itch.io

I ran this in the browser for about two hours while devving, I don't usually play idle or incremental games but the gameplay is compelling, and I liked checking it every now and then!

The visuals and UI are very nice, neat and polished, especially when zooming in and out. 

Progression:

The very beginning of the game is a bit slow-paced. As you mentioned in the discord having manual mining unlocked at first would be good, since the goal of idle games is usually to stop needing to manually click. I never used the click to mine at the point I unlocked it

the midgame progresses too fast. Very quickly, miners, freighters, and maybe void harvesters once unlocked seemed like the only things that matter for income. The traders, pirates and drones get outscaled  so fast

the endgame is very slow since there are almost no more asteroids to mine in any sector, and the persistent upgrades like cargo cap and ore value stop matter at some point because their cost is so much higher than the linear increase in value they provide. Engine speed, once fast enough, also doesn't matter. There were some performance lag towards the endgame.

Some of the one-off upgrades are a little odd:

I'm gated off by 100 traders which is weirdly extremely expensive to reach. I've fulfilled the other requirements many times over and I've unlocked everything else so I let it run for an half hour to get enough for 100 traders. The Trade Lobby upgrade itself once unlocked is only $150,000 to purchase which is about what I make in a second, whereas the 100th trader is something like 2 trillion. I think 50 or even fewer traders is a better point. Same for recruiters (100 miners). I didn't attempt the 200 miners/traders for biz school, which gates off a bunch of remaining stuff which I've fulfilled the other requirements for.

bugs

I prestiged once and the option was still there in the new game, I could endlessly keep prestiging 

speed bonuses don't apply to my pirates?

I couldn't view the kawaii anime space girls. clicking on the neurofeed? blanks out the entire game for me, on firefox. refreshing fixes it

Looking forward to seeing what you do with the game!

Yes, to some extent. I'm always making small optimizations but a big portion of performance usage is due to two things:
- particles/effects (options can be added!)

- the fog of war visibility system (which could use some optimizations, but a "lower fidelity" option would have to make some major sacrifices).

It does seem like the game especially suffers on laptops, which is something I plan to look into for future updates too.

This is weird, I switched away from mono many versions ago. 
Maybe files are missing. You could try deleting and re-downloading the game and see if that works.

awesome, feel free to join the discord server too! Thanks for bringing up the infantry issues as well. 

For now I'm focusing on development and highlighting new features, but I'll look into making a devlog diving into aspects of implementation.

I can quickly talk about the enemy AI though, I'd describe it as a hierarchical series of state trees:

- Each individual AI unit is given move/look orders by a "squad commander" and will try to fulfill them (its own safety and combat situation takes priority). 

- The squad commander takes in alerts and data from its units and propagates them to the others, and will try to talk with other enemy squads within radio range. Generally it maintains a picture of the strength of the squad vs the perceived strength of its enemies. So tactics and objectives are decided at the squad level but it is up to individual units to complete them as they see fit.

- Squads have a disposition which dictates how likely they are to assault visual contacts or split up and attempt flanking against a force. The terrain is quickly assessed to see if flanking is viable or valid. In the future I want to improve their assault maneuvers to work together more.

- The squad commanders also talk to a faction commander, although the interaction here is limited to sharing enemy contacts and locations for now. Later they will use this interface to request reinforcements or call in off-map support.

A save system has not been added yet.

Thanks for your response! 
I'll disable the resolution limiting in the upcoming patch, although the game might run a bit slower at 4k. it'll probably get a toggle in the future.

I've been working on improving infantry viability/survivability, which should be in the next patch today. There's also a bug with them taking far more damage in buildings. I appreciate the bug reports!

Thanks for playing! What resolution is your monitor at?

thanks for letting me know! I think I've fixed the issue now

tbh I changed them so that they'd needed to be provoked since both sides attacking had inconsistent results, sometimes the bloc force would be wiped out for you. But it seems like most people thought it was a bug

Hey, forgot to reply to this! 

Will fix the bugs, thanks for reporting. 

ammo tag info will be worked on.

I like the idea of putting reload time somewhere, while out of combat! I'll take a look at the damage calculation for trucks and cars, and perhaps allowing player to target cover.

Glad the AI feels more interesting! Will work on improving retreating infantry.

Looks like I overnerfed the rockets/ATGMs so I'll continue to play around with their stats. This isn't noted anywhere yet, newer ARCOS-2M atgm don't require standing still, just LOS. Yeah, the indicator doesn't account for rocket fuel and gravity yet.

The B-26 does need some love, perhaps it'll be capable of carrying the largest squads like the B-20. 

Autocannons don't really have a good niche like you mentioned. Although luck-based, I find they're good at breaking ERA and external modules like optics, so maybe I'll push them in that direction.

oops, lol good catch

Looks like that squad on mission 2 might be broken. I'll take a look, the resupply mechanic is probably not working. 

Good catch on the ordnance

I'll look into it for later builds.

Thanks for playing!

Will fix the the infantry collision bug, and adjust small arms fire vs armor, the way attached armor works is a lot simpler than the more complex internal armor calculation and needs to be aligned. Infantry recoilless rifles should be able to damage those though

Infantry should be able to take from a vehicle's supply source (not RPGs however), but the supply/ammo system overall is being reworked

I'll take a look just to be sure, but I *think* the infantry RPGs are detonating at the edge of vision because it just so happens the rocket's fuel, velocity, and arc causes it to hit the ground around that range. In the future I would like to add actual arcs and estimated range to ordnance as well.

Yes, applique armor is more effective against kinetic and provide a little protection against HEAT/warheads too

Currently only the first equipped ammo with the caliber for that gun is used

Yeah AT teams don't have small arms, They're like a dedicated atgm team, though I forgot to give them the ARCOS-2M instead of an rpg. I might also give them light smgs or something

Thanks for reporting this bug!

only affects crew whoops, looked in the code and it affects autoloaders too.

yeah, the skill system is new, so descriptions need a pass/rewrite too in the future, plus some don't have stats

Gotcha, thanks for the screenshots! Glad to see vehicles appear clearer on your monitor!

I'll probably keep the black background and come up with some way to convoy the time-of-day/region ambience. The menu has been toned down, and I'll look into ensuring menu unpausing doesn't force resume.

JUSHA

Overall I enjoyed the gameplay and pacing of the genre change. Bosses are definitely still the most interesting part of the combat, looking forward to more

I like the design of the inventory and skill menus

Lighting your sword on fire when swiping through the fire spell is a super cool interaction! I like this sort of emergent gameplay

The designed environments are really nicely done and atmospheric, in contrast the combat hallways are pretty plain

other thoughts and feedback

- In the starting room, I fell out of the window twice by climbing on the piano and on the second time the game had a fatal error crash.

- The move animation seems to feel like the player is running faster than he is moving

- Sometimes I can't see enemies since they're behind walls

- Are you planning to have a map of some sort? Can be a little tricky figuring out where to go

- The crystal money stuff doesn't pickup well when you're moving

- enemies don't catch on fire when they're downed

- cute girl is still here, yay

- sometimes hit sounds overlap and get really loud

- crossbow enemy can keep shooting you from across the map

- is there a death screen yet? nothing happens when I die, although I'm playing on 0.2.2 and I see you might've fixed this

Big changes/features in this build:

• infantry rework: they’re deadlier against tanks and more stable
• AI improvements to make enemies more unpredictable and interesting
• Ordnance changes and APS to counter them
• Wheeled vehicles with different movement playstyle

Lots of smaller changes, devlog: https://aeoriii.itch.io/ironmirage/devlog/1099307/0d-surblinde

Woah! thanks for the very detailed writeup, I'll try to address points here. Thanks for trying this update so early! I look forward to hearing your thoughts on combat changes, if you decide to do a follow up post

I knew the CRT filter would be a hit or miss for some, so how disruptive/glowy it looks has been toned down.

The spinning tanks will be slowed down.

I don't think I changed the mission select music, but I'll take a look.

Will play around with the mood for the armory as well.

The text area backgrounds have a fancy new shader which only reduces background brightness over a certain amount, so they aren't just shaded overlays, the brightness threshold will be adjusted more to help with readability.

You can swap ammo in the ammunition tab, the ammo system will be reworked soon and so it's not changed much.

Oops, marrow has a good skill too but I forgot to set it to spawn

Future crew will have actual names instead of grunt, maybe the player can rename em too

Unit color will also be customizable in the future.

I might reuse the previous icon as well! Not sure how I would, maybe as a company/squad insignia

Mission brief: The sounds playing in the back should be a bug. same here I'll rework the aesthetics a bit

Combat

Added the old ring as an UI option, I removed it because it was getting in the way of recording footage and forgot about it

The pixelization bug with lower res monitors hasn't been fixed, although I am curious how it looks -- could you send a screenshot?

Also, what do you think about the map "background" space being black instead of some shade of red/orange?

name overflow will be fixed. By pause menu, do you mean the main menu with the options and controls and stuff? I also toned that down, I guess my eyes are used to light mode haha

Some quick changes addressing your feedback will also be rolled out in the rc3 patch!

I recently added a page up on steam where you can wishlist the game! steam workshop/mods is one of those things that I'd really want to include but it might end up being a post-release sort of thing...

As for vehicle types, I ended up not going with real tanks/weapons since I wanted to explore a different setting and come up with some designs that we don't have in real life. plus balancing would be trickier haha. 

Glad you enjoyed the build! Hull facing is being added, Ctrl+rmb is a good suggestion. As for holding an angle, I do want to prioritize player agency and I'll try to play around with overriding unit behaviors.

The upcoming infantry improvements should iron out some of those problems. Some of them are getting handheld smoke grenades too!Pathfinding should be somewhat better across the board too.

Thank you! Music is the one thing I don't create, so for releasing OSTs, I can't really say right now.

Thanks for playing and for your thoughts about infantry. Infantry and its pathfinding will be reworked/updated for the next build, feedback is really helpful.

Seems like people would like a recon/sniper team, which is a cool idea!

The scout team is lacking distinction right now but it can be loaded on vehicles with a smaller bay. maybe I could make them the long range team.

Specialized infantry is planned, but probably will be a later addition.

Answers for your questions:

- supply is primarily a pool for using weapons, so tank rounds would use maybe 1-2 supply whereas a .50cal would use very little. The ammo system will probably be expanded on in the future so this might change.

- There are some more interesting weapons planned down the line!

- Perhaps upgrades to your convoy will allow you to bring more units in a battle but it's not decided.

- More light vehicles like Humvees are planned! plus trucks, they'll probably have big space for logistic modules. Mostly on hold while I wrap up implementing wheeled vehicles.

- Ordnance usually has an arming time, so firing too close or grazing something a weird angle might send it flying.

Also, vehicles should be able to run over infantry already, I'll check if I broke it or something

Swappable weapons for certain vehicles is one of those things that I'm still hashing out in terms of game design/balance, but there'll definitely be more wheeled gun systems! one coming soon

Thanks for playing! gunner, sabot, tank! hopefully future performance improvements will make your experience better

What resolution is your monitor at? currently there is a graphical bug where the pixelation shader "pixelizes" way more at lower resolutions like 1980p, compared to 2560 or 4K, this is on my todo. And at the end of the day, the stylization does lower the amount of work it takes for me to create VFX, textures, and effects.

A mode to toggle or show views without selecting infantry is a good idea!

Turning that bug into a mechanic seems interesting, I can see it in defense missions like you said, or maybe you catch the enemy base off guard in a mission and hit their hangars!

Would need to think it through however, since there will probably be lots of pathfinding and gameplay work. I will consider it in the future when buildings will get reworked.

Glad you enjoyed it! I may revisit this game in the future, but for now its development has been paused.

Thank you for your note. I'm always trying to improve performance. Can you share (roughly) what generation your CPU and GPU is from? 

Sorry I forgot to post this reply earlier. Thank your for your feedback!

I'm working on improving the ui in combat for damage especially for modules, the side overlay shows the condition of armor for each side on the vehicle.

Thanks for bringing up turret traverse speeds, I'll play around with lowering them since as you mentioned, flanking should be deadly and maneuverability/positioning should be key. I like the idea of improving turret speeds with a module too.

Rockets are overtuned in the current build, they will be less powerful in the next build. They'll might also be limited in how much you can attach, in a similar way to guns as well. Especially since enemies will fire ordnance back at you soon, and they also sometimes fire when they see you smoke ;) 

Good point, targeting UI is being improved to show better where the missile can go.

Guided munitions can lose tracking or get interrupted, but if a unguided missile is going haywire it's usually if a rocket smacks against the side of a wall/another tank and slides off before the fuse is armed.

You brought up a good point about indirect fire, I will consider how to implement it in a way which doesn't subtract from the main gameplay.

More types/shapes of smoke should be coming soon!

I might make the troop compartment(s) take up more slots, but if players can fit the compartment somehow into a tank then it'll be allowed.

Thanks for the suggestions, lots of cool ideas here. Partial destruction of buildings may not be doable, although I'll take a look when I rework the building destruction system. Walls/barriers are a good suggestion!

I do hope to add some anti-tank guns, tank destroyer type tanks, and more specialized tanks soon! 

Thank you for your thoughts and suggestions! Did you get this running though wine or a parallel desktop app? 

Yeah, pathfinding needs to be improved in the future. A model viewer would be cool.

I'd say tanks remain the focus on the game design, and I want infantry to be more of a specialist tool for dense areas. I'll definitely continue to finetune how they play, and test some long range infantry too. 

With improved enemy AI I hope this shakes up the gameplay and tactics, although I don't want it to become too pause-heavy.

I'll take a look at the bugs, the freecam is sort of a debug/screenshot which I hope to improve.

Like you mentioned, I want to keep the mandatory lore on the lighter side and exposit through the experience, and allow players to read more if they want. Hope to add better descriptions and UI stuff.

On the suggestions:

- Queuing fire commands: will consider, what may be happening is that the enemy tank has fully aimed and is just waiting for a clear firing solution, whereas yours still needs to aim?

- Purchasing/sickbay/logistics: Lots of interesting ideas here. The campaign/worldmap is still being developed and lots of the above is planned! especially with side/optional missions to "acquire" supplies. Character interaction will probably come with base/convoy management.

- Off-map support is planned too.

Awesome, I love detailed feedback and ideas! Here are some of my thoughts:

On angling tanks: I briefly experimented with tank angling adding more penetration resistance before, but I believe angling has little effectiveness against modern tank ammunition like sabot rounds. I don't think it's a bad system though, and I'll probably revisit the idea in the future.

Permadeath: In the campaign, crew losses will likely be permanent, although "special" characters may be able to survive a tank losses, similar to like what you said.

Hijacking tanks or scavenging abandoned ones during combat was planned before but I decided to scrap the idea due to high complexity. I might revisit in the future.

Infantry close quarters: I really like your idea for infantry to use grenades and be really effective against tanks in close quarters! 

Performance: the game is not very optimized right now unfortunately. My goal is to have 60 fps on a card like yours.

Platoons: In the campaign, upgrades will probably let you deploy more units. Otherwise I also plan to add more missions where you can use some temporary units, or maybe there's an allied faction there too.

Commands

• Stop and fire is planned!
• Turning hull direction: good idea, will add.
• RTS-style squad controls: Perhaps in the future, will have to rework some stuff if it goes in.

Generic chat boxes: I like this idea, will have to finetune it to prevent overloading the screen. Probably when i finish the portraits for the generic guys

Support/offmap: There's a lot of good ideas here, and I am planning to add recovery units/artillery/logistics in the future! Especially with the campaign and salvaging stuff.

As for campaign stuff, I appreciate the ideas, a lot of it is being worked out atm. The campaign will have an overworld with exploration/management, and mix of thematic story-ish missions, side missions, and procedural/randomized encounters too

Thanks for playing!!

Thanks for taking the time to provide feedback!

I agree with a lot of the armory QOL ideas, will add to my todo list. Tooltips which specify effect details and mechanics will be added in the future as well. There's no system for switching between multiple ammo types in combat yet.

I wanted to add a bit more flavor to the rather old K-50 with the variants, and they're mostly the same tank but with different/better installed modules, so barring armor material I can manually upgrade a K-50A to a UM. Later vehicles likely will have less straight upgrade variants. My plan for progression/campaign is to have a limited supply of units, and create choices where I might prefer having cannon fodder or more expendable units for some battles. 

As for the units, I'm modeling a wheeled gun vehicle so maybe that'll show up in the next build :D but yes I'm planning to add more interesting vehicles with compelling gameplay benefits/challenges.

As you've pointed out, the rockets are quite overtuned and I've reduced their armor penetration for the next build. Especially since the enemy gets to shoot them back now. Glad you like the infantry gameplay so far, they're going to be continuously improved as well.

Replay is a good feature but going to be a bit tricky, perhaps in the far future. Thanks again for your detailed thoughts!

Thank you for trying the game and for your kind words :)) I like the idea of having squads moving as one, perhaps when moving multiple units at the same time. I'll keep working on improving the ui and readability as well.

Yes, once I start working on the campaign you'll have more freedom in picking your vehicles. For now in the next update I can add a couple of duplicates

Doorkickers was a large inspiration for the movement system! I plan to improve enemy AI since currently they 're very easily baited and don't advance with much tactics. Rockets are a little overtuned at the moment too, and once enemies get to use them and countermeasures are added, it'll be less of a "everything here must die" button.

Thanks for catching that bug with the modules, yeah it appears to happen when I switch out tanks,  gotta fix that. 

I'm still fiddling with how infantry plays so your feedback is very helpful. buildings should be their element.

I see you've just uploaded a version 2, I played the prev one.

Like others mentioned, the different control scheme is quite the learning curve. I ended up mostly relying on yaw and nose up/down to fly, avoiding rolling. Maybe the afterburner could have an option as a toggle or the base speed could be increased? i found myself holding down the afterburner almost all of the time.

The feel and juice of flying and speed is there already, and the drifting lets you pull off some really fun maneuvers. Interface is nice looking and non-obtrusive. Looking forward to seeing more.

Can you explain the problem a bit? If a module is compatible, you can pick it up and click on the other module and it will swap the two. If I'm understanding correctly, the second behavior is intended, when you remove a module and try to exit module edit while holding it, it'll put it back into storage

edit: I think I know what you mean, fixed a related bug in the rc4 version.

gotcha, i think it was the rc1 build, that one had a broken simulator