August 28, 2026
The focus of this patch was content! And lots of it!
Secondarily, I added more Ranks, as a method to spread around difficulty increases more evenly.
Content
Cards
Added a new General Verga card!
Missions
Imperial Lab | Act 1, Tier 3: Blow up 3 Supply Caches guarded by a slow and steady trickle of Wardwing defenders.
Titanium Thieves | Act 1, Optional: Your Titanium income gets reduced by the amount of unspent Titanium you have. Careful… skip a turn and you'll drop to 0!
Nauth Eruption | Act 2, Tier 6: Waves of Geysers, and Geodes that explode with fireballs.
Pulsewing Rush | Act 3, Tier 7: 4 turns of Titans and Duskwings with the Pulsewing upgrade. Hits hard and fast.
Tech
Duskwing Production: Your Lancer Bays produce 1 Duskwing per production cycle
Wardwing Production: Your Destroyer Factories produce 1 Wardwing per production cycle
Lancer Autofabs: Send 2 Lancers whenever you end turn with at least 1 unspent Titanium
Autoscan Attachment: Your flagship gains unlimited detection range whenever you end turn with at least 1 unspent Solar Energy
Nightmare Autopods: Fire 1 set of Nightmare Missiles whenever you end turn with at least 1 unspent Titanium and 1 unspent Solar Energy
Traits
Unyielding Protector: Cards with Defender are free. All your units sent by cards act like they have Defender.
Unrelenting Invader: Cards with Rush are free. All your units sent by cards act like they have Rush.
Great Uniter: Cards with subtypes cost 1 less per unique subtype in your collection.
Ranks
The maximum Rank is now Rank 12. This means “Victorious Emperor” cosmetics require Rank 12 wins now, BUT any previously unlocked cosmetics will remain unlocked.
I was running into some issues balancing certain missions that could only step up in difficulty one time, at a relatively low Rank. Optional missions in particular only increased difficulty at Rank 2, and it felt impossible to make them feel hard enough for Rank 10 without feeling awful for newer players at Rank 2.
The top 3 Ranks now include difficulty increases for every mission type, giving me the ability to withhold some really tough modifiers for the top players.
The balance pass was too large to be worth listing every change, but here are some highlights:
Missions that were already sufficiently hard at Rank 10 will be identical at the new Rank 12.
Missions that rarely did damage on Rank 10 were given new difficulty increases near the top Ranks.
Some missions that were too hard at mid-to-low Ranks now have some of their difficulty withheld until top Ranks.
Balance and Design Changes
Added the Science subtype to Solarburst Laser.
Solarburst Laser cost reduced to 0/1 (down from 1/1).
Gravwave Scanner cost increased to 2/1 (up from 1/1).
Bug Fixes and Improvements
Retreat Improvements
Auto-retreat now triggers in an additional scenario: if locking in the current battle phase's damage would push you over the edge where you can no longer retreat from the mission.
Fixed auto-retreat button colors to highlight the "continue" option as red, in cases where continuing the mission is dangerous.
Fixed auto-retreat "Retreat" button to no longer be red, since it's typically the safer option.
Added a tooltip to the Retreat button that explains how HP loss is calculated.
Other Fixes and Improvements
Fixed a major bug in unit targeting, affecting slow-turning units like Titans and Plasmites the most, which caused them to choose new targets poorly after killing a target. The bug made these unit types far worse, because they would spend a lot of time swinging back and forth between targets instead of firing.
You get a red-colored warning icon if you have an empty Reserves slot and "The Emperor's Due" in your deck.
Fixed an issue where the right turret on Dreadnoughts had extra range.
Fixed an issue where playing two Gravwave Scanners on the same turn caused the effect to go into the next turn.
EF Generator resolves ties by choosing a unit that is not waiting to move out, if possible.
Fixed an issue where structures in the flagship position would be deprioritized in terms of attack targeting priority.
Victorious Emperor unlocks are displayed on victorious run summary screen.
Fixed an issue in the "Sedali I Metal Extraction" Story mission where not all Nauth ships would retreat.