Happy New Year everyone! We've been a bit silent since the holidays, so wanted to take a moment to update everyone on where the game is at and let you know that Cantata is featured in the Steam Base Builder Fest, with a new Demo for you to try out! You can explore Shoal either solo or with your friends in multiplayer mode!
To recap, let's talk a bit first about some major things we did in 2022! Firstly, some of the things below were already on our roadmap, but it should really be emphasized that many of the game's design changes and tweaks came directly from community feedback. To everyone participating in early access and giving us feedback, THANK YOU! You are helping make this game be the best it can be! Okay, let's get into it!
Early Access To Date
VERY POSITIVE!
We recently hit a "Very Positive" review score on Steam! To everyone that's left a positive review, thank you! As a reminder, if you enjoy Cantata, leaving a positive review REALLY helps us for visibility on Steam's end. Again, THANK YOU!!
Massive Supply Line System Overhaul
If you haven't played Cantata since the initial early access release, this is a major change. We saw how tedious it was to manage the game's supply lines, and as such effectively axed the system in favor of something that retains their intended purpose while also just being much better to deal with (and give more creative possibility). Read more here for a better overview.
Ammo
Many units now require ammo to attack. A far cry from just being some new micro system, ammo instead forces you to think strategically about captured regions and production.
Region Infrastructure / Supply
As part of the above changes, we also fundamentally changed how things are built. Instead of a global building menu and global supply, buildings are now built per region, using the resources that are stored in a region from the buildings that produce inside of them. Connected regions form an automatic supply network and share an inventory, making keeping your regions connected and defended much more important now.
Hotseat and Online Multiplayer
What it says in the title! We added the ability to play Cantata online with other people. The maps available for this are limited for now, but will be much expanded in the future with workshop support (see our update next week).
Map Editor
We've said it a million times, but the editor we ship with the game is the same editor we use to design ALL the maps in the game (including the campaign!). We actively use the tool and are constantly improving it and adding features to help us make Cantata, and YOU get to also benefit from that. Since Early Access we've added a litany of new features — variables, new trigger actions and conditions, UX improvements, etc. We not only use the tool but make sure that the tool is *useable* by the average player. If you haven't ever jumped in to give it a shot, we highly recommend you check it out!
That's a brief overview, but there's obviously so much more. Unit changes like radiant passives, tech tree changes, tons of unit balance and tweaking. Plenty of audio enhancements and new music, new art, etc. Check back in next week when we'll run you through our plans for the upcoming Orbital Drop (New Story Chapters 👀) and what to expect in the coming months.
Thank you,
Afterschool & Modern Wolf
Get involved with Cantata and keep up to date here:
As Cantata will be featured in the Steam Base Builder Fest next week, we are happy to announce that a new demo is now live for you to try out! Enjoy the turn based, action-packed story of Chapter 1 and grab a friend for multiplayer!
We hope you enjoy the demo, let us know your feedback in below channels!
Here is your end of year support commanders where we offer you 20% OFF Cantata to make your journey into a pragmatic and spiritual war for survival.
About Cantata
Choose a Commanding Officer from one of three factions. Explore, expand, and endure across campaigns set on a mysterious planet steeped in mystical sci-fi lore! Fight tactical, turn-based battles across large maps. Mod the game and make it your own!
Cantata is featured in #TurnBasedFest, a five-day online festival for the people who make, play, and love turn-based video games from December 8th – 12th 2022!
#TurnBasedFest has a "Games and content creator" showcase showing off grand strategy like Cantata and if you haven't picked it up yet you will want to after you see it in action!
We have improved internal systems to make your time breaking through Shoals surface more efficient. We have simplified the supply and region system to give you more enjoyment out of your reign but also to keep your tactical and strategic loyal heart here. We have provided you with NEW AMMO as your units who attack with non-melee weapons now require specific ammo to attack. Make sure your supply lines are secure and steady commanders you only get one shot. A full list has been provided for you below to check through and get ready for your next mission.
The Exec
MAJOR FEATURES
Ammo
Many units that can attack now require Ammo of a certain type to attack.
Ammo types vary per faction, and in all cases are a resource type a faction already had access to through their buildings.
Units can access ammo to attack through their own personal storage, region storage, or network storage. The game will attempt to use ammo for a unit in the reverse order of that (priotizies using network storage, then region storage, then local storage).
Ammo requirements can be found under the attack icon in a unit’s ui
Units that use ammo spawn with a number of that ammo already in their storage. This means you get a few “free” attacks before worrying about ammo.
We also tried to make sure to allow previewing of unit movement actions to display if ammo would or wouldn’t be available at the destination tile. This means if you’re in a region that gives you ammo, but you are trying to move outside that region to one that would make it such that you don’t have ammo, the movement preview unit will show an “out of ammo” icon. This “out of ammo” icon will also show on a unit when it is out of ammo and has no ammo source for any of its possible suppliers.
“Radiant Passives”
Units can now emit a passive effect to other units around them, in the same region, or in the same supply network. This effect can also be specificed to be only enemies, only teammates, or only the owning player of that unit.
You can view if a unit emits radiant passives by looking at the small box in the bottom left of the unit ui.
A unit recieving a radiant passive will show that passive in the top right of its ui.
Mousing over either will give you a tooltip of info about the passive, and also show you where you are getting the passive from/who you are giving your passive to.
Transfer Region Inventory to Units (or back)
Units can now transfer region/network storage to themselves if in a region.
This will appear to the right of the Unit ui. Clicking the item will put it in your storage (if you have local storage).
Units can put valid items back into region storage by clicking the small right “transfer” arrow that appear on hover for a storage item.
Infrastructure provides population
Population limits used to be increased by just captuing a region. Now population limits are increased through the building of infrastructure. You can find how much population an infrastrcuture increases pop limits by by hovering their build icon.
IMPROVEMENTS
Infrastructure options that can be built in a Region will appear below the region name UI when using the “R” key to view Region names. These can be clicked on and built directly into the region without needing to open the Region UI.
Generally better performance
Storage heavily simplified
No more inner-slot stacking. This was a legacy requirement of the old supply system, but upon deeper inspection we realized we didn’t need it. Units can now store a max of six items in their storage.
Another benefit here is that we can give “full” tooltips on units in Storage now. So mousing over a storage slot will show you the info for the unit in that spot!
Added in the ability for players to start with some resources automatically in generic skirmish play. No more waiting 5 turns to do something.
Finally fix region borders - region borders no longer overlap!
Additionally, region hovering was a little weird. It’s now “perfect”.
The feedback form can be opened with F8 - this also takes a screenshot for the feedback form.
Added in a scaling option for tooltips! This is independent of match ui scale, so you can have your tooltips be scaled smaller or larger than your UI.
Save/Load panels in load much more quickly. A downside of this is that old saves for the campaign need to be accessed in the skirmish menu. To migrate your old save to a new save, just load the old save and resave it.
BUG FIXES
Save loading issue should be fixed (for now) Many people reported an issue with loading saves not working. We found a possible culprit bug of this an fixed it, but if it persists please let us know. Note that the game is in EA and we do not guarantee backwards compatible saves (for now). We do our best to migrate saves on load so as to not lose progress, but make no guarantees.
Placing infrastructure in regions won’t be blocked by the Region UI.
Fixed the mining indicator to behave properly.
Resources will properly display in tooltip (and not showing when they shouldn’t be)
Fixed and issue where loading into some units, like the conscript, was bugged (@moonstone)
Networked play won’t desync when game is in background
MAP EDITOR
You know we have a deep map editor right?? We literally build all the in-game campaign maps and skirmish maps in the exact same editor we ship with the game. And it isn’t some programmer-only thing - we put a lot of time and effort into making sure it’s intuitive to use, performant, and actually kind-of fun. We add a lot of stuff to the editor each patch, but I thought it would be nice to call out some stuff specifically this patch for all the modders out there.
General Updates
Scenario Variables
Scenarios now have the ability to have arbitrary variables inside of them!
These values can be used as generic data stores for your own maps, and can be set/modified with trigger actions (and their values checked with trigger conditions).
These open up a world of possibility for maps and are the kind of thing I always thought would be cool but seemed too hard or difficult to have for Cantata, but now they’re here!
A simple example of a nice way to use them is to setup a variable that increments every turn, and then have a modifer that mods that number by some set amount, and a condition that checks when that variable reaches 0. This would give you an easy way to set up something like “do this every X number of turns” - something so far not possible in the editor!
Added the ability to select “palettes” of sprite options inside a given terrain. This allows you to better control random placement of a given terrain by choosing only a subset of the options in a terrain. This is great when you want to randomly place down terrains (hold R) but dont want to use every sprite in a terrain. It’s great for terrains that are all the same type but have variations based on biome (like trees). You can delete players!
Deleting players previously would break the map (sorry!). Now you can create and delete players in the editor at will.
Note that deleting a player will also delete any units they own / triggers they are a part of / etc. Migration
We don’t save every stat a unit has with the map files, but we do save some of them and respect that when a map is loaded (we won’t re-init your saves with the latest unit data). However sometimes you do want the latest version of a unit, so we added in the ability to “migrate” a unit its latest data version.
To migrate an individual unit, click on the unit in the editor, and if it can be migrated just click migrate.
To migrate all units, in the match menu for the scenario, click the migrate button, then click “migrate all”.
Resource are no longer tied to a specific terrain type! You resources directly on the map through the resource editor. Want tress to be your resource type? Have at it!
Player profiles can be configued to have starting resources. The way these work is that, for whatever regions a starting zone a player is placed in overlaps with, that region will get those resources. This means its possible to have regions with multiple instances of starting resources if you made really large starting zones (but you probably shouldn’t do that anyways).
Interactables / Base / Detail panes in editor load much faster and load incrementally.
You can now select ability to select “palettes” of sprite options inside a given terrain. allows you to better control random placement of a given terrain by choosing only a subset of the options in a terrain. great for terrains that are all the same type but have variations based on biome (like trees).
Added in more addon terrains into the game Did you know there are a ton of free to use terrains in the map editor that we don’t use at all in the game? Scroll past all the “Cantata” stuff in the Terrain/Detail options to find them!
Triggers
Added in the ability to duplicate a trigger / trigger action / trigger condition.
Many trigger actions and conditions that used to only work with an interactable type now have the ability to also select an amount (as well as other options).
New Trigger Action: Add Items to Region Storage
New Trigger Action: Destory a number of interactables of type in locations
New Trigger Action: Modify variables. This allows you to perform math operations on float or int variable values.
New Trigger Action: Set variables. Directly set the value of a map variable.
New Trigger Condition: Variable at value.
GENERAL BALANCE
We’re constantly tweaking the game to try and ensure rough balance but also just “fun”. As the design changes stablize will get a better sense of the balance needs, but for now feel like we’re moving towards somewhere nice.
THE REIGN OF HARMONY AND PROSPER
HQ now makes small arms
Arms Factory now only makes heavy arms
Get rid of old Refinery - new Refinery makes Engines + Oil.
Radio Tower Vision up to 8, Explore range up to 16
All human infrastructure produces 8 pressure
Human skirmish starting units changed to be 5 conscripts and a Rickshaw
THE UNIFIED SPIRIT
General pressure amounts changed (for skirmish)
Cherubin surge move cost up to 4
THE PEOPLE OF SUN AND SHADOW
Summoner now costs 3 pop
CH1
Added 30 starting alloys and move one resource node to scorched battlefield
CH2
Grant the player 50 Whispers after the player defeats the enemies on the Forest Opening region.
Removed the Shrine building at the start of Ch2, and removed the first 30 whispers that were being granted to P1 when the game started. Now P1 wont have whispers available until it clears the objective of “Forest Opening”.
Disabled the “Let the remains be untouched” dialog when the player first encounters P2 remains on the map
PLAYTESTING FIXES
We tried something new this time around for this patch. Instead of just releasing the patch into the public, we did a small round of public playtesting over the past week or so with anyone interested from the Discord. Needless to say by the notes below, it went really well. Moonstone, Anoc, and TotallyNotAVoyeur were total champs and helped us squash bugs old and new that came with the above changes. I wanted to call out here the bugs they helped us find as a special thank you. We’ll likely do this again in the future, so join the Discord if you’re interested in taking part!
Fixed issue where deselecting a unit while moving blocked turn ending (@moonstone)
Fixed issue where conscripts were unable to unload (@moonstone)
Campsite tens now have 1 movement cost (@moonstone)
Fix issue where exiting a match while region ui was open would deadlock the game on new match loads (@moonstone, @anoc)
Transforming (like conscript to encampment) ports over storage if possible (@anoc)
Fixed issue where players were unable to save on ch2 (@totallynotavoyeur)
Fix bug with building units showing wrong ammo icon and bugging the map (@moonstone, @TotallyNotAVoyeur)
Prevents building while a unit is moving (@moonstone)
Fix resource node bug in ch3 (@anoc)
Fix issue with passives not working for Psalm (@anoc)
Fix issue where passing a turn with a unit selected would bug the game (feedback form)
And with that we come to a close! To everyone that provided us feedback and bug reports to help us get here, thank you and keep it coming! We’ve got more fun stuff around the corner and want you all to stay along for the ride as we approach 1.0! Thanks so much for reading and see you in game!
What’s next?
Well we’re taking a small break for the Holiday season, but right after that we’ve got some major things cooking.
Fix the AI bugs
Add in Skirmish AI
Flesh out the map generator (and allow it to be used in skirmish)
Workshop modding
We’re a very small team these days, so bear with us still as we get all these things to you, but I can truly say that everyday Cantata is becoming a better and better game, and I hope you continue to show us love in the future as we build this game to be all it can be and all that we’ve dreamed of.
The 111th Reign of Harmony and Prosper are working hard to iron out any issues you may have as well as improve functionality in the near future.
- Afterschool Games
🗣 Follow Cantata on Twitter here 🗣 Join the community on Discord 🗣 Subscribe to our newsletter
🍂 20% OFF Autumn sale 🍂
The time has come for you to make haste and prepare for battle but don't forget to take 20% OFF discount with you. We hope you are ready for this moment as much as Shoal is ready for you.
RULE OF THREE BUNDLE
The tactical trio includes Cantata, Zero Sievert and Ostranauts. Brush up all your survival skills against every terrain, creature and environment a smart hunter needs.
Choose a Commanding Officer from one of three factions. Explore, expand, and endure across campaigns set on a mysterious planet steeped in mystical sci-fi lore! Fight tactical, turn-based battles across large maps. Mod the game and make it your own!
Multiplayer Handle host migration/ai replacement for multi matches if players leave
Bugs Fix bugged Multitudes unit for Unified Spirit DEV-3585 - User Submitted - Fix region infra limit tooltip
Improvements DEV-3588 - User Submitted - Better indicate production amounts in tooltip (number of icons) DEV-3587 - User Submitted - Default to network storage view if player owns region DEV-3589 - User Submitted - Adds health info to infra tooltip
Cantata at TactiCon | 20% Off Until Monday!
TactiCon is live from 22nd to the 26th September and during this time you can buy Cantata at a 20% discount. So, what are you waiting for? 🚀
Whether you're a new or existing player we hope you're ready for our latest patch - Orbital Drop 0.3. Updates include online multiplayer for up to 4 players, reworked region and supply management, skirmish mode, and much, much more! There's never been a better time to dive in and enjoy the Grand Tactics gameplay that Cantata offers. Get creative and craft your own scenarios or play through our three hand-crafted story missions!
You can watch the latest trailer here:
Back to TactiCon, what is it? It’s a digital convention hosted on Steam to celebrate all things strategy. Hosted by Hooded Horse & Firesquid, during the event you’ll get the chance to watch 'Let's Play' streams and listen to interesting panels starring experts in strategy gaming including our very own Lead Developer, Kyle! You can catch Kyle at the 'Creating Narrative Experiences in a Strategy Game' panel on the 23rd of September, 4pm CET so, keep an eye out for that over on Steam.
We are joyous to share the latest orbital drop with you today and we hope it improves your time on Shoal. We are introducing brand new systems for you to make managing your regions and supplies smoother which should help you crush any remaining life forms on the planet. For the first time, you can now call in support in the form of other Commanding Officers who can help, or hinder, your efforts.
The 111th Reign of Harmony and Prosper are working hard to iron out any issues you may have as well as improve functionality in the near future.
Thank you for your continued efforts,
The Exec
Online Multiplayer
We’ve now got online multiplayer! You can now play multiplayer on one of our 1v1 or 2v2 maps or create your own scenarios to play on. See below after the patch notes to find out how.
To start an online match:
Click ‘Multiplayer’ > then click the map you want to play on
This will create a new lobby, with the map settings you can adjust
To join a match, click ‘Multiplayer’ and then ‘Join’, to see a list of all active lobbies
Click the lobby you want to join
When you first join/create a lobby, you won't be in a player "slot" yet - to join a slot, click the "Join" button
Once you're in a slot, click the "Ready" button (you can't start a match until all player slots are full and everyone has readied up)
Only the creator of the lobby can click "Start Match"
Please note:
Players playing need to both have the same map on their local machine
Players will both need to own the game on Steam
Currently the end game flow to multiplayer isn't fully ironed out and if one player leaves mid-match it doesn't end the game for the other players. We are however working on an update to this we hope to release very soon!
Core Design Changes
No more global supply - This has been removed and now mining will give you a faction’s base resource, we hope this will allow you to better control the resource flow.
Region UI overhaul - View region pressure, building capacity, build infrastructure and view resource storage, all from within the new Region UI.
Region Network - Adjacent regions form a network so you can access the storage of all regions and share resources (Outposts can be used to extend the range of your networks).
General
Skirmish mode is now in the game and you can play skirmish across shared maps or your own creations!
Map generator - Auto-generated maps based on customisable variables are now available in modding. You can find a guide to the map generator on our forums here whilst we work on clarifying the in-game process!
Misc.
In-game feedback form has been hooked up to new internal processes meaning we can gather feedback more efficiently.
Basic tutorial bugs have been fixed and now working. Please note, advanced tutorials are something we are working on, for now there is a YouTube tutorial that runs through some of the more advanced gameplay mechanics.
Designing Cantata is not easy. It is a big game from both a unit perspective (about 45 unique units) and a systems perspective. Not only this, but there isn’t an obvious template for the game’s design. Other large strategy games like Civ, Total War, EU4, etc., still have design work to be done on them, but they have a sort of assumed starting point in the form of previous entries that they can pivot around. Cantata doesn’t really have this. wiegraf on our Discord pointed us to the phrase “grand tactics” - of which, as far as we know, Cantata is one of very few, if not the only. Our closest parallels are traditional wargames, and titles like, Advance Wars. Neither really is something we can just tweak a little bit to make Cantata “work”. It turns out if you want big maps, tactics, and playability, you’ve really got to start throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what actually sticks.
Which, well welcome to Early Access. We're so pleased our community has rolled with every change we’ve made to the design and given us great feedback every step of the way. We all want Cantata to be the best it can be and we all want to crack what makes a “grand tactics” game.
So with that in mind, we’ve got some big changes once again. The hope is that these are also the design changes to finally make the game sing. The crazy thing about all this iteration is that the sum total effect of all of the above is that the game just feels “right”. It’s the same game but just cleaner, tighter. and we think you’ll really like it.
As always, thanks to all the people that send us feedback on the game through whatever method. Feedback form, Discord, forums, etc. You all help us continue to make this better and we're so glad everyone is around to help.
If you want to check out all of our thoughts on this you can read the full blog post on our forums here.
- Afterschool Games
🗣 Follow Cantata on Twitter here 🗣 Join the community on Discord 🗣 Subscribe to our newsletter
SUPPLY DROP | Patch 0.2.1
Dear Commanders,
Thanks to your feedback we have many changes incoming to help your journey on Shoal. We’re pleased to be providing you with local support as well as some changes that ought to make life a little easier down on the planet. We’ve also been hearing that there have been some changes made to the local life forms that are worth keeping an eye on.
We’re expecting there to be some skirmishes in the near future for you to cut your teeth on and some larger amendments to how you give orders.
As always, keep up the good work and we’ll see you out there.
The Exec
Features
Hotseat Multiplayer! If you want to play multiplayer with someone locally, you can create your own scenario and add another Human player!
Balance
Summoner is now better at summoning than the Talisman
It is no longer free to summon with the Talisman
Talisman is now built by Summoner
They Wait in the Fens as well as units built by the Shepherd can now be summoned
You can now unload Hunger as The People of Sun and Shadow
Bug Fix
Fix issue where The Animator used Alloys for Producing instead of Motherboards
Fix issue where Scatterbirds, Finback, and Octopus cost no Population
Fix issue where Storage Requirement in Projects wasn't reflecting storage amounts available in a region
Fix issue where Mining Icon for tall buildings was way off scale
Fix issue where we were showing the explored enemy display X for units like Scrap and Remains
Fix issue where if you had more Current Population than your Population Limit, you wouldn’t be able to Transform
New Hotkeys / Controls
(Reminder: these are visible in the controls section in the game menu)
You can now temporarily disable tooltips by holding Left Control. Letting go of Control will show tooltips again
You can now cycle through units that have unused attacks with Tab + 1
You can now cycle through units that have unused moves with Tab + 2
You can also “Wait” a unit (it will not show up in your tab cycling) by clicking Z with unit selected. "Waiting" means the unit will be skipped over when tab-cycling units.
Control menu updated to reflect a hotkey for both Unloading and Loading (previously only one was listed)
Quality of Life
On the Unit Tooltip, you will now always see: Control Range (even if 0), Move Range, Vision Range
If you save and exit the game, the game will load with the camera at the last location you were looking at
You will now see every Action a unit has available to it, including Surge Move and Surge Attack, in its tooltip
When using a Heal Project, you will see the new HP of the unit you are going to heal
Unit XP Sliders have a tooltip now that show you your accumulated XP, and how much more XP to get to the next level
Both Move and Attack outlines will turn orange if you will use a Surge
Infrastructure tooltips are much more obvious about whether or not a building / unit will contribute to the Region Infrastructure Limit, and states extremely clearly under which Region Ownership they can be built
Experience Cantata Maps in Full Detail (Tile names now prioritize Detail names if there are Details on the tile. Enjoy looking at much Colony Debris, Wreckage, and Carnage!)
Some very small nit-picky formatting that moonstone suggested
Thanks to all your comments, we've been working hard on adding new features (hello multiplayer!), fixing bugs and so much more.
