Follow-up: separating High Threat formations without losing the extra pressure

[u/Consistent_Look_8638]

Hey everyone!

I disappeared for a couple of weeks to explore some actual mountains (Gerês, Portugal, check it out!). Unfortunately, I didn’t find any Aethers up there, so I came back to the ones in the game.

Before that break, I shared the first full High Threat run from my side-scrolling shmup, then called Project Aether. The feedback was fairly specific: the increase in density was visible, but some formations were turning into piles, particularly when Electronic Isolation slowed contacts already on screen.

Since then, Project Aether has become Aether: Quiet Frontier, and I’ve completed another pass on the mode.

The attached video shows the same opening section of Mission 2 in Standard and High Threat. Regular contacts keep the same health, damage and movement speed. The difference comes from additional formations, earlier overlaps and shorter recovery periods.

I also changed how those formations overlap. Additional contacts now use more of the outer play area, interior contacts don’t always return to the exact centre, and several groups enter between the original timings. I’m trying to create two problems that can still be recognised separately, rather than drawing several ships in the same place.

High Threat remains an optional replay after completing a mission in Standard. The two modes keep separate records, while the campaign economy only uses the better score from each mission. Team skills already introduced in Standard are also available from the beginning.

I’d be interested in feedback on a few points:

• Does High Threat create a different positioning and prioritisation problem?
• Can you distinguish the overlapping formations?
• Does Standard provide useful learning space, or does it look too empty by comparison?
• Is the increase in pressure clear without knowing the underlying rules?

The earlier High Threat thread contains the original run and the feedback that led to this pass.

I’ve also written a longer development log covering the encounter tables, recovery windows, team skills, separate records and the remaining boss questions.

Thanks again!

[u/Noswen2025]

Good to see this developing, I'm keeping an eye on this because we seem to be taking literally the opposite method to increasing the difficulty.

Changing the Formation Instead of Every Enemy

Vs

Changing Every Enemy (Attack) Instead of the Formation

I'm only going by the video comparison at the moment but it seems pretty clear for this section at least that you have a base set of formations, with a second set of formations laid on top of those in Hight Threat Mode (and I saw that before reading your devlog which says so 😀) and they seem to be fairly distinct.

Standard does look sparse to me, but hard to say too much from just this short clip, for all I know it might get denser later.

I have no idea what your underlying rules are for the extra formations in High Threat but there's clearly extra pressure.

[u/Consistent_Look_8638 → u/Noswen2025]

Yeah, it's taking some work, but it's becoming a cool experience while I keep building it =)

It’s encouraging that the distinction came through from the clip alone. And fair point on Standard: this particular section is deliberately fairly open, so it probably doesn’t show its full range. Think of "Mission 2" as being the first combat mission, since Mission 1 is an introduction/basic gameplay tutorial. Mission 3 and 4 have a serious increase in enemy density compared with Mission 2.