Greetings Pips,
Today we're releasing our second balance patch to follow up the last content patch. This patch will attempt to address the following issues from internal testing and community feedback.
- The airstrike mechanic at the end of each round introduces some undesired problems in the game loop, mainly that it works against the tug of war nature of the game's premise by constraining the player within a time limit.
- Vehicles can be a 'instant win button' for the game which does not create depth, choice or challenge in some circumstances.
- Using War Bucks at the Arms Dealer takes away from your ability to purchase upgrades.
To combat these problems we've introduced some new mechanics which we believe will solve a lot of these issues.
The first is relegating the end-round timed Airstrikes to only specific missions and replacing it with a cycle mechanic where the difficulty bar loops back around. Upon looping, the enemy will scale up in strength and launch successively more powerful units with each additional cycle. This makes missions into an endless loop where one side must eventually overrun the other. This fits much more in line with the tug of war nature of the game while still maintaining clear boundaries to the player.
Next, we've added a local supply cap on some units so that you can only spawn a specific amount of units at a time, making vehicles and powerful infantry scale better. We've adjusted some of these unit's rank upgrades to play into this new system.
Finally, we've introduced a new currency to purchase units from the Arms Dealer: Combat Coupons. These coupons will disconnect your upgrades from your unit purchases so that one does not stifle the other. You can still trade War Bucks for Coupons if you wish, but it is not necessary. This should make the Arms Dealer much more useful.
These and many more changes found in this patch should move the game into a much more balanced and enjoyable space. Complete changelog below:
CONTROLS
- If the game detects a gamepad it will ask once if the user would like to use it and remember the preference.
- Added a control in the options menu to enable/disable gamepad controls.
BALANCE
- New Concept: Operation cycles. Removed the concept of bombs/airstrike killing the player's command center at the end of each operation. Instead, after the spawn wave bar gets to the end it will now repeat from the start but activate a buff on the enemy, making them much stronger. The buff and enemy spawn intensity will increase with each passing cycle until the player overwhelms the enemy or the enemy overwhelms the player.
- High Reward operations will still be book ended by an airstrike, keeping them as timed missions.
- New concept: Local supply. Units that use local supply can only deploy up to a maximum number of that unit at a time.
- Added unit difficulty scaling at Major and General difficulty levels
- Added mystery rewards to many territories
- Added currency: Arms Dealer Coupons. Units can now be purchased from the arms dealer using a separate currency
- Upgrade Arms Dealer Slot 3 price increased from 20 to 30
- Upgrade Arms Dealer Slot 4 price increased from 25 to 40
- Upgrade Water Cooled Turrets price increased from 10 to 20
- Upgrade Extended Salvo price increased from 15 to 20
- Rocket: Rocket will lead its target when fired, increasing its accuracy
- Super Rocket: Super Rocket will lead its target when fired, increasing its accuracy
- Super Rocket: Reduced base charges count from 4 to 3
- M7 Battle Tank: Uses local supply. Can only spawn 1 at a time
- M7 Battle Tank: Machine gun and smoke moved to rank 1
- M7 Battle Tank: Rank 2 now increases spawn cap to 2 tanks at a time
- Heavy Gunner: Uses local supply. Can spawn up to 4 at a time
- Tactician: Uses local supply. Can spawn up to 3 at a time
- Sniper: Uses local supply. Can spawn up to 3 at a time
- Sniper: Increased damage from 15 to 40
- LRV: Uses local supply. Can only spawn 1 at a time
- LRV: Rank 2 replaced with inceased spawn cap to 2 LRVs at a time
- Puma: Uses local supply. Can only spawn 1 at a time
- Puma: Rank 1 replaced with increases spawn cap to 2 Pumas at a time
- Puma: Rank 2 moved TOW launcher to this rank
- Howitzer: No longer activates during enemy waves but after a short delay at the start of each round
- Howitzer: Shoot frequency decreased from 10 seconds to 20 seconds
- Howitzer: Accuracy decreased from 100% to 50%
- Oil Derrick: HP increased from 100 to 120
- Oil Derrick: Cost decreased from 125 to 120
- Shield Pip: Attack range reduced from 24 to 20 (will push them to the frontline more)
- Shield Pip: Uses local supply. Can spawn up to 3 at a time.
- Shield Pip: Cooldown reduced from 20 seconds to 0 seconds
- TOW Turret: Added target leading
- Puma TOW launcher: Added target leading
- Modular Pieces: Cost reduced from 70 to 50
- Deployment Logistics: Cost reduced from 80 to 60
- Base Defense Turret: Heat on shot increased from 0.5 to 0.9
- Phalanx Turret: Heat on shot increased from 0.2 to 0.3
- Landmines: Cost decreased from 15 to 10
- Landmines: Uses charges; 30 per round
- TOW Turret: Cost decreased from 65 to 60
- Added additional forward turret placements on Fortress map
LANGUAGE
- Terms and localization updated to reflect the changes above
BUGS
- Fixed: Continued bug where snipers would block units should now be fixed
- Fixed: Assault/Defend button sounds play on game end sequence
- Fixed: Enemy color would only cycle to yellow then stop
- Fixed: Dogs sometimes just stood at spawnline and then despawned
- Fixed: Warmules would sometimes get stuck and stop spawning
- Fixed: UAZ would sometimes get stuck and stop spawning
As always, your save games will remain unaffected. However, if you would like to enjoy these new features you will have to start a new campaign.
We hope you like these changes! We appreciate everyone that gave us feedback and helped us to move the game to where it is. We will continue to monitor all feedback.
Commander In Pip Klegran, out!