Approaching Infinity News

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.

Greetings galactic explorers! There's a small update this weekend in all branches:

• Fixed medical bay device description
  
• Attempted to fix an error where ship weapons given as quest rewards are sometimes not the specified size.
  
• More than quadrupled the number of last names for officers.
  
• Officer rescue quests now usually offer away team equipment as a reward instead of credits.
  
• Fire and gases now appear transparent on top of the player and monsters
  
• I spent a large part of this week on a special new monster that will probably not be introduced until sometime in version 1.7 , but I think it will be worth it.
  

These are the main goals of version 1.6 (current development cycle):

Fixing bugs and making quality-of-life improvements
• That's a constant!
  
Presenting more depth and "promise of things to come" in the early game.
• Letting players interact with the sentient alien races sooner.
  
• Giving starter quests to point new players in the right direction.
  
• Making more monsters available, and working to make them not repeat too much.
  
Balancing the difficulty of away team combat.
• Adding damage types (fire, shock, cryo, etc.) to away team weapons.
  
• Giving officers activated skills with cool-downs.
  
• Giving monsters powers to balance that out!
  
• Analyzing and changing monster hit points and damage.
  

Of course there were many other awesome developments along the way, but those are the ones I set out specifically to accomplish. And aside from the very last point, "balancing monster stats", those things have been DONE!


So the next step is obvious: let's get those monsters balanced!


As I mentioned, I'll be away March 29th - April 5th, so when I come back, I'll get straight to work on those numbers. (I might even start before I leave). I also expect to be able to give you a decent preview of what version 1.7 will entail...


So: if there are any big problems with today's version (1.6L) , let me know ASAP, so I can fix it *before* I go away, ok?


Thanks, and enjoy!

• Away team auto-movement no longer avoids harmless gasses.
  
• Fixed an out-of-bounds error concerning shock weapons and water ;)
  
• Confirmed shuttle ace is working as intended.
  
• Ship repair devices and skills now help repair the shuttle when it is damaged beyond normal.
  

Approaching Infinity has a brand new Steam trailer. Even if you already own the game, you might get a kick out of watching it... Just make sure to have your sound on ;)

Or you can watch the almost-final version on Youtube:
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]



Here's something suggested by a player here on Steam: whenever you have the maximum number of officers and you detect "human life signs" on a planet, you now have the option of rescuing them. (In the past, they were just turned into "human remains" instead...)

It's just one more small way that the universe is becoming more "alive".



(These are taken straight from the list of daily accomplishments on the Approaching Infinity Discord)

• Reduced the value of planetary surveys
  
• Each race now prefers surveys of a specific type of planet (vordalene like barren planets, humans like terran, etc.)
  
• You can no longer survey Whiteworlds (their value was negative!)
  
• The "trader" starting quest can now be completed by purchasing 200 commodities.
  
• I took aggressive action against warping into the middle of an asteroid belt or ion storm (you're welcome!)
  
• I have addressed monster permanence issues. (This makes alien spaceships behave more as intended.)
  
• "Crew lost" stat now includes crew killed in every way (I think), not just on away missions.
  
• Shrank the purple diamond on the mini-map that represents items.
  
• Increased the display size of space stations and the warp point on the main map.
  
• Stopped the over-spawning of quest items in the same sector.
  
• When you kill a Holeworm, there is now a 33% chance that the sinkhole will collapse
  
• When doing the Bankers "deposit money" quests, you now get a pop-up message asking if you want to pay now.
  
• I fixed a visual bug when unlocking a ship by completing a quest. (they were displayed on top of each other)
  
• I fixed some sounds that were playing even if you had sound turned off.
  
• I increased the sensitivity or the mouse-wheel for zooming in and out.
  
• (Thanks to some discord users for many of these... If you've got suggestions, that's a great place to have them addressed)
  
• Got 29 new "HD" sets of shipwreck walls from David!

Work continues this week, but on Monday March 29th I will be going away for an entire week! My wife is vaccinated and so are her parents. My mom is vaccinated and I should be getting my first shot this week. SO WE ARE GOING TO SEE OUR FAMILIES!

So I plan not to make any major changes near the end of the week, to avoid problems while I'm away.

Take care and enjoy,

Bob / IBOL17