Balance Patch #5 - Balance, Bugfixes, Ship impact reactions

HI everyone,
besides the usual bug-fixes and balance changes, we've got something really cool that will make combat look more dynamic: Hit impacts!

Enemies will now get shoved off course by hits from physical projectiles (Flak and especially Missiles, Railguns less so, as they just pass clean through the ship), and slowly return to their original trajectory with the help of their maneuvering thrusters.

This feature came straight out of some hit-evasion tests we were running for the experimental branch. We wanted to share it with you guys as soon as possible, because it's a small addition that adds a lot to the feel of a battle. Some values may be off/ exaggerated, it's a feature we'll add to and refine going forward.

For this weeks "Fun with analytics" section (we should make it an actual section), we're looking at the most lethal enemies in the game:

As you can see above, we still have a lot of work to do to get this list in a better shape, we've got elites and some regular enemies out-killing most bosses in the game, but we're slowly getting there. This week we're focusing on further buffing the sector 2 bosses, they are by far the weakest set compared to the other bosses and elites.

Here's the full change log for this week's patch:

• Added an experimental feature where ships now react to missile and Flak pellet impacts.
• SOL S02 Boss: Predictive Aim now correctly doubles the next Flak attack's damage, instead of increasing it by 50%.
• SK S02 Boss: Pre-emptive Pulse now deals 6 base damage, up from 4.
• FR S02 Boss: Asteroid Breaker base damage increased from 5 to 6.
• Fixed a Redline and Redline+ bug that prevented the cards from adding Heat on turn start, as stated in the card text.
• Rewrote the hirable crew picker logic. The old version could crash when you entered a new station after having already seen every hirable crew member — now the station simply shows no one for hire in that case.
• Fixed a missing shader that displayed as a pink shape in one of the sector maps.
• Fixed enemy ships sometimes silently skipping a card deployment on the first turn of combat due to a startup timing race.
• Fixed a damage display error on EM Round+.

That's it for this week. There won't be a balance patch next week, as we're focusing on finishing the Commander Update so we can start testing it ahead of the public rollout, more on that soon.

Thanks for sticking with us, participating in our Discord discussions, giving us feedback, reporting bugs, and leaving reviews! o7
The Breachway Team