Note: This is an EXPERIMENTAL update available in the "bleedingedge" beta. It may contain instabilities beyond the base version currently available.

Today I'm releasing a tranche of balancing changes that have been building up since I personally reached Thend in my playtesting. From there, I could more fully reason about some of the gross adjustments needed to overall progression. More adjustments will be coming (probably in the form of nerfing high-level lasers a bit among other things, just to forewarn), but I didn't want to hold back the changes I've made so far any more.

The upgrade cost wall has been softened between upgrade levels 5-7. The yang to that is that the upgrade cost wall has been harshened between upgrade levels 9-12. The result should be that the mid-game is easier to progress a bit quicker, but the late game slows down a bit. Previously mid-game progression was very slow until a certain point was reached, and then it was greased lightning to the end.

A couple of improvements have been made to ally ship drops so that they will tend to be more relevant to the emergent situation, and so that more valuable drops are less likely to be lost to environmental hazards.

Also in this update are two new upgrades:

A new Subspace upgrade "Optimal Magnifier" will make pickups easier to collect and thus help counteract the effect of Molecular Compressor making pickups harder to collect.

A new Legacy upgrade "Endowment" will give a permanent bonus to prestige awarded by retirement.

Plus, there is now a secret code that can be used in the Store, but I am not telling what it is. There is a clue to the code embedded in the game, so get out your magnifying glass to find it! It gives a small non-game-breaking bonus and might do a few other nerdy non-game-breaking things later.

Some audio improvements were also made, such that multiple instances of the same sound effect are less likely to "crush" certain frequencies of the audio spectrum.

The Pause menu has been re-implemented in the new UI style, however, I have not yet had the bravery to jump in and tackle the re-implementation of the Store yet. That should be coming soon.

• Improvements:
  
  • Made Ally Ships, Dark Matter, Debit Cards, and Components immune to Space Mines.
    
  • Ally ships will no longer drop Shield Power if ship shields are full, and will no longer drop Superlaser pickups if ship currently has more than 3 pickups worth of Superlaser time. If one of these conditions are encountered, the drop will be changed to a Shield Power pickup if shields at are less than 50%, else it will be changed to a Superlaser pickup if ship currently has less than 1 pickup worth of Superlaser time, else the drop will be changed to Dark Matter (70% of the time) or a Debit Card (30% of the time).
    
  • Reworked Pause UI.
    
  • Added "Optimal Magnifier" Subspace Upgrade, which will increase the size of Shield, Super Laser, Dark Matter, Debit Card, and Component pickups by 2% per level of Optimal Magnifier.
    
  • Added "Endowment" Legacy Upgrade, which will increase Prestige awarded by retirement by 1 per level of Endowment.
    
  • Added "Old Secrets" Achievement.
    
  • Added 40% frequency spread to Dark Matter collect sound, to make it easier to aurally distinguish when multiple Dark Matter have been collected.
    
  • Added 40% frequency spread to Missile launch sound. As a result, Missile Salvos will probably sound less like someone blowing their nose.
    
  • The pitch for the sound for each subsequent laser beam beyond the first will now be offset by half-steps on the chromatic scale. The second beam will be offset a half step higher than base, the third offset a half step lower than base, the fourth offset a full step higher than base, and so on.
    
  • Adjusted priority of Missile launch sound so that it would cut out less when many asteroids were being destroyed.
    
  • Improve particles generated by collecting Warp Plus and Warp Minus pickups.
    
  
  
  
• Balancing:
  
  • Adjusted cost curve for Ship Upgrades. Level 5-7 Ship Upgrades are now cheaper. Level 9-12 Ship Upgrades are now more expensive.
    
  • Increased cost increase factor for Warp Licenses, from ~1.87 to ~2.07, to align overall Warp License costs with the above Ship Upgrade cost change.
    
  • Removed "Ignit (100)" Achievement.
    
  • Changed Guardian Force effect to be multiplicative rather than additive, to allow it to scale properly past level 39.
    
  • Change rule for retirement so that at least one level will need to be cleared in order to retire, even if Appprenticeship level is 10 or greater.
    
  
  
  
• Bug Fixes:
  
  • Fixed jitter in HUD that worsened the further the distance traveled.
    
  • Fixed issue where highest speed during a mission was not being calculated correctly.
    
  • Fixed issue where bomber health would unexpectedly increase.
    
  • Limit Apprenticeship Legacy upgrade to level 50 (was previously and nonsensically 100).