A few days ago we had a live Q&A on Discord, with Felix, Creative Director of Steel Balalaika.
Winners of the Open Beta Multiplayer Challenge had the chance to talk and ask questions. We are posting a short recap of what was revealed.
- When is the game going to be released? We are still working on the game to make sure that it is a polished experience and it meets everyone's expectations. As such, the game is currently slated to release in the second half of 2024.
- Will there be another beta? Almost certainly. Stay tuned so that you don't miss it!
- What about support to modding tools? The game is built in Unity and its files are in pretty standard formats. It shouldn't be hard for anyone with the right experience to create mods for the game.
- Will there be more factions added? Yes. None have been confirmed yet, as we are currently focusing on the base game, but we have lots of plans and ideas for future expansions and playable factions.
- Will there be VOIP? No, VOIP is currently not planned.
- What will the matchmaking balancing be done with? Broken Arrow will use the Glicko 2 system for the ranking.
- Is there a lot of elevation in maps? The game is set in the Baltics which isn't a very mountainous region, but some maps have more elevation than others with some hills and short mountains. We will focus on mountains and make them shine in the gameplay when we move on to other regions in future pieces of content.
- Will you add maps with a lot of open terrain? Not really - open spaces makes your units very vulnerable and lead to a very static gameplay. It's part of the level design of Broken Arrow to have a high density of buildings and cover on the maps.
- What are the five specs for Russia and USA? Still top secret.
- Will there be a standard lobby system? There will be two systems: standard match compatible with automatic matchmaking and custom match where the host can customize the lobby.
- Will you be able to mix nations once more nations are added? At the moment it's only one nation per team in standard match and the host decides for custom matches. We might change that when a new nation is added but it's not decided yet.
- What are the team's thoughts towards scoring systems (earning points while capping) A ticket system presures the losing team to sacrifice their reinforcements needlessly to try to stop the bleeding, resulting in their long term defeat. The system presented during the beta has the advantage to give time to the losing team to recover from a bad start and turn the tide. The disadvantage of this system being that inexperienced players don't feel the incentive to be aggressive and lose because of that. We are working on a game mode that would keep the advantages of the current system while mitigating its downsides.
- Were there some units which you thought were either underperforming or overperforming Planes with smart bombs were overperforming during the beta. We have already taken action to rebalance that.
- Will you make it easier for infantry to counter vehicles? Yes but not by a lot. Don't expect a few soldiers to stop a column of tanks. It is important not to make infantry too good against vehicles or you end up with a very static gameplay with artillery as your only tool to push forward. Infantry vs infantry combat was also very slow, we have increased a bit the damage they inflict to each other.
- What's the intended use of drones? It's aerial reconnaissance. You can cover a lot of ground with a single unit which is useful to check if there are no units infiltrating your rear lines. They are easy targets for long range missiles but you can use them as bait in combination with a SEAD plane/helicopter. We have also added low flying drones which are much more survivable close to the frontline.
- What game modes will there be in the game? There will be a single game mode for standard matches to keep a single pool of players and make the automatic matchmaker as efficient as possible. But it will be possible to create or download user made game modes created with the scenario editor and play them in multiplayer.
- Will there be a handicap if someone leaves? Losing a teammate is already a handicap. We're rather looking to compensate this handicap to maintain a match as fair as possible. First off both teams retain the same amount of income, just split among fewer players. Secondly, increase the availability in the deck leads to problems of roundings. So it's better to proportinally increase the speed at which units come back to the deck for the remaining players.
- What kind of post-launch support will there be? It will be a combination of new DLCs, adding new factions, maps and campaigns, with free updates consisting of new quality of life features and improvements.
- Will there be spectator mode? Yes.
- Will there be a replay mode? Yes, but possibly after launch. It is a complex feature and we're not sure to have enough time to finish it before the release. This is the type of improvement which would be part of free updates.
- Will it be possible to airdrop infantry transports like the BMD? Yes. Maybe we will limit the ablity only if you also buy the infantry with it.
- How many people in development team? Around 15, plus people like translator, voice actors etc. which are outsourced and all the staff of Slitherine helping us.
- What was the most rewarding or fun thing you had to do while working on the game? Felix replied that the aspect he likes the most is that it is an incredibly varied job. You never get bored and you end up doing so many different tasks.