Wednesday Mini-Release! June 17, 2009: Uniforms have been added to the War camps! These uniforms give a +10 bonus to Valor Rolls! But watch out if you walk into the other side's War Camp battles

Also, new Ghost Hunter mecha models are available from Mysterious Johnson and the Myterious Stranger! For all players, there are two new models - the L24 Ha'nt Hunter and the L30 Spectre Hunter are now for sale in Mysterious Johnson's shop in Soluna City. Just outsdie his shop, the Mysterious Stranger offers the opportunity to "Feed Your Mecha." If you are a Star Captain, merging the Hunter Wraith with a Doom Cell will give you the SC-only L33 Hunter Eidolon (and don't forget to capture some ghosts while you're there, for your Eidolon's Dark Hunger).

In other news - blues is trapped in a transdimensional portal - this trap was intended for Warlic, as I was going to take over MQ for the day - but somehow Warlic escaped (which is how we have the new uniform buttons in the War camps and the fancy new Valor Rolls) - and blues was caught in my Devious Trap instead.

My initial plan was to resume the Rebalancing Project which blues and I are doing together - but without blues, and with only a few hours before release time - and my math skills... time for a new plan! Could I finish the comic? No, I need an uninterrupted block of time for that - that's a late-night project! I decided to do something I was confident I could accomplish in the time available, and make the new Ghost Hunter mechas instead. No fancy math skills required ... right? Er, well ... read on ...

The earlier versions deviated from our pre-set standards, so it wasn't quite as simple as anticipated. After using my initial calculations to determine their HP and EP values, I began pre-testing. Well, the NSC versions tested nicely - but in my SC mecha my battles were a series of Epic Failures. Consulted with Warlic on the numbers - I wasn't even too far off with my math - but at Level 33, you just plain need more base HP to be able to win a battle in Hard mode with this style of mecha. And so I talked with Warlic again, and changed everything. I think you'll be pleased! (If something is overpowered or underpowered, you can let us know in the Game Balance Discussion forum.)

Warlic and I then worked on the Pirate Cutlass series to balance them with the intention of bringing them more into line with what they were meant to be. Without blues, this became very interesting very quickly. My own balance work is done by using "intuitive mathematics" - which is a lot like "fuzzy math" ... without the math part. It's very Goldilocks-style, actually - "This damage is toooo hot!" "That damage was too cold!" The interesting part then becomes how to get it to "This damage is Just Right!"

Fortunately, I received a faint transmission from blues right around the time when Warlic and I were exchanging messages such as: Maegwyn: oh now I did *bzzzt
Maegwyn: yeah that's insane
Warlic: woah!
Warlic: that's crazy!

*really super-high damage ... yeah, we definitely buffed it!

blues managed to transmit a few numbers before he was swallowed again by the dimensional portal-trap - so we played a bit of "Let's Make a Deal" and relied on re-testing and intuition for our final assurance. So you see, if anything is still unbalanced, this must be blamed on me, and not on blues at all!