Update - 0.71.0.0

Version 0.71.0.0

This patch remade the whole save-system, and I think is an improvement in all aspects of the game. So it will be added to all branches right away.

Summary - Finally got the waypoint system updated!

So your allies will now act as if they have scouted the map before embarking, so they will plan a much better attack-waypoint, Branches will have their separate save-files, to avoid having to do extra work to make changes work with deprecated / discarded systems. some groundwork for the new content that will arrive with next patches, and lastly some tweaks, balancing, lowered xp-needed to gain ranks (meta-levels) by ~75%.

Oh, and I think there might be more unsolved bugs than mentioned at bottom (+ at discord “Knowns issue” channel). But after days of testing the game, I couldn’t find any more than those. Which will be remedied with new content in upcoming patches, <3 (It should still make the game better overall, as most of the solved bugs / issues are old ones). And I have to stop sometime with adding things to this patch, to avoid it taking too long to patch to the game.

New waypoint algorithm for your allies!

Updated the waypoint-creating system, so your allies are "much smarter", as if they have scouted the map before setting up a base and creating an optimal attack-pattern. No longer "take the closest to headquarters" anymore :D. Though, I've tested it for a few hours with no error, doesn't mean it can still have some weird edge-cases. So if you do, please send me your player.log file (more info @ the games Discord-channel: "Infrequently-asked-questions", you can send it to the channel "submission-for-player-log", or send it private if you instead prefer that).

• So your allies will now try to figure out the path that gives the least amount of pressure, with a balance between easiest at the moment and in the long run, but was a really tough nut to crack, as I've spend more than 40h just to figure out a good solution, and it is still far from perfect, but much better and what I could see, so am I happy with the result.
• Your allies will however still take shortcuts & sadly awaken camps not in vicinity, so I’m thinking of solutions to solve that.
• Also added feature for me to input your generated-map "seed" and generate identical map, which will be very helpful if you got a weird generated map regions or waypoints, so if you do, you can send me your player.log file, so can I duplicate your run to much right away to replicate the scenario.
• The new system will still be polished / improved until it is no longer whacky, so if you get a match with allies having weird attack-waypoints, send me your player.log file (more info in game’s @Discord channels), as I atm. Already know it can’t handle a complex issue I’m still fighting with, but it adds a second layer to the complexity, so it's hard to keep my tongue straight when adding a solution for that, but still don’t break the existing algorithm.

Updated Meta-xp

I reduced the amount of xp needed to gain meta-levels by an insane ~75%. The reason is, this game should be a casual game where you can unlock every “content” (equipment, all abilities & talents, buildings, etc) in a much shorter span. So you can “try out the whole game, faster”.

But, my plan is to add more playable characters, factions (and maybe even a “reset level to get a prestige-level” or something). And these things will add up a lot more playtime to “unlock everything”, so the smaller-“grind” will be more “get all characters, factions & stuff to max” instead of just 1 dude. So you can “finish” the game in much shorter time, put the game aside for x months, then return to test more content, so then you can “relive” the game with a new perspective.

New Save System (3.0)

When changing the meta-xp, I noticed a big flaw I’ve made for the previous version of the save-system, I wanted players' invested time to always be rewarding the same. E.g. You played 10 hours, got to level 5, then came a patch that increased xp you gain, so the same amount of play-time would now get you to lvl 15, so my idea was it was more fair for that player to also have that level, so it just insta-gave him/her that, no nice sweet reward-window, not even a notification to see what you unlocked or anything. A super-bad idea, if I wanted it, maybe give the player a xp-bonus until they gain that extra xp.

Anyway, now, it tracks your level and xp. So even if I do change at all to how much xp you gain / need, so will “nothing change”. E.g. it can store: “level progress”: 3.45 == level 3 and 45% towards level 4. So you will never “lose your progress”, neither get 10 extra levels just because that amount of xp you had, is worth way more.

Only thing could be, say you need 20’000 xp to get lvl 4, and a patch change it to 10’000 xp, if you then had 45% towards 4 (20’000xp), you had then 9’000 xp, it will then update to 45% of 10k = 4’500 xp.
But as I reduced the amount of “grind” needed to get max level is ~75% lower, so bug/crash made you lose one round xp, isn’t as serious as before. Plan is to make it even faster with side-quests and map-mutators down the road, giving more XP per round.

And i also notice a new feature in previous patches that caused issue/crash on the live/non-experimental-version (or prod, short for production), that made it so if you played on experimental, you couldn't play on the prod branch, as they shared settings & save-files, and I've updated settings & save-files in experimental that prod doesn't know of, so it gets sad and crash (crash & burn).

So I solved this once for all, by separating all the branches "player-settings & save files”, so you will have one set for each branch of the game. E.g. you will no longer progress on the prod-branch, when playing on experimental, or vise versa.

• This will prevent future issues with changes in experimental not breaking your other versions (prod, testing).
• However! As the game had support up til now to share a common save-file, so will I do one time cloning your save-files into the separate branches, so you don’t have to start from scratch with any of the branches.

Upcoming patches!

In the coming months now, I'm going to focus, not sure 50/50, but at least on both balancing & adding new content at same time. And atm, I totally agree with the community, the game is a big grind, which is something I don’t want. Maybe in a year or so, I'll add a huge-map that is intended to be a grind (say, last map vs end-game boss or something), or simply allow a larger portion of the map to be unlocked.

I’m just afraid the latter will encourage players to only play on longest runs, which the game is not balanced around, and be frustrated by their experience of the playthroughs “ughh, such a grindy gameplay-loop / repetitive game” (or similar). But before that, I want to make the matches much faster paced.
And a heads up! The experimental branch can be very unbalanced after this patch or future-patch, as I’m trying to try out the game style, to one that is more suited to… this game?
So things I’m going to work on next patches:

• Make enemies' sub factions more unique -they should feel much more different to each other.
• A long awaited money-spending “sink”, was thinking of mercenaries & A witch that is selling consumables.
• More Equipment, aiming for making more unique playthroughs, not just a dull +10hp or something.
• More abilities for player (also down the road, rework on some talents for more fun & balanced abilities, though that will be maybe in 3-6 months after added much more content)
  • This is a high prio, hell they all are, but this one a bit extra. As it is far away from the number of abilities I want in the game for one character, so this is going to get much needed love.

After these patches, sadly can’t estimate time-span, as I want much more content of everything atm.:

• A new playable character
• two new maps with different gameplay-styles & Victory conditions
• Upgradable buildings
• Builders that will construct all buildings, and take care of placing "base/core" buildings, e.g. they will build them automatically, e.g. your allies will be a "ally" to you, not just a puppet, so they will try help you more with building up farms and basic defences, you will then decide what type of unique buildings each region should have, also how those "free"-buildings will be upgraded to.
• Basic “inventory” system for use-items (Will be 2.0 of the witch selling potions / buffs above).

Game mechanics

• Not sure to call it a bug or mechanic, but reworked how abilities / projectiles "attack range" is calculated, before I used scientific approach (distance = speed * lifetime), but it's just complicated stuff. So now projectiles from e.g. towers, will not reach further away then their "aggro-range". So you no longer will get hit by a stray arrow from the other side of the map, just because it had an extreme "lifetime". So in recent patches I changed the "attack-range" on enemies buildings, but not their projectiles "lifetime", which was stupid, as one of them is dependent on the other. So I removed the "lifetime" variable from the equation (for things flying about).
  • Though, they will get a minor extra added range because of rounding-error with math. Otherwise they will have issues with hitting buildings at specific angles.

• Reworked the "Death-penalty" you get by dying on the two toughest difficulties
  • It is now moved out to a separate difficulty-setting, so you can now determine if you want a "Death-Penalty" or not, and how harsh it should be (Maybe 4 alternatives is a bit much, but took 5 min to fit it into the existing code.)
  • So now you get a 0%, 1%, 10% or 25% Penalty to your characters stats: Health, HealthRegen Mana, Manaregen and damage dealt.
  • Was thinking of maybe having numbers: 0%, 1%, 2%, 5%. But if you reaaally want that extra bonus-xp / challenge, it should hurt when dying. So thought these had a broader spectrum of adding difficulty. Similar to Hardcore setting i suppose. However, I'm not adding a huge xp-boost to it by intention (so I might even reduce the bonus xp even more), to not force player to play on a playstyle they don't like, just for extra the xp (e.g. having Hardcore giving +500% xp would be too evil for the average player, if that makes any sense).

Content

• Barbarians Berserker-unit is now split into two units, Assassin & Berserker, The new Berserker will have the "rage" mechanic without poison, and Assassin will have the poison without rage.
  • This is related to above with more unique sub-factions, so I want a "pure-assassin" down the road for the "Swamp-barbarians" (name suggestion :P?), which are going to focus on subterfuge (stealth, poison, etc) as their characteristics. And the frozen barbarians (cold-muscular-baddies-faction-name-here) are more brute-force with a chilling effect to easier catch their prey.

• Added new small tower for enemies in tier 3 regions (end-game), so they are on par with their region (was using same tower throughout all regions, so now there are two, Don't have a new graphic-asset to it yet though, so just making it a bit colour-adjusted for now, let me know if you have any other fast-appearance fix.). It is just a placeholder until the next patch (more different sub-factions, including buildings).
  
• Frozen Barbarians have replaced their melee unit with berserkers, next patches will work towards making updates for sub-factions, so this was just a minor step towards it.
  

Quality of Life

• Added a game-crashing "system", so now when the game crashes, you should get a warning with info what to do if you want to report the error, it's a bit crude. But it only took a couple hours, so hopefully you don't have to wonder if the game crashed or just a really long loading time in the loading-screen :).

Balancing

• Removed The full-map setting - It breaks a big part of “random unlocked map paths” and for balancing.
• Reduced cost of buildings & upgrades by a lot, roughly 40% cheaper, I’m testing if it helps solve the grinding-feeling of the game, so might be too much atm.
• Also made farms & Large Farms giving half as much food, think it can help still the snowballs (further testing needed), and the abundance of building-slots atm.
• Made some extreme building price reduction, think at least more than 50% to everything. More info above (Upcoming patches).
• Removed piercing from Barbarians fort (the large building you can face in the early stage of the game).
• Buffed Flash-Thunderstrike area by 60%
• Made some regions not possible to start at (was too hard / punishing), plus moved around some build sites / which can be hostile in the starting-region, to reduce the chance to have multiple towers in your face when you start.
• Market now has doubled revenue (0.5 from 0.25) to compensate for the halving of farms production (Also planning adding an upgrade to make it sell at 1.0silver/food).
• Market food-selling is now rounding up on .5 values (exactly in between).
• Last two difficulties are now slightly easier.
• Enemies Spear Throwers & Harpooners will now have longer range and piercing (or did i add piercing in previous patch?), anyway, longer to negate the ball-of-doom your units make.
• Enemies Spear throwers now have poison as well (those swamp-barbarians use) .
• Enemies Tier 2 & Tier 3 buildings now have less health, their primary strength should be to clear your allies' armies (on top of spawning units), not withstand a 10 min surrounded-beating :P.
• Reduced Beam-blast dmg to 25%, if I don’t calculate totally wrong, so you can hit more than 40 basic units with it, so it needs a heavy nerf. Think it would need twice the strength of the nerf, but we start here.
• Made the Arolins Tunic as default equipped chest-piece when starting the game for the first time, the slowness from the other armour is having a too big negative impact (reduce the first-impression of the game).
• Slightly slower spawn-rate for enemies of Tier 2 and tier 3 spawners.
• reduced the buildings regen-speed to ⅓ of previous, it is not something to be used to be more tanky, more a placeholder that buildings will be repaired in due time, later with workers that will fix it.
• Not sure if I have added it to this patch or in an older one, but enemy buildings no longer regenerate health.
• Flash Surge of speed now lasts 3 sec -> 12 sec, but reduced speed x3 -> x2, to resolve some issues, but still be a strong talent. + also updated its visual effect.
• Flash - Thunderstrike rebalanced: It is waaay too strong, combined with the low cooldown talent, so might do a rework on flash talents to be more balanced but still have all combinations being good ones. Not sure if this one should be focusing on damage or stun, or maybe split it into two talents? Suggestions? Maybe make it stronger vs few, e.g. smaller area, but higher dmg.
  • Reduced damage 90 -> 10, it might seem way too harsh, but with its large area + stun, so is it to gosu.
  • Stun duration: 5 -> 4 seconds at max level

• Flash - Leaping Lightning: nerfed it as well, being super-cheap AND such low cooldown was op, combined with Thunderstrike so it had best damage (area), stun and the only travelling ability.
  • Don’t start with 1 sec CD, but get at level 1-3: 10 -> 5 -> 2 seconds
  • Cost increased 45 -> 60,
    • But the cost is still reduced by leveling it, so still +15 extra manacost at max level (went from 25 to 40, this attribute I think I might have to do some extra balancing with though).

• Chain lightning increased cost, but higher dmg: manacost: 40 -> 50, damage 9 -> 11, should make it hit harder (counter armour), have to cast it fewer times (with full gear, it is pretty spammy, though think the issue also lies in equipment giving too much mana atm.)
  
• Chain Lightning Split on hit damage degradation decreased, before it went from 33% -> 25% now it goes from 25% -> 20%, e.g. deals more damage (should be roughly 33% in total)
  
• Magic Circle updates:
  • Not sure if i did it this patch or not, but size is now 2.5 from start
  • It will now increase in size up to 3.8 at max level (basic)
  • Aegis only give *15% AreaSize, but also gives +3 sec in duration

• Gave +1 Armour to enemies: Assassins and Berserkers
  

Other

• Updated Barbarians WitchDoctor poison-bolt to be less VFX-heavy, but still trying to retain its look. (It could get a bit laggy, so I reduced the amount of particles it creates by ~80%).
• Corrected some numbers on stuff using "Radius", they were radius, e.g. "Pickup Radius" was using diameter when telling its value. So their size will remain the same, but will look "half as big". E.g. Previously 7 "Pickup Radius" was the same size as 3.5 "Pickup Radius" now, and Pickup Radius have the same length as, hopefully all other stuff like MagicCircle, Thunderstrike, etc.
• Updated Flash-thunderstrike visuals.
• Changed name on Market "Production Efficiency" to "Surplus food sale price", to be more descriptive
• Fixed so castle's Architect upgrade no longer shows non-implemented buildings it will affect, as it confuses players to think he/she hasn't unlocked it yet, but it isn't even added yet.
• Removed the unique-spawn sound of assassins - it was just a silly idea :P of a warning of tough/unique (snowflakes) enemies incoming, which they aren’t anymore :).
• Updated calculations behind beam:
  • Beam - Blast no longer collide, felt really weird when it did
  • Beam - Blast had a weird behaviour if you started/went far outside its range and tried to “go closer”, it didn’t, as it used the position of the player aimed at. E.g. you reach 10 metres, start the beam at 20 metres away, now you want to move the beam closer to 9 meter distance, but the beam is moving from 20 -> 9, not 10 -> 9. Which is now fixed! (more a bug, but put it here as the rest of Beam stuff is here).
  • Fixed so Beam rotates with correct speed, which was not true when using Beam-blast (more a bug, but put it here as rest of the Beam stuff is here).
  • Added that Beam stops at approximately the actual hit position, so now it looks like the beam hits the building, not at a weird location near its center.

• Enemies with piercing will now be able to pierce your magicCircle, which is not intended. But have to do an extra day of work to make abilities be much better “identified” when being hit. And haven’t come up with a good solution for it yet. But it is something I’m going to fix next week, otherwise the Aegis is not as useful. Oh, and it atm. Blocks both enemies and allies, which is something I also need to fix. But I really really wanted to get this patch out before the weekend, so here it is!
  

Bugs

Fixed bugs

I have found and fixed at least one place where one of these bugs enters. But in the worst case, there were even more places the bug sneaks in that I have missed, so maybe a bit misleading with "Bug fixes".

• MagicMissile had its glow remaining after on hit, it now disappears as well.
• Removed the super-large flash bug from "Flash" when you use it fast.
• When interacting with a small building-slot and then interacting with a large building-slot, the tab to build on the medium-slot becomes inactive.
• You got the warnings with resetted settings when starting the game for the first time.
• If you use Flash - “Surge of Speed” and then pause the game, wait a few seconds, then return. It could have reverted the time dilation effect with wrong values.
• MagicCircle Aegis and buildings could sometimes take a long time to update the navmesh when removed, e.g. units couldn’t walk where it was, as if it was still there.
• Teleporting in and out of the magic circle was not working as intended.
• Solved a bug that made it impossible to play on different branches (more info above under “New Save System (3.0)”).

Unsolved bugs (but possible to be recreated)

• AI getting stuck / bad pathfinding (using Unity's built in, which apparently is not good for large-scale. So I bought a new tool I will look into if it can solve the issue, otherwise customise the existing system.
• The huge performance hit when your allies start to bug out & clump up together.
• The performance / lag with the xp-orbs, especially when there are loads of it / and when you pickup a black-hole (magnet)
• The Conduit talent has incorrect description, it gives a positive crit-dmg, not negative.
• Sometimes the red-value of coins doesn't go away when you try to buy a new building / upgrade, and don’t have money.

Unsolved bugs (that I have not been able to recreate or really hard to recreate)

These are reported bugs that I have not been able to recreate. So I'm sorry you have to keep experiencing these, but if they are not major, so have I put them to the side for the moment, and have my eyes open for them to figure out their criteria to be made.

But I gladly take all the help I can get, so if you experience a bug, I would love to hear the scenario with things you might think is related when it happened. E.g. you die & won't respawn (non-hardcore-mode), were you attacked by enemies? Did you have a healing-effect on? Were you affected by a DoT (damage-over-time) etc. This will help make it much easier to recreate and thus identify the cause of the bug.

• Flash sometimes reverts the player's position, but you can still do its designed effect on location (OP? Feature?)
• ChainLightning: will not always jump to next target in vicinity
• If you get slowed by chill-effect, the visual blue effect will sometime not disappear
• Upgrades in progress won't always cancel when the building is destroyed.