Commanders!
Update 1.5 has landed, and with it comes a major balance pass for Warside. This update is all about fine-tuning the battlefield: smoothing out difficulty spikes, refreshing underused strategies, and laying the groundwork for a more balanced Warside experience.
Balance Update – Better Choices, Better Battles
We’ve taken a close look at how players are approaching units and Battle Powers across all game modes, and have made a number of adjustments aimed at encouraging more diverse play. We're also aiming to make a wider variety of playstyles viable in multiplayer games.
These changes aren’t intended to completely shake up the current meta, but to better steer gameplay towards our original design goals.
Highlights include:
Infantry-type units were generally underutilised for everything other than capture. All specialised infantry have been buffed to better encourage their use. The standard Infantry unit remains unchanged.
The Boomtruck now lives up to its name and explodes with 1-tile radius splash damage.
The trusty Tank has long been a staple of every player's army, but it's a bit too versatile, and we want to see a better mix of units in play. Its base attack has been slightly reduced to make it less competitive relative to our other units.
The relationship between Attack Helis, Flak Canons, and Tanks has been tweaked so the helicopter doesn't always come out on top. Attack Helis are expensive, and we didn't want to directly mirror the relationship as seen in other games, but the data suggests they were too strong.
The Icefang's attack now penetrates units in a line behind their target. This was our original intended design for the unit. The attack damage has been slightly reduced to compensate.
The Frigate now has a secondary attack to target helicopters. The relationship between costly ships and equally costly air units is a difficult one to balance. Attack Helicopters were able to move in close and cause uncontested damage at a relatively low cost. By giving Frigates a counter-attack (or even a first-strike on a helicopter out of position), the balance shifts back towards the naval units.
This is an iterative update, and we’re keeping changes measured so we can see how they play out in live matches. Expect more balance tweaks as we gather feedback and in-game data.
We've also tweaked Battle Powers to make all Commander choices more viable. We have increased the amount of charge required where data suggested a power was too strong (we see you, Scourge!).
The power mechanics have been changed so that the required charge increases each time the power is used. The longer a battle goes on, the more you will need to think about whether this is the best time to activate your power.
See the changelog below for the full list of changes to units and powers.
Campaign Balance
All the way back in May, we introduced update 1.2 with our new (and much improved) AI. We also adjusted the campaign because many players did not find it challenging enough. The difficulty level was raised across the board, but the progression wasn't very smooth.
Our data shows we still have some very obvious sticking points where players are getting stuck. This leads to missions that feel like a slog to beat, or worse, players get frustrated because they need to restart multiple times.
The orange area of the bars indicates missions where players are getting stuck at a higher rate than intended. The mission "The Blight" is the biggest offender here.
With this patch, we've had time to go back and adjust a number of our missions. We don't want to make the game easier (some missions we have made harder!), but we do want to smooth out the difficulty level and avoid the spikes we previously had. It was the sudden changes in difficulty that players left the most feedback on, and it's something we hope to have improved with this update.
As with all our patches, we'd love your feedback on our forums. It's your constant feedback that helps us keep improving the game.
Balance Changelog (Units)
Medic
Cost decreased from 4,000 to 3,000
Sniper
Cost decreased from 3,500 to 3,000
Blightguard
Cost decreased from 4,000 to 3,500
Movement increased from 3 to 4
Base damage versus Armor increased from 10 to 15
Base damage versus Heavy decreased from 8 to 5
Base defence increased from 0 to 1
Boomtruck
Cost decreased from 7,000 to 5,500
Base damage versus Armor decreased from 90 to 80
Attacks now have splash damage in a radius of 1 tile, with 70% damage
Fixed issue where defenders would get counter-attack charge for the value of the Boomtruck
Flame Tank
Cost decreased from 8,000 to 6,500
Tank
Base damage versus Armor decreased from 75 to 70
Base damage (alt) versus Infantry decreased from 80 to 75
Flak Cannon
Cost decreased from 9,000 to 8,500
Base defence increased from 0 to 1
Attack Heli
Base damage versus Armor decreased from 75 to 70
Base damage versus Boat decreased from 85 to 80
Base damage versus Ship decreased from 45 to 40
Icefang
Cost decreased from 15,000 to 14,000
Base damage versus Armor decreased from 100 to 90
Base damage versus Heavy decreased from 55 to 50
Base damage versus Ship decreased from 50 to 45
Base damage versus Structure decreased from 45 to 30
Attacks now penetrate 2 additional tiles behind the target, with 70%, then 50% damage
Frigate
Can now (alt) attack Helicopters with a base damage of 75
Balance Changelog (Powers)
The charge amount needed to activate a Battle Power now increases by 10% (compounding) with each use.
Iconclad (Ava)
Charge decreased from 5 to 4.5
Venomous Haze (Scourge)
Charge increased from 5 to 7.5
Fearstrike (Medusa)
Charge decreased from 5 to 4.5
Neural Overload (Mordred)
Charge increased from 4 to 4.5
Winter's Grasp (Boreas)
Charge increased from 6.2 to 6.5
Shatterstorm (Demetria)
Charge decreased from 6 to 5.5
Additional Changes
Ranged units now give a visual "nudge" on the map view when firing, to make it more obvious which unit is attacking.
Fixed an AI crash that could occur when playing on fog-of-war missions.