New this week in Thunder Run:
Level 13 Tactical Ops Center
Your architects have been hard at work, Commander. In addition to a sharply-worded requisition order for more coffee, they’ve delivered the upgrade plans for the next Tactical Ops Center expansion. It seems like only yesterday we were huddled together in tents.
Tick-Tock! The TOC now upgrades to Level 13, unlocking a variety of new upgrades for your military forces!
We’ll be sure to caffeinate your architects for you, Commander. That requisition order was just shy of a death threat.
The Elephant in the Room
As you all have noticed, there has been a lot of changes happening since last week. We do apologize for the delay in our communications, but we’d now like to address and explain what, why, and how things have changed.
Hopefully, in addition to dispelling some weird rumors and theories, we can clear the air and give you a little more insight as to how to utilize the new systems put in place. For simplicity’s sake we will categorize the main changes into two: economy and buildings, and unit rebalance and strategy.
Economy and Buildings
- Previously, levels per tier are wildly inconsistent. They are now consistent
- Economy buildings now have two levels per tier.
- All unit research/production buildings have two levels per tier.
- Non-elite units and their associated research/production buildings also get two levels per tier.
- Turrets, mines, and missiles have three levels per tier.
- Time requirements dramatically reduced. It takes a maximum of 5 days (without leader bonuses) to build or research anything now. It’s a hard cap at 120 hours.
Frequently asked question: Why are our resource storage and production so low now?
Our old levels jumped all over the place in terms of advancement. Now they’re consistent. However, all research unlocks, build costs, repair costs, etc are now auto-scaled to the available harvest rate and storage caps, so you have lost absolutely nothing in terms of buying power. Think of it this way: your resource currency just underwent serious deflation. You can buy more with each unit of each resource than you could before.
Unit Rebalance and Strategy
- Unit HP, DPS, build time, and resource costs all balanced based on space requirements. The more expensive a unit, the more powerful it is, and at a predictable and consistent rate. That means that out the gate, a unit that takes 30 space is exactly twice as powerful as a unit of the same type that takes 15 space, but they receive modifications based on their roles.
- Unit speed and range balanced based on unit type and unit role: Infantry is the slowest with the longest range on average. Air units are the fastest with the shortest range on average. Artillery and Sniper units get range boosts and speed nerfs to compensate
- Close range units get a bonus to their speed and a proportionate nerf to their range.
- Long Range units get the same bonus to range and nerf to speed.
- High Speed gets a slightly higher boost to speed while paying the same range cost as close range.
- DPS units get a bonus to damage and a proportionate nerf to HP. Most of your artillery units are Long Range/DPS roles.
- Some units have the “Threat” stat, which makes the AI increase their priority in the targeting system by 50%.
- Threat gets a bonus to HP and a nerf to damage.
- The “Tank” role get a bonus to HP and get an even higher “Threat” stat, making the AI 100% more likely to pick them as a target. Note that the “Tank” role is not strictly limited to actual Tank units. Some aircrafts have the “Tank” role, too. You can find these in the Unlock/Upgrade windows of a specific unit.
- Turret HP is based on potential attacker DPS output, and is currently designed to withstand 20 seconds of fire from the average unit. There will be ongoing analysis and fine-tuning for this.
- Mine DPS is designed to insta-kill the strongest non-elite unit in its target category.
- Turret DPS is designed to focus on particular target types as well and to kill a target in 2 to 10 seconds of sustained fire.
- Missile DPS is designed to take a few hits to kill the toughest units, while able to insta-kill groups of weaker ones.
Frequently asked question: Why are units so weak now that we can’t do event bases anymore?
Units have been balanced to encourage trying different battalion compositions and being more strategic; possibly requiring a little more micro skills too. The older strategies of steam-rolling everything with Elite Paladins, for example, may no longer work, as they are now in an Artillery Role. It may be MORE effective to bring units with a Tank role and high Threat to draw aggro from turrets, then using Artillery like Mortarmen, due to their high anti-building DPS and very long range.
We know some players have taken up the new challenge of getting to know the new systems. Of course, we still welcome feedback. Please expect more monitoring and tweaking of the new systems, so if you have tried different strategies and still find it difficult, please let us know what you are having trouble with!
Miscellaneous improvements and fixes
- All costs (buildings, units) have been further reduced.
- Vault protection is now 7.5% of supply/fuel storage available at the current tier, and 10% of hardware storage.
- All upgrades, unit construction, missile, mine, and turret crafting should be appropriately scaled to resource storage.
- Building HP should all be scaled to unit DPS. Turret, mine, and missile DPS should all be scaled to unit HP.
- Special “items” added in the game that allows for insta-building missiles, or building “Doped” Mines that insta-kill any unit below its level. These items are obtainable from event bases, and sometimes, from the mail.
- TOC leaders no longer have an equip/unequip cooldown
- The update caused old missiles to unstack with no way to stack them. This has been fixed, but you may need to click the “Sort” button to restack your old missiles.
- Issues with missile blueprints not unlocking the the research is being looked in to. Please do not repurchase the blueprints if you encounter this issue.
- AI units all given some unique aspects. Hunt them all!
More releases incoming, including a planned “grand finale” event. We here at Battlehouse are eternally grateful to all our players, and we plan to go out with a bang on April 2023; and we would love it if you join us there!
Have feedback to share about this week’s releases? Let us know over on our Thunder Run Discord Server.
Good hunting, Commanders!