Every gun sees the whole sky

Weapons

• The whole sky from the start. Every weapon covers everything above the horizon, so enemies low on the flanks are always in reach. This used to take three ranks of Traverse Gears.
• Every shot leads its target. Bolts, blaster volleys, flak shells, rockets and darts fire at where a moving enemy will be, not where it is. The 40mm and the Blaster land far more of their shots on a new save.
• Every hit can crit. Weapons start with a 5% critical strike chance. Weak Point Analysis adds to it, so Critical Payloads is worth buying from the start.
• Turrets stay on what they shot. After firing, a turret keeps pointing at its target, following it while it lives and holding where it fell, and only swings to the next target when its next round is ready. The Railgun holds the line it just fired. Before, heads snapped to the nearest enemy right after every shot, which made the Railgun look like it was firing somewhere other than where it pointed.
• No more shots from the wrong side. A turret firing at an enemy low on its left no longer swings its barrel to the right to do it.

Specializations

• Specialize before level 6. With Overcharge, a weapon at level 5 no longer offers its level 6 card until you have picked its specialization, so its Specialize card no longer competes with its own level-ups. Banish the Specialize card to skip it and keep leveling.
• Frag Balloons no longer needs the Flak Battery. The Balloon Mines specialization always offers all three choices. Frag Balloons pops into fragments at the balloons' own level, whatever else you have placed.

Enemies

• Alien craft bank into their turns. Instead of rocking side to side on a steady beat, a craft rolls hard into each turn and levels out when it flies straight. A drone on a curving approach leans well into it, and a jinking Gnat swings from side to side.

Perks

• Traverse Gears and the Targeting Computer are retired. What they bought is now standard. Flux spent on them is not refunded.
• Weak Point Analysis starts at 5%. It reads the new 5% base at rank 0 and adds 3% a rank.
• Payload Chemistry also lengthens Ember Pulse's burn. Its description now lists everything it extends: freezes, stuns, slows, burns, infections, brittleness and supply buffs.
• Veterancy says what it does. Its description now reads as weapon damage for every level the run gains, stacking for the rest of the run.

Sites

• Svalbard Station, rebuilt. The research station stands on a hill behind the solar farm, looking down over the panels: a three-storey living block on stilts, a lab with observatory domes, radomes, a big dish, a banded radio mast with red beacons, fuel tanks and a Quonset hut, lit windows and floodlights, and steam drifting off the plant.
• A temple in Antigua's jungle. Far off to the left of the volcano, a stepped Mayan pyramid rises out of dense jungle, a fire in its shrine and torches up its stair, with a smaller temple behind it.
• Neo-Osaka's solar farm is back. The roof ended too close behind the guns for the farm's back rows, so a line of five or more weapons stood on bare concrete. The roof now runs deeper, and the panels fill in behind the guns and along the line like on every other site.
• No more map edges in the opening shot. On wide desktop screens, the high fly-in at the start of a run showed past the sides of the land in the lower corners on every site but Atacama. It now frames a little tighter and stays inside the land. Phones are unchanged.

Interface

• x1 is the old x2. Runs start at twice the old pace, and the speed control steps x1, x2, x3 and x4 from there (the old x2, x4, x6 and x8). If you had x2 saved as your default, it is your new x1.

Sound

• Every weapon sounds like itself. The 40mm fires real gunshots, the Flak Battery booms like artillery, the RPG Launcher fires with a whoosh, the Railgun cracks, the Tesla Coil crackles, and the Flamethrower roars. Every support weapon also makes a sound when it launches, from the mine balloons popping loose to the supply wing flying over. Before, most weapons shared one laser sound, and some were silent.
• Real explosions. The crunchy, static-filled explosions are gone. Hits spark off hulls, small kills pop, heavy kills and area blasts thump, and a boss hull or the base going up lands as a deep, rolling blast. The boss hull's death beats and the base's last stand are now heard as well as seen.
• You hear the array take a hit. A leak landing on the panels cracks glass and metal, so damage registers even when your eyes are on the sky.
• Enemy attacks give warning again. The Javelin's charge and dive, the Tumbler's retro rockets and beam, the Battering Ram's lunge, the Gunship's dive, and the boss guns' slugs, rockets, bomb volleys, bay doors and lance charge all make sound again.
• Moments to act on. A chime when a draft is dealt, a sound for each wreck you catch (flux and scrap sound different), a deep rumble when a boss arrives, and a buzzer for the line breach.
• Sounds come from where they happen. A shot or blast on the left of the field plays on the left, which helps most with headphones.
• Every site has its own soundtrack. A run plays two battle tracks written for its site in place of the shared battle music, from Mojave Mesa to the Neo-Osaka rooftops. Boss waves still switch to the boss tracks, and a replay plays the music of the site it was fought on.
• The menus' clicks are real samples too. Hovering and pressing a control play short recorded interface sounds instead of synthesized beeps.

Fixes

• The Balloon Mines shed only launches when it has room. With the minefield full, it no longer plays its launch sound and flash every few seconds without releasing a balloon.