The difficulty curve had the wrong shape. Recalculated with a new tool that weighs enemy pressure against the player’s firepower for every wave (superiority = the player’s own damage per second ÷ the damage the wave demands):
- Wave 1 was at 9.8 and stayed above 2.8 all the way to wave 20. The start was free and the curve flat — exactly what testers reported.
- With a fully upgraded hangar, wave 1 was at 125. The hangar wasn’t a lever, it was a switch: a 12.8× damage factor, maxed out after just a few hours.
Now: waves 1–4 sit around 1.0–2.0 (where the first life is usually lost), waves 5–12 around 1.7–2.0, waves 13–20 around 1.2–1.4, and from wave 25 on it drops below 0.8. A fully upgraded hangar now carries you to wave 40 instead of wave 50.
- The wave formula now lives in one place, so the game and the balance tools always agree.
- Wave 1 now has 23 enemies instead of 6, wave 2 has 34. The growth is in swarms: a lot on screen, but none of it tough. Enemy hull now starts at 1.9 instead of 1.16, and the steep part begins at wave 6 instead of 10.
- Workbench reduced from 4 to 2 tiers. Starting weapons at tier 5 skipped the entire early weapon progression (tier 1 = 16 DPS, tier 5 = 103). Weapon Core and Ion Collector now go up to 6 tiers. Armor Plating and Shield Cells got 8 instead — with the higher pressure, survival is now a real axis.
- Steeper price curve: 1.75× per rank instead of 1.32×. The first tier stays an easy early buy (Armor Plating: 100 ions), the last one is a real goal.
- A lossless transition: anyone who had bought past the new cap gets the difference refunded (82,870 ions in one test case). Stash, hangar, upgrade paths, achievements and unlocked difficulties all carry over. Only best scores reset — they were set under the old curve and aren’t comparable anymore.
Enemies now show what era they’re from. Every enemy gets a generation (0–4) on spawn that reflects how much hull it has compared to one from wave 1 — not a new dial, just a visible readout of what the wave formula, difficulty, tier and ring already do. The tint blends over the base color (white → cream → orange → pink → violet), so zone enemies keep their own look, and frost, fire and rage effects stay readable. From the third generation on, a faint rim glow is added too. Until there are dedicated models for them, this is the difference between a drone from wave 2 and one from wave 30 (9 vs. 548 hull).
Zone enemies now appear as guests in Arcade. Lance from wave 7, Driver from 9, Mirror from 12, Plague from 16 — they used to be exclusive to Orbit, where each has its own signature. The mid-game isn’t just tougher now, it plays differently too.
End-of-flight feedback. Four buttons (too easy · felt right · too hard · unfair) plus a text field. A tap sends immediately; free text follows once you submit or leave the screen, attached to the same flight instead of creating a second entry. The evaluation compares your verdict against the measured superiority for that flight: “too hard” at low superiority points to a balance problem, “unfair” at high superiority points to a readability problem — you would have been strong enough, but couldn’t see what was killing you.
The weapon now shows up on the ship screen. Icon, name, class and tags, a level bar, description, the active path (or which paths become available from level 5), what the next level brings, and which of your boons affect this weapon — including special text for boons that do something different on it. Before, there was just a heading above the numbers.
Telemetry now covers the whole flight. Each wave logs build state, enemy pressure, damage dealt and taken, lowest hull point, frame rate and hit rate, alongside player and device profile, kills by enemy type and your end-of-flight feedback. This feeds into short written findings instead of a wall of numbers.
- Progress snapshots now save after 3 minutes and then every 5 instead of every 2 — half the write load.
- Leaderboards are cached briefly to keep them fast even with many players.
- Stale data is cleaned up automatically after a set retention period.
- Text fields now keep the keyboard to themselves. Before, the game intercepted space (bomb) and Tab (skill tree) — you couldn’t type a leaderboard name with a space in it.