Breachway News

[p]Hey folks,
we started the balance patch cycle, and boy is there a lot to balance!

Which is why we are going to put out a balance patch daily for the next week at least.

These patches won't be big, but it will slowly and consistently nudge things back into balance.

We hope we can get a discussion going around balance in this post's thread and on our Discord, your opinion really matters and we'd love to hear it. It'd also be great if you could take the time to share your thoughts in a Steam review as well.

Note: You will have to start a new run after you update [/p][p][/p][p]In today's patch we focused on a the following: [/p]

• [p]Making resource bays actually useful - The resource equipment hasn't been in a good state for a while, and we're working on improving it. For the first step, we've looked at the drafting libraries, and stripped away all complicated cards that didn't do much and just kept the basic, straightforward cards.
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• [p]Giving the players more credits, especially in the first sector. The second sector is tough, really tough, but instead of weakening the enemies, we'd like to try to give you more options in growing stronger. As a result all enemies now give you more credits on being defeated
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• [p]Turning the Lancer into a viable ship by giving it some basic missile defense via a crew ability, more attack power in the form of starting Kinetic shots and an upgraded Drill round as well as making its passive ability trigger more often. Additionally, we added some use for that +1 Security crewmember ability via an upgraded Glitch card.
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[p]
Change log:
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• [p] The lancer's passive, Overflow, now gives you a Battery Surge card for every 10 energy spent (was previously 12)
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• [p] Replaced the Lancer starting railgun cards with 2 Kinetic Rounds, and 1 upgraded Drill round
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• [p] Replaced the Lancer AI crewmember with Evelyn Ryant, giving you access to the Countermeasures crew ability (destroying 1 missile)
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• [p] First sector enemies give on average 10 more credits on being defeated
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• [p] Second sector enemies give on average 20 more credits on being defeated
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• [p] First sector boss gives on average 50 more credits on being defeated
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• [p]Supply depot Mk.I now has the following cards in its drafting library: Ammo Dump, Asteroid Ore, Energy Reserves
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• [p]Supply depot Mk.II now has the following cards in its drafting library: Ammo Dump+, Asteroid Ore+, Energy Reserves+, Ammo replicator, Energy Replicator, Mass Replicator
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• [p]Resource Convertor Mk.I now has the following cards in its drafting library: Optimization, Conservation, Equivalence, Mass Surge, Energy Surge, Ordnance Surge
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• [p]Resource Convertor Mk.II now has the following cards in its drafting library: Optimization+, Conservation+, Equivalence+, Mass Surge+, Energy Surge+, Ordnance Surge+
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• [p]Refiner Mk.I now has the following cards in its drafting library: Attack Gambit, Tactical Gambit, Support Gambit, Mass Accretion, Energy Infusion, Ammo forge
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• [p]Refiner Mk.II now has the following cards in its drafting library: Attack Gambit+, Tactical Gambit+, Support Gambit+, Mass Accretion+, Energy Infusion+, Ammo forge+
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• [p]Attack Gambit now gives you 1 Ordnance for each Attack card in hand
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• [p]Tactical Gambit now gives you 1 Energy for each Tactical card in hand
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• [p]Support Gambit now gives you 1 Mass for each Support card in hand
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[p] That's it for today!

~ The Breachway Team[/p]

Hotfix patch nodes

• Honed shot: Fixed an issue where the cost of the card could go into the negative if 4+ brittle was applied to the enemy
  
• Restrain: Fixed an issue where the card would not work on most bosses and elites
  
• Neutralize: Fixed an issue where the card would not work on most bosses and elites
  
• Pacify: Fixed an issue where the card would not work on most bosses and elites
  
• FR S01 Elite: Was over-tuned last patch by mistake, its shields have now been weakened. It will now play charged barrier twice before playing field stabilizer.
  

We are currently looking into the hanging missiles, memory leak and crash issues, but these bugs will take a longer time to track down, we are going to hopefully have an update with fixes later this week.

In parallel, we have also starting looking at game balance, so please share any impressions and thoughts about the current state of the balance on our Discord or through the Steam forums

The Breachway Team

Hi, as some of you might have noticed, there have been a couple of updates over the weekend, including another one just now.

The major reason we patched the game was to fix the vulnerability discovered in games build with Unity 2017 and onwards, but we also managed to fix some of the issues some of you reported.

Here is a list of what has been fixed:

• Fixed a soft-lock that could occur when entering a station - a lot of you have pointed this out, hopefully the fix will address all cases of this soft lock
  
• Merchant ship: Fixed a soft-lock when choosing the Ace Pilot chase option, and receiving a reward
  
• Defense lattice: Fixed bug where it would not give you any bonus shield
  
• Energy Spike, Energy Spike+: Fixed bug where playing these cards would give you a debuff
  
• Eraser+: Corrected the text on the card, reflecting the fact that it removes all of a card's pips on destroying an equipment
  
• Fixed equipment tagging for some enemies that head untagged weapons/shield, thus making some hacking cards that specifically targeted those equipment types not have the desired result
  
• Field stabilizer: Fixed missing variable in the card's description text
  
• Radiator Mk III: Added the correct drafting library to it (it mistakenly used the Mk.II drafting library)
  
• Slightly increased the text contrast on the reactor upgrade buttons
  
• FR S01 Elite was buffed to bring it in line with the power level of the other elites. It plays 1 Rampart every 2 turns, and constantly buffs his shield
  

Thank you for the reports, there are a couple of bigger bugs and a dozen or so smaller ones we are aware of and are actively working on fixing, so expect more updates in the coming days.

The Breachway Team

[p]Hey everyone,
It’s finally time for another update!

This one focuses on addressing one of the biggest points of confusion in Breachway: enemy design and combat clarity.

Originally, we tried to make our enemies modular, essentially assembling them from equipment pieces that handled all of their logic and behavior. We hoped this would lead to interesting, emergent encounters.
Instead, it created enemies that were overly complex, confusing, and — ironically — kind of bland.

To make matters worse, enemies hadn’t been updated to use the new equipment and card systems we introduced back in June, meaning they were missing entire mechanics and interactions.
That mix of blandness, confusion, and inconsistent difficulty really hurt the experience, so we decided to rebuild enemies from the ground up.

[/p][h3]A Quick Note[/h3][p]Please keep in mind that this update is massive. Dozens of new enemies, over twenty new cards, new station functionality, and a much wider range of possible builds.

We’ve tested everything thoroughly, but there’s only so much a small team can catch when it comes to bugs and balance.

[/p][h3]Steam Reviews: Feedback Helps Build Breachway[/h3][p]This is where you come in: your feedback is invaluable. We read through the reviews, and it's a powerful way to let us know what works, what you'd like changed, or if you enjoy the recent patch. Please help us improve this update further by reporting any issues you find and sharing your balance suggestions on the forums or Discord. You can also join our community on our subreddit, r/Breachway.

[/p][h2]Rethinking Enemies[/h2][hr][/hr][p]We went back to the drawing board. Rather than thinking of enemies as bundles of complex systems, we focused on them individually:
What makes each one interesting to fight?

We also realized a key mistake in our original approach: trying to make enemies play the same cards as the player.
That’s fine for the player, stringing together intricate combos is part of the fun.
But when enemies did it, it just became hard to follow.
So, we set some new design rules:
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• [p]No more same-turn effects, every change in enemy stats (damage boosts, buffs, etc.) don't affect any cards played in the current turn, giving you time to react.
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• [p]All enemy actions must be clearly readable.
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• [p]And most importantly, it’s okay for enemies to have unique, even overpowered cards. This makes their actions more impactful, without the kind of combo gymnastics a player would need to go through.
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[h2]Patch Notes[/h2][hr][/hr][p]Enough talk however, here are the patch notes for this update:
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• [p]Reworked 42 enemies: some have been updated, most are brand new
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• [p]8 New elites, completely replacing the old set
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• [p]4 New bosses for the end of sector 1, each offering a unique challenge
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• [p]Reworked Sector 2 boss: the old version was the epitome of what went wrong with our enemy design: overly complex, hard to follow, and frustratingly difficult. It’s been retired for now, and we’ll add more variety for Sector 2 bosses soon.
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• [p]New enemy cards and effects: first sector enemies are simpler and easier to read, while second sector enemies now have a few new tricks up their sleeves.
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• [p]Improved enemy card clarity: you can now see the amount of shred and ignite enemy attacks will do, without having to read the card text (which is still strongly recommended!)
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• [p]Crew hiring at stations: you can now recruit new crew members at stations. It’s not cheap, but an extra card slot can make all the difference.
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• [p]Removed the Tactical hardpoint type: shield and hacking equipment now goes on the Utility hardpoint instead. This makes ships more similar in the short term, but with the upside of opening up a lot more build variety during your run. We’ll keep refining ship differentiation in future updates.
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• [p]New map node icons: reward nodes, merchants, repair ships, and fuel ships each have their own distinct icon and are now visible on the map.
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• [p]Improved card drafting: you’ll no longer see the same card shown twice in a row (though there’s a known issue where you might still see duplicates in two-option drafts — we’ll fix that soon!).
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• [p]Neutral combat events, both for Elites and regular enemies. This allows us to make the faction combat encounters more impactful in the future, and allows you to hunt elites free of any repercussions on faction relations
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• [p]Many smaller changes and fixes throughout the game.
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[h2]What’s Next[/h2][hr][/hr][p]We know everyone’s eager for the third sector, but we couldn’t keep building new content on a shaky foundation. We felt this rework was necessary.

The good news is that we’ve built a ton of new enemies recently, and that momentum isn’t slowing down.
The third sector is now our top priority, and moving forward, our focus is on iteration and maintaining a steady cadence of updates as we develop it in parallel. No more months-long reworks!

Beyond the third sector, this is what we plan to work on in the near future:
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• [p] Alternate sector layouts, this will come in the next update a couple of weeks from now
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• [p] Improved and more streamlined tutorial, offload some of the information presented in the tutorial to the game itself, to be presented when necessary
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• [p] Crew levels
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• [p] Split equipment into smaller, more varied equipment types, with a more focused drafting table. We want to put more emphasis on your ship loadout
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• [p] 1 more hardpoint for each ship
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• [p] Reworked waypoint nodes, populated with more interesting encounters (we have some great ones in the works)
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• [p] Worldbuilding- we are going to further flesh out the world and story in new events and crew interactions
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[p]That's it for this update.

Thank you for your continued support and encouragement.

We hope you'll enjoy this new update.

- The Breachway Team

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