Line War News

Hi fellow gamers,

We got some happy news for you today!

As many of you may already know, we've been working hard this autumn to bring you Line War's next important update: Teams & FFA. We know that many of you have waited long enough already for these features to arrive, and we sincerely apologize for the delay and missed ETAs (see REASONS FOR DELAY further down).

Now, at last, the beta is open as a Steam opt-in to anyone that has a copy of Line War! In fact, this has been the case since December 12 when we made an announcement on the Line War Discord. If you haven't yet joined our terrific and wholesome gang of intellectuals and gentlemen at Discord, be sure to do so now by following this link: https://discord.com/invite/ZReTqqk4FV.

If everything goes well, the proper release of Teams & FFA could be shipped before New Year.

[h3]INSTALLING LINE WAR BETA[/h3]

1. Go to the "Manage / Properties..." dialog of your game in Steam
   
2. Enter "LineWarPioneer" in the beta access code field
   
3. Make sure the dropdown is set on "beta - Line War Beta"
   
4. Wait for download to complete
   

The beta is very stable and all critical bugs have been fixed. Many gamers are playing it on a daily basis, which also explains some of the increased matchmaking duration of the released version (which the beta is competing with).

[h3]FEATURES INCLUDE[/h3]

• Gameplay with up to 8 participants
  
• Teams (including assymetric teams like 3v2)
  
• FFA
  
• New lobby and matchmaking system
  
• New menu and lobby UI
  
• Revised Picking Phase
  
• Detailed match summaries with diagrams
  
• Balance changes
  

Please note that any kind of single-player mode (except from the already existing Sandbox) is NOT included in this release.

[h3]FRESH VIDEOS FROM TEAMPLAY[/h3]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRGEAsjcieU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7h9gwcc1Pg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eufW-aiSKlk&t=7s
[h3]REASONS FOR DELAY[/h3]
Some have expressed their dissapointment or frustration over the pace of development for the various features. Once again, we would like to take this opportunity to apologize for failing to deliver according to our planned schedule as shown on the home page. We can assure you that laziness or general disregard for the game's development are NOT one of the reasons for the delay!

First of all, Imhenzia undertook a permanent move to Australia with his family in October. We failed to fully anticipate how much this would affect the game development in general, the time difference between Sweden and Australia being what it is. But we're getting better and better at organizing our work and daily schedules over time.

Then we have a number of other factors that contributed to this situation. The codebase, for one, was completely unprepared for teamplay but hardwired to 1vs1. The Picking Phase had to be reworked from the ground up to facilitate picking between teams or FFA. Not to mention the lobby and netcode that was plagued by a few really nasty bugs that took the better of us during a 3-week long grind. Special thanks goes to SomeoneSaidThatMyNicknameSucks, akamisc, Dåseåbneren, ElMeheecan, valithor, RoMad, notoriousnubs, CrimsonGiant and all the other beta testers for helping us along the way! We couldn't have done this without your support.

[h3]COMING NEXT[/h3]
Once the Teams & FFA modes have been fully released, we will focus our efforts on implementing a Basic AI to practice against, but also pick some of the low hanging fruits such as the Aircraft Carrier and Technologies. We are also sketching on plans for the future of Line War single-player gaming, involving the development of a Campaign Editor with AI Scripting. This would enable users to create their own content.


We hope that you will enjoy Teams & FFA as much as we do.

Anyone up for some games? We're waiting in the lobby!

;-)



Sincerely
Basantos & Imphenzia

We hope that you all have had a great summer! Last week we returned from our vacation, and now we're back in full development mode, primarily focusing on two major features:

• Basic AI (an AI opponent to practice against)
  
• Teams (2v2, 3v3, 1v2, FFA/free-for-all)
  

The Basic AI is an interim implementation that we have prioritized based on feedback and reviews. It’s important to know that this is not the full single-player implementation, but you can see it as an offline sparring partner where you can practice as much as you want without worrying about rank or feeling uncomfortable about anyone watching. The Basic AI will be non-cheating, and it’ll look at the battlefield and draw commands only using the knowledge that it can see in the clearings of the fog of war. Creating an intelligent AI opponent is complicated, so this first implementation will be used to satisfy the basic practice needs of players and provide us, developers, with knowledge for the future large scale implementation of an advanced AI.



Team modes are being worked on in parallel according to the road map. We are looking forward to implementing modes such as 2 vs. 2, 3 vs. 3. We're also aiming to include asymmetric matchups such as 1 vs. 2, where a single higher-skill player can play against two lower-skill players simultaneously and free-for-all (FFA).

Implementing teams is a major undertaking. It may not appear that way, but there are many challenges, including picking phase, matchmaking, networking, UI, Fog of War, bandwidth, replays, testing, and scaling so units and UI can support many different team configurations and colors.

We don’t have an ETA on the release of Basic AI and Teams just yet, but Basic AI should come first during September, followed by Teams.



We've recently also released some minor patches to the current version. Some were well-needed balance changes, and some were bug fixes. The most important bug fix that we published today should eliminate the state that matchmaking could end up for a few hours where no matchups could be made. We had a few instances of that happening during the summer, but we've reproduced and fixed that bug now.



While we are working hard on this behind the scenes, we hope that you play and enjoy Line War as much as possible. We are aware that the player count has reduced following the release, this is normal for nearly every single game, and we want to focus our efforts on continuing to develop Line War rather than allocating time and funds to marketing.

We’ve seen feedback that the release of Line War was premature, but for us two developers, it was essential that the release took place so we could fund the continued development and gather feedback on whether or not the game-play was appealing enough to continue. Nearly all the negative feedback revolves around the lack of players, AI, and additional features, and through the release, we’ve secured the funds to continue development to implement exactly that and then perform a bigger marketing drive when the time is right. The strategic gameplay and command system is receiving excellent reviews, which is exactly why we are super encouraged to continue development and evolving Line War.

Don’t worry; Line War is not dead. We have a community of hard-core players (that are now beating us, developers, in matches big time), and development continues behind the scenes.

Bug fixes

• Timeout error message displayed upon successful matchmaking: Timeout occurred when waiting for the lobby owner to assign a game server.
  

BUG FIXES

• Air units flying non-stop in circles
  
• Unplaceable eco-sites
  
• Infantry animated as running even when not Hasting
  

GAME BALANCE

• Hellfire and Maverick damage vs Riflemen -20% ⇒ -15%
  
• Air units energy consumption (in terms of production cost) 10% ⇒ 9%
  
• Infantry/Commandos capping efficiency reduced by 5%
  
• Tank production cost 52 ⇒ 50
  

Finally!

Here comes the long awaited balance patch that tries to address the issue with "artillery blobs" being too powerful. There has been some debate in the beta testers group over the nature of the various remedies and how far they should go. Several beta matches have now been played using most of these changes, with good results.

Entrenched units 15% extra armor vs Grenade
Defending units (whether it's Artillery or any other land unit type) will hold out from incoming Grenade attacks (Artillery/Destroyer/Missile Ship/Cruiser) for much longer. Static, digged-in coastal Artillery defense will pose a serious threshold to enemy Cruisers. Artillery/SAM-blobs will advance slower against prepared defenders.

Entrenched units weapon range buff +0.2 (absolute)
Increases the chance of neighbouring comrades being within range of an enemy. Increases the probability of multiple entrenched Artillery being within range of free-moving, engaging enemy Artillery.

Infantry speed buff 3.7 ==> 3.9 (5.4%)
It's hard to see any drawbacks with a faster moving Infantry: More agile anti-Tank/anti-Commando response, faster territory cap, general feel of the game speed as being faster, higher chance of outpacing kiting SAMs, and last but not least, higher survivability when assaulting Artillery/SAM blobs.

Hellfire and Maverick damage nerf vs Riflemen -20%
The Hellfire (Helicopter) and Maverick (Striker) weapons gets a target-exclusive nerf vs Riflemen. Takes away some of the Strikers and Helicopter squadrons capability to act as a "cleanup party" vs stray Riflemen without SAM protection. Indirectly buffs the Bomber. Also note: Heli/Striker Cannon performance vs Riflemen is NOT modified but stays the same.

SAM/MissileShip Missile range buff 8.0 ==> 9.0 (12.5%)
Increases the survivability of SAM "staying in the back". Remember the Missile only fires every 4th second, so it's the "weak" weapon that gets the buff, not the Cannon.

Artillery Grenade VS Land nerf 3.6 ==> 3.4 (-5.5%)
The simple solution to nerfing the blob, as it affects all artillery units participating in the blob.

Helicopter HP buff 120 ==> 125
Compensation for 5 above.

Air units energy consumption nerf 8,3% ==> 10% of production cost
Air units in general have been too energy efficient in relation to their great speed. They now consume 10% more energy per minute (in terms of production cost) as compared to 8.3% for all other energy consuming units.

Interceptor airbase taxiing speed buff 0.6 ==> 1.2 (100%)
Faster response time for Interceptor take-offs.

Interceptor Cannon VS Surface damage buff 9 ==> 10
Improving versatility.