Major Fleetbreakers Gameplay Changes Since the July Playtest
The July playtest may be over, but your feedback is already helping us make Fleetbreakers better.
Since the playtest began, we’ve made major improvements across three key areas: the UI, the economy, and relics. These changes have made the game easier to understand while creating more interesting strategic choices and stronger build possibilities.
Here’s a closer look at what has changed.
A Completely Redesigned Nexus
The Nexus, where you manage your ships and inventory, has received a major redesign.
During the playtest, we saw that players found parts of the original interface difficult to understand and navigate. The new Nexus is much clearer and easier to use, making it simpler to manage your fleet and prepare for the next mission.
There are still a few details we want to polish, but the overall experience is already a significant improvement.
A More Flexible Economy
We’ve made two major changes to the economy, affecting how players gather resources, explore missions, and make decisions on the Starmap.
Build as Many Extractors as You Can Afford
Extractors are the primary resource-gathering units used during missions. Previously, players could only have two active Extractors at a time, but this didn’t work the way many playtesters expected.
Extractors now cost resources to build, and there is no fixed limit on how many you can deploy. If you can afford them, you can build them.
The buffs associated with the previous system have also been redesigned to support this more flexible approach.
Resource Missions Now Provide Clearer Rewards
Previously, players earned the primary rewards from resource missions by collecting crates. However, many players missed these crates and finished missions without receiving the resources they needed to progress.
Now, the main resources are awarded automatically when you win the mission.
Crates are still an important reason to explore, but they will primarily provide in-mission buffs and power-ups to the squadron that collects them.
This change also allows us to display resource rewards directly on each Starmap zone. You’ll now have more information when choosing your next destination, creating clearer and more meaningful strategic decisions.
More Relics, Strategies, and Synergies
We’ve improved or reworked approximately 30% of the game’s relics, with the goal of creating stronger synergies, clearer strategies, and more exciting builds. We’ve also added entirely new relics.
Here are a few examples:
Deathslug
Deathslug grants a powerful damage boost to your starting squadron if it uses bullet weapons.
It is part of a new collection of starting-squadron relics. These relics provide extremely strong bonuses, but only to a specific type of squadron, and only when it is your starting squadron.
This creates a compelling reason to experiment with different starting fleets across multiple runs.
Inversion
Your acid puddles still damage enemies, but they now also heal allied units standing inside them.
Snowglobe
Snowglobe previously provided a simple shield-rating increase. It now heals units while their shields recharge, creating more interesting defensive possibilities.
Lay an Egg
Lay an Egg previously had a chance to drop mines when one of your ships was destroyed. It now activates every time.
More reliable. More explosive. Much more fun.
More Improvements Based on Your Feedback
We’ve also made several additional changes throughout the game:
Added a purchasable Repair Mothership ability to the Starbase, giving players the option to improve their survivability during the early game.
Made the upgrade encounter’s gambling option fairer by considering the quality of every ship contributed.
Added relics that reduce the cost of upgrading a single squadron.
Added relics that reduce the number of ships required for the gambling option.
Made it possible to zoom all the way out on the Discovery Tree.
Improved how the game introduces and explains mechanics that players found unclear.
Added more relic encounters to the early chapters.
Continued balancing units, upgrades, encounters, relics, and the overall economy.
Fixed many bugs reported by playtesters and discovered during internal testing.
Thank You, Fleetbreakers!
Thank you to everyone who played the July playtest, submitted bug reports, completed our survey, or shared their thoughts with us.
Your feedback isn’t disappearing into a void. It is already influencing how Fleetbreakers plays, and we’re excited to keep sharing these improvements with you as development continues.
Have more feedback? Want to help us continue shaping the game? Answer our survey!
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