#war-o-matic

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a few reworked chassis sprites.

first, the hover units now have big pontoons and smaller wings to emphasize that they're not real flying units.

second, I'm changing the second defense type from "evasion" to "shielding", because people don't like the idea of "evasion" not meaning "dodge chance" (which is a kind of rng i don't want in the game), and it's also dissonant with the "direct hit" mechanic.

a chassis with innate armor has a blocky appearance and golden plating, while one with shielding has a more sloped look with blue-ish coils and arrays for detailing (a "basic" chassis with neither has a simple look with neutral gray metal). armor is defeated by high-power weapons like cannons and rockets, while shielding is vulnerable to being overloaded by multiple impacts from rapid-fire weapons and multi-missiles. these values are referred to on a weapon by it's "piercing" and "suppression" values, respectively.

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PURE v3. i think this is the look.

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several design choices in war-o-matic have been made for the sake of simplifying things for the AI, and one of those choices is the elimination of transports.

to cross the sea, all units can enter shallow water and use the "embark" command to enter an amphibious mode! (they'll have altered sprites for this later.) while embarked, units can't attack and their movement is limited to 3, regardless of what it is on land. once they move back onto a land tile, they can disembark to go back to normal. embarking and disembarking both require you to be on the water's edge and use a full turn of movement.

this doesn't apply to hover chassis units though, which can seamlessly move across land and sea tiles. (they can't cross mountains, however.)

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a mockup of the skirmish mode menu, since the unit customization UI doesn't exist yet. (well, it's an ingame screenshot, I just say "mockup" because not all those buttons work.)

when you create a game every CO will have the same default loadout they have in the campaign. since those loadouts will be designed to be "good enough" for a player that doesn't care to customize them, they'll be good enough for the AI too. you'll be able to click the loadout to customize it as much or as little as you want (and yes you'll be able to save any number of custom loadouts for every CO.)

to streamline this setup process though, I do have to commit to COs not having customizable programs (mini-powers) like I planned, but that's not all bad since it means they'll all have unique complete kits.

...by the way, another consequence of custom units being a thing is that you won't be able to make custom maps with predeployed units, because, like, the COs won't actually have that unit. just throwing that out there!

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testing some dot matrix art for the CO status bars.

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WAR-O-MATIC takes place a few hundred years before ASTROLANCER. Leaning more on AI causes the corporations to abandon their slave populations, who eventually manage to organize small local governments, which in turn eventually become large governments able to challenge corporate control, which leads to the creation of the GALACTIC COUNCIL, putting an end to their open warfare.

By the time of ASTROLANCER laws have been put in place that AIs above a certain spec can't be mass produced, so automated mining tends to be handled by large numbers of individual robots with relatively simple AIs, like the rabbots, instead of a single overarching intelligence.

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TRUE BLUE. As FTL technology improved and deep space mining was on the cusp of profitability, corporations began looking into advanced automation as it was much less expensive to move equipment through space if life support for human slaves was not a consideration. During this time, TRUE BLUE emerged as a revolutionary AI that could handle the logistics of resource acquisition, producing drones, and using them to attack competitors all in one package. It was so successful that nearly every corporation that could afford to run one was doing so.

However, this monopolization led to a situation where TRUE BLUE was almost always fighting other instances of itself. TRUE BLUE was designed to be risk-averse, slowly but surely grinding out an inevitable victory; but when two instances of it with roughly equal resources were pitted against each other, the result was usually a stalemate.

To address this, when TRUE BLUE's developers started work on their next-generation AI, the focus was on creating instances that were more specialized and less risk-averse. Although they didn't necessarily win more often, they were more volatile and would at least settle matters more quickly. To sell this new concept of "individualization", the AIs also were given personality matrices that would present them with human avatars, and they could be "interviewed" by companies interested in buying them. The popularity of this generation has led us to the hellscape of WAR-O-MATIC's present day mining conflicts.

In game, TRUE BLUE is a sort of meta character. It has a dry personality and handles the tutorial. You can also play as it in VS mode; it has no passive ability, but it can use every program and power in the game! (Except biomech abilities.)

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LILU, the fifth of GAIA's guardians!

i'll be real with you, this character exists only to complete the captain planet joke. i don't actually have any plans for her in the campaign.

she may end up being the biomech equivalent of TRUE BLUE, a vs mode only CO with gimmicky abilities.