Warning: Users are reporting getting stuck on loading screens during battles and especially for campaign mode. We are working on a fix immediately, but our development team is away for the holidays. We will create another post addressing the patch once we've rolled it out in early January. Very sorry for the inconvenience!
Hey everyone! This is our 2nd to last major update before we come out of Early Access. We titled it "Ride of the Valkyries" (going with our orchestral naming scheme for updates) because our main focus was improving cavalry-play! We also included Wagner's song in the game as a free track you can listen to during battle. With this update, most of the game's content is in, though we are still looking to increase the map count, and the update after this can be focused mainly on polish and bugfixing.
Before we get into the details of this update, I do want to let everyone know that there is a new game-breaking bug that was recently introduced to the game which puts players on a never-ending loading screen when trying to load into certain large multiplayer battles. We are going to get this fixed immediately after Christmas, as soon as the team is back from holiday. Alongside that, campaigns have a few loading screen issues too which we're also going to patch very soon!
Cavalry Rework:
Despite this game being set during the Victorian period, when cavalry was far less useful compared to previous centuries, light cavalry has over-performed in F&M. Because of this, we've increased the price of light cavalry in nearly every update and they fell into an awkward spot as an incredibly expensive and versatile unit. Their diagonal movement along with 3 speed allowed them to move into 49 possible tiles each turn which made them almost impossible to predict. F&M has always been about prediction and so light cavalry has been flawed. We've addressed this by removing cavalry's inherent ability to move diagonal, and now they must use formations just as infantry does. This update not only makes light cavalry less of a nuisance to play against, but it makes cavalry more fun and interesting to play with.
- Cavalry now gets 4 formations: Line, Echelon, March Column, Dismounted Open Order. Echelon is exclusive to heavy cavalry and allows for diagonal movement. March column also allows for diagonal movement but it is not a combat formation. Line and Dismounted Open Order no longer allow for diagonal movement. Should the cavalry have the "skirmish" ability, it may move diagonal when in Dismounted Open Order.
- Line is charge and range vulnerable, meaning if your cavalry is countercharged or shot it will take increased damage. Line, like infantry Attack Column, now provides +1 on charges. Line can not move diagonal. Cavalry may shoot in line, but only one tile ahead of them at 1 base damage.
- Echelon is takes no penalties to being charged or shot, it is more durable. It may also move diagonal, increasing its flexibility in maneuver. It may not allow for shooting and it does not receive +1 when charging. It is exclusive to heavy cavalry, allowing heavy cavalry to move at roughly a similar speed to light cavalry in line.
- March Column can not shoot/charge and allows for diagonal movement. Speed is set to 3 when on roads. This means that light cavalry does not benefit as much from roads as heavy cavalry does when in column. That said, light cavalry can not use echelon and so march column is their only way to move diagonal at all.
- Dismounted open order behaves identically to infantry in open order formation. You may now purchase carbines for your cavalry and dismount them to fight as infantry.
Balance:
- Skirmishing perk has been overhauled again. It now allows for diagonal movement on infantry who are in open order. Cavalry can also utilize the skirmishing perk if they are dismounted.
- Objective mode now goes to 200 tickets instead of 150.
- Leveling up is now 60% faster.
- There's a 50-50 chance you get objective mode or elimination mode in quick match.
- Default point amount for games is 1600 instead of 1200 now.
- Rifled breech-loaders are now 80 points instead of 70.
- Shock is worth 30 points instead of 25.
- Melee drill is worth 20 points instead of 30.
- 2 Cohesion units worth 5 points instead of 10.
- 4 Cohesion units to be worth 40 instead of 35.
- 5 Cohesion units to be worth 70 instead of 60.
- 2 Speed units to be worth 15 instead of 25.
- 3 Speed units to be worth 50 instead of 80.
- French Lancers to go from no limit to 4 limit
- French Chasseurs-a-cheval to go from no limit to 2 limit
- French Cuirassiers to go from no limit to 4 limit
- French Carabiniers to receive efficiency
- French Dragoons to receive efficiency
- French Grenadiers of the Guard to receive shock (Elan!)
- Prussian Uhlans to go from no limit to 2 limit
- Prussian Cuirassiers go from no limit to 4 limit
- Prussian Saxon Garde-Reiters to receive efficiency instead of melee drill
- New unit added (see under content)
- British Light Dragoons to go from no limit to 2
- British Lancers to go from no limit to 4
- British Dragoons to receive efficiency
- British Light Dragoons to receive efficiency
- British Dragoon Guards to receive efficiency
- British Footgards to no longer receive shock (doesn't fit defensive playstyle)
- British Highlanders brought back down to a 4 limit.
- Russian Cossacks to remove skirmishing and receive rugged
- Russian Cossacks to go from no limit to 4 limit
- Russian Uhlans to go from no limit to 2 limit
- Russian Cuirassiers go from no limit to 4 limit
- New unit added (see under content)
- Ottoman Lancers to go from no limit to 4 limit
- Ottoman Cossacks to receive rugged instead of skirmishing
- Austrian Hussars to receive melee drill and disorganization
- Austrian Ulans to go from no limit to 2 limit
- Austrian Dragoons to receive skirmishing
- 2 New units added (see under content)
- Italian Lancers to go from no limit to 4 Limit
- Italian Carabinieri to go from 4 limit to 2 limit
- Italian Dragoons to go from no limit to 2 limit
- Italian Dragoons to receive skirmishing
- New unit added (see under content)
- USA Lightning Brigade to receive efficiency
- USA Regular Cavalry to be available for all periods and receive skirmishing + range drill.
- 2 New units added (see under content)
- CSA Regular Cavalry to receive efficiency
- CSA Regular Cavalry to be available for all periods and receive efficiency + skirmishing + melee drill.
- 2 New units added (see under content)
Features:
- New ranked mode added with leaderboards, an ELO system, skill-based matchmaking, and a placement system.
- Merits can now be purchased in the in-game store if players wish to support the game. Purchasing merits only allows you to spend them on unlocking base-game nations or getting cosmetics. Players are not encouraged to gain merits through any lootboxes/gambling. Merits do not give players advantages when purchased in any way at all.
- DLCs are now viewable in the store page.
- Players may now customize the difficulty and aggression of the AI they're facing. You can also select the general that you are facing, which will determine its aggression/difficulty.
- General AI improvements, with many more to come in the next January patch.
Fixes:
- Major fix to 2v2 games that would often freeze and prevent players from submitting their orders.
- Can no longer change cavalry into infantry formations by using hotkeys
- Order cancelling fixes
- Moving a reserve unit into another tile, then cancelling the order no longer places the reserve in the frontline.
- If you move cavalry, charge, then cancel your movement order, your cavalry's charge order is no longer valid.
- Units visibly floating off the board during deployment phase is fixed.
- Charge preview fixes
- Cancelling an order back onto a tile that has since been blocked will no longer break the unit's position.
- Open order formation facing diagonal now has the correct range.
- Hills no longer give +1 range when you're firing on someone at the same elevation as you.
- Bogged down units can no longer charge.
- Fire-at-will icon was getting stuck when it should've been getting removed and has been fixed.
- Cavalry damage calculation fixes.
- AI spawning with the wrong weapons fixed.
- Armory info button fixed.
- Cosmetics moved onto Steam storage so purchasing cosmetics should no longer frequently result in the item being lost.
- Fixed a readyup bug not allowing some players to ready up if the host didn't before they joined the lobby.
- Infinite shooting bug fixes which had to do with cancelling movement orders.
- Charge damage fixes
- Units moving past their charging range should finally be fixed. This means that infantry can no longer charge more than 1+ tiles in Line Formation.
- Inventory system fixes
- Tutorial should no longer be getting stuck if you follow the wrong sequence of what it instructs you to do.
- Swapping to other slots in a lobby when there is AI should no longer break the game anymore.
- Reserve units can no longer exploit the movement speed of frontline units.
- Cover now updates immediately when a hard cover building tile is destroyed.
Campaign:
- Peninsula & Overland campaigns removed and replaced by a large sandbox campaign of the entire Eastern Theater of the American Civil War, for DLC owners.
- Crimean Campaign tiles redone for better AI pathfinding, will make it more challenging.
- Franco-Prussian War campaign added to the game for owners of our new "Wars of Unification" DLC (previously called European Empires)
- All starting corps for all campaigns redone. Players will spawn with smaller armies that they will need to build up themselves now.
- Starter funds/manpower increased so players can custom make their armies.
- AI will be able to call in additional reinforcement corps to the map.
- Historical battle maps are now tied to certain campaign tiles, allowing you to reenact historical battles.
- Every tile has been given a name in every campaign so when you fight it will give a unique name to your battle.
Quality of Life:
- Flag icons no longer overlap when two units are in melee
- Learn tab renamed to "Tutorials."
- Units now face inward on a map when being deployed so that they don't deploy backwards.
- Players can switch between the "Glory" and "Rifle" periods on the main menu to view the different borders and flags.
- Formation button updates based on which unit you have selected in which formation he is in.
- Systems now in placed to prevent cheaters.
- Ready button moved to the bottom of the screen and animates up once you've purchased at least one unit.
- Camera spawn is now dynamic based on the center point of your deployment zones.
- Unit cards now turn bloodier when the units are damaged.
- Spawn zones have been changed to blue/orange which fits the orange crosswords and the blue shield in the very top left and top right of the battle lobby. This way if a player selects a slot on the side of the orange crosswords, they will spawn in the orange zones.
- All maps have been given a top-down view and a scenic view so you can preview maps clearer.
- General UI improvements made. Many more to come for our full release.
Mechanical Changes:
- New target ground orders allow you to fire at positions that you think the enemy will move to.
- Two units that charge each other at the exact same time will both do damage to each other instead of prioritizing the host's order to charge first.
- Host no longer receives an advantage to how orders are being carried out when two simultaneous orders conflict.
- Units with less than 6 max HP can no longer form a square.
- Fire at will no longer disables at the end of the turn, it only disables when it's shot by artillery or if the fire-at-will order is triggered by an enemy.
Content:
- New Maps added include:
1. Legault's Crossing 1v1
2. Gravelotte 2v2
3. Sedan 2v2
4. Paris 2v2
5. Mars-La-Tour 2v2
6. Spicheren 1v1
7. Woerth 2v2
8. Fortalice 1v1
9. Lavender Estates 1v1
10. Chernaya River 2v2
11. Malakoff 2v2
12. Great Redan 1v1
13. Inkerman 1v1
14. Balaclava 1v1
15. Mountain Pass 1v1
16. Gettysburg 2v2
17. Badlands 1v1
18. The Wilderness 2v2
19. Malvern Hill 1v1
20. Spotsylvania Court House 2v2
21. Cold Harbor 2v2
22. The Bastion 1v1
23. The Encampment 1v1put
24. The Besiegement 2v2
25. Tuscan Hillside 1v1
26. The Coastline 1v1
27. Koniggratz 2v2
28. Gitschin 1v1
29. Nachod 1v1
30. Hamlet 1v1
- New "Ride of the Valkyries" battle track.
- New Christmas themed cosmetics added for every single nation. They are available for a limited time so get them quickly!
- New Texas Rangers unit for the CSA
- New Mountain Gun unit for the CSA
- New Mountain Gun unit for the USA
- New Buffalo Soldiers unit for the USA
- New Cavalaggeri unit for the Italians
- New Honved unit for the Austrians
- New Landwehr unit for the Austrians
- Removed Volunteer Hussars for the Austrians
- New Greek Volunteers unit for the Russians
- New Guards Rifles unit for the Prussians
Graphics & Optimization:
- All trees moved from 2d sprites to 3d meshes which increases performance MASSIVELY. Players should now notice an FPS increase anywhere from 10-30 frames.
- Animation improvements have been made, units now move on the board less awkwardly. Another round of improvements will be made in the next update too.
- Units in square no longer face the incorrect direction (inward instead of outward)
- Dead body fixes, some bodies were in the wrong pose.
- Main menu nations now change flags depending on the time period being viewed.
- The 2nd tier of elevation (very high hills) have been remodeled and have been implemented in the new maps.
- Hills have proper collisions which prevent units from clipping through them.
- Italian cosmetics added for the wolf.
- Country names now update properly based on the time period selected.
- New English & Caucasian building models added for our map editor.
- Road decals now conform to the terrain allowing them to go on hills and different heights.
- Smoke/fire is now layered properly so that if your unit stands in front of a burning building the fire will layer properly behind your unit sprites.
Known Issues:
- Players are getting stuck on infinite loading screens, this will be addressed IMMEDIATELY.
- Some users are still reporting losing their cosmetics, but we believe the issue should be resolved. Still, proceed with caution.
- A few units still have the wrong traits or stats, will be corrected shortly.
- Wrong tooltip info for skirmishers.
- Missing tooltip info for campaigns.
- Missing tooltip info for the new cavalry formations.
- Clashes sometimes doing the wrong damage.
- Clashes sometimes allowing units to clip through each other without stopping to fight.
- Ranked UI issues, not saving wins/losses on leaderboard. (Elo is correct though)
- General campaign issues, player's saves not loading. This will be fixed asap.
- Order freezing in the middle of matches, we're still investigating why this occurs.
Community Event:
One other thing I'd like to mention is that we're doing a big Franco-Prussian War event on our Discord server in which players choose a side and are given battles to fight each week in order to help the war effort! We've done one turn so far, the results of which are in the image below. You can join this event for free by joining our Discord Server: https://discord.gg/fireandmaneuver and heading over to the "Campaign Signup" channel.
You can see three battles have been fought so far as the Germans go on the offensive. The battle of Wissembourg was a crushing victory for the Germans. Saarbrucken was a minor victory for the Germans. And finally, the Germans also attempted a crossing at the river Weissbach which was inconclusive. The french are attempting to hold back the German offensive while they mobilize their forces. Until then, they will be outnumbered!
Next Up:
Our plans going forward are to first fix any game-breaking issues through early and mid January. Then, we will shift gears to overhaul artillery just as we did cavalry for the remainder of January. Finally, we will then spend all of February just polishing and fixing issues with the game and improving visuals. Development may bleed into March a bit if we feel like there still needs to be more polishing done. Our aim is to come out of EA in Q1 of 2023 and during Q1 to focus solely on improving the core experience by fixing bugs and polishing visuals/sounds/UI etc.
The only other major content additions coming during Q1 will be as follows:
- A few new smaller campaigns.
- Lots of new maps.
- Boshin War DLC for the full release.
- Scenario mode improvements.
That's all for now, thank you for all the support! The team is doing their best to finish Fire & Maneuver as a polished and clean game. Afterwards, we can continue updating F&M all throughout 2023 with additional bugfixes and maybe even new factions too!
Thank you,
Griffin