This is the first update for Fire & Maneuver since launch, "General Improvements." A rather dry name, but there have been adjustments to every single part of the game, we didn't gear this update toward one specific thing. We are going to try to do weekly updates for you guys and communicate with you every step of the way leading up to full release. Next week we hope to add in the animal cosmetic system, work on the buggy melee system, add in historical scenario battles, and importantly, add in an interactive tutorial along with an advanced nested tooltip system. A lot to look forward to!
Update 1.1 has been released this week alongside Patch 1.0.4 which you can read about here: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1679290?emclan=103582791470379479&emgid=5154949827504636802
Balance Changes - Units with 3 cohesion are 5 points cheaper, this means that militia and the Union/Confederate volunteers are slightly more affordable. - Efficiency now increases a unit's price by 5 additional points, making Prussian and Confederate infantry slightly more expensive. - All modern artillery (Prussian Krupps, British Armstrongs, Russian M1867s) now have a 2 limit, we are not happy with players taking an army of artillery and putting themselves into the corner of a map so this is a band-aid solution to this problem. In the future we will be adding an objective-based game mode which should prevent people from camping in the corner. Until then, we kindly ask our players to play fairly and properly engage your opponent without employing tactics that make the game unfun. - US/CSA cavalry now have carbines as their default weapon in both the early period and late period, which is more historically accurate. - Austrian Line Infantry now all come with the "Melee-drill" perk. We felt like Austria felt too vanilla and similar to France. The melee-drill for all Austrian line infantry helps reflects the Austrian "Stoß Taktik" or "Push Tactic" of the time. - Austrian Hoch & Deutsch unit given "Melee-drill" instead of "Range-drill." This means Austria has no units with "range-drill" and therefore can't rely as much on mass-equipping the superior breech-loaders to pick off enemies. - 3 Speed units are now cost 10 additional points. We've found light cavalry has been too dominant in the Quick Match "meta." - 2 Speed cavalry is now 15 points cheaper. We've found that players often times completely ignore heavy cavalry in favor for light cavalry which is much harder to predict. In this game, prediction is one of the most important skills and heavier cavalry are much easier to predict than light cavalry, so we believe the price cut should make them a more attractive option.
Fixes - On the lobby list every match displayed it's map as "map" and not the actual name. - Movement lines/arrows weren't appearing on hills and cliffs making it difficult to properly maneuver. - Swapping reserves was completely broken and would also flip your unit backwards. - The advanced options menu was not available in battles, only on main menu. Now you can properly adjust your graphics even when in a fight. - A bug which gave units bonus movement speed when orders were cancelled has been fixed. - Changing formation and then cancelling the formation change will revert your movement speed to the correct amount instead of setting it to the incorrect amount. - Players sometimes experienced a bug in which cancelling orders simply broke on the order card, and we believe this has been resolved. - On occasion the client's (non-host) orders would get thrown out without reason and we believe we've fixed this issue. - If you alt-tabbed out of your game while selecting a nation your mouse would duplicate thousands of times and we believe we have fixed this issue. If players find that you can still break the mouse, we'll get it patched first thing next week. - The formation button should now automatically update to the unit you have selected. - You can no longer put cavalry/artillery in a formation by selecting your infantry first and opening the formations tab. - The chat in lobbies is now working. - Some settings were being reset upon confirming on the options menu, which is no longer the case. - The camera spawns for the Overland campaign are now correct. - The corps text headers for the Overland and Peninsula campaigns are now correct. - Some spell-checking has been done in the campaign mode. - Some troops were spawning in with sabres-only in the campaign mode when they were given rifles, this is now fixed. - Some troops on the unit cards weren't properly holding their weapons when assigned a new one, this is now fixed. - Quick match can't be selected more than once, this was previously queueing people into multiple quick-match sessions. - Players should no longer be joining empty lobbies in quick match. - The load button on campaigns was displaying the wrong saves. - Players can only equip the sharps-rifle to sharpshooters in the campaign. - Regiments with 0 men left should now properly dissolve. - The campaign casualty system has been overhauled and now yields more realistic and consistent results. Auto resolve still needs some work though... - Administration policies in the campaign would randomly reset. - Some players weren't experiencing the victory screen on the tutorial scenario, which is now fixed. - The campaign portraits showed the wrong generals for Overland. - Commas are now correctly displaying to merit amounts. - Players can now replay the tutorial battle from the main menu under "learn tab." - Fire-at-will mode should be more consistently firing but work still needs to be done on this firing mode. - Leaving/rejoining lobbies has been stress-tested and improved. Previously there were issues with players leaving, coming back, switching slots in a room, and doing so repeatedly.
Quality of Life - Unit cards now have blue and orange pips above their health/cohesion bars. The blue pips symbolize how many maneuver orders that unit has remaining, and the orange pip represents how many fire orders that unit has remaining. When all orders are spent, the card will darken. This makes it much easier to tell at a glance which units have yet to receive orders. - Percentage to win numbers are now: 60%, 75%, 80%, 85%, 90%. Previously there was an option for 25% kills to win which confused players who thought that they'd win once the enemy had 25% forces left, when in reality it meant the game would end once someone lost only 1/4 of their men. - Some hotkeys added. R,F,C now quick select the options for fire at will, firing, and charging. T,G,V now quick select the options for swapping reserve, moving, and changing formation. We will be improving hotkeys and making them rebindable in a later update. - If the player doesn't have any factions unlocked they can no longer access quick match/custom match menus and will instead be repeatedly prompted to select their 3 free factions. - When selecting a unit in reserve it will darken the firing buttons making it clearer to players that reserves can't shoot. - UI now completely darkens when no unit is selected. - An info panel has been added to the armory which informs you how to use it. - While in a melee players can no longer select firing buttons and formation buttons. - There is now a filter for password protected games on the lobby list. - There is now a filter for Steam friends on the lobby list. - A timer now appears on Quick Match letting you know how much time you have before the match launches. - When a weapon is equipped it now plays a sound to confirm you've equipped a new piece. - All UI now darkens during execution phase making it easier to tell the difference between the two phases. - Server region added for Asia.
Content - New Dynamic Game speed option which is now the default way to play. Dynamic game speed makes the first few turns have instant-animations and then slows down the action when the two forces engage. This way setting up troops for the first few turns is much quicker. The dynamic game speed will be improved with time and become smarter so that it can speed up turns toward the end of a match when few units are remaining as well. - Quick Match now has random map selection which adds more variety. Seasons are also randomized. - Quick Match time period is randomized, some matches are early exclusive and late exclusive. - New historical 2v2 map "Antietam" for owners of the American Civil War DLC. - New fictional 2v2 map "Delta." - New fictional 1v1 map "Frontier."
Graphics & Optimization - Players now have the options to turn off shadows. - As previously stated, the advanced options menu can now be accessed while in battle. - Unusual lag on the lobby & faction selection screen is gone. - Players can turn off "advanced sprite layering" which reduces GPU usage. - UI elements are batched when going into the battle which helps everyone's FPS. - Added a Confederate Snake animation. - Added a Union Eagle animation. - Tabletop texture remade, now it's not blurry. - New lighting update which makes foliage match their environment better and improves lighting across the map as a whole. This will continue to be improved, in some cases the foliage can be far too bright still. - The time of day was set to very early morning it hard to see on maps, we've fixed this and set it to a later time in the day. Dynamic time-of-day has been temporarily removed so we can work on it more.
Known Issues - Spawning on Antietam puts your camera at the wrong area and spawns troops backwards. Will fix asap. - After playing on quick-match some players will experience trouble hosting a lobby, this will be fixed asap. For now, the player must restart their game. - Charging is buggy when it includes more than 2 units on a tile, we will be setting aside an upcoming week to overhaul this system. - Tooltips are still unhelpful, the nested tooltip system will be added very soon. - Hard cover damage is inconsistent. - Players can't add more than 1 AI in a match. - Hotkeys need improvements and rebinding. We will allow players to remove the WASD camera controls. - Ready button UI needs to be moved somewhere more obvious. - Some invisible unit issues after melees. - Units crossing bridges look ugly when not in column as they spill into the water, will fix. - The scenario battles we tried to add in in this update are not displaying on the map and the locks are still displaying on the map even if the player has the country unlocked. These issues will be fixed soon. - The tutorial needs to be made interactive, we hear you! - Players aren't able to put cosmetics on their animal avatars. This has been disabled since launch and we decided to hold off on finishing it until the game was more stable. Hopefully next week we can get that feature in along with another round of bugfixing and polishing! - Delta map has some visual bugs that'll be fixed shortly. + General bugfixes, UI, polishing tasks...
Patch 1.04
Hey everyone!
This is our first major F&M patch. While this patch does not address every major issue everything that's been reported, it does tackle a few annoyances players have been having. Keep in mind that our development team accomplished all of this in just a day, so we are quick at work in addressing all of your concerns with balance, bugs, UI, content, and optimization. Stay tuned for a small update this Friday.
Balance Changes: - Quick match timer changed to 90 seconds from 45 seconds.
Fixes: - 2v2s reenabled and working again. - Quick match connection massively improved. - Getting permanently stuck in the Quick Match queue should now be fixed. - The charge button would flash all neighboring tiles and fade, now the chargeable tiles remain clearly indicated to the player. - Players who already owned the ACW DLC were being taken to the store page when clicking on these nations. - 2v2 maps are now listed exclusively under the 2v2 category. - Players no longer earn merits/xp from games they abandon. - Collisions on the bridges on Williamsburg were turned off, now they're on. - Soldier sprites were invisible when loading into the game until the player moved their camera close to that unit, this is fixed. - The "heights" map resolution is now HD. - Union/Confederate nation icons on the main menu have gold frames instead of losing the golden frames when unlocked. - XP was set to the wrong speed and now moves quicker when ending a match. - The Overland Campaign description had a historical error and is fixed. - Clicking and hovering sounds weren't playing when clicking on factions and hovering over the home, learn, quick match, custom, nations, and store tabs. - Merits weren't earnable in singleplayer on launch which was fixed. - Players were only starting with 10,000 merits instead of 15,000 so they could only get 2 factions instead of 3, this has been updated for all players.
Quality of Life: - New movement system update which automatically indicates the direction and path a unit will take before the player has right clicked to confirm the order. This new movement system will see some improvements on Friday, but it's a step in the right direction. We will also be implementing a system that highlights all tiles a unit has access to when selected to make movement even clearer. (Gif preview here: https://imgur.com/EbHVN4K) - Some new hotkeys added: 1. Tapping F allows you to quickly fire on units. 2. Tapping C allows you to quickly charge units. 3. Tapping Space allows you to open and close your order window. - A preview of XP earned now appears in a feint green when leveling up. - An information tab has been added to the armory explaining how to equip weapons. - Enemy units who are given an attack order are highlighted in red so the player knows which enemies have been targeted. - The "Melee-only" icon has been changed to a closeup of a sabre instead of an image of a sabre with a hand which was harder to read from far away. - Weapons in the armory are now placed in order of category (infantry or cavalry weapon), then price within that category. - There is a clear "unlock faction" button above faction icons instead of needing to click the icon several times before an unlock menu appears. - Merit rate was doubled so that unlocking new factions does not feel like a grind.
Content: - Brand new "Rumanian Rurals" 2v2 map! - Added the intro tutorial mission to be replayable under the "learn" tab. There is an issue however where this scenario will not load if the player has played a game prior to replaying the tutorial scenario. Restart your game if this happens to you. On Friday we will put out an update to fix this immediately.
Known Issues to be Addressed Soon: - The game's UI is unclear in many places. A brand new nested tooltip system will overhaul our current tooltip system allowing players to clearly understand every mechanic in the game. This is the current "tooltip" system.
This is the new nested tooltip system.
- Time of day isn't progressing and so each battle retains an early morning lighting. - Damage for units in hard cover (buildings) is not being properly applied. - There are known issues where some players can't launch into a game despite all players being readied up. - AI in the campaign system currently can't recruit individual soldiers which needs to be fixed. - Some settings aren't getting applied from the main menu. - Small pips on cards need to be added telling the player how many orders they can continue issuing certain units. - Cavalry carbines are not applying damage correctly in some cases. - Union/Confederate eagles aren't animating. - Players can't add more than 1 AI in a match, or play against AI with a friend. - Arrows not displaying on hills/cliffs. - Tiles not highlighting where a unit is able to move to. - The hotkeys aren't listed under the options menu. - Z should undo your last order. - Alt should slow down camera movement. - T, G, and V will be plugged in as hotkeys for reserves, movement, and formation changes. - The number keys will automatically select numbered units. - Ready button UI is ugly and is being remade and put in a better position. - Players who spend a long time on the choose nations screen have their mouse duplicated infinite times. - If a player hovers over another player's animal avatar that player's name should appear. - Reserve swapping isn't working as intended. - The advanced settings menu isn't accessible in battles which it should be. - A dynamic game speed mode which makes the first few turns quick and then slows down when combat happens should get added soon so that playing on larger maps don't feel tedious. - Some players experience fighting invisible units, which is a desync error on the client end when a unit isn't being properly killed during a melee. - If a player doesn't have any factions unlocked he shouldn't be able to play quick match or custom match. - Units crossing bridges need to be in a column to cross but right now any formation can cross.
There are plenty more bugs we are aware of. I personally read through every single review and comment made on our Discord and Discussion tab and recorded over 15 pages of issues. We will work every day until every one of these issues has been addressed. We are also looking into ways we can make artillery feel more powerful so that bombardments feel more impactful instead of the enemy just instantly regaining its cohesion after being shot.
Thank you, Griffin
Post-Launch Plans, Addressing Feedback
Thank you: First, I just wanted to thank everyone who downloaded Fire & Maneuver and those who purchased DLC content.
We've been keeping careful note of all of your feedback and believe it is imperative to keep a clear line of communication open with our players. We will be posting news regularly on updates and future plans. Additionally, our development team will continue working to support this game full-time until we are out of Early Access; regardless of the status of the game, we are 100% committed to polishing and fixing issues that you encounter. We will not abandon this project.
Now I'd like to address a few points we've seen brought up:
Game Monetization There has been some mixed opinions on how Fire & Maneuver is monetized. I want to make it clear that it was never our intention to make F&M feel grindy, or frustrating. The in-game currency known as merits do have a few issues that we are resolving immediately. First, players are unable to gain merits against the AI (PVE) or in custom matches, and in some cases lose merits when they lose a battle... this is not working as intended, and we want to ensure that if you are a player who plays solo that you can still experience progression. We will roll out a patch quickly to make merits earnable in PVE and stop players from losing merits or gaining no merits at all when they lose a match. Furthermore, we believe that merit gain is too low even in PVP so we will be doubling merit gain rate. In our weekend patch we will also be gifting everyone a free 3,000 merits, which should be enough for you to unlock a new faction if you've been playing some Quick Matches. Fire & Maneuver was never intended to feel like a grindy F2P game, we apologize for any frustration around that. If you are a player who wants to experience F&M completely for free, you should still have an enjoyable time and not feel pressured into buying additional factions. Finally, there was an issue with our Steam page which did not show our "standard edition bundle" which gave you all DLC for $25 USD. Instead, buying the DLC in bulk is wrongly listed as $34 USD... and we are in contact with people at Valve to get this fixed immediately. For now, use this link directly to get your discount: https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/27147/Fire__Maneuver_Standard_Edition/
Learning to Play: We understand that the game can feel frustrating to play without a proper interactive tutorial. We hear you, and it's now on the top of our list to create an interactive tutorial as well as producing an entire video series on all different aspects/mechanics on the game. We've also made sure to correct the issue with the unskippable video tutorial and unskippable tutorial battle and will have both of these be optional in a patch coming out today! Apologies for that.
If you are unsure how to play and did skip the tutorial, you can always rewatch it here:
Bugs & UI: We've been recording all gameplay and matchmaking bugs and have a clear plan to tackle these issues as soon as possible. I do not want to overwork the team so we will begin ironing things out this Monday (the 18th). Expect another patch with fixes and free new maps for you play on in only a week. UI will also get updated with more clarity on movement, facing directions, and additional tooltips. Throughout July we will continue improving the user interface and user experience to make sure the game is clear and enjoyable.
AI: AI is still a big work-in-progress and is currently locked to the "Very Easy" setting. Now that our AI developer has finished our map editor (which we want to release to you guys as soon we can) he can begin making massive improvements to the AI. As a veteran of strategy games myself, I think that a competent AI is the most important thing in a strategy game, even one geared toward multiplayer. Our campaign AI is nearly finished, which means we can begin developing a multiplayer system for campaigns.
Graphics & Optimization We've heard some comments about the art style in game lacking cohesion between 2d sprite soldiers and 3d buildings. We are going to look into applying a shader on 3d objects to give them a more "drawn" style. This is our first ever big game project so getting things unified stylistically is still something we're learning and working on improving. For optimization, it is surprising how taxing the 2d sprites can be- they are being constantly updated from every viewable angle (each sprite is drawn in 8 different angles) and in some battles there are thousands of these soldiers. We have an extensive list of ways we are going to massively optimize the game, but these changes will take us several weeks to implement. That said, optimization is another task on the top of our list, and once completed, we can increase game sizes up to 3v3s for massive battles!
New Features Before we begin adding new features to the game it is important to us to polish and correct any issues listed above. With that said, we still want to make sure a steady stream of free content is released on a regular basis to keep things interesting. A new cosmetic system which allows you to dress your animal avatars in historical outfits is on the way, Patrons who supported the game early will also get unique cosmetics for their avatars. New maps will be added each and every month up to full release including historical battles for the American Civil War, Franco-Prussian War, Crimean War, Italian Wars of Unification, and Austro-Prussian War. At this time we are not considering adding additional factions however until all issues have been addressed, but once the game is more stable we will work on adding new nations!
Conclusion: Thank you again for all your feedback, we've are receptive to all criticism. Our goal first and foremost is to make an enjoyable game, profit will always come second to your satisfaction. This was one of the primary reasons we wanted our game to be free-to-play. Updates will come out regularly, our small team of developers are extremely talented and are committed to making constant improvements.
Best, Griffin Johnsen, Fire & Maneuver Project Director
Fire and Maneuver is Live!
Fire and Maneuver is now available to download for free. You can support the game now through our early access period as we continue development for the game, as we continue to add more maps, scenarios, factions, map makers, and much more.
The game currently features 7 unique factions with distinct playing styles, 10 diverse maps based on historical and original battles through Europe, custom soundtracks based on the time period, and two single player campaigns based on the Crimean War.
From The Armchair History team comes Fire & Maneuver, a unique strategy game made by history buffs for history buffs, wargame enthusiasts, and casual players alike. Striking the perfect balance between history and playability, F&M combines true-to-life units created through extensive historical research with clever but engaging mechanics developed by a passionate team to create a strategy title that has a little something for everyone.
Thank you everyone for your continued support and we look forward to seeing you on the battlefield.
F&M Dev Diary #7 F&M Dev Diary #7: New Factions, Units, Maps with Griffin
[previewyoutube="9FNqp7Rzheo;full"]
Presented by Griffin Alpha 1.0 & 1.1 Wishlist on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/16... Gain Access: https://www.patreon.com/ahinteractive Official Discord: https://discord.gg/23nqyAz5z2
Alpha 1.0 Changelog: - Player win/loss ratio now displays in lobby - Players can kick people from the lobby - Melee system improvements and fixes - Russian faction playable - British faction playable - Cavalry added - Artillery added - New map added - New units added to French & German rosters - Animal avatar animation plays only when selected - Entrenchment system added
Alpha 1.1 Changelog: - Optimization overhaul - Additional graphical options - Max orders increased to 8 - Max units increased to 16 - Open order formation added - Square formation added - Field UI movement debuff information added - Field UI entrenchment information added - Unit damage vulnerability system added - Armory system fully implemented - Unit card tweaks
F&M Dev Diary #6: Cavalry & Artillery Preview with Aaron
[previewyoutube="ZX9JyP5OJfY;full"]
Check out Glory & Defeat! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB1e... Presented by Aaron & Sebastian Alpha 1.0 Wishlist on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/16... Gain Access: https://www.patreon.com/ahinteractive Official Discord: https://discord.gg/23nqyAz5z2
F&M Dev Diary #5: Battle Phase & Arrows with Sebastian
Pre-Alpha 1.8 Changelog: - Bug fixes - Game optimization - Sounds added to more windows - Order & Attack Phase display - Clouds - Movement arrows - Damage preview system - Tooltip improvements - Russian bear added - Camera fixes - Units now walk tile-by-tile instead of teleporting across multiple tiles - Reserve change added as a new order type
