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This is an awesome concept! I Wanna dive a lot deeper in to this!

Game looks very eye-candy and unique from graphics standpoint, keep doing awesome job in that direction!

I think such game should be more psychological. There are ways to do it, but I would like it to be MMO'ish, so players could team up with potentially dangerous strangers (other players with changeable nicknames, who may have their own plans!) to travel to more difficult zones. No map - traveling should be based on rumors about what could be found where... each new base spot or talking to strangers brings new rumors on where the next spot is. That story puzzle is fun while you are in beginners zone, and becomes vital when you travel deeper into the beautiful frozen hell! That way collecting information on your own will take long time, pushing players to collaboration instead. Leveling/research/perks/items should be temporary for current life. The only score in leader board is a sum of  days you survive, multiplied by zone difficulty (that is exponential of cause). If you die, the score gets dropped to zero, in order to make people value their lives and think twice who they trust. 

> Pressing 'H' pops up the hotkey list

Not obvious, make an icon or menu item

> Yes, it's proportional to the damage you inflicted on the enemy. For instance, if allies inflict 40% and your squad inflicts 60% on enemy, then loot distribution is 40-60

That's the hard one. I guess you'd better add some limit to witch allies can attack enemy city, so player will not join at the very end of battle.  This game has  "overwhelming advantage" check, and it ends battle a bit earlier than complete annihilation. That's smart and works for city capturing.

> Silencers are only available for 9mm and 5.56mm caliber.

One more good thing I would mention - silencer actually works very well! It looks like enemy cant's see me if I hide right after I see them and silencer doesn't attract other enemies, if they shoot me with silencer.  So I was able to specifically play a full game round without disturbing them and killed like 4 of them in ninja way! Also, I've seen they doing area patrol - awesome, thanks for adding this feature! There could be improvements later on but it's good enough for this release. For future release, it would be cool if AI give a chance to hide when enemy noted player's location... so they run to a spot where player was, not to actual player coordinates. Maybe add "camouflage cape" instead of armor?

Hi, that's me again, and thanks for a new release!

Here are some minor issues, nothing critical:

1. So old saves are not versioned and appear broken on the list... it's not a big issue, we discussed that already.

2. Throw nade, kill enemy, press undo - this will not undo the kill and not return nade in inventory. works like extra AP.

3. swapping broken and non-broken weapon places good one to broken list... but only once.

Questions:

1. What are the key-bindings? I found that space moved camera to current Merc and "D" starts game after placing Mercs in start zone. how do I call a list during the game?

2. Battle at Jury, where I play with allies ended on second turn without my participation, that is fine, since allies live their own life... but there was a message saying, they received several AKs and like 10 nades as trophy, and I got nothing... how is it calculated, who gets what? by % of kills?

3. is snipe scope and 7.62 silencer available somewhere?

4. I guess walk route calculation should first offer the best route. Below left image is what it gives by default when I move mouse straight down. To get route from the right image, i need to move mouse around a bit... I mean, it still works but I'm trying to understand what was the intent behind this logic...

The rest is awesome! nades are doing good, and the fact that enemy uses them actively adds much fun to the game! Hard mode is not too much hard, but good enough, takes about 4-5 hours to complete for me - like that :)

Awesome! Two questions:

- How about making nades roll on a ground, rather than bouncing?

- What happens to the roof when throwing inside a building?

Hi, I'm glad to see a new update and thoughts on project roadmap!

Here is what I think - Instead of turning game into some sort of Galactic Civilizations (that has resource gathering from "captured points" and "Non-aggression agreements" BTW), I would better stay away from "strategic concepts" and stick with "tactics concepts", because there is a word "tactics" in the game name :) Since you decided to develop it on your own, what you've described would take years to implement and debug, while tactics part is already in a good shape and just needs polishing. 

Another good reason to stay away from strategic elements is that most players expect strategies to be MMO these days, that requires expansive servers. You gonna need to add a huge story line to keep people solo playing strategy with AI (currently I finish campaign in two days or so). What's a cheap way, you would ask - multiplayer will turn game into a sort of "chess" that folks can play over and over againg, making new... tactics! A simple peer-to-peer multiplayer doesn't need any anti-cheat complexities and will free up your hands for more challenging AI coding, rather than balancing boring economy math...

Also, be careful, your strategic part may overlap with these Russian guys, and they are solid from implementation stand point. So Instead of racing with them, I would recommend to stick with "strong fast-paced tactics PvE & Coop & PvP matches".  BTW, take a look how they did close-combat and weapon range circles. Another good thing to implement is bushes to hide in. If enemy doesn't see you entering a bush - you can stay there safe unless they come too close and they see you. That's where your new silencer will shine! Bushes may require to turn Middle East to South America, where bushes are more common, so if you not planning this, you may add wardrobes or dark rooms for same mechanics. You also may want to look at this and that project for some good tactics ideas, even though they are not turn-based.

As an option, thinking out-of-the-box on how to make game more distinctive, you may add more character tweaking parameters that will drive his behavior at battle... even in old XCOM characters did fancy actions during panic, and you may bring it to a new level by chewing previous player decisions with Machine Learning... that eventually turns your team into a well-trained AI, that can be picked as an enemy when you start a new squad, "making player fight with his shadow".

Please make windowed mode so it can expand window, fix UI scaling so it doesn't overlap buttons and make fonts more readable/bigger/better scaled.

Also loader can't be dragged to second monitor... that is strange...

Good news - they fixed it!  Jotti's Avast says old installer is ok now :)

So new 1.2 was released, and first of all I would like to thank Astronautz for taking community suggestions serious! I found target indicators suggested by adzipl very convenient.

New features and AI (played the most complicated level) look nice and balanced so far, but there are a few small bugs spotted:

- So i already mentioned in another topic, there is a back compatibility issue with old AppData. I guess adding version parameter in those files will allow to handle file upgrade better in future releases. Just to sum up - "windowed mode" setting is ignored and old saves show up in game but produce an "trade id error". Yes, Ive seen a warning on the release web page, but code should suppress old saves too.

- Captured town generate enemy attacks. On screenshot below all three towns are captured... but Kasinga attacked Maroslav with no reason... are there rebels in my town?))

- I've found that standing behind a tall wall in house ruins allows to see and shoot through that wall in both directions. I'll try to make a screenshot next time i see that. Can they shoot through the wall?

- This issue is different from above. I guess it's a wrong texture here on the "white container" on screenshot below. The guy on first two photos was able to see and shoot me, while I can't. Then I killed him and moved to his spot to check if I can see through the wall - the answer is yes.

- debian 10 uses libm.so.6 GLIBC 2.28, while 2.29 is required; and libstdc++.so.6 GLIBCXX 3.4.25, while 3.4.26 is required... I mean lots of distros based on debian, is there any reason to be one version ahead, or you can downgrade this dependency ? what distro are you running for test? does game react on local LD_LIBRARY_PATH (didn't like libm 2.31 from sid) ?

- very minor, not sure if it's intentional: on the intro screen extra letters inconsistently show up during "type animation".. sometimes they don't:

- "Deploy Merc in village" + "Retract all Mercs" makes all weapons disappear in inventory. Close/open inventory brings all them back.

- didn't get scope in quick battle or story mode. Once I had a message that one of broken weapons had attachment, that was FAL, presumably with a scope... but scope didn't appear in inventory even when i fixed the weapon.

- Got message that Leonidas was killed in action, and later received message that he wants to join me... i guess second message shouldn't appear if he is dead... also not sure what i did wrong to make him die before we met.

- Not sure why Muko town never gets attacked by Ben Dabi, but can be captured by enemy.

- Campaign should stop at some point when everything is captured...

PS, sorry i missed your message in about pre-release testing... just send me the link in PM next time, i'll be glad to help.

I'm sorry to say that, but I feel myself an oracle now, cuz loading those old saves from 1.1 in 1.2 causes an error:

My previous game settings, like "windowed mode" ignored. Not sure if any other back compatibilities broken by that old AppData... 

well, it should at least give an option...

Sounds interesting. 

So question regarding Silencers - usually i need several turns or people to shoot first enemy, since they normally appear on a distance. That means  if I don't kill it with extra 10% power drop within first turn, enemy will shoot me back and noise will attract more enemies...

so, what would be a typical situation where it's useful?

> Also, do you plan on implementing something like "aimed shots", either old XCOM or JA-style?

> I will consider it

Wait, isn't single shot on AKM, L85 and M16 is considered as aimed? =)

> - maaybe some (limited, or more time-consuming) possibilities of HP recovery without having to go to Infirmaries would be nice...?

I personally like it as is... it gives enemy gangs a chance to bite your territory a little... with my skills they have no other chance to win anything)))

> Sorry, I don't understand what you mean by "weirdly tanky"

I guess he means enemy can be more or less resistant to bullets... or maybe just has more or less health points with no obvious (visible) reason?

> I see enemies firing from one square further that I can at me, and then dancing away, it looks just silly...

Yeh, i had this situation once... but I'm generally OK with range compression, I had many situations in original XCOM when bullet occasionally fly all the way and kill a guy on another side of the map, that looks silly...))) and you know, in Xenonauts aliens always have advantage in range. I understand, here it's humans fighting, but generally range limit makes sense. Here is a better idea - add a "fancy aimed shot" where you only set a direction rather than a specific target. In such case bullet will fly beyond range all the way in that direction, but accuracy depend on player click within range cone.

Astronautz, It would be nice to expose i18n or whatever you prefer internationalization files, so we could help with translations... in fact, there are free community sites for that...

Thanks!

FYI - both, new and old uninstaller do not clean "%AppData%\MercTactics" directory on Win10.
Not sure if it is intentional, but may break future installation of 1.2...

Looks like a plan.

So regarding fog of war - i was talking about classic xcom fog, where you don't see unexplored part of map. Take a look at "black shadows" on the right side of the shop ... in Merc Tactics you can see village layout (buildings, structures, ect...) at the beginning of a battle.  So my idea was to add a "map" item into the game - if you find or buy it, then you see village layout in upcoming battle (but not enemies of cause) , if not - you should walk around in the dark to explore the map. Ray tracing is kind of hard thing to do, so ignore if you think it's not a beneficial feature at this moment.

Two other things that i'm not sure about, maybe this is intentional, but i would suggest to fix those:

• When i rotate map during battle, i think the sound doesn't rotate with map... it shoots in a wrong ear when listening in a headset...
• During enemy's turn, when 3 teams playing - I think i've seen bullets flying and hitting objects in distant areas away from my team, where they theoretically shouldn't see them. Not sure if it's an issue, please take a look.

And regarding AI strategy discussion - without splitting enemies into smaller specialized groups, I'm getting this deployment at the first move in 4vs9 quick battle:

Great job, Astronautz!

Hi, I'm an xcom fan, and, IMHO, MercTactics mechanics provides that classical tactics experience with a touch of unique features very well! This game deserves more attention from classic games community, so I hope my small review will help to spin off development and make this game more notable.

• I understand why you planning to deploy it at Steam, but Linux community would most likely pay for DRM-free version, so please consider gog.com at least.
• I see that file structure is open and clear, so making it a mod-frienly platform should be... an achievable goal. A modular structure, a few howtos, map editor and placing AI in separate file, all packaged in mod folder - will make this game immortal.
• ...and yes, multiplayer is always a challenge, but p2p multi-team battle would make it an outstanding game! Community may help if you make API for external multiplayer module.
• AI has good tactics and bad strategy, so here are few possible improvements: currently enemies act in a zerg-rush fashion (especially on open road quick battle) that makes player to stand against in a single spot through the whole match. I understand that in real world it's usually like that, but In classic xcom aliens tend to stick to important locations in small dedicated groups that makes player explore the map and "perform tactics".  There could be several AI styles for those groups, like one group prefers hideouts, another patrols, attacks, etc... again, making game more open for modding will benefit in community help on such things and give you more time to work on engine.
• Guess what was the killer-feature of Raumschach in 1907 and also xcom and doom back in 1993? - stairs. Seriously, multi-layer map is a must-have tactics feature since that.
• Regarding maps - I would strongly recommend more trees and rocks to hide behind, cuz big open areas don't make people adventurers. Also multi-layer map unlocks such cool thinks like sewerage routes and rope bridges above streets...
• I enjoy your characters personality and this reminds me another game where you could make use of some ideas... the game called "Commandos" had cool features like movable items, climbing over walls, traps, etc. Speaking of xcom features - adding a grenade launcher and regular nades will make players to spread and leave hideouts. Proximity mines is a holly war topic but i have to raise it)))
• Suggestion/idea: the fog of war could be optional - if player was in that city before or got a map - it looks like you made it now, if not - make fog to blackout map.
• Full screen mode sticks window to main monitor, please add an option to select monitor. Windowed mode is not expandable, so it would be nice to make window expandable or having a text field to enter a custom window dimensions. Having ~ game console for advanced tweaks would be nice as well.