Incline MENACE - sci-fi turn-based tactical RPG from Battle Brothers devs - coming to Early Access in Q3 2025

[Zanzoken]

"badass" girls yelling during armed combat? Diversity?

If you take money from the g*rman government then you have to embrace modern g*rman values.

 

[itsme]

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2432860/view/515196931452961301?l=english

Dev Diary #3 - Tactical Combat Overview
An In-Depth Look at Missions, Units, and Combat Systems in MENACE.

MENACE revolves around two gameplay layers: the strategic part we discussed in the last Dev Diary and the tactical part, with the latter being the game's core.

Today, it is time to get an overview of the most important aspects of tactical combat in the game before we dive deeper into each topic in the following Dev Diary posts:

Objectives​

In MENACE, each tactical deployment and battle is called a mission. It is always part of a series of connected missions that comprise a so-called operation. Of course, missions and operations are procedurally generated for maximum replayability and new challenges.

Each mission has one or more objectives that have to be fulfilled to complete it successfully. This can be rescuing civilians and getting them to safety, defending a military base, or capturing critical infrastructure before the enemy advances. The times of killing everything that moves to win any mission are over (but don't fret; some missions still require you to kill everything). Bringing the best-suited squads, vehicles, and equipment for the task at hand will substantially impact a player's success in the game.

Combat Maps, Biomes, and Chunks​

The maps in MENACE are square-based, as you might have seen in the screenshots. However, we try our best to visually break up the underlying structure as much as possible to make the map look like an actual battlefield, not a chessboard.

A map's look is determined by its environment, which will differ for each planet. This might be temperate, desert, snow, or jungle. Each environment will branch into various “biomes.” A temperate biome could be “Rocky,” “Forest,” or “Plains.” Each biome will have challenges, like dense forests, obstructing rocks, or a lack of cover and hiding spots. These maps are completely procedurally generated.

Within these maps, we use “Chunks” to implement human-made structures. To that end, we created our very own semi-procedural editor for set pieces. With this tool, we can create a huge variety of human-made settlements, military outposts, factories, and more that all look different and have different setups. The important thing is that they make sense and are not random piles of buildings.

Action Points and Turn Order​

Sticking to the genre's origins, we implemented a classical action point system for units where every move and skill use costs a certain amount of action points. Once these points are depleted, the unit has to end its turn. It will re-activate in the next round and have its action point pool refilled.

Unlike most turn-based games, MENACE will use alternating turns between the player and AI. Each unit can act once in every combat round while the player chooses which one to pick. Once that unit has spent all its action points, the AI picks one of its units, and so on.

This creates a situation where the faction with more units has a distinct advantage as it can move all its leftover units freely as soon as the other side has spent all its action points.

Picking the right unit at the right time, manipulating the turn order, or baiting enemy units into certain moves is the masterclass of MENACE combat. It takes a lot of experience and will make the difference between suffering horrendous losses or being hardly scraped.

We will discuss our reasoning behind alternating turns in a later Dev Diary.

Units and Equipment​

Players can field two fundamentally different units, namely infantry squads and vehicles. Each infantry squad is led by a squad leader who also represents the unit in combat and is a distinct character who acts in events and more outside of combat.

The size of infantry squads can vary between 1 and 9 elements but will mostly be around 5. The unit shares one health pool, and one element will perish with a certain amount of hit points lost. This will reduce the unit's firepower as more and more fighters drop.

Squads can be equipped with a huge variety of squad weapons. Every member of the squad will use this weapon. Additionally, a squad can opt to equip a special weapon, replacing one of the squad weapons. These usually have a special purpose, such as a rocket launcher to fight armored targets or a machine gun to provide suppressive fire.

On top of the weapons, body armor can be equipped for additional protection and other benefits. Finally, accessories that usually focus on utility can be added. This can be a target designator, a motion scanner, or a set of frag grenades to fight enemies behind cover.

Besides squads, there are also vehicles, including walkers. These have a pilot instead of a squad leader and are always only a single entity on one tile.

Vehicles also have a health pool, but instead of losing elements, a vehicle will collect “defects,” aka injuries. Defects range from an overloaded targeting computer to a disabled engine or might even lead to a catastrophic explosion, instantly wiping the vehicle out.

Unlike squads, vehicles come in certain fixed configurations and can only take on accessories or “upgrades” on top. However, each vehicle will have different variants to ensure a large build variety.

Cover and Line of Sight​

Cover and lines of sight are crucial to the tactical combat in MENACE. Cover is provided by buildings, nature features, ad hoc barricades, and even vehicles. Unlike in other games, cover is very effective at blocking shots from the front, so dislodging an enemy in cover with a direct assault usually ends badly.

Instead, players will have to get creative. For example, they suppress the enemy and send another squad to flank them. Alternatively, players can throw smoke bombs to conceal their advance and take the enemy out with frag grenades that ignore cover.

Lines of sight are very lenient in MENACE. Units can see and shoot through all buildings and assets smaller than 3x3 tiles. Only larger structures or objects will block all lines of sight and fire. There has been a lot of development, testing, and trial and error behind this decision.

Still, ultimately, we feel this is the best solution for the scope of the game while putting clarity and predictability for the player first. Few things are more frustrating than expecting to see an enemy from a certain position, moving there, and then not seeing them.

Next week, on the 3rd of January, there will be no Dev Diary. We will take a little break for the New Year.

We wish you all the best and see you in 2025!

 

[*-*/\--/\~]

yeah, they can take their stronk wamen, diversity and german government money and shove it

i probably won't bother torrenting, let alone buying, this crap... are those even the same people who made BB that i liked?

 

[Hydro]

Judging by the looks of it it’s going to be a top notch sci-fi. Hyped quite a bit.
Also the look of the winter biome is very reminiscent of The Thing.

 

[Serus]

Instead, players will have to get creative. For example, they suppress the enemy and send another squad to flank them

So much creativity.
Some "tactical" games don't even have that much but they aren't aiming very high, do they.

 

[Kruyurk]

It is mindboggling to me the level of butthurt over women soldier. At least they have a snow environment, so you snowflakes are represented as well.

 

[Yosharian]

It is mindboggling to me the level of butthurt over women soldier. At least they have a snow environment, so you snowflakes are represented as well.

All criticism = butthurt

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

However, we try our best to visually break up the underlying structure as much as possible to make the map look like an actual battlefield, not a chessboard.

What concerns me about this is that all battlefield shots have only shown flat terrain.

 

[rojay]

We will discuss our reasoning behind alternating turns in a later Dev Diary.

Looking forward to hearing the explanation, because while he acknowledged the advantage to the side that has more units, I'd like to know how they intend to address it.

Each infantry squad is led by a squad leader who also represents the unit in combat and is a distinct character who acts in events and more outside of combat.

I'd also like to know more about this.

Battle Brothers is a great game and the developer gets some level of trust from me from the start but Myth: the Fallen Lords/Soulblighter were great games and look what's become of Bungie.

Edited to remove a redundancy.

 

[Alienman]

However, we try our best to visually break up the underlying structure as much as possible to make the map look like an actual battlefield, not a chessboard.

What concerns me about this is that all battlefield shots have only shown flat terrain.

It's an oddity. Xenonauts 2 is the same. What is weird is the old demo had hills, and even ragdoll effects

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

From discord:

Just a quick note on stealth: theres a character stat called „concealment“ that can be increased by perks or equipment. It‘s also lower for large targets like vehicles. We will cover it in more detail eventually

There are three different cover levels from environment as well as different cover states for being in forests, open vehicles or certain buildings. The AP economy will work similarly to Battle Brothers with a unit having 100 AP and a normal attack costs 40. There is free aim, any unit can attack any tile it can see that is in range. Squads will require healing between missions to refill hitpoints and elements. There are also some more long term status effects for squads.

Yes, human enemies will follow the same rules, they even have limited ammunition too ; ) Also, in MENACE the player will often outclass the enemies in stats but is often outnumbered. It is a bit of a change of pace from BB where you started at the lowest low.

 

[Ascetic]

However, we try our best to visually break up the underlying structure as much as possible to make the map look like an actual battlefield, not a chessboard.

What concerns me about this that all battlefield shots have only shown flat terrain.

There's actually terrain elevation in the recent trailer, with some troops positioned in defilade and using small hills/depressions for cover. It just took me 3+ watches to see it, since the editor was too focused on jump cuts between generic explosions and death animations.

 

[Ibn Sina]

The game will be pozzed piece of trash. Not even worth playing

 

[goregasm]

I know/knew, the owner of Hooded Horse back from the warband modding days. He's cool, if not a bit left of center in his sensitivity and desire to never offend and always include.

The staff at his company are all pronoun showing blue sky degenerates, it started quietly, but as it always does..it's bubbling up to the surface as he is less involved with the day to day operations getting something off the ground.

Just some food for thought that this is the publisher. Not sure of the influence it would have on the game, but they are all they/thems, he/shes over there from what I have seen.

 

[Alienman]

The staff at his company are all pronoun showing blue sky degenerates

How does this always happen?

 

[kyosuke]

The staff at his company are all pronoun showing blue sky degenerates

How does this always happen?

When a company Owner drinks the "inclusive" Kool-Aid, his "inclusive" HR is always gonna be degenerates who only hire other fellow degenerates.

 

[goregasm]

I mean to be fully transparent, tim and I collaborated on some warband stuff. Were chummy and he is 100% is a genuinely nice dude who was extremely helpful in the warband modding scene.

I DON'T know the day to day operations of his company, I know that they put out there that they are very much a "hands off" publisher who will offer cash if it's needed or marketing and have put out a pretty easy vibe into the world, and that sounds like the guy from the warband days of yore.

Obviously developers who have worked with them would know better than I.

I am only...adjacent to the situation and know some of the employees and have interacted with them and they definitely give off and have the blue hair/bluesky vibe and worldview.

It's still an extremely small company by publisher standards, but the lefty tech weirdos are there 110%.

For all I know they are a wonderful publishing company to partner with, they certainly built a portfolio quickly, I just see it as a shiny apple with a big bruise on the other side of it.

Then again, I am a pessimistic asshole.

 

[cpmartins]

It is mindboggling to me the level of butthurt over women soldier. At least they have a snow environment, so you snowflakes are represented as well.

My issue isn't women soldiers per-se, since you could close the gigantic physical gap with cybernetics or deep gene therapy, and the psychological one with conditioning. My issue is why it's there. They could spend millions making a mediocre women front-line combatant, but why would they? So, why are they in the game?

 

[Hydro]

Idk what the problem is really. Since their inception computer games had women combatants, and it never was a problem. On the contrary it added to a setting.

I understand the sensitivities one may have nowadays towards the inclusive culture, but it is important to distinguish a badly designed product with woke quota and a good product without one. I haven’t seen much of the former with this one so far.

 

[thesecret1]

Since their inception computer games had women combatants, and it never was a problem. On the contrary it added to a setting.

It was dumb even back then and got many an eyeroll from me, but at that time, it seemed a minor enough issue to pass over it. Now that we're in the middle of a culture war, such things acquire much larger importance.

 

[rojay]

Since their inception computer games had women combatants, and it never was a problem. On the contrary it added to a setting.

Now that we're in the middle of a culture war, such things acquire much larger importance.

You don't have to participate in a culture "war," friend. You can acknowledge that both sides of the political divide are trying to get you worked up over woke shit and you can wish a pox on both their houses.

 

[Alienman]

Idk what the problem is really. Since their inception computer games had women combatants, and it never was a problem. On the contrary it added to a setting.

How?

In any setting trying to depict a realistic military, it makes no sense having 50% women. It was always cringe. Culture war, or not. And that includes X-com.

 

[Harthwain]

Idk what the problem is really. Since their inception computer games had women combatants, and it never was a problem. On the contrary it added to a setting.

How?

In any setting trying to depict a realistic military, it makes no sense having 50% women. It was always cringe. Culture war, or not. And that includes X-com.

Eh, Jagged Alliance was fine with having women.

 

[PanteraNera]

It was always cringe.

 

[Alienman]

Oh no, the soviet sniper argument. It's over. Make the armies 90% female.