G'day Forts Fans! Welcome to the Balance of Power update. We have been listening to your feedback and have been busy implementing three-phases of balancing, Campaign difficulty, weapon calibration, and commander balance. We've also added inverted missile silos for hanging forts, and of course a new map, in preparation for next weekend's tournament (see below).
Campaign Difficulty
The Campaign difficulty has been the source of much discussion, and we have been busy tweaking and testing Easy, Normal and Hard mode. The end result is an Easy mode experience that caters for the novice player to get to grips with the missions and mechanics at their own speed. Normal mode is now calibrated to provide a challenge, while at the same time making the attainment of bonus objectives achievable. Hard is still the same stern test of skill and strategy.
Weapon Balance
With Forts having been out for a month now, we've noticed certain patterns of play and strategies that, while within the 'laws' of the game, tend to make for less entertaining battles. These include Energy Shield spam, Cannon rush, and mid-tier weapon obsolescence. Here are the changes we've made.
Cannon - Reduce hitpoints - 300 (down from 550)
Cannon - Increase firing cost - 75M/3000E (up from 50M/2000E)
Factory - Increase build time - 120 (up from 90)
Shields - Reduce hitpoints - 60 (down from 100)
Swarm - Increase payload - 12 rockets (up from 9)
Machine Guns - Increase build time to 20 (up from 15)
Laser - Increase reload time - 26 (up from 24)
Missiles - Can be built upside-down
Commander Balance
In an effort to bring all commanders into the same ball park of effectiveness, we have made the following changes.
Firebird - Reduce active fire radius, AP sniper leaves a trail of flame.
Overdrive - Instant upgrades reduced to 2x rate of upgrade.
Pinchfist - Increase reclaim to 100% of cost (typical reclaim rate reduced to 50% of cost)
Warthog - Passive ability now includes Heavy Mortars having faster reload
New Map Balls 2v2
The original Balls map has proven popular, and now there's Balls 2v2, featuring two forts on either side of this symmetrical map, with a couple of satellites each side for the placement of additional mines or silos.
Build 2017-05-20a
Full list of changes are below.
Add: New map Balls 2v2
Add: Scale aiming arc with zoom
Fix: Hang Time - Shrunk caves to counter turbine exploit
Fix: Unable to find slot for joining player error spam for host
Balance: Add DestroyShields flag for cannons
Balance: Overclocker changed to 2x upgrade speed rather than instant
Balance: Pinchfist metal & energy reclaim 100% including when damaged
Balance: Pinchfist repair cost reduced to 75%, down from 80%
Balance: Firebird active fire radii reduced
Balance: Firebird AP sniper leaves a trail of fire rather than a circle
Balance: Cannon - reduce hitpoints - 300 (down from 550)
Balance: Cannon - Destroys shield - Shield hitpoints 60 (down from 100)
Balance: Factory - Increase build time - 120 (up from 90)
Balance: Swarm - Increase to 12 rockets
Balance: Machine Guns - Increase build time to 20 (up from 15)
Balance: Cannon - Increase firing cost to 75M/3000E
Balance: Laser - reload period to 26 (up from 24)
Balance: Missiles - can be built upside-down
Balance: Mortars - mouse sensitivity reduced to 0.5 from 0.85
Balance: Reduce max metal reclaim of materials and devices to 50%, min to 25%
Fix: Replay desync. AI door state - oscillating laser sight on the edge of a door
Fix: Avoid recursion when copied map name contains original map name
Fix: Avoid selecting stereo pixel formats
Fix: High GroundDeviceSnap prevents mines snapping properly in Rhino vs Tiger
Fix: \keylist console command not showing names properly
Fix: Crash in editor screen and loading when there are wide characters in a map name
Fix: Unable to drop console on German keyboard (map secondary console toggle to F3)
Fix: Height challenge numbers overlapping on restart
Forts Tournament
If you haven't signed up to the Forts Tournament happening on Saturday May 27 at 4pm CST, follow this link - Forts Tournament
Pro-tips
We're introducing a new segment to the updates, Pro-tips, in which we will suggest a useful trick that we've noticed is going unused. This week it's the Refire function.
As some of you may know, double-clicking on a weapon, or pressing 'E' (either with the weapon selected, or hovering over it with the cursor) will cause a weapon to fire again using the same power and trajectory as it's previous shot. Additionally, combining this with the TAB function, which cycles through each available weapon, allows players to lay down a sequence of accurate shots in rapid succcession.
Thanks for playing Forts!
Cheers,
EWG