[list]
[*] Fixed a bug that prevented laser damage done to be counted, and thus not letting players unlock any laser weapons.
[*] Fixed a bug where merging an equipment with a subsystem into another equipment would delete the subsystem, now it is added to the cargo bay instead.
[*] Added a preview text in the equipment merging dialogue, showing you what equipment you will end up with if selecting one of the merge options.
[/list]
Hey everyone, time for the weekly update.
The headline this week is really exciting, a brand-new hangar feature: [b]equipment combining[/b]. On the balance side we've tweaked some enemy values to smoothen the difficulty curve, and there's a batch of quality-of-life work for both mouse and controller players.
Let's get into it.
[h3]Equipment Combining[/h3]
You can now combine two pieces of equipment of the same subtype in hangars. Feed a donor piece into your equipped one to upgrade it. Adding card slots, subsystem slots, or expanding the drafting library (if the donor is Mk.II) or transfer a single card from the donor to the receiving equipment.
And if the two pieces are from the same family but [i]different[/i] subtypes, something more interesting happens: you can [b]transform [/b]the receiver into the donor's subtype. It takes on the donor's drafting library and model, while keeping the cards you've already drafted. This means you can now build equipment carrying cards from multiple subtypes. Shredder cards on your Bruiser, or a Light Laser with Pulse Laser cards: the duplicate drops that used to be dead weight in your cargo bay are now build material.
[h3]Card Power-Up Highlighting[/h3]
Cards whose power-up conditions are currently met now light up in your hand, so you can see at a glance that your Charged Shot is getting its bonus right now instead of re-reading the card text mid-turn. This is implemented for the Laser, Flak, Shield, and Resource Bay families so far, with the rest to follow.
[h3]Completing Your Loadout[/h3]
Two changes aimed at the same problem: too many runs end with hardpoints still empty, PDC and Radiators are only found rarely.
To increase he odds of filling out your ship, store equipment slot now has a 50% chance to be stocked with equipment that fits one of your unoccupied hardpoints, so visiting stores should reliably work toward a full ship over a run.
Combat equipment drops also now have a chance to be rolled from equipment that fits an empty hardpoint. The drop rate hasn't changed, but you should be seeing more usable equipment.
[h3]Controller: Better Hangar Navigation[/h3]
On a controller, LB and RB used to hop between every stop on the fitting screen: reactor, perks, hardpoints, cargo, and the store lists. Getting from your ship to the store meant multiple bumper presses, and the order in which UI elements got selected wasn't intuitive. The shoulder buttons now switch between whole panels (Ship Status, cargo, station services, store), and the D-pad moves you around inside a panel.
Each panel also remembers where you left the cursor, so bouncing to the store and back puts you on the same hardpoint you were fitting.
[h3]Targeting Fix[/h3]
If you took apart every piece of enemy equipment, your railgun, laser, and hack cards were suddenly unplayable. Precision attacks could only fall back on the ship body with a mouse, and hacks couldn't be played at all, which especially affected controller players.
Once nothing on the enemy ship is a valid target, those cards can now be dropped on any destroyed equipment, and the attack still lands its hull damage. On a controller the dead modules are cycled like any other target if there are no other viable targets.
Change log:
[b]Balance changes[/b]
[list]
[*] [b]Solarii S02 Elite[/b]: Target Analysis now takes 3 turns to play, up from 2.
[*] [b]Solarii S02B[/b]: Shredder Flak durability decreased from 22 to 20, Shield durability from 16 to 15.
[*] [b]Starkin S02B[/b]: Now fires one regular Pulse card (4 damage) after Blinding Pulse, instead of firing 2 Blinding Pulses in a reload cycle.
[*] [b]Starkin S03 Elite[/b]: Radiate now takes 1 turn to play, down from 2.
[*] [b]Freeroamer S03 Elite[/b]: Rampart now takes 3 turns to play, up from 2.
[*] [b]Freeroamer S03A[/b]: Shield durability decreased from 18 to 16.
[*] [b]Freeroamer S03B[/b]: Now plays Heat Ray+ (3 damage, 3 Ignite) instead of the regular Heat Ray (2 damage, 2 Ignite).
[*] [b]Deadweight S03C[/b]: Thermal Tick now takes 3 turns to play, up from 2.
[*] [b]Beam Sweep+[/b]: base damage decreased from 4 to 3.
[/list]
[b]New features & quality of life[/b]
[list]
[*] Equipment of the same subtype can now be combined in hangars: upgrade, or transfer a card (see above).
[*] Same-family equipment of a different subtype can transform the receiver into the donor's subtype (see above).
[*] Cards now highlight in hand when their power-up conditions are met (Laser, Flak, Shield, and Resource Bay families so far).
[*] One store equipment slot now has a 50% chance to offer equipment fitting an unoccupied hardpoint.
[*] Combat equipment drops are now biased toward equipment that fits your empty hardpoints.
[*] Controller: shoulder buttons now switch panels in hangars and the Ship Status screen; the D-pad moves within a panel, and each panel remembers your cursor position.
[*] Precision attacks and hack cards can now target destroyed enemy equipment once nothing else is targetable, instead of becoming unplayable.
[/list]
We're excited to get some feedback on how the new equipment combining mechanic works out, especially the cross-subtype transformations, let us know which hybrids you come up with. We're also still keep to hear any feedback on how to improve controller support,
That's it for this week (for real this time).
See you in the next one! [b]o7[/b]
The Breachway Team
Hey everyone, time for another balance patch.
We were away last week, right after a major update. So naturally we came back to quite a collection of bugs waiting for us. This patch clears most of those out (there are still some left that we're looking into), alongside some small card balance changes.
Unfortunately, some of the bug-fixes and additions required addressable changes, so this update will reset your current runs in progress.
We've also started work on one of the big goals of the Tactician update: enemy variety.
Most enemies currently feel similar, and a big reason is tempo. They each play a card every 1-3 turns and mostly loop the same cards, and there's only so much variety you can build within those confines. Going forward, we'll be redesigning enemies to make their behavior and tempo genuinely different from one another.
The first example is the redesigned Deadweight S01B.
It used to fire an interceptor every 2 turns and a Starflare every 3, the same tempo as most other Sector 1 enemies.
Now it opens by firing a volley of three 6-damage Drifter missiles that hit in 4 turns, effectively putting a timer on the fight, especially for players without missile defense, which most won't have in Sector 1.
It has no shields, relying on a shredding barrage for defense, and has an ongoing effect that increases its damage every 2 turns.
This is probably our most aggressive Sector 1 enemy, and we'll be keeping a close eye on its lethality rate next week.
Change log:
[b]Balance changes[/b]
[list]
[*] Reworked the Deadweight S01B enemy (see above).
[*] Firestrike+: base damage reduced from 5 to 4.
[*] Flare: cooldown increased to 6.
[*] Flare+: now applies only 1 Blind, but grants 6 SP. Cooldown reduced to 5.
[*] Heavy Pulse: cost increased from 3O 1E to 4O 1E.
[*] Heavy Pulse+: cost increased from 4O 1E to 4O 2E.
[*] Tracer+: now gives +3 damage on your next Attack (was +4), cooldown reduced from 6 to 5.
[*] Accelerator Burst: now gains +3 damage when you have 4 or more Laser cards in your draw pile.
[*] The starting weapon selection event now only offers Tier 2 weapons with at least 4 card slots. The older 2-slot versions were basically dead picks. We also added more variations to the starting weapons' pre-drafted cards to make up for the loss of the 2-card equipment choices.
[/list]
[b]Bug fixes[/b]
[list]
[*] Fixed a bug where the + versions of Solarii Sector 1-2 enemies and Deadweight Sector 2 enemies never appeared, the base versions were loaded instead.
[*] Fixed Echo Burst+ to add its Blink cards to the draw pile instead of your hand.
[*] Fixed the Accelerator Burst card text to show the proper values, they were wrong before, causing confusion about why the card wasn't behaving as expected.
[*] Fixed a text issue on Marking Shot that prevented the Mark keyword from appearing in the card text.
[*] Fixed Ionized Round not dealing equipment damage.
[*] Fixed a bug where child card descriptions sometimes rendered the default card text instead of their actual text.
[*] Fixed the unlock requirement numbers shown for unlocking the various ships.
[/list]
[b]Other changes[/b]
[list]
[*] The Beam Laser and Quad-Flak weapons are now unlocked from the start on new accounts. The Light Laser is now locked instead, and unlocks after dealing 600 total Laser damage.
[*] The Thermal Lance and Industrial Laser are now unlocked separately from the Beam Laser.
[*] The Arbalest can now start with the Thermal Lance once it's unlocked.
[*] The Marauder can now start with the Industrial Laser once it's unlocked.
[*] Quality of life: items you can't afford are now greyed out in the shop.
[*] Fixed/Updated some card translations
[/list]
That's it for this week, see you in the next one, where we have some cool new features and UX improvements rolling out! [b]o7[/b]
The Breachway Team
Hey everyone,
The Commander Update is now live!
This is our biggest update this year, and I'd like to thank everyone that helped test it on the Pre-deploy branch, reported bugs, and helped us polish it for today.
[b]Please note that this update includes a run reset.[/b]
The changes to equipment, cards, and run data mean old saves aren't compatible. Any run in progress will need to restart.
As promised in the preview, this post has the full details. It's a long one, so settle in, or skim the headers for what you care about. Let's get into it.
[h2]Controller Support[/h2]
The big one, the most requested feature since our Early Access launch. You can now play the whole game with a controller.
To be honest, we're not big controller players ourselves (although Breachway does feel surprisingly good with a controller), so while the full game is playable, the experience might not be quite there yet. Treat this as the first iteration, and let us know what feels awkward. Controller UX improvements and polish be happening over multiple patches ahead.
[h2]Combat Value Previews[/h2]
The game now shows you exactly what will change: Hull, Shield Points, equipment durability and resources when you drag a card out of your hand, before playing it.
No more mental math on whether that attack finishes the equipment off, or whether that shield card keeps you alive through the incoming volley.
This feature touches nearly every card in the game, so there will still be edge cases where it displays the wrong values. If you spot one, please report it, these are quick fixes on our end once we know about them.
[h2]Pulse Laser and Light Laser Redesign[/h2]
The precision laser family gets its redesign pass, following the same approach as Shields and Flak before it: trimmed libraries, clearer identities, and every card earning its slot. Both families can now also have their cards upgraded individually, joining Resource Bays, Shields, Flak, Railguns, and Beam Lasers.
This pass introduces two new mechanics:
[list]
[*] [b]Marked[/b]: some cards Mark an enemy equipment when they deal Hull damage. Marked equipment takes 2 bonus damage from all precision attacks for the rest of the turn.
[*] [b]Card selection[/b]: you can now [i]choose[/i] a card from the draw/discard pile instead of getting a random one. Try it on Repeater+, which lets you pick which Laser card to pull back from your cooldown pile.
[/list]
These mechanics will be used more extensively in the future, these two new interactions open up a lot of interesting options for us to explore.
[h3]Pulse Laser[/h3]
The starter weapon, rebuilt around a clear identity: attack sequencing. Nearly every card either sets up your next attack or pays off the ones you already played this turn. Perfect for new players getting into the game, with some simple and satisfying combos.
[b]Mk.I cards:[/b]
[list]
[*] [b]Quick Pulse[/b]: 2O 1E, CD 3 - Deal 5 Precision damage.
[*] [b]Snap Fire[/b]: 2O 1E, CD 4 - Deal 4 Precision damage. Reduce the cooldown of a random Laser Attack in your cooldown pile by 2.
[*] [b]Tracer[/b]: 2O 2M, CD 6 - Deal 4 Precision damage. Your next Attack deals +2 Precision damage.
[*] [b]Test Fire[/b]: 2O 2M, CD 5 - Deal 4 Precision damage. This turn, the next Attack from this equipment costs 2 less Ordnance.
[*] [b]Heavy Pulse[/b]: 3O 1E, CD 7 - Deal 6 Precision damage. If you already played a Laser Attack this turn, deal +3 damage.
[*] [b]Paired Pulse[/b] (Uncommon): 3O 2E, CD 6 - Deal 3 Precision damage twice.
[*] [b]Blinding Pulse[/b] (Uncommon): 2O 2E, CD 6 - Deal 4 Precision damage. On Hull damage: apply 1 Blind.
[*] [b]Primed Pulse[/b] (Rare): 2O 1E, CD 6 - Deal 4 Precision damage, +1 for each Laser Attack played this turn.
[/list]
[b]Mk.II cards:[/b]
[list]
[*] [b]Quick Pulse+[/b]: 2O 1E, CD 3 - Deal 6 Precision damage.
[*] [b]Snap Fire+[/b]: 2O 1E, CD 4 - Deal 4 Precision damage. Reduce the cooldowns of 2 random Laser Attacks in your cooldown pile by 2.
[*] [b]Tracer+[/b]: 2O 2M, CD 6 - Deal 4 Precision damage. Your next Attack deals +4 Precision damage.
[*] [b]Test Fire+[/b]: 2O 2M, CD 5 - Deal 4 Precision damage. This turn, the next Attack costs 4 less Ordnance.
[*] [b]Heavy Pulse+[/b]: 4O 1E, CD 6 - Deal 8 Precision damage. If you already played a Laser Attack this turn, deal +4 damage.
[*] [b]Paired Pulse+[/b] (Uncommon): 3O 2E, CD 6 - Deal 4 Precision damage twice.
[*] [b]Blinding Pulse+[/b] (Uncommon): 2O 2E, CD 5 - Deal 6 Precision damage. On Hull damage: apply 1 Blind.
[*] [b]Primed Pulse+[/b] (Rare): 3O 1E, CD 6 - Deal 4 Precision damage, +2 for each Laser Attack played this turn.
[/list]
[h3]Light Laser[/h3]
The Light Laser has a new role: it's now the roster's dedicated support weapon. Its attacks are deliberately small, with the value being in the riders: cooldown reduction, cost discounts, card retrieval, Marking, and generating Blinks (a cheap token attack that feeds every Laser Attack trigger in the family). Not the best damage output on its own, but great as a support weapon.
[b]Mk.I cards:[/b]
[list]
[*] [b]Blink[/b] (token): 1O - Deal 2 Precision damage. Deplete.
[*] [b]Accelerator Burst[/b]: 2O 1E, CD 4 - Deal 3 Precision damage, +2 if you have 4 or more Laser Attacks in your draw pile.
[*] [b]Echo Burst[/b]: 2O 1E, CD 5 - Deal 4 Precision damage. Add 1 Blink to your draw pile. Returns to your draw pile on play.
[*] [b]Swift Charge[/b]: 3M, CD 6 - Add 3 Blink cards to your draw pile. If the enemy is Blind, this card is free to play.
[*] [b]Booster Pulse[/b] (Uncommon): 2O 2M, CD 6 - Deal 4 Precision damage. The next 3 Laser cards you play cost 1 less and have their cooldown reduced by 1.
[*] [b]Catalyst Pulse[/b] (Uncommon): 2O 3E, CD 6 - Deal 5 Precision damage. Laser cards played this turn deal +1 damage.
[*] [b]Auto-Fire[/b] (Uncommon): 2O 2M, CD 6 - Deal 3 Precision damage. Your next 3 Attacks played this turn each draw a random Attack card.
[*] [b]Marking Shot[/b] (Uncommon): 1O 3E, CD 6 - Deal 3 Precision damage. On Hull damage: apply [b]Marked[/b] to the targeted equipment.
[*] [b]Repeater[/b] (Rare): 2O 2M, CD 5 - Deal 4 Precision damage. Return a random Laser card from your cooldown pile to your hand.
[/list]
[b]Mk.II cards:[/b]
[list]
[*] [b]Accelerator Burst+[/b]: 2O 1E, CD 4 - Deal 4 Precision damage, +1 for every 2 Laser Attacks in your draw pile.
[*] [b]Echo Burst+[/b]: 2O 1E, CD 5 - Deal 4 Precision damage. Add 2 Blinks to your draw pile.
[*] [b]Swift Charge+[/b]: 3M, CD 5 - Add 3 Blink cards to your hand (Blinks that don't fit are added to your draw pile instead). If the enemy is Blind, this card is free to play.
[*] [b]Booster Pulse+[/b] (Uncommon): 2O 3M, CD 6 - Deal 4 Precision damage. The next 5 Laser cards you play cost 1 less and have their cooldown reduced by 1.
[*] [b]Catalyst Pulse+[/b] (Uncommon): 2O 2E, CD 4 - Deal 5 Precision damage. Laser cards played this turn deal +1 damage.
[*] [b]Auto-Fire+[/b] (Uncommon): 2O 2M, CD 6 - Deal 4 Precision damage. Your next 5 Attacks played this turn each draw a random Attack card.
[*] [b]Marking Shot+[/b] (Uncommon): 1O 3E, CD 4 - Deal 4 Precision damage. On Hull damage: apply Marked to the targeted equipment.
[*] [b]Repeater+[/b] (Rare): 2O 3M, CD 5 - Deal 4 Precision damage. Pick a Laser card to return from your cooldown pile to your hand.
[/list]
[h2]Equipment Destruction Changes[/h2]
This is a deceivingly impactful change: destroying an enemy equipment now wipes all the charge pips off the card it was charging.
A well-timed kill cancels the incoming attack entirely, instead of just pausing it. This makes destruction meaningfully different from disabling, and adds a real timing decision to focusing equipment down.
To balance that extra power, enemy equipment durability has gone up by roughly 15-20% (scaled by how long the cooldowns on their cards are). Destruction is now harder to achieve, but hits harder when you get there. And to make up for the extra durability, Area damage to equipment from Flak and Missiles has been increased from 0.5 to 0.7 equipment damage per point of hull damage dealt.
[h2]Faster Meta-Progression[/h2]
Unlock durations have been compressed across the board, you'll unlock new content roughly twice as fast on average. Our median play time sits at 3 hours and 42 minutes, which means most players never saw anything beyond the initial weapons and the Marauder, a small slice of what the game has to offer.
Two additions on top of that:
[list]
[*] [b]New perk: Reinforced Hull[/b]: start your run with +10 max Hull. It unlocks after losing 2 runs, and it's meant to do exactly what it sounds like: give newer players a bit more room to find their footing.
[*] [b]Random ship selection[/b]: once you've unlocked the Avalanche, a new random ship button appears on the ship selection screen. Feeling indecisive, or want to force yourself out of your comfort pick? Let good old RNG decide.
[/list]
With the addition of the Reinforced Hull perk, all ships have had their starting hull value set to 50, as all ships can now add that perk to gain 10 max hull, like the Marauder and Firebrand had. Expect starting hull and hardpoints to be more varied for the different ships in the future.
[h2]Tutorial Improvements[/h2]
We've shortened the tutorial's intro sequence so you get to the actual fighting sooner, and rewrote the tutorial text throughout to be clearer about what the game is actually asking you to do. The updated text has also been retranslated across all supported languages.
We also fixed a long-standing gap: several tutorial panels outside the prologue were only ever shown to players who had completed the tutorial. If you skipped it, you never saw them. Those panels now appear for anyone who hasn't seen them before, whenever the relevant screen first comes up.
[hr][/hr]
We still have some of the smaller items planned for the Commander update that did not make it in time, such as the in-game patch notes, and color-blind friendly colors, which we will add in the coming weeks. Additionally, we'll keep polishing the controller UX based on your feedback, we'll do some fine-tuning on equipment durability around the new destruction rules, and we'll continue the weekly balance patch series once the update stabilizes.
[h2]Going forward[/h2]
We've got a lot of new and exciting things coming in the Tactician Update that will add more tactical choices to the game. Look out for more details on that in a coming Steam dev post early next month.
So far we've focused on tying up loos ends and adding missing functionality like proper analytics and now controller support. From the Tactician update onwards however, we'll finally be focusing primarily on brand new content!
As always, your reviews, bug reports, and feedback on Discord are what point us in the right direction.
If you try the new lasers, we'd love to hear how they feel in practice, and we're especially looking forward to any feedback from controller players, especially on the Steam deck or similar consoles.
Thanks for taking the time to read this monster of a post, and for your continued support. [b]o7[/b]
The Breachway Team
Hi, this is a small update focused on improving the ship hit reactions, sorry for the large file size, it's something we're looking into.
Change log:
HI everyone,
besides the usual bug-fixes and balance changes, we've got something really cool that will make combat look more dynamic: Hit impacts!
Enemies will now get shoved off course by hits from physical projectiles (Flak and especially Missiles, Railguns less so, as they just pass clean through the ship), and slowly return to their original trajectory with the help of their maneuvering thrusters.
This feature came straight out of some hit-evasion tests we were running for the experimental branch. We wanted to share it with you guys as soon as possible, because it's a small addition that adds a lot to the feel of a battle. Some values may be off/ exaggerated, it's a feature we'll add to and refine going forward.
We still have a lot of work to do to get balance in a better shape, we've got elites and some regular enemies out-killing most bosses in the game, but we're slowly getting there. This week we're focusing on further buffing the sector 2 bosses, they are by far the weakest set compared to the other bosses and elites.
Here's the full change log for this week's patch:
[list]
[*] Added an experimental feature where ships now react to missile and Flak pellet impacts.
[*] [b]SOL S02 Boss[/b]: Predictive Aim now correctly doubles the next Flak attack's damage, instead of increasing it by 50%.
[*] [b]SK S02 Boss[/b]: Pre-emptive Pulse now deals 6 base damage, up from 4.
[*] [b]FR S02 Boss[/b]: Asteroid Breaker base damage increased from 5 to 6.
[*] Fixed a Redline and Redline+ bug that prevented the cards from adding Heat on turn start, as stated in the card text.
[*] Rewrote the hirable crew picker logic. The old version could crash when you entered a new station after having already seen every hirable crew member — now the station simply shows no one for hire in that case.
[*] Fixed a missing shader that displayed as a pink shape in one of the sector maps.
[*] Fixed enemy ships sometimes silently skipping a card deployment on the first turn of combat due to a startup timing race.
[*] Fixed a damage display error on EM Round+.
[/list]
That's it for this week. There won't be a balance patch next week, as we're focusing on finishing the Commander Update so we can start testing it ahead of the public rollout, more on that soon.
Thanks for sticking with us, participating in our Discord discussions, giving us feedback and reporting bugs! [b]o7[/b]
The Breachway Team
Hey everyone, time for the weekly balance patch.
For this one, we've focused on reducing the difficulty of some Sector 1 encounters. Some Sector 1 elites actually had higher kill rates than Sector 1 bosses, even though Sector 1 bosses already kill players at 2-4x the rate of Sector 2 bosses. Sector 1 is still a big wall most players repeatedly get blocked by, so lowering its difficulty is the top priority.
On the player side, we've buffed some Railgun family cards, since that weapon family was underperforming compared to the rest. We've also buffed the starting Railguns on the Lancer, its win rate was the lowest of the five ships, and the weak start was causing a lot of player frustration.
We aim to share some interesting game statistics each week. This week we have the graph that best represents the issue we'll focus on fixing in the coming weeks: fights are too long, even against enemies that don't pose much of a threat.
Average hull damage done is represented on the Y axis, combat turn length on the X axis.
We've found and corrected the issue with the Avalanche achievement, and tracked down the reason the Smuggler achievement was so difficult to get. Turns out you had to be a Deadweight Ally when dropping off the smuggled package to get the achievement. On top of that, you only got the event once per profile, instead of once per run.
We've also added an achievement fallback check, in case you earned any achievements while offline and they didn't get properly registered. Check out the change log below for the exact changes.
Change log:
Bug fixes
Balance changes
Let us know what you think, let's discuss how we an reduce combat length in our Discord, and see you all in next week's balance post! o7
The Breachway Team
Hey everyone
We've optimized the turn end performance, as a good amount of our players mentioned they experienced low framerates in between turns. Since this affects so many of you, we wanted to ship this fix as soon as possible, even though its outside the weekly cadence we mentioned in our previous post.
There's also some other small fixes bundled in.
Changelog:
Thank you for your continued support, bug reports, and messages of encouragement. The game wouldn't be where it is without you! o7
The Breachway Team
Hey everyone,
We've started some long-overdue balance changes, kicking off a new balance patch series with the aim of releasing one balance patch per week until we've smoothed out the game's difficulty curve.
For starters: Sector 1 is a wall new players keep hitting and bouncing off of, while Sector 2 is much easier by comparison, Sector 2 bosses rarely pose a challenge. To that end, we've started by nerfing some Sector 1 bosses and elites, and buffing Sector 2 bosses. The aim is to gradually bring the difficulty curve to a healthy shape, instead of overcorrecting and going back and forth.
We've also started looking at bringing the player ships closer together in terms of power level. We haven't made a lot of changes yet, but that'll be a big part of this balance pass.
Change log:
Lancer: Ranging shot damage increased from 3 to 5
SOL S01 Boss:
Improvised Flak damage lowered from 6 to 5
Replaced the Light barrage with a regular barrage dealing 4 damage 2 shred (Light barrage used to also fire an additional flak shell besides dealing 4 damage and adding 2 shred)
The first shield card now takes 2 turns to play, instead of 1
Hull points reduced from 70 to 65
FR S01 Boss:
Shield equipment durability down from 18 to 16
Shield points gained per Shield card played down from 8 to 6
SK S01 Elite:
First Shield card played delayed from 1 turn to 2 turns
Pulse laser equipment durability decreased from 12 to 10
SOL S01 Elite:
Stagger shot damage reduced from 5 to 4
Shield generator durability decreased from 14 to 12
SK S01 Boss (by far the weakest of the Sector 1 bosses):
Laser pulse damage increased from 4 to 6
DW S02 Boss (barely did any damage, but still resulted in long fights):
Trident Torpedo countdown reduced from 4 (3+ Reload) to 3 (2 plus Reload)
The missile rack now fires 4 missile instead of 3 before needing to reload
HP reduced from 100/125 to 80/100
SK S02 Boss (The weakest Sector 2 boss):
Paired Pulse cooldown decreased from 3 to 2
Suppression added by Inhibit increased from 1 to 2
SOL S02 Boss:
Twin Barrel cooldown reduced from 3 to 2
Light barrage replaced with a 5 damage 2 shred Flak barrage
Shaped Charge cooldown decreased from 2 to 1
FR S02 Boss:
Drilling Beam damage increased from 5 to 7
Let us know what you think, and see you in next week's balance post! o7
The Breachway Team
Changelog:
Changelog:
New build is up (still 1.141.0.0, so it won't reset current runs) with the following fixes:
Build 1.141.0.0 is now live.
I apologize for the constant version changes that reset your current run progress, but we had some bugs that required a full addressable rebuild, which clears ongoing runs.
Changes:
- Area damage now only gains the brittle damage bonus against unshielded targets (for now, a launched missile will preserve the damage it had on launch, this will change once I start the missile design pass)
- Correctly added the Smelter and Centrifuge resource bays
- The sector start events and sector end shops now correctly spawn in the second and third sectors
Hey everyone, i will keep this update short, but it has a much-requested feature: Card upgrading!
You can now upgrade base cards on Mk.II Equipment. Before , when upgrading your equipment pieces from Mk.I to Mk.II you had to remove and redraft cards, or just drop your Mk.I equipment entirely.
Now you can directly upgrade base cards to their upgraded version if you have upgraded your equipment to Mk.II.
In order to do that, just select a Mk.II equipment in the hangar, select a card, and press the upgrade button.
Hovering over the upgrade button will display the upgraded version of the card.
Right now card upgrades are only available for the following equipment families:
Flak, Railguns, Beam Lasers, Resource bays, Shields
Thanks for your continued support
The Breachway team
Hi , we have a small update fixing some reported issues with the new flak cards.
This build has a complete rework of the flak equipment among other things, read more below:
Hi everyone, it’s time for another patch!
As mentioned on our Discord and forums, we’ve been focusing on fixing two of the most serious issues you’ve reported repeatedly:
persistent cards getting stuck (most notably missiles), and a memory leak that caused performance to degrade during longer play sessions.
Testing indicates that the persistent card issue has finally been resolved. The memory leak fix, however, introduced a few secondary issues that we’re still working through. We expect to have those addressed in a follow-up patch by the end of the year.
With that out of the way, let’s talk about the main new feature introduced in this patch: Equipment Subtypes.
Equipment subtypes are more focused versions of existing equipment. Each subtype has a smaller drafting pool and is built around a clear core theme.
The first example of this system is the Beam Laser. Previously, Beam Lasers lacked a strong identity: some cards applied Shred, others applied Heat, and some simply dealt damage. With a large drafting pool, it was difficult to consistently lean into any of those directions, as the odds of seeing synergistic cards were relatively low.
To address this, we’ve split the Beam Laser into three distinct subtypes:
This change aims to do a few things:
We think this system has a lot of potential, but before committing to it more broadly, we want to test it with your help and gather feedback.
We’ve also added new features and refined several existing systems. This includes new shield modes - Focused and Diffuse Shielding, which reduce incoming damage from Precision and Area attacks respectively, as well as new armor types like Angled and Ablative Armor, which mitigate specific damage types such as Kinetic and Laser damage. You can read more about these and other changes below.
Changelog:
As always, thank you for taking the time to play, report bugs, and share your feedback.
This patch includes some meaningful changes under the hood, and we’re especially interested in hearing your thoughts on the new equipment subtype system. Please let us know how it feels in practice, and don’t hesitate to report any issues you encounter on our forums or Discord, it genuinely helps us shape the game going forward.
- Edgeflow Studio
Hi everyone,
We're happy to announce that because of the hard work of our testers and community, we were able to quickly roll out the 3 sector patch on the main branch!
Hi everyone, This update brings a few exciting additions and important improvements:
Alongside these updates, we've also addressed a number of bugs (thank you all for your detailed reports!)
We're also beginning to dig deeper into your feedback on game balance. Whether you're a new or returning player, your experiences help us pinpoint where things need adjustment. This marks the first step in a longer process to fine-tune and improve Breachway’s balance and gameplay experience.
Changelog 1.91.0.0
Thanks for being part of the journey, your feedback is invaluable in improving Breachway.
Hey everyone, here are some more fixes based on your latest bug reports.
Change-log:
Thank you for your support and for reporting further bugs!
The Breachway Team
Hey everyone, here are some fixes and balance changes based on your latest bug reports.
Change-log:
More achievements to be added soon.
Thank you for your bug reports in our Discord server, your feedback is invaluable.
Hey everyone, We are happy to announce that the update we've been working on for the last four months is finally live on the main branch!
This is by far our biggest update yet. It completely overhauls some of the game's systems, progression, adds dozens of new cards, and more than doubles the number of cards in the game through card upgrades.
Let's go over the main features we've added since the last update on the main branch:
This is a big one. Every card now has an upgraded version you can draft on higher-tier equipment, effectively doubling the amount of cards in the game.
We've added more than 40 new cards and redesigned dozens of existing cards for more impact and synergy
We've added a wide variety of equipment variations, where before you could only find a couple of variations on each equipment, we now have more than 30 versions of each equipment type, each with a different number of card slots, subsystem slots, and drafting library level.
Where before you would mostly finish a run with the gear you started, you now have a good chance to find new equipment dropped on defeating enemies, making for a more varied loadout and thus more interesting choices throughout a run.
You can now upgrade any equipment you encounter or start with. Whether you're aiming for a specific build or adapting to new synergies, this feature adds flexibility and more strategic decision-making.
You can now view your stats at the end of each run, as well as what progress you made towards unlocking new ships, perks and equipment. Additionally, you can also view your lifetime stats, and have a general overview on your meta-progression unlocks from the main menu.
We’ve reworked the early-game experience to offer a more gradual and guided introduction to the game’s core systems and card mechanics, making progression more rewarding and the game easier to get into.
As you unlock equipment through meta-progression, most of it becomes available for use at the start of a run. This adds more variety and lets you mix and match different starting strategies. This is just the beginning, as we plan to expand this system with more unique starting options in future updates.
A cleaner and easier-to-use interface on the map and in shops, greatly streamlining the station experience.
You can now set up multiple player profiles, each with their own level of progression.
Point defense, flak, and railguns have been grouped into a new Kinetic weapon family, enabling more synergies and interactions between these weapon types.
What items you see in stores and drop off enemies is now based on what faction those enemies and stores belong to. This leads to more control over your loadout in a run, and helps differentiate the factions more.
We have fixed dozens of bugs since the last major update on the main branch, There will undoubtedly be some new bugs added, as is the case when you add so much new content and code to the game, so keep those reports coming, and we'll do our best to squash all of them!
Thanks for sticking with us while we worked on this major overhaul. Our goal with this update was to address two of the biggest issues you've raised: lack of variety in runs and a weak progression system for new players. We hope these improvements make your runs more dynamic, your builds more interesting, and your time in Breachway more rewarding overall.
Now that we’ve laid the groundwork, we’re shifting focus to balance and content. With so many new systems in place, we want to make sure everything feels tight and fair. Expect regular balance passes, along with new content, every two weeks—including new achievements, enemies, perks, and subsystems.
Additionally, we also still have to create new images for all the new cards, that is an ongoing process, so please bear with us.
Your opinion mnatters If you’ve been playing the new update, we’d love to hear what’s working for you—and what still feels off. your feedback helps surface the patterns we might miss when we’re deep in interconnected systems. Whether it’s a quick note or something more detailed, it gives us a better sense of how the game’s landing now that the foundations have shifted.
Thanks again—and enjoy the update!
New Equipment Expands Build Variety + Key Bugfixes
Hi everyone, We’ve added some new equipment to Breachway, designed to expand the options for viable builds across the different ships.
While we’re still hard at work on the Meta-Progression update, which we’re confident will be a great addition to the game, it just needs a bit more time to fully come together.
Looking ahead, we plan to shift to a more regular patch release cycle. Instead of waiting for one large patch every couple of months, you can expect more frequent updates that introduce fixes and fresh content, like new enemies, cards, subsystems, and events. Larger updates—like the Meta-Progression patch—will still happen every couple of months, but smaller updates will keep things moving at a steady pace.
In the meantime, we hope you enjoy experimenting with the new Missile Launcher and Hacking Array equipment, and let us know what you think!
Changelog:
To the Community As always, we want to thank you for your patience and support for Breachway. Please keep sharing your thoughts and opinions with us—every review and suggestion is hugely appreciated, and the game will only get better because of them.
Hi everyone, there were some minor issues that were reported after the last update. We're fixing them as we see them, so here's the first hotfix after our Avalanche update:
Expect more fixes in the near future as more issues are discovered.
Thank you for your kind words regarding our latest update, it really means a lot to us!
Hi everyone,
First, thank you for your patience while we worked on this update. We know it’s been a while, and we apologize for the long wait.
This patch turned out to be more ambitious than we initially planned. As we dug into the game, we discovered more areas that needed attention, and we couldn’t resist tackling them to improve Breachway.
We want to start by presenting you with our latest ship:
The Avalanche is a new missile-focused ship designed to dominate enemy point defenses with overwhelming missile barrages. Its playstyle centers on high-volume missile volleys, synergizing with the new Blast Damage mechanics, opening up new possibilities for missile-based builds. (Insert screenshot of the Avalanche here)
Flak Overhaul Flak mechanics have been reworked to promote strategy and reduce randomness: Shred Counters: Most Flak cards now apply Shred counters to enemies. Brittle Effect: At 10 Shred counters, enemies gain 1 Brittle, increasing the damage they take from Blast attacks. Controlled Impact: These changes make Flak weapons more predictable and tactical.
New Damage Types Three new damage types—Precision, Blast, and Ion—replace the previous equipment-specific interactions, adding flexibility to deck-building: Precision Damage: Single-target, high-accuracy attacks. Blast Damage: Area-of-effect attacks for handling groups of enemies. Ion Damage: Disruptive utility effects for strategic control. This change encourages diverse synergies between cards and weapons.
Ignite Mechanic Simplified The Ignite mechanic has been updated for better clarity: Each card now has a specific Ignite Value, which determines the maximum Heat it can generate. For every point of hull damage, 1 Heat is added to the target up to the Ignite value. This system provides better transparency and opens new design possibilities.
Subsystem Swapping Subsystems are now swappable, allowing players to experiment and adapt their strategies during a run.
Generic Mk. I Equipment Mk. I equipment is now generic, providing greater variety in early-game drafting. This change and the new damage types support creative builds from the start.
New Features Run End Screen At the end of each run, a Run End Screen summarizes your performance, showcasing key stats such as: Damage dealt by weapon type. Enemies defeated (Regular/Elite/Boss). Nodes traveled, Heat added, and credits earned. Future updates will expand this feature with scoring systems, achievements, and highlights for a richer post-run experience.
Streamlined Space Station Menu Station services have been consolidated into the Hangar screen to simplify navigation and reduce menu backtracking. (Insert screenshot of the updated menu here)
Stability Enhancements Key improvements to the tutorial experience include: Bug fixes for increased stability. Improved communication of mechanics to help new players get started more easily.
Enemy Behavior Updates Enemies have been adjusted to align with new mechanics, creating more engaging encounters: Streamlined actions improve predictability and counterplay opportunities. Rebalanced behavior ensures less frustration and more strategic gameplay.
The next update will introduce meta-progression features, addressing highly requested additions. Here’s what’s coming: Unlockable Starting Loadouts: Customize starting configurations to suit different playstyles. Expanded Starting Perks: Experiment with new perks for varied strategies. Achievements and More: Progression elements to add depth and replayability. These additions aim to provide more meaningful choices and increased variety in every run.
To the Community: Thank You
With this patch, we’ve worked to tackle some of our players' most frequent feedback and concerns. This is just the beginning of our journey toward improving the game, and we hope these updates will enhance your experience while unlocking more viable card and equipment combinations.
These foundational changes have delayed some of our planned content releases. We felt it was essential to address core gameplay mechanics first to ensure that the game’s foundation is solid before we start adding new features and content.
We can't stress how crucial your feedback is in identifying the game's issues, so please keep it coming. We're a small team, and progress is slower than we'd like, but we're here for the long haul and are determined to do our best to bring out the potential so many of you saw in the game.
We can’t wait to hear your thoughts, so please keep the feedback coming — it truly makes all the difference.
Hey everyone.
It's been almost a week since our last official update, but this is a meaty one. We've broken the changelog into several categories to highlight the changes we added over the last week.
On the game design side, we've simplified some of the systems in the game, giving you more freedom in making decisions on how to equip your ship. For example, the crew now directly determines your card slots (number of the crew + 1 base card slot) and whether they operate equipment. Equipment items now always add their cards to your draw pile, whether operated by the crew or not. This allows more leeway in your ship's setup; you can have a fully equipped ship with only a few crew or a fully crewed boat with only a few pieces of equipment.
Additionally, we've implemented a limit to how much fuel you can buy from stores (3 per store currently), which is a better way to add some fuel scarcity without increasing the price. We've also improved the odds of getting subsystems that are actually relevant to your current loadout, enabling more natural power scaling that is less reliant on RNG.
On the technical side, we've eliminated a handful of nasty bugs that resulted from our combat save system. However, this also required us to disable saving during combat (at least for now) as it created more edge cases than our programmer could handle in a limited amount of time (there are a lot of cool additions we want to work on).
Additionally, we've improved performance in some cases by addressing a memory leak and reducing some texture sizes that had to be written for the ship damage system.
We've also had some fun and added a ship-renaming option in the hangar as some of our players suggested. It has no effect, but we'll soon have people referring to the ship by its name at events.
With these latest technical bug fixes behind us, we hope the game is stable enough for you to enjoy without any issues. This will also allow us to proceed with all the cool features and content we want to add.
Due to the sizeable changes in this patch, your current run progress will be reset (meta progress will not be affected). We've tried to avoid this, but there's no way around it when we make fundamental changes to the game.
Stability and Performance Fixes
Card Fixes and Balance Changes
Crew and Equipment Changes
Shop and Fuel System Changes
Miscellaneous Changes and Additions
From now on, we should have more time to work on the features we discussed in the last dev update and patch notes.
Roadmap Update We’ve also listened to your feedback regarding the presence of too much RNG in the game, and we’re currently reworking the Flak weapon system to reduce the excessive RNG while keeping its core identity intact. You can read more about the changes in the upcoming dev update next week. We're also working on a roadmap, but it will take longer. We want to ensure we present you with a clear and accurate development plan for Breachway.
Thanks again for all of your suggestions and words of encouragement. They're a big help in improving the game and a great motivator that keeps us going! We're genuinely excited about what the future will bring for the game and can't wait to share more details with you.
As always, we encourage you to continue sharing your thoughts and feedback. Every review and suggestion helps us improve the game, and we're genuinely grateful for each one!
Hi everyone,
It's been a long week, and we're so happy our work fixing all the various issues you pointed out has been appreciated. Before we take a much-needed weekend off, we've got one more update to ship, with many fixes in card and event interactions. (We'll still keep an eye on this thread just to make sure nothing slipped by.)
We’d also like to update you on the saved data rework. Last night, we finished refactoring the save code and spent all day stress-testing it to ensure stability. So far, everything looks solid, and it seems the data loss issue is resolved. We’ll continue testing over the weekend, and if all goes well, we plan to push the fix to the main branch on Monday.
We can’t express how excited we are to have the most severe issues resolved finally — or very close to it. This means we can start focusing on adding features you’ve suggested, improving readability, and generally making the game more user-friendly.
Next week, we’ll focus on one of the most requested features: ship customization. Many of you have asked for more meta-progression and more ways to tweak your starting ship, experiment with different equipment, and explore new combos.
We’re also working on enhancing the end screen to make it more satisfying. You’ll soon be able to see detailed stats of your run, including enemies defeated, missions completed, nodes traveled, unlocks, and more.
We’ll keep you updated throughout next week on progress and what you can look forward to in the near future.
We deeply appreciate the incredible community that is forming around Breachway. Your bug reports, suggestions, and reviews are keeping us motivated and helping us pinpoint issues, fix them, and expand the game into something that has the potential to truly special. We couldn’t do this without your support!
Hi everyone, we've managed to track down and solve the issue with the soft locks happening on the second sector boss, as well as fix some minor issues related to events. Thank you for your patience while we sort the save game data issues out. We've managed to pinpoint the issue there, and are working on a permanent fix for it.
In terms of balance, we've moved the fuel cost increase to the first escalation level, as it was too punishing to new player. Additionally, we've changed some cards on the Marauder's starting loadout to make them more synergistic with the resource types associated with it. The game's balance is an on-going process, so thank you for all your feedback , if the game's launch has proven one thing, it's that you can be blind to a lot of obvious things if you've worked on something for long enough.
On to the patch notes
Thank you, and please keep the comments and reviews coming, they are extremely helpful in locating and fixing bugs and design issues.
Hi everyone, We've got another patch packed and ready to ship! This update primarily focuses on fixes, including some that address potentially game-breaking bugs.
The main balance adjustment is to the fuel system. Based on your feedback, we realized the fuel prices were too cheap, trivializing the fuel system to some extent. To address this, we've introduced a scaling cost system. Now, each time you purchase 1 unit of fuel from stations, the price increases by 5 credits (10 credits on escalation level 5+). This change should keep fuel accessible while discouraging farming the entire map.
We'll be keeping a close eye on your feedback for this patch, to quickly catch any potential bugs that might have slipped through.
As always, we encourage you to continue sharing your thoughts and feedback. Every review and suggestion helps us improve the game, and we're truly grateful for each one!
Changelog
Hey everyone, It’s finally time for another update!
We're sorry you get this a week after the Steam update, but we had a pretty rocky launch for the patch, and we wanted to have the build stabilize before posting it to GoG, so this includes all other updates between the initial launch and yesterday's hotfix.
This one update on addressing one of the biggest points of confusion in Breachway: enemy design and combat clarity.
Originally, we tried to make our enemies modular, essentially assembling them from equipment pieces that handled all of their logic and behavior. We hoped this would lead to interesting, emergent encounters. Instead, it created enemies that were overly complex, confusing, and — ironically, kind of bland.
To make matters worse, enemies hadn’t been updated to use the new equipment and card systems we introduced back in June, meaning they were missing entire mechanics and interactions. That mix of blandness, confusion, and inconsistent difficulty really hurt the experience, so we decided to rebuild enemies from the ground up.
A Quick Note
Please keep in mind that this update is massive. Dozens of new enemies, over twenty new cards, new station functionality, and a much wider range of possible builds. We’ve tested everything thoroughly, but there’s only so much a small team can catch when it comes to bugs and balance.
Please help us improve this update further by reporting any issues you find and sharing your balance suggestions in our Discord. You can also join our community on our subreddit, r/Breachway.
Rethinking Enemies
We went back to the drawing board. Rather than thinking of enemies as bundles of complex systems, we focused on them individually: What makes each one interesting to fight?
We also realized a key mistake in our original approach: trying to make enemies play the same cards as the player. That’s fine for the player, stringing together intricate combos is part of the fun. But when enemies did it, it just became hard to follow. So, we set some new design rules:
No more same-turn effects, every change in enemy stats (damage boosts, buffs, etc.) don't affect any cards played in the current turn, giving you time to react.
All enemy actions must be clearly readable.
And most importantly, it’s okay for enemies to have unique, even overpowered cards. This makes their actions more impactful, without the kind of combo gymnastics a player would need to go through.
Patch Notes
Enough talk however, here are the patch notes for this update:
Reworked 42 enemies: some have been updated, most are brand new
8 New elites, completely replacing the old set
4 New bosses for the end of sector 1, each offering a unique challenge
Reworked Sector 2 boss: the old version was the epitome of what went wrong with our enemy design: overly complex, hard to follow, and frustratingly difficult. It’s been retired for now, and we’ll add more variety for Sector 2 bosses soon.
New enemy cards and effects: first sector enemies are simpler and easier to read, while second sector enemies now have a few new tricks up their sleeves.
Improved enemy card clarity: you can now see the amount of shred and ignite enemy attacks will do, without having to read the card text (which is still strongly recommended!)
Crew hiring at stations: you can now recruit new crew members at stations. It’s not cheap, but an extra card slot can make all the difference.
Removed the Tactical hardpoint type: shield and hacking equipment now goes on the Utility hardpoint instead. This makes ships more similar in the short term, but with the upside of opening up a lot more build variety during your run. We’ll keep refining ship differentiation in future updates.
New map node icons: reward nodes, merchants, repair ships, and fuel ships each have their own distinct icon and are now visible on the map.
Improved card drafting: you’ll no longer see the same card shown twice in a row (though there’s a known issue where you might still see duplicates in two-option drafts — we’ll fix that soon!).
Neutral combat events, both for Elites and regular enemies. This allows us to make the faction combat encounters more impactful in the future, and allows you to hunt elites free of any repercussions on faction relations
Many smaller changes and fixes throughout the game.
What’s Next
We know everyone’s eager for the third sector, but we couldn’t keep building new content on a shaky foundation. We felt this rework was necessary.
The good news is that we’ve built a ton of new enemies recently, and that momentum isn’t slowing down. The third sector is now our top priority, and moving forward, our focus is on iteration and maintaining a steady cadence of updates as we develop it in parallel. No more months-long reworks!
Beyond the third sector, this is what we plan to work on in the near future:
Alternate sector layouts, this will come in the next update a couple of weeks from now
Improved and more streamlined tutorial, offload some of the information presented in the tutorial to the game itself, to be presented when necessary
Crew levels
Split equipment into smaller, more varied equipment types, with a more focused drafting table. We want to put more emphasis on your ship loadout
1 more hardpoint for each ship
Reworked waypoint nodes, populated with more interesting encounters (we have some great ones in the works)
Worldbuilding- we are going to further flesh out the world and story in new events and crew interactions
That's it for this update.
Thank you for your continued support and encouragement.
We hope you'll enjoy this new update.
- The Breachway Team
