itch.io

Hi Petr,

> Enemy behavior is great, a huge improvement compared to the earlier releases.

nice to hear that :)

> In the savegame that you provided the prison is on one side of the map and the enemy troops are in a building on the other side. So I can just walk to the prison, blow the door, let the hostage escape and then retreat. Without any enemy contact I get the reward. Possible solution: enemy troops should be located near the prison and patrol there, making it hard even to approach the area.

It could just be the save game that I gave you. Normally the scene generator is meant to put the prison fairly far from where your soldiers deploy to make the quest harder. 

> If I get a hostage rescue mission I can wait (on the strategic map) for allies to weaken the enemy troops. When the enemies are almost eliminated I join the battle. The battle is won easily and I get the reward. Maybe it would be better to get the award only if a player is really taking part of that mission.

I never considered that some one would do that. good catch.

> When the alarm sounds, enemies don't really seem to head for the prison in order to kill the hostages. Actually in all the hostage rescue missions that I have played (normal and hard) never any enemy tried to get close to the prison. I think they could be more determined to do so.

> After finishing a hostage quest successfully, sometimes the popup which tells you where to go for the reward does not appear. However it appears when you drive to another city and then drive back to the city where the hostage was rescued. Same bug occurs sometimes, when you drive to collect the reward. Sometimes you have to enter the city several times until the reward pops up.

Yeah, I already found many problems with the hostage quest and already fixed them. Fortunately they're not show stoppers.

> Weapon balance: I think grenades and especially the grenade launcher have a very high range, damage an accuracy. Considering the explosion radius the grenade launcher has a range comparable to the FAL sniper rifle. Other weapons fall short. Maybe assault rifles and snipers should have higher firing range to compensate the advantage of nades.

Yeah, I could make sniper rifles a bit longer range - but if I make it too long the game gets hard to play. The grenade launcher is the most powerful weapon in the game, but 40mm grenades ammo for the grenade launcher are very scarce, which makes it more balanced. 

> As you already have included hostage rescue missions: what about turning it the other way around? In assassination missions the player does not have to rescue a hostage but he has to enter a building and kill the enemy leader. Mission is over when this goal is achieved, remaining enemies surrender. That would be an interesting change to the normal kill-everybody missions.

That's a good idea. I am also toying with other quest ideas, such as defending a village against enemy onslaught.

Anyways thanks for the great feed back 

Ed

Hi Petf, 

There's not really any specific things to be tested. 

You could try this game save - it's just at the point that you can do the hostage quest: www.astronautz.com/gamesaves/s9_0165.bin

Also, this is one from the same campaign, but more advanced:

www.astronautz.com/gamesaves/s13_0337.bin

Also, there is a now "hostage" selection in the quick battles.

Send me an email if you need a link to the full version of the game

It should run on most PC's, except if it's very old. Which model CPU and GPU does your PC have?

What do you mean by "RNG"?

Anyway, it could be a problem if you are playing the demo version you do not have access to the weapons buyer, which is a big revenue source. Maybe in the next version I should add more quests to generate cash.

There's several ways to generate cash. You can sell damaged weapons at the scrap merchant. Also, there is a weapons buyer (only available in full version). Also, if you help Ben Dabi militia in a battle, they may offer to trade weapons for cash.  You should also manage spending frugally. For instance, it's not too wise to send soldiers to hospital when they are only down to 80% health - wait til they get down to 60% (you are charged the same rate either way). Also, avoid spending money on repairing weapons that are only marginally better than the ones you already have.

I guess I could allow clicking and holding mouse to rotate camera, but to be honest I never have a problem with viewing angles when I play the game

Hi Shitar, I'm glad you like the game.

> I've had a bug with the same popup dialogue with Zanata telling me we split and see in Ben Dabi. This popup is supposed to happen once but it was showing again allways at the same location, followed by the game quitting. Things were ok as long as I was voiding this location.

That bug was fixed in 1.8

>I am sometimes a bit annoyed by the visualization of the soldiers on the map. In some very few cases (mostly small buildings  and / or small rooms / small corridors) For these cases I would like to switch the visualization to another  axis that is not available. Besides, I got used to this little inconvenience and it's not something that would stop me from playing.

Actually, you can flip the camera angle from the HUD (also by pressing 'F' and 'V' keys)

>Also not a big deal but I guess it would be better with roadsigns readable from both sides (I send pictures for showing).

You're right, I need to improve the signs.

I'm glad you like the game. We'll see about the shotgun.

thanks ;)

That's great ;)

Hi Shitar,

I tested the MacOS zip file and found that it had somehow got corrupted. I uploaded a new file for the Mac version. Try downloading it again, it should work now. Thanks for reporting the issue.

Anyways, I'm glad you like the game.  I spent a lot of effort on the AI algorithm and that seems to have paid off ;)

This is how the new inventory system now looks:

There are 4 pouches that can hold small items, such as silencer, or grenades and two spare gun slots. For simplicity they can hold any type of gun.  The soldier will be restricted to only being able to carry two guns. Changing weapon now costs only 1AP.  Launching 40mm grenade costs 11AP, while throwing a normal grenade costs 12 AP, as before.

Some more developments. There are three types of 40mm grenade fuse:

• Contact. This is the simplest type. It just explodes as soon as it hits the ground (or wall etc.). Very accurate
• Air burst. The grenade jumps up after hitting the ground, this can (in theory) do more damage, by hitting enemy hiding behind cover. 
• Timed. The grenade explodes after a set time, allowing it to bounce and travel further. The disadvantage is that it unpredictable where it will detonate.

The next version of Merc Tactics will have under-barrel grenade launchers, here is a quick look:

Unfortunately not.

In the next version the inventory system will be expanded. I am trying to keep it simple as possible. This will allow for more grenades to be carried and also make it slightly more realistic

The new system, there are the following slots:

1 hand slot for current weapon

1 holster slot. Can only hold hand guns

1 armour slot, as before

1 long weapon slot (on shoulder sling), can only hold long weapons (rifles, machine guns, submachine guns)

4 -6 pouches, which can store small items, such as grenades, silencers, etc.

Hi Jamfanli,

I will eventually add shotguns, but bear it in mind other weapons such as grenade launchers have higher priority

Not at all, the project is going strong. It just takes time to implement new features properly.

Thanks. Hopefully, the next version will not take so long ;)

Hostages are AI controlled. Next version should land this month sometime ;) 

In the next version of Merc Tactics will have a free hostage quest. 

Ben Dabi soldiers will surrender if they are badly out-numbered in a battle and then will be taken hostage. Then, one of their comrades will offer a reward if you help to free them. The hostages will be kept in a locked prison building and you can either try to break them out by blowing one of the doors off, or you can just kill all the enemy and they will be freed at the end of the battle. However, once the enemy soldiers detect a break out attempt, they will try to kill the hostages, so you have to protect them.

Hi Petf,

Nice to hear from you again ;)

> I have been playing on a Windows 10 Convertible / Tablet. Performance is good, but the volume buttons toggle the main menu when in combat mode. And when the enemy is moving the volume buttons make the screen rotate.

Yep, I see that that bug. Quite wierd. I will try and fix it.

> One minor issue/bug: When picking up a soldier from hospital after healing, his ability scores still are reduced (due to injuries suffered). When entering the next battle the ability scores return to the normal values though.

I could not reproduce that. Maybe you are taking about temporary AP loss?

> Concerning the gameplay: The  AI is throwing far less nades now, maybe because of the changes to the algorithm you made? 

Yes, the AI algorithm is rewritten, including the code for throwing grenades, but I don't see them throwing less grenades than before. It could be just random luck that you didn't come across situation where AI had chance to throw. 

> And it drops less usable weapons. Before good weapons could be found all over the place after a battle. Now I have to take the broken weapons to repair. 

I did not change the code that decides to drop good weapons. There is a certain amount of luck involved, so it could be just down to bad luck.

> Even Leonidas didn't bring his G36 when he joined my team, only a handgun :-/

Yes, that can happen. Militia have their weapons reassigned after a battle, with strongest soldiers getting best weapons. If Leonidas gets injured then he falls down the pecking list and can get a worse weapon.

> Concerning the AI skills: Great improvement! AI movement is less predictable and they move to very good places to take cover, flank etc. I also found the AI to literally learn from my tactics. When I managed to kill some enemies from a good spot, they just rounded up some snipers and waited for interrupt. This is great because it keeps players moving and stop camping in one place all the match.

That's good to hear :-D

> I am playing on very hard and it is insane! Like a match of chess: when you make one mistake you lose :-) I know you don't want the AI to be unbeatable, but I think it is ok, it is beatable, it is just really hard.

Yep, on hard level even I struggle to beat the enemy ;). 

> You wrote that you will have to  either reduce the amount of enemies, or make them weaker. I don't think you should make them weaker. I think the solution will be the campaign layout: if you make a player encounter enemy teams with about the same strength, the game is playable. But it is impossible if you make a team with a strength of about 1000 fight an AI team of 12000. So I think in the campaign layout the enemy strength could be reduced in some cities and that will do the job. You could also make better weapons available in the earlier stages of the campaign. In my opinion the most difficult matches happen when the AI has better weapons (AK47 against handguns/submachine guns for example, or snipers against AK47). 

The player needs to be careful not to attack an enemy that's too strong. Usually there is a choice of attacking a weaker enemy first. (I even have a help tip that pops up to advise about this).  I think the weapon assignment is ok. Because of the randomised campaigns it's not very predicable what weapons each militia group will have, or if they drop good weapons. The player might get better guns earlier in  one game and not in another.

Don't worry, that's not going to happen

Yep, the latest version is there, 1.6 (not 1.5)

Thanks for the offer, however it's not quite setup for translation yet. I am planning to release on Steam when the game is 100% ready

I've been busy restructuring the AI algorithm.  The AI soldiers have three main attack strategies: standoff attack, zerg-rush attack  and flank. They also have various "tasks", such as patrol, pick up weapon, investigate noise, change weapon, etc.. 

Previously, the task would be chosen by hard-coded logic. I changed this to use a generic algorithm, which generates a score for each task based on various parameters and picks the one with the highest score. I've being testing this and I think it improves the AI hugely. Unfortunately, now the AI is much smarter and harder to beat. So, I'm going to have to either reduce the amount of enemies, or make them weaker.

thanks!

That's because it's better to kneel behind cover rather than staying standing and exposing the soldier to enemy fire.

You can deselect the auto-overwatch feature in settings and then you have control of what the soldier does in overwatch mode.

If you move into location and then discover that it doesn't provide good cover, you can use the undo button, and then take a different position.

> And once I had a moment, when my merc didn't see enemy behind the fence, but enemy saw him.

That can happen. The fence could be blocking his line of sight, but still the top of his head is visible to the enemy. There are some aiming visibility problems in the game. In a future version I am going to add more ray tests to alleviate the problem.

I'm afraid I don't, but thanks very much for kind offer anyways ;)

That's very kind of you.

You can donate via Paypal: Paypal donation

Yeah, the AI isn't smart enough to avoid going into location where it was previously interrupted. In fairness, your scheme would fail if more than one enemy attacked at the same side. You would only kill the first guy and the second would get through.

I don't know when next version is, but from now on I am only releasing 1 new feature per version.  This will make it more controlled and releases will be more frequent.

I'll answer your questions below:

> Sure, light weapons won't destroy a door.  But when a players uses a machine gun it could do some damage. 

a machine gun would make a lot of holes in the door, but it wouldn't cause it to disintegrate

> Maybe you could also make the AI consider the power of both teams and then decide how to behave:  If the AI team clearly outnumbers a players team the AI should decide to rush in most of the cases. If it does not it loses its clear advantage. For example I played a match with my own team's score at about 3.000 whereas the AI strength was more than 14.000. If the AI had started to attack with all or most of its forces it would have been impossible to defend and I would have had to retreat. But the AI decided to throw separate attack waves on my position. That is (too) easy to defend. You could define some threshold: If AIs strength is twice as much as the players strength, the AI should be more likely to attack with all its forces.

That make it impossible to beat the AI and it's not very fun to play against an unbeatable enemy

> As we are talking about tactics: I would prefer the AI to throw even more nades when it realizes that a player is camping inside a building. Sometimes enemy soldiers nade the doors quickly. But sometimes they only stand around, waiting to be slaughtered.

It depends on many things whether a soldier will throw a grenade at a door or not. On easier levels is happens less often, because it makes it hard for newbie players. Also, there may be friendlies in the way, or something obstructing the trajectory, or he could be out of grenades, or out of range. Also, sometimes the soldier will try a back entrance to the building instead.

<on PCs with low end integrated graphics physics runs slowly. You could try deselect the "highres shadows" option and that might improve it.>

Yep, that did  the job for me. Animations are much better now.

It's also fixed in 1.5.2 BTW. Physics now runs at the same frame rate of the game.

<I could make it right mouse click to create path. Maybe that a solution?>

Yes, I think so. Introducing the right mouse button would make things easier. You could also consider: one mouse button for movement only, the other button only for attacks. 

Now that I thought about it,  I'm not so sure. Using right click to select something feels very weird. Maybe, I can just add an option to disable the left-click to create path. Also, I can tweak the tolerance to favour shooting when the user clicks near the enemy.

>Another suggestion concerning attack controls: when activating a nade, the green path will show up. But if you find out that the enemy is too far away and you want to leave the nading mode you have to click again on the nade icon. That is not very intutive. I would prefer to click anywhere on the screen outside the nade path to exit the nade mode.

That's a good idea. To tell the truth, I only use the CTRL key, never the button.

Another issue: If a merc throws a nade over a long distance, he sometimes takes a small damage (only 2hps), although he should be clearly out of reach. Is that an issue or intended to be that way?

Yes, it's intended. A grenade does pressure damage and fragment damage and the fragments fly a long distance.

> And another bug: A player tries to open a door but it is blocked by an enemy on the side of the door.  The enemy is killed by another soldier in the same turn. Still the player in front of the door can't open it (Open door button is deactivated). When moving the player (for example kneel and stand up again), the door can be opened.

That's a HUD update bug, I will fix it.

BTW, I just release 1.5.2, this fixes some of the issues that you mentioned 

Hi Petf,

Thanks for the feedback. I'll answer your questions below:

>Nice improvements! I like the new destructible-doors-feature. The AI makes use of it when I start to camp inside a building. That makes the game more dynamic because you have to change tactics and stop camping. That leads to the first question: Why not make other structures destructible, too? And why can doors only be destroyed by nades - shouldnt a machinegun be able to destroy a door, too? 

I don't use nades to destroy doors, because i prefer to use them against enemies. So destroying structures with guns would be an option. Just giving some ideas for possible further development...

Glad you like it! I could allow guns to destroy doors, but it's not really realistic. In real life a bullet will make a hole in a door, but wouldn't cause it to disintegrate. There are two many different types of object, so to make everything destructible, I would have to create a mesh divide algorithm, which is quite difficult. That's why I would leave that feature  to the future.

> I like the AIs behaviour. Enemies dont rush into a well fortified position anymore, but retreat and try to flank. That feels pretty realistic. And they use a variety of tactics, so it is hard to predict. Really good work.

>So far the AI hasn't tried that all-out-assault tactics that it used before when it had very strong forces. I don't know if you changed that or if the AI for any reason just has not chosen this tactics in the games that I have played so far. I think the AI could chose this tactics more often. In my view it is the most difficult situation to defend when hordes of enemies rush towards your position at the same time.

I haven't changed to AI that much. They could all rush at your position, but it's down to random chance. In the next version, I want to add a "smart charge" behaviour, where they would take cover if they can't reach your position in one turn.

> Nades do a good job now. Throw distance, AP usage and caused damage are in a good relation.

> Some minor issues I have experienced so far:

> When a merc has only 2 APs left, he can still close a door, which results in -1 APs.

looks like a bug. I will try and fix

> All animations run smoothly. However, when a nade is thrown or when a door is blown up, the objects seem to fly in slow motion. You could speed that up a little. Or is it because of my poor hardware?

Yep, on PCs with low end integrated graphics physics runs slowly. You could try deselect the "highres shadows" option and that might improve it. Meanwhile, I am looking to it to see if I can improve the performance.

> After blowing up a door, in later turns sometimes parts of that door can start to fly again for long distances (if a merc passes near the destroyed door).

 Yep, that's a bug. I have already fixed it.

> I like the diagonal movement feature. However, it does not work when trying to move next to allies. That could be changed.

I can't see any problem. Moving diagonally across allies works for me.

> I know that many testers have demanded the new point-and-click movement control. I am pretty familiar with the old drag and drop movement. Enabling both controls at the same time can be confusing. Especially when I try to shoot: sometimes I accidentaly click on the neighbouring tile and make a merc move although I wanted to shoot. Suggestion: you could allow players to chose the control type they want, by enabling and disabling either.

I could make it right mouse click to create path. Maybe that a solution?

It's not in the usual place, because I changed servers. Send me an email and I'll send you the link

Yes, if you agree to do some beta testing I can give a link to the full version. Send me a mail: edwelch@astronautz.com

Wait a while. I am about to release a bug fix