Approaching Infinity News

I just discovered a bug with the new cryo tube pickup found in silver caves that gave my away team 5 million HP! That's a little too big to just let go, so you get a hotfix.

And since I was able to review over 1600 away missions from the weekend, I've made *more* balance changes:

• Further increased the low end of suit HP by 2.
  
• Somewhat reduced the high end of suit hp.
  
• Increased the possible random scaling of monsters against large away teams by about 2%
  

And then this happened:

Changes to the devices "crew toroid" and "life support", regarding away team size:

Away team size is calculated as your number of crew divided by 4, with a minimum of 4 and a maximum of 12. The officer skill "Personnel" increases this maximum by 1 per level, after the maximum. That means if you've got 100 crew, your away team maxes at 12, but personnel can bring that up to 13 or 14.

Now (not before), these two devices will increase the maximum, meaning you can start with 13 or 14 (or 15 with both), and then add your extra one or two, for some *really large away teams*!

What's the difference? For one thing, the skill reduces hiring costs while the device does not.
And the skill benefits smaller crews by always having an effect, while the devices benefit larger crews, allowing them to field more of their available resources (aka redshirts / "people").

Bonus: away team size is now shown in parentheses on the "crew" readout of your ship.



The skill "Power-Leap" now has a range of 3. This may go back down, but there are some things to keep in mind about this skill: you still get to do something *else* after you use power leap (it doesn't end your turn) , and ... skills may be upgrade-able in the future, in a not-yet-introduced area of the game, so even if they start a bit weak, you may be able to put more resources into them for upgrading purposes.

Now let me get back to work :p

Greetings Captains! After reviewing your after-action reports and official communiques, more changes are incoming.


Across all away missions with away team size less than 8, crew losses (and entire landing-party losses) have increased up to 20%! This was not intended, but thanks to modern game design techniques, it can be corrected!

Accordingly, the following changes are effective immediately:

• Slightly increased hit points of suits, especially early ones.
  
• Reduced the damage of ALL planet monsters by about 10%.
  
• Smaller away teams will sometimes encounter slightly weaker enemies.
  
• Slightly increased the upper limit for monsters to scale
• up* for larger away teams.
  

Meanwhile, deaths are actually down somewhat for large away teams (also not intended). Some difficulty increase has been felt, because there has been a significant decrease in "missions where no one dies". Less has been done this week regarding larger away teams, so that the focus can remain on getting early game missions to feel "right".



For the sake of analysis, I refer to using grenades, activating skills, and swapping weapons as "tactical actions". I recently discovered that a majority of away missions don't use any tactical actions at all.

What's wrong with that?
I want Approaching Infinity to present you with the right level of challenge, and I want you to feel like all the stuff you've collected and equipped is actually useful. I consider this a problem, and I intend to fix it.

I did get some very useful direct feedback here on Steam about this. It seems that in many cases, skills have excessive cooldowns, not enough power, or even not enough fuel (gel). And while grenades were always intended to be used sparingly, I don't think *never* using them is any fun...

To this end, the following changes have been made:

• Reduced cooldowns on majority of (ALL?!) activated skills.
  
• Increased potency of some skills.
  
• Increased the spawn rate of cyber-gel from lockers.
  
• All level-related limitations on cooldown skills have been removed! (That means a level one officer can equip 2 skills!)
  
• Fixed an error in the early game where you would find skills that you couldn't use
  
• Increased ammo for most (but not all) grenade types.
  
• Created a new device, the "Grenade Replenisher", that slowly restores the ammunition of your grenades while you are in space (but
• not* while on away missions)!
  

At this point, there's not much I can do to actively encourage weapon swaps, but the secret feature I've been working on might ;) I'll be very excited to see the results of these changes at the end of the week. I hope to see far more skills and grenades being used.

The great rebalaning isn't over yet, but I think I'll be able to reveal my "secret new feature" soon.

• Added new cave level type : silver caves
  
• Added "cryogenic freezer" pickup, which can contain crew members, sentient aliens, or zombies!
  
• Added new weapon mod : "Needle", which can be applied to most physical-projectile weapons. Its damage type is still "piercing".
  
• Added "Gyrojet" weapon modification for pistols, rifles, shotguns, and snipers. Slow-firing, with increased range and explosive damage.
  
• Added more planet names in Resistance sectors.
  
• Added lockers and furniture to former human colonies.
  
• Music tracks will now fade out if you change areas and they're no longer appropriate.
  
• Crash sites ("technology") should no longer destroy walls on loot stockades (or anywhere else).
  
• Reduced the amount that "cave depth explored" adds to survey value.
  
• Computer terminals now have 8 different animated versions (thanks David!)
  
• Reduced the number of merc bases that will spawn on any given planet.
  
• Fixed a bug where the captain's "10% HP bonus" was not always being taken into account.
  

• Artifacts can no longer be destroyed during identification. (This may change!)
  
• When identifying artifacts, the game now remembers your previous choices for you, and anything that has failed in the past will now be colored red.
  
• Added a new "bad artifact ID" outcome that reduces the artifact's effectiveness by about 33%.
  

That's it for now, but there's so much more to come!

Greetings Captains! The past week was spent working on a brand new feature (that you won't see yet), while passively collecting data on away missions.

From that data, I can make a few generalizations about version 1.6M5 :

• The vast majority of away missions seem to make it back to the shuttle.
  
• Away team size plays a huge part in mission survivability. (Having 15+ crew members seems to guarantee survival!)
  
• A large percentage of missions don't involve using skills, grenades, or weapon swaps. (Is this due to lack of challenge, or players not understanding those options are available?)
  
• Squither larva kill the most crew by far, followed by cyclopeans, gnashers, and zombies.
  
• Certain common monsters are guaranteed to kill at least some of your crew: giant snails (surprise!), narcratu, gruff soldiers and the gorgonleaf.
  
• Rare monsters to look out for are the vordalene mutant, hungry rock, and banker security droid.
  

Note that away missions to locations without monsters are not counted, and neither are any games played on easy difficulty.


[h3]"The Great Rebalancing", phase 3[/h3]

The major change in this version is to increase mid- to late-game monster difficulty, while trying to keep the early game mostly the same. One notable change that will affect everyone (positively) is ... more oxygen!

I'll continue working on the new secret feature while the numbers keep rolling in. I plan for phase 4 (next week) to be the final segment of the great rebalancing, then we can all move on to other things!

Small changes:

• Bandit machines spawn less often.
  
• The "Energize" skill now reduces cooldowns by 75% (instead of 50%).
  
• City walls can become infected with lichen spores.
  
• On the mini-map, the player icon and any area transitions are now animated.
  

Until next time...

Greetings, Captain! After weeks of analysis, testing, and tweaking, "The Great Rebalancing" is moved into the main branch, with version 1.6M5 (Star Trek reference definitely intended). The beta test was successful, and revealed a few issues that you'll never have to encounter.



Purpose:
To modulate difficulty over time, creating both peaks ("challenge") as well as troughs ("feeling powerful"). Sometimes you need to feel like you're surviving by the skin of your teeth, solely by your sound tactical decisions. Other times you experience being so ripped and equipped that you can mow down hordes of enemies at your leisure.


Method:
All creatures encountered on away missions have had their stats tweaked. This is mostly hit points and damage, but also some changes to speed and powers were made. Many monsters are designed with a specific counter weapon and/or damage type in mind, so it will really help to pay attention to whether your attacks are working (check those resistances and vulnerabilities!).

But adjusting monsters wasn't enough. The hit points of suits (and therefore your away team) were increased, and so was the damage done by your weapons. You should now see a more reliable power progression over time.


Result:
Ground combat is now more in line with what it should be.

I THINK.

But let me know what *you* think, okay? Hailing frequencies are open...



Because there will be a

Where I take all your feedback, find out which monsters are too weak or too strong, etc. and make everything just right.



I'll spend next week analyzing the data, and preparing to transition to version 1.7 soon.

The stats of all monsters encountered on away missions have been modified! Now I need you,
Brave Beta Tester, to go out there and kill or be killed ;) That's right, the changes are just in the beta branch right now, so if you're not ready to deal with that, it's fine (for now).


But be careful! The hit points of space suits have been increased, and the same goes for the damage of new weapons. Sounds great, but it also means that your existing equipment might not be up to the task of defeating these newly-empowered monsters.


I'll go into more detail on this later, but for now, just let me know how it's going... Too easy? Too hard? Just right?!


Here are some other fixes and changes available in the beta branch:

• Updated another 120 images!
• Solved a problem of away team image doubling.
  
• Added a range-based darkening of tiles on away missions
  
• Increased the shotgun's number of adjacent targets hit to 3.
  
• Fixed a display error on the stats screen that showed the away team was being sped up instead of slowed down.
  
• Discovered and corrected a survey loading error.
  
• Increased the prices of all components by a small but constant amount.
  
• Minefields and dark nebula can no longer spawn in sectors 1-4,
  
• "Rare growths" no longer spawn before sector 10. (They still can't be picked up yet.)
  
• Added a new starter quest about fully equipping the away team.
  Planetary bio-signature can now be "off the charts", and be inhabited by any kind of monster.