Star Battle Reloaded 5.0 - Patch Notes

• [TODO] Tourney rewards
• [TODO] Look into adding some of the recent maps

Map editor

• Reintroduced basic starmap editor - allowing to edit and expand the pool of existing battle maps.

See more on YT

More features will be added in the future..

Ships & Balance

• Queen reintroduced.

Queen still requires more thought, not just testing. Abilities such as:

• Symbiote
• Infestation

Aren't considered to be complete - likely still flawed on both angles. But hopefully good enough to postpone

Other avenues are "done" on the design aspect, but the exact way of implementation leaves a lot of room for improvements/changes.

"Done" means I hope it's good enough for now, but I bet this is not a final iteration and I expect it might require a lot of revisions before things are in place.

Queen

• Added missing blood FX when ship is crit/heavy/light damaged.
• Added first set of achievements for playing Queen ("Casual Play" category).
• Neural Parasite:
  • It's now a projectile driven ability - it needs time to arrive at the impact point.
  • Affected ships now require extra 2s for effect to complete, and fight for the Queen.
  • Affected ships can no longer use the shield.

    This is mostly aimed at upgraded Carrier's interceptors

  • Duration increased from 20s to 25s.
  • Improved interactions with following units:
    • Interceptors can be box-selected.
    • Scourges will no longer suicide, instead they'll turn back, attacking nearest capital ship they'll see unfriendly.
    • Siege fighters & Broodlords will initially waypoint back to the other base.
    • Observer & spotter will initially follow the Queen.
    • Other units will initially a-move to the Queen.
• Infestation:
  • Can now be casted on non mechanical units - all zerg capital ships, including Queen itself.
  • Infestation cooldown ultimate 30s -> 45s
  • Fixed an issue where Queen's Infestation tentacle would remain floating in the space whenever it failed to connect with the target.
• Blinding Cloud:
  • It's now larger, and no longer a perfect circle, but an oval, that stretches to the sides in relation to the direction it was thrown.
  • It no longer limits the vision of the ships that are inside, but also blocks the line of sight of the approaching ships, similarly as Gas Clouds do.
  • [TODO] Add cast time
  • [TODO] Nerf radius
  • [TODO] Rotate 180
• Parasitic Bomb:
  • Reduced damage vs. Massive from 1350 to 1200
  • Removed target acquisition in response to the Parasitic Bomb damage, that would draw aggression to the Queen, from affected units and the ones which were nearby (in response to CallForHelp).
• Ensnare:
  • Upon impact effect stays on the battlefield for 1s before expiring (akin to Arbiter's storm), instead of one-time hit-scan like behavior.
• Fixed an issue where Blinding Cloud effect would persist, if player's ship was killed while cloud's effect was still active.
• Fixed an issue where Blinding Cloud wouldn't de-buff Overlord's Antennae.
• Fixed an issue where Infestation would not be immune to Dreadnought's Cover.
• Fixed an issue where Infestation wouldn't correctly mark player's ship as killed, by a result game couldn't be won until enemy base has been destroyed.
• Fixed an issue where Infested ship wouldn't have its minimap icon.

Battlecruiser

• Fixed Lockdown to no longer disable ability to launch & retarget OBF and Escort Fighters (Carrier's Scouts).

Dreadnought

• Fixed an issue where Cover could repeatedly attempting to redirect the same projectile. Combined with the slow down of speed for first ~0.5 second upon redirect, it could cause weird glitches, especially noticeable with chasing projectiles (i.e. Raven's Seeker, BC's Nuke).
• Fixed an issue where Cover would remain active when trapped in Arbiter's Stasis Field.

Frigate

• Fixed range upgrade to actually increase launch/retarget of wraiths per 1.25 per level (instead of 1), as it was intended and written in the tooltip.
• Fixed inaccurate tooltip on Wraith upgrade mentioning increased damage by +0.5 to massive, where it was actually +1.

VoidRay

• Remove phase shift scaling from shield upgrades-
• Remove damage reduction from armor.-
• Energy Nova:
  • Increase its damage to 125(+1275 vs massive)
  • Remove shield and energy leech.
  • Remove scaling from lasers.
  • Reduce nova radius to 4.
  • Increase nova animation (after changing blasts from 3 to 1) by 50%.
  • Nova does its full damage in 1 blast (instead of 3).
  • Revert nova energy cost to 100. Reset its cooldown to 10s.

Misc balance

• Reduced AI leash radius (21 → 18) and movement limit (21 → 18) — units return to their post sooner when chased.
• Increased leash reset radius (5 → 7) — units re-anchor further from their origin before giving chase again.
• Increased call-for-help radius (2 → 4) and period (2 → 4) — nearby units now respond to allies under attack from further away, more often.

  Above adjustments were made in response to the introduction of the Queen.

Bugfixes

• Fixed lack of spacing between teams on the leader board.
• Fixed an issue where if match completed prematurely ("You won the game." message at the end - without any points), it would count as a loss for the victorious team.
• Fixed an issue where changed settings (UI config, ship skins etc.) wouldn't be immediately saved into bank file (it required completing rated game, or changing settings prior to picking a ship).
• Fixed an issue where Team Side option in lobby settings wouldn't apply. (Or rather, it was only being considered in games where teams were automatically balanced - so completely opposite from how it was intended).
• Fixed na issue where Map chosen in lobby settings wouldn't align with what the game actually used.

  The list presented in lobby was off by 1 element, so when you were picking C, the game was loading B etc. - in that order, with the exception of "Ulnar" - it was the only one that did align.

• Fixed a rare issue related to "Squads" - in some scenarios (reaching 15 players within the lobby at least once during its lifetime + some other edge case criteria) the game would fail to initialize completely - no bases, no ships.
• Fixed an issue where rating of the teams wasn't calculated in games that used Premade / IH mode, and had teams preset in lobby (no FFA). Resulting in +16 / -16. (It was working correctly only when teams were balanced automatically by in-game systems).

  Really surprised we caught it just now. Also, please double check if it was indeed fixed, as it was kind of a blind fix.

UI

Team overview

• WIP

Battlecruiser

• Mini Yamato Gun:
  • Reduced damage from 1200 to 900
  • Reduced price from 200 to 175
  • Changed weapon target acquisition mechanic to allow manual manual targeting.
• Defensive Shield:
  • Removed bonus to hull regenaration from the upgrade (was +5 for each level).
  • Doubled bonus to shields regenaration from 25 to 50 per upgrade level.

Dreadnought

• Increase base armor to 15.
• Reduce armor per upgrade to +4.
• Decrease sieging/unsieging time to 4 seconds.
• Increase siege speed to 25%.
• Enable gatlings while sieged.
• Decrease siege damage to 100 (+300 vs massive) + 10 (+30 vs massive) per upgrade.
• Reduce Reinforced Hull damage reduction to 30%.
• Lockdown now should turn off cover and disable it.
• Add a new upgrade – Gauss Cannon – increases siege damage. Gatling upgrades no longer increase siege damage or attack speed.
• Gatlings upgrades no longer increase Gatlings attack speed.

Frigate

• Adjust magnetic mines damage to 550 (+55 per upgrade).

Raven

• Enhanced systems:
  • Reduced EMP bonus range from 1.0 to 0.5.
  • Removed EMP bonus damage to shields.
  • Reduced bonus regeneration granted by enhanced systems.

Colossus

• Increase field disruptor radius from 4 to 4.5.
• Increased base shield regeneration to 80.
• Reduce shield regeneration per upgrade from 10 to 8.

Arbiter

• Force Field: Reduced cast range from 9 to 7

Carrier

• Interceptors:
  • Increased move speed from 2.6 to 2.75
  • Removed shield regeneration delay reduction from capacity upgrades.
• Scouts:
  • Increased base damage from 40 to 50.
  • Reduced base hull and shield amount from 125 to 105.
• Tempests:
  • Increased amount of tempests Carrier can warp in from 4 to 6.
• Plasma Barrage:
  • Added a 1.5s casting time. Reduced period between individual barrage from 0.4s to 0.25s - making it to 2.5s.

    Combined "cast time" remained effectively the same.

• Fixed an issue where it was possible to cast Vortex further than the intended 10 range, pushing it to a maximum of ~15.
• Fixed an issue where Warp In ability would be able to cooldown white under effect of BC' Lockdown.

Leviathan

• Reduced the extra damage from corruption from to 33% to 25%.

Guardian

• Increased Guardian starting speed from 1.3007 to 1.3507 (+0.05).
• Reduced Corruptor Acquire Leash Reset Radius (radius within which new targets may be acquired after chasing) from 9 to 4.
• Increased Acid Spore base damage from 160 to 180.
• Increased Broodlord acceleration from 0.1875 to 1.5.
• Increased Corruptor acceleration from 0.9375 to 1.5.
• Reduced Corruptor Acquire Leash Radius (maximum chase distance before returning to original position) from 19 to 6.
• Reduced Corruptor Acquire Leash Reset Radius (radius within which new targets may be acquired after chasing) from 9 to 4.
• Wild Mutations now grants detection in a 5-unit radius (for Guardian), +20% attack speed, and +10 sight range (to all affected units).