Howdy! This last month was all about doing a big pass on player content. Up til now I’ve mostly been cherry-picking mechs and abilities that will force me to implement important parts of the engine; this is the first time I’ve sat down and been like “OK, let’s do ALL of X”.

The stage of making Content feels very different from the engine-setup stage. Instead of taking a wide view about what sort of weight the system will have to support, my scope is constrained down to making just the thing in front of me work.

“Apoc rail refunds CP if you don’t use it? Ugh ok charging will set a generic variable, firing it resets it, and if the mission ends it’ll check for that magic key to see if it should trigger a refund.”

For this effort, Carpenter smartly made a big ol spreadsheet with all the mech content we wanted to include for the “bones” version of the game:

I was not expecting it to be as motivating as it was to check these suckers off; every day I’d wake up bright eyed thinking about which ones I wanted to do next. All in all, the game now has bare-bones implemented (so no unique graphics/sounds; just the mechanical impacts) for:

• 10 out of 29 PC mechs+licenses (including the Everest)
• 14 out of 29 talents
• 18 out of 30 core bonuses

The fact that we were able to make such quick headway (85 talent ranks/licensed gear/traits in about a month) is very promising. There’s a lot more that goes into a game than ability mechanics, but the fact that it looks like their implemenation will not be a blocker is a big relief. Fingers crossed that NPC content will be at a similar pace; I think their effects are simpler on average, but I’ll need to make sure the AI knows how to use it.

Changelog

Engine updates

• Superheavy mount bracing
• Gaining or losing status effects can now trigger events e.g. losing flying can cause fall damage. Migrated old Barb losing apoc charges and Vlad immobilization/shred effect to this new system.
• Being immobilized while flying causes you to fall and take damage.
• Implemented overkill tag
• Multiple things can modify a weapon i.e. a weapon mod and a core bonus.
• Compress landscape block/tile data. 100kb map files now down to like 12kb.
• Be able to pick multiple targets in a chain (Drone Commander III)

• Added “irreducible” weapon tag (tomorrow’s thought, paracausual mod eventually)
• Restrict CBs from being applied to integrated weapons
• Added “Exiled” status which removes a unit from the field. Mourning Cloak CP now exiles itself on triple-matching rolls.
• Implemented Intangible status, which works much like Exiled. This finishes FADE cloak.
• Implemented Hidden status. Can now hide and search.
• Drones can now provoke engagement.
• Thrown weapons become unavailable until you go pick them back up.
• EVA flight puts you just under the water surface OR 3 tiles above the floor, whichever is lower.
• Implemented “straight line movement” and “must move maximum” rules for Nelson’s ramjet, non-hover flight, and puppet systems.
• Enemy stats are hidden until scanned. Health/heat are revealed on structuring/stressing them. Edef/eva are revealed on missing an attack. Armor is revealed on landing a non-tech attack.
• When targeting a tile with two units, it now asks you to choose between them instead of affecting both.

Licenses

• Barbarossa frame and all license levels
• Tokugawa frame and all license levels
• Vlad charged stake, combat drill
• Minotaur frame and all license levels (placeholder mech art)

• Deaths Head CP and tracking bug
• Goblin CP
• Armor lock plating adds a brace trigger against being knockbacked/grappled.
• GMS core bonuses: Integrated weapon, Mount retrofitting
• HA core bonuses: Superior by design, Integrated ammo feeds, Heatfall
• SSC core bonuses: Full subjectivity sync, neurolink targeting, ghostweave
• HORUS core bonuses: Tomorrow’s thought

Talents

• Ace I, II
• Brutal II, III
• Combined arms I, II, III
• Drone commander I, II, III
• Executioner I, II, III
• Gunslinger II, III
• Stormbringer I, II, III
• Hacker I, II, III
• Vanguard II, III
• Tactician I, II, III
• Brawler I, II, III
• Walking Armory III
• Hunter III
• NucCav converts bonus damage correctly

Basic gear/actions

• Custom Paint Job
• Implemented Brace. In order to prevent prompt spam, it only triggers when it would save you from structuring or when you would take at least half of your maximum health.
• Implemented scan.
• Expanded compartment and manipulators. These don’t do anything on their own but can be checked for via sitrep triggers.

Downtime/character sheet

• Redesigned weapon/system picker modal
• disable editing character sheet during module downtime
• implemented spending repairs in module downtimes
• spoke with a narrative design consultant about the module editor to learn how to make it more usable and friendly

Schedule & reward updates

No new build this month; I want to clear out some bugs in the backlog to be better set up to handle the influx of bugs y’all will find before releasing this much un-battle-tested content.

My day job has reduced my hours to zero for the foreseeable future, so I’ll be working full-time on Lancer Tactics for the rest of the year (this was a big contributor to getting so much done this update); I’ll be paying rent til the end of the year by eating through some of the KS money from the final stretch goal.

Next year there’s a good chance that I’m going to have some paid work for Crescent Loom come in. I’d like to try batching it, so it’ll probably look like spending ~3 months off to work on just that, and then come back here full-time for the rest of the year. It should come out to about equivalent to have been working 1/3 time at a day job for the full year, so the only difference is when I’ll be doing what.

We’re still currently aiming for the “bones” release by the end of February (three months behind the original schedule due to the 3D cataclysm), and then the “rest of the owl” and fulfilling the higher pledge levels by Q1 2026.

Three total years of development will be pretty on-par for a game, but it’s still wild to me how long making these damn things take to make. Me to you: if you ever want to tell a story and you’re considering doing it through a video game, please be sure that you can’t tell that story through literally any other medium first.

🌺 Olive