#More Early Game Active Content

33 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

knotty salmon
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The early game has a pretty large issue with lots of inactive time due to a lack of accessible content. You are pretty much just waiting for raids to popup and then you have a somewhat subpar battle. It would be really cool if there were more activities to do at the lower level, like increased raid popups or high threat raids which are built for high quantities of low rank units.

Another thing that would be cool are structures that could trigger or enhance raids. Something like a beacon that might get raider/critters to attack your base. It would also be a neat way to introduce low level boss strikes or get some early access to mid game materials like bars for early unit promotions.

Maybe this could also be building specific, like boosting a mine or a logging camp but there are strong raids which will attack the resource collector and until the raid is defeated the resource collector won't collect resources, so there is a high risk high reward way to boost early game speed.

Anything more than just waiting for new raids to appear and then being done with the game for an hour or more.

If you have any ideas those would be appreciated. I also like talking about why an idea is good or not rather than just being told it sucks so feedback is appreciated.

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It would also be interesting if high threat raids were an alternate method to unlock new attacks for units rather than spending nano pods on them. IE promotion style missions where you must to an extent incoperate the promoting unit in your strategy and keep them alive or something.

vale musk
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To build off of this right now in early game those levels where there's nothing to do are level 7, and 16-18. If you've done all your quests (which basically you should have) those level ranges there's nothing to do and you're short a ton of xp to the next level. 16-18 is barren of anything to do, as all the quests are requiring you to be level 20 for rangers and gun foundry

Adding extra content to do will keep the player engaged and logging in more than just to collect and go offline again

wise haven
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Yes, I’ve just come to BN again after like 10 years and I don’t remember needing to wait days to get XP to level up and having nothing to do in the meantime.

drowsy spoke
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Might not totally answer your suggestion but during early game if you're short on ressources but have time to kill you can chain raid raptor nest for 15 wood per fight (3 trees clumped together)

Or chain raid gantas fortress for 10 stone, 10 iron and 5 wood per fight on this very specific spot

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knotty salmon
lean leaf
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Another way to increase early game content is to significantly lower the wait times for things. It really sucks that I can start a new game and after only a half hour tops I am suddenly waiting like three hours for something to finish building so I can continue the story.

turbid flare
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I like the beacon idea. In OG during the zombie events, there were zombie traps that would spawn additional zombie encounters, so it's not like it's something new.
I think there shiuld be certain building you could build with an upfront cost in the faction's resource in exchange for spawning those encounters, but also having a hard limit so your screen isn't lagging

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For example: basic Raider totems that cost 3 skulls apiece and spawns one leveled Raider encounter every 1-2 hours, and if you want something more challenging you can uprade it to a Raider War Totem for 12 more skulls that changes it to spawn a Lieutenant every 4 hours

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All animals would have their own specific baits costing 5 teeth, Silver Wolves I think could be one of those wooden cutouts of a bank used in movies, Reef Bandits could have a pile of junk with a "Free Salvage" sign, Civillians could be a bar or a soapbox (somewhere a riot would start from)

vast wren
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I think in general the game really should start newer players out with the basics at the very least. Currently it's still running the core 2011 release formula which is lets bleed the player dry

It's not very encouraging at all to continue playing, but you and I will bleed, and sweat because it's a game we all enjoyed when we were younger.

What do I mean by the basics? Things such as the Storage Vault, at least 1 Iron Mine, 1 Lumber Mill, and 1 Quarry.

If the game started you off with at least all of that for free, it would be much less grinding and headache. Especially as a free player, you are forced to build tiny little sheds of warehouses which takes a century to build and acclimate, especially since each takes an egregious 8 population.

And then the resource acclimation to get these things, also takes a decade, if I didn't immediately sink $15 dollars in this game, I'd be comfortably behind, still boringly fighting boars and raptors before my interest quickly jumps off a cliff.

mortal wing
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BN, being a product of its time, does the exact opposite of what modern F2P games do. These days, games hook you fast: fun combat, constant unlocks, tons of free resources, and you feel powerful, until gradually, the grind creeps in. Then the timers stretch out, and you’re nudged toward spending a little to keep the fun going. It's a slow process, though, stretched across several hours to ensure you either like the game by the time it starts slowing down, or you already lost interest. A hook that works damn well.

Battle Nations flips that model on its head.
You get 15–20 minutes of snappy dialogue, a few quirky characters, light combat… and then boom: "Come back later." I'm not talking hours into the game, I'm talking within your first 30 minutes, max!

Check it!

  • Level 1: You build a Barracks (3s), train your first Trooper, which takes nearly 8 minutes, unless you spend a very precious nanopod to rush it.
  • Still at Level 1, you’re asked to promote a unit, and with Troopers only needing 120 SP to max out the rank-up bar, you'll likely hit that 4 hour promotion timer soon. You can hit that wall before even reaching Level 2 (which only takes 425 XP).
  • Level 3: You’re asked to build a Hospital, 2-hour timer. Want to plant Daikon for a farm mission? That’s a 24-hour crop job, again at level 3 (just 500 XP in).
  • By Level 5, you’re stuck in "Tools For Zoey," which asks you to craft three different tool jobs: 2h, 4h, and 8h. Unless you go ahead and build extra Tool Shops, that’s 14 hours of straight waiting.

All of this hits before Level 6, which only takes 2,250 XP to reach. To put that in perspective? Level 40 requires a total of 1,643,175 XP. So you're only .13% of the way to the current level cap when the game starts throwing multi-hour roadblocks at you.

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So instead of gently encouraging investment like modern titles do, BN tells you "Okay, you played the game enough, come back in a while." Back when people were meant to play this stuff on their phones, this was totally acceptable. Now? In the days where people can download stuff like Warframe and Call of Duty Mobile on their smartphones, that's just insulting. Worse still if you decide to play the game on Steam instead of a phone. Why spend 15 bucks on BN when you have hundreds of 15-dollar games instead? Or any other F2P game?

vast wren
# mortal wing So instead of gently encouraging investment like modern titles do, BN tells you ...

And that's the most egregious part remaining. I can't think of any game today with build times like Battle Nations has. I could go on and on, and on about how dated the systems feel and how in dire need of a tune up they are

If I were to be as direct as possible: The build times should be heavily cut in half, if not outright removed the demand system exists just to waste my time the units taking time to build is cool for the animations but 10 hours for a mini tank??? Don't even get me started on taking 1 day to cut a ham up

There are so many mechanics I like and also hate at the same time

Lets inverse this and look at it from a consumer perspective. We take 10 hours to build a mini tank. not because the game assumes we have a job to do, and will be distracted for 10 hours, but because the game wants us to spend money, to speed up the process. This applies to everything in the game

Modern games that have released 2020+ tend to respect my time and ask less of me, they take time to accumulate, because they know I won't engage with the game for 10 hours. I could speed them up, but it's arbitrary and in most cases I'll be spending less time than that of Battle Nations. 1 day, 12 hours, to build a medium warehouse. Why?

8 minutes for a hunter, arbitrary and illogical, it exists just to encourage me to spend money to speed it up. I can think of no sane person spending money to speed things up, beyond the span of 1 hour, or they got money to burn Especially in this current economy.

When it comes to Battle Nations you can no longer watch ads for nanos, Tapjoy doesn't exist for it, And I'm not 14 anymore. I have things I have to do. The game should revolve around me setting times for myself, rather than the game making times for me.

Simply put There should be less arbitrary build times, and train times.

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People have things to do, and most things in this game are locked behind nanopods. It's not just units, it's your resource collectors, your buildings allowing you to build units that cost nanopods...

Why build a heavy weapons factory? There's no meta in which it's useful because The TF2 collab exists. Sure I built it as a dumb kid, as an adult what's the point? It's a shiny cool thing to show off in base, that's it.

So why spend nanopods speeding things up when they are needed for so many other things? The difficult part is regardless of how I feel about it, It's likely not to change. When you are already charging people money for this resource, you will now be screwing over the consumer if you dare change this. And that in itself is a problem.

mortal wing
# vast wren People have things to do, and most things in this game are locked behind nanopod...

Yeah. That’s the whole thing, huh? That it won’t change.
This entire revival is meant to be a faithful recreation of the original game… warts and all… At least, for now.

That’s honestly the main reason I want an offline version or private servers. Someone once told me, “But without multiplayer, you’ll be stuck at a snail’s pace. No bars, no gears, no events, you’ll lose the magic.”
And my answer? I cheat in infinite nanopods and just throw them at everything. That sounds way more fun than the normal experience.

I only had one friend who took BN seriously back in the day, we don’t even have multiplayer right now, so really, I’d only be gaining from an offline version. No loss, just freedom. No glacial pacing, just raw gameplay. I’d throw 15 Dragoons and 15 Shock Troopers at raiders! Let’s go! Healing costs? Timers? Faaah! Woe, 50 million nanopods upon ye!

The final weeks of the game, where they gave everyone a million nanopods and told them to go crazy? Most fun I had in the game, hands down. It is depressing I can even say that.

I’m still playing the revival because I’m hoping, maybe naively, that they’ll fix the pacing someday. That they’ll trim these absurd timers down and I can finally recommend this game to people.
I know my friends. They’d play 10 minutes of BN and forever mock it as "the most mobile game of all time."

vast wren
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I don't want to derail this thread too much, but I've found a steam review, and I can specifically cite multiple times where they mentioned addressing Nanopods via "buildings that produce them" or other things. Meanwhile I see they have patreon tiers, which give "supply drops"

Supply drops in other games, any other game. Entails daily however your supply drop in Battle Nations seems 1 time, 1 month, and that's it. That's.... Hmm.

Then there's the again, lack of the afromentioned buildings that produce them. It's well and fair- I understand. a business has to make money, running servers, paying people to work on the code of this ancient thing. It all takes money. But it's essentially appealing to a cult, core audience. And I feel most people don't really care to put up with it.

I am putting up with it because I want to see it grow. But even stuff like promotional limited units in this game. Man, you're in era right now where you're competing with Gacha games who's entire lingo is that model. Meanwhile your game tries to do 3 different things because its a faithful 1:1 recreation. Maybe it's time to lay out your game plan?

Again though, the difficult part is since you are already selling limited transactions you are screwing the people who already are financially supporting when you regear the game to be playable so the most they've said they'd do so far is occasionally give them out through missions. And that's just... Iffy. What's also iffy is the mass amount of things still requiring nanos to build, and even replacing Z2 points with your own companies points. I'd rather just avoid that all together.

knotty salmon
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One thing that I really want right now is an early way to get bars. A lot of units aren't useful by the time you can rank them up to 4 and more so when you rank them up higher. Having early game high difficulty raids that may be optionally spawned would be great. I wouldn't mind the slow level progression as much if I could see my early game units progressing further and fighting more difficult early game raids. It would also be appreciated if promo times for early game units were largely reduced and nanopod costs on unlocking attacks on early game units was removed. They are weaker and won't be used for to long so having their subpar attacks locked behind a premium currency just feels bad and is all the more reason to get away from these units as fast as possible.

mortal wing
# vast wren I don't want to derail this thread too much, but I've found a steam review, and ...

Yeah… here’s the painful reality.

This game isn’t being carried by its systems, its content, or even its current gameplay... it’s being held up by nostalgia. That’s the foundation. A lot of folks have been financially supporting this project since 2018, and they’re deep in it. There’s bias. There’s sunk-cost fallacy. I’ve seen people in donator chat casually mention burning through 2,500 nanopods like it’s chump change, knowing they’ll just get more. It’s a tight-knit group, loyal to a fault, who excuse everything with "it’ll come later" or "just wait for the features to return, until then, open your wallet or deal with it."

It’s fanatical. Even this conversation, just us being honest, probably makes some folks tense. To them, this isn’t just a game. It’s personal history. They’ve been following Alex and Andrew for years. Back then, Alex told the community every gritty detail while fighting King for the game rights. Now? We get vague updates like "we’re working on a quirk” and "stick around, good stuff’s coming soon 😉."

Meanwhile, we’re stuck in a game where:

  • You need bars? Wait for PvP.
  • You want to speed things up? Buy nanopods.
  • You want anything that actually fixes the game’s broken pacing now? Sorry, that’s "post-legacy" talk. Gotta wait until the game is fully restored to pre-shutdown status.
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It just hurts, mate. They need to rip the bandaid off now. Yeah, it’ll sting to change the game after so many early players spent money and time, but honestly? That’s better than watching the game bleed out because nostalgia doesn’t last forever. Once that fades and the devs still haven’t delivered, all those die-hard defenders? All the ones bragging about their nanopod spending? They won’t be so loyal anymore.

Then again… if the game does shut down, I’ve heard private servers would be an option. Funny how that works. The most fun I ever had in BN was right before it shut down, when they gave out nanopods like candy and told players to go wild.

What was that old saying? History doesn’t repeat, but it sure does rhyme...

vast wren
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Your most avid haters are also former fans.

I hate systems in place but I have no idea how the current game is created or running. It seems very close to the original but missing core things. It's as if someone ported the code and it got a little corroded in time.

So again, I can have patience, and wait, but you put it pretty well, it's running on nostalgia and sunk cost fallacy. I don't want to see the game go under though. I am mostly complaining because I want it to improve, to attract a new blood of audience, to shed what made me abandon it before that final week under Z2.

However, that also suggests that it can. It's under new management but I don't know who Alex, Andrew, or anyone is. I'm just an observer, so all I can really do is hope feedback like yours, or OP's is listened to. Because dear god, right now the game needs a looot of QoL and readjustments.

mortal wing
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Preach it.

I fell in love with the combat and the vibe, so having BN back? Yeah, that felt like a win. But the warts? The bloody timers? That constant "play for 9 minutes, return in 5 hours" loop? God... It’s a time capsule in the worst way.

I, too, got no idea how the backend works. Maybe the code is a junkyard of spaghetti... But I keep finding little signs that things behind the curtain aren’t nearly as smooth as Madrona tries to present.

Like, they removed the purpose of resource depots altogether because the cute lil' hauler trucks were spaghetti-coded? That’s insane. Just... rewrite them. Or fake it. Make them visual-only. Something. People keep asking for them over and over, so it was a pretty not-insignificant part, I'd claim.

Then there's the transparency, or lack of it. Nine days ago, someone brought up the blue arrow bug again, and another player replied, "The devs know, it’ll be fixed in the next update."
Right after that, Andrew himself (lead programmer, or close enough) popped in with: "We’re aware of it, but we still don’t know the root cause."

Like… what?

vast wren
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Likely salvaged Z2 code which aligns with what I've heard.

Madrona seems to be people with some knowledge but disassembling someone else's work isn't easy especially without a blueprint.

Everything is easier said than done, especially when you're looking from the outside to the inside like us. Besides, I miss the resource truck animation in a way, but if they fix it eventually whatever. Just means I am saving pop cap right now.

I've noticed in general roads, and even tiles on the floor stick out more than usual. But I've also noticed the game takes 0.5s to launch on my phone now. Pros and cons, ups and downs.

mortal wing
# vast wren Likely salvaged Z2 code which aligns with what I've heard. Madrona seems to be...

I get where you're coming from. Rebuilding code is hard, sure, but in my opinion, that doesn’t excuse the monetization decisions being made right now, before the game is even back to pre-shutdown status.

We’ve got $50 and $300 Patreon tiers with exclusive new units, Diamond Tank and Plasma Mammoth, and we’ve had nothing but concept art since they were first announced in 2023. That’s nearly two years. We’ve seen nothing since, no gameplay, no stats, not even a preview. Just "pay now or miss out."

The game launched without PvP, no friends list, no guilds. There’s no clear roadmap, just vague mentions of "level 45" and "level 50" content that the community itself is assuming out of basic logic. That kind of silence and ambiguity is driving me up the wall.

Maybe I’m just seeing what I want to see, but between the push for merch, the time-limited trophy units, and the fact that the Steam nanopod packs are 12% worse than the legacy Z2 prices (2500 for $99.99 now, versus 2800 back then)... it feels like a slap in the face.

I’m not saying "you’re being too kind, be harsher," I’m just airing this out. I feel like I’m going mad sometimes, like I’m the only one seeing this stuff. Maybe I am. Maybe I’m forcing something that’s not actually there. It feels nice to actually say it outloud, though.

I'll stand my ground if any Mammoth-donator wants to tussle! I got critical thinking and nuance on my side!

tacit rivet
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Yeah, I’ve been feeling a pretty similar way.

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But I’m broke, so I doubt anyone would take me seriously if I was to open up about those thoughts.

knotty salmon
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I feel like in general the game would be healthier if the city building aspect wasn't nearly as tedious and the main progression and game experience was tied to battles. If battles were revamped to be more varied, available and provide exp this game would honestly feel a lot better.

mortal wing
mortal wing
# knotty salmon I feel like in general the game would be healthier if the city building aspect w...

Right off the dome, I got a basic idea, might be janky, but hear me out. (A suggestion under a suggestion, haha)

What if, instead of only using nanopods to skip timers, battles gave out a special timer-reduction resource?

Every battle in the game, critter, raider zones, whichever, would give you some of it. Then you could grind out combat to shrink down timers on buildings, units, jobs, and more. Basically, you'd be rewarded for playing the game.

It’s not a radical system, lots of modern F2P games already do this. If you hit a roadblock, they still let you grind. The core loop keeps moving. Right now in BN, once your timers are up, you’re out. Yeh, you can wait for encounters to respawn, you can grind resources and SP in raider bases, you can cabbage grind... but it doesn't really feel like you're making progress. Just feels like you're just doing something to pass the time than actually advancing towards something meaningful.

Even a barebones system like this would make a huge difference.

knotty salmon
knotty salmon
foggy parcel