1.2.0 Memorial update

Now that the game had some time to mature and gather feedback, I thought it was time to polish up a few rough edges, balance-wise, so that is the primary focus of this patch. Though, of course, a few new features have arrived as well. Let's take a look!

Memorial

One of the popular requests was to see the fallen soldiers. Now, you can do so by clicking the memorial tab in the barracks. You can even see statistics over the soldier's lifetime, like the strongest foe slain, for example! (But important note, these statistics are only being gathered in missions after the patch, so in existing saves, these statistics will not be completely correct)

Concealed condition rework

The concealed condition (and by extension, the whole rogue school) could really be only used defensively till gaining the Expert Stealth skill, making it a very situational school till the master level is researched. The most important change is that the condition, from now on, behaves as if the unit had expert stealth from the start, opening up its usage and synergies, while reworking the old expert stealth skill. Details of the changes:

• Concealed condition now only gets removed if being seen by an adjacent enemy at the start of the turn (previously given by expert stealth skill).

• Expert stealth skill is now an advanced-level skill (down from master), provides concealment at the start of combat, and can be reapplied at the start of the round if no enemies see you. Does not work with heavy armor.

• Pass by skill becomes a master level skill (up from advanced).

New research images

As promised, we are getting around to replacing the placeholder images for the school's research. In this patch, light/dark, marksmanship, and strategist schools received their own images.

Frostwall headquarters buff

Frostwall headquarters bonus design intent was to promote a quantity over quality playstyle, but only by making recruiting units cheaper felt weak. Now, in addition to cheaper troops, every friendly unit that dies in combat increases the melee and ranged attack of every other friendly unit by 5 (max 25) till the end of the mission.

Hammer nerf

Another popular sentiment in the feedback was that the hammers are overperforming compared to other weapons. My original design goal with the weapon was that it should be a low-damage weapon with a lot of utility, especially against heavily armored opponents. But in practice, it was a bit of a jack-of-all-trades, especially with the very action-efficient stunning strike weapon skill. Details of the changes:

• All hammers' min/max damage reduced by 1.

• Reduced the amount of damaged armor condition two-handed hammers are causing to 1 (from 2).

• One-handed hammer stunning strike skill gets -3 damage, but only costs 3 stamina (down from 4).

• Staff stunning strike skill gets -3 damage.

• Two-handed hammer's stunning strike skill has been replaced by Shatter. Function similarly to the old stunning strike, but in additon of the stun, it causes 2 damaged armor conditions as well. Costs 2 action points (up from 1) and 4 stamina.

Equipment balance changes:

• Heavy armor defense is reduced by 1 across the board.

• Tier 1 smith weapon/armor projects cost and time have been lowered across the board.

• Unit's absolute minimum stamina increased to 4. So even in the worst case scenario, every unit should be able to move + basic attack from max stamina with a melee weapon.

• Acid bomb and healing potion usage stamina cost increased by 1.

• Acid bomb, healing/stamina potion, all get disabled if inside a melee enemy zone of control.