Devlog #002
Hello operators!
We’re back, as promised. We’re going to start by addressing the elephant in the living room: the AI has been our biggest time sink these past few months. We’ve been working hard to provide players with a sense of realism and immersion that few would expect in a game using a top-down perspective. A big contributor to that experience is the Artificial Intelligence behind the NPCs and we’ve been rather busy placing the I on AI.
We want Thunder One to behave like an elite squad without seeming too mechanical or stiff. Your squadmates will maintain formation and discipline, but we wouldn’t want them to be mindless automatons. We want them to be an extension to your eyes and ears on the battlefield. They’ll scan the surrounding area for threats reporting them to the rest of the squad and engaging, if at liberty to do so.
They’ll respect the stance their Team Leader imposes, but they’ll do so organically, each of them at his own pace. Same for weapon discipline and movement speed.
In combat, AI will try and engage targets that they identify as the biggest threats to their own team. They will take many factors into consideration such as role and weapon of the enemy, distance, stance, level of exposure, whether he is already being engaged by any of their teammates or not and so on. They will also attempt to apply real life tactics. Also, expect flanking maneuvers. dashing for a better cover or a vantage point and being able to dynamically change between point and suppressive fire as the need arises.
This also means that you, as a player, won’t always be the preferred target for enemy combatants. Expect your squadmates to be on the iron sights of hidden foes more often than not. Should they fall, bear in mind that non-fatal wounds will be able to be patched up. And you can order your squadmates to take care of their fallen comrade. After a quick patch up, he may not be fully functional, but he’ll be able to fight and help his squad.
So, as a Squad Leader, you’ll have the tools to command your squad. Your first tool is the Radial Squad Menu. From here, you’ll be able to give general orders to all the members of your squad. You can order them to move to a specific location, ask them to hold their fire unless they’re spotted or someone else opens fire and order them to regroup with their Squad Leader.
Hold Fire is important should you aim for a more tactical and coordinated approach.
Your squadmates will track enemy movement and keep their sights trained on them, but won’t engage unless you shoot first, order them to shoot, or if their position has been compromised. In any case, a successful ambush relies on good coordination. Strike fast, cause chaos, take down the enemies before they can shoot back or report your known location to nearby enemy groups.
But if you want to get a little more into the details of managing your squad, you can, of course, assign individual orders. You may order a squadmate complete a specific task you don’t want to perform personally for whatever reason. You can also manually control the positioning of every single team member.
All that using just one order key and your mouse.
That is all for now. We'll dig deeper into the devblog soon. Thank you for patience and for staying with us. You're more than welcome to pay us a visit and give us your feedback on our Discord Server.
STORM OUT
We’re back, as promised. We’re going to start by addressing the elephant in the living room: the AI has been our biggest time sink these past few months. We’ve been working hard to provide players with a sense of realism and immersion that few would expect in a game using a top-down perspective. A big contributor to that experience is the Artificial Intelligence behind the NPCs and we’ve been rather busy placing the I on AI.
We want Thunder One to behave like an elite squad without seeming too mechanical or stiff. Your squadmates will maintain formation and discipline, but we wouldn’t want them to be mindless automatons. We want them to be an extension to your eyes and ears on the battlefield. They’ll scan the surrounding area for threats reporting them to the rest of the squad and engaging, if at liberty to do so.
They’ll respect the stance their Team Leader imposes, but they’ll do so organically, each of them at his own pace. Same for weapon discipline and movement speed.
In combat, AI will try and engage targets that they identify as the biggest threats to their own team. They will take many factors into consideration such as role and weapon of the enemy, distance, stance, level of exposure, whether he is already being engaged by any of their teammates or not and so on. They will also attempt to apply real life tactics. Also, expect flanking maneuvers. dashing for a better cover or a vantage point and being able to dynamically change between point and suppressive fire as the need arises.
This also means that you, as a player, won’t always be the preferred target for enemy combatants. Expect your squadmates to be on the iron sights of hidden foes more often than not. Should they fall, bear in mind that non-fatal wounds will be able to be patched up. And you can order your squadmates to take care of their fallen comrade. After a quick patch up, he may not be fully functional, but he’ll be able to fight and help his squad.
So, as a Squad Leader, you’ll have the tools to command your squad. Your first tool is the Radial Squad Menu. From here, you’ll be able to give general orders to all the members of your squad. You can order them to move to a specific location, ask them to hold their fire unless they’re spotted or someone else opens fire and order them to regroup with their Squad Leader.
Hold Fire is important should you aim for a more tactical and coordinated approach.
Your squadmates will track enemy movement and keep their sights trained on them, but won’t engage unless you shoot first, order them to shoot, or if their position has been compromised. In any case, a successful ambush relies on good coordination. Strike fast, cause chaos, take down the enemies before they can shoot back or report your known location to nearby enemy groups.
But if you want to get a little more into the details of managing your squad, you can, of course, assign individual orders. You may order a squadmate complete a specific task you don’t want to perform personally for whatever reason. You can also manually control the positioning of every single team member.
All that using just one order key and your mouse.
That is all for now. We'll dig deeper into the devblog soon. Thank you for patience and for staying with us. You're more than welcome to pay us a visit and give us your feedback on our Discord Server.
STORM OUT