Posted January 04, 2021 by Commodore Shawn
Happy new year, all. I'm back from my break, and ready to get started on some new stuff for you all.
First up is a few updates for Industrial Age to bring it up to date with 3.1.2. Mostly this will be compatibility fixes, but there will be a new crisis similar to the Cannibal and Ravensworn crises, but focused around communist revolutions. This will be pretty quick to do.
Next up, some performance fixes. There are two main focuses here: graphics and rebellions. I've managed to reproduce the graphics glitching from the Optimized Tile Drawer on some of my machines, and so will use that to try and fix the glitches entirely, removing the need to turn off the optimized drawer (and kill performance in some cases).
Additionally I'm going to be consolidating logic around rebellions, and putting in some hard limits to prevent the "rebellion cascade" that can kill performance in the late game. I don't expect this to take longer than a week or two.
Lastly, the big one, the one you've all been waiting for: tactical combat. This will look similar to how I outlined pitched battles way back in 2019. Instead of the current auto-resolve process you will get a choice: auto resolve or manual combat. Manual combat will change to a separate battle map, with control over formations of troops. Each "unit" from the world map will be represented by a formation of individuals. Imagine Total War, and you're not far off.
Timeframe for this, I'm not sure. Probably a month or two, but software development estimates are notoriously inaccurate.