Lancer Tactics

Rebaked NPCs Pt. 2 (+ linux build!)
11 months ago – Fri, May 09, 2025 at 01:35:35 PM

Hey there! Surprise bonus post 'cause the discussion about incorporating Kai's NPC Rebake last week unexpectedly popped off — y'all shared a lot of perspectives we both had and hadn't considered. Thank you to everyone for your input!

We all want the best possible Lancer Tactics and there are a lot of mutually incompatible ideas for what that means. This is complicated, and the discussion revealed some expectations & taut threads leading into the heart of this project. I'm glad this gave us the opportunity to unpack them. That means we have a long post ahead of us here!

First, just to get everyone on the same page about Kai's NPC Rebake: it's not a rules overhaul; it performs a relatively conservative rework of existing NPCs to address problems that have made themselves clear in the six years of play since Lancer was released. A lot of you were excited about LT fixing these issues by using the Rebake, and there were others with genuine concerns about deviating from a near-1:1 port.

We've had a week to chew through your commands, and I wanted to write this post to regurgitate and further digest the discussion [ew, olive, that's really the metaphor we picked?] and share our process. Each section starts with quotes we pulled that exemplify the topic, sourced (sans attributions) from last week's comment section, Discord, and itch.io.

The TL; DR: after reading everyone's feedback and talking it through with Carpenter and Josh, our plan is to implement most of the Rebake's changes for individual NPC classes + veterans/ultras, but skipping its alternate rules for NPC structure/stress + grunts. Additionally, we're leaving open the possibility ofpulling from other supplements and our own designs to further patch non-PC-option mechanics as-needed.

Let's go!

(oh also I got a Linux build up and running! Hot tip it works surprisingly well in desktop mode on the Steam Deck. I recommend also installing the itch.io launcher app for easy updates.)

Impact statement; Change is scary; Let's get on the same page

The biggest change from the Rebake is the blanket removal of tier 2 and 3 multiattacks. There's a reason no homebrew supplements in the community use these; they make high-level Lancer extremely rocket tag-y. More broadly, it removes or adds loopholes to things that inflict the ever-unpopular Stunned. It also reduces Accuracy inflation to make Evasion builds more viable & cover more impactful.

I wrote up an NPC-specific summary of the current version of the Rebake here; I was gonna put it inline here but even listing the classes made this too long. If you want detailed design notes for the mentioned changes, I encourage you to read Kai’s design notes inside the NPC Rebake itself.

Will it make Lancer Tactics better?

> "I think if the Rebakes make for a better game then that is the way to go even if it makes them not 1:1 with the core rules."
> "do whichever you feel is best for the game. Use the rebake, or don't. Or hell, cherry-pick the best bits of each if that's what you feel creates the best experience"
> '"the physical game it was based on" is a bad excuse for poor user experience - if including those updates makes for a better experience for players of your game, then you should go for it.'

The most common sentiment expressed was that if it makes the experience of playing Lancer Tactics better, go for it.

At a minimum, dropping tier 2 and 3 multi-attacks allows high level play to not be games of rocket tag. Needing to survive casually-structuring Quick Actions flattens the diversity of possible player builds.

Getting granular, almost all of the changes I see in the Rebake will smooth over both experiential and implementation difficulties with the core NPCs. To pick some examples:

• The core Breacher's Painmaker delays its turn until after a target. Nothing else in core plays with initiative ordering like that. The Rebake simplifies this to "the next attack the Breacher makes".
• The Sniper's Moving Target has always been an optional that drastically changes the threat it poses: the difference between firing its rifle every turn and every other turn. The Rebake fixes this by making it a cheap way to apply Sniper's Mark instead.
• The Rebake's Goliath's Towering Stride allows it to comfortably straddle uneven terrain; the core version's movement would be severely hampered by lack of available standing room on most maps.
• Linking different conditions is hard for the engine; the Scout's Marker Rifle now applies Shredded like a decent mech instead of the weird exploitable "as long as it's locked on" thing.

On the other hand, there are a few changes the Rebake makes that are designed for giving the GM or players more options that would be more difficult or unnecessary to implement:

• The Bombard gets different shell types that cause the cannon to need to be reloaded for specific tactical uses. The AI is just going to be worse at making those judgements.
• The Witch's Predatory Logic has a "can't brace against this" condition; joke's on you Witch, we've already changed Brace so it can't be used against most attacks.

Luckily, I'm not an automaton, and when I run into a situation where implementing a mechanic from the Rebake doesn't make sense I can just skip it and leave things as core (note that even without the Rebake this would apply, so there's no "purity" that's being lost). What these will end up being is impossible for me to predict ahead of time; what I can say is that NPC implementation will end up being a bit of a Lancer Tactics-specific patchwork.

The effects of human GM moderation; AI is bad at picking fun gameplay options

> "in-person DMs have the luxury of tilting the scales a bit to keep things feeling fun and fair - the AI in a videogame has much less provisioning for that sort of thing"
> "i feel that core lancer does have some flaws that require a human gm to moderate. With a gm playing full send optimally, it can be somewhat miserable. As such, a sidegrade might be a good idea."
> "Personally I don't particularly care about the NPC rebake and don't use it at my table, but I also know that what works for a group of friends with a live GM is not necessarily what works for a single-player experience run by a program, and what works on a physical (or virtual) tabletop is not necessarily the best thing for a computer game."

The core rulebook is designed for tabletop play with a GM and players. GMs can adapt to situations at-will, even bending or breaking rules if they need to. A computer opponent has no such judgement, and runs a greater risk of falling into nonsensical play.

An example: I was playtesting the Linux build on the Steam deck and a Demolisher spawned on the other side of the Riparian Zone rivers. It couldn't figure out how to cross, so it spent the entire holdout just handing out lockons and basic frag sigs. A human GM would have:

• 1. not spawned a demo on the other side of a river in the first place, and
• 2. been better equipped to find a creative solution for what to do with a demo in that situation (have it build a rock bridge? spawn an emergency Mirage? simply retreat and not take up an NPC activation?).

As quoted in last week's post, the Rebake would have helped here by giving the demo a few more interesting things to do (ie golf clubbing a piece of terrain) when it's at range, while keeping its core identity as a slow area-denial slugger.

Tabletop compatibility; New player onboarding

> "One phenomenon I've noticed in my D&D groups is the 5th edition rules are constantly being compared to Baldur's Gate 3, or worse even confused between the two. Its not a huge deal, but it creates some dissonance I've found can mess with new player expectations."
> "it's for sure going to be confusing when new players who've arrived at the game via the LT pipeline encounter the regular NPCs"
> "To be exact, what I'm particularly worried about is that the homebrew rules will 'replace' the original CRB rules, as then I can't really help out the people I'm introducing to the game."

Being a good neighbor to the tabletop and functioning as an introduction to Lancer for new players is the strongest argument I heard for sticking with core. Here's my one thought about this, plus two categories of quotes from other folks (none of them a definitive answer to this):

These changes are GM-facing, not player facing

> "This is from someone who has only played and not GM'd lancer, but I think that the stats of the NPCs aren't a huge impact on how the player interacts with the game. We would still have the same mechs available as players, with NPCs rebalanced for a single player experience. I could still do all the cool mech things I had wanted to do (like blasting someone into swiss cheese with a Raleigh)"
> "I’ve run games for a lot of (newish) players that would probably not be able to tell even if they meet two Assassins in the same encounter using Core vs Rebake other than that they have different abilities)"
> "While i feel the PC mechanics / mech features should be pretty faithful, I really think the specific NPC stats are not that integral to the identity (there are many and you interact with each individual NPC a bit rarely)"

Lancer Tactics is already off-core due to adaptations

> "The core rulebook is already not a reliable guideline for playing the video game just by virtue of existing changes necessary for a video game adaptation. And that’s the free version that more of the Lancer Tactics player base will have access to than the paid crb the npcs are in"
> "but I don't know how much LT aims to be an entry point to teach you how to play and run the game at your own table, you'd still have to learn the pdf and brush up on the rules if you wanna run Lancer anyway"

We've already had to make some unavoidable changes as part of the change in format that dwarf the Rebake in terms of players learning LT and then switching to tabletop:

• The distinction between quick and full actions, like Skirmish, Barrage, and Full Tech, have been dropped in favor of "action points". This has some knock-on effects like being able to move between firing weapons and the awkwardness of not being able to repeat weapon attacks but repeating Invades as much as you want.
• Flight in tabletop is granular: you can move up and down as many spaces as you want. This would be a nightmare to make UI for so we simplified this to a simple status that puts you 3 spaces above whatever ground you're over.
• Brace can normally trigger any time you take damage, but it is very rarely the correct decision. We obviously don't want to spam players, so we changed it to only proc on taking 50% of your health in one hit or getting structured/stressed (and I still think it's too much).

And that's not to mention our changes to line-of-sight to be more computer-friendly and completely dropping downtime + pilot combat rules. This is to say: the fact of whether or not the enemy Ace's missile launcher has Seeking is a less impactful concern when talking about what new players will be learning.

Expected a 1:1 port; Perceived authenticity

> "what I wanted was a translation of Lancer the tabletop game, warts and all"
> "i am simply of the opinion that authenticity to core Lancer is important in making what is likely going to be the only Lancer video game to exist"
> 'A lot of it is just that it feels a bit weird to go from "lancer with some changes to account for the medium" to "lancer with published homebrew and QoL changes to account for the medium"'
> "I also backed the project under the thought it was going to be the base rules and maybe some neat olive exclusives."

I take my Kickstarter promises very seriously (and have gotten increasingly conservative with them over my previous campaigns due to occasional trip-ups), and the idea that you might be getting something significantly different than what you were expecting is something that gets my attention.

We ran this campaign on "we're making a Lancer video game!" Specific mechanical adaptation requirements — the Flying status, dropping Barrage/Full Tech, curtailing Brace's trigger — have been well-received even though they're substantial and player-facing. 

Conversely, the switch from 2D to 3D was not in original Kickstarter plans, but the change has been well-received and has made for a more polished & stronger game.

This underlines that not all changes in expectations are created equal, so it's interesting to see that the idea of us willfully changing any mechanics elicited a strong reaction for some.

So, even though I understand hesitation about implementing mechanical patches like the Rebake, I can't operate as a game developer without the elbow room to make changes. But I also want to make everybody happy (something that's both normal to want and possible to achieve). Kickstarter tries to make it clear that projects aren't pre-orders & changes happen, but leaning on that legalese leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I think if you absolutely need LT to be literally core rules, then that's not something we can accommodate & I'm happy to send you a refund — though I hope you can instead trust us that you're still going to get the Lancer video game experience that you were hoping for.

> "As an intellectual exercise, pure 1:1 core rules would be interesting to play. Given the choice between Core and Rebaked, I'd prefer the latter."
> "All I can do is say, fellow backers, we backed because we are excited about Lancer AND we believed in the ability for this team to bring it to reality. I ask that we trust those in the trenches on how to make a Lancer game, no matter how different it may be from expectation"
> "...what we'd be losing here is something that every GM of every game alters, willingly or not, every time they sit down at the table. NPCs never use the full range of their abilities, never act in the same way from table to table despite having the same statistics, and don't necessarily have the same statistics anyway because everyone tweaks stuff all the time, even if it's just accidental. Preserving their exact implementation in perpetuity represents misunderstanding their purpose; they're a tool for narrative and tactical tension, and they should be freely adjusted by any and every gamemaster to make them a better tool. That includes Olive."

Dev workload

> "But ultimately whatever makes Olive happier and more satisfied with the project wins here, and whatever doesn't make it stuck in development hell."
> "I think it's fine, just please don't go and add a huge amount of workload."
> "In the end I just want a finished product that won't become abandonware"

We'll do our best! I continue to be paranoid about overscoping. The biggest advantage to the Rebake is how much of a drop-in replacement it is.

Modding

> "If people really want the original core NPCs, they can be modded in 🤷‍♀️"
> "The Rebaked npcs sounds like a great mod/supplement to let people make after release, but i'd rather have the option for them down the line, instead of HAVING to use them :)"

We currently have no timeline for mod support. I dearly hope that we're able to get it working someday, but there are enough unknowns that I'm not comfortable making plans that rely on it. I mentioned this in the original post but saw this suggested enough I thought it was worth reiterating.

Just make a new set of custom-designed NPCs!

> "I personally think the best method is to tailor make an npc roster for the game itself, in a way that makes coding easy and make the game fun and interesting."
> "I don't see why it wouldn't be possible to just do quality of life things that are commonly discussed amongst the community like making Juggernaut more interactive. Seeing how those changes play out in the game, which this will be primarily for anyway and not for tabletop use, shouldn't make that much of a ruckus in terms of playtesting." 

So: the biggest reason we've been able to move so fast with so few resources is because the game's already designed, i.e. balance and playtesting are done; we don't have to implement anything only to throw it out later because it no longer fit. Even putting our Kickstarter promises aside, inventing entirely fresh custom-built mechanics would be a relative tarpit. There's a reason the homebrew mech Xiong Xiaoli tier was limited to one person.

However, this brings up: having dipped our toes into opting into any improvements to core, we've opened up the door to the question "if you're making changes, why not fix X?" We've signaled that we're now making limited game design choices, which means we're no longer a 100% neutral translator of the one Holy Text. Uh oh! How do we start making those calls?

The soul of this: what are we making? Lancer MegaMek or Lancer Tactics? A virtual tabletop?

> "As absolutely killer of a CRPG as I think it'd make, this isn't a CRPG, and comparing it to CRPGs is a bit messy due to the narrative focus of that genre compared to the tactical wargamey focus of LT"

An admission: we've been having our cake and eating it too. Lancer Tactics has been riding the line between "a Lancer wargame simulator" and "a CRPG that tells a story". Here's two pages from our internal lookbook that Carpenter made at the beginning of the project to get everyone oriented:

We're trying to thread the needle of giving people action figures they can set up and smack against each other AND having a specific voice with stories that we think are worth telling & using Lancer as the vehicle to deliver them. The former is what people are going to be excited and show up for; the latter is how I sleep at night spending so much energy on making a video game in the face of the Horrors.

Battletech has an unofficial straight port from tabletop to video game called MegaMek. It's all toy box; an automated virtual tabletop for playing that one wargame. As satisfying as making cool robots go boom is, spending three+ years making a Lancer version of MegaMek sounds so so boring to me! That's not how I wanna spend my life!

So the plan has been to make a toy box that equips folks to tell their own stories in the Lancer system & universe (which is what y'all showed up for), and then use those same tools to make some campaigns that'll follow through with voices and characters and settings that I think are important. We stitch the whole thing together in a loose modular anthology structure and we've made a platform for people to tell their own stories while setting the political tone with our entries.

With that as the big picture, you might see why I'm not particularly biased towards being a strict Lancer literalist. I love playing Lancer (it's been my sicko hyperfixation for like five years now) but my lens for what I'm hoping to do with it is wider than making a totally neutral virtual tabletop (I spent so much space in the Kickstarter's description talking about the planet Viridian's colonial & ecological situation). This means I'm not afraid of improving player experience by making changes as needed, as long as they maintain the core fun of putting builds together and seeing the Raleigh go pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop with its seven guns.

> "All in all, I think you have proven through each update and instance of the project that you are not only open and honest about these things, but you desire more than simply making a port. THAT is what I am most excited by now, and originally when I backed. It's not just LANCER, it is LANCER: Tactics."

So we're changing things now? Where does it end?

As discussed above, our biggest production advantage in this project is that we've known the shape of the game we're making from the start. I was able to go heads-down and work on the engine for a year before having anything playable. This would normally be a death sentence for a game's production, but since we already knew Lancer was fun we were able to get away with it.

With that in mind, it's only with extreme reluctance (note: it was my idea) that I'm opening the door to us explicitly taking on a limited role of game designers in choosing what Lancer patches to bring into LT. This whole discussion has generated a number of explicit constraints that I'm going to be looking for when considering divergences from the core rulebook:

• We continue to do minimal design work. The change comes as a tested package that benefits player experience; I'm skeptical of one-off "hey I bet I know how to fix the balance on this specific thing" ideas without them being thoroughly vetted.
• It does not increase scope. We're not adding completely new stuff. Having an associated LCP is also required since we're set up to consume those for names and descriptions.
• It doesn't complicate compatibility with tabletop. The changes we're picking up from the Rebake are mostly GM-facing; NPCs with different systems are well within the core lancer experience from players' perspectives. Modifying a PC option is last-resort ONLY (e.g. Skirmisher II).
• It's forward-compatibility-friendly. Mods are not on the roadmap, but I want to leave the door open to them. Any design updates we make should not change something that later work is likely to rely on being a certain way.

In this case, Kai's NPC Rebake checks all these boxes. Other sources we may look at to pull from are TK's Lancers in the Dark or the standardization of sitrep objectives as Payloads from Ralf's Enhanced Combat. I could also see someday finding an update for dangerous terrain & environmental effects that fit within these constraints.

This also means there won't ever be one definitive PDF/book source of truth for Lancer Tactics as a whole. That... seems fine? An NPC roster with the relevant info exists in-game in the places where it's needed. And someone who's played LT will continue to be better equipped to sit down at a Lancer table and play than someone who hasn't.

Outcome; so, what's the plan?

• We are going to prioritize player-experience compatibility with the tabletop rules. This means we're not going to use the Rebake's alternate structure/stress tables nor alternate grunt classes. I personally think they're good solutions in themselves, but their changes-to-rules/things-they-fix ratio isn't enough to justify picking them up for LT.
• We are going to pick up most of the rest of the Rebake's NPC class changes. Most of them reduce reliance on GM sandbagging, reduce my overall dev workload by letting me spend less time implementing abstruse minutiae, and are a light enough touch that I don't believe they compromise our Kickstarter goals of porting Lancer to a video game (especially in light of the larger player-facing changes we've already had to make). I'll skip the changes that don't make sense for LT on a case-by-case basis.
• We also reserve the right to make further non-PC-option patches as gameplay demands. For example, even before all of this I was going to ignore the tabletop ruling and allow Berserkers get a last Aggression hit in before dying. These changes will follow the criteria listed above.
• I don't think I'll get to starting the next batch of NPC implementations until like October, so there's plenty of time between now and then to sit on all this and let it ferment.

There has never been a flawless game of Lancer played; the quest for the holy 1:1 RAW grail is a fool's errand; tables out there right now are doing PvP (bleh) or have dropped the 1/round limit on overcharge (woah!); chaining your early access game to a beloved-but-unchanging set of rules means that it can't ever grow into something better.

Closing words

I love this process. I love getting the opportunity to hear folks voice their thoughts and feelings as we all orbit around this shared idea of what Lancer is and could be. Thank you again for spending your time sharing your perspectives, both in public and private. Our core team a lot of time talking this over and have done our best to chart a course through more political and charged waters than we were expecting. Even if you don't totally agree with a decision we made, don't think we made it lightly. I tried my best to listen and understand & I hope you felt heard. 

Alright, now for real I gotta switch over to my non-LT work to pay some bills. See you in July after the break!

🌺 Olive

NPC Rebake, rests & repairs, community maps
11 months ago – Fri, May 02, 2025 at 03:39:16 PM

Hello, happy May! Summer in the northern hemisphere is fast approaching. I've been having a nice time whenever I stumble outside, blinking in the unfamiliar sun, smelling long forgotten floral aromas.

A new build, 0.2.6, is available for download via itch.io. If you're a backer and haven't yet, you can still check your digital downloads on Backerkit for your itch download link.

I'm updating my Linux dual-boot machine in the background as I'm writing this, so depending on how that goes we might have a Linux build up in the near future as well. Fingers crossed. How hard could it be.

NPC Rebake

Here's something I think is a good idea but want to run past y'all since it's technically a divergence from our Kickstarter promise of porting the core rules as straight as possible. Kai Tave, author of the Solstice Rain, Winter Scar, and Suldan modules, has been working on a Lancer supplement called Lancer: NPCs Rebaked which does a design pass over the core NPCs "with an eye towards transparency, ease of use, readily graspable tactics, and memorable challenges". It's designed to be able to be as easy a 1:1 swap with the core NPCs as possible while still giving them some (imo) sensible updates.

Here's a paragraph from his design notes on the Demolisher rebake, to give you a sense:

My concerns with using the Rebake rules in Lancer Tactics:

• I want Lancer Tactics to be a good neighbor to the tabletop game; people should be able to play LT and then come into an in person session well-equipped to play at the table. Since the redesign is mostly GM-facing, I don't think this will be an issue, but there will be discrepancies.
• Sticking to the core rules was very helpful in answering the question "why don't you take this opportunity to fix <perceived problem with Lancer>?" because we could say that we're limiting design scope by only making changes necessary for the adaptation to video game.
• A common refrain (see the comment section in dragonkidd11's video, below) from people encountering LT is "wow! I wonder if this could be used as a Virtual Tabletop if they add multiplayer!" This makes me nervous. I've been clear as possible that multiplayer is out of scope for now, but we've accidentally stumbled into an uncanny valley of LT as a 1:1 port of the core rules (e.g. Megamek). Being in that valley could make people upset that we've had the audacity to make game design changes that don't line up with their expectations — this whole thing can open up a Pandora's box of political opinions.
• This seems like mod territory, right? Why not do both and let users choose? => I don't wanna do twice the work. It'd be a big mod, and I'd rather just do the version that fits LT better from the get-go.

Why I think it'd be worth it to use 'em anyway:

• It replaces all Veteran & Ultra optionals that only really make sense with a human GM running it or flatten possible player tactics (e.g. ejecting, NHP copilot, blanket immunities). We could have just skipped those, but having templates that are holistically designed with a different set of abilities from ground-up seems strictly better.
• It shaves off the rough corners of some NPC systems that were going to be a pain to both implement and communicate. The Archer has fewer "if you do this I shoot you" duplicates, Priest Investiture no longer shares its System save, and Seeder mines are no longer the only hidden info in the entire game.
• It removes multiattack scaling from NPC tier. A tier 3 core Ronin is a blender that forces players to have invested in Hull or die. A human GM could moderate this by judging if it made sense to take the insane focus-fire option possible for high-tier NPCs or spreading things out a little more, but a computer is not as good at making "what would make for the best gameplay" calls.
• If Baldur's Gate 3 was able to make Shove a bonus action and add a boatload of weapon-specific abilities and people still accept it as D&D, I think we can get away with some NPC changes.
• We're not trying to be a Virtual Tabletop! You know what makes a good VTT? The existing VTTs out there!
• It won't be a significant change in workload. There will be fewer and simpler abilities overall for me to implement, but I'll have to re-do some of the existing NPCs, so I think it's a wash.

The other changes the rebake makes — consolidating each NPC's tactical role to be more cohesive (e.g. Ronin doubling down on being an anti-ranged melee threat), incorporating the years of playtesting since Core release (e.g. the Sniper no longer comes in two genders: ones with Moving Target for free reloads and ones without) — are ones I'm a fan of but can't honestly come up with a reason for using beyond "I agree and think they're neat".

You can see the 1.4 Rebake PDF for yourself here. Our primary obligation in this project is to deliver on our promises to backers, so I'm interested in hearing any thoughts you have about this.

Changelog & Updates

People

• Eld will be doing the map and encounter design for the first campaign! His previous Lancer map design work includes the Solstice Rain, Winter Scar, and Shadow of the Wolf modules.
• Added three "community" maps from Titania Bird. We'd love to have a more automated way for folks to share maps, but until we do I can just include them manually. If you've made something cool, send it our way!

• Carpenter reached out to all the Pilot-/Vehicle-/LL12-/Xiong-level backers to start finalizing the work for custom token rewards.
• Dragonkidd11 made a nice short video covering Lancer Tactics! <3

Features

• Added repairs + persistent damage across Instant Action runs, with the option to clear it all out and reset. Wrecked mechs can be repaired.

• Maps can export a top-down view of themselves as a PNG for potential VTT usage.

Mechanics

• Reworked LOS a bit to let tall objects cast "shadows" to reduce the number of situations where you're clearly hiding behind something bigger than you but somebody at a taller elevation is still able to see you.

• Fix ace barrel roll being used against tech attacks
• Make it so you can attack with two ordnance weapons
• Make it so you can double up on a quick tech option
• Shepherd drone movement respects movement costs
• Fix caltrops/other deployables not being able to go on setpieces
• Fix massive slowdown on using ideal image; deploying size 2+ objects no longer lag the game
• Fix dimensional emblems not being placed next to the target. Dimensional emblems placement action now uses the main invade's description.
• Exiled targets no longer count as valid units; all reactions that require a targe unit and are passed someone intangible will categorically fail.
• Mines no longer trigger off of intangible units. Grenades can no longer be used while intangible to damage tangible units.
• Bombard cannon prone effect no longer hits intangible units.
• Goblin CP gives knockback+prone immunity while active.
• Involuntary movement should no longer separate a sybiosis'd goblin and its host.
• I Kill With My Heart no longer applied bonus damage even when you're not consuming it.
• Don't offer IKWMH as an option on followup no-bonus-damage attacks.
• Fix thermal charge not working in specifically instant action (it was the same bug as the below Apoc Rail phantom everest, actually! game dev is weird.)

UI & Graphics

• Updated to Godot 4.4.1, which should allow the game to automatically fall back to Compatibility mode for people with incompatible hardware with Godot's default rendering pipeline. This means not having to download a separate DEBUGCOMPAT build. The different in rendering pipelines is frustratingly different; the Forward+ lighting settings made the Compat mode look like this flashbang went off (below). I've fixed this by disabling some visual features in Compat mode (weirdly, having shadows enabled was what was causing the brightness). This is something I can't test on my own since I don't have hardware that triggers the fallback, so please continue letting me know if you see crashes or really weird graphics on the new versions!

• Hide mini heat bar for units without a heat cap
• Placing large deployables (only two in the game T_T) has proper UI (still shows a slightly wrong "placeable" area)
• Format for the correct NPC tier in kit tooltips
• Implemented "dioramas" as an alternative to plain backgrounds for downtime beats; miniature maps that show your lancers and their mechs. Reworked the downtime UI flow in general so it's more of a hub with a series of buttons & modals rather than switching between tabs.

• New batch of weapon and ability FX.
• Escape is the new default "cancel action" instead of backspace
• Added secret F1 key to toggle UI on and off for trailer work.
• Fix how we were making copies of units & their loadouts in instant action that was causing weird everest tokens to show up on Apoc Rail firings.
• Correctly say "on crit" in action descriptions such as variable sword
• Human tokens on map no longer have glowing hair
• Filter out duplicate bonus damage sources in log
• Correctly show weapon mods in action tooltips.

Editor

• Updated internal format of dialogues; use DialogueManager's tag system instead of specific commands for emotes. Similar update for "chorus" simultaneous speech.
• Fixed "jump to conversation" dialogue commands.
• Gave in-combat speaker subtool access to the parent module's Origin Characters and Narrative NPCs
• Added a new Stage Direction to emit trigger signals mid-conversation — dialogues can now run other sitrep triggers mid-conversation! Use this power wisely, this seems rather dangerous.
   

Schedule Updates

As mentioned last time, I have to take on some grant work for Crescent Loom for the next two months in order to bring myself through the end of year financially. Similarly, Carpenter is going to be traveling for his dance work for the next month. We'll still in contact with the rest of the team & contractors as they work through making content (Josh is going to be implementing a sketch of Dia's campaign in-engine), but expect the next few updates to be a lot skinnier.

Take care ~ Olive

🦴☠️🦴 LANCER TACTICS BONES 🦴☠️🦴
12 months ago – Tue, Apr 01, 2025 at 04:44:29 PM

🦴☠️🦴 BONES 🦴☠️🦴 BUILD 🦴☠️🦴 DONE 🦴☠️🦴

This build ~officially~ completes our original Kickstarter goals for the game!* You can get the download via Backerkit as normal, but this time I've also included an itch.io† key which will be where early access builds will live going forward. 

This also ~officially~ starts our 1-year timer for taking a shot at a 100% port of core game content. I am hungry to sink my teeth into focusing on content implementation; the foundation is poured; the first few floors are proofed and tidy enough; it's time build this tower up.

One of our top priorities post-bones is delivering on our custom mech tokens/pilot portraits for our higher-tier backers, as well as the homebrew Xiaoli mech. We'll reach out individually to communicate as needed for delivering on those, so keep your ears open.

*(Except rests/repairs; those will come for free as we move onto campaign work. I really wanted to get these crossed off the list too so we could say we were totally in the clear on this front, but we decided this running-late bonus month would be better used for bugfixes  & UI polish instead. Can't win 'em all.)

† (itch.io, if you're not familiar, is like Steam but small and indie and where all the cool game dev kids are hanging out these days)

Changelog

I'm coming up short on time so don't have many anecdotes to share here this month. Go play the dang game if you want some human experience of interacting with this electronic house of cards!

Gameplay:

• Finished remaking the tutorial.
• Made a new stock map: Arroyo

• Default sitreps now modulate/cap number of enemies spawned; will not totally overwhelm you, but will spawn more if under-threshold.

Bugfixes

• Fix AI getting confused about long-distance moves if they have an ally nearby.
• Fixed being able to mount up into enemy mechs
• Siege armor only works against attacks
• Fixed drake armor 2 => 3
• Fix siege cannon 2 => 4 heat
• Fix deep well heat sink not resisting self-inflicted heat
• Fix argonaut shield propagating heat
• Fix overcharging ending protocol phase
• Fix not being able to jumpjet multiple times in a turn when you have a free boost
• Tiles with setpieces that are obstructions don't count as "free tiles"
• Fixed units being able to get cover from the block they are standing on top of
• Fixed problem with large units not being able to move to certain tiles
• Fix crash in exported build on entering portrait maker
• Dispersal shield can't double-stack on the same unit
• Fix reactive code  // choice gear panel buttons; they are now small
• Can teleport kidnap while grappling
• Teleporting can do damage if you teleport them off the side of a cliff
• Correctly consume all free action buffs when stunned
• Ordnance can target other units, but not the one in engagement (this was news to me!)
• Brace no longer triggers when shredded.
• Can spawn outside of player deploy zone when there's no space left within it (4-barb squad represent)

UI/UX:

• Added crowdsourced loading screen tips
• New custom in-game cursors (fixed missing cursor in fullscreen mode)
• Many new attack/ability fx and icons.
• HDMI mode enabled; crisper text on HDMI screens. Automatically scales up UI when detected.
• Added setting to toggle SSIL/SSAO for performance
• Added setting to toggle glow for performance
• Can add & remove setpieces en masse with the brush tool instead of one at a time.

• Attack FX can now arc and hit targets instead of just doing the pokemon-politely-dance-in-their-own-space technique.

• Added subtle pulse to mech "glow" channels.

• Added ability to save/load pilot portrait JSONs directly without having to do the whole pilot.
• Added 4x sized portrait export as well (some people wanted them larger)
• Portrait "reset outfit" button.
• Additional portrait maker assets
• Added ability to make maps bigger/smaller from the north/west sides of maps instead of just south/east.
• Can change lighting angle for maps.
• Improved trigger descriptions & error bubbling.
• Can skip dialogue by right-clicking
• Hold WASD to keep scrolling instead of having to woodpecker it
• Add additional hotkey for canceling (backspace) and a few hotkey hints for it in-UI
• format tier {1/2/3} in action descriptions
• Animate in confirms/telegraphs/action bar
• Show camera controls in dialogue when telling how to boost over the wall.
• Updated damage popcorn fx to make it more obvious what it is
• Can click flying units directly to target them instead of their base tile.
• Better focusing on flying units to get them in-camera
• Play names of enemy units on spawn
• Music now shuffles in battles.
• Added ambience channel.
• Added triggers to play musice.
• Can click on talents in char sheet to go straight to the relevant catalog ring
• Log to history when damage is from a reliable attack
• Themed file dialogs (not great, but better than ugly grey)
• Added descriptions for spin up/spin down cannons. Added "linked action" for those tooltips so you can see the change of the profile in question.
• Auto-creates a "my first map" combat for players on first combat editor load
• Added a fun little hologram distortion to the "preview" unit placements on launch and moving units around.

🦴☠️🦴 bones bones bones bones bones 🦴☠️🦴 

(Today, April 1st, is the right holiday to be making a bones-themed announcement, right? We're synced up with wider society? Great great.)

🦴 bones 🦴 ~ Olive

Prebones_build_final_FINAL (2), production update, new narrative director
about 1 year ago – Fri, Feb 28, 2025 at 06:05:42 PM

New build

New build new build!

[ New build ]

We're calling it a "bones release candidate" even though it's not technically a release candidate since we know there's a buncha blocking issues, but this should be the last backer-only one before we start selling the early access "bones" builds on itch.io.

Production timeline update

I was aiming to get the "bones" version done by february, but looks like that didn't quite come together. Here's where we currently are with respect to the "bones" version I described in the campaign:

This officially puts us a month behind schedule, not including the 3-month extension we gave ourselves for the switchover when we discovered the game wanted to be in 3D.

An update on my own working situation: you may remember I changed the stretch goal for "one year fulltime to try and get to a 100% content port" to instead be "three years 2/3 time" to smooth things out with a bit of income via a part-time webdev job. That's hit a wrinkle: the contracts have dried up and as of jan 1st I'm no longer gainfully employed by others (did you know you can get paid for being laid off??? I've never gotten severance before! o_o).

However, I subsequently was accepted for Oregon's Self-Employment Assistance unemployment program so I can still get an income for most of this year as we work towards finishing the game. I'll need to fill a bit of a gap of a month or two by picking up some Crescent Loom grant work that's become available, so I think these changes are mostly a wash lol; overall I'll still be working on LT this year about 3/4 time.

Here's a sketch the current overall production timeline. With the 3D cataclysm and now running a bit behind, we're aiming to finish the Kickstarter build around March 2026.

We also still have all of the custom portraits/mech tokens/map video calls/homebrew mech rewards to fulfill in 2025.

The thing that's most likely to slip here is the implementation of the two campaigns we promised as stretch goals. I've been telling friends that that's the one place I feel the scope got out of hand during the crowdfunding. It's important to ship with stories because otherwise all we've made is a little toybox for digital robots to smash into each other, but promising *two* campaigns was a way bigger swing than I realized I was making at the time — and the cost of which was not reflected in the stretch goal itself. If that's the worst of the scope creep I think we're still in pretty good shape, but it's good to note.

Narrative Director

And to help us out with managing these two campaigns, Mark and I have brought on a third core team member. Meet Josh Boykin! ::

------------------------
Hey, folks! I'm Josh Boykin, and I'm joining the Lancer Tactics team as the Narrative Director!

A little about me: I run Intelligame: a Twitch stream and community where we use "thoughtful play" to make connections between games and the real-world. I've been working in indie games and narrative for over a decade now, with some of my most recent projects being Spirit Swap: Lo-Fi Beats to Match 3 To, REPOSE, and Sorry, We're Closed.  I'm also a former adjunct professor for NYU Game Center!

Olive and I have known each other for a few years now, and when I first heard about Lancer Tactics, I was SUPER excited...and a little too shy to ask if there was a way I could get involved. 😅 But now that the narrative campaigns are more underway, Olive and Mark agreed that there was some space for me to lend my experience. I've been working with our fantastic writers, Dia and Trey, to help bring the campaigns they're writing to life in Lancer Tactics. I'll also be helping with a few things here and there with production, business development, and our storefront too.

I'm seriously incredibly excited for y'all to get to see what we've got coming; it's a great game and a great team making it, and it's an honor to get to help bring it to you. If you want to reach out, you can find me on BlueSky at Wallstormer, and you can find all the Intelligame links here. Hope to chat soon!
------------------------

Changelog

ART

• Connor's been hard at work giving us more than basic minecraft blocks to make maps with with a buncha new setpieces:

• New meshes for deployables!

• New terrain textures!

• Implemented "doodads" in map editor that don't affect terrain and exist on a separate layer from setpieces. Can go either on top of setpieces or on the ground.

I did some work dialing in the rendering pipeline for the game, as well. It's a common among hipster game developers to looks at games with pixel art and comment on whether they're using a "true" pixel grid or not: Shovel Knight is a purist, while Noita commits the sins of rotating its little squares and being inconsistent in their sizing.

Lancer Tactics falls into the latter camp: while I'm locking the camera to zoom levels that don't warp the pixel art, they exist in a non-pixel 3D world and if you zoom in, the pixels of the objects are smaller than the enlarged pixels of the mechs. I experimented with locking them to the same size, but Mark pointed out that had an uncanny valley effect and the 3D objects just looked like bad pixel art.

To help with this I threw in a toon shader (think Wind Waker) to help make the 3D shapes look more pixel-art-y:

We ended up scrapping the consistent pixel sizing but keeping the toon shader: even though the game doesn't fit a purist's definition of pixel art, the hard banding lines for lighting present to the eye as a similar effect as pixel arts' limited palette and make the mix of the two more cohesive overall.

I learned a fair bit about 3D lighting during this process and unlocked the ability to change environmental lighting. Here's a test nighttime scene:

This has created a bug where if there's shadow-casting lighting anywhere on-map, the 2D arts' shadows come out upside down. I cannot for the life of me figure out why or how to fix it, so in-world lighting might end up being shadowless.

• New weapon attack effects.

• Updated attack roll animation. Show the total roll's number, along with acc/diff count and the result. Use damage symbols instead of the word "damage".
• Added a system where we can play one effect at an attacked tile (like a missile landing) and a different effect at any AOE tiles (like an explosion). This replaces the old system where you would fire one missile and many would come down for each tile affected.
• Robin has started work on sound effects, shifting from their previous work on music. This is a lot harder to include tidbits about in a text/image update 😅 but they're great, I promise.

UI

• Learned how to move long-running tasks to different threads to not make the game's interface hang. Did so for pathfinding, AI, and the initial content load. I can't overstate how much smoother this makes the user experience.
• Other UI optimizations to make screens load up faster.
• More action icons for Barb & Toku.
• Can "reset outfit" in portrait maker.
• Add reset button to catalog ring for licenses/talents/CBs.
• Weapon picker shows SP-unaffordable options, just greyed out.
• Add "continue" input (defaults to spacebar) that automatically continues past NPC telegraph prompts.
• Stabilize popcorn text during screen shake.
• Scale the amount of screen shake by how much damage was done.
• New "movement area" visual style: white for initial move & gold for boosts with a dotted line showing the original movement range.

• New load screen animation & tips. If you have some ideas for some, feel free to throw them on this spreadsheet!

MECHANICS

• Redid the hard cover calculation method, again. No longer rely on raycasts: it now steps through the voxels in a rough 3D line, and ignores hits on voxels lower than both the attacker and target. Only show cover icons for the most-clear shot instead of every voxel-to-voxel line.
• Give size 2+ units a threshold for ignoring small changes in elevation when moving, so they can step over stuff smaller than them more easily.
• Shuffle AI target tiles to help prevent arbitrary focus-fire in the case of ties.

BUGFIXES

• Hair color now correctly randomizes.
• Logic bomb AOE is correct. Metafold maze also hits all affected targets.
• Ordnance weapons can't be fired in engagement.
• Don't explode pilots on death.
• Don't confirm ending turn w/ unused actions for pilots.
• Roller grenade no longer just immediately hits user.
• Better movement visualization for size 2+ units; adjust fake target move tiles more proactively.
• Grunts dying to heat doesn't require a rxn to be available
• Fix several instances of a reaction or triggered attack being able to be used twice on a turn if it re-triggers again before the first one resolves.
• Exposed singularity movement is mandatory so you can't cancel out and then re-use it.
• Scanpedia automatically knows grunt HP
• Attack preview shows "??%" if the evasion is unknown rather than magically knowing the percent chance.
• Fix Walking Armory shock & jager not working if the original target died.
• Fix kinetic compensator adding accuracy for every attack.
• Fix core siphon never removing its initial accuracy.
• Disdainful blade attack is required to be thrown.
• Fixed disdainful blade not triggering if you destroy your target
• When an attack with knockback is controlled by an opponent, they get to pick the knockback as well.
• Slave systems boost has a flag to have the unit ignore being knocked off-course even though we're spending move.
• Fix being able to staple a pistol to a rifle and overwatch with the rifle.
• Don't warn for overwatches when moving an enemy unit (e.g. slave/puppet systems).
• Fixed up excommunicate/chains localization keys.
• Fixed portable bunker not granting cover.
• Add capability to attack the tile you're on if there's also a valid target there (e.g. webjaw snare).
• Webjaw snare immune to knockback.
• Moving a unit via a katamari correctly triggers reactions to that unit's involuntary movement; can now grapple mechs onto mines.
• No longer full-repairs every unit whenever a game is loaded.
• Systems with no charges left don't magically refill charges on loading a savegame.
• Fix loading a game breaking unit elevation while standing on another unit with dynamic elevation ie jericho.
• Fix AI shooting each other if they're in objective zones.
• Custom Paint Job is no longer guaranteed to trigger.
• AI avoids moving into terrain that slows them if they don't have and EVA or flight.
• Fixed AI teleports having unlimited range.

(you probably missed it above, so I'll link it here again: if you wanna suggest some loading screen tips, you can do so in this spreadsheet)

That's all for this month-! Oh yeah and I had a nice NZ vacation for January, it was good to spend time away from touching computers, and their fern and bird game continue to be excellent. But I really did jump straight back into things as soon as I got home lol.

Pre-vacation changelog
about 1 year ago – Sun, Jan 12, 2025 at 02:14:01 PM

Heya! I'm about to head out for my first real vacation since the start of this project (my Ireland trip last year was cancelled; I'm spending the rest of January in New Zealand with some friends!), so I'm gonna keep this month's update a pretty plain changelog.

Gameplay & map

• Added system for weather & map-wide environmental effects. Implemented particulate storms, corrosive atmo, extreme heat, thin atmo.

• Added asking for confirmation before attacking an ally or ending a turn with actions.
• Unit chits greyed out when they're out of activations.
• Testing out a higher camera angle for better access to clicking the map (old: -30 deg, new: -35 deg).
• Wreck sprites inherit the color scheme of the mech they came from which is kind of neat.
• Weapons with no special effects skip NPC telegraphing by default.
• Connor's made a barn! We've been prototyping to dial in on what we want our 3D asset style to be.

• Added "dappling" of terrain blocks where textures are pulled across the voxel boundaries to make the map look more naturalistic.

• Immediately suborned this dappling-system to get autotiling for path blocks like roads:

• Gen finished the Barbarossa sprite, she's a beaut.

• I doubled automated test speed by somewhat dangerously re-using the world instead of tearing it down and remaking it for every test. This has the side effect of making it a lot more fun to watch, too:

• Added "cover" icon on attack preview so you can see where the cover is coming from.

• Added camera shake on attack and deployment.
• Carpenter's been chipping away at re-implementing the web demo's tutorial mission in the new trigger system. About 90% of the way there. I've been adding a lot of small quality-of-life improvements to the editor as he requests them in that work.

Editor/UI

• Added Undo/Redo buttons, 8 steps deep. May increase this if it feels like we need more.
• Added edge-of-screen scroll.
• Added "paint" mode for blocks to change the block type without adding or removing elevation.
• Updated a bunch more UI styling in accordance with last month's design overhaul.

• Change how selected zones are indicated on-map, which makes invisible zone domains visible.
• Added trigger fetchers for unit state bools/ints (e.g. "has normal boost" or "number of overcharges used")
• Added "unit took action" trigger for use by sitrep triggers. I've been very slow to add this as a possible thing that abilities can react to because of the risk of an easy infinite loop. It's implemented on probation.
• Experimenting with making buttons change the cursor to a "pointer" like they're hyperlinks or something
• Disabled trigger groups are greyed out
• "customize mech/pilot" buttons in unit subtool, update the on-token correctly when unit is changed
• Pressing a zone in the tool will move the camera to it
• Dramatically improved editor performance when painting setpieces/blocks.
• Can add any kit in the game (e.g. dismount) to NPCs in their character sheet
• Portrait maker can set pilot unit tokens that show up when dismounted.
• Fixed playtesting conversations not having access to speaker portraits.
• Added "chorus" dialogue lines where multiple characters can speak at once
• Visual Novel mode is integrated with the battle map with little pointers to the speaking unit. This sorta obsoletes the old "word bubble" mode, so we're thinking about simplifying and only having the "visual novel" mode.

• Conversation editor shows a guide for each visual novel layout and where each character will go. Also can have speakers start in-conversation instead of having to manually enter each one.

• implemented Doodads; can paint a "rubble" piece wherever whose placeholder asset looks suspiciously like a mech wreck. Will make less intrusive as we get more assets for these.
• Made a "unit palette" for placing units instead of that huge ugly list.

• Started work on "Zone NPC Guides" system where a mapmaker can mark certain zones as desirable to occupy or avoid for NPCs. They can additionally mark specific NPCs to override the zone's defaults to, for example, have a sniper hang out in an advantageous position and never advance to try and take a CZ.

Bugfixes

• Fixed screen overflow for massive tooltips for e.g. the Barb CP.
• Fix witch pred logic causing units to target themselves with impact lance.
• Fix pred. logic being used with ordnance weapons
• Hidden targets don't cause engagement.
• Integrated weapon only triggers off of weapon attacks.
• Autopod now works correctly with Walking Armory.
• Destroy ramps when their block is destroyed.
• Fix Avalanche charge being able to target hidden units.
• Fix mines triggering twice if you move on top of them again in reaction to taking damage from them (i.e. exposed singularity).
• Fixed earthshaker shells poisoning savegames

Stay safe, take care of each other.

— Olive