Hello everyone! We had our hands full with the release of the demo at TactiCon and we had to blow off a bit of steam after that. But we are back now with a new devlog about the resistance base -or more accurately- bases!
The old ways
Before I go into how it was changed, a quick recap of how it worked previously. It was pretty much identical to how XCOM 2 did its base. It was set up like an ant farm underground, and every level had 4 slots for rooms. Like so:
Now that is okay, after all, it worked for XCOM as well. But to me, it doesn't feel like the player has too many decisions to make here. Mostly it's just the order in which the player builds stuff. In addition, I had another problem, namely that I wanted the player to care about the different territories a bit more in the campaign map.
Then a solution dawned on me that could solve both of these problems. What if I break up the bases into smaller ones, and place them inside territories on the maps? This creates bases that need to be protected, leading to certain territories beings more important than others. Plus I can make bases more unique depending on which region they reside in.
What can a base do for you?
Every base built will provide the region base resources, by simply existing. These are smiths, scholars, soldiers per month, and gold per month. Smiths provides equipment points that govern how much equipment can you bring into a combat mission, scientists speed up research and skill acquisition, soldiers per month governs how many new recruits you have at the start of the month, and gold per month is well, the gold you receive per month.
The base rate for these resources is different for the 6 regions on the map so that itself differentiates the bases. But that is not all! Every region has attributes(reminder, every skill belongs to an attribute) that belong to them, and the player will only have access to those in which they have a base in. So for example, if you want to use swords, you will need to have a base in a region that is known for sword-wielding. That means the choice of the base location is not only determines your income but your available and researchable skills and equipment!
Anatomy of a base
The base itself is a tavern that acts as a front for the secret base below. Every base will have 4 slots to build into. At the beginning of the game, you will have four buildings you can build, corresponding to the 4 resources a base can provide. A black market for gold, a laboratory for scholars, a smithy for smiths, and a training center for soldiers. In addition, if you research one of the early techs you will unlock the scrying room, which will add scrying charges for your planning phase in combat.
What is important to note here is that income these buildings provides are not flat but dependent on the base value of the region. So for example building a laboratory is more beneficial in a region naturally high in scholars.
How to lose them
Now I have deliberately avoided what makes territories different inside regions for a base. The reason is there is nothing if all of the territories have the same loyalty to the resistance. But the amount of territory does matter! If a territory loses all of its support for the resistance the base will be lost. But if there is another territory still valid for a base in the region, the player can play an evacuation mission to move the base there. How much of the base he manages to evacuate depends on the player's performance on the mission of course.
The player will start with one base for free, and additional bases will be buildable, for a considerable cost. This system provides a natural defeat condition for the player as well, the game will end if all of the player's bases have been destroyed.
Closing thoughts
So that's it about the new bases! For me, it feels like this was the last piece of the puzzle that was necessary to make the decision-making in the campaign portion compelling!
For more general news, the TactiCon event feels like a big success for us, as we managed to more than double our wishlist count! I want to thank everyone who is supporting us in this project! In addition, we have started a Discord channel where we post everything related to Slaves of Magic, so if you want to ask us anything, or just want a central place for all the news related to the game feel free to join us here.