Star Battle Reloaded 2.0 - Patch Notes

Aug 15, 2021 Live on Battle.net new-content ui bugfixes

Star Battle Reloaded 2.0 - Patch Notes

This update focuses on improving adoption of the game on NA region. It doesn't feature any balance changes.

Notice: Due to possibility of bugs this version hasn't been published on EU region yet - it's currently only available on NA. It'll be deployed on EU in a follow up release, likely the next one - 2.1.

General

UI

Bugfixes

Details

1. Gameplay Data Variants

This feature was inspired by the ongoing issue - where since deparartue of zedu, each region had its own SB version.

We've based SBR on a version that was closest to the original, with better balance around competitive scene. Which is SB by EtaC - known as SB3.1 on EU, and SB3.5 on NA.

However, that version never took off on NA. Which had it's own equivalents - first SBX, then Omega which was based on SBX. Unfortunately these equivalents have devolved significantly from the original.

Due to that reason we've decided to introduce a feature called Gameplay Data Variant, that allows us to load different gameplay modes, within the same map. Currently this feature is limited to:

In the future we'll likely use this option in other ways, either to conduct some experimental balance testing (like beta testing of new ships) or anything else, that might be made purely for fun - TBD.

2. Variant: Omega

Balance / Gameplay

We've identified the key differences between SB3.1 and Omega that affect the pace of the gameplay, and have incorporated them to our Omega-SBR variant. These include:

In terms of abilities, differences still remain - but we believe these differences will factor positively.

However as the match progresses - the game will evolve more towards gameplay known from 3.1/3.5. Due to the fact that we've only changed the starting values. Most importantly, with every upgrade of the base, towers will gain on strength (armor + shields), and money gained from killing AI fighters will keep raising. See below for exact values.

Gameplay differences

Major differences between 3.1 and Omega, in relation to original

Omega:

SB3.1/SB3.5:

Differences between 3.1 and Omega-SBR in terms of ship's abilities

Rough overview:

Visuals

Omega/SBX has not only changed gameplay - it also changed a variety of visual effects, leading into direction that doesn't align with our vision for this project.

SB was once known as a battle between warfleets of Terran (red) and Protoss (blue). Yet SBX/Omega have almost completely ditched this part of the game. Instead there's the "red team" - as it is now called, with the base building being a Taldarim Mothership.. that happens to send out Terran fighters into the battle? Furthermore towers protecting base have been turned into some advanced protoss units, throwing fireballs at the enemies? That's neither Terran nor Protoss weaponry.

The "blue team" has similar story, instead of Protoss Mothership there's some weird construct (in SC2 lore known as home warship of the Purifiers), with glitched animations. Same could be said about towers that accompany it - some ancient structures, which look like they don't belong to the space..

In a game like this lore isn't particularly important, but as it stands that version of SB not only ditched lore, but also degradated aesthetics and by that clarity of what's actually going in game. Every visual change has been exeggerated, to the point where Frigate and BC instead of missiles use red lasers/energy balls as its ammo. This makes no sense regardless of the criterium - both lore & visual clarity have been impacted negatively.

We've called game Reloaded because it's something we're devoted to follow - loading back to original, and building on top of well established foundations.

Regardless, we'd like to acknowledge authors of SBX and Omega for their efforts. And despite of our vision of the game not aligning, we did find some inspirations and features that may have find its way into SBR.

First addition are minimap icons of the ships. Thanks to Graveyard and Suge for making it!

3. TrustGate

TrustGate is autonomous anti-smurf system. That will attempt to keep obvious and semi-obvious players hiding behind newly created game profiles out of the game. Unfortunately, due to technical limitations this cannot be used to protect lobbies - that's why there are 15 slots to accompany it, even though the game won't allow more than 12 players to participate.

It can be activated by the player hosting the lobby. There are 3 choices:

As default (Auto) it'll be enabled for games hosted on NA region (unless lobby is started with less than 10 players), and disabled on EU.

How does it work

System will be launched right after loading screen, and will verify all connected players - determine their trust factor, by taking into consideration:

Using above data system will determine trust factor of a player. If it'll be below certain threshold, such player will be stopped from entering the game - it won't get the ship, nor will be assigned to any of the teams.

However, we're aware that even with 15 slots in lobby, half of the connected players may be the same person or a group. Thus this still requires some work from the host. Basically the better job the host will do at ensuring the number of smurfs in lobby is low, the more players will get to play. 15 players lobby with 5 smurfs will end as 5v5.

It's not bulletproof - at least not yet

It's more than likely that system will require some tweaking, and testing for possible weak points. Also, it has also small potential of hurting legitimate players with new accounts. So depending on the course of actions, we're considering following improvement: