Dev Diary #4: Patrols, Alarms and Sniper Rifles

Hi

I still have at least a week before I finish the patch with a new class and features so I decided to share a new Dev Diary to show what I'm making and what's ready.

Assassin Weapons and Skills:

The Human Assassin class is almost ready, the model is done and 3 different heads and skins are also included to have some basic customization. The Human Assassin (I specify Human because later I would like to add some alien or "synthetic" versions) can use Sniper Rifles (which are a new type of weapon) and equip sidearms as a secondary weapon in case you run out of ammo with your sniper rifle.

So far I've added 2 new weapons for the Assassin:

A conventional Sniper Rifle:

And a Railgun:

I still would like to add a Tier 3 weapon, most likely a Plasma Lance, during this week.

Regarding skills, the Human Assassin has Aimed Shot and Fire Sidearm added from Level 1 but in higher levels you can get:

- Headshot: a shot with increased critical chance and reduced aim chance (already in use by the Mercenary class). - Final Firing Position (FFP): makes the Assassin enters a stance that ignores range penalties to aim as long as you don't move (I'm still pondering if to give another benefits to this skill). - Target Spotting: reveals a small area of the Fog of War in order to discover enemies without alerting them (unless they are too close). - Deadshot: refunds one action point for every kill you make (this could lead to chain kills).

Patrol and Alarm Features:

What's taking more of my time right now is working in patrols, basically a few players mentioned they didn't like that the enemies just stayed in place in the map so I'm giving more priority to a Patrol mechanic that will make some groups of enemies move around the maps. To make it more varied, I have 3 behaviours for enemy groups: Stay in Place (which will be reserved for enemies hiding inside the bridge of a ship or other special rooms), Random Patrol (for enemies that are animalistic) and Waypoint Patrol (for normal enemies so they move in a more realistic patrol pattern). This new feature opens the way for players to ambush enemies with Overwatch, currently I'm fixing some bugs though because interrupting enemies in their patrol still causes some minor issues (like enemies standing in the same cell) but I'm positive I can make a fix during this week.

Note: patrols are only slow moving when they are visible, when enemies are hidden by the Fog of War they move super fast so don't worry about enemy turns being longer.

What I'm also starting to make is a new Alarm mechanic. That means that some patrols can be alerted of your presence and move towards you. I'm thinking stuff like explosions can attract close enemy patrols but also some enemies could radio for helpn and you have to kill them before the call is finished or have them closing in your position.

New Combat Scenarios:

Of course, I want to have at least one new combat scenario ready for the next patch, in the screenshot you can see a new type of environment that I'm preparing: an Ice Planet.

Adding to that I would like to do more in the future with the planets and enemies I already have so I'm currently gathering new ideas for combat encounters (for example: