Greetings, NIMRODS!
We've got an exciting update for you today.
Economy Balance
We've made substantial changes to the economy. In short, nearly all costs have been reduced. Players will now be able to unlock almost everything in the game much earlier. There are still some high-cost targets in more optional systems, such as high-level genes and airdrops, as we still want to reward players with many hours invested. In particular, we wanted players to be able to play with all the new gun chassis much easier, so out of everything that had its price cut, the guns got cut the most. RYS Plasma Spirallers stans rejoice! Also! Players will earn a refund on the difference between the cost of anything purchased before this update to now.
Drone Power
We have observed quite a bit of confusion from newer players referencing the lack of a "metagame" or "meta progression". This seemed very strange to us at first given all of the different unlockables, genes, guns, airdrops, etc, available in NIMRODS. But then we realized that a lot of that stuff is not as accessible until the mid-game. In the early-game, our metagame is something far more organic: Your drone! Your drone's gun "caps out" at the point where you died in the run you crafted the gun, but until it reaches that cap, it typically keeps pace with you, essentially doubling your damage. So let's say a player has a level 10 gun in their drone and goes on a deployment where they reach level 20. Now they have a level 20 gun for their drone and on the next run maybe they can reach level 30! This is a very natural meta progression built by the mechanics of the game in contrast to other metagame systems, like the Genetics system in NIMRODS, which centered around increasing your stats directly.
In fact, we suspect that this metagame is so natural that people aren't realizing it's meta progression at all! Some players associate a "metagame" with a set of numbers that gets higher every run. If they don't see their number getting higher, they're not sure they're making progress.
So what do we do? Simple. We give those players a number that goes up! The drone pedestal is now equipped with an analyzer and has a digit display under it. This will analyze any gun you give your drone and compute a "Drone Power". This is a number that represents a generalized sense of how good a gun is for your drone. The biggest contributing factor to your drone power is the drone's max level, but in addition to that, it also takes into account how quickly you get there. If two guns both get to level 60, but one gun had an early power spike and stays several levels ahead of the other gun until right near the end, it will have a higher drone power than the other gun. Drone power doesn't take into account things like your gun's DPS as it's very situationally dependent, so drone power won't tell you the whole story regarding which gun is better, but it will provide a new unique heuristic to consider!
Tech Stacks Diminishing Returns
We were impressed to see some big-brained plays that got Resource Drop Rate boosted to nearly 50,000%! While we love rewarding game knowledge and the fruits of intense theorycrafting, this was too much even for us. We're buffing Tech Module's Resource Drop Rates on low-performing builds (under 4800 stacks) and toning it down on high performing builds (over 4800 stacks). The drop rate on Tech Module still stacks to infinity, but it'll take a lot more work to get there.
Changelog
Added
- The Gun Augment Tree in the Gun Upgrade screen has been overhauled
- The Drone station is now equipped with an advanced power analyzer that will compute & display power based on how many upgrades a gun has and how soon it obtained them
- A "Disable Miniboss Intro" option has been added to the Gameplay settings tab
- When Auto-Aim and Auto-Fire is enabled, you can now hold left-click to overwrite Auto-Aim
- Pressing "Y" will now enable Auto-Aim
- Pressing "U" will now enable Auto-Fire
- The keybind is now displayed in the description of the corresponding setting in the settings menu
Balance
- Crit Bonus for Umbral Reaper Sight has been changed from 3.3% -> 13.5%
- Damage Bonus for Deadly Sight has been changed from 17% -> 7.5%
Tech Stacks
- Resource Drop Rate from Tech Stacks: 0.1%/stack → 0.15%/stack Diminishing returns now kick in after 2000 tech stacks:
- The next 2000 Tech Stacks only count half as much
- The next 4000 Tech Stacks only count a quarter as much
- The next 8000 Tech Stacks only count an eighth as much (and so on...)
Changed
- Round time limit has been increased from 1659 to 1680
- Airdrop Bay is now unlocked by defeating Malphor and Drone Bay is now unlocked by defeating Titannus
- Gambler Pod is now unlocked by default instead of Smasher Pod when the Airdrop Bay is purchased
- Some units no longer take damage until they appear on screen first
- Improvements to the Save System for Cloud saving flows
- Emerald Bauble renamed to Amethyst Bauble
- Localization improvements made to all languages
- Chinese (Simplified) localization improvements
Fixed
- Fixed an issue where Charrrger fire puddles could instantly kill the player
- Fixed an issue with the sequence of the final boss's enrage cycle
- Fixed an issue where the "Incoming!" Quest and Achievement had the incorrect target goal. It now requires 100 kills in a single run instead of 1500
- Fixed an issue where the Skullspike Grip augment provided more Move Speed than intended
- Fixed an issue with the "Headbanger" quest not tracking hard versions of Chargers correctly
- Fixed an issue with the "Little Friend" quest not tracking kills from some underbarrels
- Fixed an issue where certain quest icons were using the incorrect icon
- Fixed an issue where certain glyphs would not appear when using a Switch Pro controller
- Fixed an issue with the Adamantite Ore collider
- Fixed an issue that could occur when using a Optical Carbine with a Magazine Size of 1
- Fixed an issue where the Medic Pod's healing pulse would not properly clear after being picked up
- Fixed an issue where Airdrops would sometimes appear invisible
- Fixed an issue where Airdrop timeline could skip unslotted airdrops
- Fixed an issue where enemy waves would sometimes trigger incorrectly
- Fixed an issue with Bombardier Bee's impact radius
- Fixed issue where Malphor's thorns could spawn far in front of him while he is enraged
- Fixed an issue with the camera on the Home Ship when using wide aspect ratios
Thank you all so much for the overwhelming support. We're dedicated to make this game together with those joining us on this journey!
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