Slowly but surely, our game progresses and refines month after month. Pulling in new fresh elements while refining what was old.
This month we did a lot of behind the scene testing and development of feature changes and we have a couple already ready for release and happy to share with you all.
Improved Explore Experience
Colony ships now have a new module called SCAN 1 which allows them to see what planets are one-jump away from their current sector. This means that you will no longer need to guess which planet is better to colonize and makes the early game a lot more meaningful by forcing players to review and select the best planets to colonize early.
The game previously would require too much effort to scan a planet before sending a colony ship, the opportunity cost of playing a card or sending a ship was just not worth it. Scan changes all of that, in a good way.
Advance technology slot
For a while now we had planned on releasing a card that advanced the technology slots for you, but ultimately we decided to instead just add a button that does it for you.
The "Advance Tech" button starts at just 1 Research cost to use and advanced the technology pool by one "slot" by dropping all the cards down one step on the conveyor belt. (This is in addition to any at turn start movement of the conveyor)
After the first buy though the cost will immediately go up to 2, then 3, then 4.... so if you want to get 3 new cards it would get costly at 6 Research (1+2+3). However even a single click each turn can really help you speed through the options to find what you are looking for before the next shuffle comes.
So many 3D models
Over the last few month's we've been getting a lot of 3D models added to the game, thanks to James Carol's great work.
Visual improvements
- Star symbol now flashes when a player is within 10 Stars of winning.
- Star gen icons now appear, animate and make a sound each turn to make it more obvious that they are important.
- Star's earned is back to being a bar for both you and the opponent.
- The toggle to show/hide your tech pool was removed and now your tech pool is just always displayed. This should make it less likely you forget you can buy technology.
Balance Changes
This month it looks like we lowered Sylith power level in testing, as a wind-fall the damage card mechanic and the need it created to re-balance things.
- Stinger lowered to 2 attack from 3 and bombard value increased to 2 from 1.
- Scythe attack lowered from 5 to 4, raid ability replaced by Torp 1.
- Brood Nest infantry value lowered to 2 from 3.
- Continuum Hollow cost increased to 4 from 3.
Bug fixes
- Fixed reload bug where tech pool would advance incorrectly sometimes.
- Fixed some specific reload issues in global effects modules from game replays.
- Fixed issue where Nebulae would apply modifier twice when reloading.
- Fixed issue where ships with zero attack could not attack when they had a boost from an attack module.
- Some tool tips got disabled when first loading to not overload a new player. (still more to do here, but it is a start)
Future
We are working still on brand new scenarios that will replace the current ones. They will be more like multi-turn puzzles that slowly teach you mid to advance game play strategies.
In parallel we are testing two game play changes that should help soften early-game wins to make it easier for you to still come back from any early disadvantages in the early game. While they are still being finalized, the mechanics around this are centered around reducing the penalty for being contested and making newly invaded worlds less productive.
Beyond this we are also exploring some mechanics around upgrading cards to higher tech (instead of buying new ones) which we have started internally testing with positive results.
Eko Puteh just finished a half dozen new artworks for us, which will start appearing on cards too.
And we are even looking at a shift in how invasion works to make it potentially more like regular combat too.
Plus a lot lot more in store!
Thanks for being with us as we continually refine and improve our game. We would love to see your voice on our Discord channel where we all hang out some time. Be well,
Gala Collider team