Good day folks, urb here,
Hope you guys are having a decent Saturday, plenty of coffee and some free time to fire up some of your favorite indie games. And perhaps even maybe that obscure WW2 game about maneuvers and tactics.
Mud and Blood patch 0.4.0 is essentially an effort to close the game loop in the campaign in order to have a fully supported 333 days combat experience with ribbons and varied map generation. I would say I am almost there. Regarding classic mode, at this stage, I'm looking at what can be added to have a solid and nostalgic experience (Sarge, Frenchies and such). There is currently a healthy amount of variety in both modes and now we narrow down to the milestones required for full release.
Let's take a look in detail at what the patch brings and the new mechanics.
Coordinated movement order
A nifty alternate movement mechanic has been implemented where you can press the alt key and then assign moving orders. When you let the alt key go all the movement orders will be executed simultaneously. This is very useful when timing is everything such as when crossing a hedgerow in the example above. Note that movement speed still applies to slower soldiers such as Gunners and Signallers.
V1 Blitz waves
In classic, there is a possibility of a V! blitz wave. it is essentially a volley of 5 V1s flying at your defence lines. I can almost hear some of you sharp commanders out there thinking about air superiority. Will it work in the case of the V1 blitz? The short answer is yes, air superiority has indeed 50% chances intercept V1s. A dice roll is made for every rocket of the blitz.
P38 Lightning air strike: rocket run
During the Brest offensive, the 29th critically lacked artillery in order to conduct their advance. A supply issue was at the root of the cause and nothing could be done about it. In order to move ahead with the operations the 29th came up with very intuitive ways to integrate the air force into their tactics. The result brought the P38 into the fight with the aid of USAF liaison officers attached to Gerhardt's HQ.
The P38 offers an air strike that has a tight and mostly horizontal spread. The P38 will fire at least 6 rockets in a fairly accurate fashion. The rockets have limited frag spread but pack decent anti-tank capabilities. Since vehicles are usually moving horizontally in the game world, this strike add one more tool in your arsenal to deal with this potential enemy. Currently, the P38 is 2 tp in classic. In campaign, the P38 has a minimum of 6 rockets but will increase by 1 per card rarity level.
Trap Doors
Once you start rolling in German cities expect the enemy to use trap doors and various tunnels in order to circle around your troops and perform hit-and-run tactics on you. Luckily, you can still mine or destroy the trap doors preventing their future use. They are also fairly noisy so you will hear a distinctive metal door sound when the enemy is using them. Trap doors will spawn in the current special event so make sure there is none behind your position or the enemy will simply have a shortcut to your end line. Something to keep in mind.
In the campaign, trap doors bring in additional troops over time. This makes static fights increasingly challenging with the real possibility of being bogged down in a 2 fronts fight.
Trap doors tend to appear in an urban area, most commonly within Germany itself. Be advised that there is a rare occasion where a trap door could be inside a building in some rural areas such as St-Lo.
New Biome Aachen
Aachen was a map I wanted to redo for a lil while and I'm very happy I had the chance to tackle this one in this patch. It is essentially a dense urban map filled with ruins and treacherous angles. Aachen was a nasty fight with Germans holding large buildings in number delaying the advance with a fair amount of tenacity. In order to reproduce these street-to-street quick and deadly fights I've designed Aachen to be grid-like and entirely roofless. It resulted in narrow city blocks in quick succession peppered with few standing trees and back alley streets. Germans can shift forward really fast and often out of the line of sight creating these impromptu vicious fights where the outcome is decided on who is caught off position.
Aachen comes at the middle of the campaign some time after Brest. It is also the current special event in Classic.
New Biome Roer River
After the big fight of Ardennes, the Allies needed to reorg in order to roll in Germany enforce. While this happened the 29th was tasked to patrol the banks of the Roer river in order to prevent Germans to take back some of the ground left by other divisions. This area gives a very unique map layout since it is traversed by a large river. Allies or enemies end up maneuvering either on top or the bottom of the map. This transversal dynamic makes planning a fun process as you try to anticipate where the enemy will be in the limited terrain. The river also gives emplacement and vehicles a fair amount of range if they occupy the center.
Squad panel weapon inspection
In the squad panel now you can click weapons in order to access their hard specs. The user will be able to see info on the specific weapon carried by this such as range, damage, rate of fire and recoil. Let me know what you think about being fed weapon data. In my opinion, this can help some folks out there learn about specific weapons' pros and cons.
There is also some fixes and tweaks in this version so let's take a look at all the patch notes.
4.0 complete change list
- Fixed an issue where WP, heavy mortars and air burst attacks from Germans would not be redirected by counter intel
- V1 blitz in Classic mode (hey don't look at me you guys asked for it)
- Air superiority has 50% to stop a v1 (in case of a v1 blitz an individual roll is made for all 5 rockets)
- Fixed spirit of the 29th text
- Fixed an occurrence where Commandos would deploy and announce themselves as medic (aint that the furthest you can be from the truth)
- First stab at preventing some vehicles to see stealth units across LOS blockers. not that 222s are very good at spotting hidden troops and retained that ability.
- Cleaned up the code for loot pick up, sometimes the soldiers would not pick up loot they are walking towards.
- Bodies will now burn if exposed to fire with a nice bacon sound (Please send help. This is a cry for help.)
- Build preview for antennas, tank traps and dragon tooth added
- Antenna build zone reduced by half
- Camouflaged individuals (soldiers who are using the camo loot drop) and does hand to hand attacks will reveal themselves
- Fixed some parts of the game where the "no music" option wouldn't affect the tunes
- Fixed a display error when showing the progression in Heart of Germany in campaign
- Rhine, Roer, Ardenne, Cologne, München-Gladbach, Hog ribbons added to the game. We now have 105 ribbons.
- P38 rocket run added to campaign (as a command ability) and classic (2tp)
- Sdkfz 222 will now spawn on roads
- Fixed a fault where enemy trucks would group up at the end of a map in the campaign
- Added trap doors, this is used by Germans to spawn behind your lines. Destroy it with TNT or Bangalore or booby trap them with mines for best effects.
- New Biomes, Aachen which is a grid-like city full of ruins and nasty surprises. This biome offers tight fighting spiced up with large open areas at times challenging close and long firefight strategies.
- New special event in Classic will play the map of Aachen this could help some folks trying to get the Guerrilla Warfare ribbons since it is fairly well populated with defences already in map.
- Germans spawning in ambushes (under a camnet) will react a little faster simulating they were on overwatch and waiting for your squad to walk in their kill zones.
- New asset, Waco CG-4 glider that crash landed behind enemy lines. These can be seen in Aure and in the Hedges. Gliders give cover save and block line of sight. they can often contain some useful items.
- Fixed a fault where the track sound for the Sherman would not fade over distance
- Exploding vehicles have increased chances to burn for some time now.
- Fixed some ricochet effect when it hits the water
- New Biome, Roer river. this is an interesting map with a river crossing from left to right. opening long-range shooting in the middle and tight close quarter battles across the water.
- New in-water bleed effect
- Fixed in water ricochet
- Added water drips when explosions hit the water
- Added voice-over on hand-to-hand kills
- Added voice-over for ambush detection
- Added voice-over for Ambush triggered
- Added voice-over for when a soldier is hit by a backblast
- Added the hilarious flamer voiceovers for classic
- Added voice-over for when the armour leaves
- Added long-awaited tank radio chatter when moving and leaving
- QoL/Game Mechanic: Coordinated movement. Press Alt and assign movement orders to your troops. When you release the alt key they will perform the actions. Perfect for synchronized assaults and attacks.
- Fixed Spirit of the 29th timer not being affected by its rarity levels.
- Classic Ribbon medal of honour requires now to have an average of 75 waves anytime after the 5th game.
- In the squad panel you can click a soldier's weapon to inspect it. This will display the weapon specs such as range damage and such.
- Some AI polishing was done in order to make some behaviours more human-like. Notably how Germans are affected by the tempo of the fight. A variable named tension is keeping a record of how heavy the fight is and adjusting the enemy's behaviour for greater or worst accordingly.
- Classic [1 tp] and Campaign as a new lootable. Toolbox. This for now adds 5 to 25 hit points to a damaged vehicle. It has the potential to repair critically damaged parts after the vehicle's mechanics get further implemented.
0.4.0c
- Fixed a drift issue with the particle system
- Trap doors are destructible now
- Fixed an issue where Batttle conditions would reset upon launching a mission.
0.4.0d
Fixed an issue where soldiers called in hasty defence and would not refund TP when dismissed.
Fixed commandos having their max health not set to 120 on hasty defence.
This resumes the patch for now folks. We will catch you very soon in the one-year anniversary of the Steam MNB patch with a few surprises :)
Community highlights
Very good fight by MT. This is a good video to learn about maneuvering and reacting to hard losses in the middle of a fight.
A very tough fight in Ardennes by Mentally.
Check shadowguy888 streaming some Campaign and doing pretty good
Calii doing his thing in the Siegfried line.
That is it for me on this patch folks, hope you enjoy the new stuff. Let me know what you think on discord or here my DMs are open and I'm always happy to hear about cool stuff you would like to see in MNB.
Stay safe and warm, catch you all guys at the Christmas patch drop.
Respectfully,
urb