Great game, I've had a lot of fun plating it.
Maybe just luck, but I was able to break the balance by finding a sector where I could handle the debuffs and constantly revisited jump points. Additionally, the Experimental Weapon card quickly became very powerful by upgrading the charge level, even without the grinding.
Some suggestions:
-Maybe don't outright nerf the player's ability to draw, discard, and play 0 cost cards, but have an enemy type (or boss) that punishes the player for these things. Some unbalanced examples:
| Enemy Passive | Effect |
| Suppressive fire | Deal 4 Ion damage for every three cards played in a turn. [Encourages a deck that can do more with less cards played or can counter the chip damage] |
| Building rage | Every other time this enemy takes hull damage add the following buff(s): precision, anti missile ammo, shield regen, etc. [Encourages a deck that can deal hull damage quickly (plasma) or that can counter enemy buffs] |
| System jamming | Each time the player's discard pile is reshuffled add 3 unplayable trash cards. [Don't build a small 8 card deck of very powerful cards] |
| Reactive shields | Every time this enemy takes hull damage, it gains 10 shields and 5 shield reflect. [Makes missiles and ion much more important, I didn't find either to be worth the deck space.] |
| Damage control | Every time that this enemy takes more than 5 hull damage in a strike, it gains 3 shields, 3 ablative armor (single hit armor plating), 1 missile diffuse, and repairs 3 damage. [Be able to ramp your damage up or just have high damage cards.] |
| Evasive maneuvers | Completely negate the effects of the player's first offensive card every turn. [Be able to burn the dodge with something weak or use explosive cards.] |
(Edit: I noticed that some of these are handled with timeline debuffs.)
-I didn't pick up the prejudiced payload card in my playthrough out of caution. If the ion damage is applied first rather than simultaneously, you could write it as "Deal 7 ion damage, then deal 7 energy damage."
That said, I appreciate you guys putting this out for free. The crafting was novel and fun, especially when the corrupted shard unceremoniously deleted a card. "Huh"