Changelog

Version: 1.2.0
Date: 2026-07-09
  Features:
    - Companions can now be equipped with four tiers of gear (MK1-MK4) for
      their roboport, shield, laser, and reactor. MK1 is cheap and
      craftable right away with no research needed; MK2 is the loadout
      your first companion starts with for free, but crafting more of it
      requires research; MK3 and MK4 are further research-gated upgrades.
      Crafting costs use materials that fit each tier's tech level (basic
      components early on, more advanced ones at higher tiers) - MK3 and
      MK4 are the same story - research & craft.
    - Laser damage and range now scale meaningfully with tier: a MK4 laser
      is a genuinely stronger fighter than a MK1 one, not just a faster
      shooter, and each tier's range is tuned to match the enemy it's
      meant to fight. Companion lasers also no longer keep firing a full
      volley at enemies that are already almost dead - they intelligently
      fire only what is needed to kill the enemy - then retarget.
    - The maximum number of companions you can own now increases as you
      research the "Follower robot count" technology (which now also
      shows an icon confirming this), instead of being stuck at a flat 3
      forever.
  Changes:
    - Removed old leftover equipment tiers that were never actually used.
    - The "can't support another companion" message now correctly points
      you toward the Follower robot count research instead of being vague.
  Balancing:
    - Roboport range and shield capacity/recharge per tier are tuned with
      equipping multiple copies of the same item in mind, so stacking
      several roboports or shields onto one companion can't turn it into
      something absurdly far-reaching or nearly unkillable.
  Bugfixes:
    - Fixed companions hovering near a job without ever actually starting
      to work on it, because the distance they considered "close enough"
      didn't match how close their equipped roboport actually needed to
      be.

Version: 1.1.0
Date: 2026-07-07
  Bugfixes:
    - Fixed the companion abandoning or "forgetting" large player-issued
      tasks (deconstruction orders, blueprints) before finishing them.
    - Explicit tasks are now exempt from the follow-the-player leash and
      from the "must return near the player to be reassigned" requirement,
      so a large task is worked through unattended instead of requiring the
      player to stay nearby the whole time.
    - Large tasks are no longer silently truncated to the area around the
      player's position at the moment the order was given; the whole
      selection is queued, including areas far from the player.
    - Fixed "islands" of untouched entities within an otherwise-worked
      task by re-queuing an area until it is actually empty, instead of
      dropping it after a single pick.
    - Fixed a full cargo hold causing the companion to freeze mid-task; it
      now reliably recalls its robots, returns to the player at full speed,
      unloads, and resumes the same task, using effectively all of its
      storage capacity before doing so.
    - Fixed a resume loop where the companion endlessly circled between
      flying to the player and flying back to an already-finished or
      unreachable job site.
    - Task selection now prefers proximity over arbitrary order, to reduce
      the companion "indecisively" hopping between far-apart, unequal parts
      of the same task while closer, unfinished work is available. Not
      fully resolved yet; still being investigated.
  Changes:
    - Removed the challenge/forgiving/combined difficulty system entirely:
      the related startup settings, the alternate recipe-cost tables, the
      crippled starting stats, and the research-triggered stat/equipment
      upgrade tree.
    - The companion now always starts fully equipped and uses a single,
      consistent set of recipes and stats.

Version: 1.0.0
Date: 2026-07-07
  Info:
    - Initial standalone fork of Companion Drones 2.0, based on the
      mjlfix 3.1.2 build.