SquadCraft 2
Basic Description
A highly strategic and tactical game. Players will alternate between commanding troops and customising them. Plenty of equipment, strategies, and game settings provide tonnes of replayability.
Inspired by X-COMs designed by Julian Gollop
Game Concepts
- Easy to learn and play, hard to master
- Can have short games, roughly between 30 mins to 1 hr
- Can be played with plenty of friends (11 max)
- Very rewarding towards players that make strategic decisions
- Very dynamic gameplay that contributes to replayability
- Realistic, including a destructible environment
- Balanced gameplay
- Very enjoyable
- Very flexible in many ways, including game setups, competition, and the decisions available
- Risk-reward gameplay. Decisions come with advantages and disadvantages
Game Flow and Objective
Objective: Kill all enemy marines
Every players starts with 4 marines in any room. After 1 team remains, players can customise their marines in preparation for the next room/round. Each one can equip up to 2 guns, 1 armor, and 6 items. The game ends based on the majority vote on the win condition from the lobby.
Marine Equipment
Each one has their own unique strengths and weaknesses. The following are some examples:
Sub Machine Gun (SMG)
Very effective at wearing down armor. Only accurate at short ranges.
Plasma Rifle
Powerful and regenerates ammo. It is more expensive to obtain than other items.
Heavy Armor
Allows marines to survive several more hits. It's weight limits what else you could equip on the marine.
Personal Teleporter
Marines can instantly travel to a target location. There are limited uses and cooldowns in between.
Cloaking Device
The marine remains cloaked until they perform an action, that usually involves attacking, and cloak re-enables at the start of each turn. There are ways to detect cloaked units and taking damage also disables cloak.
Replayability
The following are sources of randomness:
- Which room the players fight in
- Lighting
- Where the mineral pickups are spawned
- Where players start in each room
- Firing weapons at long range
- Amount of armor that degrades after being hit by projectiles
- The game mode if random is selected
The following are what helps make the map dynamic:
- The large variety of marine equipment to experiment with
- The different research paths you can choose
- Different game modes for a different experience
- The interesting decision making in tactical battles
- Figuring how to beat or counter other players
- Learning how to adjust play style based on the amount of players
- Learning to improvise with what is available
- The behaviour of enemy players, especially if it changes often
- Weighing the risk and rewards of your decisions
Videos
Final Comments
This is not supposed to be an exact replica of the original X-COM games. Just simplified, multiplayer supportive, and my own spin on the gameplay. I've also used many game concepts and mechanics that I feel make the original X-COMs great.
A big thanks to all who helped make this map possible. This includes those directly involved in this project and the mapster community :D
Não consigo ver os vídeos acima.
OMG the new load screen is beeeautifuuuul! XDDDD
XCOM :D
Ah, well, the thing is that you might want to be able to fire at cloaked units. Hmm
Hmm. Rifle does appear to snap properly. It seems to have infinite accuracy, and also can no longer target the ground.
Also, none of the other effects have charges, still.
I did some minor bug fixes regarding the vehicles and the death animations.
Squadcraft 2 v0.5 fixed
I think the issue with EMP is that I intended it to drain shields instantly, not over time via the buff. Hence, It regens next turn, drains, loses another layer, so on till shield is gone. Basically, Steal 200 shields when it hits, then apply a debuff to disable tech for the next 3 turns. (but no more shields)
When I said shield recharge, I meant the item, not the passive regeneration. Like 50+5x, not 5x regen.
Well, I have no idea if mines are supposed to cloak or not, but I do know that you cant test cloaking with single player, unless a good visual effect exists.
I cannot see any way to quote, and its also far easier to read stuff in the other thread. So yea, Lets move it back there instead :p
I've tested the shields and, as expected, it won't allow a shield item to be used when the shield life is 0. However there's still the issue of receiving the old shield regen amount on the turn after the shields went down. I agree that EMP's effect on shields need to be fixed.
I've tested the mines on hostile marines and it works properly (which is good). Although it is unrealistic that a mine can be set up at a shooting range distance away from the marine. It would be more suitable for mines and demolition charges and to have a range of 1 (or melee range).
There are some other bugs such as specific vehicle types not blocking projectiles, and that the death animation from rocks are too disproportionate to the size of the rock. I'm trying to locate the source of the problems, and have tried to modify the death animation of the rock, but only had limited success so far.
Anyways, good job on the items.
Very nice. A lot of the stuff appears to be working
Shields do not fail quite correctly atm. Two issues exist. One, When the shield fails, it will not lose capacity immediately. it waits until the next turn instead. I believe this would allow you to recharge your shields again before turn end, hence is a problem. Also, on the next turn, you still get the old level of regeneration. I think you should add a second shield behavior, which handles the shield being active. When the shield hits zero. It deactivates (disable instead of remove) and removes a shield layer. It reactivates (re-enable) when shields rise again next turn, or with a charge.
Shield recharge does not appear to restore the expected amount of shields when used. I had it restore 20, 50, 70, and 80, but am unsure how it was determined. I might have to look at the map to figure it out. Oh, and it also doesnt work if shields are already down, but that might be intentional. Im not sure if it should either.
Also, EMP currently annihilates the shield totally(It refuses to recharge next turn, and loses a layer, until whole shield is gone), and does not appear to disable other weapons. (probably haven't gotten to the second part yet, so not an issue) It also seems to remove a shield layer immediately, unlike normal damage.
and all of the tooltips are unfinished, but that is to be expected.
Still need to add targeting assist, so you can attack units directly with stuff. Some of the time aiming is impossible, and still nothing nearby explodes or takes damage without AOE attacks.
Hmm. Stun grenade (or was it disruption grenade?) Appears to steal all the energy next turn, although I still disagree with the effect.
Not sure how to test the smart mine. but the demolition charge works as expected (aside from cloaking, no idea if that part works)
Assuming teleport displays the range correctly, it works fine.
Makkit and stimpacks work perfectly, although I wish they had slightly more range (Its kinda hard to click directly next to another marine, since it just rejects direct clicks)
Tech List. (Italicized all of the upgrades that are unlocked immediately on teching)
Electromagnetic Tech - Manipulation of Electromagnetic waves. Highly focused lasers, as well as Energy bursts.
Plasma Tech - Manipulation of plasma, effective creation, as well as containment.
Alien Alloys - Creation of far more durable and lightweight materials than normally is possible. Might also call it advanced armor.
Warp Tech - Manipulation of energy fields, as well as translocation warp effects.
List of stuff to do:
Note: Everything is subject to change. Nothing is certain. :)
Shields
New Items
Medical and Armor Kit:
Stim pack:
Stun grenade
Personal Teleporter
EMP Grenade
Explosive Mines
Demolition Charge
New Armor
Deflector Armor
Mobility Suit
Lightweight Agility suit
Shield Armor
Plasma Armor
Stealth Suit
-
Heavy Armor – change it so it provides 60 (or 70) armor but it takes up 3 inventory space.
Delete the weaker version of prototype armor because it is too weak.
New Weapons
Submachine gun
Wave Cannon
Power Fist
-Add an ammo regen system for all high tech weapons. The max ammo limit should be significantly lower than that for standard weapons. Once completed, reduce the attack energy cost of the high tech weapons.
Add a mechanism that allows the purchase of extra ammo for standard weapons.
Add range indicators, 1 for perfect accuracy range (green colour), 1 for maximum range (yellow colour).
Implement fixed targeting for when the target is moving (so the shot won’t miss if it should have hit).
wow a lot of work, very nice
four areas, urban miliary compound ruins forest
really like the urban area
as far as game play goes i hate being paused on and off, maybe make it less often, less often for movement or only turn based in combat (no ideas how sorry)
is it one player at all?
anyways it looks great that is the important part