Hey everyone!

After a lot of tweaking and testing, we’ve rolled out Patch 5.01. In this patch, we’ve made some moderate changes to how Destructobot plays. All this while, we’ve felt that Destructobot has been a bit out of place among the 4 heroes, namely because it’s a lot slower especially when shooting (to which some people have complained that it makes Destructobot less fun to play) and has a rechargeable shield that potentially makes it overpowered in some situations.

With this patch, we’ve made Destructobot noticeably more lightfooted, by increasing its base move speed and reducing the speed penalty while shooting. We’ve also reduced its damage output and reworked how some of its weapons. Now its lasers don’t slice through all unlimited enemies anymore, and its Buccaneer Cannon’s range has been reduced significantly. We’ve also significantly reduced the amount of setup time on Destructobot’s final special attack, “The Big One”. The aiming has been improved too, so that the Nuke now actually lands where you want it to.

Over the next few patches you might see some further tweaks, but as of now we feel that Destructobot has been made more fun to play, and we like where it is right now overall. We understand this is quite a big change to Destructobot, so if we missed a couple of things here and there, we apologize in advance!

As for the Science Lab level in New Philly (the second level you encounter), we’ve put in an additional boss that shows up on occasion in place of the giant red (pink?) brute. I’ll do an entire post dedicated to it later this week. But, just to give you a brief introduction: Subject-223 was an experiment to splice the Spartilian (those bug aliens) genome with Arcturan genome, and the experiment has gone very, very wrong. Subject-223 will now sometimes appear at the end of the Science Lab level, in place of the giant brute.

Full changelog:

Destructobot

• Reduced Destructobot's base shields from 300 points to 100 points
• Increased Destructobot's base move speed while shooting by 50%
• Increased Destructobot's twin laser base damage from 140 to 150
• Reworked Destructobot's twin lasers so they don't pass through enemies (they will now only shoot the first enemy they come in contact with). The "piercing ammo" powerup still works with this weapon.
• Reduced Destructobot's “Buccaneer Cannon” weapon bullet range by 40%
• Reduced Destructobot's “Buccaneer Cannon” weapon damage from 125 to 90.
• Changed "The Big One" (Destructobot's final special attack) Nuke site targeting. The target area is now set much closer to Destructobot (right next to Destructobot).
• Reduced "The Big One" (Destructobot's final special attack) Nuke's setup delay time from 3 seconds to 1 second (it now drops down much sooner than before)
• Reduced Destructobot's spreadshot special ability base duration from 10 seconds to 7 seconds

Level Bosses
Added a second boss: Subject 223, to the New Philly science lab level. Subject 223 will now sometimes appear at the end of the Science Lab level, in place of the Red Brute.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed bug where opening cutscene did not play music or sound.
• Fixed bug where Mac OS/X users using keyboard/mouse were not able to select the hero they wanted at the hangar hero select screen.

Cheers!
-William from Rocktastic