Greetings, Warmasters and Candidates! This is the newsletter for November 22th, 2022, the second November newsletter. The main topic is the AI, of course, but not in the way you might think. The AI Helper system has started to be implemented! More on that below.
AI Discussion
Rank: Warmaster while a micro manager's dream was never meant to be only played that way. Because of the many genres that are being put together, it can be overwhelming. The original intent was always to have AI helpers for the player, to offload some of the work the player may not wish to handle. The game was always intended that different ranks were different roles to handle different aspects of the game. The opposing AI already implements this, because each faction isn't simply one AI, but several working together. A Mayor to build and maintain cities/installations, an Admiral to handle fleet orders such as scouting, cargo transport, and of course attack an defense. During testing of the newer Admiral AI, it became more obvious that the time for the Helper AI interface was required to speed up testing. While the newer Admiral AI isn't available in this build (because it needs more testing), the helper interface is.
What does this mean? It means if you go into the Asset screen, and click on "Create New AI", it will ask for a role you want this AI to have. After it's creation, if you go to the Nav Screen, you'll see an avatar representation of that newly created AI that you can click on, and see it's commands. Mayors and Admirals have different possible commands, so you can explore this preview in the new build now available. Obviously, this won't be a preview for much longer.
Short-term RoadMap
With the new AI-Helper interface, newer and more appropriate icons are in the works being created for the different commands. More and more different AI abilities will become available to the player, so the AI development is in process.
That's all for this update, stay tuned for more news next time! If you'd like to give Rank: Warmaster a try for yourself, pick up a copy on Steam and begin your conquest of Mars!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1422270/Rank_Warmaster/