Telemetry: measuring balance from real runs. Benni’s idea, after my ion estimate came out seven times too low. Every game now sends an anonymous data set per flight — a snapshot every two minutes, plus a final one at the end (death, victory, quitting, even a closed tab).
- What’s in it: version, mode, difficulty, weapon/path/jump/defense, duration, score, ions (including per minute), kills, wave/system/zones/guardians, skills, boons, hangar, modules, tokens, rage — plus new counters: damage per weapon and path, damage taken per enemy type, causes of death with ring, and timestamped events (guardian, zone, key, Gate, Core, jump).
- Where it goes: to a small backend service, kept in the same account as the game — nothing exposed at home. The collected data gets turned into answers to concrete balance questions: results per weapon, ions per hour, damage per weapon per minute, causes of death, time to the first guardian.
- Anonymous and can be turned off: a random ID in your browser, no name, no IP logging. A toggle in the main menu (on by default), with a section in the privacy policy.
Being honest about the statistics: this becomes meaningful once there are a few hundred runs per comparison across multiple players. Until then, it mostly measures Benni — and even that was already worth more than any estimate.