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Mechabellum Dev Log #1

Greetings, my fellow commanders! Thanks for all your support, Mechabellum had a great EA launch with a 91% recommend rate! Here is our first Dev Log. And we will try to post Dev Log regularly in the future to show you guys what are working on and answer all your questions.

[h2]The Roadmap[/h2]
Important note: Game development is complicated and full of uncertainty, the roadmap is subject o change.

Before the end of June
-Improve the matchmaking experience, automatches will be using the standard Elo rating system.
-Enable players to vote to speed up game progress.
-Enable spectator delay by default in automatches and tournaments.
-Improve the report system, so we can manage the public chat better.
-Make 1-2 balance adjustments.
-Implement Various quality-of-life improvements.
-Add several new unit techs.

Before the end of July
-Launch the Credits Store, which includes avatars, avatar frames, and emotes.
-Add a third device besides Sentry Missiles and Shield Generators: Missile Interceptor
-Add fortification upgrades to the core buildings, which can consume supplies to increase the HP of core buildings.
-Optimize the replay viewing experience.
-Optimize the lobby UI layout.
-Add more unit techs and reinforcement cards.

Before the end of August
-Allows AI to take over surrendered teammates in 2v2 and continue the game.
-Add a more compact 2v2 map
-Add super giant unit: War Factory.
-Add unit skins to the credit store.

Farther
-Added 4-player free for all mode.
-Optimize the experience of survival mode.
-Adds 2 new core units: Wraith(air) and Scorpian(land). The unit names are temporary.
-Add 4-6 experimental units, they are enhanced (often enlarged) variants of existing units, and they will first appear as bosses in survival mode.

[h2]Answering community Questions[/h2]
Yes, we read most of your comments under Patchnotes, your posts on Steam Discussion and Discord, and we watch Twitch streams regularly to see how players with different skill levels play.

Can I become stronger by paying(Pay to Win) in the future?
No.

Will you continue to update the game?
We have big plans for the game still for the Early Access phase, so we will continue to update the game for sure. After the early access period, we will keep updating the game for as long as possible.

Will you make improvements to the matchmaking experience?
The current combat power system is designed for a small community of players who mainly fight in the lobby. At present, it has not been able to bring an excellent experience to players who play auto matchmaking, and many players cannot be matched with suitable opponents. We will add a new matchmaking system based on the standard Elo method as soon as possible in June, which will work together with the current combat power system. And we will keep improving the matchmaking experience.

In the later stage of a battle, sometimes the pace is very slow, is there a way to speed it up?
In the future, we will automatically speed up battles in some situations, such as when one side has only air forces left and the other side has no anti-air units. In addition, we will also add the function of players from both sides voting to speed up the battle

Sentry missile is so powerful, why?
Sentry missiles, shield devices, nukes, and various commands in the command center, they all take on an important role in the game: allowing players to quickly increase their own strength to solve problems in the current round at the expense of long-term economy. Because of their existence, the power curves of both players will lead alternately in a game, which is why comebacks happen so frequently in this game. Although the Sentinel Missile is very powerful in the current round, because it can only explode once, it will hurt the player's long-term economy. We think the current strength of sentry missiles is appropriate, and the offense and defense around sentry missiles provide more strategy for the game.

Are the nukes in the Research Center hurting the strategy of the game?
Our original intention of designing the nuke is to provide players with a way to immediately forcefully break the enemy lineup in the current round at the cost of future economy. But at present, because it is often difficult for weaker players to grasp the timing to use nukes, nukes often become the advantage amplifiers for leading players in the lower ladder. And nukes give aggressive strategies too much advantage. Taking these factors into consideration, in the recent patch, we decided to move Nuke out of the Reseachcenter and make it a reinforcement card with a price of 350.

Will there be new units?
At present, we still have 3 planned core units that have not yet been released. One is a super giant unit that costs 800 supplies, one is a medium ground unit that costs 300 supplies, and one is a medium air unit that costs 300 supplies. In addition to the 3 new core units, we are also making 4-6 units which are experimental variants of the current units, often very large in size, with powerful attributes and techs, and they will first be used as bosses in survival mode and may later be moved to PvP battles as reinforcements card. Beyond all this, we will try to introduce non-mech units in the future when we have the time and capacity to design and test them fully.

That's all for today. We will try to make this Dev Log a regular thing. Thank you all for reading and supporting us, write in the comment section, Discord server, or Steam Discussion if you have more questions, and we will try to answer them in the next Dev Log. See you around!

Update 0.7.6

[h2]Update 0.7.6[/h2]
[h3]Preface[/h3]
Throughout the Early Access period, we will regularly add new game content and regularly make large-scale balance adjustments based on the data and feedback collected. If you're interested in our update plans and why we've made various balance decisions, check out our regular development log on Steam.
[h3]Survival Mode[/h3]
Now when the unit loses all of its durability, the full cost will be refunded.

[h3]Units and Battle[/h3]
Overlord
HP increased by 3%.
The price of [Overlord Artillery] has been adjusted from 250 to 300.
The price of [Jump Drive] has been adjusted from 150 to 200.
[Photon Emission] price adjusted from 300 to 350.
[Mothership] production interval adjusted from 26 seconds to 28 seconds.

Vulcan
HP increased by 3%.
Increase attack by 5%.

Melting Point
HP increased by 3%.
Base range adjusted from 110 to 115.
[Energy Diffraction] range reduction adjusted from 25 to 30

Rhino
[Photon Coating] price adjusted from 250 to 300
[Final Blitz] price adjusted from 250 to 300
[Power Armor] price adjusted from 250 to 300
Rhino's attack interval is adjusted from 0.7 seconds to 1 second, and the damage per hit is increased to 3297

Fortress
HP increased by 3%
[Improved Fortress] card effect is adjusted to: the HP of the Fortress is increased by 50%, the attack is increased by 30%, and the movement speed is increased by 3, but the recruitment cost is increased by 100.

Steel Ball
Attack increased by 10%
New Technology [Heavy Target]: Decrease range by 10, when switching target, lock-on priority is given to the unit with the highest HP in range.
The effect of the [Improved Steel Ball] card is adjusted to: Steel Ball's attack increased by 50%, HP increased by 30%, and movement speed increased by 3, but the recruitment cost increased by 50.
[Extended range Steel Ball] is removed from the game.

Wasp
New Technology [Air Defense Specialization]: Attack against air units is increased by 75%, and the range when attacking air units is increased by 30.

Fang
Attack adjusted from 54 to 55.

Hacker
Hacker's attack increased by 6%.
The effect of [Multiple Control] is adjusted to: the range of the hacker is reduced by 25 meters, but 5 control beams can be fired, and the control efficiency of each control beam is 17% of the original.

Core Buildings
The EXP of destroying the core structure has been reduced to 100, which is the same as the experience value of killing a squad of crawlers.
Adjusted the duration of the paralyzed state after the core building is destroyed from 13 seconds to 9 seconds.
The HP of core buildings has been increased from 3200 to 3400.
Now when two core buildings are destroyed in a short time, the duration of the paralyzed state will be stacked.
Nuke was removed from the Research Center and became a reinforcement card between rounds for 350.
Sticky Oil Bombs are placed in the Research Center with a cooling time of 3 rounds and a cost of 150.

Starting Specialist
New starting specialist:[Heavy Armor Specialist]: HP of all units increased by 17%.
Adjusted the effect of Elite specialist: Obtain an extra 50 supplies in the first round, able to immediately recruit Lv. 2 units.
Adjusted Cost Control Specialist's HP and ATK reduction from 15% to 13%.
Starting specialist's HP adjustments
-Supply specialist's player health bonus adjusted from 0 to -300
-Air Specialist's player health bonus adjusted from 400 to 300
-Rhino Specialist's player health bonus adjusted from 200 to -400
-Cost Control Specialist's player health bonus adjusted from 0 to 200

Starting Units
Adjusted player health bonuses for most starting units based on the latest win rate stats.

Other balance Adjustments
Lightning Storm price adjusted to 350.
Air Specialists will no longer appear in reinforcement cards between rounds
Adjusted the damage reduction effect of photon effects from 55% to 50%
Added Elite Variant cards for most non-giant units, appearing only after round 5, allowing direct recruitment of Lv. 3 units.

[h3]Other[/h3]
Slightly optimized the performance of the unit transformation scene.
Both automatch and tournaments have spectator delay enabled by default.
Slightly adjusted the rules for obtaining combat power in the tournament, now high-scoring players will no longer lose significantly more points than they score.

[h3]Bugfixes[/h3]
Fixed an issue where photon effects from different kinds of sources could stack.

Update 0.7.5

[h2]Update 0.7.5[/h2]
[h3]Slightly increased 2v2 match times to match players with more suitable opponents.[/h3]
[h3]Slightly increased the sending interval of public chat.[/h3]
[h3]Fixed an issue where 【HIDE PUBLIC CHAT WHILE IN COMBAT】in Settings would be incorrectly reset after each login.[/h3]
[h3]Fixed an issue where sometimes the game would speed up to 2.5 times randomly.[/h3]
[h3]Fixed a loophole in the combat power system, now high combat power players who have not participated in tournaments will also lose points in the lobby battle as other high combat power players.[/h3]
[h3]Fixed some other bugs.[/h3]

Update 0.7.4

[h2]Update 0.7.4[/h2]
[h3]Fixed an issue where some players were unable to enable VSync.[/h3]
[h3]Note: The control panel of some graphics card drivers has the option to forcibly turn off VSync, which will cause VSync to fail to be enabled in the game. If you still want to enable VSync in the game, you need to go to the control panel of the graphics card driver to enable it.[/h3]
[h3]Now players in some regions will block the Steam avatar by default, you can reopen the display of the Steam avatar in the settings.[/h3]

Update 0.7.3

[h2]Update 0.7.3 - GPU problem fix[/h2]
[h3]Fixed the issue that some driver settings cause the GPU to run at full load during game. For some players, the load of the graphics card will be significantly reduced.[/h3]
[h3]Optimized the network strategy, and the login speed of some players will be significantly improved.[/h3]