Release notes here.
This one refines a lot of things from the prior build, and fixes up neutering, waves, and counterattacks all in one fell swoop. The list of short-term general annoyances is getting much smaller, and the discussion that started it all is here.
So what's new?
- Counterattacks were working well in the prior build, but in some respects a bit TOO well. Basically the AI was being granted too many counterattack points (the same as too much salvage in prior builds), and so the counterattacks were just plain too large in a lot of situations. Things should be much more reasonable now, but we do expect it to be something we need to tune over time, so please do keep the feedback coming.
- An unintended side effect of counterattacks that I completely missed was the fact that neutering a planet (scouring away all the guard posts but leaving the command station) was being treated as if you had failed to conquer the planet. Blah! This is definitely a big part of why we love having so many dedicated fans who are testing things out. Neutering is one of the oldest and most important strategies, and counterattacks were never supposed to mess with that. As of this new version, they no longer do; the command station isn't a counterattack-helping unit anymore, except for the AI Overlord version of it.
- With some of the changes to waves in the prior build, I actually entirely broke waves, too. So they were supposed to be more specialized, but they wound up just not coming at all anymore! This was because waves themselves have been evolving a lot over time in the code, and the code needed a bit of a refactor in order to fully embrace the new "how much the AI pays for things is decoupled from how strong it is" balance change that we put in months ago. The AI needs to be able to know when to not send a wave, or when to spend a bit less on a wave than it might otherwise spend, and it was previously having to approximate that sort of thing in a way that could often be quite wrong just because there isn't a literal relationship between cost and strength. Now it's using real numbers and is thus able to make far more intelligent decisions.
- Counterattacks were also happening too quickly, rather than being something that wouldn't kick in until a certain threshold of battle. We think that's fixed.
- And there are a variety of other bugfixes, including the Global Command Augmenter hacks always being hidden (oops, typo on my part). Overall this should make the game far more pleasant to play, and the back-and-forth should feel a lot more natural.
More to come soon. Enjoy!
Problem With The Latest Build?
If you right-click the game in Steam and choose properties, then go to the Betas tab of the window that pops up, you'll see a variety of options. You can always choose most_recent_stable from that build to get what is essentially one-build-back. Or two builds back if the last build had a known problem, etc. Essentially it's a way to keep yourself off the very bleeding edge of updates, if you so desire.
The Usual Reminders
Quick reminder of our new Steam Developer Page. If you follow us there, you'll be notified about any game releases we do.
Also: Would you mind leaving a Steam review for some/any of our games? It doesn't have to be much more detailed than a thumbs up, but if you like a game we made and want more people to find it, that's how you make it happen. Reviews make a material difference, and like most indies, we could really use the support.
Enjoy!
Chris