancement from Cold War -> Hot War -> Boss Spawns for Fire Clan.

The Triggers for automatically advancing are not yet developed, as they will leverage a brand new MES feature known as "Events," which was just released this week.

Additionally, spawns have been separated into Combat and Passive phase spawns. Generally speaking, grids that will directly attack a player will be Combat phase, and Grids that require the player attack them are Passive phase.

Currently, the "FireClanWar:false" Sandbox Variable will be assumed at start, and will allow only "Cold War" spawns such as non aggressive bases when Passive. Combat phase brings fighter patrols, small carriers, light bombers, and less-than-aggressive battleships. These can mostly be ignored unless they are directly confronted, or they only spawn when threat score is so high that they arent a threat.

When "FireClanWar:true", the advanced, or Hot War spawns are eligible. This includes tougher patrols, carriers and bases that spawn squads of fighters, tactical strike squads, heavy bombers, battleships, and air-to-air ordinance.

Eventually, destroying critical grids, such as the fuel bases or cargo ships, will have a large % to enable Hot War. Other grids will only have a small % chance to start war with Fire Clan. Destroying specific numbers of Hot War structures and ships are the planned mechanism for enabling bosses, and destroying a TBD boss will reset the mod to Cold War.

Testers can use the following MES commands to enable/disable Hot War or Cold War:

/MES.Debug.ChangeBool.FireClanWar.true
/MES.Debug.ChangeBool.FireClanWar.false

===== Two New Encounters

----- Napalm Lift

Advanced version of the Fire Lift, the Napalm Lift functions similar to a Carrier/"Swarmer", except it is a planetary installation. It launches squads of challenging fighters at enemies up in the air, releases drones when attacked, and launches a tactical strike squad every 10-15 minutes. The tactical strike squad consists of a random assortment of fighters or horsefly grids that target the weakest ground grids they can find.

----- Battle Torch

Advanced battleship large grid. It simply patrols and goes horsefly when a target is close. It spawns with 5 escort fighters, and can launch Firebolts at nearby targets. It flies high and mostly attacks things in the air and ignores things on the ground.

Minor fixes to Swarmer encounter