The sky stays full

Weapons

• The Flamethrower is standard issue. Every account owns it from the first run. It answers anything that slips under your guns, and the opening waves already fall inside its short reach.
• The Balloon Mines moved into the Arsenal. Same weapon, now a 300 flux purchase like the rest of the shop.
• The Flak Battery is pure artillery. It holds its fire on anything closer than its shells can arc instead of bursting point blank over the cannon, and fires about fifteen percent faster in exchange. A loadout of only artillery leaves that close-in blind spot open. Its gallery page shows the dead zone.

Enemies

• The swarm falls slow, everything else comes sooner. Enemies fly nearer full pace from the first wave and reach it by wave 10 instead of 14. Drones are the exception: they fall slowly and take their time working up to full pace, so the pressure comes from how many there are. Gnats and javelins stay quick, so speed still reads as a threat when it appears.
• The roster arrives sooner. Gnats from wave 5, tumblers from 9, javelins and the warden from 13, rams from 17.

Waves

• Half again as many enemies, at every wave. Wave 1 opens with about fourteen drones instead of ten, and the raise carries through the whole run.
• Deep waves crowd the sky. Later waves send more ships still, and each one takes less to bring down. The difficulty curve is the same, but a hard wave now looks hard.
• No break between waves. The next wave arrives while stragglers are still falling instead of waiting for a clear sky. When a wave runs out of its own spawns early, reinforcements keep streaming in at reduced rewards until the wave is over.

Draft

• Cards keep coming. Your first level-up lands in the middle of wave 1 instead of at its end, and the level bar grows more gently past the opening act, so picks stay a regular beat deep into a run instead of thinning to one every few waves.

Interface

• Screen shake. Every explosion kicks the camera in proportion to its size, from a drone popping to the array going up. The Options switch turns it off, and the minimal effects setting drops it too.
• Defeat points at your next purchase. The game-over screen shows a Perks button only while you have perk ranks left to buy, and an Arsenal button while any weapon is still locked.

Fixes

• Speed labels are honest. Every run played about a tenth slower than its speed label said. x1 now means x1, at every step.
• You can leave a run again. Choosing Leave mid-run put the same prompt back on screen instead of leaving. It leaves now, and Return to command after a mid-run orbit insertion works again.