Pilots,
This is your friendly in-game AI companion handing off this post to our developer who would like to address you directly. Be kind, he created me.
Thanks AI companion whom I haven't given a name to yet...
Anyway, let's cut to the chase. The game in it's current state has a damage problem, which is evident towards later sectors and empowerment runs.
While I wanted this game to be challenging, I don't want the game to be impossible. So I had to think about how we can approach the distribution of damage (both given and received), how we can scale difficulty without it being a complete bullet sponge and players getting completely overrun with reinforcements because the damage output just isn't there.
What I found was that, with an unlocked end-game build (I'm talking like, everything unlocked and available, T5 modules, full ability matrix and all cards available), the game became increasingly difficult especially towards the late empowerment tiers, to the point where even E10 was completely impossible to beat due to the health scaling of enemies.
The above graph is a representation of how it currently is across empowered sectors.
The blue line is a representation of the base damage of a ship. (note that these numbers are not real, they are just a visualisation of how it is currently setup in game).
Initially the idea was to get cards and modules to boost the damage output. But with the way the modules and card systems work, it was increasingly difficult to get enough damage while also selecting cards to enhance survivability.
Couple this with the spawn pressure of enemies, and especially in later empowerment tiers where we have support role enemies buffing other enemies and the likes... with objectives having more health... it was just a kite-fest until you're eventually destroyed or just give up because you can't kill anything.
This is how the game currently stands. And it's not in a good spot.
You may remember that in a recent update we added the tag system.
We are now expanding on this while providing a level of scalability.
All enemies will have vulnerabilities and resistances against certain damage sources. When you shoot an enemy with a projectile and that enemy has resistance to projectile damage, it will say that they are resisting it. It still does damage, but just not as much.
On the flip side, if your drones do damage to an enemy, and they are vulnerable to drone damage, they will take significantly more damage from those drones, again with the in game visualisation telling you that they are vulnerable.
Coupling with this new approach, I'm working on base damage scaling.
This is referencing the same thing as before, but as you can see, the base damage is scaling with enemies as they get tougher.
What this does is allow for coherent builds to shine. Damage is now percentage based, rather than flat number based. As enemies get harder, your base percentage damage does go up with it, but not at the exact same rate.
This is to encourage diverse builds and fleet mechanics. While the above graph doesn't represent the new tag damage system, it does show that the base damage amounts scale up as enemy pressure gets tougher.
Now you might be thinking "oh but this is too easy now!". Trust me, it's still a challenge. Numbers themselves don't tell the full story.
Just because your base damage scales up a bit throughout empowered sectors, it doesn't mean that you're going to successfully extract with a ship with no modules equipped and no cards.
What this does is to move the focus of the end game away from raw damage output, to survivability and mixing your fleet with different damage options.
Come up against a group of enemies that have pulse resistance? Then switch to another ship that has Ramming damage and ram through them at great speed. Use abilities to create detonations to blow them up...
The idea here is to allow E10 runs with end game builds to be successful, but at the same time, increase the challenge of encounters where it requires fleet swapping, mixed builds and damage sources to really be successful.
With this in mind, the end game signals will also have a significant buff. You know those elite patrols that you try to avoid? Well, you will see more of those elites in levels with existing objectives. Requiring smart fleet decisions to take out shield pylons and other side objectives before getting overrun by those shielded lieutenants.
It's also come to my attention that the progression of the module system is not in line with the sectors. The general idea here is to effectively 'grind' those lower tier missions for low end modules, which you can then forge into higher tier modules, giving you the edge when you want to move up in difficulty.
But drop rates are low, especially in low tier sectors. As such, we'll also be making a pass on loot drops so that it becomes more apparent that you need to be spending your hard earned credits on engineering to get your builds and fleets online.
Anyway, that's it from me... I thought I'd update you on what's being worked on.
Normally, I wouldn't do these sorts of posts, but honestly, the damage re-work is a huge amount of work and it's going to take a fair bit before it's available.