This is the first of two updates based purely on feedback I have received during Next Fest. If you've made any suggestions, you'll hopefully see them addressed here.
Item / Hull / Shield Scaling
Despite our recent balance changes, some feedback indicated that enemies were still too tough. What was actually happening was that weapons were becoming ineffective far too quickly due to the +10% hull / shield per level enemies received.
As such, we've reduced this to +2% hull / shield for the player and enemies. This also applies to weapon damage which used to be +10% and is now also +2%. This is a huge change but it should result in weapons being useful five times longer than they used to be as you level up. In order to allow for easier testing, this change HAS been applied retroactively, so all your old weapons and ships should be updated.
Damage Scaling
As a side effect of this change, you could now fight much higher-level enemies. To counter this a little, I've re-added in the damage, debuff, and experience scaling from the level difference detailed below.
Grey Enemies (5 or more below)
20% damage, 0% chance to debuff, and 0% experience.
Green Enemies (3 to 4 below)
50% damage, 50% less chance to debuff, and 50% experience.
Yellow Enemies (2 below to 2 higher)
Normal values for everything.
Orange (3 to 4 higher)
150% damage, normal chance to debuff, and 150% experience.
Red (5 or more higher)
200% damage, double chance to debuff, and 200% experience.
Experience Gain
As the above changes will impact the enemies you can fight and come with some bonuses to experience for fighting higher-level enemies, I'm reluctant to touch the experience equation just yet. I'll review the curve of experience required in a future update once this one has had time to be tested.
Ship Part Limits
Five parts were kind of rubbish for the Frigate design, so you now get 10. And additional parts for bigger ships.
Hitboxes
All smaller enemy ships use a circle as their hitbox; the size of this circle has been doubled. This should make small enemies easier to hit.
AI Changes
I recently removed all friendly fire as it didn't make much sense to keep as a mechanic; all it did was result in enemies accidentally killing each other. However, a side effect of this was that enemies would now all shoot you at once, as they could shoot through their friends without conciquince.
This vastly increased damage received when a large group of enemies attack you at once. As such, I've now changed the AI so they try to avoid shooting through friendly targets. This should limit the overwhelming damage when attacked by large groups.
Oh yeah, Trainwiz over on Underspace always includes a cat photo so here is Katness my grumpy cat that isn't very happy about being woken up to take a photo!
Thanks for all the feedback, full patch notes are below, including lots of bug fixes!
Patch Notes
New Features / Content
- Frigates can now have up to 10 parts instead of 5.
- Destroyers can now have 20 parts instead of 10.
- Cruisers can now have 30 parts instead of 20.
- Battleships can now have 40 parts instead of 30.
Balance Changes
- [Retroactive] Weapons damage, ship hull and shields now scale by 2% per level instead of 10%.
- Re-added damage / debuff chance scaling based on level difference between ships.
- Enemy AI will now try to avoid shooting through friendly targets.
- Increased damage of short and long range PDLs by 100%.
- Increased range of Auto Tesla Coil by 25%.
- Increased health of friendly Arrow ships in Rescue stars by 50%.
- Increasing enemy damage in difficulty now also increases friendly ships hull / shield.
- Reduced speed to Beetle enemies slightly.
- Increased speed of Firefly enemies slightly.
- Reduced speed of Specter enemies slightly.
- Increased speed of Wraith enemies slightly.
Quality of Life / Accessibility
- Doubled the hit box size of all smaller enemy ships.
- Added slight delay to death canvas buttons to stop them being accidentally clicked.
- Reduced volume of beam weapon hits by 60%.
- Reduced brightness of Long Ranged PDL slightly.
- Equipment of the same type in cargo will now sort by required level.
- Projectiles now display if they receive damage and if so how much hull they have.
Performance
- Improved the performance of some HUD elements that had heavy garbage collection cycles.
- Optimised component lookups when damage is applied to ships.
Bug Fixes
- Seeking projectiles now get the same aim assist as non-seeking projectiles.
- Fleet in Sector 2 is now attacked by Phantom ships instead of Skeran.
- Level up banner now correctly says you unlocked new slots at 5, 15, 25, etc.
- Hot key for mirroring parts in ship design no longer works when mirror is disabled.
- Vipers no longer split up when hyperdrive jumping into encounters.
- Local Cold no longer displays as Local Heat in navigation panel.
- Mine projectiles now correctly receive damage from weapons.
- Point defense lasers will no longer target friendly projectiles.
- Fixed incorrect navigation in settings tabs when using a controller.
- Fixed position of target ship name so it doesn't overlap status effects.
- Fixed display issues in Mothership panel on Steam deck's UI scale of 120%.
- Fixed issue with controller navigation when loading a long list of players.
- Fixed end of laser weapons being a different colour to their body.
- Fixed issue where hyperdrive jump countdown wouldn't start.
- Added some null pointer checks when cloning Orchids.
- Notices about pushing buttons to dock / jump no longer display while jumping.