Upcoming features (Patreon)

Did even more work on the strategic/base management side of things. Here is a short preview for features to come:

First I should explain that the base management side of things are divided into turns as well.  Every turn, you get to embark on one mission of your choice. Doing so will advance the base management turn timer to the next turn and trigger all associated effects. 

Every turn, your characters can only partake in one activity. So for example, if you want they to take part in missions, they cannot do any other activity for the turn. The selected activity is shown in the roster window on the right.

Soon to come (not on the next patch), you will be able to actually assign the characters to different activities, such as relief for low Resolve or additional training to learn new grab moves.

I also added a Panic meter, which will serve as your "base HP." If the Panic level goes too high, you risk a Game Over. 

I went back and forth on this, removing it then reinstalling it, as I am not sure if its better to add a count down timer, or remove the idea of time pressure all together and let players do things at their own pace. This may be changed in the future.

The bulk of the work went into the new dynamic mission system. On the surface, it looks very similar to the old mission screen:

However, there is one key difference, the missions here are dynamically generated instead of fixed. There are several advantages to this:

1) The old system lead to too much mission cluster, for example, there are 4 missions related to Goblin Shaman. Once I start to add more threats and bosses, it's going to become more and more unwieldly and difficult to use.

2) Dynamic missions. Some missions can be generated base on the context or "background" state. For example, if one of your characters get captured, the game can generate a Rescue Mission for a number of turns. During which the player have the opportunity to get that unit back.

3) A more intuitive (story) progression system. Essentially, how the progression system work for CATC is that there will be a number of Bosses/Threats. The Goblin Shaman being one of them. Once you discover and beat one of the them, it will unlock the next batch of enemies, zones and the next Threat and so on. I like there to be a number of missions before the next Boss fight is unlocked. You can call them filler if you wish but I think they are important to introduce the player to the new enemy types and their strategies. I can be far more direct in giving players an idea of what's going on with these new Threat-Progress missions.

4) Finally, these new Dynamic Missions are far more modular than the old Fixed Missions, by separating the Enemy Types, the Stage and Modifiers and such. For example, in the future, I can add a toggle on the selection screen to disable the Enemy Insight system, instead of having to define those permutations statically.

* The older missions are still playable in the next build as "Legacy Missions" but I expect to fully remove them in favor of the new Dynamic Mission system in the future.

I also added a one page combat quick guide, that players may find useful:

For people looking towards SR / Versus Mode, there will be a a patch for that as well next month. The 2 highest priority features, based on suggestions, are customizable key-binds, and perhaps a group fight mode. I am probably going to add 2 additional character slots in the Versus Mode screen, to a total of 4, and then add a team selection so you can setup 2v2s, 1v2s, 1v3s and so on. 

I think the 4 character limit is a good maximum, I know HR supported up to 8 but that felt like too much of a clusterfuck. I can be convinced otherwise though.