Invasion Machine News

My current big development task in the game is adding politics and more interactions with the civilians. This is a long and somewhat tedious development, so far this is proving to drag on for much longer than I thought it would.

Which is why:
1) the most recent update to the game has been released silently a week ago. It includes a new feature where you can set up meetings with the locals ("shuras") in the villages. I chose not to advertise the change publicly, because for now it's just a single part of a much bigger, still not finished feature. The meetings do already work, and you can get a nice boost in relations with the civilians if you organize them, but I plan for them to be of much more consequence in the game world once I'm done with the rest of the changes around them.
2) the rest of this "project" will keep on coming in parts as well, with the immediate next one being the addition of politicians ("local leaders") to the game. The politicians will travel the map, observe your actions and possibly make your life more complicated if they don't like what they see. The civilian relations will now depend on them as well. Later, I will also add new buildable structures (and probably change the build menu a bit), so you can start creating your own infrastructure projects in the villages.

But for this entire feature to make some sense, I need to finish adding a lot of new systems and interactions. For example, you cannot have a local politician struck with CAS, and the locals ignoring the incident. You shouldn't also be able to stop and arrest a politician for no reason, either. And the people should listen to what a leader thinks of you, maybe he should be able to rouse them against you... and so on, and son on. All these small details keep on adding up, so in the end - I'm still not yet close to being able to release the feature.

Currently, I plan to have all this finished and tested in the next 2-3 weeks.


After the politicians are added to the game and the new build released, I will dedicate some time solely to improving quality, with no new features at all. I will (again) look into pathfinding, quality of life changes and performance.

All in all, I probably keep doing the same mistake - I try not to post news here until I have something big to share, but at the same time I'm probably creating the impression that the game is dying. Let me say this clearly, then - the project is not dead and not abandoned. It's just that I'm trying to add an ambitious feature, and the time needed to finish it keeps mounting up.

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[h2]What is happening with the development this month?[/h2]
The last time I wrote an update, I said there were major changes being made to the AI. That's still the case, the development is still in progress, and the first batch of these changes is already live in the current game build (some of you noticed that the enemy became more aggressive - this is because the enemy can actually see you better now, in some cases).

The update in AI will be noticeable in your engagements with the enemy units, but I also need it to finally start building more interesting interactions with the civilians. Why don't the locals remember the troops you post in front of their houses? Why don't they expect compensation when you damage their property? Why don't they have leaders? These are examples of things I'd like to start simulating a little better in the future, starting with the nearest update.

[h2]Planned new features[/h2]
In other words, I will soon be adding various new interactions with the civilians and villages. The idea is to let you work on a longer term hearts and minds campaign, and be able to see how the locals are affected by your actions.

Some of the new things that will soon appear in the game:
* a proper statistics window for the entire villages (as opposed to specific houses) - showing you all the major events, what the people think of you, and what their leaders think of you.
* a new UI section, letting you track the requests and promises you've made to the locals (similar to the missions you get from your command). If you work with the civilians, you'll eventually gain their trust
* a new order (and lots of new UI) for the interpreters, allowing you to organize meetings (you might know them as "shuras") with the locals. Here's where grievances and issues will be solved, and maybe new relations built.



This is just a start, this entire "nation building" aspect of the game should eventually become a big part of what you do in Invasion (talk to locals, find out what they need, provide security, build infrastructure) in the future. However, since this entire new feature will take a lot of dev time, I plan on rolling it out in phases. First, the new stats windows and the shuras. Then, new social projects. Then, political leaders. Then, something else, and so on.

[h2]Bonus - the MRAP is now in the game[/h2]
I know many of you asked for the MRAPs, so finally - I added one to the game. Just a note, though - you don't get to have it in your default roster, when starting a new game, because this is the most powerful land unit you can get. If you want one - you'll have to spend Command Points on it (it's available from the unit buy menu).


[h2]tl;dr;[/h2]
There will be a new update in about two weeks, adding new interactions with civilians. You'll be able to better track the progress of your hearts and minds efforts. You'll also be able to organize meetings ("shuras") with the locals.

[h2]What's with the updates[/h2]
The last time I spoke here, I promised to focus on developing a more fleshed out hearts and minds interaction for the game (more social projects, political leaders, more lasting consequences to how you interact with the villages). This hasn't changed, and will still remain the main task for the nearest future.
I have, however, reached a limitation in how the AI brain works. I initially made a somewhat simple system, where each actor senses the events around him, and tries to pick the most suitable action for his current mission. This works fine, but the problem is - the more complicated a mission is, the more unreadable the code that manages it becomes.
For example, if the enemy units are doing a foot patrol, their goal is to move from point to point, looking for anything interesting they might wanna check out. So far, so good. But, what if they should check out a village, instead of a random map point? What if they stumble upon and unguarded enemy car? What if they get enegaged in an unexpected place? What if their allies need help? What if they're in cars themselves? They then need to stop, exit them and continue the mission.
All these things are being tracked by the mission script, making it more and more hellish to manage and read. I cannot continue writing the AI this way, cause it completely discourages me from making any more complex interactions (whenever actors leave their cars, I need to remember why - is it the location they were going to, are they stopped in traffic, is it something else), and in general - if at any point the AI gets engaged by your troops - it has to abandon the original mission completely, because it has no way of remembering what it was trying to do.
The solution I'm currently working on, is switching to a more modern and robust way of writing this code - a node based system, similar to a behavior tree. The AI will now always remember at which stage of it's mission it is, and after I'm done writing the "nodes" for various interactions, I can start making really complicated plans for it.
The same system will be used for other parts of the game, starting with behavior in combat, to the in-game politics.

[h2]How will the AI be different when I'm done[/h2]

This is a sample view of an AI mission, where instead of a single monolith of unreadable code, I now have a structure I can track, and think of as "point to point" interactions for the AI. This lets me plan entire behaviors, like: 1) go to an area 2) exit cars 3) enter a building 4) if engaged, abort and return to this plan later 5) etc.

[h2]What does this mean for the game[/h2]
The AI will get smarter, and I will again start making new interactions for it. The first thing I'll do will be adding political leaders to the game. The leaders would be moving from village to village, changing the civilian sentiment in favor or against you, promoting their local allies, maybe organizing protests. As the player, you'll be getting new missions related to them, new demands to meet, and so on.
This sort of complicated interaction would be impossible to make with the old system.

[h2]What's coming next[/h2]
The next big update will add politics and more hearts and minds strategies for the player, like new social projects for you to develop, and more interesting interactions with the locals.

[h2]When is it coming[/h2]
With the summer season in full swing, I'll take two weeks off by the end of August (gonna be my first time getting any downtime since 2019). Before I leave, I plan on finishing the switch to the new system for all existing AI missions. This might not be immediately visible for the players (after all you rarely see what the AI is planning to do, and why), so I also plan on implementing smaller, unrelated changes as well. Expect new units, as well as some QOL improvements.
Planned release date - end of September.

[h2]Second development update of the helicopters release[/h2]
The helicopters update is still in public testing, and I've just released an update for it. The update addresses a bunch of issues related to broken saves, a bug introduced in the previous patch (where you could no longer take anything from the cars, because the game thought the vehicles were never parked) and other smaller stuff (like the stupid issue of cars rolling down hill, any time you loaded the game).

Also, upgraded the underlying game engine, so there is a bunch of noticeable performance upgrades under the hood.

[h2]When will this be in the public branch?[/h2]
I'd like to take the next couple of days to continue gathering any further issues people can find, related to the helis (or not). By the end of this week, the helicopters should go public.

[h2]And after that?[/h2]
The next update will address the almost non-existent interactions with the locals. It's always been one of the promised features of the game, and is supposed to be a major part of what you do in the game. I want to add local leaders for you to deal with, more social projects, more stats for you to review on how your dealings with a village go, etc. This is gonna be fun.

[h2]Helicopters[/h2]
I took a little detour before working on the features described previously (more social projects and interactions with the locals), and decided to add a feature that's been steadily requested ever since the game first appeared - the helicopters. This (as usual) took a while, because I first had to actually teach the game what a helicopter is (a flying car, basically), and figure out all the quirks around the mechanic.

[h2]Helicopters in Invasion Machine - what to expect?[/h2]
First of all, they're always gonna have a lot of limitations. I don't want this to be a helicopter game, I want you to be thinking of them as an extra, emergency unit (quick medevac, quick reaction forces, etc.), which you can use once every while, but not as a complete replacement for the ground vehicles.
This means, among other things, that:
* helicopters use fuel constantly, when spawned on the map, even if you order them to land. If you let your helicopter run out of fuel, it will immediately RTB (if in air), or will only accept the RTB order from you.
* the only helicopter in the game is a "transport only" variant, and is unarmed.
* they're very vulnerable to RPGs and enemy rockets
* there's a hefty timeout (refuel time) applied to them any time they return to the base, so you can only use the helicopter transport occasionally
* there's a hard limit of only a single operational helicopter you can have at any time. I might increase this in the future, but haven't yet decided. Again - think of this as a "special" asset, not your main method of transporting troops
* they cannot be towed away with the wrecker. If your helicopter gets downed, only the EOD unit will be able to clear out ("neutralize") it's wreckage.
* there's not many places where they can safely land (the terrain must be flat, with no vehicles around). The cursor will change to a "you can land here" icon, any time you hover over a valid landing spot. If a car gets in the way, the landing may still get aborted.

[h2]Future plans[/h2]
I'd really like to add PJs to the game, in some form, so in the future I'll probably add an AI-controlled medevac helicopter. I'm thinking of something similar to how you call in CAS - select a landing zone, keep it safe, wait for the medevac bird to arrive, and load up your wounded into it.

[h2]Other future plans[/h2]
I'll now get back to working on new interactions with the locals, and making the hearts and minds part of the game more interesting.
More social projects to work on, managing the local politics, civilian VIPs, and so on. More news soon.




[h2]Update:[/h2]
Ok, this was stupid. If I want you to test the helicopters, I should make them more available at the start of a new game. From now on, you'll get a free helicopter when you first start the game in the test build.