🏰 Base Assault Mode, New Unit: Apothecary, Red Zone Overhaul & Ability Scaling!

Full Patch Notes

🏰 New Game Mode: Base Assault

• Fortified Headquarters: Each team defends a fortified base structure with 20 Base HP. Destroying the enemy base immediately secures victory!

• Melee & Ranged Siege Damage:

  • Melee Strikes (Distance = 1) deal 100% full damage to the base structure.

  • Ranged Attacks, AoE & Over-Time Abilities deal 50% siege damage, rewarding aggressive frontline breaches while preserving artillery tactics.

• 360° Perimeter Deployment: All 8 surrounding tiles around each home base start fully captured under your control on turn 1, enabling flexible defensive positioning and deployment angles.

• Solid Structure Rules: Base structures are solid terrain—units cannot step, spawn, or clone directly onto active base tiles and must breach them through combat.

• Tactile Destruction Effects: Attacking bases features custom masonry shard physics, billowing dust clouds, impact shudders, and cataclysmic collapse explosions upon destruction.

• Intelligent Siege & Defense AI: AI players evaluate home base defense threats, intercept incoming siege attackers, and execute lethal finishes on vulnerable enemy headquarters.

🧪 New Unit: Apothecary (Support / Purification)

• Role & Stats: Support unit (Deploy Cost: 398, HP: 3, Attack: 1, Range: 2, Move: 2, Capture Power: 4).

• Active Ability — Cleanse (Range: 2): Targets an allied unit within 2 tiles and purges all negative status effects, crowd control, and hazards.

• Universal Debuff Removal: Strips away Poison, Toxic Sludge, Burning ground, Corrosion, Contamination, Suppression, Jammed, Root, Disarm, Fear, Taunt, Freeze, Daze, and Vulnerability in a single cast.

• Combat Flexibility: Can move, attack, and cleanse in the same turn to keep your frontline assault units operating at peak performance.

⚡ Last Man Standing: Red Zone Overhaul

• Hazard Damage to Both Teams: Units from both teams left in the collapsing Red Zone now suffer 1 damage at the end of every turn they remain inside the hazard.

• Faster Collapse (4-Turn Cycle): The Red Zone now advances 1 tile inward every 4 turns (reduced from 5), accelerating match tempo and forcing decisive mid-board skirmishes.

• Impact Shakes & Combat Feedback: Suffering Red Zone damage triggers full combat audio, floating -1 indicators, and physical on-tile unit shake animations.

• Inward Hazard Indicators: Corrected the scan line animation on the right side of the board to smoothly animate inward toward the center, mirroring the left edge.

💥 Unified Damage Engine & Ability Scaling

• Attack Upgrades Scale All Abilities: Tile attack upgrades (+25% per level) and Unit Merge ranks (+33.3% per combined unit) now dynamically scale non-basic attacks, traps, explosions, and damage-over-time effects!

• Scaled mechanics include:

  • Explosions & Traps: Exploder detonation bombs, Martyr & Battery death blasts, Bearmine traps, and Chronomancer time bombs.

  • Hazard & DoT Effects: Pyromancer burning ground, Contaminator toxic sludge, Ooze poison pools, and Disruptor corrosion.

  • Passives & Retaliation: Phalanx thorns reflect, Dominator trample pathing, Mortar artillery splash, and Zapper chain lightning bounces/surges.

• Snapshotted Status Values: Scaled status effect damages snapshot at cast time and persist seamlessly across unit movements and Phase Shift swaps.

🏃 Pathfinder Logistics Aura & Phasing

• Phasing Movement: Friendly units adjacent to a Pathfinder now reliably receive the Logistics Boost, allowing them to phase directly through mountains and ally units during movement and merge actions.

• Status Indicators: Added dedicated Logistics Aura status badges to on-tile health bars and the Unit Intel breakdown modal across all supported languages.

🎬 Enhanced Replay Fidelity & Combat Polish

• Live Combat Replays: Replays now execute the exact live combat audio and particle system (projectile arcs, explosion shatters, and floating combat text) without visual degradation or desyncs.

• DoT Casualty Bursts: Turn-transition casualties (such as Blight, burning ground, or toxic pools) now trigger full particle bursts, defeat audio, and resource popups.

• Fullscreen Arena Skin Scaling: Universalized responsive aspect-ratio cover-scaling across outer environment backgrounds and inner boards on all screen resolutions (including Volcanic Core).

• In-Game Private Chat: Receiving a private message during an active match now auto-opens a compact minimized widget in the bottom-right corner so you never miss messages from friends.

• Time Bomb Visual Sync: Synchronized Time Bomb visual indicators to use high-visibility red badges and the tactical bomb icon across health bars and Unit Intel cards.

🎬 Replay System Overhaul & Visual Fidelity

• Full Live Particle & Audio Pipeline: Replays now execute the exact live combat pipeline—including projectile curves, explosion shatters, hit sparks, audio impacts, and floating combat text—with 100% fidelity.

• Deep Status Cloning (No Desyncs): Persistent tile statuses (such as Exploder detonation countdown timers, Contamination zones, and Barriers) are deeply cloned per turn snapshot, eliminating state degradation or visual desyncs.

• DoT & Turn-Transition Casualty Animations: Replays now reliably resolve victim unit types from tile history and display full death particle bursts, shatter effects, and defeat audio even when end-of-turn damage instantly clears the unit.

• Engine Version Tracking: Replays now track the active engine version with an in-viewer notification banner informing players when watching matches recorded on earlier game engine versions.

• Uninterrupted Playback: Idle "You're away" screens and auto-away timers are fully suppressed during replay watching and active spectator matches.