Turn-Based Tactics Mars Tactics - Fight for Martian freedom or suppress terrorists who hamper future of Mankind

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

From discord:

OK here is the final'ish design for "minutiae" control over cover and step out.

When selecting where to move, you'll now see a silhouette indicating the default lean direction + stance (stand/crouch) at the destination. And if the default is OK for you, it works exactly as now. You don't have to do anything extra. Just move there. But if you want to customize, you can hold CTRL to override the default and decide which way to lean and your stance. And after you move, if you have AP, you can still change your direction and stance for free.

As you can see, the design is not FULL control which I mentioned just yesterday. After a lot of testing I decided to streamline it after all. FULL control was too fiddly. And it encouraged pixel hunting which to me is not an interesting decision/skill in a turn-based game where you have endless time to take an action.

BTW regarding crouching, I'm also adding a balance tweak. If you end the turn crouched, your mobility is reduced by ~~2 ~~ 1 tiles the following time you move. I hope it's an interesting decision for you between extra protection vs mobility. Without this, I think players will always just end the turn crouched for the free defense.

Lastly, for step-out, I decided to maintain the FULL control approach. I know this is pixel hunty. So I'm not too thrilled with it. But it doesn't seem like overkill. And I think it can allow some interesting risk/reward decisions about how much to step out. However, if it ends up too pixel hunty and fiddly and you're spending like 30 seconds finding just the minimum amount to step out to get an angle, I might streamline it too.

Anyway let's see how it all feels!

EDIT: crouch mobility penalty is 1 tile, not 2 tiles.

There's also demonstration video, but I'm too lazy to figure out how to embed those from current discord.

 

[hellbent]

This actually looks pretty cool. Don't mind the visuals at all. Much more toned down "pixal art" style than many games these days (meaning it doesn't look like bad Minecraft art!!). Will keep an eye on it.

Yeah, some of the art design reminds me of the old RTS games Z & Steel Soldiers - kinda cartoony, but appealing in how it tries to stand apart from stock assets. This game already looks to be much more complex in its combat systems and army/faction building options than the Z series ever was, fortunately.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

Early look at dynamic fog of war. The visualization is a bit buggy but the algo basically works.

Anything above waist-height will block visibility. So plenty of places for enemies to hide. However, if an enemy becomes obscured you'll see a silhouette at their last known position so you don't have to try and remember everything

Unfortunately I still got no idea how to embed videos from discord.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

From discord:

Alright, here’s the latest on the Fog of War design:
- Your squad’s FoW is based on the cumulative Line of Sight from all of your units. LoS is calculated from each unit’s eye level. So a standing unit sees the most, crouching unit sees less, and hunkered unit sees the least.
- FoW automatically takes into account LoS from each unit’s *possible step-out positions*. (It was a pain in the ass to manually step-out to see around corners. It slowed down gameplay and decision-making. So I made it automatic to speed everything up.)
- If a spotted enemy becomes obscured, you’ll see a silhouette at their last sighted location. The silhouette remains until its location becomes revealed or the enemy becomes visible somewhere else.
- Enemy units follow the same FoW rules. There’s no hive-mind overseer AI so each unit makes decisions based on what they have seen. So if a unit hasn’t seen you, they might unwittingly run into an exposed position -- easy kill! However, enemies do talk to other nearby enemies (audible range is 6 tiles) and will share info on what they have seen with each other.

Overall, I don’t want to lean too hard into stealth-based tactics. (My focus is firmly on infantry squad-based fire-and-movement!) But maybe the current basic system and rules allow you to discover something. For example, if you want to hold off engaging and wait for reinforcements, you should now be able to do so better by hiding and turtling. Or if trying to run away, maybe you can buy a bit more time by hiding and then escaping. Hopefully small little things like that become possible with this system.

Look forward to your feedback! New build being pushed out SHORTLY.

 

[udm]

Yes! Proper line of sight and fog of war was what the game badly needed. Can't wait to try the new demo build.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

From discord:

Alright, I think <@251398598208651269> just helped me figure out how to make grenades suck less. No more turn delay for HE grenades. And no more extra AP cost for Frags. Everything now costs just 1 AP to prime and throw and it explodes right away.

HOWEVER! Enemies near the blast zone who have AP will try to scramble away before the explosion. The key word is TRY. Encumbered or injured units may struggle to outrun the blast. And others as they panic might scramble into bad positions. And of course those without AP will just hunker and hope for the best <:9962_RIP:591345138303762461>

Aiming to deploy this for play testing later today!

 

[Gumsmith]

Units on overwatch will also get their action refunded and run away if they get grenaded which I feel like is the only time we're going to see this fleeing mechanic, how many times are enemies going to end their turn with actions? You need those for shooting.

Dev also made the comment that 2023 release is probably not happening, better get comfy.

 

[BrotherFrank]

Makes sense, if they are overwatching then why wouldn't they also be watching out for grenades thrown at them?

Will have to see this in practice but on paper but sounds like a great idea.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

From discord:

Notes after first mission in a sandstorm:

- This is now a horror game!
- Always move with a buddy
- Overwatch EVERYWHERE!!
- Should have brought more nades...
- Just keep repeating to yourself: "the enemy is just as blind and scared as I am"

 

[Parsimonious cook]

TBH fam I would be much more interested in seeing where the strategic layer of the game is going. The tactical battles were OK in the demo I played, but it was the strategic/management stuff that needed plenty of work back then.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

From discord:

Optimized the terrain system quite a bit to improve performance. It's really like Minecraft Tactics now -- you can go nuts with the deformation. Importantly, I think this should allow for bigger maps. Let's test that soon

 

[spectre]

Holy shit, this game is going places.

 

[Alienman]

WW1 dynamite tunnels incoming.

 

[udm]

Holy shit, this game is going places.

Yeah the last few updates have left me really pumped for the game once more. Hoping it turns out well!

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

From discord:

Traits are coming in the next playtest build. My favorite is "This Belongs to You" -- if a grenade lands at your feet and you have at least 1 AP, you'll throw it back in the general direction of the thrower.

All other rules stay same, meaning if the original thrower has AP they'll try to run away from their own grenade.

Many thanks to <@823915656163491840> for the idea for this trait!

Also, you might have noticed that Armor and HP are now tracked separately. I'm not sure about this change, but more than a few people have asked for it so I think it's worth a try.

Overall, my goal is for this to introduce a few new wrinkles:

(1) Soon you'll be able to pick-up armor mid-battle from the fallen to replenish your defense -- a kind of natural "medkit." Maybe it will be annoying to hunt for fresh armor. We'll see. But it's another step to more "sandbox" gameplay.

(2) This will add more flavor to weapons and armor types. Every weapon now has an penetration % -- how much will ignore the armor. But every armor also has a penetration defense %. The delta is how much actually hits the body. And of course after armor is destroyed, all damage goes to the body.

In terms of balance I'm thinking 0% penetration for pistols, SMGs, shotguns and explosions. 15% for AR and LMG. 30% for DMRs. And 100% for snipers. And for armors, all the ones in the current playtest are early-game so they have 0% penetration defense. But soon I'll introduce some meatier armor so the penetration is something you start to think about when planning for battle and during engagements.

(3) This means more troops will be scuffed after every battle. I hope it encourages players to focus on troop rotation and maintaining larger squads in the strategy layer.

Again, this is VERY experimental. I'm not certain it's a good design. Maybe it just introduces more micro and mental work for the player. So we might go back to a simpler system. But maybe the payoff is worth it. Let's find out together.

If you have thoughts, let's discuss here -> https://discord.com/channels/937594193709248523/1110766753908281377

 

[BrotherFrank]

The future of warfare will be playing tennis with grenades it seems.
This should imo come with more limitations then just having spare ap, which already is starting to feel like this games meta more so then actually doing things on your turn.

My instinctive suggestions would be:
-need a hand free or armed with lighter weapons so a dude with heavy weapon cant just magically toss back a nade without letting go of his gatling gun or rpg launcher
-should be % chance based on a units agility/reaction or equivalent as you need to think fast, maybe even bravery to reflect it takes nerves of steel to fight the natural reaction to gtfo from a grenade

Still cant fault the dev for trying new things, stumbles are expected when innovating.

 

[std::namespace]

Also, you might have noticed that Armor and HP are now tracked separately. I'm not sure about this change, but more than a few people have asked for it so I think it's worth a try.

Guy is making a mobile trash jrpg and has no idea about mechanics AFTER the whole engine is working.
Chances of this being decent are 0.

 

[Gumsmith]

I do wonder if the dev talks to people in the discord too much, he is chatty and receptive to ideas. Labor's one hit kill sniper rifle was the superior weapon in the demo and from what I've read that's not changed, so implementing an armor mechanic that makes sniper rifles even better seems questionable. If he's not careful the game's going to be Jagged Alliance 3 all over again.

 

[Parsimonious cook]

This might end up being quite annoying as AI rarely throws nades in these kinds of games, so it might be mostly player thrown nades being tossed away. On the other hand, IIRC you can remove APs of enemy units by suppressing them, so that might be a solution to this new mechanic.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

Here is the first batch of Traits going in 0.2.22. I know some are super powerful and unbalanced. Probably they will be toned down / reserved for like the highest tier of the trait. (I'm thinking of having Traits be upgradeable, altho not sure yet.)

But the goal for now is to test what is useful vs useless / fun vs tedious / complements vs distracts from game's core mechanics. I have like 200 traits jotted down. So your feedback now will help me understand which ones will fit the game and which to throw away. And then this will shape the overall progression system design. And then we can worry about game balance and progression system design later!

 

[Gumsmith]

Suppression overhaul

Hey guys, coming back to this, as you know I wasn't happy with the existing Suppression design.

It was simple to understand, but enabled cheap tactics like farming Initiative via pot shots. On defense too it made your units vulnerable to Suppression even if you put them in good cover. All of this was counterintuitive and detracted from the player's tactical decision making. So here's how my latest attempt to redesign things:

Granular Suppression

• Instead of pips, the Suppression wheel now fills in a granular way depending on how much Suppression was applied by each bullet. You can hover over the wheel to see the exact %.
• When the wheel reaches 100%, the unit becomes Suppressed. The penalties are the same as before: AP reduction and accuracy penalty.
• But you can now over-Suppress beyond 100% all the way to 300%. And the more Suppressed someone is, the bigger their accuracy penalty.
• Units only recover -100% suppression each turn and if they're still Suppressed they will continue to suffer penalties. So by over-Suppressing a target, you can knock them out for multiple turns.
• The goal is to make suppression less binary and more strategic. If you put enough lead in an area, it can yield long-term advantages and provide openings for new tactical maneuvers.

Suppression and Accuracy

• Instead of a flat amount of Suppression per bullet as before, the amount is now tied to shot accuracy.
• There's no RNG because I want Suppression to negate RNG. If you have a bad roll and miss the shot, at least you will apply some suppression. I think that's kind of how it works in real life too? The risk from a well-positioned enemy is constant, not variable.
• So how is it calculated exactly? I spent a long time experimenting with various formulas. Recoil, damage, fire rate, caliber, distance to target, etc etc. But I couldn't figure out a simple and intuitive formula. No matter how hard I tried, it always slowed down my tactical decision making. "If I take this shot how much will it cause? Wait why is that? Oh what if I shoot from here? etc etc" It never felt intuitive and involved too much thinking. So in the end I made it SUPER simple: the amount of suppression is simply equal to the accuracy of the shot + a multiplier for special weapons like the LMG.
• For example, when using all non-LMG weapons, a 60% chance-to-hit shot will fill the target's Suppression wheel by +60%, as long as the bullets don't hit an obstacle along the way. The LMG gets a special 2x multiplier, so in this example it would cause 120% suppression.
• The Caliver now causes as much suppression as other weapons. Again, I wanted to streamline player decision making. So snipers are getting a suppression buff. However, they're getting a nerf in other ways so I think it will even out. Overall, it feels intuitive to me since I think suppression-by-sniper is a thing in real life? Let's see how it goes in testing and if it doesn't feel good we can tweak.
• For shots not aimed at a target (aimed at empty space or those fired via Spray Fire), Suppression is calculated using the existing formula: a fixed amount of Suppression per bullet regardless of accuracy. But the amount is limited to 5% per bullet. This might not sound like much, but the LMG (8 bullets) is guaranteed to cause 80% Suppression even to someone in a very good position (5% * 8 bullets * LMG 2x multiplier). And with a well-placed Spray Fire (16 bullets) you can cause 160%. Using both actions on Spray Fire = 320%. So with the right weapon, you can still fully Suppress (and over-Suppress) someone in good cover.
• Overall, the goal is to prevent "cheap" Suppression from shots that don't pose a meaningful risk to the target. Instead, I want to reward players for getting into advantageous positions with good sight lines on the enemy or using the right weapons for the job.

Other Rule Changes

• When firing on flanked targets or those out of cover, Suppression is doubled.
• Hunkering down no longer fully blocks Suppression, but reduces it to 1/3. This was necessary to allow over-Suppression. Without it, all Suppression would be capped at 100% which is when the target auto-hunkers. (BTW, 1/3 is still a powerful defense and makes over-Suppression harder to achieve.)
• Getting hit by a bullet now applies +100% Suppression. This is to further reward players for taking good shots even with weapons that wouldn't normally cause immediate Suppression. Hopefully it also reduces weird situations where sometimes you wished you didn't hit your target. (However, there's still no Suppression on Kill, so you'll still have weird moments where you wish you didn't kill someone. I'm still working on this...)

These changes are now deployed in the new build 0.2.22. If you have time this coming week, I appreciate if you could give them a go. I want this feeling as good as possible ahead of Next Fest next week.

TL;DR:

• Suppression is now percentage based and can go up to 300%, at least 100% suppression is required to apply any effects and units can only recover 100% per turn.
• The amount of suppression units receive is directly proportional to the hit chance of the incoming bullets.
• Unaimed attacks normally only apply 5% suppression per bullet.
• LMGs have a 2x multiplier to the suppression they cause.
• Flanked or out of cover units receive double suppression also.
• Hunkering down reduces incoming suppression damage to 1/3rd, units still hunker down automatically at 100% suppressed.
• Getting shot applies +100% suppression to the injured unit.

This is implemented in the latest playtest so it's not just dev talking.

Probably subject to change in the future, I'd wager.

 

[Visperas]

What happens when you're 100% or more suppressed?

 

[Alienman]

Shit your pants gameplay will commence.

 

[Gumsmith]

Once per turn a unit that has just suppressed an enemy can gain 1 AP "initiative" that they can use or pass on to nearby allies, suppressed units will lose 1 AP on their turn and get an accuracy penalty that increases as they get more suppressed, plus the hunkering down which should cancel any overwatch they have.

Right now units only have 2 AP but I've heard that elites can have more when they're in, not sure how suppression will interact with that.

 

[std::namespace]

Overwatch should be purged from every tactikewl game in existence and whoever came up with it is a moran. The dev is cargoculting Nuxcom.
Find me a wargame with something like Overwatch! (I'd like to see that actually...)
What wargames have is Retaliation fire variants and which is a decent mechanic that is not braindead.