Okay, let's start the monthly report. This time it will consist of several separate posts and will stretch over several days, because I've been stuck fixing bugs and haven't had time to take screenshots, record and edit videos, and come up with descriptions for everything we've managed to do this month.
Let's start point by point.
1. First Stratagem
We've created our first Stratagem, which essentially means my partner has written the mechanics of how abilities work, how they recharge, how they're summoned, and so on, all the mechanics. Now we can add new Stratagems of various kinds. This particular Stratagem summons drop pods with a squad of unmanned drones that support player in battle. We call them VE-Droids (official name Versatile Expendable Drone) This is a play on words and transcribed into our language vedroid means a robo bucket. This VE-Droids won't win the war for you; they're very vulnerable to air strikes and clearly can't do anything against heavy elite units or bosses, but they can deal with common enemies and temporarily distract stronger ones.
2. Drop pod model
Now, a few screenshots of the landing pod from the Stratagem. It's not particularly important, but I spent a whole day drawing it. I want to show it off :)
The pod is versatile and will be able to carry various items, supplies, other units, and weapons in the future, enemies will also use it Currently, the landing pods have unstable engines and explode after landing. The problem is that we haven't yet addressed environmental destructibility, so it's better for the pod to explode, leaving behind a few pieces, than to be an eyesore for the rest of the mission.
It might look a bit like a Warhammer Drop pod, although I based it on the Soviet Soyuz descent vehicles. Well, purpose dictates form. I don't want to be original for the sake of originality. The vehicles in our game should look functional and militaristically ascetic.
3. A new unit, Battle Expendable Drone (BE-Droid).
This is a modified version of the our standard drones. They are armed with grenade launchers and have reinforced armor. Basic VE-droids were created for patrol and police purposes, while these drones are designed for war, they already hold up well to attacks and inflict good damage even to armored vehicles at close range, although they are still cheap consumables that can be printed relatively quickly on a military 5D printer. They are unmanned and remotely controlled by our mech's onboard AI, so there's no need to feel sorry for them. These drones will be called by the stratagem from the post above, but we haven't had time to add them to the gameplay yet, so the stratagem still summons regular drones.
4. New weapon Dispersal Mortar
We've finalized the functionality of the "universal modular weapon". Now we have a single universal class for arms and back hardpoints that can be modified in every way, adding new weapon types in just a few minutes. Plus, we can add additional properties to the weapon's projectiles. And based on this class we decided to make a mortar.
But we decided that a simple mortar was too simple and gave it a cluster munition.
The mortar's shells are smart munitions and split into multiple fragments when they approach any obstacle within a certain distance, making it very effective against clusters of enemy targets. The weapon will be effective at any range. You can fire a trajectory from a kilometer away, or you can fire it almost point-blank, in which case the shell will split as it leaves the barrel. From a game design perspective, the mortar fires multiple non-armor-piercing projectiles that explode in a small radius. It should be effective against groups of lightly armored enemies and buildings; its effectiveness is almost zero against aircraft and it is not very strong against armored targets You can see how the mortar works in the video below.
This concludes the first part of our report, the next part will be tomorrow, stay tuned.
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