Rules v42.1 Patch Notes

A new balance pass and adjustments to the game rules are now live for all players. The changes will apply only to games created after the patch was live. It’s been a long time since a balance patch so this is a big one. Before we get to the details, I want to talk about our longer-term objectives with the balance of the game.

Medium-Term Objectives

Check-In Frequency

Core to Subterfuge’s design has always been that players can be successful while checking in roughly every 8 hours. Right now, it is too common that checking in more frequently than every 8 hours presents an advantage. This will always be the case, but we hope to make some steps to reduce this.

Aggression

In general, we’d like the macro play to favor a bit more aggression. Too often, especially at lower rankings, games settle into winners and losers and then don’t change. We also feel that turtling is too effective right now. We’d like to see more eliminations (while preserving goal 1!), more combat, and fewer medals be earned with little challenge. We want shields to become a more compelling mechanic and don’t think this goal is at odds with aggression so you’re going to see some changes to these as well.

Pacing

The start of the game is just too darn boring. This impacts how much fun new players, in particular, are having.

Global Effects

“Timing is Everything” is one of our design pillars. Subterfuge is all about planning ahead and positioning your units in the right place at the right time. In general, global effects are less interesting than local ones because they eliminate this part of the game. Global effects are compelling when they act like specializations impacting how you play the game and others interact with you. The King, in spirit, is a great example of this. He should force you to play aggressively.

System Changes

Rules Mechanics

Rules now support minor version increments. This allows us to iterate on rules while they’re in beta. When we publish rules versions changes, we’re going to describe them in terms of changes from the previous major version.

Gifting

Gifting now respects the energy cap. When a gift arrives, drillers that would put you over your energy capacity aren’t granted.

In general, we like when collaboration between players fosters specialization. Having some players focus on production and others on energy is healthy. Right now, we are only getting half of that because it’s trivial to blow past your energy cap. We hope this will encourage collaborators to pair Tycoon/Foreman stacking with Tinkerer/MoE stacking.

The existing energy cap mechanics nicely serves our “Aggression” goal. Players wasting production while capped are incentivized to use them for attacking or mining rather than let the resource go to waste. Circumventing the production cap works against this goal.

We considered more elaborate versions of this - allowing gifting to push you slightly over the cap or nerfing specialists that result in busted behavior but are opting to try out the more impactful, easier to understand mechanic first. We also think gifting drillers and specialists as well as specialist captivity will be fruitful areas to explore as we begin to add new specialists.

Game Start Speedup

We are making the first twelve hours of the game effectively run at 1.5x speed. For the first 12 hours of the game:

All subs move 1.5x as fast
Queens produce specialists 1.5x as fast
Production cycles at factories are reduced by 33%
Shields regenerate 1.5x as fast

Prisoner Release Fixes

There were a few ways players could alter the outpost that a prisoner would be released to. We’ve closed these loopholes.

Adjustments

War Hero / Sentry

War Hero becomes recruitable from the Queen. Sentry now promotes from War Hero.

We’re swapping these specialists such that the War Hero is recruitable from the Queen and promotes to the Sentry. We think this makes the promotion an interesting choice as opposed to a never-do and gives you a path to some early-game aggression and makes the Sentry a late-game option which it wants to be anyways. The artwork will need a rework as well if this change sticks. The War Hero lives in the “Offensive” deck for specialist recruitment.

Engineer

Engineers can no longer result in repairing more drillers than you started with.

While the text of the engineer doesn’t specify it, we think it’s implied. Engineer-stacking doesn’t happen in most circumstances but when it does, we think it’s silly.

Combat Priority

Infiltrator: 4⇒5
Double Agent: 5⇒6
Assassin: 6⇒7
Lieutenant: 7⇒8
War Hero: 7⇒8

The Infiltrator moves into a priority band of its own, just after the Thief, so a Thief still steals before combat ends. Everything below shifts down one to make room. Martyr (1), Revered Elder (2), Saboteur (3) and Thief (4) are unchanged.

Buffs

Infiltrator

Drains all shield charge of any outpost it attacks. When participating in sub-to-sub combat, combat ends.

We want the infiltrator to be a generally-useful specialist rather than being circumstantial. The infiltrator buff made shields less interesting, and didn’t end up having the impact we had hoped for. It is still rarely selected, so we’re trying again with a fictionally-aligned change. Yes, this is a stealth nerf to the pirate.

Foreman

~~Produces 6 additional drillers with each production cycle while at a factory. Promotes to: Engineer~~ ⇒ Produces 4 additional drillers with each production cycle at all your factories within half the sonar range of Foreman’s outpost. Promotes to: Engineer

The foreman is one of those specs like the hypnotist that is mostly recruited for her promotion. We’d like her closer to the equivalent of the tinkerer but for driller production and to synergize better with other mechanics.

Nerfs

Navigator

Owner may change course of sub carrying Navigator once every eight hours.

The navigator is the primary source of needing to constantly check in. This change keeps her powerful, unique capabilities and will reduce her ability to make you wake up in the middle of the night. Players can see the countdown to her next course change in the info panel.

King

If you have 1 or more Kings, they destroy 1 enemy driller for every 3 4 of your drillers that remain after the specialist phase in every combat you are involved. Reduces max shield charge of all your outposts by 20 ~~except at King’s outpost, where it is increased by 20~~.

The King is overpowered currently, making the Hypnotist a must-recruit spec. The surprise king promotion is one of the nasty sources of needing to check in frequently. The shield buff synergizes well with the tinkerer and others, and because the king’s location matters little, they tend to stack on the queen, making eliminations harder than we’d like.