Hail space explorers! This week's update brings more balance analysis, active corrosion, and lots of fixes and micro-features. The End of the Great Rebalancing is upon us...
...of course balance changes will continue to be made, but the overall feel and result is very close to where it should be now, thanks to a month of analysis, feedback, and tweaking.
Grenade use is up 212%
Similar to the increase in away team skill use, people are now using grenades twice as often, thanks to the simple fact that they're ammo replenishes before each mission (and they're not destroyed when you use the last one). And from what I can tell, grenades are not being over-used either. I think they've fallen into their proper niche.
Overall tactical action use during missions has increased as well, though it's still lower than I'd like. I realize that at least half of those missions are just when you're really OP and well equipped, but still, you can't get off too easy...
Also of note: complete losses of away teams are down, both by size category and in total. Gnashers replaced squither larva as the #1 killer, thanks to a very small reduction in the squither hit points. I've raised it slightly, we'll see what happens. And thanks to recent crew size changes I'm now seeing missions with a total of up to 27 people (that's HUGE!)
Active corrosion
Yes, time for something new! From now on, weapons with the "corrosive" damage type can create a status effect on the target tile that will damage whatever entity or terrain is there. It'll go away eventually, but you probably shouldn't step in it...
Changes:
- Fire burns even more on planets with higher oxygen content.
- Lava terrain can now start fires nearby.
- Acid terrain will sometimes spread the corrosion effect.
- Planetary gravity now effects movement speed! <0.8G makes you faster, and >1.3 makes you slower. 3G+ will slow your movement to a crawl!
- Fewer total primordial liquidators can breed (be summoned by others).
- Updated the spawning of black hole data for a tentaculon quest.
- Auto-explore now avoids "unstable asteroids" (which explode).
- Cut down on the number of sigorn freighters that will spawn.
- Macro-swarms can now move through damaged shipwreck sections.
- If you are on fire (burning status effect) and you step on "hydrocarbon sludge" tile, it will burst into flames!
Fixes
- Fixed: some monsters would not become hostile even when you attacked them
- Fixed: when monsters dodged your launcher shot, it would not get cooldown or even explode!
- Fixed: minesweeper no longer just ignores mines: there will be an outcome, bad or good.
- Fixed a bug where "copy grenade" skill wouldn't work if your grenade ammo was zero.
The largest part of the Great Rebalance is concluded, thank you! So...
What's Next?
The major goals of version 1.6 have been accomplished, so it will be time to move to 1.7 soon. But what does that actually mean?
The focus of 1.6 has been away missions, and here are some of the additions over the past 7 months:
- A complete visual and algorithmic overhaul of planets.
- Added activated cool-down skills for away teams.
- Reworked all the passive skills too :)
- The discovery of fire (and poison gas, nano-swarms, corrosion, etc.)
- The introduction of over 20 damage types for away team weapons, and their ability to alter the terrain.
- Monster resistances and vulnerabilities *to* those damage types.
- Your crew talks to you (in floating texts, and mostly when they die).
- ADDED GRENADES!
- Re-balanced the hit points and damage of every monster encountered on away missions.
- Gave monsters powers too :D
- Added a level editor?!
- Made your away team members die one at a time instead of all at once.
So many changes!
Well let me tell you, 1.7 is going to be EVEN BIGGER.
More on that later... Enjoy 1.6M9 today.