The community’s response to our call for questions has been phenomenal. The Iron Doctor, our community manager, has been swamped. But it’s great to see what you’re interested in as we move forward. We’ve had to split the answers into two parts. Here’s the 1st, and the 2nd will be in January’s DevBlog.
When will you send out the request for the in-game picture of the backers? - Kaada (Discord)
We’re
going to start sending our requests for your likeness to help us create
the in-game portraits of you over the holiday period. If you haven’t
heard from us by January 15th, please contact us.
The plan is to send out all rewards together with the game. Our goal is you having everything in your hand at launch day.
1st of September 2020 to Steam and GOG on PC as well as Xbox One and PlayStation 4.
Thank
you, if you’re an Alpha or Beta backer you can access the PC Alpha
already by logging in from the top right of our webpage and claim your
Steam key. When we release the game in full, everybody gets a new key
for the platform of your choosing. The Alpha/Beta Steam key will no
longer work.
We
haven't decided yet. The artbook is primarily for our early supporters.
But if there is interest, perhaps we could offer it later over our shop
as well.
Yes.
:-)
What we can confirm so far: There will be 21 campaign maps, 7 for each
campaign. There will also be a good number of multiplayer and challenge
maps as well as new maps after release.
Yes!
The plan is to release it physically in all major markets. Our
publisher Deep Silver (Koch Media) is one of the biggest distributors
for boxed games in the world. We’ll also lobby for at least one
Collector’s Edition.
All
our previous games had native Linux support. The only reason we didn’t
want to promise anything for Iron Harvest is the fact that it is so much
more complex than anything we’ve done so far (including multiplayer and
coop features). We’ll look into Linux and try to make it as easy as
possible for Linux fans to get the game running. We have some Linux fans
in the company, so you have a lobby here ;-)
As
with Linux (see above), we can’t promise anything yet, but we’ll look
into it down the line. One additional problem on Mac is that many Mac
systems, especially older MacBooks, have notorious bad graphic chips. So
even if we would be able to release a Mac version, it would most likely
be limited to higher-end systems. Look out for news mid-2020.
It’s
great that a lot of people want to get into Iron Harvest ASAP. However,
Alpha will remain closed as it was always a special thing for our early
supporters and Kickstarter backers. We are currently discussing
internally, how open/closed the Beta will be. There are a surprisingly
number of pros and cons to consider here, but we will defiantly let you
know as soon as we have decided.
We’re
going to do the backer-Beta early 2020 and most likely some sort of
performance/stability test, maybe a “Beta 2”, an Open Beta or sort of
demo, close to release.
There
will be most likely different versions (we’re thinking about a
“Collector’s Edition”, for example). The game will be a “full price
game” which means different things in different territories and on
different platforms. You can take games like Total War: Three Kingdoms
or Dawn of War 3 as examples.
YES!
We would love to. But it’s not going to happen. At least not without
some sort of game streaming solution on the Switch or a hardware
upgrade. Iron Harvest is relatively demanding when it comes to CPU power
(AI, pathfinding, many animations for many units at the same time and
so on) and the Switch has a pretty weak CPU. We love the Switch, but
there is no way we can make it happen.
We
don’t know yet. We’re talking with Unity; our engine provider and Deep
Silver is in close contact with Sony and Microsoft. So, we’ll
investigate it but it’s too early to say.
As
with the next gen consoles, we’ll investigate it. In general, we think
it makes sense to give players many different options to play a game. We
don’t like exclusives, but we DO like choice.
There
will be announcements regarding our plans next year. All we can confirm
up to this point are the things we have already promised: There will be
a mini-campaign as DLC (Kickstarter stretch goal; free for backers),
there will be new maps and game modes. We’ll also try to provide an
editor so fans can create their own maps. We’ve put a lot of effort into
a player progression system that works for both multiplayer AND single
player fans. More about that next year.
We believe in Iron Harvest and want to support the game long-term. So,
we are actively working with Deep Silver on ideas how to make that
possible.
We
will likely do another tournament after Beta release. Once we’ve
launched, these will continue every now and then depending on the demand
from the community. We’ll try to support these with suitable and themed
prizes from us.
Rusviets will definitely be playable and will most likely enter the battlefield later in Beta.
A
lot. Buildings and many other things on the maps are destructible. Big
mechs can walk through most structures, infantry can jump over fences,
low walls and so on. Expect maps to look a whole lot different at the
end than they did at the beginning of a match.
No.
We have a system where most units receive more damage when hit from
behind. But you won’t be able to focus fire on individual parts of a
mech. Visually, though, mechs receive damage where they get hit.
It’s
not realistic, for sure, but we think it works well and makes the game
better. Balancing is, of course, one of the biggest tasks on our list
for the next months.
In general, gameplay is more important for us than realism. We are
talking about a world with giant mechs after all ;-)
They will have cavalry and we plan to bring these into the game during Beta. No wings, though. Could be a cool idea for a skin!
One
of our design goals was to make each unit/squad feel important. Your
units become veterans and ultimately elite units, so you want to keep
them alive for as long as possible. That’s one reason why we implemented
a “retreat” functionality, engineers, medics, medic tents and so on.
They all help to keep your units alive. Units will be relatively costly,
and you want to think about how to use each one efficiently.
Each
of our faction has a unique theme: Polania are the guerilla rebels,
Rusviet are a military powerhouse and Saxony are the industrial
elitists. Their playstyles derive not only from one facet of their theme
but from many of them. Keeping this balanced means while the factions
are not equal, they stay equally viable. We ensure this by providing
each faction with all the tools they need in a way that matches their
themes.
We
will have a couple of “Challenge maps” in the game, which are maps with
special goals designed for you to play them multiple times and get
better and better over time. But you can also play all multiplayer maps
against the AI in any configuration (so for example you and an A.I.
teammate against two A.Is.). We don’t know yet exactly how many maps
will be in the game at release or how many more we’re going to release
after release.
You
will see that while CoH has been a big inspiration for us, Iron Harvest
plays different. Many of our units are slower but offer more
flexibility and utility. Depending on which hero you chose for a match,
you have very different ways to put pressure on the opponent. Very
experienced CoH players are usually positively surprised how much they
must adapt and come up with new tactics.
We also invested a lot of time in streamlining the U.I. and controls. We
believe in complex and deep games, but we also think it is our job to
make it easier for new players to get into a game. We think our U.I. is
more consistent and less redundant than some U.Is. in the past.
There is a whole player progression system we haven’t talked about yet;
our campaign is comparatively HUGE and of course we have a very
different setting. Did we mention the mechs?
I
presume you refer to permanent features. Mechs must already navigate
around trenches, some buildings and map features such as rivers and
narrow bridges. You can also lay minefields. Mechs will want to avoid
bottlenecks and dominate open terrain.
Visually
there will be many different types of cover. Gameplay-wise we only have
three fundamental types: Low cover which infantry can use to shoot over
while being somewhat save from many attacks, high cover which is to
high to shoot over and something we call implicit cover which is, for
example, a mech between the attacker and you, or a cliff that prevents
you hitting the enemy.
Many covers can be destroyed. These covers have an armor type and hit
points, so for example a wooden fence can be easily destroyed by
bullets, a heavy cover can’t. Some cover, like for example trenches or
objects like rocks, can’t be destroyed at all.
Units
can become veteran and eventually elite. Many units get at least one
new ability when they level up, but you can’t choose between different
abilities for standard units. Heroes, however, have different skills
that you can level up individually during the campaigns.
Absolutely.
As mentioned above, we’ll talk more about the player progression
system and our ongoing efforts next year. We’ll do more than “just”
frequent balance updates.
We
don’t see Iron Harvest as favoring one or another and nor would we want
to limit ourselves by choosing only one of these. Iron Harvest aims to
have a great single player campaign for those times when you want to
immerse yourself and take it easy, while also having a well-grounded
multiplayer experience for when you want to get competitive and try out
new tactics. Thanks to all our Kickstarter supporters and our publisher
Deep Silver, we have the resources to do both. And we’ll support both
after launch.
That
is working as intended. As you know, you can give squads new equipment,
effectively making them a new unit type. Nonetheless they keep their
XP/rank. The same is true for weapon systems. The weapon systems are
just “tools” manned by soldiers and the soldiers are the ones that get
the XP.
Depends
on how often you must restart a mission, of course. We think most
players will take about 20 hours. Most missions are around 40-50
minutes, but there are some much shorter (20-25 minutes) and some much
longer as well (up to 90 minutes). And there will be good 60 minutes of
cinematic cutscenes between the missions.
This
depends on the game settings players choose. We think the game feels
best with no more than 15 units/squads under your control but if players
what to control more units, they can obviously choose to do so (you can
set the max and the rate of resource income in the multiplayer &
skirmish settings). In most of the campaign missions you will have less
than a dozen units/squads most of the time, but there are also some very
open missions with a much higher ceiling.
We
looked at all games in the “RTS Hall of Fame” but I’m not sure we used
something explicitly from a Red Alert game. I know we talked about the
option to increase the size of maps during missions but ultimately, we
chose fixed sizes. Now I think about it: There is one mission that was
definitely inspired by classic Tanya missions.
Them
being slow is a design decision (though we’re still working on them, so
speeds might change). Lacking punch is something we have on our list.
This has mainly to do with animations, effects and missing “juice”. Or
are you talking about gameplay/stats? We think most mechs already have
good punch there, depending on how you use them (not every mech is good
against each type of enemy).
No.
We wanted to keep production kind of simple: One building for infantry,
exo-skeletons and weapon systems, one for mechs, both upgradable.
Are there going to be any infantry squads with more or less than 5 men?- Jnc3 (Discord)
Infantry is defined by always having 5 squad members. But there is
another unit class called exo-skeletons. They usually have three squad
members. Making larger than 5-man squads is something we are also
investigating. It comes with new technical challenges, but it might well
happen in the future.
You
are talking about the CoH system where you only get resources from
areas connected to your base? No. We thought about that, but our maps
are usually on the smaller side (because units are slower) and it felt
weird to force the necessary number of sectors into them.
All
of them. Well. Most of them. We looked at many classics plus basically
everything that came out in the last 5 years. The biggest inspiration
when it comes to gameplay and feel is Company of Heroes 1. The campaign
structure and the hero system are more like Warcraft 3. StarCraft 2 was
an inspiration for some player progression system stuff and U.I.
elements.
Sometimes, when we were unsure about something, we literally let a game
designer investigate half a dozen or more games and analyze what worked
and why. But it is not only RTS that are helpful. We play a lot of games
here and good ideas can come from everywhere. And of course, it cannot
be ruled out we ourselves had a good idea or two. After all, we've been
doing this for 20 years ;-)
Very
early on we did a survey and the fact that A LOT of people really care
about the campaigns in RTS was something we saw in ourselves but didn’t
know was so widespread.
Something else that is surprising is how different players play. We get
feedback from player A that some unit is completely broken and useless,
while player B thinks the units is awesome, maybe slightly over-powered.
Sometimes, as a developer, you think in terms of “the players” or maybe
player types/groups but in reality, all players and play-styles are
unique and you need to figure out how to enable as many as possible to
have a good time.
The
complexity. There are a lot of moving parts (literally) and so many
systems that are all interconnected. On the one hand that is what you
want: You want everything in the game to influence everything else
because it makes for a deep gameplay experience. But at the same time,
it is really, really hard to make it fun, balanced and not exploitable.
We’ve
been making games for 20 years, but this is the first time we've often
left meetings with more questions than we had when we went in.
Everything is more complicated and more complex than you would expect.
It became a running joke: Nothing is ever easy when you want to make an
RTS that can be up there with the greats.
The
new path-finding system will be in the Beta. It is currently in our
internal QA. The new system is very cool. Faster than the old system,
more powerful and much more flexible. It’s probably one of the most
advanced systems in any RTS, the scientific papers it is based on are
fresh off the press ;-)
The big
challenge we have with Iron Harvest is that many different units need to
find many different paths in an ultra-dynamic environment. For example:
A big mech can go through sandbag barriers and even houses, but it
can’t use a narrow bridge over a river. A light mech can go through a
wooden fence or a chicken house and it can use the narrow bridge, but it
can’t go through a house. Infantry can’t go through a wooden fence, but
they can leap over it, if its not too high. They can also jump into and
out of trenches, which is something mechs and weapon systems can’t do.
When a wreck of a mech blocks a bridge, some units can destroy the wreck
and make a way for themselves, others can’t.
Now
imagine this with a couple of hundred units sending thousands of path
requests on a map that changes 8 times per second and you get an idea
why it took Thomas, our Technical Director, a couple of months to rework
the system ;-)Are you working on pathfinding currently and how high of the priority list is it currently? - Uliysess (Discord)
The
new path-finding system will be in the Beta. It is currently in our
internal QA. The new system is very cool. Faster than the old system,
more powerful and much more flexible. It’s probably one of the most
advanced systems in any RTS, the scientific papers it is based on are
fresh off the press ;-)
The big
challenge we have with Iron Harvest is that many different units need to
find many different paths in an ultra-dynamic environment. For example:
A big mech can go through sandbag barriers and even houses, but it
can’t use a narrow bridge over a river. A light mech can go through a
wooden fence or a chicken house and it can use the narrow bridge, but it
can’t go through a house. Infantry can’t go through a wooden fence, but
they can leap over it, if its not too high. They can also jump into and
out of trenches, which is something mechs and weapon systems can’t do.
When a wreck of a mech blocks a bridge, some units can destroy the wreck
and make a way for themselves, others can’t.
Now
imagine this with a couple of hundred units sending thousands of path
requests on a map that changes 8 times per second and you get an idea
why it took Thomas, our Technical Director, a couple of months to rework
the system ;-)
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