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[snow dwarf]

Ok, I agree it's not a roguelike, but it's just the closest thing I can relate it to. However it doesn't change that I love how it looks. 

[Rebel Crusader]

Hello Everyone, I just released a new update:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOtki-l9l2M&t=3s

[Reelya]

btw I meant to ask, what platform/engine are you developing this on.

I'd like to muck around with making a map creator algorithm for it at some point.

[Rebel Crusader]

I'm developing my own engine called KharmaEngine, including the editor that works with it.

Here are some backstage screenshots:
http://imgur.com/ezvS68m
http://imgur.com/y0F2gdy
http://imgur.com/2BLHsFM

Since pretty much everything about the engine can be set by the editor, one will be able to create an infinite amount of campaigns, missions, units, items etc.

Rebel Crusader's editor is way more massive than the engine itself.

I'm not sure how you would create an algorithm for it, nonetheless this is something I will definitely love to have in RC.

[Retropunch]

This looks amazing!!

There aren't enough deep TBS games around and this looks like a great one.

I guess my big question is, how much 'meta' stuff will this have? As in between missions will I be gearing up my soldiers/researching/trading? This is one area that I feel that TBS games really don't put enough into this so it'd be great to see your take on it.

[Reelya]

There actually wasn't any meta at all in the original game, which this is a fairly close remake of, so far. The original was basically the ancestor of the ancestor of X-Com (same game designer made them a decade apart), but Rebelstar was only some standalone missions.

[Retropunch]

There actually wasn't any meta at all in the original game, which this is a fairly close remake of, so far. The original was basically the ancestor of the ancestor of X-Com (same game designer made them a decade apart), but Rebelstar was only some standalone missions.

I have to admit I never played Rebelstar, although I do know of it and have watched some videos.

I wasn't aware there wasn't any metagame with it, and I'd thoroughly implore you to change this - to me, the very best bit of a TBS game is being able to carefully set up my squad with my salvaged loot (or stuff I've traded), and use that to accomplish harder missions.

I don't think it needs to be fancy or anything that wrecks it as a remake (you can have lots of stand alone missions obviously) but I think longevity would increase dramatically with just a little bit of this. It could be something as simple as 'get credits for mission completion -> use credits to buy stuff for next mission', but the more the better.

[Rebel Crusader]

I have to admit I never played Rebelstar, although I do know of it and have watched some videos.

I wasn't aware there wasn't any metagame with it, and I'd thoroughly implore you to change this - to me, the very best bit of a TBS game is being able to carefully set up my squad with my salvaged loot (or stuff I've traded), and use that to accomplish harder missions.

I don't think it needs to be fancy or anything that wrecks it as a remake (you can have lots of stand alone missions obviously) but I think longevity would increase dramatically with just a little bit of this. It could be something as simple as 'get credits for mission completion -> use credits to buy stuff for next mission', but the more the better.

Hi Retropunch, Reelya already responded correctly to your first post.

Regarding what will happen between scenarios, the original Rebelstar had only one map but Rebel Crusader will have campaigns composed of several missions (maps). What I have planned so far is that you upgrade / build your "army" as you get paid, this is based on how many objectives you achieve during a mission and also by gathering the loot at the end of missions. Since your army can reach a few dozens of units, I believe that needing to micro-manage units' equipment would be a negative point, perhaps I'm wrong and people want this. What do you think?

You don't get to carefully select the equipment units carry but you will hire units which can either replace your soldiers or increase your army size. There will be some classes of units like sniper, medic, assault, heavy, scout etc., each class carries a specific set of equipment and there are differences even among each class, so you will need to balance your army strategically by carefully selected new units. Units will also feature tiers, meaning that tier 2 scout will have better equipment and skills when compared to tier 1. I'm also formulating the possibility of units getting experience that can be used to promote units into the next tier.

Units have permadeath so you need to maintain your army's strength between scenarios. This is naturally only applicable on campaigns.

I leave a new screenie bellow. I've been working on the graphics, pathfinding and interactive objects like doors.
The blue path preview, now indicates where the unit can move and still fire with the current weapon set in the current firing mode; this is something I always missed in X-Com series.

I hope you guys enjoy it because I'm putting all my strength on it

[Reelya]

With the permadeath thing, you should put some thought into anti-save-scumming methods. The best method isn't to restrict the player from save-scumming, but to make it pointless.

Here's a plan I thought up.

- use your own randomization code
^ this allows you to control the randomness better

- each unit gets their own random seed
^ this ensures the order in which units move doesn't change the outcome

- each turn, roll one throwaway random number for each unit
^ this ensures you can't exploit the predictableness of the shots the next turn. Each turn has fresh percentages.

Basically this would eliminate the simplest "take shot, reload, repeat" type exploit which means 100% of your shots hit home.

A remaining exploit would be if you got a perfect shot with one character, so you rolled back and used that shot on a different enemy. Unfortunately, there aren't many ways to fix that possible exploit without creating more other exploits. e.g. say you said that each units hit chance changed per step you took, or on where you were standing, or was different for different enemies, but still deterministic, then players would start reloading to try out different combos until they hit the "magic one" for that round. Which would be back to the original problem that save-scumming is tempting, because you can max-out your longterm gain, but it kills the fun.

So, the above plan for determinism is the one that reduces the amount of save-scumming that would ever be attractive in terms of maximizing your hit/miss ratio.

Some other steps can further reduce the incentives to save-scum:

- make it so that taking a shot, even if it misses, gains XP with the weapon faster than an actual hit. near misses would be worth the most. Basically someone who gets perfect shots won't gain weapon skill as fast as those who make mistakes.

- experiencing death of an ally, or taking hits/near misses, should have short-term morale effects, but make it so long-term they become hardened by the experiences, and gain bonuses in other situations, e.g. they're more calm in combat situations so they get some amount shot bonuses etc. Players who save scum away all allied deaths or danger, will end up with wimps.

Basically these things would create incentives to just play through the game and almost never to save-scum.

[Retropunch]

Hi Retropunch, Reelya already responded correctly to your first post.

Regarding what will happen between scenarios, the original Rebelstar had only one map but Rebel Crusader will have campaigns composed of several missions (maps). What I have planned so far is that you upgrade / build your "army" as you get paid, this is based on how many objectives you achieve during a mission and also by gathering the loot at the end of missions. Since your army can reach a few dozens of units, I believe that needing to micro-manage units' equipment would be a negative point, perhaps I'm wrong and people want this. What do you think?

Hi, great to hear from you!

I don't believe that micro-managing unit's equipment would be a negative at all - I find equipping my team with what I consider the best gear and trying out different gear combinations the most fun part.

That being said, the key to stop it getting too micromanage-y is to base it not on individual soldiers but on roles/uniforms - instead of setting/upgrading each soldier's individual stuff, you instead set what scouts carry and then it's applied to all scouts. That means you're only really dealing with the classes and not the soldiers themselves. Maybe you could tweak individual soldiers if you wanted to, but that's a bit optional.

You could then use your loot/mission credits to upgrade parts of the kit which is applied to all that use that item; lets say you love long range fighting, you can spend that money on upgrading sniper rifle accuracy which would be applied to everyone that has a sniper rifle. If you give your scout kit that weapon then they'd have the upgrade to the weapon too.

[Rebel Crusader]

With the permadeath thing, you should put some thought into anti-save-scumming methods. The best method isn't to restrict the player from save-scumming, but to make it pointless.

Here's a plan I thought up.

- use your own randomization code, so you can control the seeds

- rather than having one seed for the whole game, each unit gets their own seed, which is used to generate the next number in the randomizer.

- each turn, you roll one random number for each unit, to update it's seed so there are always fresh shot chances on every turn.

Basically this means that if you take a specific shot, you can't know what will happen until you take it, but if you roll back the game and take that exact same shot again, then it has a predictable result. Sure, that could be exploited in itself, but it's better than being able to save-scum and always get the shot through mere repetition.

That's a clever way of handling save-scum, having each soldier with its own seed. What I have in mind is actually harsher, no saving at all, unless if you have a special robot / item that allows you to do that but it will still offers a very limited amount of times you can used it (1 or 2); I've worked on it only superficially. But the idea is the same as in the old Operation Flashpoint, which works with checkpoints and if you quite the mission between them, well you simply loose the progress.

I'm not sure how players will see this but I will release a playable demo showing the whole concept, when the time comes.

[Reelya]

I'd suggest implementing the random situation I outlined. That way even if saving is later implemented then it won't be so exploitable.

As for gear, from my perspective Rebelstar is supposed to be about a motley band of rebels doing raids against a well-organized tyrannical space government, rather than a well organized army. It sort of suits the setting better if troops come with their own custom gear to start with, that they're attached to. They could be deserters from military units, who will have a range of gear suitable to their original role, or civilians who only come armed with a basic laser pistol sidearm, then you have to dig a rifle out of stockpiles for them, which they need to learn to use.

I'd suggest having a salvage system similar to X-Com, where all enemy gear and ammo is stockpiled, your troops then automatically refill used ammo after the battle (maybe retain the empty clips as an inventory item).

Excess salvaged weapons become a "base" stockpile, and you can order one troop to switch their main weapon to a salvaged one, that then automatically gets them to switch out any ammo refills.

The main thing to avoid is the scenario where you have so many of those Rebelstar laser-machinegun things that you're giving them to half your squad. They're meant to be scarce, each side only had a couple in the original. The best way to handle that in a campaign scenario is to make it so the ammo is expensive to replace, and/or they're bulky so the units carrying them cost more points on your loadout, and you can't take as many total guys then.

[Rebel Crusader]

- make it so that taking a shot, even if it misses, gains XP with the weapon faster than an actual hit. near misses would be worth the most. Basically someone who gets perfect shots won't gain weapon skill as fast as those who make mistakes.

- experiencing death of an ally, or taking hits/near misses, should have short-term morale effects, but make it so long-term they become hardened by the experiences, and gain bonuses in other situations, e.g. they're more calm in combat situations so they get some amount shot bonuses etc. Players who save scum away all allied deaths or danger, will end up with wimps.

Basically these things would create incentives to just play through the game and almost never to save-scum.

These are very nice ideas! I'll keep them in mind. Gaining more XP by missing is indeed a must-have and also a more realistic way to handle events.

[Rebel Crusader]

That being said, the key to stop it getting too micromanage-y is to base it not on individual soldiers but on roles/uniforms - instead of setting/upgrading each soldier's individual stuff, you instead set what scouts carry and then it's applied to all scouts. That means you're only really dealing with the classes and not the soldiers themselves. Maybe you could tweak individual soldiers if you wanted to, but that's a bit optional.

I see your point but configuring classes removes a feature I haven't described yet. You will have units being randomly generated between scenarios which will be available for hiring, and these units are unique in a sense then have their own fighting style, skills, attributes and equipment bound to a class type. For example: The scout class which features random light weapons, light armors and scanning equipment which can detect units between walls. Now, not all scouts will have scanning equipment (which will be rare, like a special ability), some scout units will focus more on agility, protection, or weaponry (carrying also more weapon magazines). So you never know what you will be able to hire when manage your army to the next scenario.

This makes units more special and unique, if you can set them up the way you want them, you won't "grow attached" to units as they can be any type you want. So "Michael Angelo" came up randomly generated and you see if has great agility and also a scanning device, you are hysterical to have it on your army. That heavy unit randomly generated called "Arnie Stalone" finally appeared, carrying that heavy weapon you still don't have on your squad.

So basically this is what I have in mind, replay value through chance and wits; the strategy is hiring units to fit your needs as chance permits it  because not always we can make things happen the way we want.

What do you think? Thank you for the feedback!

[Reelya]

Heh, i just thought of something nice. You could have gun upgrades such as auto-aiming scopes and other aids, but with higher XP for misses then there would be a more advanced meta-game here.

e.g. if near misses give the most xp, then the "auto-aiming scope" upgrade would help rookies get familiar with the weapon quicker and be more useful in the short term, but it would end up slowing down their rate of learning. At some point they'd learn faster by removing the auto-aim scope and "using the force" so to speak, at the cost of some accuracy. There could be a base character such as "weapons instructor" who could advise you on exactly when it's a good idea to switch. Once the troop then truly mastered the weapon, they might be advised to use the auto-aim again, because it reduces errors.

The reason this would work is because we avoided positive-feedback loops. In the scenario where only hits/kills gain XP then you'd want to load all gear on everyone and give them all the best guns, there's no room in that scenario for the guy who trained up with only a basic rifle and got really good because he didn't have all the flash targeting systems to help him.