Hey Spacelords!

Welcome to the second instalment of the State of the Game Address. As with our previous article, we want to shed some light over some of the more candent topics and concerns shared by our community.

We have been following many threads in our official forums, and in our Twitter and Facebook accounts, about Spacelords’ Difficulty and MMR systems, two different but closely intertwined concepts. We hope the following post helps shedding some light over this subject. You can read all about it in the Spacelords Website

We hope you find this post informative. If you have any questions, let us know and the team will be happy to give you an answer. Thank you all and see you on the Broken Planet!

When she was just 20 years old, Ayana enlisted in the New Exeter, a notorious privateer spaceship under the famed Captain Jenkins. Ayana quickly found that she had a talent for piracy; always a fast learner, her combat and navigation skills improved by the day.

It wasn’t too long before Ayana was promoted to First Mate, and her fame steadily grew after each engagement, raid and plunder, until it reached the most remote corners of the galaxy. The legend of Ayana, “Captain of Captains”, had just began.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3KBj9qj_9U
The new “Recruit of the New Exeter” skin for Ayana is now available in Spacelords!

Nilben are fascinating creatures… They might as readily spit acid underwater than burst out a torrent of flame if they are in the surface. These little echinoderms can burn to ashes any unfortunate creature they deem as a threat -and that’s about anything within reach! Rak thought it would be fun to use the as munitions for a new weapon and throw them against his enemies. He just needed to remember to smear himself with Krogeront’s fat before doing that, lets he ends up scorched too!

Rak Mayura’s Nilben Launcher is now available in Spacelords. Play now for free!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGgSqBBqEQQ

This is a quick, one-fix patch.

Some cards combination allowed players to surpass the 100% barrier and thus became virtually invulnerable.

- Damage reduction value can never exceed 95%.


That’s all! Here is some nice picture for your enjoyment:

Many, many gameplay changes are coming today! We're fixing some economy issues as well as going hard on Raiders, Missions and Cards balance.

REWARDS

Bad streaks on Blueprint draws are rare thanks to the bonus chance after losing one Blueprint in a previous round, however, they are very unpleasing when they do happen. We've removed the loss of the Blueprint prize in the main map after losing the draw.

- One-time rewards are no longer consumed when you lose the draw.
- Mission requisite to get a Common Blueprint changed from "Win the mission" to "Score over 2"

ANTAGONIST

Playing as the Antagonist is meant to be challenging, but it's not meant to be a burden on the economy of the player. We've adjusted Antagonist's scores so that they will, on average, be similar to those of the Raiders and thus, earn the same amount of gold, faction points and have the same shot at blueprints as Raiders do. This means that Antagonist's scores may be well over 5 even when they lose the match if they perform good enough.

- Raider kills and match time now have more weight on score calculation.
- Antagonists can now get a scores above 5 even after losing a game.



MISSIONS

With the last patch we introduced a delay on using Dr.Kuzmann's levers without properly adressing the duration of Shae's electrocution. We're adressing this along with some extra touches on the Council Apocalypse campaign.

In Shock
- Greatly incrased Shae's electrocution duration.
- Decreased lever use time by 10%

A Breath of Hope
- Decreased Aleph charges needed on both second and third monolites by 10%
- Decreased Guardian's health by 10%

A Fistful of Sand
- Increased the Protector’s health by 10%

The Beast's Lair
- Decreased General Marmalade's life when not playing against an antagonist by 10%

The Destroyer of Worlds
- Increased Aneska's life when playing against an antagonist by 10%

Upside Down
- Reduced Kuzmann's crab health by 10%
- Added enemy turrets to the level.

Mind Over Matter
- Decreased the required number of enemies to pass the Fifth Council's exam by 10%
- Increased enemie's spawn rate by 5%


FACTIONS

Locals
- Increased Locals' life regeneration speed by 100%

Fifth Council
- Lowered Fifth Council player character's resistance to shooter damage from 60% to 50%

CHARACTERS

Harec
- Decreased Stalk's cooldown by 35%
- Increased Vindicta Anima's damage by 5%
- Increased Vindicta Anima's reload speed by 15%
- Increased movement speed when aiming with Vindicta Anima by 20%
- Increased movement speed when aiming with Ignis Fugit by 20%

Doldren
- Increased KLT-13's damage by 5%
- Increased KLT-13's fall off distance by 10%
- Decreased Patient Boy's clip size by 1
- Decreased Patient Boy's fall off distance by 45%
- Decreased KLT-13's reload speed by 7%
- Increased Bloody Mary's damage by 10%
- JK-5 can now perform Headshots (headshots instantly kill wounded characters)

Iune
- Last Wish can now perform Headshots (headshots instantly kill wounded characters)
- Sigh can now perform Headshots (headshots instantly kill wounded characters)

Valeria
- Decreased Little Girl's damage by 10%
- Decreased Little Girl's quantum projectile damage by 10%
- Decreased The Whip's damage by 20%
- Decreased The Whip's quantum projectile damage by 20%

Ginebra
- Decreased Hound's life from 60 to 50
- Decreased C33 SU-SCHLEUDER's damage by 5%
- Decreased JAVELIN URSA M-02's damage by 5%
- Decreased J.WHEEL M-11's damage by 10%



Ayana
- Increased Makilium's damage by 10%
- Increased Makilium's projectile re-check time to damage by 50%

Schneider
- Decreased Yama Boom Boom's damage by 5%

Konstantin
- Decreased Tolchok's damage by 5%

Hans
- Decreasad Heaven's Bane K8's damage by 5%

Rak
- Increased pishacha's regeneration cooldown by 20%
- Decreased Shepherd's damage by 5%

Alicia
- Decreased Rock&Roll's damage by 5%
- Decreased Rock&Roll's spread by 5%
- Decreased Rock&Roll's projectile explosion radius by 10%

Loath
- Decreased Bubble Gum's damage by 5%
- Increased Dragée's damage by 5%

H.I.V.E.
- Decreased Shy's clip by 1
- Decreased Shy's fire rate by 33%
- Increased Shy's infection time by 20%



CARDS

Locals
- Mystical Concentration: damage bonus increased from 25%/75% to 35%/100%
- Mystical Concentration (rare): damage bonus increased from 35%/75% to 50%/100%
- Patient: damage bonus increased from 60%/200% to 70%/250%. Required time to activate the card decreased from 6s to 4s.
- Patient (rare): damage bonus increased from 90%/200% to 110%/250%. Required time to activate the card decreased from 6s to 4s.
- Urgency: reload speed bonus increased from 70%/300% to 80%/300%
- Urgency (rare): reload speed bonus increased from 120%/300% to 80%/300%
- Abnegation: wounded time decrement bonus decreased from 30%/80% to 20%/60%
- Abnegation (rare): wounded time decrement bonus decreased from 50%/80% to 40%/60%
- Skill: reload speed bonus decreased from 13%/50% to 10%/30%
- Skill (rare): reload speed bonus decreased from 20%/50% to 15%/30%
- Merciless: damage bonus increased from 25%/80% to 35%/110%
- Merciless (rare): damage bonus increased from 40%/80% to 60%/110%
- At the last minute: damage bonus increased from 50%/150% to 60%/200%
- At the last minute (rare): damage bonus increased from 80%/150% to 100%/200%
- Lone vigilante: damage bonus increased from 50%/150% to 70%/250%
- Lone vigilante (rare): damage bonus increased from 80%/150% to 120%/250%

Fifth Council
- Failsafe: damage resistance bonus increased fro 30%/60% to 35%/60%
- Failsafe (rare): damage resistance bonus increased fro 40%/60% to 45%/60%
- Unlimited surge: activation time reduced from 60s to 40s
- Unlimited surge (rare): activation time reduced from 60s to 40s
- Effectiveness: damage bonus decreased from 5%/12% to 4%/12%
- Effectiveness (rare): damage bonus decreased from 7%/12% to 6%/12%
- Firewall: damage resistance bonus decreased from 40%/95% to 30%/90%
- Firewall (rare): damage resistance bonus decreased from 60%/95% to 45%/90%
- Reboot: regeneration bonus decreased from 110%/350% to 80%/300%
- Reboot (rare): regeneration bonus decreased from 170%/350% to 120%/300%

Hades Division
- Nerves of steel: reload speed bonus increased from 100%/400% to 120%/500%
- Nerves of steel (rare): reload speed bonus increased from 200%/400% to 240%/500%
- Charge: damage bonus increased from 15%/50% to 20%/60%
- Charge (rare): damage bonus increased from 20%/50% to 30%/60%
- Hard: damage resistance bonus increased from 25%/60% to 30%/60%
- Hard (rare): damage resistance bonus increased from 35%/60% to 40%/60%
- Cold blood: aleph meter shut off bonus decreased from 9s/120s to 8s/60s
- Cold blood (rare): aleph meter shut off bonus decreased from 16s/120s to 12s/60s
- Armor-plated ammo: damage bonus increased from 20%/40% to 25%/50%
- Armor-plated ammo (rare): damage bonus increased from 25%/40% to 35%/50%
- Spiral of violence: damage bonus decreased from 25%/60% to 15%/45%
- Spiral of violence (rare): damage bonus decreased from 35%/60% to 25%/45%
- Stealth: aleph meter attenuation bonus decreased from 35%/100% to 27%/100%
- Stealth (rare): aleph meter attenuation bonus decreased from 45%/100% to 37%/100%
- Professional: damage bonus increased from 30%/90% to 40%/100%
- Professional (rare): damage bonus increased from 45%/90% to 60%/100%
- Black belt: damage bonus decreased from 25%/65% to 17%/45%
- Black belt (rare): damage bonus decreased from 25%/65% to 25%/45%
- Survival: health bonus reduced from 80/240 to 60/200. Duration decreased from 10s to 8s
- Survival (rare): health bonus reduced from 120/240 to 90/200. Duration decreased from 10s to 8s

Umbra Wardogs
- Supreme tribal healing: regeneration speed bonus increased from 140%/500% to 160%/500%. Distance increased from 5m to 7m.
- Supreme tribal healing (rare): regeneration speed bonus increased from 250%/500% to 300%/500%. Distance increased from 5m to 7m.
- Natural selection: healing chance increased from 50%/100% to 55%/100%
- Motivation: damage resistance bonus decreased from 15%/40% to 12%/30%
- Motivation (rare): damage resistance bonus decreased from 22%/40% to 18%/30%
- Exacerbated: damage bonus increased from 60%/300% to 75%/300%
- Exacerbated (rare): damage bonus increased from 100%/300% to 140%/300%



BUG FIXES

- Fixed a bug that caused the main menu to freeze sometimes and block any possible action.
- Fixed a bug where the game was not giving PlayStation Plus’ associated skins to some users.
- Fixed a bug where the Antagonist could spawn in a different point than selected.
- Fixed a bug on Upside Down where the game could crash if the Raiders lost the match with an Elite soldier grab.
- Fixed several game crashes related to host migrations.
- Fixed a bug where Matchmaking was not working properly after cancelling a match in a squad.
- Fixed several bugs related to the squad system.
- Fixed a bug where Doldren's Bloody Mary was not resetting the score after reloading.
- Fixed a bug where if two Doldrens were on the same match with Bloody Mary, both weapons shared their score.
- Fixed a bug where Ginebra's S. Bogen C-A00 was not applying push correctly to Fifth Council's Elite Assault units.
- Fixed a bug where Lycus shield was not suffering damage from enemy bullets.

The Killerball is the name of Planet Mort’s official sport. The Killerball professional teams played its deadly matches using high-powered spheres that could harm, or even kill a careless player.

Not being quite an athlete himself, Schneider didn’t understand the rules very well, but he was fascinated about such a bloody sport where death was a common occurrence. Thus, he decided to create a drone able to shoot bouncing energy spheres as a homage to the one and only sport ever to interest him.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHeih-Uxfos

The Spacelords Team address the hottest community topics.

Dear Raiders and Antagonists,

Welcome to the first State of the Game Address. In this new section, the MercurySteam team would like to acknowledge the most candent topics shared by our community in Spacelords’ official forums, the game’s Steam forum, the unofficial Discord channel and our social media channels.

Previously this week, we released Spacelords’ Update 11.0, including many optimizations and upgrades to the game’s AI and Logic systems.

The feedback we are receiving is quite positive overall, but there are some topics our community is concerned about or would like to have a better understanding. Let’s have a look to the top 3.



1. MMR, game difficulty and disparate player levels.

With the new F2P model we have welcomed thousands of new players. These new users are very important for the future of game, and in time they will develop their skills and become really good players. We believe that, as more players enter the game, players will be better stratified between low, mid and high levels. Until we reach that sweet spot, though, we currently have new players mixed with dedicated veterans.

In an ideal world, matchmaking would flawlessly match players with absolute precision, and the system is designed to function with that goal in mind, but in real life time zones, geographical zones and connection speeds might affect the experience. Again, we keep working to minimize their impact.

Ideally, Spacelords matches players with compatible MMR, independently of their character level. It is entirely possible for a low-level player who recently joined the game to be matched in games with players with higher MMR, and facing and Antagonist with a superior Forge Level. We keep working on fine-tuning this system and improving the user experience.



2. Aneska Mentor Matches

This topic is related to the previous one. We implemented the mentor matches to support and reward veterans who give a helping hand to the players new to Spacelords. While the concept is sound, it is not pleasing a significant number of vets out there. We are aware that the system is not 100% fine-tuned, and we are thinking about ways to improve it, including increasing the rewards for the mentors, among many others.



3. Kuzmann’s levers in “In Shock”.

The latest patch included a small modification to the “In Shock” mission boss fight against the infamous Dr. Kuzmann. We felt the old "insta-use" levers incentivized suicidal manoeuvres a bit too much. With these new changes introduced in the game, we tried to encourage a safer and slower approach in order to solve the situation.

The solution, however, is not as fine-tuned as we hoped, resulting in a significant increase of the mission´s difficulty. We are amending this in an upcoming game update.



We hope you have found this State of the Game entry useful. We are immensely grateful for all the constructive criticism feedback. We take all the feedback received into account, and several ideas coming from the community have ended-up being implemented in the game. Of course, this process takes time from evaluation to execution, but our commitment to making the best game possible based on our fans’ preferences remains.

See you on the Broken Planet!

Our programming team has been hard at work since the release of Spacelords to bring you this performance optimization patch.

The Council Apocalypse campaign came with lots of new bosses and spectacular attacks that were dragging down some systems' framerates. Many of these optimizations happen quite deep in the engine code so it has taken the QA team longer than usual to test.


GAME LOGIC IMPROVEMENTS

- Parallelized collision detection code.
- Overall memory usage reduction.
- Code optimizations for some FX transformations (scaling and material swaps).
- Parallelized sphere hit detection code.
- Reduced the amount of hit colliders in some common objects (shields, parrots and airships).
- Created lighter versions for the enemy prop ships flying in the background on some missions.


AI IMPROVEMENTS

- Implemented smart time limits for decision makers.
- Parallelized task assignment code.
- Removed some redundant events in enemy animations.
- Implemented variable caching for the enemy horde manager.


GAMEPLAY

Along with the many tech changes, some new "under the hood" gameplay systems have been implemented. We now have more power to tune mission difficulty server-side. In this first iteration, our focus is on low MMR matches. Low MMR matches sometimes have a very slow pace, with too few enemies around. We are increasing enemy spawn rates and lowering AI skill a little bit to bring the game a bit more action and, hopefully, not modify the difficulty curve too much in the process. Veteran players will notice these changes mostly on mentor matches.

- Increased enemy spawn rate at low difficulty levels.
- AI behaves more permissively at low difficulty levels.
- Decreased enemy damage at low difficulty levels.




MISSIONS

As we mentioned in the patch notes for 10.3, the Council Apocalypse campaign released a bit too strong. The following changes tackle problems in mission duration mostly.

IN SHOCK

The Fifth Council now sends Elite Snipers to join the troops protecting Dr. Kuzmann's expedition.

Kuzmann's levers now require time to activate.

THE MOUSE AND THE SNAKE

- Reduced the health of all Beholders by 15%.
- Reduced regenerating beholder's regeneration speed by 40%.
- Reduced Valeria's health by 20%.

UPSIDE DOWN

- Reduced the time required to activate the trojan by 20%.
- Reduced Dr. Kuzmann's health by 15%.
- Increased the time Dr. Kuzmann stays stunned by 10%.
- Increased enemy spawn frequency by 10% when not playing against an antagonist.

MIND OVER MATTER

- Reduced the Council's health by 10%.
- Reduced the amount of enemy kills the Council requires for examination by about 10%.


WEAPONS

SCHNEIDER

- Decreased Rain of Fire's damage by 10%.

H.I.V.E.

- Decreased Shy's damage by 10%.

DOLDREN

- Increased JK-5's damage by 10%.

HAREC

- Increased Ferox Impetus' damage by 10%.


BUG FIXES

- Fixed a bug on The Beast's Lair where the game could crash due to a memory leak.
- Fixed a bug on The Enemy Within where the game could crash for the host the first time Uras-Beherit's weak points were exposed.
- Fixed a bug where the game could crash where entering a match.
- Fixed a bug where the game could crash when healing Lycus with his shield activated.
- Fixed a bug where the menu could block after reconnecting to a game.
- Fixed a bug when receiving rewards where the menu could block.
- Fixed a bug on In Shock where some enemy ships were not reaching their destination and enemies were not been deployed. - Fixed a bug where aiming was not working property while in cover.
- Fixed a bug where Valeria's quantum projectile was not appearing correctly after a host renegotiation.
- Fixed several bugs caused by hot renegotiations.
- Fixed a bug where the AI was not selecting cover properly.
- Fixed several VFX bugs on Kuzmann's Surgeon skin.
- Fixed several FX bugs.
- Fixed several language issues.

H.I.V.E. has a new, epic skin! The Nityat is a link to this enigmatic Raider's distant past, and her tragic implication in the Broken Planet's wars of old.

After her third lethargy. H.I.V.E. awoke in the middle of a war. Weary of so much strife and concerned about her little ones, she chose to believe in the word of a commander who swore to bring peace to the planet if he was the victor in the war.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwU3_h3yQrE
Thus she became one of the Nityat: one of the most lethal elite units the Broken Planet has ever seen. With them, H.I.V.E. would perform acts in the name of peace she would come to regret. After winning the war, the commander’s lust for conquest only grew and decided to expand his conquests. Powerless and disappointed, H.I.V.E. ran off to Uddas Nassar to enter a new lethargy. She didn’t quite wanted to escape that place, but to escape that time.

We are delighted to share with you our ambitious Spacelords’ Roadmap!

We have just announced the roadmap for Spacelords’ immediate future. Celebrating one year since Raiders of the Broken Planet launched, and a month after its rebirth as a Free to Play game, Spacelords continues to grow with over 400.000 games played in the last 30 days and a player base more than 10 times larger, taking console and PC users into account.

We are very pleased with the game’s performance since Spacelords’ launched on August 23, seeing many new players discovering Spacelords for the first time every day. This roadmap is our way to thank all the community for their support and show our continuing commitment to the game.

The roadmap includes four key upcoming main milestones, each marking major changes to the game. Between each of these milestone, MercurySteam will continue to release regular new content at a steady pace in the form of game updates, new skins, weapons and characters.



• Space Guilds
The first major Spacelords’ milestone will allow players to create and customize their own Space Guilds within the game, with full cross platform implementation* and expanded communication options. Aspiring Spacelords can team up, design their own Guild banner with the new in game editor and coordinate their games together in preparation for the conflict to come.

• Spacelords Identity
With the arrival of the new in-game store, players will now have countless more options for customizing their characters, with new outfits, exclusive weapon customizations, emotes to express in game and even new fighting styles, melee weapons and finishing moves.

• The Great Clash
With the Space Guilds now fighting to control the Aleph resources, the stakes will be raised much higher when they compete to show who’s the best! Guilds will endeavor to leave their mark on the Broken Planet, obtaining the best scores and literally planting their banner on the missions they master for all to see. This isn’t a battle anymore, but a War!

• The Aurora Specters
Spacelords thrilling 4 v 1 gameplay will be further boosted with the arrival of the Aurora Specters, daemonic entities whose eldritch powers are only rivalled by their thirst for the Raiders’ blood. Something wicked this way comes…

Let us know what you think of the upcoming new features. We'll be glad to answer any questions you migh have