This week, we are spinning back and taking a look at one of the features within our Operations system that we talked about in Dev Diary #18. Strategic Assets are important rewards for completing missions within an operation, but enemy forces are also not sleeping on improving their combat odds.
Let’s take a closer look.
Note: Operations are branching mini-campaigns of three to five procedural battles. You choose one mission per tier, carry all damage forward, and end with a single showdown. Clear the chain, and your roster is restored while you bank OCI points, Authority, faction trust, gear, and temporary Strategic Assets; fail any mission, and the operation ends, costing you the top rewards. Dev Diary #18 has more details.
What are Strategic Assets
Early in development, we decided not to have singular missions. Still, we wanted to create an entirely new dynamic and procedural system that creates ever-new campaigns with connected and branching missions. The result of this effort is our Operations system, which we discussed in the Diary linked above.
Each completed mission gives the player a variety of rewards, mostly new items but also experience in the form of promotions to hand out to squad leaders. Also, players get OCI points and trust with the local faction as rewards for completing the whole operation. What was still missing was the actual outcome of each mission and how it affected the rest of the operation.
Armed clashes always have a goal or a reason to happen. Each side wants to achieve something and is risking their lives for it. This outcome of a mission is what we decided to call a strategic asset.
The name might change, as it does not fit a hundred percent.
So, in short, a Strategic Asset is a boon, resource, opportunity, item, or any other kind of advantage that the player earned by completing a mission. These assets depend on the mission type, and many are unique to specific missions. Often, there are multiple different possible strategic assets for each mission, and it might be a different one when playing the same operation and encountering the same mission later.
Most strategic assets will only be active for the duration of the current campaign and are reset once the campaign is resolved. However, there are some where players get permanent rewards like additional items, promotion points, trust, or others.
Why Strategic Assets
When designing the game, it was important to us to add immersion, choice, and consequence, and believability to the operations. They are all about adding context to each mission, and this not only includes the mission preparation and briefing, but also the outcome and aftermath. After all, there was a good reason to set up that specific mission by local command and the Impetus Staff.
An example would be a mission to free loyal local forces soldiers from Rogue Army holding cells in a rescue mission. A possible strategic asset could be two local forces squads joining the players' army for the final mission of this operation.
Another would be more manpower in the form of Squaddies to join the player’s forces. Another mission might have the player ambush Pirate reinforcements along a road.
If the player succeeds, the Pirates might suffer from reduced supply points in all following missions.
Strategic Asset Examples
The mission “Rescue Settlers” in which you have to sweep in and stop alien critters from killing local settlers:
Securing a settlement might bear various effects; in this case, the player gains the bonus of a Hunting Lodge. These hunters can be very helpful in bringing down large aliens that might lurk in the area:
The assignment to clear and secure a landing zone will often be the first when starting an operation and setting up a bridgehead to advance from. This might be a strategic asset from such a mission:
Searching and destroying Pirate weapon caches might have you gain access to some piratey equipment:
Oftentimes, opposing forces are fighting over the control of fringe settlements. The reasons might be many, but often it is about gaining access to powerful facilities that help the ongoing efforts, like a repair workshop:
Enemy Assets
The enemy factions are, of course, also not sitting idly by. They do have their plans and ways to acquire strategic assets, which in this case are called “Enemy Assets”.
After the initial operations, which are relatively short, longer and more difficult operations start to appear. These might have missions that are not strategic assets, but enemy assets as rewards. In case the player decides not to take on the mission with the enemy asset attached, but does another mission on the same level of the operation, the asset gets activated.
Just as with the strategic assets, it will only run for the rest of that specific operation, but given that Operations can be up to 5 missions long, this can really add up.
The enemy assets are faction-specific and resemble efforts of, for example, the pirates, to establish advantageous conditions on the battlefield. Here are some examples of what to expect:
Pirates love to tinker, break apart, and Frankenstein together new equipment. Letting them set up a metal workshop will help them improve the durability of all their armored units.
Being the unorganized bunch they are, the Pirates suffer from low discipline and can be beaten back even when attacking with superior numbers. They might want to work on that weakness and give their units a little nudge in the right direction. Allowing them to establish a propaganda center that boosts their morale will make them much more resilient on the battlefield, recover faster from suppression, and be less likely to flee.
As you can see, both strategic assets and enemy assets can be decisive to the outcome or difficulty of a campaign. Going for permanent goodies like items can be viable.
Still, it will come at the cost of not getting an immediate advantage that helps to win the operation with better results and fewer losses.
Additionally, stopping enemy assets is crucial to avoid giving the enemy an edge. However, missions involving enemy assets do not provide a strategic advantage, so players are missing out on any immediate advantage.
We want players to not only face complex decisions on the battlefield itself, but also before that on the operational level.
In combination with all the other factors like mission type, difficulty, expected reward, weather conditions, and strategic or enemy assets, there are a lot of factors that have to be taken into consideration when selecting not only the next mission but also planning a way through the branching operations.
Engage, Explore, and Stay Informed
That's it for now! We'll see you next Friday.
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