“Every time I go out I’m looking for that rare Spark. That rare Core. As good as this gear is, it can always be better. Better gear means more Sparks and Cores. It’s a cycle, man.”
- ECHO grunt
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Balancing stats in any game is tough. Balancing them in a new game, especially one as complex and interconnected as Warped Universe with loadouts being shared between both Action and Turn-Based game modes, even more so. You try to predict what will happen, test what you can, and then hope players don’t immediately blow it up, one-shotting everything they come across, or even worse, getting one-shot by a basic enemy troop.
Welcome to stat balancing: a strange mix of math, psychology, and chaos control.
When you build a stat system, you’re making educated guesses. You give weapons base damage, create modifiers like accuracy or random damage boosts, and assume the system and player base will behave. On paper, it makes sense. In spreadsheets, it definitely does. In internal testing? We get early impressions and start to feel what is and isn’t working.Then you hand it to real players… and that’s where the fun begins. Some players follow intended paths while others push every limit. Someone may find an obscure build that stacks unintended bonuses. A mission you thought would take 15 minutes is cleared in four. And that one Spark you worried was underwhelming? It’s now meta, and you’re seeing it in 80% of loadouts.
Stat balancing isn’t about “getting it right.” It’s about reacting to how players play, not necessarily just how you planned.
In Warped Universe, something as seemingly simple as stats on equipment quickly becomes a tangled web of progression when you factor in all of the elements that affect the outcomes when receiving and upgrading equipment.
One of the primary focuses of the design team is ensuring that equipment stats provide value at all stages of the season. Let’s take a look at why this isn’t as easy as it sounds…
First, we have base equipment. Each piece of equipment comes with a set allocation of statistics that will remain the same from the start of the season all the way to the end.
What does change is bonus modifiers. Depending on the rarity of the Artifractal Core used to create a piece of equipment, you’ll find one to six bonus modifiers. In addition, the value of these bonus modifiers will increase as more Research Facilities are created and maintained on planets. A bonus Kinetic Resistance modifier may provide 5% bonus at the start of the season and could get up to 30% towards the end.
In Warped Universe you will never create an item you can't use. Rather it's more about choosing the kinds of bonuses you want in any one of your loadouts.
Then we have our upgrade system, Potential and Sparks. We wanted to have a player driven equipment enhancement system, and thought it would be fun for it to revolve around the dice rolling mechanic you’d find in many Table Top RPG games. The items created by using Artifractal Cores also come with an extra stat called Potential. The Potential of an item is filled up by using Sparks that players can receive as end of mission rewards. Sparks come in six rarities from Common to Warped, D4 to D20 respectively. These are rolled at workbench to consume that amount of Potential and receive a set upgrade depending on whether the Spark was applied to a Weapon or piece of Armor.
There are currently ten types of Spark, with some providing different bonus modifiers depending on whether it is placed on a weapon or piece of armor.
Light - Adds Light damage dice on weapon, or Light resistance on armor
Gravity - Adds Gravity damage dice on weapon, or Gravity resistance on armor
Armor Piercing - Adds Armor Piercing damage dice on weapon, or Armor Piercing resistance on armor
Kinetic - Adds Kinetic damage dice on weapon, or Kinetic resistance on armor
Void - Adds Void damage dice on weapon, or Void resistance on armor
Power - Adds a bonus Power modifier
Precision - Adds a bonus Precision modifier
Psionics - Adds a bonus Psionics modifier
Hit Points - Adds a bonus Health modifier
Speed - Improves Attack Speed on weapon, or Movement Speed on armor.
These modifiers work in both Action and Turn-based missions and can affect abilities in different ways which requires additional balance iteration.
Common Armor Spark Upgrades:
As each Season progresses and players build planets throughout the system, the base amount of Potential also increases with each Factory Facility that is built representing the capability of items being produced on Nexus Station..
The amount of Potential an item has will limit the possible amount of Sparks that can be added to it. Each Spark will boost a stat chosen by the player depending on which Sparks they have available to them, and the rarity of the Sparks. Often the decisions will be made based on what kind of loadout they are attempting to achieve or try.
Deciding how much Potential an item starts with will be something we keep a close eye on as we imagine it will require significant balancing during testing.
So we have equipment with base modifiers, bonus modifiers, and Potential to add Spark modifiers. The latter two of these are affected by player chosen progression in the way of Facilities granting bonuses to every player throughout the season.Something to note here is how we plan to incorporate these bonuses into the game, and that is having any bonus only apply to new items created from Artifractal Cores while the Facilities are operational. Your old equipment remains the same, but if a Rifle Research Facility, or Ship Hull Factory Facility is built, that may be the ideal time to upgrade your loadout with new pieces. You’re going to want to take advantage of the tools and bonuses available to you while they last… the Void is always looking to consume and once a facility has been destroyed, it may be some time before it’s operational again.
This is a way for us to allow player base power to increase with progress in a social, seasonal way, while also giving players the freedom and agency to upgrade their own equipment as they see fit.
A fun bonus with the way Facility upgrades affect player items is that a player joining later in the season won’t have to start at the very beginning. Every piece of equipment created from an Artifractal Core will benefit from the current state and highest possible modifiers, allowing them to quickly catch up to the current power of players later in the season.
We believe this will provide enough variation to allow players to create a wide variety of loadouts with enough random elements sprinkled on top to really capitalize on some lucky bonus modifier and Spark Potential rolls. We’ll be constantly watching how players choose to play and listening to all feedback on these systems. So prepare yourself, especially if you intend on joining us in the early stages of testing. It’s going to be a wild ride with gameplay that may never be experienced again in later seasons as we hone the design of these systems.