Greetings, commanders,
We're back with a new festival build, and this one brings some substantial changes to the combat experience. Campaign mode is disabled in this version while we rework he strategic layer, but the tactical side has received a lot of attention.
Content changes
Tutorial Rebuilt
The tutorial has been completely rebuilt as 7 standalone topic-based challenges: movement and terrain, melee combat, ranged and magic, zones of control, flanking and advanced tactics, interactions (levers, traps, secret exits, treasure chests), and VIP extraction. Each one has a hand-crafted map, a curated party, and signposts explaining mechanics as you encounter them.
It is entirely optional and you don't have to do it in order.
Challenge Missions
We put our 3 initial hand-crafted tactical missions with pre-built parties, along with 3 randomizd ones, so you can jump straight into combat. Campaign mode will return once the strategic layer is more stable.
Combat rules changes
Archers
Archers no longer exert Zones of Control, so you can move past them without penalty. However, ranged units caught in melee can no longer shoot and must swap to a sidearm. The AI handles the weapon swap automatically. Magic is unaffected.
Weapons & Armor Balance
Armor and penetration reworked. Armour should always help now, regardless of the opponent penetration.
Success margin allocation fixed (margin was added both to damage and for bypassing armour).
Swords can now use a thrust attack against opponents.
Technical changes
Performance
Pathfinding should be roughly 80% faster as caching is more agressive and initialization greedier .
Level generation calculations have been streamlined, and should now be about 75% faster.
Enemy AI
The AI has been restructured so that all enemies now coordinate across a shared turn: ranged units shoot first as a group, then melee units move in together.
Target selection has also been fixed (they were attacking the lowest-priority target first, which... explained a lot), and they won't go around the map for a 10 turns detour to try to hit your rearmost character anymore.
Combat Feedback
Lockpicking attempts, trap disarming, and trap avoidance rolls now appear in the combat log. More floating labels were also added to explain action failure: "Exhausted" (no stamina), "No Action" (no actions left), "No Target" (artillery with nothing in range).
May the stars watch over you.