Isn’t Lancer played on hexes?

I know, I know, alas! We knew we’d never hear the end of this; it was a production decision early on to limit scope. Art assets + line of sight calculations get significantly harder in hexland & swinging for hexes would have meant we’d have to cut something else (e.g. the portrait maker, the map or module editors, etc). Hexes were, unfortunately, the most acceptable casualty in keeping scope low enough to deliver the rest of the game.

Fun fact though: Lancer was originally designed to be played on a square grid, and is still technically grid-agnostic. You can see artifacts left from that history in systems like the Black Witch’s perimeter command plate’s “2x2 space”.

Are you adding multiplayer? This would make a sick VTT!

For the early access/initial release, we’ve only scoped for local multiplayer + controller support. We’d absolutely love to do remote multiplayer, but since there are already virtual tabletop solutions for Lancer & we want to make sure that we don’t overextend ourselves, we haven’t prioritized it. It’s possible we’ll follow a Stardew Valley-esque pattern where they spent a year after launch retrofitting the game to be multiplayer, but being able to do that depends on how well said launch goes.

As a developer, I’m paranoid (perhaps too much) about being sure to never promise anything I’m not positive we can actually do with the resources we currently have. It means I have to say “no, sorry, I’d love that too but reaching for it right now would threaten the rest of the project” a lot, but IMO that’s better than biting off too much to chew and not being able to land it.

Will I get a Steam key (eventually, once it launches on Steam) if I buy it now here on itch?

Short answer is yes.

Long answer: Steam takes 30%, while we’re currently paying itch 15% (it’s a PWYW scale). When we go live on Steam, we may increase the price there to cover that. It would be nice to be able to keep itch’s price lower, but my current understanding is that if you’re selling the game for less than it is on Steam on a different storefront, you’re not supposed to provide Steam keys.

Our options, then:

1. Increase the price on itch to match, and say “thank you” for the extra tip from people who get it there. Provide Steam keys as normal.
2. Keep the price low on itch and “grandfather in” everyone who’s already bought it on itch before it was available on Steam, but not provide more going forward.
3. Keep the price low on itch but have a second tier where if you pay a little more (matching the Steam price) you unlock a Steam key. I haven’t seen anyone do this before and I’ve been advised to not play too many games with schemes like this because you wanna stay on Steam’s good side, but who knows how much of that is hearsay.

But whatever we end up doing, we’ll make sure that people don’t have to buy it twice and are able to get it on Steam if they bought it on itch first.

Are there plans to add Kobold/Lich/Orchis/Worldkiller/other non-corebook mechs?

We’re focusing on getting everything done from the core rulebook solid before looking at expansion content. We have about a year’s worth of gameplay features in the backlog first (e.g. local multiplayer, campaign modules, mod support) that we should do before tackling adding more mechanical content.

Once that’s done with, I think adding stuff from other Lancer modules would be a very very natural progression, but we’d have to clear it with Massif & see what makes sense at that point.

But lancers wait for no dev team, and unofficial mods have already made a lot of progress in hacking in new mechs. If you’re hungry for Long Rim mechs & aren’t afraid of a little technical work getting them set up, check them out!

Is this using the Lancer system under the hood? How true is it to tabletop Lancer, mechanically?

We’ve managed to stay extremely close to the TTRPG ruleset! You can even import characters from COMP/CON. Some of the biggest differences we’ve had to make for the sake of the adaptation are:

1. Flying is a on/off status that puts you +3 above the surface instead of free elevation control.
2. You have two “action points” instead of an explicit quick+quick/full; in practice this ends up being extremely similar to tabletop, minus some restrictions (eg you have more movement flexibility in between your attacks while Barraging).
3. We had to limit brace triggering to not prompt-spam you each time you take damage. Currently it gives you the option to brace whenever you’d otherwise be structured/stressed or if would take over half your health in one hit.
4. We’re using Kai’s NPC rebake project instead of the CRB NPCs; this was hotly debated but through the discussion we decided that it’s a dramatic improvement in experience while being a light enough touch that it doesn’t compromise tabletop compatibility.