Balance Patch #7 - Balance, Bug-fixes, Unlock changes

Hey everyone, time for another balance patch.

We were away last week, right after a major update. So naturally we came back to quite a collection of bugs waiting for us. This patch clears most of those out (there are still some left that we're looking into), alongside some small card balance changes.

Unfortunately, some of the bug-fixes and additions required addressable changes, so this update will reset your current runs in progress.

We've also started work on one of the big goals of the Tactician update: enemy variety.
Most enemies currently feel similar, and a big reason is tempo. They each play a card every 1-3 turns and mostly loop the same cards, and there's only so much variety you can build within those confines. Going forward, we'll be redesigning enemies to make their behavior and tempo genuinely different from one another.

The first example is the redesigned Deadweight S01B.
It used to fire an interceptor every 2 turns and a Starflare every 3, the same tempo as most other Sector 1 enemies.
Now it opens by firing a volley of three 6-damage Drifter missiles that hit in 4 turns, effectively putting a timer on the fight, especially for players without missile defense, which most won't have in Sector 1.
It has no shields, relying on a shredding barrage for defense, and has an ongoing effect that increases its damage every 2 turns.
This is probably our most aggressive Sector 1 enemy, and we'll be keeping a close eye on its lethality rate next week.

Change log:

Balance changes

• Reworked the Deadweight S01B enemy (see above).
• Firestrike+: base damage reduced from 5 to 4.
• Flare: cooldown increased to 6.
• Flare+: now applies only 1 Blind, but grants 6 SP. Cooldown reduced to 5.
• Heavy Pulse: cost increased from 3O 1E to 4O 1E.
• Heavy Pulse+: cost increased from 4O 1E to 4O 2E.
• Tracer+: now gives +3 damage on your next Attack (was +4), cooldown reduced from 6 to 5.
• Accelerator Burst: now gains +3 damage when you have 4 or more Laser cards in your draw pile.
• The starting weapon selection event now only offers Tier 2 weapons with at least 4 card slots. The older 2-slot versions were basically dead picks. We also added more variations to the starting weapons' pre-drafted cards to make up for the loss of the 2-card equipment choices.

Bug fixes

• Fixed a bug where the + versions of Solarii Sector 1-2 enemies and Deadweight Sector 2 enemies never appeared, the base versions were loaded instead.
• Fixed Echo Burst+ to add its Blink cards to the draw pile instead of your hand.
• Fixed the Accelerator Burst card text to show the proper values, they were wrong before, causing confusion about why the card wasn't behaving as expected.
• Fixed a text issue on Marking Shot that prevented the Mark keyword from appearing in the card text.
• Fixed Ionized Round not dealing equipment damage.
• Fixed a bug where child card descriptions sometimes rendered the default card text instead of their actual text.
• Fixed the unlock requirement numbers shown for unlocking the various ships.

Other changes

• The Beam Laser and Quad-Flak weapons are now unlocked from the start on new accounts. The Light Laser is now locked instead, and unlocks after dealing 600 total Laser damage.
• The Thermal Lance and Industrial Laser are now unlocked separately from the Beam Laser.
• The Arbalest can now start with the Thermal Lance once it's unlocked.
• The Marauder can now start with the Industrial Laser once it's unlocked.
• Quality of life: items you can't afford are now greyed out in the shop.
• Fixed/Updated some card translations

That's it for this week, see you in the next one, where we have some cool new features and UX improvements rolling out! o7

The Breachway Team