itch.io

Was able to play RC4. The new UI changes are great! Everything is a LOT more readable both with and without the CRT filter. Main menu is a huge improvement! The options menu looks ugly imo (just not a personal fan of the gradient style, looks out of place in the main menu but fine in-game) but it doesn't burn my eyeballs anymore with or without CRT so I can't complain. The only notable thing is that the white external modules have a bit of a bright outline in CRT but the actual text is much more readable now with the CRT filter. The E80 engine is still hard to read with the CRT but that + the "ENGINE" in the module guide suffer more from the chosen font/color rather than size or brightness. New briefing screen is also epic, good blend of the old and the new.

I noticed a bug with the crew; take a mercenary crew member and move their box above one of the anime girls' boxes and the bottom half of the mercenaries will cover them. They will also overlay other mercenary boxes too, but it's more noticeable with the girls. Small detail but hard to miss once you see it.

For gameplay, I noticed the C1B2 is a lot worse with the default engine (E70) compared to an upgrade. Not sure why the max speed is so low but the traverse is so high - traverse doesn't really make a massive difference for the C1 series but top speed is really important. Acceleration doesn't matter if you have such a low top speed that you reach it in a couple seconds, regardless of acceleration. Since the vehicle is wheeled, the traverse will be terrible regardless of the value when stationary and sharp turns will still cause you to lose all of your speed, whether you're going at 30, 40, or 80. At least at higher speeds you get to the turn faster and escape from the turn faster. The E66 is arguably a better engine for it, even stock with no upgrades to weigh the vehicle down.

...what if we had a watchdogs style module that let us hack into enemy systems and let us temporarily control them? Maybe a bit far-fetched but would be very sci-fi.

A small suggestion for rocket balance; make the 3R8 something like a 3R6. Smaller rockets to compensate for having more of them. In the future a 3R8 might be more balanced with a progression system (make it a late game unlock or really expensive) but right now it's either the normal R8s are kinda bad because they're too weak for only having two rockets, or the 3R8 is too strong because rockets slap hard and you get 8 of them. Since MGs and autocannons aren't that good right now, you aren't really losing anything by dropping them for space for the rockets. Buffing those could also help a little with balance.

It's also fine if you'd rather keep rockets on the stun side over the damage side since they're dumbfire and more spammable but ATGMs definitely should be hurting more.

As a note, I haven't had the time to try out the rc3 or rc4 yet if you've changed them there.

I've played with the new tanks a bunch, so here's my take on them:

First, some miscellaneous stuff. Noticed a bug(?) on the C1, it has the same third slot as the C1B2 but that slot doesn't actually work. Trying to fill the the third slot just results in a denied sound playing, if it's intended, it should be make a bit more clear why. Looking at the ammo tab, there's a 120mm APFSDS option that's is a straight upgrade to the AP round, but has the SABOT tag... no explanation for what that tag changes in-game. It would be nice to see reload time even when the tank isn't targeting something - maybe on the bottom left window, since the new vehicles are shoot-and-scoot tanks. It can be hard to judge when the reload is done, especially since morale/crew health/commander traits can give the same tank drastically different reload speeds.

Recon infantry doesn't seem to have smoke. Rockets, both infantry and tank, seem to have difficulty destroying cars and trucks now, so there's often no good way to clear sightlines except running them over. If we could shoot them manually with a target ground command to fire the main cannon or shoot secondary weapons at them (GPMGs, HMGs, Autocannons) to blow them up would be good.

Rating the AI; the new improvements have made the AI 100x better and more fun to fight. They don't surprise you or flank well every fight, but an APC magically appearing from an alleyway you didn't anticipate and getting shots off definitely increases the tension and stakes a lot higher, even if it doesn't kill any of your tanks. So far, I've only seen one enemy tank try and flank at a time, so most enemies still try to take you on head-on and are still susceptible to getting gunned down in a firing line. Despite that, since they can use smoke and rockets, they are still actually a threat and you actually have to micro your tanks when fighting the enemy head-on rather than being able to go AFK. Infantry actually persuing you now is a bit of a double edged sword, on one hand it makes them a lot weaker since they don't really know how to ambush you properly (they just walk in a straight line to you 90% of the time) but on the other hand, it adds a lot of uncertainty as to where they could actually be. One issue with infantry I've seen is that most tanks can spot and engage infantry through the walls of buildings, even if line of sight is blocked, and the AI doesn't always try and retreat their infantry after popping smoke. Seems like it gives it an order, but it gets routed or stunned, and never completes the order so it never sends a new one. A little weird to watch a recon team pop smoke in the middle of the road and then do nothing while the smoke disappears. Might happen with tanks too, but more often than not it's easier to just finish off a tank with a rocket or a flank when it pops smoke. For a final note for AI, the Coalition AI on the left spawn of the new mission seems to be broken or confused. They won't leave their spawn area to attack the convoy unless you specifically provoke them to go around the corner and they see the convoy tanks. Usually results in the coalition forces getting defeated in detail and not really doing much to help fight the convoy.

For the rocket changes, all in all I'm a bit mixed about them. They were ridiculously overpowered previously but now they feel a bit on the weaker end. Unless you're hitting enemies in the rear, you don't do a ton of damage and mostly just stun enemy tanks. This is still decent, but it results in the new B-207 feeling on the weaker side, especially with it's nonexistent turret rotation speed. You can easily fire all of it's rockets and not get a single kill. Maybe it's better that way; stunning enemies is an effective niche, but only really effective if you're using higher fire rate weapons to be able to actually exploit it meaningfully. It does shred lighter vehicles and infantry but the low blast radius, shorter range, and slow turret turn speed (also the turret doesn't visually turn on the back so it's sometimes confusing what direction it's facing) mean it's not really the best suited for fighting either of them. I don't know if multi-turret functionality is planned, but it would be awesome to have an autocannon turret turn faster than a tank cannon but slower than a machine gun. ATGMs feel a bit weak at the moment, they also don't reliably kill tanks from the side and also take three centuries before they hit their target. The fact that they also require you to stand still and take hits makes them really not that great... part of the problem is definitely the urban environment, though. It's hard for an enemy to miss a stationary target (or vise versa) so usually the tank firing the ATGM gets obliterated before it's even a quarter of the way there. When an ATGM does hit, it does stun nicely but the damage feels low, especially for something you only get 2 shots with. I also noticed a bug(?) with the rockets, that being that they will often land short of farther targets. I don't know if they have a maximum range before hitting the ground, but it feels like a bug since the indicator stops at the target.

The C1 and C1B2 are great additions to the game. They offer a new and fun playstyle while also not being overpowered or overbearing in any way. The C1B2 may be a bit overtuned but since the cannon struggles to penetrate frontal armor and the ATGM isn't very strong even from the side, it relies very heavily on actual tactics to perform well. The C1 is pretty weak but so are all of the other "older" designs like the K-50s, so honestly it's comparable to it's peers. The fact that we now have wheeled vehicles with real cannons means we can actually scout well with armored vehicles and not just infantry. Now there's really no reason to bring the B-26 but the B-26 is definitely the worst vehicle in the game by far... can't hold any more troops, weakest cannon in the game, fast but not fast enough to outrun boolet, and virtually no armor. It's more appropriate to say that the niche the B-26 was supposed to fill and failed miserably can now actually be filled by the C1 tanks. On the B-26 note, the autocannons do feel really weak and don't really do well at anything other than killing infantry with HE, and even then it's usually the main cannon that does most of the damage. Still useful for slower firing tanks, and definitely better than MGs (since there's no target lead and no splash on MGs, they just waste ammo versus infantry right now). 

While the B-207 is a bit niche, the B-20 CFV is a lot better than I thought it would be. The decent splash means the B-20 can hurt infantry and the recoilless can still slap light vehicles. It's also a run-and-gun like the C1 and the accuracy isn't the greatest on the move, but it's better than I thought. The MGs are still not that helpful, but with the autocannon(s) it's a lot better. Still weaker than a tank but it can also scout and at least do damage from the side, unlike the B-26. Decent APC. Infantry buffs are also very much warranted, and other than the AI sometimes having issues they are a genuine threat to most tanks. I noticed that the recoilless infantry fires sometimes doesn't fire down the sightline accurately, so when in keyhole positions they will happily fire the recoilless and/or RPG straight into the wall next to them and die. The 3AGL is pretty solid against infantry clumps too, if they land hits, but since infantry is weak it's much more effective on vehicles.

I wish there was a far version for the line smoke, would be really good at blocking off roads to cross or peeking around corners. Still a great addition along with the APS systems. Said APS is sometimes a double edged sword since it can detonate rockets that would have safely flown by, but since detonated rockets usually only hurt external modules it's still usually worth the risk, especially on slower tanks.

That's all I have for gameplay right now. I was going to play and post more but my game froze (probably my problem, my PC is having issues lately), so this is what I am able to post for now.

Honestly, I actually kinda like the background being black rather than red/orange. Makes the game feel a bit less like a desert adventure a bit more depressing, which is probably more appropriate for the game's setting. When combined with the blackening of the scren around the edges, it's a lot less distracting during gameplay when you're fighting around the map edge, but to be fair the brighter colors didn't look bad; just personal preference. I haven't lost any tanks because I was staring at either background.

Yes, by pause menu I mean the options menu/controls/exit etc. Most of the game is relatively darker in comparison, so it's basically a flashbang every time you pause. On a minor note, when you open and then close the menu, the game unpauses. It can be a little annoying to pause the game manually, open the menu, tweak a setting, and then unpause straight back to real time and have to pause manually yourself again so you can give orders. If you could make it so that manual pauses overwrite the automatic unpausing of menus that would be good (sorry, I don't know how to explain this well). Minor QoL feature.

Here are the screenshots, 3 from 0.C and 4 from 0.D. I couldn't get a really good angle of the K-50 but hopefully you can see how much clearer it is than everything else as well as how much cleaner vehicles in shadow looks. The resolutions of the screenshots are a little skewed because I had to manually crop out my second monitor.

Hey! Giving my feedback for the update here. First impressions is that I'm not a massive fan of the new UI changes, mostly the coloration difference. The new UI is a bit mixed. The "exit" button and changelog is a lot easier to see, but when the spinning vehicles intersect with the text it becomes much harder to read. It's cool feature and isn't too bad, especially after getting used to it, but combined with the CRT filter, the spinning vehicles, intersecting text and bright red honestly hurts my eyes. The start button is easier to see, at least, and thankfully I can turn the filter off. I also couldn't notice any glitch effects at all while playing, despite glitches turned on, so I don't know if the feature is broken or was reworked to be more subtle. For me it didn't affect visual clarity but added a nice visual fitting the theme. The CRT filter would probably be better to look at if everything wasn't glowing neon.

For mission select, the new UI was generally harder for me to read, with or without CRT filter since it's missing a background. The old UI wasn't great either but different text colors or a transparent background would help. Also RIP old desert music, though I suppose the new UI is less desert themed overall. The tip box being slightly smaller also meant I accidentally missed it the first time around and thought it was removed, but there's a lot of empty space on the mission select, so it could be a little bigger. Same goes for the cityspace, it feels like there's a black void staring into my soul. The tank icon is much clearer to see, but I'm not a fan of the new logo. The old one was simpler and had a clearer outline to it, so it felt more distinct and recognizable, whereas the new one blends together and the outline is mostly just a circle.

The mission select briefings are both easier and harder to read. The larger text makes it easier but the ALL CAPS FONT + no background + text effect makes it harder. CRT filler makes it easier to read, but at the cost of the mission select buttons fading away.

The hangar is also much easier to see, yay! I can actually look at my tanks in great detail! I do still prefer the old hangar's lighting, as it set the mood for the upcoming battle better. Maybe make the base hangar a little darker but brighten the light around a vehicle once you select it to modify. Could also give the rotating camera a "spotlight" to help. I can't tell it if already has one because the hangar is so bright. The hangar camera also doesn't feel like a camera anymore, with or without the CRT filter. Also, I won't be testing the CRT filter from here on because my eyes hurt.

The squad armory section has smaller icons that are harder to see, but the text is easier to read. It also lost some of that aesthetic in the process. The new UI could honestly easily fit another row in the motor pool and still have enough room left over to see the vehicles, so you could make it a little bit bigger for clarity. I noticed the old version had the white line on the left looked like it was slightly curved at each end, which definitely helps with the camera effect.

For vehicle editing, the new UI is cleaner but isn't really any harder or easier to read. Things being brighter makes them easier to see, but the font doesn't make them easier to read. The old UI is harder to see but the font (combined with less light) makes it easier to read. The best example is probably the E80 engine, I struggle to read the module on both versions but for opposite reasons.

The module descriptions are harder to read, but the actual module stats are way easier to read and that's what really matters. The box looks a little out of place when empty compared to the construction lines, but tbh it's overall an improvement. It's also nice that the vehicle stats are in their own box now rather than slapped on to the description. The ammunition tab is a bit of a weird tab as it doesn't feel like it has any purpose, so I would probably move the UI there to the right, just above the armory module guide, but doesn't really affect gameplay so it's likely better to keep in case you have any plans to fill out that tab in the future. Also, vehicle armor and armoury module guide can sometimes be harder to read when the camera is at certain odd angles. Probably the most egregious offender is the blue "ENGINES" text and the "INTERNAL" and "APPLIQUE" sections, but everything else is fine. I'd personally consider adding a transparent background to some of the boxes so they'll always have good contrast, regardless of the camera angle. The old UI did contrast a lot better; with the new UI, you can have some parts hard to read and other parts crisp and clear with the same camera angle.

For crew, the new portraits are really nice and it's good to be able to see actual detail. It removes a bit of the mystery of who they are (aesthetic is cool) but in exchange I can actually see what they look like more clearly, so either way is fine. Hopefully Marrow gets a positive perk, because it does feel like a drag taking her instead of a regular grunt. On one hand, the grunts having perks is nice, but on the other hand, now I want to promote one of my grunts into an anime character because they get better skills than the "notable" characters! Maybe in the future give them fresher icons, randomized names, or the ability to rename them. Custom character creation in the future? The last thing I want to note is it's a little sad seeing the start operation button disappear from the module screen, but maybe it's for the best so that I don't accidentally press it before I'm ready or forget something important the moment I press it. Also, the back button is a godsend for preventing me from accidentally going back to mission select every time I want to swap vehicles. One final note: aww look at the cute little drone in the background, I wanna give him a hug. I didn't even notice him in the old version but I hope he stays visible. I hope he becomes an anime character in a future update... better maintenance perk means better performance for the tank? Also; I'm noticing the smaller sidebar looks much more in place in the modules section than in the larger hangar view. Fits in very nicely, so it just looks a little small when you zoom out.

For actually starting a mission, I like the new loading screen even though it doesn't live long. For the actual mission briefings though? The old version is just better imo.The new screen is much clearer but I honestly never had any issues reading any of the text because it's quite large, and all of the aesthetic is gone. It looks like a boring blackboard rather than an old school computer screen. The vehicle noises in the background feel odd, I'm not looking at a screen in a vehicle as we ride to war but sitting in a briefing room analyzing the mission. The map itself is a lot clearer but still doesn't really give enough detail to plan out the whole mission ahead of time, so while it's an improvement, everything else that was cool abotu it was nuked. I checked this screen with the CRT filter and while it looks better, it just looks like I'm staring into the void and the void is staring back... wait, that's my reflection. Also, the lancer icon looks a lot better here than the mission select screen, but I still prefer the older one. Maybe combine the two, but I am a sucker for simplicity and distinctive outlines for logos. The old one looks like a logo you'd put on the side of a tank as an identification marker, while the new one looks like something you'd stamp on office paperwork or put on a sign outside the building. The glitch effect not working here is probably the most notable instance in the game and also helps to make this screen feel kinda sad.

Now for the gameplay. Immediate impressions are:

1. nooo my cool ring is gone, why :(

2. wow, I can actually see! wait, no. sort of?

3. oh, the mimimap is actually usable now

4. infantry view is a lot better and a little worse

For #1, the old ring was a bit distracting and did lower the field of view a lot but tbh I really liked the aesthetic. It makes you feel like you're an actual commander looking through a UAV to see the situation and command your troops in real time. The new cmaera scratch effect is so subtle I only noticed it when I zoomed out all the way and I also just realized it's also in the mission briefing screen, too. I still prefer the old UI though; you could just zoom out more if you needed to see more. I'm also realizing that the camera zoom is the exact same but now fog on the edge of the screen makes you see far less than you ever did with the ring effect. I don't know if bringing it back would look good but something else on the screen to indicate you're looking through a camera would be good; the zoom lens blur also feels weird now since we aren't looking through a ring like an oldschool camera.

2. The pixelation is still really awful. Vehicle outlines are clearer and so they're much easier to make out, but like... I still can't really see the vehicle, even when I zoom all the way in. If it's in shadow I can see it a lot better, but in the light, vehicles can range from clearer to still blurry. I think it's tied to the detail of the vehicle, the more complicated the model, the more outlines... the more outlines, the harder the blur. The K-50 is crisp and while pixelated, is stylized in a cool way. The K-115 barely looks like a tank and the C1B2 looks more like a family van. On the flip side, the lack of a brown filter means wow! I can see everything else totally fine. Cars on the road? Small buildings? Alleys? Great! The only minor issue is when zoomed farther out, roadside obstacles become harder to see. Maybe look at making outlines for destructable obstacles for cars toggleable so they can stand out more, but even as-is it's still a major improvement over the previous version. Clarity of vehicles is still a meaningful issue when zoomed out, but the pixelation was genuinely just that bad on the older version and I can at least see some of the vehicles when I zoom in.

3. The minimap is a massive improvement! It doesn't give you enough detail to see everything perfectly but there's enough detail now that I can see what the map looks like, rather than a bunch of thick red bricks. Spotted enemies also showing up on the minimap actually gives you a real reason to look at it or pay attention, rather than going "uh which tank just beeped at me?" and frantically scrolling the camera to find the enemy which I also conveniently couldn't see because of the layers of filters. I might actually have a reason to look at it!

4. Infantry view is way easier on the eyes, and it's quite nice to not have to  flashbang myself every time I want to see all of paths I can drive or walk. It's just way easier to look at and use, with most of the buildings being a lot clearer and the cutaways give a better view of the whole map. It's overall an improvement, but sometimes thinner walls and windows will blend into the map easier and sometimes become nearly invisible. This would happen with the old system to, but since all of the buildings were bright red, the contrast with the environment meant you could see the sliver of red pixels even when zoomed all the way out, and if you saw a break in the wall you'd know there was a window there, even if none of the yellow pixels rendered. Not a massive deal since it's fixed by just zooming in a little, but notable. I do really like that buildings highlight when you hover over them, lets you see the actual size so you can get a better grasp of whether your tank will or will not fit.

I'm also noticing that the name for drone fireteam (recon) still cuts off and starts a new line, even though there's enough room for the whole text in the box. I also don't know why the morale and health boxes were changed from green to white; I personally find them a lot harder to see now and have to rely on the bottom left icons more. As a final note, the new pause menu is absolutely awful and it hurts my eyes. The older one was sometimes not really clear if you paused in a bright area but man, I'd rather have that than staring into the sun.

Those are my first impressions of the new update. I am thinking about posting a gameplay post after I get to mess around a lot with the new weapons, tanks, and changes but I wanted to put my first impressions here before muddling it down. A lot of it is UI annoyance, so a lot of this is just fluff when what really matters is how the game plays. I was gonna put it here but this is too long already.

TL;DR Give a semi-transparent background to a lot of the text boxes to make it more readable and reduce the glow of some of the text so the CRT filter doesn't make my eyes bleed. Aesthetic was removed which is very sad but there are pros and cons. Gameplay clarity is better, but that's more because of how awful it was before. New tanks awesome, no new anime waifu sad. Cute hangar drone. Haven't extensively played; first impressions.

Small suggestion, let us change the colors of our squads, or base it off of their callsign. Having 1 dark blue and 3 cyan is really bad when I can't see the vehicles and have to guess which cyan is the one I want to order.

I honestly found infantry to be really useful. If you're tactical and plan ahead, every map has multiple good routes to move infantry through cover and if you minimize exposure you can get close enough to enemies to scout them. They're also expendable so if you mess up, you can just use their (kinda bad) APC carrier to do the scouting instead, for the same reason. The extra movement speed of the recon platoon meant I pretty much always brought them instead of normal infantry, since they all die basically instantly and so I'd rather move faster to break line of sight faster as well as speed up the boring wait for the infantry to reach the enemy.

They aren't as good at scouting long sightlines, but are a lot better at scouting areas like factories or city blocks because they can just walk through 50% of the buildings. The trick I used was sending the squad out of a building just a little bit, seeing if they get shot at; if they don't, move into the street. If they still don't, move the tanks up. If they do, pause and move them not just inside the building but out of the back door to break sight and they usually survive. Sometimes I could even use this to bait enemy tanks to chase and they would drive straight into my pre-set firing line of tanks! (This method trivialized the final defense mission) The infantry pathing does need a lot of work though, they always get stuck whether I use automatic or manual pathing.

I do hope infantry does get better vision though, or maybe a directional vision one like tanks so they can scout in one direction farther. Maybe save it for a future "sniper team" squad that's great against infantry and hard to spot but really bad versus tanks. It's fine if we don't, though... It seems like the idea was that the terrible environment reduces visibility for everyone, so high-powered optics are A. hard to come by and B. really strong. It's nice having atmosphere affect gameplay for immersion.

I run two monitors, 1920x1080 and 1600x900. It's hyper-pixelated on both. If necessary I could get pictures/video of the problem if you need.

I do hope you are able to go into more detail in the future, when the game is more complete; definitely focus on playability, content, and anime waifus first!

I also have one more suggestion, add a Stryker APC to the game. I was a little sad not being able to take off main armament and switch them around, but with the Stryker it was designed to be "easily" converted between APC, IFV, ARV, MGS, and other configs. Would be awesome with the modularity of the game! Also probably best to wait for later.

edit: one more: map editor

I definitely second this. It was very hard to tell the difference between my vehicles and the ground because of that. Some pixelation is probably fine, and the game's aesthetic is great, but maybe a screen filter or smth would be easier on the eyes than pixelation. If the game looked half as clear as that final screenshot does, it would be 100x better. Imagine being able to visually see ERA detonate or a shot ricochet, rather than just being a bunch of vague pixels.

Also, I don't know if this will help anyone, but use ctrl + left click in order to order your units to move backwards. I don't know if you can chain reverse and forward gears in the same line, but it would be a cool feature.

edit: also, a mode that lets you switch between infantry view and tank view would be good in order to see what pathways your tanks/infantry can take at a glance, without needing to dismount first.