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[Jarkko Vallius]

SOTA is a turn-based, tactical squad-level wargame, covering battles from WW2

A player controls individual tanks, infantry groups and artillery. Units have attributes like experience, morale and suppression which all affects how a unit perform on the battlefield.

I'm taking a realistic approach here. Tanks are harder to destroy from front than behind, different guns have different armour penetration values. Infantry will take cover if under MG fire and will flee from a totally hopeless situation.

I'm currently building an engine and designing the game. Still have not decided the scale of game, which nations/units comes first, how many maps/scenarios, campaigns?, multiplayer? etc. Will update this as soon as I know.

[Jarkko Vallius]

Can rotate units now, took all day, dammit!

[Jarkko Vallius]

Implemented Line of Sight. Not perfect but a good starting point.

[Jarkko Vallius]

Hex porn again! FOV implemented.

[pelle]

Looking forward to this. Underrepresented genre here.Dont get stuck perfecting hex engine instead of completing game.

[Jarkko Vallius]

Dont get stuck perfecting hex engine instead of completing game.

No sir! I'm using all the possible shortcuts to get the prototype playable. Most of time I struggled with those hex calculations, but I think I got them now. I need to improve some algorithms later, such as Line of Sight and Movement Range. They act little oddly now but not a big deal.

Implemented simple map editor, different types of terrain (trees, road, buildings) and a rough combat model.

[Parsley]

Nice, how are you implementing the line of sight? I'm making a hex-based game as well and tried putting in LOS by taking the corners of each hex and casting rays, but eugh... too much weirdness (like intersects being counted when it barely touched the hex by one pixel) and I ended up scrapping it.

Anyway will be watching this one!

[Jarkko Vallius]

Nice, how are you implementing the line of sight?

At the moment I'm doing this: Calculate ring. Enumerate through ring and try to draw a line from an origin to it. Stop when the line reaches an obstacle.

Works ok, but doesn't give the exact results I want. Need to fix it later.

[Jarkko Vallius]

The prototype is shaping. I started to implementing the Suppression/Rally system.

Suppression
A unit get suppression points if 
- is under enemy fire
- is taking casualties
- friendly units taking casualties in adjacent hexes
- unit is under enemy fire and cannot spot the enemy
- bombardment in adjacent hexes

A unit have different states, measuring their will to fight. The states are bound to suppression points.
Ready - a unit is ready to fight
Pinned - a unit takes cover, may refuse to move and/or shoot
Retreating - a unit decides to withdraw from firefight, seeking for a better cover
Routed - a unit panics and runs away in fear, all hope is lost

Rally
Rallying is the unit’s leader attempt to encourage his men to keep fighting. In successful rally the unit’s suppression points are reduced. If a rally attempt fails, the leader must wait for the next turn before he can rally again.