Hi everyone,
We're excited to announce a pretty large update to the Fleetbreakers Demo. We have incorporated a lot of the feedback from the community around game balance and difficulty. We've also added some new content like the end of run Boss Battle.
Please Note: We changed so much that we do have to force reset your progress. We apologize to anyone who has lost what they've accomplished so far. We will look at how to improve this for future updates.
Build Notes
Gameplay
- Boss fight first pass. Multiple stages with different behavior per stage. It's still early, but it gives a good idea where we are headed.
- All new Colony system. New colonies. New techs. Geared around letting players customize their runs in fun and different ways. Rush vs. Boom (of course), but also things like Luck vs. Predictability.
- Attack Facing is in! This gives players the ability to control exactly where their squadrons attack from while retaining the combat movement we like.
- Squadrons can be given a direction to attack from (press and hold the attack button and then rotate the facing).
- Figure 8 Patterns are now offset from the target to support the directed attack facing
- Orbit Patterns are now "Arc Patterns". For example, Tanks will swing through a 90 degree arc and then ping pong back.
- Gigantor pass on difficulty for better ramping throughout the full run
- Squadrons without Attack Patterns fire in salvos. This includes Rail Cannons and Launchers. Part of the squadron will fire immediately, then the next group goes, etc. This reduces their wastage from overkill making them feel better against smaller ships while still retaining their overall counter to stationary targets.
- Victory Mode. When a mission is over, players have the option to clean up the map. This allows them to use any extractor powers they have left and hunt down any crates they did not find.
- The map is fully explored to help with this.
- Cooldowns are greatly reduced.
- And, most important, we've added some helper text to indicate that extractors collect all their resources when players warp out. This should hopefully clarify that players don't have to wait around or cheese the map to gather resources before they win.
- Big pass on combat numbers to help clarify the intended roles of the different ships and make them all viable. Some highlights:
- Bursters have more defensive utility now (while still being a Specialist unit). They can be thought of as a weaker Tank. They now use a semi-circle Orbit Attack Pattern. They've got a new active ability, too.
- Scouts and Fighters have more hitpoints
- Scout Nova ability lost knockback (to help Scouts continue to shoot at their targets)
- Changed resources so that Metal is the "earlier" resource and Prisma is the more "advanced" resource.
- Intro missions have a free mystery crate full of exciting things
- We drop a few extra Resource Crates in missions until players unlock Extractors
- Adjustments to when the AI is allowed to use certain ships. More complicated ships are delayed a little longer.
- Stunned AI spawners (e.g. Fabricators and Conscriptors) will pause their train actions
- AI Spawners show a radial indicator to indicate their training progress
- AI will build Defense Stations farther apart now
- AI is less likely to YOLO turrets next to the human Mothership
- New Vendor and Encounter content
- Fighters are easier to unlock
- Strategy Map layout affords more Rush vs. Boom opportunities
- Admiral Torval is now Admiral Flint
Visual
- New Defense Station art
- Unique Colony Station gibs
- Constructed stations got some randomized rotation to vary their looks
- Map and Obstruction improvements
- Many new FX and improvements to existing FX
UI
- Enemy movements on the Strategy Map are faster and have an option to go even faster. Or slower, but no one really wants that.
- Better resource borders
- Each Reward Panel shows a gameplay tip
- Details Panel does not cover the Minimap
- Story objectives (achievements) say "Story Objective" on them now
- Story objectives do not go away when completed (so players can review them if they like). Completed story objectives are sorted up under the active achievements.
- Boss Meter techs are toasted to draw attention to them. It's really, really useful to pay attention to those.
- Force the main unit the AI is training to be the first tech on the Boss Meter.
- Toast animations are faster
- Strategy Map hex button states are much more distinct
- Strategy Map hexes are smaller
- Selected squadron panel darkens when players are deploying a different squadron
- Achievements track their new-ness and display said new-ness with an appropriate dingle
- Campaign techs show players what ships/stations are affected by the techs
- Simplified icons and details in the mission popups on the Strategy Map
- Boss Meter techs can be hovered whilst the AI is moving around the Strategy Map
- Relic backgrounds show rarity
- Enhancements show rarity
- Duplicate enhancements no longer visually stack in the UI, but they still stack for gameplay
- Removed the callouts for the "bonus objectives" on non-intro missions. Not really necessary anymore with Victory Mode.
- MKB input mode got options to adjust camera speed
Misc
- Advancing story dialogues plays a sound
- Enabled Visual Quality settings with an auto-detect on first run to set defaults. This helps get Steamdecks set up more correctly.
Bugs
- Health tooltips correctly say "Max Health" when showing just maximum Health and "Health X/Y" when showing current health. Same thing for Shield tooltips.
- Removed non-functional Details button on Reward screens where there is no choice
- Achievements are only redeemable from the Council Screen
- Handful of crash fixes
- Mothership Class Icon corrected
- Don't twiddle the "you can buy something" indicators when resource values decrease
- Mothership powers that cannot be immediately equipped no longer disappear
- Boss Meter techs no longer pull low rarity techs for the higher rarity buckets
- Fixed a lot of outdated tooltip data
- Supernova ability targeting no longer fails if targeted on one of the player's own ships
- No more duplicate items in Vendors
- Can't select squadrons that are Warping In
- Turn off fullscreen mode on Steamdeck to fix "craziness"
- Fixed some selection glyphs that were always showing MKB glyphs regardless of input mode
- Fixed several loss of focus bugs with controllers
- Edge scrolling is now correctly disallowed while input is disabled
- Can now change Nexus tabs in missions with controller
- Fixed issue where the wrong Pylons could sometimes be placed on maps, enabling a much too fast win or loss
- Death spiralling squadrons are no longer shown in the Deploy Menu