Update 1.1 - Spaceship Balancing

2024-11-02 EDIT: Version changed from 1.0.1 to 1.1. 

This is twenty days late. I made patch notes for fun but didn't release them initially because it seemed weird, but I figured I'd get used to this Devlog thing that itch has sooner rather than later.

Anyways, this patch focused on spaceship balancing, along with minor quality of life changes.

Balance Notes

Playtesting revealed that Andromeda was the most powerful spaceship by far. All of these changes are intended to reduce it's effectiveness, while buffing the other playable characters.

Spaceship Changes

For reference on how the spaceship stats work:

• SPEED refers to your maximum effective movement speed.
  • This is essentially top speed, but effectiveness is mentioned because you can exceed your top speed by getting hit.
• THRUST is actually ACCELERATION. It's how quickly a spaceship can accelerate.
• HANDLING is how quickly your spaceship can turn.
  • NOTE: The direction a spaceship is looking is based your turn input (except for when you respawn). It is unaffected by knockback or any attacks.
• DEFENSE applies a percentage reduction on knockback with every hit.

Spaceships have base stats which are boosted by a spaceship's stat values.

All stats are set within the range of 3-8. This is predominantly an aesthetic choice, as it looks weird if a stat has zero or ten points.

Defense stat effectiveness cut in half.

The reduction between high and low defense was so skewed (15% to 40%) that it made Andromeda practically unstoppable. The new reduced range should reduce most of this, though defense will likely be tuned again in the future, given the combat nature of the game.

Acceleration stat effectiveness increased by 50%

Acceleration and Speed didn't seem to matter much in the long run, which made Discovery a weaker spaceship to choose. Acceleration has been buffed to increase Discovery's ability to recover from attacks.

On a side note, buffing Speed is problematic as it makes it harder for ships to stay in the safezone, especially in the later parts of a round. The slight difference in top speed that the Speed stat makes should be OK for now.

Handling stat effectiveness increased by 50%

This buff targets Serenity, as it's high Handling stat didn't see much benefit. In a game like Arcfest, handling won't ever be valued as much as defense, though this hopefully should prevent Serenity from feeling too underpowered.

The base handling of spaceships has been reduced so Andromeda's calculated handling remains the same.

Features

• Spaceship trails now highlight when a dash is currently active

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a bug where the game would freeze if both players died at the same time.
• Fixed a bug where the health percentage could go to zero percent (percentages are now always rounded up to the highest integer)
• Fixed a bug where the very center of an arena would still be marked as a safe zone, allowing rounds to last indefinitely.