New update in the public test branch
I will be focusing more on making the villages (and the villagers) more important in the game. Their simulation is still very basic, and in the future having control over them should be the main focus of the game. Your goal should be to control the villages, build support in them, and to try and make the life better for the locals. So far it's not really working.
I've released the first update trying to address this in the test branch. The villages now have proper resources management, with the civilians buying food (and consuming it, which wasn't the case before), going to work more regularly (if they have work), and in general - being much more active.
In the future updates, I will also add basic utilities - water, electricity and telecommunications. The player will be responsible for reconnecting and maintaining them.
The update will go public in the main Steam branch after this week. I would just like to test it a bit more, first.
The logic that manages how households and civilians living in the AO behave has been rebuilt, and I again used a decision tree-like system for it. It will let me modify the AI reactions very easily in the future, and make the interactions more nuanced.
The villages now have a basic economy system, with the locals more actively looking for jobs. For now, they can only work in the stores (there's at least one new store in each village, now) or in drug farming, but this will be extended in the future updates of the game.
Because so many people asked for this feature, you can now order your units to automatically load all available killed/wounded units into a car, without having to issue the order manually, over and over. You just need to order the unit to carry all other wounded to the highlighted car. Note: only the units from the same faction will be picked up, so you can easily focus on helping your own men, first.
Changelog:
version 0.8.3:
* NEW: rebuilt the civilian life simulation. The villages will be becoming much more important in the future versions of the game, with the locals doing many more activities, and their attitudes to you affecting the game more.
* step one of this rebuild is making the locals care about their food and money levels, and allowing them to work in the stores in villages.
* Civilians will now buy food in the markets located in their villages
* Civilians might now start working in the markets located in their village
* There's a new map area, called the food market, confisting of many small food stalls. In the future, this will become a very active spot where new interactions will happen (gunrunners, trafficking, criminals meeting, etc.)
* fixed the bug where civilians would never be able to finish their AI assignment of going to work
* fixed the way village stats are calculated
* fixed multiple issues with loading the game
* started to rethink the cost of units in the game, would over time like to make it very cheap to acquire the basic transports and riflemen, but much harder to get any greater numbers of specialists on the map
* NEW: added an option for the medics to carry all available wounded to a single vehicle, without having the player issue the order more than once. Just use the "put this any any other wounded in this car" order for this.
General Plans for the rest of this year
1. A complete overhaul of the unit dispatch window - nothing about the current one works as it should. The window is way too large, selecting the vehicles too slow and there's no templates (like - letting you dispatch a transporter with a simple rifle squad quickly)
2. Extending the Squads - each squad should have a team leader with special actions available. This is also related to the overhaul of the unit dispatch, because currently it's impossible to send a certain squad to the map in any easy way
3. Adding the buildable civilian structures, like wells and power generators
4. Adding telecommunications and I-Com - the civilians and your enemy should be using some sort of communication devices. This would let them organize attacks over the map, call for reinforcements, and in case of the civilians - telling the enemy about locations of your units. The player would get a special I-Com vehicle for listening in on these communications (with the help of a translator).
5. Adding a proper main game menu, and letting the player select options for the new game (Fow/ No Fow, enemy weapons, amount of enemies, etc.). This one is kind of obvious, but always took a back seat to more pressing developments.
6. "Building the case" - slowly gathering intel against more prominent criminal leaders living in your AO, as well as small-time guerrillas becoming more notorious over time, until you manage to stop them. I'd like to introduce some sort of a "kingpin" system, where a guerrilla would hide on your map, keep organizing ever-greater attacks against you, as long as you're not able to uncover him.
