Merchant fans! Just wanted to let you know what the current plan is for the main development focus on the game over the next couple of months. The two key areas I'm planning to focus on are two interconnected systems; combat and heroes. First up, combat -
Combat Evolved
The main focus for combat will be adding extra tactical depth and variation, while at the same time making each of the fighter types you can hire more differentiated and interested.
I'm going to add a set of combat talents, fighters can have one and they'll also find their way to heroes. The current working list for these is -
- Ranged - Can attack targets in other quadrants
- Heavily Armoured - Chance to ignore damage if hit
- Weapon Expert - Can cause damage to fall on two enemies in one combat round
- Veteran - Increase security by one if in same quadrant as another Veteran
- Healer - Chance to heal a unit within their quadrant between rounds
- Manouverable - Ability to move quadrants between rounds
- Bloody Minded - Chance to regain one health when it drops to zero
- Leader - Adds loyalty to combat score for quadrant
- Brave - Adds health to combat score for quadrant
- Battleborn - Adds morale from combat wins
Hopefully this will give players lots more tactical options in how they deploy their forces and manage them during battle!
I'm currently undecided on if these talents will be mapped to specific fighter types (e.g. archers are always ranged, guardsman are always armoured) or if it'll be more of a randomised thing that only some fighters get.
Looting Phase
This is currently in the game in a very basic and behind the scenes fashion. Basically, if the attacking forces win a battle then they face off versus the cart's defence stat and this determines if they loot anything from you or not. I'm going to make this a clearly depicted phase with specific artwork to call it out, so it should be much clearer how it all fits together and what you lost.
In addition, will be adding back in the ability to loot enemies if you beat them in a battle!
Morale and Loyalty
Each fighter in the game has a loyalty stat and the original idea was that it could be decreased through various unpopular choices during events and from losses in battle. If it reached zero then the fighter would desert, so it essentially worked like a second health stat.
The main problem with this is that with a fairly limited number of trips that you would have specific fighters with you, the chances of encountering several events that could knock their loyalty down before they left you anyway was very low.
The aim of the system whereby you of hire fighters for an upfront fee in return for them protecting you for a set number of trips was simplicity, avoiding having to pay monthly overheads or something like that. A core design principle is that this game should never have a balance sheet screen!
The trips system isn't very popular though and loyalty doesn't really matter. I'm going to replace the trips system with morale. Each fighter (and hero) will have a morale bar, which will drop over time, from defeats in battle and unpopular decisions. If it reaches zero then a fighter may or will leave. You can pay the fighter a set fee at any time to top up their morale. This should be a much more flexible system - it will allow you to keep useful fighters around for as long as you want, as long as you can afford to keep them happy!
The loyalty stat will act as a modifier to this - the lower it is, the faster that morale will drop. It can go up or down through specific actions in events and maintaining it should now be much more important.
As always, let me know if you've got any thoughts on these proposed additions and changes to the game!