Devlog #16 The heart of the resistance, their members!
Hello everyone! This month, we have done a lot of work on one crucial aspect of the campaign map, the barrack which houses the resistance units!
No two men alike
Let's take a closer look at the recruitment page:
The inherited difference between units is their traits. Instead of just giving a unit lesser health, better attack, or whatnot, I wanted to highlight everything that is unique to a given unit at a glance. Positive traits are shown as green, and negatives as red. Every trait has a numerical value, and by summing the trait's values, we get an overall estimate of how good a given unit is (and you can sort by this value on the recruitment page by the way!).
This value is being used to decide how likely a given unit is to appear on the recruitment list, which itself is refreshed at the start of every month. Sub 0 value recruits are the worst and have a low chance to appear by default, 0 values are the norm, and all of the 1-2-3-4 values have their own category. I don't want to mention concrete percentages just yet, as those will surely still change with balancing, but the player will be able to improve their recruit pool by building and improving a recruitment center in their base, to increase the quality of their recruits.
Knowledge is half the battle...
Take a look at a unit statistic page:
After you have recruited your units, you should decide how to spend their attribute points. This is a big divergence from the way XCOM handles levels and skills, but those who played the original GW1 will find it familiar. The basic idea is that units gain attribute points when they level up. Then these attribute points can be used to learn/improve a certain attribute which will provide a passive benefit, plus increases the potency of every skill of the given attribute in some way.
Let's take the sword-wielding attribute for example. For every level, the unit passively gains +5 defense and +5 attack when they are equipped with a sword. The levels in order are beginner, amateur, professional, expert, and master. To learn a new attribute, you only need to spend 1 attribute point, but for every additional level, you will need to spend one more than the previous level.
The max level of a unit will be 8, and the unit will gain attribute points for every level up. In addition, a level 1 unit only has 4 open skill slots which they can use. At every even level, another one will open up.
...the other half is the equipment!
The only thing that is left is to equip your unit with the correct gear for their job! The equipment is straightforward, so I wouldn't dwell on it too much, beside that you can bring 2 sets of weapons to combat. It will take 1 action to switch between them. The skills are basically part of the equipment as well, you will be able to place any skill which is known to the resistance into the empty slots. The only requirement is that the unit needs to be at least a beginner in the attribute to which the skill belongs.
What I would highlight is that there is a job system in place. The player can create a job with any arbitrary name, and save the current unit equipment settings into that job. So for example the player can create a warrior job template once, then he can just set that template to every other unit which he wants to take the warrior job. Plus you can sort the units by their job name as well.
Closing thought
So that's it for today's devlog! But before I leave, I want to talk a bit about a new playable demo that is in the work. The demo will include both the strategic and tactical portions of the game together. We wanted to share this build with you at the summer Steam festival, but sadly, we need a bit more time to properly polish it for public consumption. So our new target for this demo will be the autumn Steam festival.