Genre: Real Time Strategy (RTS), Simulator, Strategy, Indie
Conflict of Nations: World War 3
DEV LOG #24 Mommy, what's a Update Intake?
We’re back!
Our first update was released some days ago! While it may not look like much on the surface, bellowing beneath the game visuals is a new modular package of goodness infused into the long running Supremacy engine which we have built the CoN foundations upon.
Internally this package is colloquially known as 'Update intake'.
To understand this, we need to take a trip down Stillfront-lane. I promise we’ll take the express lane.
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times
When Bytro built the Supremacy engine way back when (most of us still had hair), they expanded the engine to accommodate the games they developed. Supremacy, Call of War, Thirty Kingdoms, New World Empires, and later Iron Order.
A whole new world
Between New World Empires and Thirty Kingdoms, Dorado Games entered the scene tasked with a mission; We kill th Use the Supremacy Engine and take it on for the next project. To get our blades sharpened, we used the ongoing Thirty Kingdoms game taking it apart and putting it back while applying our company touch. This, of course, meant getting very familiar with the Supremacy engine, along with all its quirks and supremacy.
Blitzkrieg to end 2016, after a very intense number of seasons, Dorado packaged and released Conflict of Nations into the stratosphere (take that Tesla) through an open public Beta. During this time and to this day, Bytro and Dorado work on separate codebases but still maintain very close contact including (but not limited to) cross-company support across departments.
1984 2023
Fastforward again some years, (some? It’s been almost 6 years - oof I’m getting old)
My existential crisis aside, the two companies lived happily ever after diligently, and with great fervour worked on their games in an unrelenting manner with the aim of utmost dedication. (Seriously, I’ve been in those meetings.)
Over time our codebases grew very differently from one another. Now, for the technically inclined of you, this probably rings some alarm bells. But for sake of the normal folk, this means that one company had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, while another had a pineapple pizza (I’ll let you be the judge of who has what). The problem here is; we somehow had to merge the two dishes while making it work.
And here we are! What? I said we’ll take the express lane, I only kind of lied.
What were you talking about again? I’m hungry now.
Yes! Update intake. Thanks for reminding me. For the better part of last year one of our developers had the monumental task of merging the two savoury dishes that have no complimentary qualities. The peanut butter and sandwich is the base, as is the pizza with sauce and mozzarella. The Jelly and Pineapple? Well, you see the problem here.
More technically speaking, update intake adds in some modernised code on the underlying engine of our game. Another way of thinking about it is in this way: We took the engine of a car from years ago, and infused the engineering of progress made over the past years.
You will not see visual changes, and may not perceive any changes at all, but the intake allows us greater flexibility in improving the underlying code. Oh! Also, it fixes a fair bit of bugs and optimisation issues which were causing headaches. It’s one of those black magic things which touches on so many areas that it isn’t so clear cut as to what is fixed and improved.
Here Be Dragons
We spent quite some weeks and months making preparations for Update intake, in past week having the beta testers mercilessly break our beta environment (with consent). But, alas, such is the nature of development, we cannot know the full effects until live release. Thankfully, with 2 days since release we haven’t seen very many bugs, actually, it went much better than expected!
The team scrambled together 3 Hotfixes since then, and things are looking delicious! We aren’t out of the kitchen yet, tracking down pesky bugs as they make themselves known. Given sensitivity of the situation we’ve been very quick to identify and fix said bugs. Even they couldn’t resist the allure of PBJ pineapple pizza.
Believe it or not, yes we made PBJ & Pineapple pizza work. If you ask how? Honestly, the dedication of everyone at Dorado. We’re monitoring very closely but internally this is considered a success all things considered.
It’s been 87 years
I think that concludes this lengthy rant post for devlog 23. As it stands, we’re finalising the roadmap for 2023 which I will gladly share with you once we have. We have some other interesting things in the short term pipeline which I’ll be showing soon.
Also, we’re looking for another sacrificial dev for the next update intake. Now excuse me while I prepare lunch.
- Yak
PATCH NOTES - 2301.31
+ + + + UPDATE + + + +
After extensive feedback from our community, a new setup is being introduced for Squadron Cycle, called Artillery Barrage! This setup will include an Air Superiority Fighter, Airborne Infantry, and a Multiple Rocket Launcher System in the capital. The aim is to entice players to bombard enemy cities and then swoop in with Airborne Infantry, with the MLRS acting as both the offense and defense for this tactic.
We are also introducing a notable performance update. While the update is intended to improve the gameplay experience for our dedicated community of players across the board, it is nevertheless good to note the update might result in new issues coming to light. While the update will not impact the visuals, many changes have been made to our code, that essentially runs the entire game. It makes it easier for our developers to introduce more changes in the future and to better improve on our existing features. Additionally, our aim is to improve performance across the board and hopefully have an impact on any crashes that some might experience on their mobile devices. We shall be monitoring this extensively and your patience is appreciated during this time should issues crop up. Feel free to reach out to the closest friendly Community Manager in such a case!
Changes:
An extensive performance update to improve the gameplay experience
“Artillery Barrage” starting setup for Squadron Cycle maps
Greece now has an Electronics resource city in World War 3 4x maps
Fixes:
Fixed Victory Points not recalculating when there is a change in a coalition
Fixed a visual issue where multiple buildings in a city caused them to overlap with one another
Here's to a glorious 2023!
Commanders!
With the Holidays swiftly approaching, many in the office are preparing to make their way to designated locations (where rumor has it a cult-like ritual of gut-stuffing takes place). Now is as good a time as ever to thank the players for their much appreciated involvement within the community, and game.
It's been a year of milestones for Dorado and Conflict of Nations, and some subtler introductions which are setting up the stage for a very exciting year ahead! An obvious upcoming change is that of the updated graphics engine that will be available next year on Desktop/Web clients.
We also acknowledge that many players struggle when learning the game, especially during the first days of playing the game. The team has concocted an ingame solution we believe will benefit everyone, from the fresh recruits to the battle-hardened veterans. More details on that early next year.
The lovely folk at Dorado are always happy to identify areas of improvements, if not especially when we miss the mark. Thanks to the community, in such events we have identified these pressure points and made it a point to improve for the coming year. Be it server stability or otherwise. We strive to deliver excellence, and to ensure the delivery of excellence we've bolstered the team size to assist us in creating the CoN we envision for years to come, for exciting new projects I can't wait to share with you.
On behalf of all Dorado, we are wishing you and yours a lovely end to the year, and great appreciation for all your involvement.
Season 9 is Live!
+++++ SEASON 9 IS LIVE ++++ Featuring: Elite Frigate
The Time has come, The long-awaited The one and only, Is it a jet-ski, is it a whale? It’s the Elite Frigate!
We have been teasing and discussing the Elite Frigate for some time now! We have noted the challenges involved in making this new unit a reality, but now the time has come and we are ready to go with Season 9!
The Elite Frigate is a support surface vassal capable of servicing helicopters to further improve your Navy's combat operations. As a ship - whilst it can take a beating, it is not designed for direct combat and should ideally be kept out of harm’s way, and not used to directly engage hostile ships.
The unit starts off as a capable Anti-Sub deterrent, and provides the fleet with an early warning detection against hostile helicopters. The unit can carry two Helicopters from the get-go, allowing you to further enhance its combat ability against Submarines, provide it with better reconnaissance capabilities, or give it the ability to provide helicopter air-support to ground operations.
Once you begin to upgrade the unit, it really starts to shine.
Tier 2 At tier two, it can carry an additional Helicopter, bringing it up to 3. The unit gains the ability to launch Cruise Missiles, giving it further ability to neutralize distant targets, be they sea or land. The ship gains the ability to launch Loitering Munitions, allowing you to either cover a retreat, or cover an area to intercept hostile units.
Tier 3 At Tier 3 - The ship gains more cruise missile capabilities. Giving it a strong ability to serve as a primary cruise missile launch platform. On-top of that, the ship gains strong anti-missile defence capabilities, improving your fleet's survivability. At this tier - the unit has a low-signature, allowing it to sneak past most radar systems available - save for the very best and finely tuned radar systems.
Note: The new unit will only be available in NEW games which are spawned after release.
As many players who have been with us in previous Seasons are aware, we also offer a previous Seasonal Unit to give players a chance to experience those units again. This time around, we have 2 previous seasonal units on offer.
Elite Loitering Munitions and the Main Battle Tank are both making a comeback only for a Limited time!
Those of you who haven’t had a chance to permanently unlock these units before can now have another crack at it during Season 9! Security Council members need 500 Points in this Season for permanent unlock of the Loitering Munitions, and 2,500 points for the Main Battle Tank..
In case this is your first Season, here’s a rundown how Seasons work: Earn Season Points by killing units in any of your games - they all count! Try out the unique Seasonal Units, available to everyone! (NOTE: Only available for new games starting now) The Season Units can be researched from a new tab in the Research Panel. Any Elite units you have already unlocked from previous seasons are fully able to be mobilized in any game of your choice!
In order to permanently unlock the Seasonal Unit and use it after the Season ends you must earn at least 1,500 Seasonal Points for the Elite Frigate, and also have a valid Security Council Pass.
After announcing our Merch Shops earlier this year, players will now be able to access them through the Gold shop in a Game! Take a quick peek and brand yourself with original artwork from the Dorado Team.
With great excitement, we are also excited to announce that Season 9 is fresh out of the oven! Before all details are revealed, it is important that you are informed about a change being introduced with this release.
During the development stages of the upcoming unit, we came across an issue that would have delayed the start of the Season. Keeping in mind the overall excitement in the Community as well as our hype for Navy enhancement, we could not let Grinch steal this Christmas.
As a temporary workaround, the Team decided to remove the ability of Carrier-like units from merging together. This will specifically affect Aircraft Carriers as well as the, as our Lead Designer playfully called it, the Pew-Pew Boat¹.
Keep your eyes peeled - an Announcement post will be up very soon!
Pacific Theater General Update
Updated CRVs as starting units
New Leader names
Fixed province name spelling mistakes
Squadron Cycle General Update
Added Strike Fighters and Mobile Anti-Air as Starting units in each Capital
Middle East Conflict General Update
Updated Leader names
Created an Apocalypse 4X Version
Changes:
Removed Merging ability for Carrier-like Navy
Introduced a Merch Shop Button
Updated Unit Upkeep cost for later Tiers
Fixes:
Fixed an issue with broken Radar
Fixed an issue of an incorrect notification if a Trade offer is canceled [Mobile]
Fixed a UI issue on the Trade Delegation pop-up [Mobile]
Fixed wrong information on the Army Deficiency screen [Mobile]
Fixed a case where the mobilization continues after conquering the homeland
Fixed the Speed setting for Able Archer
¹ For the longest time, the Season 9 unit description was ‘Something to describe a boat’.
Anyone with us for a long time will have heard the stories about how we never could offer variations on carriers or units such as Amphibious Assault Ships or the like. This is now changing: due to the ongoing refactoring of the relevant code and the time we are needing finalizing the programming, we are currently working on also finalizing the design side of the new unit.
For the first time we are actually touching the “Carrier Code” of the game, allowing a unit besides the aircraft carrier to serve as a mobile launching platform for air units - in this case: helicopters.
Our unit of choice at the time of writing, for the upcoming Season is an ELITE FRIGATE with the following design principles which need to be adhered to: 1. The unit will come in three visual models as per the artworks 2. All three units will be interchangeable in stats, so no dedicated faction/doctrine 3. The tech tree must differentiate three research levels per Elite Frigate
With regards to the features it will have, it will offer the ability to host helicopter(s) onboard, at one stage of the research tree. A list of features that will also be included, derived from other ships are:
Research Cost/Time,
Mobilization Cost/Time,
Day Available,
Hit Points,
Speed,
Attack/Defence vs XYZ,
Sight/Radar/Sonar Ranges,
Helicopter Slots,
Cruise Missile Slots,
Ability to deploy Loitering Munitions,
Stealth/Stealth Detection,
AA Range/Envelope, … to name the most obvious.
While we do not envisage any issues going forward, the unit is obviously subject to change. Nevertheless, we are midway through development. We look forward to receiving any feedback you might like to pass on to us as we now enter the final stages of the run up to Season 9!
And now fair winds and following seas while designing this new vessel.
PATCH NOTES - 2211.02
+ + + + UPDATE + + + +
We have a very important game change in this update:
Air patrol revision [read more under Changes below]
In other news, this update features General Map updates, a new Squadron Cycle version, and much more!
For this iteration of Squadron Cycle map, we were inspired by the growing cult on Discord. They have no leader, purely driven by the songs of war, a precursor to the path which delivers them unto faith. The church of roads.
In the new Squadron Cycle variant, player-controlled nations will start with an Elite Railgun in each Capital, as well as Roads in all non-urban provinces.
Map Changes:
Antarctica General Update:
Updated World leaders
Added suburban provinces
Pacific Theater General Update:
Added 4X variant
Corrected Capital cities and fixed Nation Descriptions
Fixed the map visual for the Laos river
Battleground USA General Update:
Each player-controlled Capital will now start with a Towed Artillery and a Main Battle Tank
Fixed proper province names
Changes:
The Air patrol command has been revised to fit better with our design goals. Patrolling units will be forced to refuel after a certain amount of time. Read more on our official wiki
Dynamic VP - Points will immediately be updated according to conquered/lost territory
Improved localization: Players will receive Push notifications in their own language
City population will be shown next to the City name [Mobile]
Fixes:
Updated a missing flag in Rising Tides 100p
The + sign will no longer be shown on the Army Deficiency indicator
Progress Report: Season 9
Greetings Commanders!
Can you hear that!? The channels are bursting with anticipation for the upcoming seasonal unit.
Player curiosity creates frequent questions, we hear you, so here is a sneak-peak!
For the upcoming season, the Team was inspired to create something that will enhance and support combat, utilizing existing features in a new creative way. Keeping all perks in mind, players will have the opportunity to nail Naval and Air defense, while clearing the path to conquer the coast and reach new grounds.
In Season 9 - Aircraft will reach new grounds, the sunken shall turn away, and projectiles will take to the skies!
As always, our approach is involving honorary members of the Community during the early development stages to make sure we are providing something wanted by the players.
As of right now, the Season 9 unit designs are being prepared for deployment to our internal Alpha environment, where internal testing officially begins.
This usually takes approximately a week or two, depending on feedback and findings.
The moment we’re most looking forward to is the following stage: our Beta Testers getting their hands on the unit. Once the Unit is deployed to Beta, Community feedback is gathered and discussed.
In the coming weeks, we will drop tidbits of information and images on our social channels - so keep an eye on Discord, forums, etc!
In the meantime, you are encouraged to join the Season 9 discussion on our socials!
PATCH NOTES - 2210.05
+ + + + UPDATE + + + +
Introducing … Steel Division
In our last update, we introduced a new scenario known as Squadron Cycle! The aim of this scenario is to provide varied gameplay experiences by changing up the starting units we are used to. So far, we have had a Covert Ops variation, where players started out with a Special Forces unit and a UAV in their capital city.
Thanks to the success of our ‘Covert Ops’ Variation in Squadron Cycle, a new variation is being introduced!
These special games will start you with:
Player Nations:
Air Superiority Fighter in capital.
Main Battle Tank in capital.
Mechanized Infantry in capital
2 Motorized Infantry in each city.
OPTIONAL: CRV in another city besides the capital.
AI Nations
2 Motorized Infantry in the capital.
We hope you are enjoying this new scenario. Stay with us as we have further updates coming to this scenario in the coming months.
The new Steel Division variation is available NOW!
Changes:
New starting variation introduced to Squadron Cycle: Say hello to the ‘Steel Division’: Main Battle Tank, Mechanized Infantry & Air Superiority Fighter in each capital!
Swarm UAV renamed to Loitering Munitions
Balance changes for the Elite Attack Aircraft and the Elite Attack Helicopter
Victory Points in Antarctica scenario have been updated
Fixes:
Fixed an error that came up when refreshing the game during the tutorial [Mobile]
Fixed an issue where large aircraft stack could not be split when being ferried to an aircraft carrier
Fixed the Amphibious Fighting Vehicle not getting any bonuses from the Urban Survival Kit research upgrade
Season 8: Closing Remarks
++++SEASON 8 - END++++
Season 8 has come to an end. We hope that you utilized the abilities of the Elite Attack Aircraft and maintained Air superiority during the last months. If you did not yet purchase Security Council, you are still in time as there is a 24-hour grace period that allows you to unlock the Seasonal Unit if you have enough points.
And now… *drumroll please*
It is time to give credit where credit is due. After a very competitive Season, it is only fair to honor the top Commanders for Season 8.
Congratulations to the top 3 victors, who won:
3rd Place - HHLE: 30 000 Gold + 3 months Security Council + Season Winner Role on the CON Discord Server
2nd Place - Mauropacker: 40 000 Gold + 4 months Security Council + Season Winner Role on the CON Discord Server
1st Place - KingSuper: 50 000 Gold + 5 months Security Council + Season Winner Role on the CON Discord Server
A new name to the top of the leaderboards, HHLE made it to 3rd place with a score 53,823 points. Hailing from Chimera, we hope to continue seeing HHLE in future top rankings.
Ranked 58th in Season 7, Mauropacker has now reached the 2ndplace on the Leaderboard this Season. A relatively new name on the Leaderboard bringing a fantastic achievement for the Alliance he represents - CruzanMafia340, has achieved a whopping 59 519 Points. We hope to see you even higher next time!
Coming in 1st, is KingSuper! A well-known name among the Seasonal winners, after reaching the Top in Season 6, as well as Season 5, he makes his way back in the top three again. A member of the Centre of the World alliance, keep an eye on them if you want to reach the Top, you will surely need to get through this player first.
Stay tuned for Season 9, we can certainly tell you that the Team is now focusing on a unit type that hasn’t been included in the Seasons in some time! Keep your eyes peeled on the upcoming Teasers very very soon!
