Mercenary Mode Dev Blog

What is Mercenary Mode?

This is a new game mode that will be part of a free content update coming on Oct 9th. If you enjoyed the core gameplay of Omen, this is more of that, but more focused on back to back procedurally generated missions and unlocking every ship hull.

Omen is on sale for 20% off right now for the Steam Autumn sale and we'll be extending the sale when the Mercenary update arrives.

Take contracts. Get paid. Get out alive.

• Choose one of three contracts from the Missions screen. Each lists its primary resource, the enemy faction and a bonus objective.

• Every contract is a newly generated sector. Gather resources, crack vaults, take on the bonus objective, then reach a jump beacon to extract.

• Destroying enemies and targets earns credits. Spend them in the Market on ship hulls, allied ships and upgrades.

• Credits you earn raise your tier, bringing tougher factions, better blueprints and new bonus objectives.

• If your ship is destroyed, its cargo is lost. You can buy your wreck back from the Market, at a premium.

Bonus objectives Include:

• Faction outposts
• Atomics vaults
• High Value Targets (Mini-Bosses)
• Veil Islands

Mercenary progress is separate from the campaign and will be available from the main menu.

What's New?

After a short break, my main focus has been on this new game mode, but there will also be a handful of performance updates, quality of life improvements, and of course some new ships and weapons to unlock with mercenary mode. I'll have full patch notes when the mode releases but here's an overview of some of the other new things:

Player Ship Hull Rebalancing

Previously there wasn't enough variation between player ship hulls in terms of stats and it was also difficult to understand what those stat differences were. Every ship has been modified in terms of max power, health, acceleration, and max speed. I've also added a new ship hull tooltip that will display all of these stats when mousing over them.

New Ship Hulls

• Loyalist Cruiser: This hull also brings some new cruiser only weapons and abilities. The cruiser's hardpoints can fit any type of cruiser module, so if you want to make a carrier with 4 hangar slots you can do that. The cruiser also has a micro jump drive ability instead of a dodge.
• Chief Hull
• Apostle Hull

Some New Items

• Cruiser Laser Lance
• Cruiser Missile Battery
• Cruiser Scattershot
• Cruiser Hangar
• Cruiser Shield
• Cruiser Automatic Turret
• Experimental and advanced afterburners
• Passive regen armor

New Points of Interest (Merc Mode)

Since you get credits for ship kills in mercenary mode, you'll encounter new garrison POIs so you can get some extra kills from ships. You'll also see credit icons on the maps, these are fuel depots that can be destroyed for a ton of cash.

Attacking a fuel depot for credits with the new playable cruiser hull using 2 hangar bays and a big laser lance.

The mission select screen at Tier 1.

The market screen, also the new ship hull tooltip that gives some more info about the stats of each ship.

Attacking a garrison with the new unlockable horde chieftain ship hull.