Starting Note

These next few dev logs are going to be a bit rapid-fire as they're just going to be about each individual tower and I plan on dropping v0.1 soon.

There have been some minor changes since the previous dev log, as you can probably see in some of the game screenshots, as they were replaced earlier today. Now, your fastest completion time is tracked for each individual game mode as well, providing some use to the Round Timer option.

Additionally, there have been quite a few optimization changes that makes the game far faster in Fast Forward, especially on higher game speeds.

Now, let's talk about the water tower that was overpowered in the original, Oceanic Ship:

Base, Up To Tier 2 Upgrades And The Ability

Oceanic Ship still remains as a double-sided attack tower that can become a fast, spread shot tower. The base hasn't been changed all that much, however each path once it reaches Tier 3 is changed compared to the original, and are mostly worse.

The base changes:

• 1/x/x - Hollow Radar

  • Price reduced from $350 to $300

  • Grants Hollow Priority Targeting

• 2/x/x - Shard Shot

  • Price increased from $600 to $650

  • Shard count increased from 4 to 5

• x/2/x - Flaming Arrows

  • Price increased from $500 to $550

• x/x/1 - Stronger Cannons

  • Price reduced from $300 to $250

• x/x/2 - Even Stronger Cannons

  • Price reduced from $750 to $500

The speed path is a little overpriced, so I decided to lower the cost of that path and put a little bit into Flaming Arrows. Additionally, some of the price from Hollow Radar was shifted into Shard Shot. The shard count is a revert to a balance change from the original's 2.1 update, mainly just cuz the spread didn't look great and the extra shard doesn't make all that much of a difference realistically.

The ability, Take Down, got some smaller changes that should help it out and provide a bit more utility to it. It now ignores enemies that aren't its specific target, which while useful for like 1 or 2 2TM in the original, was more unhelpful than anything in an actual game. However, it now follows the tower's main targeting priority. Just be careful when you use it on First/Normal/Normal as it will gladly target the weaker targets in the front instead of the stronger targets you'd want to prioritize like Medium or Hollow Crushers within the groups of Easy Crushers.

Top Path - Taking Out The Trash

The top path remains focused primarily on the ability's gimmick of instantly crushing any Crusher it can crush. However, I didn't want to go with the passive Take Down off bat, so I instead went with a slightly different approach. So, first, the non-ability upgrade effects with the top path upgrades:

• 3/x/x - Arrows deal more damage to bosses and shards deal more damage to Shelled

• 4/x/x - Arrows gain a stronger version of the shard's Shelled bonus, shards gain a weaker version of the arrow's boss damage, and triggers a passive take down every few seconds

The bonuses towards Shelled is meant to help very slightly with clean up, and the bonuses towards bosses is meant to help very slightly if the ability is on cooldown or for late game clumps when you want the passive Take Down to target Medium or Hollow Crushers.

The ability at 3/x/x gains a second Take Down skull, allowing it to crush 2 separate Crushers at once. This helps it remain relevant in the early-to-late midgame once Crusher density starts to pick up. 4/x/x ability replaces the secondary skull with the dark, Wipe Out skull, capable of taking out all but the strongest Crushers.

Unlike the original, if all of the valid targets for the Wipe Out skull dies before it can crush anything, it bursts into 2 Take Down skulls instead of vanishing. This should be useful as it basically just allows it to crush the Crusher's children. Brutal.

Middle Path - Calling In Backup

The middle path takes a different approach than the top path, where instead of instantly crushing targets one at a time, this path focuses on high damage output via high attack speeds and the use of the Warship attack planes.

• x/3/x - Triple attack speed on both arrows and shards, however projectile size reduced very slightly

• x/4/x - Double attack speed on both arrows and shards, and gains a permanent attack plane

The speed of Warship from the original was spread across both the Tier 3 and Ultimate, however now it results in a higher total speed and also the shards are way faster than before. This is mainly to make up for the revert of the original's 2.1 Balance 2 patch balance change, which gave Warship arrows and shards +1 damage and pierce.

The Take Down ability is ditched immediately once you buy x/3/x, instead summoning an attack plane for 10 seconds. The stats are very different compared to the original. The plane attacks way slower, deals less damage, and has less pierce. The radial attack got hit way more than the normal focused fire attack, hopefully making it not just "set on Chase flight style and call it a day"

Unlike the original, the new middle path Ultimate upgrade now has a permanent attack plane, but the ability only summons 2 planes instead of 3. Even with the heavy nerfs towards the planes and the slight nerf towards the ship itself, the perma-plane provides a massive boost to this ultimate. Now it permanently has a global range attack that, while very useful, does provide 2 separate problems. The first is that it has less synergy with Brewing Station's buffs, as it drains through those faster. The second is that it provides anti-stall, which could potentially be a problem if you need the extra planes at the start of the next round or some other important ability. It is important to remember that this game has a heavy reliance on abilities.

Bottom Path - Supply And Demand

Last but not least, one of the main reasons why Oceanic Ship is as good as it is. One of the main things I aim for with Oceanic Ship in both the original and here, is that it requires an early risk to build up a stacking speed boost as early as you gain for massive benefit in late game. With bottom path, I wanted to keep that essence, however, I also wanted to tone it down a notch due to just how powerful Oceanic Ship was in the original (It's the only way that I'm aware of that can beat the absolute hardest thing in the original, just to see how powerful it is)

• x/x/3 - Can now gain a ship part every round that provides a small stacking speed boost, stopping at 10 parts

• x/x/4 - Increases ship part cap to 25 and speed boost applies to all Oceanic Ships

The x/x/3's effect makes it way easier to get up to the ship part cap, as you can build the first 10 parts up way earlier. To counter this, 2 separate things were done. The first was somewhat minor, increasing the total price of the bottom Ultimate. The second one, which may be changed at a later date, was to lower the effectiveness of the ship parts themselves. It still remains a 2% bonus, however it's multiplicative instead of additive.

In the original, attack cooldown was reduced by a flat 2% per ship part. So if an attack triggered every 1 second and you had 12 ship parts, the cooldown is reduced by 24%, resulting in a 0.76 second attack cooldown. In the original, this would instead result in a 21.5% reduction in attack cooldown, or 0.785 second attack cooldown. While it doesn't make that much of a difference at lower ship part counts, the cap was dropped from a 50% cooldown reduction to a 39.7% cooldown reduction. This is a rather large reduction, as it reduces total DPS by roughly 17%.

While this does make the other Oceanic Ships less reliant on bottom path to do anything, which does somewhat go against my goal of making all of the Oceanic Ship ultimates used with each other, I feel like a smaller bonus is important. I also decided to keep the random detail that bottom path's ultimate reduces the its Take Down ability cooldown, which isn't as important now since it can now start with 10 ship parts instead of none.

Ending Note

Oceanic Ship remains a solid early game water alternative to Crossbow, as it can clear within a small area at once instead of chipping in multiple places at once. The tier 3s each have their own use while building into their own Ultimates, and 3/x/x can even be useful if spammed in late game due to how good the ability can be in regards to thinning down Hollow Crusher numbers for Rounds 95 and 99, or a quick clean up for the Extreme Crusher's Hollow Crusher children.

There's another thing I would've mentioned here at the end of this dev log, however I think I might save it for Magic Orb's dev log, as it would fit more there.

See you all tomorrow with the next dev log!