Hey everyone,
The Commander Update is now live on the main branch!
This is our biggest update this year, and I'd like to thank everyone that helped test it on the Pre-deploy and experimental branches, reported bugs, and helped us polish it for today.
Please note that this update includes a run reset.
The changes to equipment, cards, and run data mean old saves aren't compatible. Any run in progress will need to restart.
As promised in the preview, this post has the full details. It's a long one, so settle in, or skim the headers for what you care about. Let's get into it.
Controller Support
The big one, the most requested feature since our Early Access launch. You can now play the whole game with a controller.
To be honest, we're not big controller players ourselves (although Breachway does feel surprisingly good with a controller), so while the full game is playable, the experience might not be quite there yet. Treat this as the first iteration, and let us know what feels awkward. Controller UX improvements and polish be happening over multiple patches ahead, as we slowly work our way to being Steam deck verified.
Combat Value Previews
The game now shows you exactly what will change: Hull, Shield Points, equipment durability and resources when you drag a card out of your hand, before playing it.
No more mental math on whether that attack finishes the equipment off, or whether that shield card keeps you alive through the incoming volley.
This feature touches nearly every card in the game, so there will still be edge cases where it displays the wrong values. If you spot one, please report it, these are quick fixes on our end once we know about them.
Pulse Laser and Light Laser Redesign
The precision laser family gets its redesign pass, following the same approach as Shields and Flak before it: trimmed libraries, clearer identities, and every card earning its slot. Both families can now also have their cards upgraded individually, joining Resource Bays, Shields, Flak, Railguns, and Beam Lasers.
This pass introduces two new mechanics:
- Marked: some cards Mark an enemy equipment when they deal Hull damage. Marked equipment takes 2 bonus damage from all precision attacks for the rest of the turn.
- Card selection: you can now choose a card from the draw/discard pile instead of getting a random one. Try it on Repeater+, which lets you pick which Laser card to pull back from your cooldown pile.
These mechanics will be used more extensively in the future, these two new interactions open up a lot of interesting options for us to explore.
Pulse Laser
The starter weapon, rebuilt around a clear identity: attack sequencing. Nearly every card either sets up your next attack or pays off the ones you already played this turn. Perfect for new players getting into the game, with some simple and satisfying combos.
Mk.I cards:
- Quick Pulse: 2O 1E, CD 3 - Deal 5 Precision damage.
- Snap Fire: 2O 1E, CD 4 - Deal 4 Precision damage. Reduce the cooldown of a random Laser Attack in your cooldown pile by 2.
- Tracer: 2O 2M, CD 6 - Deal 4 Precision damage. Your next Attack deals +2 Precision damage.
- Test Fire: 2O 2M, CD 5 - Deal 4 Precision damage. This turn, the next Attack from this equipment costs 2 less Ordnance.
- Heavy Pulse: 3O 1E, CD 7 - Deal 6 Precision damage. If you already played a Laser Attack this turn, deal +3 damage.
- Paired Pulse (Uncommon): 3O 2E, CD 6 - Deal 3 Precision damage twice.
- Blinding Pulse (Uncommon): 2O 2E, CD 6 - Deal 4 Precision damage. On Hull damage: apply 1 Blind.
- Primed Pulse (Rare): 2O 1E, CD 6 - Deal 4 Precision damage, +1 for each Laser Attack played this turn.
Mk.II cards:
- Quick Pulse+: 2O 1E, CD 3 - Deal 6 Precision damage.
- Snap Fire+: 2O 1E, CD 4 - Deal 4 Precision damage. Reduce the cooldowns of 2 random Laser Attacks in your cooldown pile by 2.
- Tracer+: 2O 2M, CD 6 - Deal 4 Precision damage. Your next Attack deals +4 Precision damage.
- Test Fire+: 2O 2M, CD 5 - Deal 4 Precision damage. This turn, the next Attack costs 4 less Ordnance.
- Heavy Pulse+: 4O 1E, CD 6 - Deal 8 Precision damage. If you already played a Laser Attack this turn, deal +4 damage.
- Paired Pulse+ (Uncommon): 3O 2E, CD 6 - Deal 4 Precision damage twice.
- Blinding Pulse+ (Uncommon): 2O 2E, CD 5 - Deal 6 Precision damage. On Hull damage: apply 1 Blind.
- Primed Pulse+ (Rare): 3O 1E, CD 6 - Deal 4 Precision damage, +2 for each Laser Attack played this turn.
Light Laser
The Light Laser has a new role: it's now the roster's dedicated support weapon. Its attacks are deliberately small, with the value being in the riders: cooldown reduction, cost discounts, card retrieval, Marking, and generating Blinks (a cheap token attack that feeds every Laser Attack trigger in the family). Not the best damage output on its own, but great as a support weapon.
Mk.I cards:
- Blink (token): 1O - Deal 2 Precision damage. Deplete.
- Accelerator Burst: 2O 1E, CD 4 - Deal 3 Precision damage, +2 if you have 4 or more Laser Attacks in your draw pile.
- Echo Burst: 2O 1E, CD 5 - Deal 4 Precision damage. Add 1 Blink to your draw pile. Returns to your draw pile on play.
- Swift Charge: 3M, CD 6 - Add 3 Blink cards to your draw pile. If the enemy is Blind, this card is free to play.
- Booster Pulse (Uncommon): 2O 2M, CD 6 - Deal 4 Precision damage. The next 3 Laser cards you play cost 1 less and have their cooldown reduced by 1.
- Catalyst Pulse (Uncommon): 2O 3E, CD 6 - Deal 5 Precision damage. Laser cards played this turn deal +1 damage.
- Auto-Fire (Uncommon): 2O 2M, CD 6 - Deal 3 Precision damage. Your next 3 Attacks played this turn each draw a random Attack card.
- Marking Shot (Uncommon): 1O 3E, CD 6 - Deal 3 Precision damage. On Hull damage: apply Marked to the targeted equipment.
- Repeater (Rare): 2O 2M, CD 5 - Deal 4 Precision damage. Return a random Laser card from your cooldown pile to your hand.
Mk.II cards:
- Accelerator Burst+: 2O 1E, CD 4 - Deal 4 Precision damage, +1 for every 2 Laser Attacks in your draw pile.
- Echo Burst+: 2O 1E, CD 5 - Deal 4 Precision damage. Add 2 Blinks to your draw pile.
- Swift Charge+: 3M, CD 5 - Add 3 Blink cards to your hand (Blinks that don't fit are added to your draw pile instead). If the enemy is Blind, this card is free to play.
- Booster Pulse+ (Uncommon): 2O 3M, CD 6 - Deal 4 Precision damage. The next 5 Laser cards you play cost 1 less and have their cooldown reduced by 1.
- Catalyst Pulse+ (Uncommon): 2O 2E, CD 4 - Deal 5 Precision damage. Laser cards played this turn deal +1 damage.
- Auto-Fire+ (Uncommon): 2O 2M, CD 6 - Deal 4 Precision damage. Your next 5 Attacks played this turn each draw a random Attack card.
- Marking Shot+ (Uncommon): 1O 3E, CD 4 - Deal 4 Precision damage. On Hull damage: apply Marked to the targeted equipment.
- Repeater+ (Rare): 2O 3M, CD 5 - Deal 4 Precision damage. Pick a Laser card to return from your cooldown pile to your hand.
Equipment Destruction Changes
This is a deceivingly impactful change: destroying an enemy equipment now wipes all the charge pips off the card it was charging.
A well-timed kill cancels the incoming attack entirely, instead of just pausing it. This makes destruction meaningfully different from disabling, and adds a real timing decision to focusing equipment down.
To balance that extra power, enemy equipment durability has gone up by roughly 15-20% (scaled by how long the cooldowns on their cards are). Destruction is now harder to achieve, but hits harder when you get there. And to make up for the extra durability, Area damage to equipment from Flak and Missiles has been increased from 0.5 to 0.7 equipment damage per point of hull damage dealt.
Faster Meta-Progression
Unlock durations have been compressed across the board, you'll unlock new content roughly twice as fast on average. Our median play time sits at 3 hours and 42 minutes, which means most players never saw anything beyond the initial weapons and the Marauder, a small slice of what the game has to offer.
Two additions on top of that:
- New perk: Reinforced Hull: start your run with +10 max Hull. It unlocks after losing 2 runs, and it's meant to do exactly what it sounds like: give newer players a bit more room to find their footing.
- Random ship selection: once you've unlocked the Avalanche, a new random ship button appears on the ship selection screen. Feeling indecisive, or want to force yourself out of your comfort pick? Let good old RNG decide.
With the addition of the Reinforced Hull perk, all ships have had their starting hull value set to 50, as all ships can now add that perk to gain 10 max hull, like the Marauder and Firebrand had. Expect starting hull and hardpoints to be more varied for the different ships in the future.
Tutorial Improvements
We've shortened the tutorial's intro sequence so you get to the actual fighting sooner, and rewrote the tutorial text throughout to be clearer about what the game is actually asking you to do. The updated text has also been retranslated across all supported languages.
We also fixed a long-standing gap: several tutorial panels outside the prologue were only ever shown to players who had completed the tutorial. If you skipped it, you never saw them. Those panels now appear for anyone who hasn't seen them before, whenever the relevant screen first comes up.
We still have some of the smaller items planned for the Commander update that did not make it in time, such as the in-game patch notes, and color-blind friendly colors, which we will add in the coming weeks. Additionally, we'll keep polishing the controller UX based on your feedback, we'll do some fine-tuning on equipment durability around the new destruction rules, and we'll continue the weekly balance patch series once the update stabilizes.
Going forward
We've got a lot of new and exciting things coming in the Tactician Update that will add more tactical choices to the game. Look out for more details on that in a coming Steam dev post early next month.
So far we've focused on tying up loos ends and adding missing functionality like proper analytics and now controller support. From the Tactician update onwards however, we'll finally be focusing primarily on brand new content!
As always, your Steam reviews, bug reports, and feedback on Discord are what point us in the right direction.
If you try the new lasers, we'd love to hear how they feel in practice, and we're especially looking forward to any feedback from controller players, especially on the Steam deck.
Thanks for taking the time to read this monster of a post, and for your continued support. o7
Edit: I forgot to mention that we will be on vacation next week, so there won't be a regular weekly update, but that will resume the week after that.
The Breachway Team