Hi everyone,
Last week was mostly spent on ammo and all that brings with it - so I will talk about that a bit today.
With the change to 6 units, the fundamentals of our soldiers and military gameplay changed quite a lot.
Before the change, we only had ranged units from the stone tier on, which meant that all of the ammo production chains were also starting in the stone tier. With the addition of the blunderbuss wielder to the wooden tier, this now means that the player has a unit that uses ammo, but no way to produce it yet.
I went through a lot of different ideas on how to fix this. We could simply move the ammo production chain to the wooden tier - and maybe add a second, more efficient building to the stone tier; We could create a second type of ammo for the blunderbuss only; We could have the soldiers start with more ammo; etc. Ultimately, each of these ideas impacted changes I am already planning to make in 0.9, and would only be a temporary fix that is probably more work than it is worth.
The way I would like for this to work when 0.9 comes out is for players to have the option to buy ammo at the wood tier. This will be expensive, but can obviously support both their early and mid-game ranged units. Once the player reaches stones as a resource, they can research ammo production, and decide to set up their own supply lines. Of course this depends on being able to buy ammo, which is disabled for other reasons ahead of 0.9 at the moment - so I have increased the chance of ammo being present in loot containers in the starting area. Once the ranged units run out of ammo, they are also only marginally weaker than melee units at the wood tier, so I am hoping that this will work well for the time being.
Another change I made this week was the ammo distribution. So far, most military buildings (watchposts, towers, barracks) had an inventory for ammo, which they distributed to any unit that was closeby. While this was a good idea in theory, it turned out to not be great in practice, as players ended up with just too many buildings that could have ammo for a very limited supply early on - so it was never clear where the precious ammo had ended up, and how you could best arm your units again.
So, I am now introducing the ammo depot. For now, I have only made a wooden version, which distributes ammo in a 50 metre radius around it. Future versions at the stone and metal tier will likely get a larger range, and will take more ammo into their storage as well. On the plus side, this means that players will have much more control over where their ammo goes, which I think is a step in the right direction. On the minus side, towers will have to be built in range of both a market and an ammo depot to be supplied with food and ammo. However, considering players also have the option of putting down melee watchposts, I am hoping this will simply add another layer of planning to most bases.
I should be able to finalise some of my work on the six units this week, so there should be an update to the experimental branch before next weekend.
Until next week!