All SSC & HORUS mechs, pilot barks, visual landscape palette

What’s up, Youtube? It’s ya girl Olive with another Lancer Tactics content update. This month, we’ve finished implementation of all SSC & HORUS mechs, almost all the core bonuses, and some big improvements to the map editor interface for painting blocks and setpieces.

As a reminder, Kickstarter backers should have a link to their download key on their Backerkit digital rewards page. If you’re having trouble accessing it, please lmk.

This last month, we’re happy to have brought on Mark Jorgensen, the creator of Interpoint’s Map Creation Tool, to handle QA and start working through our backlog of bug reports from the google form. Ty to everyone who’s submitted something through that — we’ll get to it if we haven’t already!

Carpenter, Josh, and myself will be attending PAX West (and SLICE) in Seattle at the end of the month. It’ll be my first time at PAX, and I think the first time I’ve gone to a large gaming convention since the start of the COVID pandemic! If anyone has any recommendations of events or wants to meet up while there, lmk!

After experimenting with Compatibility mode last update, I’ve moved back to Forward+. It ran fast and reliably, but on many machines (my own included), the shader compilation step could take upward a minute in the loading screen and still had consistent stutter when using abilities. So with a heavy heart we’re back to Forward+ by default. If you’ve got a computer that F+ doesn’t work on, you can still toggle it to Compat mode and I’ve also added a toggle in the options menu to disable ability & movement fx. Having a degraded visual experience is better than it not running at all, I hope. Frustrating that Godot doesn’t have a one-size-fits-all rendering solution that I can use for a game with this low a level of visual fidelity. That’s PC gaming for you, I guess.

Finally, I accidentally wrote a full second blog post about the process of implementing the Balor in Lancer Tactics. I was going to put it at the end of this update, but it would have tripled the length of this thing and even I thought it was excessive. If you’re the kind of sicko who likes reading how-the-sausage-is-made technical details, go check it out!

New Content

Finished Manticore, Balor, Gorgon, Swallowtail, Black Witch, finishing off the SSC and HORUS catalogs. Still using placeholder tokens for most of them, but Gen finished the new Monarch! What a beauty.

This update adds Nerveweave, Kai Bioplating, Fomorian Frame, Gyges Frame, Titanomachy, Briareos, Held Image, Thinking Tomorrow’s Thought, Transubstantiation, Adaptive Reactor, Stasis Shielding, and Universal Compatibility.

That’s everything besides that one Horus NHP guy! 29/30 hell yeah!!

And a few new basic things:

• Self destruct action
• Jump action
• “Survive” sitrep. Can modify round limit in instant action.

Pilot Barks

I got a bee in my bonnet this week and sketched out a system for pilot “barks” in combat where they say a short line to comment on notable events like deploying or taking structure damage. There’s more styling to do to figure out how to keep them from taking up so much space and running into each other, but I think they’re quite neat.

Added a “Dossier” section to the character sheet where you can customize those barks. You can pick from an overall preset (“temperment”), pick individual preset lines, or write your own entirely new ones. These are SO fun to come up with for me.

Content Fixes

• Standardized drone deploy/redeploy action across different systems
• Snipers now prioritize shooting at their marks
• Auras trigger correctly on combat start
• Ability dice that don’t last between scenes now reset on combat start
• Fix assassin drone triggering on allies
• Saves now have the context for the action that forced them (so e.g. retracted profile can give difficulty to specifically search checks)
• Added a Priority file to keep track of reaction priorities instead of having hardcoded numbers everywhere
• Standardized at what point abilities can interface with and modify attack rolls

• Fix line/cone attacks not being able to fire over cover due to LOS issues
• Fix genghis CP cloud invisibility applying when only the attacker is inside the cloud
• Stressing heat clear now triggers “on clear heat” effects e.g. mathur stop
• Blackbeard grapple pull works correctly when blackbeard is flying (it pulls, then BB lands to match the fallen unit)
• Grappled ends when either unit is exiled
• Goblin symbiosis ends when goblin is exiled (changelog drinking game: every time there’s a symbiosis bugfix)
• Fix shepherd drone movement using up orochi drone speed
• Hydra can no longer take orochi drone reactions while grappled
• Fix external batteries not triggering on all structure checks
• Deployed drones are now lost when the gear that deployed them is destroyed
• Can’t end movement on a drone
• Fix spotter 3 not always consuming the placed lock
• Annihilation nexus attack doesn’t hit originating drone
• Fix suppress being able to be used against hidden targets
• Can no longer overwatch against hidden targets
• Fix losing hidden even when you decline to overwatch
• Fix bristlecrown hitting self
• Fix bristlecrown not ignoring engagement penalties
• Burst attacks hit other units on the originating unit’s tiles
• Can end sekhmet turn when stunned
• Fix zero in crackshot damage
• Fix stormbending lighting/thunder bug that resulted in duplicate actions getting run
• Fix stormbending thunder radius: now correctly burst 2
• Open door heat is now optional to apply
• Fix Flank overwatch not doing half damage
• Fix hyperspec fuel injector’s free boost circumnavigating the stunned prohibition on doing anything
• Fix crash when last argument of kings kills its target
• Fix apoc rail bug where if you started charging your rail but were exiled at/died before the end of a combat, you would not regain your CP.
• Optimization of tile picking calculations for barb & apoc rail
• Omnigun damage now correctly doubled from exposed

AI

• Discovered that AI inordinately prefers targeting size 2+ units because they have more available target tiles. patched by having them prefer closer target tiles in the case of a tie
• AI with melee weapons slightly prefers attacking targets who are not themselves equipped with a melee weapon invigorate calculates LOS from last target picked
• AI will now sometimes try to take actions to clear effects (e.g. hack/slash) from themselves

UI / Graphics

• Explicitly make the save game folder if it’s not there already (will fix autosaves not happening on some computers, I think)
• Fix duplicate actions being shown in assault cannon tooltip
• Fix mine trigger text
• Stabilize won’t try to reload destroyed weapons
• Stabilize heal logs how much HP was healed
• Refactored stabilize action to use the variant action system instead of the choose-your-own adventure sequence

• Zero In uses the variant action flow instead of an interrupt prompt
• Log when units deploy.
• Exposed singularity logs & show the die roll for range
• Added automatically-generated dynamic aura effects to help delineate ability areas

• Character sheet styling; make button/tooltip clickable areas larger
• Add little counter numbers to hase/cbs/licenses/talents in the character sheet
• “Add” buttons go away in character sheet when it’s full up. can clear individual talents. chill out all the Xs on the character sheet to keep them from being the dominant visual element.
• Styling for fight setup to get it fitting on small screens better
• The little on-map healthbar uses correct blue for overshield
• Instant action warning/disable launch when lancer mechs are wrecked. full repair them all on choosing them
• Color code instant action modifiers to make it more clear when they’re making it harder or easier (sorry red green colorblind folks!! 😬 it’s emphasis information, not exclusive)
• Trigger tool styling (reduced edward tufte chartjunk lines) + added tooltips
• Give playtesting a map some random lancers so the deploy lancers event works
• Fix non-destroyable setpieces still hanging out when the blocks under them get wrecked (fumarole)
• Better text for honorable challenge trigger
• Fix fragile description to not specifically call out the goblin
• Weapon tags stack correctly in tooltips (no more double-thrown tags)
• Fix grapple lines not always clearing // supress laser pointer not always applying

Map editor

• Landscape tool uses a visual palette instead of a text list.

• Tooltips for setpieces in the palette to explicitly list their dimensions, health, and terrain properties.
• Better previews for placing blocks; see the shape and rotation of ramps before you place them.
• Can only put down ramps in “blocks” paint mode. “paint” and “fill” paint modes do not change geometry.
• Better “texture dappling” for ramps; they’ll integrate better with their surroundings. There’s still a few bugs left in this but it’s way better now.
• Setpieces store what variation they are, so you can hypothetically delete them and re-place if you want a specific one.
• Started work enabling hallway/corridor/room maps by painting “forbidden interior” setpieces. We still don’t Officially™ support interior maps, but I wanted to make sure the engine could handle it for the future.

• Added eyedropper tool for terrain editor
• Added “Line” painting tool by holding shift

• Can ctrl+scroll wheel hotkey to change editor implement size
• A new batch of setpieces, including windmills with animated blades:

Take your Balor to work day

{Excessive notes about the technical process of implementing the Balor has been removed from this location ‘cause it was too long. You can go read it here instead.}

That’s all for now. Have a nice… August? Already? Wow. Don’t like that. Hm.

Olive