The latest update has quite a bit of changes both to the Core Rules, Wargaming supplement and the Unit Profile sheets.  In this post we’ll cover a brief overview.   Which we’ve broken into three segments.  Some of these we will cover more in depth in follow-up posts.  For this segment let’s cover Balance Updates.

(Also, Super Robots have been updated on the game downloads page)

Points Update

We’ll start off with the upgrade options for available for your units.  A few new ones were added, a few were updated, and VP in general was streamlined where +50pts now equals +5VP, with the exception being Performance the biggest driver of VP increases.  

The most commonly picked upgrades for Playtesters were one of the ‘Free Skill’ upgrades such as Superior Instincts (Flash), Overzealous (Zeal), Fearless (Valor) and Persist (Iron Wall).  And there’s a reason for that, at the time 50pts for a [M-3] free skill was a steal, especially so when Momentum was always critically low for aggressive players. 

We confirmed this on the Dev team where a very cheap 250pt unit and a partner unit with a wealth of upgrades including free skills ended up hammering a 1000pt Freedom and Justice over and over again.  (Battle Report forthcoming).  The free skills were the driving victory factor here, after bumping up the point cost the gameplay became more fair.  We tries several adjustments in this test series  but eventually settled on +100pts per level which we find to be a bit more fair, while also making other options more viable for their points cost.

As a silver lining, we’ve removed the type restrictions on Flash / Iron Wall.  We’ve also raised the cap by 50pts on Unit Upgrades (although the Free Skill upgrades are exempt from that).

Elite Bonuses

These have been reworked a bit mostly on the melee side, since one option was proving to be much better than the other.  Now both have an equivalent with Bullseye/Barrage, and a bonus effect like making it harder to counter or easier to disengage.  Similarly, the upgradable bonuses you can give your pilots, have been split on the Melee side similar to Bullseye and Barrage.

Speaking of Barrage, we’re also rolling back changes for ‘Auto-Hit’ effects.  Barrage no longer gives auto-hits on +Hit weapons, instead it’s limited to giving auto-hits only if you go over 10dice of attack.  AOE weapons were proving to be too potent, blasting through cover with enough auto-hit effects to wipe out virtually any unit.  Now Heero Yuy has to try a little before vaporizing the target.  Fortunately, all machine gun types weapons were rebalanced and for the most part are all stock 10d10 on attack, so barrage remains the best (and most thematic) choice.

Weapons Update

As mentioned above there were big changes to AOE weapons and machine gun type weapons.  We also did a big overhaul of high damage weapons.  We noticed that some of the melee weapons were remarkably high damage and it only took a couple hits to cleave through heroic type units.  We’ve since adjusted how much damages boosts are worth and you’ll see a lot more reasonable damage numbers on melee weapons, bazookas and cannons.

Similarly, beam weapons are now generally -100 DMG but +1 PEN across the board to further differentiate their feel from conventional kinetic weapons.  Weapons with a [Free Attack] special clause went up again in points costs, and so were rebalanced to be weaker at their same price, or significantly higher in points which affects units like the Gouf series for instance. 

Lastly, but certainly not least the points weighting for attack dice has increased again with this primarily affecting DMG 300+ or PEN 5+ weapons.  Many of these weapons either went down in dice to around 6-7d10, or they went up in points costs as you’ll notice in the unit profiles.

Unit Update

Doing a complete overhaul of all weapons and shields necessitated a rebalance of all units.  So you’ll see a lot of points adjustments, or some units stayed the same points costs but had to be adjusted elsewhere such as lowering their HP or sensors.  HP went through another overhaul, some reoccurring feedback we’ve gotten is that the heroic type Frame 4+ units like Gundam’s, often feel too fragile compared to a grunt suit.  We’ve adjusted the HP formulas (and VP formulas) such that higher Frame units have consistently higher HP while also trying to maintain the lethality where the average grunt can still and will be destroyed by a well placed beam rifle shot.

On top of that, a lot of our more rare units got a lot of care and attention on their rebalance.  G Gundam as a whole has moved up to 1000pts each, representing how they are the finest machines their country put out.  Likewise, the Wing units has a good boost to better represent their grunt killing prowess.

Super Robots also received considerable glow ups, as the Gundam sheets have been overall increasing in costs it’s time to make some of the iconic Super Robots significantly more expensive, and thus more powerful as well.  Some classic favorites will retain their cheap 250pt version, while others are getting bumped up to 750-1000pt options.  Do note, that even a cheap unit with a bouquet of unit upgrades can still menace significantly more expensive units if you play them right.  That’s one of the fun options we’re happy to keep designing around in MechaStellar.