Lancer Tactics

[cyan crow]

thanks

[brisk snow]

also this was using hellfire rounds too, idk if that changes the result as far as replicating the issue goes

[cyan crow]

how many pilots can you have before stuff explodes

like in your files or whatever

[brisk snow]

Ok it worked this time? not sure what's going on with that. maybe it dealt the damage to the terrain or something?

I wonder if it's not doing the damage because it passed the hull save

[cyan crow]

oh also when updates happen how do i go about installing them properly

[alpine sorrel]

I recommend getting the itch.io app, which can apply updates/patches automatically. Otherwise, delete the entire game folder and re-download the new version manually -- your data is stored elsewhere.

[cyan crow]

like the data_lancer tactics X_windows file or

hm im not sure where else the game data would be stored

[rain cipher]

game data is stored in %AppData

[alpine sorrel]

Check that forwarded message for instructions to open it

[cyan crow]

ah ok

the save file one?

that would make sense

didnt connect it but yeah the save file location would be the save file location

[cyan crow]

were turret drones changed so that they can trigger off the person who deployed them?

[alpine sorrel]

They shouldn't; it's a bug if you're seeing that.

[cyan crow]

So I think I found a bug or two and I saved the save file —- but the bug already happened
(Shooting a person with lock on not triggering drone commander 2)

Do I send it anyway?

Also do you prefer it through the form or here

[small panther]

That's the intended process as far as I know, yes

You send the autosave made immediately after you noticed the bug

(don't remember when autosaves are made though. Was it end of player turn or ?)

[cyan crow]

Yes I tried to read the form instructions I just wasn’t sure if I was supposed to try and recreate it

Oh the autosave? I don’t just make a save immediately?

[small panther]

That works too

Just "a save of when that happens"

As far as I know

[gritty spire]

am I doing something wrong or the color picker in customization broke on the last patch?

its picking random colors after I pick mine

[fickle pecan]

yeah its broke

[alpine sorrel]

should be fixed on the 0.4.4 hotfix, are you still on 0.4.3?

[young sorrel]

Fusion Hemmorage Vulture DMR is pretty nuts

Casual 7 damage shot through resistance

[small panther]

Bug report : after exiting the "edit OppFor" menu in the Instant Action setup, the displayed name of the group and the displayed mechs are mismatched, the name and selected group switches to Asset Mgmt Team every time (whether custom or default group) and you can't select Asset Mgmt Team from the drop-down menu.

Not sure what file to send though.

Maybe this ?

Bug Report : As suspected, Ophidian Trek machine broke. It seems to display the rolled teleport number above the attack result correctly, but only ever moves the target one space.

Mechanics Weirdness : sorry for the mess of reactions, but the non-exposed Sentinel shouldn't have been a possible target for the DSAS Overwatch as the one moving was the exposed one. The pistol shooting wherever is good though.
Don't know if that's known, intended or unfixable, but here it is anyways. (I can give the detail about why that shouldn't be possible if you want, it's just long, a #rules-questions and also I want to get back to the game to find more bugs. Sorry.)

This is actually a Bug Report :
Figured out what happened there actually : the base OW targeting works well, but here the culprit was the "multiple units in the same space" target picker that allowed me to attack the wrong target.

Rules Weirdness : Ophidian Trek again, this time featuring interdiction field.
if used on an enemy in an interdiction field, the teleport fails. This is consistent with the text of interdiction field in the game, but the the one in basegame Lancer. Just checking if that's intended, as it's technically not what should happen. If it is meant to do that because of video game restrictions, it works as intended !

RBJJ not being able to trigger Ace 2 is a known thing right ? I think it is so I won't do the whole shebang about it, but if it isn't lmk and I'll do that.

[brisk snow]

yes

I think

[small panther]

Bug Report : I hit with a Puppet Systems and the target just. Didn't move. ?????
Investigating further. Investigated. Check below.

[small panther]

Actually, what happened was that it allowed me to select a space occupied by one of my Minos, but that didn't make it collide with me and as such stop nor did it simply Not Allow Me To Do That, it instead simply cancelled the move. Probably shouldn't do that. Second save that led me to that conclusion :

Once again : I feel like I saw it being discussed already, but are allied invades still being attacks (and as such able to miss) a known issue ? It isn't applying heat though, which is correct. I have a save of that happening, if it's needed reply ping this message and I'll send it.

[alpine sorrel]

allied invades being able to miss is RAW, I believe?

[small panther]

Nope. Allied invades aren't attacks (auto-apply, can't miss) and don't do heat

Pulling it up, hold on

There, last paragraph

[alpine sorrel]

ah sure enough

[brisk snow]

huh.

[small panther]

So need the save or ?

[alpine sorrel]

ding ding adding to the "I've been playing this wrong for years" list! beautiful day

nah

[small panther]

Alrighty, just posting the other bug then :

Bug Report : The puppet systems movement didn't resolve correctly. Not sure how or what happened, but something's weird there.
Also pretty sure Puppet Systems lets you not move your target their full speed when they're supposed to move their full speed every time (barring collisions etc.). Maybe this is a difficult terrain/climbing proble actually ? Unclear, needs looked at anyways, the guy moved in an entirely different direction at the end of the move anyways.

Friendly reminder that you can tell me to stop and take this elsewhere if I'm doing too much, or if I'm flooding or anything like that.

[brisk snow]

you're [rpbably ok. we've been using this channel to report bugs for a bit now. I'm assuming there'll be a dedicated channel for it eventually tho

[small panther]

I know this is a good place to send bugs, I'm mostly worried about the sheer quantity of stuff I'm sending. For example :

Bug report or UI problem : Puppet Systems movement resolved weird. Don't know if everything secretly worked like it should have, but if it did then the final location of the target wasn't made obvious to me nor is where I clicked, so I'd say look into that anyways ?

[brisk snow]

I mean as long as you don't ping them every time you're probably ok. I just assume they'll see them when they see them

[small panther]

This time it's a bug alright : THIS FUCKER TOOK MY PUPPET SYSTEMS TO THE FACE AND DIDN'T EVEN MOVE WHAT THE HELL

(do not worry for me, I am not actually mad, just having fun)

Alright, I'm satisfied for tonight. Next on the chopping block : Blackbeard grapple cable shenanigans and also Roland Chamber AOEs !
(@small panther Reminder.)

You know, despite basically going out of my way to find bugs and weird interactions and stuff that doesn't work, I'm still having a blast ! Amazing work, all of you !

[alpine sorrel]

Puppet systems currently doesn't work when the target is immobilized, is that some of these do you think? I have a fix for that waiting for the next deploy

(We're currently working on putting together a dedicated discord server for LT including a bug report forum)

(but until then here is perfect)

[small panther]

Almost certainly none of these, they weren't immobilized I don't think, and even then the problem is that they did move, Wrong somehow. Every time it wasn't me selecting a space where a minotaur was, because that eats the move before it even happens apparently, the target moved at least one space

For some of these there might even be no bug, just a lack of clarity on what the end space of the move is.

(or it could be a bug idk)

[young sorrel]

Spelling report:

Specter

Bug Report: If a Death's Head attacks an invisible enemy as its first attack of the turn and misses to invisibility, you don't get the option to reroll from Neurolink

[lethal leaf]

Rerolls don't reroll invisibility.

Invisibility is rolled first, and if it says it's a miss, it's automatically a miss no matter what else you have.

[young sorrel]

I have no idea how you coded this to work properly, but if you end your turn with a quick action available, FMJ, Mjolnir, integrated aux melee, then Hunter 3 with a weapon that has Shock Wreathe, it'll give you the option to use it. I'm shocked.

[stable smelt]

oh I'm so glad to see that this stupid tech works in LT

I made a whole lancer custom werks build for it because it was so weird

it's almost useless! because it's a whole garden path of chained actions! but it works!

[magic cave]

holy shit

that's. genius??

extremely niche but like

good??

[young sorrel]

Move+Boost into FMJ Mjolnir Tacknife Shock Knife Shock Wreathe is a pretty good FMJ turn.

[heady iris]

Absolute
tactics

✋ 🤚

[lethal leaf]

I thought it didn't work, because you lose your actions when you end your turn.

[ashen kindle]

Yeah... So if you have a spare QA and end your turn you can?

[alpine sorrel]

Oh neat! Nice to see all the engine robustness work paying off

[final mesa]

I feel we may need to summon the esoteric God of Lancer Action Economy. I'll start overclocking my microwave. And grab the metal "Stress is a Resource" plaque to put in there.

[teal sundial]

Achievement?
["Just one more thing..."
take free or quick action that isnt prompted when you end your turn, after you've ended your turn]

[fickle pecan]

Technically the end of turn was delayed I think

[brisk snow]

Columbo Combo

[heady iris]

your engine robustness always surprised me when i saw my most crazy builds take shape

[young sorrel]

The rest of the team: "Great combat guys, that was perfect"

The Death's Head: "Yeah, totally"

Never in my life have I seen one character get focused this hard

[elfin peak]

I wonder if itwould be possible to make some kind of 'GM discretion' mechanic where more damaged player mechs have decreased targeting priority for every structure lost.

[heady iris]

I noticed hovering the mouse over the color schemes has the same problem that the colors had
It selects the last color scheme that the mouse hovered over

[young sorrel]

Bug Report: I'm not sure exactly how, but it's possible for the tooltips to get "stuck" on your mouse cursor

[alpine sorrel]

Dang I saw that once too and was hoping it was a fluke

[young sorrel]

It's happened to me a few times but this was the first time it didn't go away at end of turn

[thin lark]

You can make it go away by popping some other tool tip usually

It’s happened to me too though

[brisk snow]

I don’t know how to repro but for me it’s usually the bonus damage tooltip that gets stuck

[alpine sorrel]

same!!

very strange.

[mild jay]

On the one hand, being able to narrow it down to that specific case seems like it should help reproduce it. On the other hand that also sounds bizarrely specific

[brisk snow]

I think it happened a lot when I was doing my my death’s head AMR + Roland chamber + autoloader + crackshot build. I don’t know if it was specific to the AMR or if the vulture would also encounter it. Maybe when using hellfire or something

[alpine sorrel]

I think the way I'm going to approach fixing it is by adding more safeguards around having missed the "mouse exits tooltippable thing" event, like adding a realtime sanity check; "is the mouse over any UI right now? No? then I hope there's not a glossary tooltip active...."

My guess is that the inline glossary tooltip mouse-exit events aren't catching the case where their parent tooltip goes away before the mouse has moved off the highlighted word

[young sorrel]

Bug Report: I was fighting a Demolisher and it straight up damage resisted my shot for no reason. Here it has resistance to the Vulture shot, I shoot it with Andromeda on the same turn, and it digs in to resist the andromeda as well

...unless demolishers resist kinetic, shoot do they resist kinetic?

[stable smelt]

they resist melee weapons.

[alpine sorrel]

This one'll be a bit moot since Kai dropped Dig In from the rebaked demo... but we should keep an eye on it in case other "resist just this attack" effects don't expire when they should.

[young sorrel]

I have a save file but I finished the combat so unsure if you can glean any info from it

[stoic bloom]

@alpine sorrel Death Cloud from the Iskander is affecting allies and self

[stoic bloom]

also, i think the weapon mount listing on the structure table should still group the weapon by mounts, since one mount can destroy multiple weapons

[alpine sorrel]

yeah that one's been on our list for a while

[young sorrel]

Also also, 4 out of 5 auxspam builds agree, you should allow one repair to repair both weapons on a destroyed aux/aux or main/aux

[heady iris]

Oh boy

Yeah haven't tried the rest mechanic much

[thin lark]

While this would be lovely and feels like it would be most fun, especially given how they’re both destroyed in a single roll, it’s not how the core book does repairs. You pay per-weapon :(

[young sorrel]

That's true, but also, LT doesn't have to follow the rules of base Lancer exactly, there are some things that work differently, and this is a super common houserule

[thin lark]

Yeah, it’s one I’d absolutely support as well

[lethal leaf]

I've got a core bonus in my homebrew that does that, along with several other bonuses.

The other bonuses are "one lock-on benefits both weapons" and "one mod benefits both weapons".

[brisk snow]

How’s that work with like, thermal charge?

[lethal leaf]

It still uses the same pool of Limited Charges.

[young sorrel]

(Also, using Thermal Charge with a weapon attack that can't do bonus damage is usually not a good idea)

[lethal leaf]

It also shares X/turn, round, scene, or mission timers, so if you have UNCLE, you can attack with one of the weapons as a free action 1/turn.

[young sorrel]

Should probably discuss this in #homebrew-design, but suffice to say, allowing one repair to fix a mount wouldn't be overpowered and is a commonly used houserule

[brisk snow]

it does seem a little punishing for aux builds

[hazy ferry]

That seems silly to me, since you lose per mount

[thin lark]

Whenever I actually run lancer I have a list of house rules a page and a half long, so yeah I agree, but I also see the value I changing as little as possible so people are surprised the least

[fickle pecan]

I think thats less of a concern when its not really a nasty surprise ever

[alpine sorrel]

Still, as a general rule we're abstaining from intentionally making small PC-facing balance tweaks like that (unless it's needed for the adaptation).

[young sorrel]

10/10 mech names, as ever

Managed to get an autosave immediately after a damage resistance effect that should not have happened, assault used hunker down on the previous turn and the damage resistance carried over to my next character's turn

Achievement unlocked: Destroy an enemy mech by causing its reactor to melt down

[teal flame]

tbh for achievements you can probably ask to copy comp/con’s ones

[small panther]

Or just go have fun in https://discord.com/channels/426286410496999425/1232855341583306802 and see what'd be easy to implement

[alpine sorrel]

I've been secretly harvesting ones from there since the beginning. Most are "an unlikely dice thing happened" or narrative which I can't use, but there are some bangers

[small panther]

100% speedruns are gonna be wild with this one

[rain cipher]

Speed runners are going to love Pegasus. 100% consistent runs! Every time!

[heady iris]

i found a very broken bug today

lemme repro it rq

if you equip a main weapon with a mod and an aux with a mod in the same mount
the main weapon can use both mods and i got to use shock wreat twice in the same turn

-thanks to ashura for the extra actions

ooh! i just discovered i can ram size 2 wrecks outside the map limit but only by 1 square xD

[hazy ferry]

Wonder if you could then do that to size 2 mechs

[weak willow]

You mean size 3?

[hazy ferry]

No? It's a size 2 wreck that is happening to

I mean a living mech you control

[old pivot]

hey, dunno if this is a known bug, or just me misunderstanding things, but I have a goblin blistered onto another mech, the other mech walked past a berserker, and the berserker's overwatch attach hit the goblin rather than the mech that actually triggered it

[stable smelt]

that shouldn't happen(by core rules) yeah, the goblin isn't moving voluntarily

[old pivot]

also, the way the payload is working in the escort doesn't seem to be following the core rules? I.e. I can't daisy-chain the movement with it. Unless I'm doing something wrong

[brisk snow]

Bug Report: You still take full damage after bracing with Reactive Weave

[alpine sorrel]

Yeah right now it gets confused if two mechs share space when one triggers something

[alpine sorrel]

We had to make some tweaks because we don't distinguish standard movement really, but you should be able to daisy chain. What specifically are you seeing?

[old pivot]

vlad can move the objective 5 spaces (or I guess 7 if he picks it up behind him and places it in front) but then another friendly mech can only pick it up and then put it down again, not move with it

[alpine sorrel]

Ty, can you share an autosave?

[old pivot]

I'm not entirely sure how to do that, but I'll see what I can do

okay, I finished the mission I saw that in, so I don't have an autosave anymore. However, I can easily do that again. I presume you'd want a save from... just before? or just after? It happens

[old pivot]

okay, further testing suggests that I just didn't understand what I was looking at

[old pivot]

I think Iw as gettign confused about the way the payload can be rotated around a character but that still counts as part of the movement allotment for the payload. 100% operator error on my party, sorry for the false alarm

the goblin blister getting overwatched is still 100% a real bug though :p

I suspect that might have something to do with how you handle multiple units in a square? I had a similar thing where I had a unit inside a mobile bunker that got hit with the witch ability that forces you to attack an ally.... it picked an adjacent square, but it let me pick if I wanted to attack the ally in that square, or the bunker in that square

[old pivot]

is Death Cloud damage triggering on the guy on a lancaster when the lancaster moves a known bug?

...and for that matter, triggering on all friendlies

[alpine sorrel]

Listen, R&D is still ironing out some minor kinks

[old pivot]

hey, I love it

please do not take any observations as criticism

I have literally worked in the software development and deployment pipeline

I've been meaning to get the game for months and I only got it yesterday so I'm unclear what bugs are known and not

[alpine sorrel]

Oh haha I meant Harrison Armory R&D

🙂 I appreciate the bug reports a lot!

[old pivot]

I had a lot of fun making my players' PCs (or as close as possible with core book only) and seeing if they could survive Survive mode

[old pivot]

hey, in the map editor, how do you delete things?

[heady iris]

Iskander with this

[heady iris]

now that we can add an additional AI to our mechs i'm experimenting more with asura
and i tried to see how it works with Sekhmet

it does surprisingly well!
my mech did
2 nano carbon sword attacks (normal skirmish and overcharge)
1 chain axe (likely from sekhmet free skirmish)
1 from another axe on the third mount (barrage action)
and then rammed an enemy to use up the 4th action from asura

not sure why but sekhmet used the 3rd action to boost despite being already next to the targets to kill
i could've used that last action to heal with redundant systems

i have noticed some UI problems when using asura while having sekhmet active

when i pressed the asura protocol it would prompt me to choose a target even tho i didn't press the continue sekhmet button
then after that it didn't charge forward, but the other attack options opened up in the menu and weren't greyed out

in another game when pressing on the asura protocol with sekhmet active, sek would actually take over and start attacking an enemy that was adjacent to her

[thin lark]

Generally, you switch to the same toolbar that placed the thing, and then you right click on it

Of note, it only works on the same toolbar. If you want to delete terrain cuboids but you’re set up to place debris, it won’t work, only delete debris, and vice versa

[brisk snow]

Is that just activating asura protocol and then activating sekhmet?

[cyan crow]

Any uh, any plans for a “see spaces you can see and move to” before you commit to using a mech?

Weirdly enough a “high visibility square” option would probably be good enough…

[alpine sorrel]

Yes, it's on the list

[cyan crow]

I have trouble counting squares sometimes is all—- something that.. idk clearly drew little lines off each squares corners or similar would be really nice

No clue how hard that is to do, tbf

[alpine sorrel]

Or like being able to overlay a grid maybe?

[cyan crow]

Something like that, really
Mostly just.. easier to count squares and stuff.

Being only on when it’s held down is… fine
But it’s preferable that it’s a toggle, if possible

[old pivot]

hey, how do you get down off a Lancaster?

(the joke answer is "you don't, you get down off a duck", but I'm genuinely trying to work out how)

[alpine sorrel]

Oh did I focus too much on all the ways you fall off and forget to add a "step off" button?

[brisk snow]

there's a button for it

[old pivot]

I couldn't find it, I logged a bug report via the Google form with a save included

It was a size 3 Lancaster, so maybe that messed up something

[alpine sorrel]

I just checked, looks like the green everests are equipped with arcing weapons -- was it the burst launcher they were shooting with? Putting some guys down and checking with frag signal looked like the walls were blocking LOS correctly.

[stoic bloom]

i see i see

[old pivot]

Amusingly I only found this because I was playing around on the boarding action community map and discovered the hallways were too narrow for the bigger Lancaster... So I went to dismount and found myself unable to 🤣

[weak willow]

the ship being boarded developed advanced anti-lancaster paracausal technology

...as a result, dismounting was impossible because the walls were always too narrow, and they found that...

[brisk snow]

Ah. You will learn my pain.

[old pivot]

so that Lancaster belongs to the PC of one of my players

and all I can say is I'm glad for their sake that most of the campaign I'm running is outdoors

because they want that Size 3 lanny to cart the party Iskander around

[brisk snow]

Lanny is my fav so I’ve been finding all of the weird interactions with it. It’s fun! Doing my part in reporting

Size 2 paths are my only weakness

Also been enlightening on why jug3 is good in theory

[old pivot]

...I had not thought about that

I don't think it'd work with the build my player is going for, but I'll suggest it

[brisk snow]

It’s a little wonky still in lancer tactics but they’ll sort it out. The issue is usually that you can’t end your movement without being in a 3x3 space, so you can’t have like, 8 spaces and then the last space is on lower terrain or something, so jug3 theoretically lets you make space (and bust through walls in scenarios where you’re too beeg

[weak willow]

https://tenor.com/view/kool-aid-man-oh-yeah-gif-10117983411222945873

[hazy ferry]

Alternatively if you are playing with the Barbarossa, you can spontaneously decide to start urban replanning

[torpid orbit]

when you transport the extraction payload across dangerous terrain, is it supposed to die?

[alpine sorrel]

nope, fixed in the next build

gave it EVA and blanket invulnerability

[brisk snow]

Are you supposed to be able to climb with cable winch if you have people in your mule harness

[thin lark]

Nobody knows

The cable winch’s climbing abilities are an arcane and occult leftover from the paradigms before, and the details of their interactions can twist and scar the minds of mortal ken.

[heady iris]

Ah i see a metavault artefact

[hazy ferry]

Cable Winch has a max weight right?

[stable smelt]

max combined size.

[void hearth]

hey @alpine sorrel, sorry to bother but you're the person I know with the most experience in Godot (Lancer Tactics, obviously), and I was wondering if you might have any advice for a friend of mine who is also trying to make a tactics game in the engine.

So I'm running into an issue where I want units to have an _init function that takes in parameters so I can create them programmatically. However if I try to create units and place them in the editor it calls their _init function and crashes the game since it doesn't get the parameters for their _init.
They're currently experiencing this specific problem which prompted me to come ask, but general advice would also be appreciated!

[agile lagoon]

Not who you asked, but I hope I can help.

init requires a parameterless implementation; either a init() or a init(parameter = "default", allParamsDefined = true) style thing. This is because methods like preload call init by default and pass no parameters into it; it's not just called when the scene is ready

Instead of doing the setup code in init, which can be called by all sorts of places, there should instead be a dedicated method for it. Oftentimes these will be named setup() or something obvious but always consistent. Everything that needs to run through it's "I'm ready to start playing" script when it needs starting or resetting can have a setup or build method and be called only when everything is ready; make another Node that can take all these other nodes as an array and iterate over them, calling setup when the game starts.
-# This in computer science is close to the Builder pattern, with Godot's editor fulfilling the ability to add parameters to each object and this second Node type acting as Director. In C# consider making everything with a Setup or Build method the same Interface; gdscript doesn't have explicit interfaces as far as I know so duck-typing will suffice

The second step above this would be to have that second object be responsible for spawning these objects at runtime instead of just having a list of pre-existing nodes. Have it responsible for parsing some instructions, Instantiating new nodes through preload, passing parameters into them as necessary, and then when they're all spawned correctly calling these setup methods, so it can all be done programmatically from a single place.
-# This is the Factory pattern

[thin lark]

Godot often wants things initialized in the _ready() function as well, which only triggers when things are added to a running scene tree (I'm not sure whether adding them to the editor counts as an active scene tree or not)

A third and even more different way of handling it would be to give the objects some export parameters, inject all their various dependencies or data via those, and then specifically call your custom setup() function assuming everything will be filled in at those places so the object can depend on stuff being there. You can even add warnings to the editor if they're not filled in. Most of the built in nodes work this way, with collision stuff popping up that yellow triangle if there's not a CollisionShape attached for example.

Since Godot would sortof like you to do it that way, there's a LOT of editor support for it. Scenes can have temporary or permanent references or tables of data saved as associated with them which set up all of that stuff before the _ready() function is ever called by the scene tree. That's not to say that you -have- to use this, but it is easier, and then you can still fall back to doing all the initialization by hand if you really need it.

[agile lagoon]

The danger with just relying on _ready is that a) it's only ever called once, which means if you wanted to reuse these nodes later they won't get called, b) it always gets called at the start of the scene, whether you want it timed that way or not (and in an order that may not entirely be practical for you) and c) you'd have to ensure you manually put it in every node

but it makes for a strong start above putting things in init

[thin lark]

Mmm. I've found my _ready() function is often just something like:

  setupSubStuff(arg, thing)
  setupOtherStuff(foo)```
so I can call them manually if I need to elsewhere, especially when I'm making one myself and not relying on the scene tree.

(Or at least, the ready functions I actually -like-... let's not talk about those other messy ones that aren't, uh... ready, yet. :) )

(Tangentially: I really need to switch to an editor with easier refactoring support, godot's built in one you have to copy paste everything by hand and replace it with functions and so on. I got spoiled by using c# with resharper a lot back in the day... Presumably something has at least some stuff like that for gdscript by now.)

[agile lagoon]

Yep yep. It's just one of those inversion of control principles of ensuring that your game initialisation steps are done when you want them to; if having every node run setup() on ready() is something you're fine with, it works. Personally I've generally got a dozen other steps between "put things on the ground" and "start them all up"; particularly if any of them need to know about each other, so having some explicit seperation is important for me. But this is a valid way to work.
-# (I work in patterns so bare metal that I use godot only as the View in an MVC so I don't even have any game data in my nodes... but let's keep this somewhat anchored to godot since they asked 🙂 )

-# for my money every game studio I worked at reinvented the Game Loop pattern when working in Unity; rather than relying on Update and OnReady they would instead have the Game Controller god objects manually batch them and run them. This is better for the cache, controls the order of executions, easier to see where everything happens when adding additiona features, and easier to debug when race conditions happen, and so pooling everything is often the preferred option for structure and clean architecture, but comes at a trade off of requiring additional software engineering and being less intuitive.

[thin lark]

-# All of my best and most successful games (so maybe two actually finished small projects out of a dozen attempts) that felt in any way finished have always used pooling and one big controller object to manage all the other objects. Any time I've tried anything fancy with supposedly 'better' architecture it's always got messy and complicated and I got lost :) One of them was even written in what was effectively a modernized basic, and is still the most complete thing I've made.

[toxic badge]

my godot 2 cents: there's three "built-in" ways initialization happens:

• _init() is called on object creation.
• _enter_tree() is called immediately after a node is added to the scene tree, before children nodes get added or have _enter_tree() or _ready() called.
• _ready() is called after a node is added to the scene tree, after all child nodes have _enter_tree() and _ready() called. By default the engine only ever calls _ready() once, even if you remove the node and re-add it to the scene tree, but you can ask the engine to call it again via request_ready().
  Keep in mind _enter_tree() and _ready() only exist on classes that inherit from Node, while _init() is there for anything that inherits from Object. Understanding and using all three is very handy, I'd encourage learning enough to be comfortable with all of them.

I avoid adding parameters to any of those methods on node scripts that I want to add to a scene within the editor, for the exact reason that your friend experienced - the engine doesn't have arguments for them and can't handle it. For initialization of that sort of thing I generally rely on @exported fields that let me configure things from the scene editor - those fields can also be configured when initializing a node from code, so it doesn't matter which way I'm using it. Those exported fields can then be read and used inside _ready() or whatever to actually do the initialization whenever you need that to happen. I tend to do that rather than using a homemade setup() method since I can't bind arguments to a method if I'm adding a node to the scene in the editor (it makes it initializable via code only).

Side note, you may be better off using the official godot forums or the godot subreddit or either of the two big godot discord servers or any old gamedev discord server with a godot channel, rather than here 🤔 🤷

[void hearth]

I asked here because I knew of a specific person with experience on a generally similar project, since my friend was already checking the usual "just google it" places and having limited success.

[alpine sorrel]

I don't think I can give better advice than what's been given, since this particular problem doesn't sound like it's specific to the project/game type.

I gave a talk about the heaven/ghost/earth pattern I used to structure the project here, which may be of interest to your friend though it doesn't help with their current problem.

(with a shorter summary written here: https://wick.works/devlog/lancer-tactics-engine-chart)

[void hearth]

thanks!

[alpine sorrel]

Only the seeder is left with regard to implementing npcs+base kits... with a second wind I might be able to polish it off today. The next update is gonna have SO many bugs with so many new npcs.

[small panther]

Sounds like a job for me tbh, I love data collection

Also, with rebake seeder's mines working just like player mines, shouldn't it be pretty straightforward to implement ? The mines aren't even hidden anymore.

[alpine sorrel]

100%

Rebake stays winning

The most time consuming part of implementing most of the NPC systems has been telling the AI how to use the thing

eg I was able to use my off the shelf solutions for deploying barricade cubes, but had to do a bunch of extra work to make it smarter about where/when to place them

I think it'll be similar for the mines. Plus adding in some general AI to encourage everyone to knock players into mine triggers.

[small panther]

Oh right you have to give those guys brains.

Forgot about that somehow

Really looking forward to the next drop though, can't wait to see how everything turned out !

[gaunt plume]

I only recently just got around to sitting down and read through the entire Rebake book. This was one of the things that felt like a serious game changer. Can't wait to see the rebake fully implimented

also cant wait to see the operator and breacher in action. those were probably my favorites out of the book

[alpine sorrel]

I implemented the breacher this morning; watching it ramming through terrain and units is a lot of fun.

[proud dirge]

oh seeing him breach will be so cool in LT

[summer dragon]

Had an all time most hilarious interaction a few days ago with a barbarossa getting harassed by a hornet, the hornet wanted to stop the apocalypse rail from charging by grappling the barb and forgot a few things in the process

1: its size 1/2
2: its flying and because it lost the grapple it gets immediately immobilized
3: it had less than 3 health

And so the shortest hornet-barb grapple ended as soon as it began

[weak willow]

https://tenor.com/view/jump-skip-fall-epic-fail-playful-gif-16015832

Live hornet footage

[tepid temple]

Yeah that's what happens after you first bind Swift Step

[gaunt plume]

hell yeah. the breacher going up a size and its breach ram+painmaker combo is terrifying to think about and just makes me think of the AC6 reveal trailer moment

https://tenor.com/view/armored-core-ac-rubicon-armored-core-gif-27638347

[rain cipher]

(Man what a great trailer)

[torpid orbit]

So I just had a weird issue where an elite witch got stuck in the water and was so far away they couldnt do anything, so they just sat there for 4 turns not moving

[old pivot]

observation: when you export a pilot portrait, there's a single brown pixel off to the left

[old pivot]

okay, actually, that seems to be caused by something I selected on that one pilot, but I'm not sure what

[stoic bloom]

many such cases

[old pivot]

having observed something similar, I think what's happening is that it can't get out of the water due the combination of climbing being double movement cost and being in water doubling movement costs

meaning the unit cannot actually climb all the way out of the water in one move, so it's not a valid movement option

[stable smelt]

huh, movement out of water/difficult terrain shouldn't cost double

[rain cipher]

If so, I don't think that's right. Generally if things are halved or doubled, similar effects don't stack

[thin lark]

When you're in water, you're Slowed, and it also all counts as difficult terrain I think? And then climbing is ALSO a separate double, so climbing difficult terrain is actually, effectively, 4x cost? I vaguely remember something like that.

[hazy ferry]

As a goblin enjoyer, I love water

[brisk snow]

as a human I love water, couldn't live without it

[stable smelt]

right, but climbing out of difficult terrain shouldn't incur the penalty for it - it only costs extra to move into it.

[old pivot]

yeah, that matches my understanding (although said understanding could be flawed)

[hazy ferry]

I love water to force enemies to take a swim. You love water to drink.

We are not the same

[thin lark]

I am greatly looking forward to expanded enemy types. I think I’m going to try a bunch of Goliaths first, if they are available

[teal sundial]

coughing bomb vs hydrogen baby

[alpine sorrel]

I have uncovered a key weakness of the pyro firebreak shield due to the ability to move diagonally

[stable smelt]

lmao.

strictly speaking this would also be an issue for stasis barrier and magnetic shield so however you handle that might apply here?

[mild jay]

Augh. The curse of diagonal movement found a new way to manifest

[alpine sorrel]

since those are obstructions, the pathfinder knows it can't pass diagonally through them.

[stable smelt]

uh oh!

[alpine sorrel]

I think we'll just deploy some extra fire tiles to fill in the gaps for firebreak specifically

[stable smelt]

(strictly speaking that's not how diagonal movement in core works - you can totally 'slip' between two corners if it's not a solid object. which it sounds like you haven't handled directly)

this would also be an issue for the atlas's multi-gear system but thankfully you don't have to deal with that one

[burnt frigate]

Maybe I'm not reading this correctly, but if the idea is you can slip "between the cracks" on a diagonal AoE like this and not be affected by any sort of effect that doing so would cause, you really can't

like yeah you can move through firebreak because it's permeable, but not in a way that doesn't make you take burn for it

(the rebake implementation specifically)

[stable smelt]

yeah of course you should be affected if you try to slip through it this way

it's basically uhh, on a square grid two corners touching diagonally aren't blocking in lancer unless they're part of the same object/effect

slash 'if the GM says they are'

[burnt frigate]

it matters about landing ON a space I guess, like if you wanted to move in a way that doesn't end in you occupying the actual wall itself then it works, so you aren't starting a turn overlapping the space, but firebreak and similar effects mention "crossing the wall" as well

so it's kinda like yeah, even if you hopscotch your way diagonally through it, you're still gonna get burned

I'm assuming the issue here is more to keep allied AI from jumping through it

[stable smelt]

it's like, if these two big size two objects are big barrels, you can totally slip past. if they're one contiguous chunk of wall, you definitely can't. I think I've gotten too far into the weeds of stuff that probably can't really be modified at this point, please excuse me for bringing out the Diagrams

[alpine sorrel]

Heyyy who wants to do some free design work for us and throw me some stock opfors? I want to get a few more presets that show off all the new NPCs. All rebaked NPCs are on the table (no optionals yet) + Elite/Grunt/RPV/Commander templates.

Just post your list (probably no more than, like 8 NPCs? budgeting for 4 lancers?) + group name here and I'll pick a few to put in for the next build.

[thin lark]

I honestly think a randomly ordered set of one each of veteran elite everything is fun. It worked way better than I thought it would. I called mine Chewable Assortment (like you’d find on a vitamin assortment or something) and also randomised the portraits and colours for every NPC.

I also have other ideas for a less chaotic, more typical opponent list though, if you’d prefer that. Will post that later once I am at a computer to format things better and read the PDF.

[ashen kindle]

#1334655875679260692 message

Potentially with permission, Kai has been doing a bunch

With write ups

[alpine sorrel]

oh cool! 🤩

[thin lark]

Those ones did seem pretty cool

[brisk snow]

It sounds like you’re done with implementing the rebake then?

[small panther]

The base classes only for now

She said optionals aren't done yet

[burnt frigate]

Yep, go for it

Some of them rely a bit more on optionals than others, but you can probably get a good 4-5 out of there that work without well enough

[lilac anchor]

is this like, giving you NPC squads? Am I understanding the assignment right?

if so: The horde of grunt cataphracts and two snipers

[small panther]

Team name : Duck hunt
There's a bunch of dudes that go down in one hit flying across your screen and when you pop your head over the tallgrass cover after shooting a bunch of 'em you get domed in the head. This is assuming you are in fact the dog.

[glad lotus]

Cursed submission from one of my first GMs: 9 berserkers.

(Please, please don't do this)

[proud dirge]

dont do this.

[hazy ferry]

Me when I send them to The Maze

[small panther]

Honestly can't tell if rebake witch makes this better or worse

Wait it's a robot and not a human GM, who cares which is better this is heinous

[burnt frigate]

Probably pretty value neutral tbh

I'm also not 100% clear if olive's use of the rebake NPCs in Lancer Tactics also includes bespoke grunts

because if so, you'd have 16 controller types which are less heatgun oriented but I still probably wouldn't recommend it

[young sorrel]

Tempest Brigade
1x Elite Rainmaker
2x Scout
1x Hive
1x Commander Ace
1x Goliath

This is an opfor built around Lock-On, with two Scouts to locate enemies with Marker Rifle and set up for the Rainmaker and Ace, both of which gain special effects for consuming Lock On with their attacks. The Goliath attempts to pull player focus from its frailer allies and has good enough sensors to throw out a Lock On itself, while the Hive provides area control and Drone Barrage can force players into the Rainmaker's Skyhammer Salvo

[wind wolf]

coincidentally I'm using almost the same opfor for an encounter in my next mission - just replacing scouts with specters to capitalize off of goliath displacement with straight damage

[wind wolf]

used electro-nanite payloads on the hive to further emphasize moving away from the razor swarm, making it harder for players to disable specter's invis and succeed against other forced saves such as from goliath and rainmaker

[thin lark]

Nest and Dragons
1x Commander Veteran Goliath (is often also a Ship in tabletop usage)
2x Ace
2x Hornet
1x Support
2x Grunt Ace
2x Grunt Hornet

Ideally mix the grunts in with the stronger ones. Thematically supposed to represent a big mobile base sort of thing, and then fast strikers that deploy from that. Ideally the support hides behind the base and repairs it, and anything that survives long enough to get back there, while the aces and hornets go out and make attack runs, while the base slowly advances forwards and sits on an objective or something.

In Lancer Tactics order by deployment system I'd probably have it be CoVeGoliath, 1 ace, 1 hornet, the support, one each of grunts, then another ace and hornet, then another each of grunts, to make sure it all deploys evenly.

If optionals were in play, the hornets would definitely be getting Supersonic. Support would get Latch Drone, Aces would get Strafe, probably...

[glad lotus]

The Shining Guard
2x Veteran Cataphract
1x Support
2x Witch
1x Barricade
2x Grunt Scouts (or support-type). (For TT I made these flying vehicles as well)
2x Grunt Assault (or ranged striker-type)

Deployment wise, I'd probably keep 1 cataphract, 1 witch, and ~half the grunts for reinforcements.

If/when optionals are in play:

• cataphracts: capacitor discharge, vet self repair
• support: latch drone
• witches: chain, petrify (yes, nasty witches)
• barricades: hunger/pursuit limpets

[summer dragon]

-# stealthily stealing some of these opfor ideas for my own games...

[glad lotus]

Black Hands
1x Elite Veteran Operator
1x Mirage
2x Veteran Berserker
1x Veteran Hive
1x Priest
1x Witch
1x Exotic Commander Witch
1x Sniper

This one is decidedly above standard difficulty, lol. Tone it down to taste. When I ran this combat I used several Wallflower NPCs (lurkers instead of berserkers, spite instead of mirage, strider instead of sniper), so I'm not 100% sure about the comp. But it was a fun romp. 😉
For deployment, I'd start with the Operator, mirage, 1 berserker, and the hive and leave the rest for reinforcements.

[glad lotus]

Optionals:

• operator: singularity grenade, fade generator, vet lightning reflexes
• berserker: harpoon cannon, vet rending cleave
• hive: vet abrade
• witch: chain, petrify
• ex cmdr witch: chain, petrify, exotic chronotorus, cmdr bolster network

To slim it down, I think I'd drop the witch and sniper first

[lilac anchor]

MSMC JACKALOPE SQUAD
(Using the light blue as a primary and orange as secondary)
1x Ronin Veteran
1x Hornet
2x Scourer Grunt
1x Support
1x Assassin
2x Scout Grunt

[rain cipher]

Bash Bros and Co

• Elite Veteran Demolisher {Drag Cables, Parting Gift}
• Veteran Commander Breacher {Feign Death, Quick March}
• Mirage
• RPV Priest {Feedback}
• Hive {Electronanite Payloads}
  Reinforcements
• Hive {Electronanite Payloads}
• Mirage
• 4x Grunt Hornets
• Cataphract
• Commander Seeder {Grav Spike, Press On!}

2 nasty dudes and their support crew, who's jobs are either to enable them with movement, protect them or be annoying distractions. And their dad in the Seeder bringing up the rear.
It's a little high on the HP side and Im not fully up on how LT handles reinforcements, so might need some tweaking. It works as a base concept though I think. It's also heavy on the melee characters but hopefully the movement tech helps alleviate that.

[young sorrel]

More weirdness with resistance reactions: Dig In protected from the burn but not the energy

[lilac anchor]

Etruscan Royal Army

• 2x Cataphract
• 1x Ronin Elite
• 2x Assault Grunt
• 1x Scourer Grunt
• 1x Sniper
• 1x Archer
• 1x Priest

An antiquated fighting force fighting a local war with Union, the ERA specializes in a mostly striker focused combat doctrine, leaving them open to E-Warfare and other modern combat techniques. They will fight for their king, and probably die for him too.

[young sorrel]

Longest Dataveil transfer i've ever seen

[stiff spruce]

Anyone knows the canvas size of theses portraits ? I would love to try to draw my pilot like this

[thin lark]

looks to be about 100x100, from some basic pixel counting. Not exactly, I think that screenshot is 97x98 or something, but 100x100 is close.

[stiff spruce]

Yeah by the look of it i also thought it was 128x128

I didnt had the time to try it...!!

[stiff spruce]

The resolution is 95x95

[alpine sorrel]

updated the unit xray shader today

[old pivot]

looks really good

[tulip peak]

Also a secret new Sherman sprite

[heady iris]

can we select enemies through terrain now? xD

[alpine sorrel]

Not select just see

[weak willow]

And a metalmark, it looks like!

The grass is maravioso

[tulip peak]

Oh yeah, Ive been slamming out so many that I forgot which weren't in the last release

[rain cipher]

ah metallic Marcus

[hearty helm]

I wonder if its possible to run Lancer tactics on a PSP

Probably not but uh

Would be cool

Imagine

[hazy ferry]

I can't imagine it is impossible

Would take some work though

[hearty helm]

Probably, it might not run well

But if its like

Doable

It would be my go to

To play the game

But the new FFT remake has got me excited for this project

[stiff spruce]

Depend on a lot of stuff

But I think it is possible to

[alpine sorrel]

Do you know if folks have gotten other Godot games running on PSP?

[thin lark]

There's quite a few linux-running devices that are portable nowadays. And a couple of windows ones.

There's also, according to the internet, an open source version of the PSP SDK, so it would be -possible- (but a lot of work and a massive amount of hassle) to compile something for PSP with Godot. In theory.

Probably weeks or months of work just to get hello world working (hah, no, of course, they actually have a sample project for this so no, it'd be a few hours or days to get it working on your PSP I guess), and then a further year to get anything with 3d graphics...

Someone has apparently got the PICO-8 version of Celeste to run on their PSP, for example.

Looks like someone did the work for godot version 2 a few years back. Can't find anything suggesting they updated it though.

[ashen kindle]

If LT works with a controller it could probs work on a steam deck...

But the decks customisable so that's probably not even necessary

Actually just looking at the controls on the itch page they could easily be bound...

[thin lark]

You can just use a mouse with a steam deck, you know. It has bluetooth :)

Probably it works fine if you don't use one, also, there's a default control scheme where one of the pads pretends it's a mouse. Not sure how much fun it would be to play it like that but it would work.

[old pivot]

hey, this is less a Bug thing and more a Quality of Life thing - is there some way to tell what debuffs a character has on them before you pick them to go next? I keep forgetting who's braced or has stunned or whatever

[alpine sorrel]

Pre-activation unit inspection is high on our list for after the next release

Along with replacing the default click-to-move after activating with a click-to-inspect

(instead moving by a button in said inspector or a dedicated button on the action bar)

[ashen kindle]

The track pads are solid for working as a mouse

[stiff spruce]

I'll share it when it's finished but... It looks good

At least it's a good practice

[tulip peak]

Yeah steamdeck's trackpads along with touchscreen are good for mouse inputs

[alpine sorrel]

Hello fellow mac user. Would you be down to help me test something out? Godot 4.5 broke rendering on my macbook and I'm trying to figure out if it's because I have an intel chip. If you've got a more recent mac that has an apple silicon chip, can I send you a build to see if it crashes?

[proud dirge]

hello

i would love to help

i have a 2021 macbook pro with apple m1 chip

[alpine sorrel]

perfect, I'll dm you a download link 🙏

[young sorrel]

Spoken like an alien with a mustache and glasses disguise would say "Greetings fellow humans"

[heady iris]

[proud dirge]

hardlight bubble is crazy

just put up a thunderdome on the objective and wait for the opps to walk into it and get massacred one by one

[alpine sorrel]

I don't think it'll make it into the next build, but I spent the evening prototyping a new color picker system with a lot more options. The top section lets you pick a base color, then the bottom palettes let you pick a "tone ramp" that modify how that color gets lighter and darker.

each handcrafted palette that we currently have is individually better imo, but I've been hurting for a wider array of options

[stable smelt]

that seems pretty versatile! I always think handcrafted can look better but the tone ramp is like, half of the work that goes into handcrafting colors like this imo so that's a great thing to have

[sand goblet]

that's sick

[lilac anchor]

Awesome as hell

[proud dirge]

sick af

[wraith cradle]

Hell yeah!!! Gonna love having more color options.

[glad lotus]

That's incredible, dang

The tone ramp is not a thing I remember seeing before, brilliant

[alpine sorrel]

New build is up: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/wickworks/lancer-tactics/posts/4548150

It's got a few really noteable changes:

• new build for linux+mac (including a compatibility mode for old macs like mine)
• a first pass at all the NPCs in their rebaked form, sans optionals
• you can upload and download other player's maps via an ingame modal, hosted on mod.io. Many of the previous community maps have already been added to the repository

[flint portal]

it has the first draft of the maps I made for Lancer Tactics in btw!

These ones

[alpine sorrel]

Oh yeah I forgot to call that out in the update! These are maps that we'll be using for the first campaign, so we're hoping to get some preliminary playtest data on how they flow.

[flint portal]

A lot of them are still kinda in the blocking stage (as in, using colored blocks instead of props where I could probably use props)

[proud dirge]

WOOO NEW LT BUILD!!!! GO OLIVE!!!!!

https://tenor.com/view/zelda-triforce-heroes-gif-25707819

[young sorrel]

You spoil us

[young sorrel]

You also spoil us

[thin lark]

Just when I think the build isn't releasing soon and stop checking the thread obsessively every couple of hours! Thanks!

[young sorrel]

Looks so freaking cool

[proud dirge]

thisgoes so tuff

mac version is saying that disk image is damaged?

[alpine sorrel]

Uh oh, I'll take a look

Hm I'm not seeing anything wrong with it. Is it a Mac security thing maybe?

Weird that it didn't trip on the last one I sent.

My recc would be to try downloading it via the itch app, which I believe manages talking to the mac's security

[proud dirge]

ya its not giving me the security popup like it normall does

[alpine sorrel]

I'll rebuild it when I get home. 👍

[thin lark]

... it's so WEIRD seeing things that aren't assaults and hornets and the occasional mirage or witch or demolisher.

Also the icons for systems are really nice.

Bug report: Napalm grenade shows up twice for some reason? But can't be selected. Is on an old pilot from the previous version, if that matters

[old pivot]

hey, what's the deal with the .dmg files? I am unclear what I'm supposed to download

oh, wait, I think I worked it out

[thin lark]

I am fighting a goliath and we squashed everything around it and did loads of damage and it's still sitting there on half health on the objective applying Crush Targetting to stuff... and it has three structure! This is hilarious and fun and how am I ever going to get RID of it?

... I thought Puppet Systems would work, but it will not target. Perhaps because it has Heavy Frame? That said, Puppet Systems specifically says it isn't pushing, pulling, or knockback, which are the things Heavy Frame prevents...

Bug Report: Targetting Goliath with Puppet Systems does not work - other tech attacks or normal attacks do target, so I suspect Heavy Frame is blocking it. It should block everything except Puppet Systems and presumably the Hurl into the Duat gate thing that allows you to control enemy movement.

[old pivot]

Word of Tom is that Heavy Frame blocks Puppet Systems, despite how it's written, so LT is working as per the tabletop game in this instance

[small panther]

even then, you should still technically be able to target it with puppet systems, it'll just apply the 2 heat and then block the move.

especially with the whole "you choose the invade option after hitting" thing, even if the game isn't doing that (and is better for it)

[old pivot]

Oooh, I see, it's preventing targetting. Okay, you make a good point there

on the other hand, that might be intended to prevent a Feels Bad by stopping you doing something that won't achieve the main effect?

[thin lark]

Ok, then... the game needs to say that. I wasn't aware of that word of tom, and the game's text says "This blocks X, Y, and Z" and the puppet systems instead says "This doesn't count as X, Y, or Z"

Suggestion: Heavy Frame should include "or Puppet Systems" if it works on Puppet Systems :)

[small panther]

if I'm reading this correctly and it is blocking targetting and not the move, that is. Also if it's blocking the 2 heat on hit that's also wrong.

[stable smelt]

my honest solution to this is to just make puppet systems a Push with the explicit 'triggers reactions obeys engagement' text

[thin lark]

No, I agree with JamJar that if it isn't supposed to work, it shouldn't allow the targetting

You can always FragSys instead, and that's always better against something with heavy frame if it's not going to let you Puppet.

[stable smelt]

(this is functionally identical)

[thin lark]

It's just it reads like it absolutely will work, because it has a specific exception carved out. And then it doesn't

Could also just reword Heavy Frame to be "prevents any Involuntary movement or prone from smaller targets" instead of having specifics.

[small panther]

Honestly the real fixes would either be axing that line from puppet systems (since it doesn't do anything) or adjusting the wording of heavy frame and heavy frame-type effects to "immune to prone and non-teleport involuntary movement from smaller characters" like they were always meant to be.

[flint portal]

I think the exact solution can be left out for olive to figure out imo

[small panther]

I was writing something along those lines yeah, but you said it better. At the end of the day Lancer's just like that sometimes and this is a port of it; at this point it's more an issue with Lancer than with Lancer Tactics.

[flint portal]

It is good to bring up as a point of friction tho

[thin lark]

True, but since Lancer Tactics is already changing a few very minor things (and several not so minor things) it can have different wording that doesn't confuse people that don't remember or don't know that rule. It should ideally be possible to play Lancer Tactics without ever knowing the Lancer FAQ exists, reading the rule popups ingame and such.

[small panther]

I mean yeah there's definitely something going on here, I just don't know if it's a bug, a feature, or a QoL thing. I'll do some testing of the new version tomorrow I think.

[burnt frigate]

It doesn't prevent teleportation is the thing

This is the crux of the Demolisher/Mirage combo among others

[flint portal]

I don't think anyone is disagreeing with that, more so that the exact nature of the "solution" can probably be left up to the Lancer Tactics team to figure out

[thin lark]

smh. headdesk. Well I hate it now :) But yeah, ok, that does seem useful... yeah, I'll stop talking about it now for someone to decide what to do, now it's obvious that it's pretty confusing. I'll restate that the current behaviour of can't target and waste action is far better than wasting an action that doesn't work, but whatever solution is chosen should ideally communicate back to the player why it isn't doing that, either via reading tooltips or some sort of popup saying heavy frame prevents it.

(It's probably good that the Goliath is not so easily moved, mind you. From an actual design/how should things work standpoint, it's almost certainly a good thing)

[heady iris]

i like how it works now
maybe in the future there could be a feature that tells you why you can't target a character because of "ability"

[thin lark]

Bug Report: Ally triggered a smoke mine, but smoke went away at end of laying character's next turn, not triggering character's next turn

[heady iris]

interesting bug

i actually didn't know smoke mine worked like that

[thin lark]

Given I took that turn next it was very short feeling indeed :)

[thin lark]

Might be a bug?: No sound when firing Krakatoa flamethrower

[alpine sorrel]

OK just updated the build with codesigning totally disabled. I think my $100 that I paid apple last year for whitelisting LT (which never ended up working) finally wore off and the partial machinery for it became a blocking problem. Lmk if the new download is also blocked

[thin lark]

Should I be able to jump up here? I'm unsure what two stacked cubes in this count as, height wise... are they height 2? I think they're height 1, though.

Didn't start adjacent to it, so that may be why

[stable smelt]

I think that's height 2?

[flint portal]

That's def a height 2 building

[thin lark]

The Shining Guard was an absolute slog to fight, in a good way. At one point there were three witches on the field, and the rebake witches being invisible to targets in the danger zone was brutal. Everyone was (I presume) constantly getting reactor overload warning sirens and shooting each other in the back.

Not a huge issue, but perhaps worth noting - I'm not sure any of the current opposition groups include any Engineers, Spectres, or Aegis.

[glad lotus]

Oh shit, I forgot that my opfors are in this build! Now I really need to get to giving it a spin so I can taste my own medicine, lol.

[alpine sorrel]

The thought crossed my mind to double check how much coverage we were getting but I never got around to it. I'm open to suggestions to fill that gap in the next build.

[stable smelt]

an engineer aegis pairing would be pretty good. and it shows off the rebake aegis's weakness to AoE attacks pretty well. at least if the engineer places turrets in the Zone

[burnt frigate]

this might be a bit "can the AI do this effectively the same way a GM can" but I think Engineers also pair well with Bombards because turrets count for amplifying Cluster Munitions and the Engineer can just always make more

I have an opfor writeup I'm working on that uses this

[stable smelt]

oh the AI probably won't be good at it but I love that

[glad lotus]

Elite veteran operators are nasty, who put that in this opfor?

I'm playing at tier 2, so it crits most of the time. My gorgon had to Stabilize last round because 18 burn.

I did a double- and triple-take at that

[burnt frigate]

beats 7x4 damage though

[glad lotus]

Yeah, it's true

[glad lotus]

(It was me, I did that)

[worn tiger]

Simply rock a lancaster and watch the operator desperately try and make sure you're in cover so it has difficulty on the shots and won't crit

rebake operator vs burn-immune targets is a really funny interaction

[glad lotus]

Haha, that's really amusing

Also, in hindsight, I should've sent the manticore after the operator instead of the metalmark

[burnt frigate]

Honorable spec ops on spec ops combat

[weak willow]

New Opfors are so cool

It feels like a whole new game. You have to play with all of your options and the enemies aren't only trying to damage you, which is a breath of fresh air

A pair of witches made my Tortuga daisy-cutter my Raleigh twice in a single turn though 😢. He only lived because the second shot missed by some miracle 🙏

Then the next turn one of them Predatory Logic'd their own Operator teammate to get another shot off at me. I really appreciated the evilness of that one

https://tenor.com/view/mojojojo-mojo-jojo-powerpuffgirls-evil-gif-10021241

[alpine sorrel]

I've been surprised by how common a tactic that is for the ai witches. It makes me think I'm not doing it enough as a GM.

[weak willow]

It made me take the whole mission a lot more seriously than I was a turn before, that is for sure

[burnt frigate]

This might actually be a bit of a bug under rebake rules

The rebake version of Predatory Logic specifies hostile characters only, so you can't use the Witch as a surrogate Warlord for your own allied units

Normally I'm a big Warlord advocate, BUT in this case I felt like having Predatory Logic do everything it does AND also be a roundabout ally attack juicer was a bit much in one, hence the adjustment

Now as you've mentioned before, you aren't necessarily beholden to doing things with perfect 1-1 fidelity, as noted in your devposts the tweaks to Predatory Logic that interact with Brace probably aren't going to work the same given you've overhauled how Brace works, that sort of thing, so if you decide you'd rather keep that interaction then that's your prerogative, but I figured I'd point it out

[alpine sorrel]

oh fr? I missed that change.

My approach has been to cleave to the rebake's take by default unless given a reason otherwise

[burnt frigate]

I didn't really mention it in the design notes, I probably should have

so it's a "blink and you miss it" wording change

[alpine sorrel]

My experience has been that it's an interesting "oh shit" surprise, but only because I'm so used to it working as typical. I could be persuaded either way if we think that makes for better gameplay, but thinking about it at minimum I'd probably give the AI a hefty decision score penalty for doing so.

[burnt frigate]

At the very least, you don't have to worry about it giving tier-scaling multiattackers an additional flurry of attacks at higher tiers. I don't know if it's a use I would consider, like, exploitably powerful, but I kind of class it in the same vein as my Avenger changes (not that you're working with Wallflower stuff) where I tied off the loophole that let you kill your own guys to trigger Revenge; it may not be BROKEN per se, but I don't find it as INTERESTING (speaking for myself personally, all disclaimers disclaimed, etc)

[summer dragon]

the avenger technically being able to commissar its buddies to activate its traits for free is hilarious to me, actually doing the "who killed hannibal" bit on the battlefield

but its only funny if it happens incidentally rather than building an entire encounter on the idea that the avenger WILL be doing it tbh

[burnt frigate]

I think with the Avenger, my issue with it (moreso than Predatory Logic, though there's an element of that there as well) is it turns an interactable element of the NPC into a non-interactable one

The Avenger shoots one of its buddies and procs Revenge and that's that, you didn't have a say in it, the end

[summer dragon]

yeah absolutely, the entire class is meant to make it play like a defender and punish you for trying to get around it, killing its own allies just defeats the entire point of the class from both a class vibe and at an actual mechanics level

[burnt frigate]

"Do you deal with the Avenger and try to burn it down before it goes apeshit, do you rip the bandage off to damage race it down faster, do you accidentally trigger it, etc" are all cornerstone elements of what the Avenger is trying to do as an NPC, forcing the players to weigh tactical considerations, but if the Avenger can just push a button and do it themselves then that undercuts that premise

There's a BIT of that with Predatory Logic, at least out of the book (not sure how the Lancer Tactics version fully works with its own changes) where the Witch has to work around players packing superheavy weapons (can't hijack those) or unloaded Loading weapons, PC positions and ranges, etc, to find the ideal target, then that person can decide to Brace or not, etc

while doing the warlord thing is less about that and more just "pick your guy with the nicest non-superheavy gun and hope you hit the attack roll"

[old pivot]

speaking of NPC AI vs GM piloting: I noticed a thing in one of the fan-made maps where a Ronin spawned on a high location and the only path down led it to move further away from the PCs... so it never moved off the high ground and just did tech attacks and lock ons

[worn tiger]

Extremely funny anecdote regarding pred logic from the other day, where my buddy used pred logic and then when figuring out who he was gonna hit it on realized there were 0 good options

The only two ranged heavy weapons in the party are AMRs, both were unloaded, and those characters are both set up for nexus spam with their other mounts. The everest is almost entirely melee with only a thermal rifle for ranged, and none of us were within 5. So it came down to me, my melee main/aux (with none of my friends in threat), and my backup assault rifle.

[burnt frigate]

he is meditating atop the mountain, thank you

[worn tiger]

if you went up there he woulda beat your ass

but you didn't so he just dispensed wisdom (targeting data) to his disciples

[old pivot]

hey, should the rainmaker be throwing all three attacks at the same character?

[burnt frigate]

nope

it has to spread its attacks out, it's "can attack 1-3 targets at a time," not "can make 1-3 attacks at a time"

[old pivot]

that's what I thought. It's been throwing all three attacks at my lancaster every turn

wait, let me check the log before I claim this

the lancaster is very big, it's possible I'm understanding what I'm looking at

no, its definitely putting all three attacks on the same target

[alpine sorrel]

definite bug, sick

brutal

[old pivot]

I also observe two issues with the hive drone swarm area: 1 it doesn't put it on top of PCs. 2 it's REALLY hard to see

[burnt frigate]

As in, it doesn't MOVE it onto PCs or it doesn't deploy it directly onto them?

it can't do the latter, it CAN do the former

[old pivot]

okay, so I meant the latter, but apparently I've been running hives wrong

having said that, it is also not doing the former

[burnt frigate]

yeah, razor swarms have to deploy in a free area

and that means the whole of the area

but once deployed, it can move it with the 2 space start-of-turn movement wherever it wants, which includes overlapping with characters

(the rebake version can, crb can do this with Motile Swarm)

[old pivot]

another odd thing:

I have a formorian Lancaster, with an Iskander riding it, with an allied Nelson next to it. Nelson tries to initiate a grapple, intending to get dragged along on the Lancaster's next movement.

(I accidentally did some damage to the Lancaster due to Momentum)

...but then the Iskander fell off the Lancaster and took 6 damage for some reason?

and now they're under the level

[stable smelt]

huh, that shouldn't happen. the lancaster is larger than you, so the grapple should not immobilize it unless you had synthetic muscle netting.

[old pivot]

nope, no Blackbeard levels

I put in a bug report with save state etc

it also appears that Aces can't work out how to navigate on maps with un-fly-over-able walls

this is amazing - the iskander under the level keeps popping back up and then going back down again as I go near terrain. He's taken more damage from repeated "falls" than the enemies have dealt

[burnt frigate]

the earth is punishing him for his flagrant minelaying

[torpid orbit]

if I download the itch io map can I get the updates to the game automatically?

[thin lark]

The itch.io app should do that, yeah

If that’s what you meant? (You can now download maps, in game, so it’s mildly unclear)

[old pivot]

I think Ozu is asking if the itch.io app, the itch equivalent to Steam, will auto-acquire updates to LT

(I don't know the answer to the question, but I am fairly certain I understood the question at least)

[torpid orbit]

mostly cause I want to migrate to using the ap if such a thing is true, but I dont want to erase my previous pilot data

[thin lark]

You can copy the pilot data over anyway, but I’m pretty confident it’ll use the same directory

That’s the upshot for it being in appdata, it finds it wherever the game is installed and just uses one save location

[teal sundial]

the spectre's vibes translate super well into the video game medium; the shorter timeframes and invisibility effects makes it really feel like its prowling around the battlefield

the ronin also has unbelievable aura but i think that is primarily just a product of the sprite art

[thin lark]

The shorter turn times make bigger sitreps work rather well. I was thinking about the duel vs three witches and two veteran cataphracts I had last night, with some grunt scouts and assaults and stuff as well, on the train yard map (good map btw), and thinking it would probably have taken somewhere between three to eight hours on tabletop

(Four player lancers, usually about six or seven activations of enemies on the field most rounds…)

[teal sundial]

how long did it take you?

[thin lark]

I wasn’t playing very fast, but slightly less than three hours I think. I could have gone faster if I wasn’t also sometimes doing other bits :)

I’d estimate it took 2:30, and if I’d been concentrating I could have got it done in 90 minutes probably.

(I took the full 8 rounds and only barely made it. Had a Ghengis of all things pushing the payload, because the witches were totally bullying my poor Pegasus)

Also of note, used the heavy flame four or five times, only rolled higher than a 7 once. Lancer is so d20 dependent unless you focus hard on stacking the dice, and EVEN WHEN you do that, if you roll a 3 it’s just a big miss.

I mean I also got 13, 16, 14 for Mimic gun, which is probably -why- the witches were bullying the Pegasus, so it’s all ups and downs, but still :)

[proud dirge]

still says both mac builds are broken

[stoic bloom]

this is why the classic Operator telefrag into an enemy near the avenger anf die in front of it is funnier imo

[lilac anchor]

hey, new build is here? awesome!

[lilac anchor]

wait i couldve been doing this the whole time???

That tactic is INSANE the AI witches are crazy

[burnt frigate]

it's a CRB thing yeah

[orchid pendant]

It's something that technically can be done, but tbh it always feels like it's unintentional wording and goes against the controller bit of the witch. It just means your Witch now becomes a Striker/Artillery with the highest damage weapon on the team.

[lethal leaf]

Yeah, the player variant can only target hostile characters.

[burnt frigate]

Note that you do have to roll and hit with predatory logic, NPCs don't get the "auto-hit allies with tech stuff" that the PC side Invade action gets

again, this is a thing that the rebake version specifically disallows

[lethal leaf]

How bad would it be if Law of Blades could target allies?

[orchid pendant]

Yeah, it's not auto, but there's less ability to counterplay like breaking LOS to your allies or whatever.

[burnt frigate]

genuine question, is this rhetorical or actual speculation?

[lethal leaf]

An actual question. It'd mean the Stabilize option actually meant something.

[burnt frigate]

The answer is that in a lot of respects it probably wouldn't be broken on the surface, BUT it would be something that's very hard to monitor with compounding effects like "if someone boosts, they also get to do X, which also lets them do Y, etc"

and then the attack component, Predator/Prey Concepts, gets even more out of hand

basically, the thing about 4E's Warlord class is that it and various things that hooked into it were designed to do so in a way that Lancer doesn't have

the concept of "basic attacks" don't exist in Lancer, and so "give an ally an attack" ranges from a 1d3 pistol to a 2d6+4 HMG with no differentiation

being an action donating guy is something that would probably work better as a frame-locked thing rather than a system, but I think the other big element of it is the risk of creating perverse incentives

like what DataMoth mentioned, Predatory Logic being ally-facilitating means that the Witch now sidelines in being a striker, and if you have the right sort of NPC in your comp (say, a high-tier Operator) then rather than use the shoot-your-allies ability for that purpose, it becomes much more inviting to simply use it as the Striker Damage Optimizer

and I see the same sort of thing arising with Law of Blades where my guess is it would be vastly more distorted around using it to maximize allied PC output over using it as a hostile hacking tool

this is orthogonal to "is Law of Blades worth doing X to an NPC," do you want to spend a full action to force an NPC to stabilize? 99% of the time probably not, I'm not going to argue that this is slept on tech, just that I think "well let it be used on allies" is one of those hacks that SEEMS like the right idea on the surface, but that I expect wouldn't really create a lot of healthy outcomes

I think there's a world where law of blades could be reworked into something that allows that sort of "use on an ally or an enemy" dynamic in part, but I think it'd need more adjustment than a simple targeting clause change, and I also don't think that with lancer as it exists that "let your HMG pal shoot their HMG more" is what the game really needs more of either

Again, I'm a huge Warlord fan, I think the lack of games that just straight-up copy the 4E Warlord is a huge missed opportunity, but I think it's the sort of thing if you're gonna include it in your game that you need to be much more foundational with from the outset

[teal sundial]

I think spotter 2 and 3 arent working here

[alpine sorrel]

Speaking of warlord mechanics

[summer dragon]

The thing is tho using your full action to give an ally an attack DOES exist in lancer already at spotter 3 (and its ludicrously strong which proves the point lol)

Very funny timing on the spotter bug report yeah

[alpine sorrel]

I think I want to prune off the general warlord discussion here, there's other threads to talk design

[spiral nova]

I'm having this problem as well - anyone figure out a way to fix it

[alpine sorrel]

I did some tests today with a friend's MacBook and couldn't repro; the dmg download opened fine. So I'm somewhat stumped

[spiral nova]

i’m downloading the newest macos and i’ll lyk if it happens again

i’m a 2022 mac on a M2 so it may be different systems?

I’ll also scrub through and delete all the other lancer tactics stuff

[weak willow]

God Given with The Shining Guard Opfor is tough, failed it 3 times so far

gonna have to specialize

Escort mission type

[proud dirge]

death cloud dealt damage to a razor swarm and destroyed it, is this allowed?

[alpine sorrel]

Haha nope

[spiral nova]

still aint working :c

Is the size of the dmg supposed to be different?

What was your friends mac specs?

[alpine sorrel]

Nooooooo 😖 I didn't check the year but it was a silicon chip because the non-compat mode played just fine.

ty for testing.............. very frustrating

"it works on my machine + my friend's machines"

The fact that it's a different size on itch vs downloaded is very strange

[spiral nova]

OOF nw at all- is this fixable or are us mac users cursed to keep waiting?

fuck mac fr

[glad lotus]

General question for olive/the team - is it worth posting AARs or observations on NPC behaviour? Is that a kind if feedback you want fir tuning the AI?

For example, operator engaged by a metalmark with nanocarbon blade alternated its 2nd action between ram, grapple, and lock on. Not quite sure what the "goal" of the grapple was, in particular. It gave up the grapple on its following turn.

[weak willow]

Finally did it- nelson/gorgon was the key

[glad lotus]

1st action was always "shoot the Metalmark", which definitely makes sense. It was annoying that the engagement penalty didn't prevent any hits from that, lol.

I'm curious which parts of Shining Guard were the most troublesome?

[weak willow]

the double vet cataphracts locked down some teamcomps and it just turned into a slog, no way to push through. I had to drop a support mech and bring an artillery in order to 1-round each cata and keep pushing forward

[proud dirge]

olive tested 0.4.6 on me and it worked, im using it rn

[glad lotus]

Did you have a goblin/puppet systems?

Puppet systems is kinda hilarious on cataphracts

[weak willow]

double actually, was running Minotaur and hacktuga

[glad lotus]

Hmm, interesting

Olive, it's come to my attention that the main page text on itch is out of date re: content completion status. 😉

[weak willow]

Tlaloc showing up behind this weapon card display

ohhh wait I can just click on it and it pops up

to the front

[spiral nova]

Oh hell yeah do you mind sending / dming me the dmg file? I can only access 0.4.7 in itch I think

tysm!!

[glad lotus]

Bug report: the Barricade printed a cube that covered the space the Metalmark was standing in. Metalmark ended up on top of the cube. Not sure if the autosave is early enough.

[alpine sorrel]

My top priority on Monday will be getting the dmgs fixed.

[spiral nova]

0.4.6 works for me, just opened it now. Thank you for all your work Olive!

[alpine sorrel]

What does AAR mean? But yes, if they're doing notably wacky things I'd like to hear about it

It'll be lower priority to fix but it's useful to know where they're weak

[glad lotus]

After Action Report

Fancy name for when you do a write up of how a combat went

Bug report: witch used Predatory Logic to attack with the vorpal gun. Pretty sure that shouldn't be allowed given vorpal's special rules?

[alpine sorrel]

Hah yeah nope

[glad lotus]

This Barricade has printed a cube in the same spot 3 times now. Maybe something up with its decision/targeting logic?

Make that 4 times. It really feels that spot needs fortification, lol.

[proud dirge]

ya my barricades have been reprinting cubes in the same spot

[weak willow]

same

but Drag Down is no joke if you forget it's on your guy

casual 10 damage

[glad lotus]

Drag down is hands down the best barricade system, I love using it

[glad lotus]

I'm not quite sure what happened here for Stonefire. At the end of combat he was exposed and IIRC at 1/4 stress. Post-combat it shows his mech as destroyed but with 3/4 structure and 22/25 hp. Not sure if the autosave helps for post-combat stuff?

Bug report: fold knife is range 1 instead of threat 1

Oh wait, it has a special quick action that's threat 1. Is that something to make the crit teleport work properly?

Also maybe bug report: my manticore melted down and went kaboom, but the pilot was still available and the mech repairable for the next combat. 😉

[proud dirge]

DRAG DOWN IS SO CRAZY

[thin lark]

Log might help in this “what just happened” sort of case? I mean it might not but it’s good to take a copy before it fills up with other stuff, just in case. I can’t speak to Olive’s debug process but if you look in the log there is a detailed description of all actions taken in there…

(Up one directory from where auto save is, and then down in a folder called logs. One is the main one and most recent, others are probably backups by date I think)

[flint portal]

Leave it alone it’s playing minecraft!!!!

How have you been finding the maps btw

They’re named after the songs i listened to while making them btw

[glad lotus]

Good call, I'll check on that later today.

[glad lotus]

I quite liked it! Played a Holdout so we were parked in the middle from the start, with opfor coming in from the two opposite narrow ends. There was some nice cover available in both directions without feeling like it made movement really difficult.

[alpine sorrel]

oh haha that makes sense. I totally forgot to implement any sort of flag for this.

[glad lotus]

The smaller size of the map meant that long ranged stuff could reach immediately (my Goblin never left the OZ, witches & barricades slung tech attacks from the ingress zones). I've come to prefer a bit tighter maps like that in my TT games, so it suited that preference.

[glad lotus]

it's ok, he's a flash clone now

[alpine sorrel]

speaking of, I have no idea how we're going to handle this for campaign modules and I'm open to suggestions. The problem being that for any campaign module that allows player control over builds and is LL 2+, every fight has the potential outcome of explicitly totally killing off the entire party.

Maybe we disable castigation state for campaigns?

[stoic bloom]

sometimes it do be like that

maybe having an option for different types of failures or losing

[alpine sorrel]

The module engine does allow things to branch/do whatever it wants on defeat, but a in-combat character death is a pretty extreme narrative thing that I don't think we can support for the sake of a niche ability.

[thin lark]

The flash clone approach does seem the most reliably applicable to all situations. Maybe have some sort of increasing negative talent for cloning decay?

Could have that as a general approach if pilot ejection and/or death is wanted in the campaign maybe? That or a “you lost due to no pilots” end state, I suppose.

[tepid temple]

What FE does is that while your rank-and-file can perma die, and your lords dying is a lose con, anyone who has so much as a bit role in the story has plot armor and is merely crippled such that they can no longer participate in combat ever again. The problem with this approach, of course, is that Tom will break into your house and take your kneecaps for cheating castigation

[fair pike]

Say, can anyone figure out how to save groups? I'm trying to save this NPC squad but whenever I click save, the file explorer pops up, I click 'save' and the file doesn't appear.

[young sorrel]

Remind me how to redownload the new version?

[young sorrel]

In my eyes, if you load up with castigating Manticore, you've implicitly signed up for the consequences of dying. I think a generic "all your party members are dead, you must load a previous save or restart the campaign" would be fine.

[alpine sorrel]

But what if just one person dies? And they had a speaking/story role in the future? Do we require writers adding alternate conversations and logic for every combination of possible dead characters for all modules? Baldur's Gate 3 pulls it off by having each companion's story pivot off of only you, the protagonist, and can never have a load-bearing conversation between two different companions because you don't know if both will be there.

Which is an uncertainty they have to work around because character death or simply not picking up the companion is so common. The fiction of mechs in Lancer makes it not necessarily so; death in combat is not equated to character death except in this one very specific edge case.

[burnt frigate]

yeah this is a separate sort of thing from the tabletop game

"someone who presses the big red button knows what they're getting into" works when it's one player with one character making that choice with a GM that can adjust narrative parameters on the fly

this is "what if in Final Fantasy 7 you could have Cloud die halfway through Act 1 because you, the player, used a weird spell"

[alpine sorrel]

or not even cloud because of the protagonist death = game over pattern. More like if aerith, barret, and tifa all had that weird spell. You wouldn't ever be able to write a cutscene with them talking to each other about something plot-critical.

I didn't know about the Fire Emblem wounded-in-action-and-can't-fight pattern; that's a pretty clever solve for this, honestly

We unfortunately can't steal it in this case because of the explicit "they're gone" parameters for castigate. Flash clone feels closer to a solution but is also a massive can of narrative worms.

[burnt frigate]

I think that the flavor and community meme-ification of Castigate (complete, total, irretrievable destruction and death) is at odds with "they survive but fucked up," yeah, and the various solutions to the approach in-setting (flash clones, decorp, homunculus copies) all have weird narrative implications

like, I would be inclined to say "this is disabled for the campaign" and be done with it, which might actually lead to more people seriously considering the manticore for more reasons than funny castegate memes

the alternative, which might be a bit of work and idk if any of the named characters are specifically intended to die during the course of it, is that you could enable it for those characters for those specific missions and if they die via castigate then that's how they die rather than being shot by some bad guy or w/e

treat it more like an easter egg

[slow helm]

I am definitely on team 'turn off castigation in the main story'. Hell, you can even have the character express their unwillingness to risk atomizing themselves if the player tries to toggle it on-- make them show a bit of self-preservation.

[lilac anchor]

Easter Egg Castigation sounds fun, or maybe when a character has reached the end of the story have it be activated in some kind of final stand?

[young sorrel]

My solution to this would be "any plot critical character death would require a reset", but in that case it'd probably just be easier to disable castigation for campaigns, wouldn't it.

[burnt frigate]

yeah at that point castigation is functionally no different from a game over anyway

[young sorrel]

What do you plan to happen in a "normal" situation when a player's mech is destroyed during a campaign mission?

[burnt frigate]

My understanding is Lancer Tactics doesn't have "pilot play," so destroyed mechs simply result in the characters ejecting and being removed from the battlefield

[young sorrel]

And then I assume you'll have to provide four repairs between your team before the next combat of the mission?

(That's how it works currently, but currently there's no structured campaigns, it's just "do sitreps until you die")

[alpine sorrel]

You can but not required to repair player mechs. Can enter the next combat without all your teams mechs just fine.

If there's required dialogue with somebody who happens to be off-field, they teleconference in as a hologram by default

[small panther]

That's fun actually

[alpine sorrel]

This also gives an avenue for potential companion PCs you didn't choose to bring along to still be able to participate

There are wrinkles for if that character is jammed or in a blinkshield I haven't worked out yet though

Would be funny to blank/static out their dialogue but have the cutscenes proceed as normal lol

Everybody jammed === a bunch of static being thrown back and forth

[fair pike]

That's pretty cool

[small panther]

Turns out, the only one jammed was you, the handler

Somewhat joking, but also "jammed prevents communication to the handler only and not the pilots between them" is very funny to me and a good justification for the static to not chnage anything to the cutscene

[fair pike]

Would feel bad to miss out on dialogue though

[small panther]

Yeah

[fickle pecan]

That would be kinda hilarious

[fair pike]

And also, jammed usually wears off decently quickly

Anyone here a map maker btw?

Huge fan of the latest update allowing community maps, started messing with them

[fickle pecan]

Jammed is a really odd status now that I think about it

[small panther]

Maybe just making the portrait a black silhouette and bluring/corrupting it to shit is the way then

Revoke their facetime privileges

[fair pike]

That would be neat, but more for narrative puposes than just "oops everyone jammed, cope" imo

[flint portal]

okay funny idea, keep castigation but every time the castigated character speaks, its replaced with an ellipsis and everyone carries over like they just said their line normally

(don't do that)

[alpine sorrel]

moment of silence for our dearly departed 😔

[alpine sorrel]

cue plot twist where your pilots intentionally jam themselves so you can't hear them and they can plot against you

[small panther]

That's still a consideration to have for regular meltdowns/explosions though, no ?
The whole "what happens if someone dies" thing ?

[flint portal]

Protag: "You know, i've been wondering, hey Castigate Steve, what do you think we should do?"
Castigate Steve: ...

Protag: "That's very true, we should be pushing forward while their guard is down"

[small panther]

Upon death they are instantaneously turned into a marketable plushie for their companions to rubber duck to

[alpine sorrel]

We don't have it yet but I want an eject fx showing some sort of pod going up/off-field

[wraith cradle]

Out of curiosity, will that same effect occur with enemy NPCs?

[alpine sorrel]

excellent question! I don't know.

[burnt frigate]

For NPCs, maybe it should be a random thing

sometimes they eject, sometimes they don't

[wraith cradle]

Fair!

[cinder island]

Maybe save it for plot-critical NPCs. You see an eject and go, "Oh this guy's coming back to make my life worse, aren't they?"

[alpine sorrel]

probably add a toggle to the npc character sheet so mapmakers can control it?

[wraith cradle]

Oh, that would be neat!

[slow helm]

The way I'd do it in my ideal world is tying it to how much the enemy has been overkilled (if you only killed them by a bit, they eject, but if you massively overkilled them, they don't, with exceptions for mapmakers to elect for never ejects/always ejects)

[wraith cradle]

Could have like a random, a death, and an escape setting.

[slow helm]

but honestly that's a bit complex

[cinder island]

I like it being something you toggle individually? You're writing a campaign and you want the rival to start out as a grunt and keep escalating what mech they pilot

that One Squad You Hate always Team Rockets out of there, etc.

[slow helm]

ah, yes, Lancer Iguazu...

[wraith cradle]

That's a very fun concept!

[stoic bloom]

oh yeah, my friend has been playing it

what they;ve found annoying is that when you click a lancer, you can't then click away if you just want to check their systems, movement options, etc

I think it could be useful to have a confirm take turn button

since the click is automatic

also the issue of cars blocking roads is there as well

so like, a size 2 unit can't end turns overlapping cars, even though in normal lancers they should since they can spend an extra movement to end their turns overlapping smaller objects

[alpine sorrel]

Sounds like a bug

[fickle pecan]

Every time they talk someone else goes “What’s that <character name>? Little timmy has fallen down a well?”

[stoic bloom]

i think also on the highlighting for overwatches can be clearer. with the current method, all the areas are highlighted red and it's unclear which unit triggered it due to the speed of the autmoation

[stoic bloom]

for example this is unmovable for a speed 3 iskander, even though it shouldn't be since all of those are just cars

[lilac anchor]

started getting some wonky camera angles, is this intentional?

also what is a point defese system

andnwhy do all the cataphracts have it

[old pivot]

The Point Defence Shield is a trait all Cataphracts have

It gives them resistance to damage from the closest enemy

You get around it by attacking with... Anybody who isn't the single closest person

Or else having two PCs equally close

And that camera angle appears to be the top down view, which you can toggle on and off with R

[lilac anchor]

ah true, i forgot what it was called thank you

I try and skip through a lot of the notifs, didnt read those, thanks!

also I seem unable to upload the map I made, and it doesnt say why?

[lilac anchor]

i know the top down, but it usually isnt at an angle like this, which is unusual

[old pivot]

Oh, huh, you're right, it's not precisely top down. How odd

[lilac anchor]

yeah, the obelisks usually are just the base whe top down, my guess is the height of the tiles I placed

I cant share it online for some reason but I can share the json if folks want it?

[alpine sorrel]

Oh that's wild! I've never seen it end up in that state unintentionally. Maybe it has something to do with the automatic rotation for clear views I added.

[lilac anchor]

that might be it, the camera was rotating a lot lol

[alpine sorrel]

I'd love to see that map to see if has something to do with that, strange that the upload doesn't work.

Is the button greyed out or you press it and nothing happens?

[lilac anchor]

yes

lemme show u the map

[mild jay]

I’m a little late to this conversation but the castigation talk is a really good example of the Door Problem, because it’s a relatively easy mechanic to define in the tabletop version. Death is intuitively understandable to the group of people playing the game and deciding what happens. To the computer for the game version, death needs to be thoroughly defined. How anything that could be affected by death is affected by death needs to be designed and implemented.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Door_problem

[lethal leaf]

Yeah, I remember some chud on Twitter asked why computer games had to ask for your pronouns, and someone else replied that computers don't actually know what pronouns are innately. It has to be programmed in.

[mild jay]

Wait that was only coined in 2014? And that was over a decade ago? I’m not sure if that makes me feel old or young

[lilac anchor]

Wow it's been 11 years huh... i dont like that

[alpine sorrel]

Figured it out, the summary is too long (over 250 characters). I'm not sure why the text box's character limit didn't save us here, but if you reduce the length manually it works.

[lilac anchor]

Gotcha, thank you!!

just uploaded, think youll find a way to increase character limit some time?

[alpine sorrel]

It's a limit from mod.io for the summary. There's a longer description field but I don't have anywhere to put it in-game yet so didn't make a text field for it. You could technically add it via the browser I think if you're logged in there

and then other people could see if if they press "details"

if there's interest, I could expose that text in the explorer somewhere (a "read more" button or something)

[lilac anchor]

Ah, gotcha!

Well, I suppose whatever you do, ill be fine with!

[lilac anchor]

a minor issue

I dont think these guys should be size 2

they drank their milk lol

[mild jay]

Which ones are those?

[lilac anchor]

bombard and sentinel

[mild jay]

Cause iirc some things did get size bumps in the rebake

Ah yeah I think sentinels sound right for that

[lilac anchor]

oh wait this is supposed to be how it is?

idk rebake stuff so i trust

[mild jay]

I’m less sure of the bombard

[burnt frigate]

The following NPCs got upsized from Size 1 to Size 2 in the rebake:

• Aegis
• Bombard
• Breacher
• Sentinel

[thin lark]

I would like that. Anyone else?

[lilac anchor]

I feel like Bombard is one you could make a size 1 or size 2, like a scout or monstrosity

aegis I can see going either way

[burnt frigate]

in the sense that a GM at the table can edit anything they want about NPCs, sure, I made those changes for a variety of reasons, including to diversify the NPC roster which is (in the CRB) overwhelmingly Size 1

[lilac anchor]

oh yeah there is a lot of size 1

I think if I had to make someone size 2 Id go for aegis or bombard, maybe hive?

ooo or pyro, if you want a worldkiller in flavor

but thats not what this is for this is for LT

[lethal leaf]

Size 2 Sentinel is literally just a Tortuga.

[burnt frigate]

Could be a Sentinel OR a Breacher, really

[hazy ferry]

Can also enter combat with no mechs

Unless that was fixed in the latest update

[young sorrel]

The Hive Razor Swarm is extremely hard to see

[stable smelt]

...is there one in that picture?

[young sorrel]

Yes, its centered around the tree in tbe middle, you cans see a subtle Grey line through the water one tile below it

And two even subtler Grey lines in the light brown tiles above it

Also, Razor Swarm and Skyhammer Salvo both don't go away when the character that spawned them dies, and they block the "all enemies are dead so you win early" effect because of that

This is what the razor swarm (grey) and skyhammer salvo (red) look like in isometric view

[wraith cradle]

I won't lie, I played this build and I didn't even realize the razor swarms had any kind of effect indication.

[weak willow]

I figured those AoEs were WIP because the Hive itself doesn't have a finished sprite

Like, obviously Olive saw how difficult those were to see

[young sorrel]

There's another placeholder AOE though which looks like a series of little clouds, and that one is much easier to see

[alpine sorrel]

yeah, aura indicator fx are coming up on the docket for something better. for nanobot auras like hive swarm we'll likely do something closer to the smoke cloud, and for shield/barrier/warning areas I want to use a shader like this: https://godotshaders.com/shader/shield-shader-with-intersection-highlight/

[lilac anchor]

LT lets me play with my characters and make em stories, 10/10 game would buy again

[glad lotus]

Might I suggest doing something like that or the burn particles for imminent meltdown as well? I actually forgot my manticore was melting down when its turn came back around, so it ended up halfway killing my goblin. 😉

[burnt frigate]

a mech undergoing meltdown should flash orange, imo

I'm sort of half joking, but I do think a big visual indicator of "hey this is happening" wouldn't be a bad idea

[viscid harness]

back to the potato farm

having a blast with green energy

[teal sundial]

maybe a slight reach but maybe a similar visual effect when under the effects of stuff like coreworm rockets/drag down which promise major hurt conditionally

its very much a skill issue but when you're controlling 4 mechs rather than 1 its a lot easier to forget which mech is dealing with it

[young sorrel]

Not sure if this is a bug, but this map, cliffside town, starts you out with an entire force of extra PCs and doesn't mention that at all.

[brisk snow]

That’s a cool map tho

[young sorrel]

It is, and it seems like the map was designed with the second mech squad in mind, the number of enemies you fight is higher than I'd expect for a group of 4

including two witches that spawn at range 20

So I don't think this is a bug at all, but man, controlling seven player mechs takes so long

[glad lotus]

This is a good call IMO. Add Tear Down to the list.

[young sorrel]

I think that if you're under Drag Down, the game should give you a "this will cause you to take 10 Drag Down damage" confirmation prompt the same way as if it would trigger an Overwatch

Who's the star of the show now?

[thin lark]

On a normal sitrep, not UseMapSettings? I wonder how...

[young sorrel]

Yeah, this was a normal holdout

I think the enemy density was adjusted upwards to compensate, but I'm not sure, some of the new opfors are absolutely insane

[alpine sorrel]

@wintry egret looks like you mighta accidentally left a test squad on-map

[thin lark]

It autoscales based on PC amount so if it's counting them all it would scale up, yeah. That would mean the reinforcement budget runs out a lot faster though

[young sorrel]

Yeah, that's basically what I noticed as well

[lilac anchor]

I know the everest gets some npc mechs for its own, could we get the ronin as an everest option?
(Sorry to interrupt here!)

[thin lark]

... I would love that, yeah. :)

[young sorrel]

The enemies did a pretty good job of hanging around though because I was fighting lockdown: the opfor

[thin lark]

Yeah that one is really well tuned to hurt so bad/good.

Hmm, yeah, there's just preplaced units in the map. I honestly thought those only stayed around on Use Map Settings...

How are we supposed to have preplaced units otherwise, in fact?

(I suppose maybe you could trigger them to be placed at turn 1 but that's so inconvenient compared to just having them on the map...)

[alpine sorrel]

Use map settings / sitrep only changes the triggers, so you can do things like preplace explosive barrel "units"

There should be a tag that shows up in the download card when there's preplaced units

[thin lark]

The tag is there for that map, so that is working.

[glad lotus]

I'm so sorry you guys, lol.

[young sorrel]

Before I throw up a bug report about it, do aces not have Barrel Roll in the NPC rebake?

[glad lotus]

My players were insane min-maxers, I had to uptune everything to challenge them, haha.

[young sorrel]

I'm also an insane min-maxer, so I did win the sitrep, but it was touch and go

[glad lotus]

I have seen aces do barrel roll last night, but I haven't examined it further than that.

[young sorrel]

Okay, can confirm they do have barrel roll, so uh... sometimes they don't use it even if the hit would otherwise oneshot them

Similarly, Hornets don't seem to have Weave

Though that seems more likely to be something that was removed in rebake

[glad lotus]

Rebake hornets do still have Weave

[wintry egret]

Haha oops, I'll update that

[young sorrel]

Well that's also a bug then

...Wait, if the ace attack has seeking, why does it need a secondary effect that makes it ignore cover? Doesn't seeking already let you ignore cover?

[glad lotus]

Rebake removed seeking, so that's an oversight probably

[alpine sorrel]

yep exactly my thought

[teal sundial]

why did it go black and white?

[young sorrel]

Dramatic effect, I imagine

Or it might have been that the red effect you saw before is the weapon range indicator, so that goes away when you fire, and the map is just very gray

More weirdness: Here I fire Pinaka Missiles on four targets, three of them take the same damage but one of them doesn't. I don't have Opcal and wasn't in the Danger Zone

[glad lotus]

I don't think it actually is, that map is mostly grey tones. It just seems black and white after the red "attackable spaces" overlay goes away.

[weak willow]

it is but getting to the witch and sniper on either flank is rouuuugh

[alpine sorrel]

Just posted a small hotfix that avoids a crash if you download a map before ever going into the map editor: https://wick.itch.io/lancer-tactics/devlog/1123759/v048-hotfix

[rain cipher]

QoL feature request: scroll wheel working on hover tooltip content without having to lock it in place. Having your mouse over the action bar already disables map zoom so this just adds back functionality to the wheel.

Ah wait Tab fully reveals the whole thing anyway so that might just be an input bug

[alpine sorrel]

I spent a few hours a couple months ago trying to do exactly that but couldn't figure out how to forward the scroll event. Would love to come back to it eventually.

Good news though: I was finally able to repro the "damaged dmg" issue on my girlfriend's laptop this evening so should be able to figure out what's going on with that soon. I'm fairly certain Apple is simply lying about what's going on and calling unauthorized-by-them "damaged"

[proud dirge]

likely

girlfriends are very useful

[lethal leaf]

Apple has gotten in trouble for lying before.

[glad lotus]

Would not be surprised in the least

[small panther]

Are you sure there wasn't a crit involved ?

Otherwise, could be armor maybe

[stable smelt]

armor would be noted in the log, wouldn't it?

[small panther]

Yeah, which would turn it into a bug report

We don't know if there is or isn't one here, so putting it out there just in case

[stable smelt]

well, breachers and demolishers should have armor, right? unless this is seeking payload irreducable or something

[small panther]

Regardless, I just noticed the different damage is on two different hives, so armor's probably not it.

Though yeah, demos and breachers should have armor (and say it in there) and take less, unless seeking payload yeah

Probably just a crit though. That or there is a bug somewhere.

[young sorrel]

Oh, it might have been a crit, yeah.

I have Paracausal Mod, so armor doesn't matter

Another bit of map weirdness that I think should be corrected: The docks map has an enemy deployment zone small enough that if there's a single size 2 enemy, the others need to spawn in the water, which means this breacher isn't going to get to do anything because the path out of the water is very long.

(And it also can't fit size 2 characters)

[young sorrel]

The Evil Eye map has an Extraction sitrep that's completely impossible because there's no way to get the payload up onto a tall building

[teal sundial]

destroy the building

[young sorrel]

🤔

Will try that

Is there a way to target the building with attacks that aren't AOE?

Alright, did manage to win the sitrep by firing a couple of pinaka salvos at the building

[weak willow]

Maps called Evil
Look inside, design is evil

[young sorrel]

So far I've tested the first and fifth ones. Did a Gauntlet on map 1 and it was really good, it felt almost too easy with a ton of cover and enemies funneled into a tight space but assuming it's intended to be the first scene that makes sense. The fifth map, evil eye, I played an Extraction in but there's no way to get the payload onto the extraction point (which is at the top of a building and you can't climb while carrying a payload) without bringing an AOE weapon and blowing up that building (you can't target structures with non-AOE weapons). I also tried a holdout on it but there's an enemy spawn area inside of the player spawn areas so Berserkers were spawning directly adjacent to the party, which was very rude of them.

[flint portal]

oh that's because in context of the campaign it'll be used its not an extraction map

Also enemies spawing inside the zones is not intentional

basically I put in the default sitrep zones so that people could play them in instant action

[young sorrel]

Might I ask what sitreps the maps are intended for?

[lilac anchor]

depends, technically if the zones are there any map can be used for any sitrep

[lilac anchor]

interesting, Ill see 'bout fixing that soon

[flint portal]

01: Extraction
02: Something close to an escort
03: Something that's not actually in any sitreps here but it does have an extraction condition to win
04: Gauntlet-ish
05: Deathmatch

[flint portal]

yeah mostly like I mentioned earlier its like this here so people can test them, but these maps will end up being used for a campaign, they're mostly made instant action compatible for the sake of getting eyes on them

[young sorrel]

I see. Gonna try out doing all of those in a row and see how that goes

I assume the campaign is going to start at LL0?

[flint portal]

yeah

[young sorrel]

👍 Something to look forward to after class

[flint portal]

I'm gonna try and fix the zone thing making npcs spawn

like in player deployment

[lilac anchor]

ooo, smart, I've got a couple ideas for something like that I'd have to think about

[alpine sorrel]

Picking up the escape pod/eject conversation: I stg I remember seeing an animation and fx of this happening in the old mechwarrior games but cannot for the life of me find a clip of it happening. Does anybody else remember this? Can anyone find an example I can pass to our artist?

[small panther]

Idk about mechwarrior, but I know Walking War Robots had one of those. Too bad the game sucked, but that's neither here nor there.
It's just a vaguely orange glowy/"on fire" thing shooting up though, not sure you'd really get much out of it.

[thin lark]

Phantom Brigade has back mounted pilot pods that eject somewhat magnificently on command, if that helps at all? I can try and find or even just make some footage of it if you like? Obviously not the game you were thinking of, so it might not be quite right, but let me know if it’s better than nothing!

[alpine sorrel]

oh that'd be great actually!

[thin lark]

(They’re sort of a lowest budget military contractor version of the pilot pod from evangelion, clearly slotted into the mechs at some point during the outfitting stage.)

Can’t find any solid clips on YouTube , which I find strange but it’s getting harder to actually find specific things there nowadays. I’ll take some small screen clips of the eject sequence later tonight.

[glad lotus]

Not sure about mech warrior games, but mech commander 100% had this. It's burned into my retinas at this point, lol. I'll see if I can find a ref.

If all else fails, MechCommander is freeware now

So I/someone could got take a screen recording

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wl3nCyI7Pn4&t=683s here you go

Or from mech commander 2: https://youtu.be/GWepdXSfRcg?t=585

[alpine sorrel]

mechcommander.......... 😌

these are both great ty

[glad lotus]

They bring back so many memories, lol

I played MC1 to death back in the day

[alpine sorrel]

it feels like a glimpse of an alternate evolutionary path: small-squad RTS. Instead we got:

• trad RTS
• single-unit RTS (dota, league)
• small-squad turn-based tactics

I guess games like Frozen Synapse are related

[alpine sorrel]

I just checked the save and it looks like Stonefire was mid-meltdown at zero stress. Does that sound right? If so, I think counting as destroyed is the right call

should still knock structure down to 0 though if so

[glad lotus]

It's certainly possible. My recollection was that Stonefire was at 1 stress at the end of combat, but I didn't specifically look at that or screenshot it, so I could be wrong.

[thin lark]

Ground Control 1 and 2 were both in the small squad RTS lineage, as well as Sacrifice, Giants:Citizen Kabuto and (arguably) Brutal Legend, and probably some more I forget.

For a while it was a small genre to itself almost!

[smoky glacier]

Fallout Tactics as well

[thin lark]

Here we go, best I could get on short notice but let me know if you need or want more. Very much inspired by or similar to the mech commander stuff, I think :)

(Now without pointless file-bloating and my desktop at the end, yay video editing. Took me so long to manage just cutting that piece off, but I got there eventually!)

[alpine sorrel]

yessss this is perfect

tysm!

[thin lark]

After the fact I realize I should have had them stagger their ejection times so it was more cinematic :)

[young sorrel]

Finished the first scene with my LOZ theme builds, and the fight was really fun, didn't take too much damage but enemies were spawning more quickly than I could kill them and so I needed to nab the payload and book it.

Combat 2, you said it would be "something resembling an escort", so I did an actual escort, and the destination is so close to the start that even with my LL0 team I got the payload one square away from the end on the first round.

[young sorrel]

Bug Report: Even on an Everest with Replacable Parts, you can't repair Structure if you have one repair cap left

(If you have two repair cap, you can repair structure and it'll leave you with one repair cap left)

Finished an Extraction on the third map, and IMO this map is too large for an extraction, I had a mech with 2 points in Agility that spent all 8 rounds of the combat boosting towards the objective and then ferrying it back and I still barely made it on the last round.

[thin lark]

(In corebook Lancer extraction Sitreps give you 10 rounds, as opposed to Escort's 8 rounds but a central field full of enemies. That is not the case in Lancer Tactics at present, which only gives you 8 rounds.)

[young sorrel]

Gauntlet on map 4 went great, no complaints here

NOW THATS WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT

There's no "deathmatch" sitrep so I used another gauntlet, and after four straight fights of my CPR build missing every CPR shot, they hit both of them this time to scrape the team by without losing anyone

Definitely not fit for another scene as I have zero repairs on anyone, but managed all five scenes with no full repair

[toxic badge]

folks already mentioned crits; another possible culprit here is hunter lock. Do you happen to have a save?

[young sorrel]

Not recently, I've played several fights between then and now

I don't have Hunter Lock on the build so it was probably a crit

[flint portal]

its a weird "defend an npc leaving and survive" is maybe more clear

[cursive cave]

How do I rotate the map?

[glad lotus]

Q and E

And R gives you an overhead straight-down view

[tulip peak]

How's everyone liking the new mech sprites?

Kicks legs

[flint portal]

if you could tell whoever made them that they rock it'd be cool

could be ANYONE

[cursive cave]

Im new to this, did Gen make them?

And How do I see how many repairs I have left?

How do I reset health with a repair?

*with a stabelize

[tulip peak]

Yeah! I'm the one who's slowly updating all the mech assets to a more isometric view (Along with other things)

[tepid temple]

actually downloads the latest version

They look good!

Some of the palettes look slightly off but in a way I can tell is for "this makes for the best videogame sprite and/or the shading tech we use requires this"

I love the Iskander for how detailled it is, and the Napolean for how it manages to squeeze so much detail into a tiny space

[glad lotus]

They're fantastic, I love them all!

It's so fun colouring them, tbh

I eagerly await your version of my goodest boi, the Manticore.

My only critique is that it sometimes feels a bit weird based on loadout. For example, doing a ranged Toku but the sprite is wielding torches. I'm fully aware this is probably a budget/scope concern, though - I don't actually expect sprites that change based on loadout.

[tulip peak]

Thank! Some details are such a fight to include and I often make cuts for clarity but glad they're coming across as overall detailed!

I'm hoping the new color ramping helps smooth out some weird gradients but yeah I can't really test them on all current palettes so I just gotta pray some pixels will behave

[glad lotus]

The details do feel very satisfying. Especially on the size 2s. Gorgon, Balor, and Lancaster all kind of jumped out at me.

[tulip peak]

Working on that one now! then it's hydra time and after that all the main licenses are done

[glad lotus]

Main licenses? Pray tell?

[tepid temple]

Can I ask what's been the most difficult frame to turn into a marketable plush sprite so far?

[proud dirge]

gen we LOVE the mech sprites

theyre so so so yummy

[tulip peak]

Yeah, that's definitely just a scope thing. It'd be nice to make variants but time is a valuable resource alas

[glad lotus]

Yeah, 100%

[tulip peak]

Probably toss up between Pegasus and Vlad. Pegasus is just hard to have a clear silhouette for due to its weird crawl, and Vlad just had tons of spikey bits that seemed important to it and those were a pain to get to read clearly

Swallowtail looks like it'd be weird but it actually came together super easily and its back sprite was pretty friendly with letting me use most of its legs without having to redraw them

[tepid temple]

The Pegasus came out really good despite that!

[rain cipher]

I wonder if it'd be viable to have variants with no visible weapons. Erasing isn't that taxing right? I think most sprites fit that anyway though

[tepid temple]

It's a little funny seeing the swallowtail next to the squished down Death's Head

[rain cipher]

My favourite is the Balor, very imposing and the nanite flame came out great

Plus the extra detail from being size 2

Iskander's no-nonsense stance is a cool contrast to its book art too

[tepid temple]

I might have slept on the Gorgon. The Iskander is distinctly Gen "Songs We Sing" Trigger, which is to say it's drawn very stylishly, but the Gorgon looks like it's ripped straight out of the book.

[tulip peak]

I had to look at Iskander's backpack in so many ways till I was like "Frick it, I'm doing it my own way". Its cloth was very stylish and fun to do though

Also didn't realize it was size 2 till I had to choose which size canvas to use

Gorgon's lean also just came out super well. Its little face at the base of its neck is my fave part