Patch Notes v.0.81.0

v.0.81.0

Patch Summary

This patch introduces new and improved enemy AI, adds some new cards, changes a number of existing ones and fixes a few bugs.

ATTENTION: This patch is incompatible with the previous version's save files. If you wish to continue a game from the previous version, please use the version selector in Betas and choose the previous version!

Overview

Happy New Year!! After taking a break last month, I am back in full swing development. Expect a bi-weekly update for the next 2-3 months.

Improved AI

Opponent AI is the most important and complex part of Star Scum. Creating an opponent AI that can play a complex card game with a large board, hidden information and arbitrary cards and do it fast enough to not make the player wait too long even on older hardware, has been quite a journey. This patch is the next big step in that journey.

Over the course of the game's development, I experimented with a number of approaches, some of which worked really well but were too slow for the complexity of the game. Recent optimizations in how the card scripts sequence events into the game allowed me to run simulations fast enough to try an all around better approach to how the AI makes decisions. I will probably write a separate post just on this, but in short, the AI is now smarter, faster and uses a lot less memory! It's also more inventive, unpredictable and interesting to play against.

There are a few drawbacks to it as well; because it a bit more loose, it will sometimes play cards that do not do anything or even benefit the opposing player, especially on lower difficulties. But I find the overall improvements to be worth the occasional really bad decisions. This algorithm also opens up a lot more room for tweaking decision heuristics, so I am confident I can help guide the AI from making them.

Crystalloid Updates

Crystal Growth (and by extension Crystalloid decks) have so far been the most experimental and thus most broken cards. This update reworks them to be less random and they now grow towards closest teleporter when on friendly ship and towards the core when it's on the enemy ship. They now also grow by cloning instead of by spawning a new Crystal Growth, inheriting all of their attributes. These changes make them into a much more formidable foe.

Detailed Change List

Gameplay

• Completely reworked and optimized enemy AI.

• Added an AI difficulty selector to Skirmish.

• Added ability for mounts to have a local range of effect.

Cards, Ships and Balancing

• Cards added: Security Camera, Mimic, Mantrap, Tesla Coil, Blade Dancer, Surge Capacitor, Structural Scan

• Every ship now has an expansion slot.

• Crystal Growth now clones itself with 2 HP towards closest teleporter or core if on enemy ship.

• Crystal Core now grows a Crystal Growth toward closest teleporter.

• Fungaloid Growth now 1 command point to play, reduced cost to $30 and can now be bough in the Cantina.

• Frozen plasmoids are now affected by fire and other 1 damage fire attacks.

• Removed Bulb Mutagen from starting Fungaloid deck.

• Neurotoxin now rare and price raised to $150.

• Training Disk now 3 command points to play.

• Portal now teleports friendly units from opposite ship each turn instead of summoning neutral units.

• Sabotage price down to $30.

• Robot Legs deck limit is now 3.

• Fire Extinguisher Panel now puts out fires within a range and has 2 HP.

• Turret now 1/1, auto shoots 3 tiles centered on a random enemy within range. Price down to $30.

• Federation Marine no longer shoots itself while shooting random tiles.

• Units that shoot area tiles now do correct type of damage if their damage type changes.

• Shield Station power reduced to 1.

• Power Buddy now gains half maximum energy instead of 2.

• Catapult now launches all adjacent units.

• Fire At Will now 0 command points to play and only applies to units with action points.

• Barrage now fires at random enemy targets rather than random tiles.

Graphics and Audio

• Entity detail cards now reflect stat changes and highlight raised or lowered stats with green or red.

• Slightly reduced card art size to make room for longer descriptions.

• Cleaned up some Russian copy to fit better.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed entity actions triggered by map change not being applied correctly.

• Fixed being able to draw cards during the mulligan stage when using gamepad input.

• Fixed incorrect tilesets being applied when loading a battle.

• Fixed local decks being corrupted in some cases.

• Fixed discard piles not being loaded properly in some cases.