As mentioned in our last Patch Notes, now that we have completed rolling out the Apocalypse event, we will try to fix as many lingering bugs as we can to make the last few months be as smooth as possible. Here are a few bugs that have been squashed.
Leader Barracks now train leaders to L7, whereas it was previously missing
Stryker Platoon is now researchable, whereas it previously was not despite having the BP
Hardware Factories now have a Leader slot for Chernyak and Damyan
Oscar Leaders Chernyak and Damyan no longer deployable on Turret Emplacements
We understand that these bugs may have been occurring for a while, and would like to apologize for the delays. We also thank you for bringing this to our attention, and encourage that you continue to do so.
The final chapter of the Apocalypse Event is here!
This is it, folks! The finale of finales. Featuring:
Increased Seismic Datum and Data amount obtained from Apocalyptic Gundar map.
Heat shield awarded after hitting certain thresholds of seismic data progress. That is plural. So players get multiple shields that stack and caps at 70% damage reduction from Volcanic Towers!
Apocalypse: Chapter II added to Singles, This is a “bridge” mission to Chapter III.
Apocalypse: Chapter III added to Singles. Stop Red Pole from destroying Gundar! Or at least, you can certainly try!
Volcanic ash and lava may fall on your base during defense missions. They may or may not look like missile strikes from afar. Heads up!
The Future
We truly appreciate your patience, Commanders, while we have hunkered down to get this Apocalypse Event out. As previously stated, this will be the final update to the game. Of course, there are some lingering bugs that you have brought forth to us, and we will try our best to fix them in the upcoming weeks if time and resources allow.
This is not the final Patch Note of the game. Not yet, anyway. So we won’t say our final goodbye… yet. Instead, we would like to take this opportunity to thank each and every one of you that have been with us until now. We only got this far because of you. Thank you.
Chapter Two of the Apocalypse Event is here! Featuring a new map map: Apocalyptic Gundar! Race to gather Seismic Data! These will be required to unlock Chapter 3.
We have received a few recurring questions about this event, and we do apologize for the lack of intel on that, Commander. But we’re going to answer the most asked here:
Volcanic Towers are OP. How do we even do this event?
Volcanic Towers can be weakened via an unresearchable tech will shield against lava and thermal damage. This is rewarded upon getting a certain amount of seismic data. It is recommended to do lower level event bases for now, or wait a little. More info below.
Why do we have to do tens of thousands of event bases to beat this event?
You don’t, and we apologize for not communicating this earlier. At the moment, the amount of seismic data obtained per event base it intentionally set too low as a throttling mechanism. The 150,000 seismic data objective is meant to be unreachable at this time, so as to give time for our developers to finish Chapter 3.
As soon as Chapter 3 is ready, seismic data rewards will be increased hugely. By this time, it should be easier to hit the threshold where you can get the heat shield, as well as the full amount required to unlock Chapter 3. Or, you are also free to keep farming now so when Chapter 3 releases, you get the heat shield earlier.
Bug fix
Bug preventing Oscar leaders from being promoted is now fixed. Other Oscar-related concerns are being looked into.
We again thank everyone who has stood by with us for all this time, and those will stand with us until the end. We hope you like what we have left in store for you in the coming months.
This is it. The beginning of the end. Welcome… to the Apocalypse!
Apocalypse Event: Chapter One
The Apocalypse has begun! In this update, you will find…
24 levels of mayhem! Featuring:
Cutscenes of beloved (and behated) characters with new portrait and backdrop art
An all new lava environment with completely new artwork (careful, it’s hot!)
New Volcano environment hazards that send out blasts of lava. Steer your units clear, they can’t damage volcanoes but volcanoes can damage them.
New Volcanic Tower buildings with a new art model. Does the same damage as a volcano, but your units can damage these.
Reworked loot tables. All units, turrets, and missiles now have free unlock items for every level. The loot system will check your levels in order and award you an appropriate upgrade item. Use it right away so you can enjoy the newfound power before your next mission.
New 60-minute, 50% damage boosts for infantry, vehicles, and aircraft in the loot mix.
Chapter II is coming soon, with a race to gather seismic data before Red Pole launches the next step in his vile xenophobic plan.
Game improvements
Lore-drop with the new “Dossiers” in Achievements New “History of Gundar” achievement. Click to see a brief cutscene.
All single-player maps are now available all the time, but will be replaced with a new Apocalypse event map as new chapters roll in. Eventually, all of them will be retired upon the Apocalypse Grand Finale. Beat them before they disappear forever!
Slashed prices and build times again
ONP Store permanently open, with Hardware Prizes store planned to do the same
ONP no longer expire. Save and spend!
We again thank everyone who has stood by with us for all this time, and those will stand with us until the end. We hope you like what we have in store for you in the next coming months.
Oh, and a belated Seasons Greetings to everyone! We also wish you a Happy New Year!
“It came in the dead of night. A patch of stars disappeared a few days ago. In its place, a strange spot of darkness, a black void where the stars should have been. It quickly grew larger, eventually encompassing the night sky. Then, it suddenly disappeared. The stars flickered again, as if nothing happened.“
These were the words of our night-duty guards, who swear that since that incident, our technological progress has been reversed. That we have been sent back a short period back in time.
This, of course, is hard to believe. We are leaning more towards the possibility that our guards were having a sneaky drink while on duty. They have been sent to our resident psychiatrists for further eval.
We still have our TOC13. We still have our Doped Mines. We still have our latest military technologies. Our units, turrets, and bases still behave as they used to two months ago.
Still, even though the guards have sent to our resident psychiatrists for further eval, some of us cannot shake the feeling that something has changed. If what they saw was real, perhaps it is a sign of things to come. We will report any updates, Commander! In the meantime, here are the…..
Tweaks of the Week
Just in case it wasn’t clear above, all balance changes have been reversed.
Bug involving undying units being targeted by the TOC LRAD has been fixed. Just to be clear, it was a bug. NOT a cheat or a hack.
Due to the reversal of the balance changes, there will likely be little to no tweaks made further. Apocalypse event development is now in full-swing.
We appreciate all the feedback over the past few weeks on the new systems. We understand that some have gotten used to and have actually enjoyed the new systems. Unfortunately, further tweaking and balancing is taking up too much of our lead developer’s time – something we are running out of.
Our team has continued, and will continue, making tweaks to the new systems so as to make it easier for everyone to participate in our “Grand Finale.”
We are again thankful for those who keep on providing feedback so we can continue to try and make these last few months as fun and memorable as we can for everyone. Here are some changes to address a few of the issues and suggestions that you’ve brought forth to us.
Tweaks of the Week
Splash area was too small that units are often unable to hit moving targets. Splash area has been doubled.
Reduced HP penalty for DPS units by 20%
Nerfed AI unit damage and HP.
Slight boost to unit damage and HP for all player units.
All other maps have closed. There are now only two maps.
Tournament Map: Strongpoint Quarries now award combat bonuses in addition to quarry yield and text bonuses.
Non-Tournament Map: Free base damage protection is now awarded more frequently.
Due to PvP issues at higher levels, security teams from leader items have had their HP and DPS nerfed. Since single player AI attackers have reduced HP and DPS compared to players, this should have minimal effect on the difficulty of single-player and bring the defenses of bases in PvP closer in line with what people are used to.
When units are selected a group, their speed is modified so they will stay closer together. As soon as they are no longer in a group they regain their normal speed.
Group speed works this way: The difference between the speed of the slowest and largest is divided by the size of the group. The group then gets the minimum speed plus this, or +5%, whichever is smaller.
The reason for this is to make it always worthwhile to group units, but not allow really slow units to travel super-rapidly around the map by also selecting an ultra-fast unit.
Incoming
Client: Will take another crack at improving targeting when a unit can do no damage. Snipers currently refuse to target buildings at all. They are meant to never select a building on their own.
Combat Balance: Will be continuing evaluation of difficulty attacking and defending. Have made new script to instantly rework a base at a higher or lower TOC tier in order to test different difficulties.
Content:
The “Apocalypse” event is in the works.
Reduced costs of TOC leader upgrades (will require a TOC leader promotion token instead of merging, reduced time and resources to upgrade).
Reducing XP requirements for player levels so everyone has a chance to get to max level before the end.
De-Monetization: We will be further increasing speed bonuses given by gold/alloy. Pre-closure announcement, you got crafting, repairs, upgrades, etc sped up by 3 minutes per gold/alloy. Currently, these get sped up by 6 minutes per gold/alloy. This will increase to 9 minutes on 12/1. Resource harvest rates will be increased on 12/1. The maximum craft/research/upgrade/etc time will also be reduced by 24 hours on 12/1.
More tweaks incoming! Please do continue to share your feedback over on our Thunder Run Discord Server as it helps a lot in speeding up the adjustment process.
The recent patches, include the TOC13 release have, admittedly, been a little rocky, and we do apologize for that. We are thankful for those who keep on providing feedback so we can continue to try and make these last few months as fun and memorable as we can for everyone. Please rest assured our teams are working really hard to address a few of the issues and suggestions that you’ve brought forth to us. But first, we’d like to address a recent issue that you may have already heard of.
Unrequested Refunds
It appears that the issue of unrequested refunds issue from back in July through August, which happened to other games on Facebook as well, has affected some players once again. We believe Facebook is working on it, so if you have a negative gold balance, just sit tight and don’t worry about it.
Tweaks of the Week
TOC 13 didn’t ship properly, but has been since manually deployed.
Power consumption issues upon TOC 13 release, causing generators to have lower output levels instantly. This has been fixed.
A base upgraded to the max now produces slightly more power than it consumes, with minor exceptions at TOC levels 1, 4, and 5, which you can quickly build past.
Build time has been obliterated for earlier tier buildings.
Build time is 30 minutes for support buildings at TOC 3-5, 60 minutes at TOC 6-8, and 4 hours at TOC 9-11. It stays at 5 days for TOC12 and 13. This should allow everyone to get their storage, harvesters, and power levels optimized very quickly.
Hardware Factory is now available
More Hardware can be found in Logistics Dispatch
Snipers, who have been reported to be OP, gets a range nerf, damage to buildings removed, reduce damage to vehicles and aircraft. Basically, no longer a guaranteed turret killer.
Snipers have been set to ignore barriers and treat buildings as their lowest priority target, and treat infantry as double priority.
TOW range has been slightly reduced, but gets a huge damage boost in return at max level.
Turret damage is now scaled on the same progression as units. Units are scaled against their consumed space. Turrets are scaled based on the number of total turrets available compared to the total unit space available at a tier, then modified based on their overall rarity.
Units get an HP and DPS boost across the board to make equips and mods more meaningful.
Vehicles get a speed boost across the board.
Heavy vehicles get an additional HP boost. Tanks get a further additional HP boost.|
The “weight” of a unit’s space when calculating its DPS and HP is now also weighed against the proportion of total space available. This means small, cheap early units have a shallower power growth curve, and more expensive big units get a steeper curve at higher levels.
For example:
Elite M1Abrams prepatch: HP 7719 min, 12431 max, speed 2.16 min, 2.16 max, range 229 min, 249 max, damage 560 min, 1756 max
Elite M1Abrams patched HP 5250 min, 14668 max, speed 2.5 min, 2.78 max, range 229 min, 249 max, damage 360 min, 1961 max
Bunker Buster gets 20% damage boost across the board, plus a further 20% boost against turrets. Other missiles will be looked at in the future
Generator grid size requirements were reduced from 14×14 to 10×10. The graphic was the size of a supply building, and the grid is now too. Players now have an extra 4×4 total map cells freed up per generator.
Stinger and eStinger now have the designation “Anti-Air” with an appropriate tooltip
New “Staging” button in Battalion management screen that acts as a temporary storage area so you can swap them in and out of a batt more easily. Swap mode and swap space persists through sessions by being saved in player preferences, but it does not affect actual batts in any way. It’s just an organizational tool.
More power issues affecting all harvesters and storage buildings are fixed.
TOC leader issue where it did not affect Hardware Factories is fixed
Issues with Ambush Points triggering a message despite them being empty is fixed.
One thing we would like to highlight: units are not supposed to be able to destroy towers without taking any damage. This was never were supposed to happen, but range inflation unfortunately made this possible. Use “Tanks” to soak up turret damage.
More tweaks incoming! Please do share your feedback over on our Thunder Run Discord Server as it helps a lot in speeding up the adjustment process.
Your architects have been hard at work, Commander. In addition to a sharply-worded requisition order for more coffee, theyāve delivered the upgrade plans for the next Tactical Ops Center expansion. It seems like only yesterday we were huddled together in tents.
Tick-Tock! The TOC now upgrades to Level 13, unlocking a variety of new upgrades for your military forces!
Weāll be sure to caffeinate your architects for you, Commander. That requisition order was just shy of a death threat.
The Elephant in the Room
As you all have noticed, there has been a lot of changes happening since last week. We do apologize for the delay in our communications, but we’d now like to address and explain what, why, and how things have changed.
Hopefully, in addition to dispelling some weird rumors and theories, we can clear the air and give you a little more insight as to how to utilize the new systems put in place. For simplicity’s sake we will categorize the main changes into two: economy and buildings, and unit rebalance and strategy.
Economy and Buildings
Previously, levels per tier are wildly inconsistent. They are now consistent
Economy buildings now have two levels per tier.
All unit research/production buildings have two levels per tier.
Non-elite units and their associated research/production buildings also get two levels per tier.
Turrets, mines, and missiles have three levels per tier.
Time requirements dramatically reduced. It takes a maximum of 5 days (without leader bonuses) to build or research anything now. It’s a hard cap at 120 hours.
Frequently asked question: Why are our resource storage and production so low now? Our old levels jumped all over the place in terms of advancement. Now they’re consistent. However, all research unlocks, build costs, repair costs, etc are now auto-scaled to the available harvest rate and storage caps, so you have lost absolutely nothing in terms of buying power. Think of it this way: your resource currency just underwent serious deflation. You can buy more with each unit of each resource than you could before.
Unit Rebalance and Strategy
Unit HP, DPS, build time, and resource costs all balanced based on space requirements. The more expensive a unit, the more powerful it is, and at a predictable and consistent rate. That means that out the gate, a unit that takes 30 space is exactly twice as powerful as a unit of the same type that takes 15 space, but they receive modifications based on their roles.
Unit speed and range balanced based on unit type and unit role: Infantry is the slowest with the longest range on average. Air units are the fastest with the shortest range on average. Artillery and Sniper units get range boosts and speed nerfs to compensate
Close range units get a bonus to their speed and a proportionate nerf to their range.
Long Range units get the same bonus to range and nerf to speed.
High Speed gets a slightly higher boost to speed while paying the same range cost as close range.
DPS units get a bonus to damage and a proportionate nerf to HP. Most of your artillery units are Long Range/DPS roles.
Some units have the “Threat” stat, which makes the AI increase their priority in the targeting system by 50%.
Threat gets a bonus to HP and a nerf to damage.
The “Tank” role get a bonus to HP and get an even higher “Threat” stat, making the AI 100% more likely to pick them as a target. Note that the “Tank” role is not strictly limited to actual Tank units. Some aircrafts have the “Tank” role, too. You can find these in the Unlock/Upgrade windows of a specific unit.
Turret HP is based on potential attacker DPS output, and is currently designed to withstand 20 seconds of fire from the average unit. There will be ongoing analysis and fine-tuning for this.
Mine DPS is designed to insta-kill the strongest non-elite unit in its target category.
Turret DPS is designed to focus on particular target types as well and to kill a target in 2 to 10 seconds of sustained fire.
Missile DPS is designed to take a few hits to kill the toughest units, while able to insta-kill groups of weaker ones.
Frequently asked question:Why are units so weak now that we can’t do event bases anymore? Units have been balanced to encourage trying different battalion compositions and being more strategic; possibly requiring a little more micro skills too. The older strategies of steam-rolling everything with Elite Paladins, for example, may no longer work, as they are now in an Artillery Role. It may be MORE effective to bring units with a Tank role and high Threat to draw aggro from turrets, then using Artillery like Mortarmen, due to their high anti-building DPS and very long range.
We know some players have taken up the new challenge of getting to know the new systems. Of course, we still welcome feedback. Please expect more monitoring and tweaking of the new systems, so if you have tried different strategies and still find it difficult, please let us know what you are having trouble with!
Miscellaneous improvements and fixes
All costs (buildings, units) have been further reduced.
Vault protection is now 7.5% of supply/fuel storage available at the current tier, and 10% of hardware storage.
All upgrades, unit construction, missile, mine, and turret crafting should be appropriately scaled to resource storage.
Building HP should all be scaled to unit DPS. Turret, mine, and missile DPS should all be scaled to unit HP.
Special “items” added in the game that allows for insta-building missiles, or building “Doped” Mines that insta-kill any unit below its level. These items are obtainable from event bases, and sometimes, from the mail.
TOC leaders no longer have an equip/unequip cooldown
The update caused old missiles to unstack with no way to stack them. This has been fixed, but you may need to click the “Sort” button to restack your old missiles.
Issues with missile blueprints not unlocking the the research is being looked in to. Please do not repurchase the blueprints if you encounter this issue.
AI units all given some unique aspects. Hunt them all!
More releases incoming, including a planned “grand finale” event. We here at Battlehouse are eternally grateful to all our players, and we plan to go out with a bang on April 2023; and we would love it if you join us there!
It is with heavy hearts that after 10+ incredible years of producing Battlehouse games, we announce that Thunder Run will be taking its final ride off into the sunset in April 2023.
Effective now: Weāre doubling the time speed-up value for gold, halving the cost of all gold speed-ups. Soon, weāll be rolling out one final major content patch. While easing the grind on the next batch of content, we also plan to release a unique āEnd of The Worldā event that we think is going to be really fun for all of us. Thunder Run deserves to go out with a bang!
We canāt stress enough how appreciative we are of all of you, and everything youāve all contributed to Battlehouse games over this time. The majority of free-to-play games donāt last nearly this long, and the fact that we thrived as long as we did is a direct credit to our passionate player base. Weāre aware that many of you have been with us since the very beginning, helping to build and nurture this amazing global community that has enjoyed these games just as much as we have. For that, we say āThank you!ā
In advance of sun-setting the games, we want to be as transparent with everyone as we possibly can, give plenty of time to make sure our small team has a soft landing at their next adventures, and also so that we all properly celebrate the legacy of the games we all love.
Itās important to note that in-game purchases will be available up until March 31st, 2023, at which point the gamesā payment systems will be completely turned off. Thereafter, the games will not be accepting any payments, but will remain open for one last hurrah until at least April 30th, 2023. Any remaining gold that you have during this period will need to be used before that date.
We hope that the experiences weāve developed over the years have provided you with the highest level of entertainment that weāve always strived to reach. This hasnāt been an easy decision for our team to make, but we remain hopeful that with every end, comes a new beginning.
