Hey everyone.
It's been almost a week since our last official update, but this is a meaty one.
We've broken the changelog into several categories to highlight the changes we added over the last week.
Game Design Updates
On the game design side, we've simplified some of the systems in the game, giving you more freedom in making decisions on how to equip your ship. For example, the crew now directly determines your card slots (number of the crew + 1 base card slot) and whether they operate equipment. Equipment items now always add their cards to your draw pile, whether operated by the crew or not. This allows more leeway in your ship's setup; you can have a fully equipped ship with only a few crew or a fully crewed boat with only a few pieces of equipment.
Additionally, we've implemented a limit to how much fuel you can buy from stores (3 per store currently), which is a better way to add some fuel scarcity without increasing the price. We've also improved the odds of getting subsystems that are actually relevant to your current loadout, enabling more natural power scaling that is less reliant on RNG.
Technical Updates
On the technical side, we've eliminated a handful of nasty bugs that resulted from our combat save system. However, this also required us to disable saving during combat (at least for now) as it created more edge cases than our programmer could handle in a limited amount of time (there are a lot of cool additions we want to work on).
Additionally, we've improved performance in some cases by addressing a memory leak and reducing some texture sizes that had to be written for the ship damage system.
New Features
We've also had some fun and added a ship-renaming option in the hangar as some of our players suggested. It has no effect, but we'll soon have people referring to the ship by its name at events.
Run Reset Notification
With these latest technical bug fixes behind us, we hope the game is stable enough for you to enjoy without any issues. This will also allow us to proceed with all the cool features and content we want to add.
Due to the sizeable changes in this patch, your current run progress will be reset (meta progress will not be affected). We've tried to avoid this, but there's no way around it when we make fundamental changes to the game.
Bug Reporting and Feedback
If you have any issues to report, please use the bug reporting forum on Steam. You can also join our Discord and report your issues in our bug reporting forum. We also have a subreddit community found here.
On to the change log:
Patch 11 Changelog
Stability and Performance Fixes
- Combat Stability: Fixed issues where leaving combat on the enemy's turn could result in a soft lock.
- Turn Resumption Fix: Fixed issue where leaving combat on the enemy's turn could result in the enemy playing cards on your turn when you resumed.
- Texture Optimization: Reduced the damage map texture size for the first two enemies, as some people reported the game crashing when they exploded.
- Memory Leak Fix: Added a new fix for a reported memory leak (save file massively growing in size as you played).
- Combat Save System Update: Modified the combat save system to only save at the start of combat.
Card Fixes and Balance Changes
- Diffraction Field Adjustment: Modified diffraction field to require targeting your ship, not the enemy ship; increased its cooldown from 2 to 3 turns.
- Tinker Card Cost: Reduced the cost of Tinker from 2 Mass 2 Energy to 0, as the card depletes and takes 3 turns until its effect activates.
- TEG Enhancer Duration: Reduced duration of TEG Enhancer to 4, as stated on the card.
- Art and Display Fixes: Removed placeholder art from Dead Heat and removed variable from the card display.
- Tutorial Card Fix: Fixed the wrong tutorial cards shown if you leave/continue between fights.
- Heat Shift Bug: Fixed bug where Heat Shift could result in negative heat for the player.
- Tutorial Expansion: Added a new tutorial node for getting your 4th crew member.
- Exhaustive Card Mechanics: Added an icon for exhaustive cards (both on the card and in the keyword) and a tutorial panel explaining them in the 4th fight.
- Light Flak and Flak Barrage Changes:
- Light Flak Barrage cooldown increased from 2 to 3.
- Flak Barrage cooldown increased from 3 to 4, minimum damage increased from 3 to 4.
- Endothermic Reaction Fix: Fixed Endothermic Reaction not giving its bonus shield in certain edge cases.
- Arbalest's Starting Laser Update: Added an extra Pulse Laser card to the Arbalest's starting laser.
- Crew Ability Adjustments:
- Force Production: Cost increased from 2 CP to 3 CP, cooldown increased from 3 to 4.
- Overload Cannons: Cooldown increased from 3 to 4.
- Cheap Shot: Cooldown increased from 2 to 4.
- Reload: Cost increased from 2 CP to 3 CP, cooldown increased from 2 to 4.
- Tune Generator: Cooldown increased from 2 to 4.
- Emergency Shielding: Cost increased from 2 CP to 3 CP, cooldown increased from 2 to 4.
Crew and Equipment Changes
- Card Slot Allocation: Each crewmember always adds 1 card slot to your ship, regardless of whether they operate equipment or not.
- Crew Abilities: Crewmembers need to operate equipment to use their ability.
- Ability Activation Feedback: If crew can't activate their ability, a message explaining why is displayed next to their ability text.
- Equipment Functionality: Equipment now adds cards to your deck even if not operated by the crew.
- Cooldown Adjustment: Cards from equipment without a crewmember operating it have +2 cooldown.
- Card Management Flexibility: Cards can be drafted or removed from equipment while not operated by crew.
- Subsystem Operation: Subsystems function normally on equipment not operated by crew.
Shop and Fuel System Changes
- Fuel Availability: Each station now has three fuel available for sale.
- Crew Ability Usage: Crew abilities are limited to once per station.
- Subsystem Availability: Greatly increased the odds of having subsystems for your loadout on sale in shops.
- Weapon Subsystem Frequency: Increased the chance of having weapon subsystems appear in stores.
- Shop/Hangar Interaction Fix: Fixed issue where entering and exiting the shop and/or hangar would reset the card removal and addition option.
Miscellaneous Changes and Additions
- Ship Renaming Feature: Added the ability to rename your ship in the ship selector screen (to be later implemented in events whenever someone refers to your ship).
- Tutorial Expansion: Extended the tutorial by adding an extra node that introduces a new character, showing that crewmembers are tied to card slots.
- Exhaustive Card Explanation: Added a new tutorial panel in the 4th fight explaining exhaustive cards (still needs localization for languages other than English).
- Exhaustive Card Icon: Added a new icon for the exhaustive card mechanic, making it more visible and adding it to the keyword.
- Transponder Sell Price Adjustment: Modified the transponder sell cost from 50 to 20 (as the item itself costs 35).
- Notification Icon Addition: Added a notification icon next to your ship status panel when you gain reactor power or receive a missile launcher in the weapon picker event.
- Shield Mk.I Equipment Price Increase: Increased the sell price on shield Mk.I equipment to make it easier to buy higher-level equipment.
Future Development Plans
From now on, we should have more time to work on the features we discussed in the last dev update and patch notes.
Roadmap Update
We’ve also listened to your feedback regarding the presence of too much RNG in the game, and we’re currently reworking the Flak weapon system to reduce the excessive RNG while keeping its core identity intact. You can read more about the changes in the upcoming dev update next week.
We're also working on a roadmap, but it will take longer. We want to ensure we present you with a clear and accurate development plan for Breachway.
To the Community
Thanks again for all of your suggestions and words of encouragement. They're a big help in improving the game and a great motivator that keeps us going! We're genuinely excited about what the future will bring for the game and can't wait to share more details with you.
As always, we encourage you to continue sharing your thoughts and feedback. Every review and suggestion helps us improve the game, and we're genuinely grateful for each one!