Mud and Blood 0.4.3
The mother of all patches
Good day folks, urb here welcome to another Mud and Blood patch
I'm happy to introduce one of the most significant patches to date for Mud and Blood. This update not only brings two new friendly infantry units to the game, but also a slew of exciting features, fixes and a biome upgrade. But before we dive into the specifics of these mechanics, I want to express once again my heartfelt gratitude to you guys who have been supporting Mud and Blood since its rebirth. Your support is truly motivating, and I am immensely grateful for your continued enthusiasm it makes creating Mud and Blood such a rewarding hobby.
So, this patch took a little longer to cook, as the addition of new major mechanics to the game demanded extra polishing and testing (especially the new AI) to ensure a smooth experience in line to what MNB is currently and where it is going! I believe I implemented several new mechanics that will enhance your gameplay and also reinforce what Mud and Blood is set to deliver, a ruthless experience of combat.
Now, let's delve into some of the exciting new features and how they work. There's a lot to cover, so buckle up and get ready for some epic action in Mud and Blood!
Frenchies!!
A classic soldier from the MNB2 the Frenchies are back to the front. Essentially the Frenchies are a low cost/low skill troops. Some commander consider them good meme material while others have built impressive strategies around their usage. Regardless the French resistance was active part of the of the war and now they are one more additional tactical option for creative commanders out there.
In classic
the Frenchies cost 1 TP and come with a 15 combat skill. Uncommonly a Frenchy can have past military experience or be a veteran of the first war which will increase his combat skill. They are less resilient than well fed and trained soldier with only 75 hp. Their morale can be questionable at times but it is usually the task of the commander on the ground to manage that aspect. If you take care of your Frenchies, they will go the extra mile for you. I must warn the new commanders to be careful if you are tempted to group a large number of Frenchies. Large troop movement tells the enemy where to focus his own troops. (6 men rule)
In campaign
frenchies can be called with a command ability. The abiltiy can call 4 frenchies +1 per rarity tier that will drive, to the best of their abilities, a marked civilian vehicle (fast QRF) to your front line. Frenchies will disembark only if they see enemies, they are like that. They just rather drive around than walk. If you think about it they kinda have a point. If the Vehicle is called and no contact is made within about 3 min the vehicle will leave your AO, probably to go seek a fight somewhere else. Due to their impressive enginuity at procuring material they come to the fight armed with a fairly exotic array of weaponry including older models such as the Chauchat and the Mas36 (see new weapons below)
Airborne
This patch also has the addition of Airborne troops to Mud and Blood. These highly versatile soldiers have always been a fan favorite due to their superior quality and value for investment. One unique aspect of Airborne troops is that they are deployed via air drop, providing a quick deployment option that carries some inherent risk. Depending on the circumstances, troops may land in unfavorable terrain or dangerously close to enemy forces. Airborne troops are equipped with their own weapons, selected from the airborne-specific arsenal. This diversity in armament may affect the squad's proficiency in certain areas, such as ranged combat or close quarters raiding. Nonetheless, the benefits of having Airborne troops as part of your force outweigh the risks, as they provide unparalleled tactical flexibility and combat prowess. Most of the airborne troops that were fighting alongside of our Division (the 29th) were from the 82nd.
In classic
airborne troops can be called to your front lines in exchange for 12 tactical points, bringing in 4 troopers +1 per rarity, each with a combat skill of 40 as a standard "no hook" private. It's important to note that the drop can shift slightly to the left or right, so it's crucial to consider the timing and positioning of your front line before making the call. The commander now has the ability to draw a landing zone (LZ) on the ground using the engineer skills, which was introduced in the last patch, allowing for a more precise drop at a specific area.
In the campaign
, Airborne troops are AI-controlled and can be called using a command ability. When called, a plane will drop 4 troopers initially, with an additional trooper per rarity, onto your front lines. Once deployed, they will regroup and either hold their position or make their way towards your location if you are ahead of them. Airborne troops are known for their high mobility and preference for utilizing vegetation for cover. While they progress cautiously under enemy contact, it is important to avoid separating too far from them during sustained fights, as leaving only one group to absorb enemy fire may not be ideal. Expect the Airborne AI to occasionally attempt daring actions, whether rightly or wrongly, when they perceive an opportunity. They are also mindful of not staying out of the fight for too long, as they are cautious about the risk of counterattacks.
The Wespe
A new vehicle has been introduced which is the Wespe. A German mobile artillery vehicle that will stay away from direct fire and the front line and engage with powerful HE rounds far away units that are flagged (visually identified by a friendly unit). The Wespe will prioritize vehicles and other artillery pieces. They are very valuable for the Germans and are usually only called on site when counter battery is needed. This means that if you are using field mobile artillery yourself, you may risk to see these more often.
This is where it gets interesting in my opinion. While you are fighting your own fight at the front, artillery pieces that are in map engage in skirmishes in order to determine to see who will dominate the field and attempt to destroy the infantry. As a tactical commander you need to keep an eye on the indirect fire situation in you AO keep an eye on both ends of the map and anticipate if you will need to maybe give a hand to your own arty with a command ability (such as precision arty or maybe even heavy mortars) or a siggy Artillery strike. More indirect fire units will be implemented when we nail down the meta battle between field artillery. I feel we could still add some variety in artillery pieces and systems in order to spice up this additional layer of depth.
New Weapons
Our FFI allies come with an array of salvaged and captured weapons. This variety brings 2 new weapons in the that were used by the French resistance.
The Chauchat
This very slow firing LMG dates from WW1 and it shows. It reliability is less than ideal and is a pretty hefty boy to lug around. This said if you manage to connect it can create some decent damage firing a 8mm round. Those LMGs were either retired by France or distributed to some heavier Police/security local forces. The Chauchat can appear in crates.
MAS36
The Mas36 is interesting because it is essentially a bolt action rifle in the body of a carbine. Which gives the MAS a pretty clean look and also lower bulk than normal bolts. The range is suffering from this design but in the right hand this can be a pretty surprising faster mid range secondary marksman rifle. It is failry old in age and in design but still maintain an ok reliability and decent punch.
[h3]Take charge[/h1]
This ability gives the commander in campaign to temporary take command over attached troops in the AO. The ability will last for 1 min, +1 min per rarity level (so significantly affected by rarity) and also you get a +10 sec bonus length per campaign ranks you hold.
This makes it the only command ability that is affected by other factors than it's rarity. Ai troops (infantry) at this point will be selectable and will listen to your move orders. Note that they will not become automatons. A move order to a location that the AI soldier judges less than ideal will not be held for long.
This is often useful when you wish to reorganize the structure of your advance and assign maybe half of the AO to the AI squad supporting you. This can be also good to save the lives of your allies if you see they are walking into an ambush, at this point you are encouraged to take charge and order them to safety in a more effective way than what they are intending.
Another example is if you want your allies to hold a very specific arc while your own troops are progressing. In a nutshell, If the AI is gainfully placed and actively fighting they will tend to stick to that position.
Naval Guns of Brest
While advancing towards the port of Brest, the 29th often faced improvised gun sites constituting of a Naval battery gun placed on top of a fortified location often made of concrete. These naval guns where initially placed to defend against an attacker from the sea but were turned inland once the German knew the allies would come from inland.
The naval guns are the only neutral unit in the game which means that they can be used by both factions. Who ever occupies the Bunker now can control the artillery piece and use it against the enemy. In testing it was entertaining to see the gun changing hands a couple of times during a particularly hairy fight. It created a new dynamic scenarios and daring assaults in order to turn the guns on the incoming German armor.
Naval guns are pretty sturdy and at times can even still function even when the bunker is destroyed.
outskirt Brest
The outskirt of Brest are a biome that is fought thru right before entering the city of Brest in campaign. This is a fairly open rural area described to be spread with rolling hills and small hamlets looked by gun sites and observation positions. The Germans had dug extensive
anti tank trenches
, occupies the medieval fortresses and built hasty defenses on to of elevations ready to delay the advance to Brest as much as possible.
In order to reflect this in game I added a couple of new features to the outskirts. Including
hills
, which will impede movement to those want to climb them and can make inexperienced troops fall when they go up or down the hill. This is the first time we mess with the Z axis in Mud and Blood so let's observe how this pans out, if we like it and go from there. Personally I find it brings additional depth when it come to the fight as now elevation of the terrain has to be factored in some situation. This makes holding the top of a hill or having that arc covered with a machine gun a factor to consider. You can be sure the Germans will.
The second aspect of the map rework is network of medieval fortifications that are procedurally generated reflecting the particular engineering of these old sites. A network of walls and room the 175th has to navigate and fight thru often outnumbered in order to clear these citadels. The fortifications are fully destructible and come with their own set of props for more fidelity. Tactically speaking they can offer some pretty tight room to room fighting or the single most valuable piece of real estate you have in a barren AO.
The outskirt of Brest are also currently the special event in classic giving the classic commanders the opportunity to turn captured naval artillery against the enemy. A satisfying process.
QoL stuff and functionality:
A feature I'm proud of is the the new group
Halt command
. This was often requested in our discord and it made perfect sense. Often the commanders were looking for a way to stop the entire squad expediently. Especially when walking in minefields or nearby fire. You can now press H to stop your squad in both modes.
The tab key now hides portraits and the mini map. This is good when your soldiers are close to the edge of the map and you have to squeeze in some tight moving without being affected with the UI. It also makes pretty rad screen shots.
Individual saves are here!! This was also often requested and made perfect sense. It is now possible to reset only one mode, classic or campaign or both. Just hit the reset button in the option menu and you will be directed to another menu that will ask you what actions you wish to take.
I've added a bunch of feedback and sounds for the UI now, so the player can have an auditive or visual confirmation when performing actions or when the game perform some actions. This is a collective of minor improvements we noticed could help clarity. A good example is the icon notification when a TP is generated by the HQ or the system messages not overlapping.
There is a lot of love put in this patch and many other things implemented I'd like to ramble about but this patch note is already outrageous as it is so I'm going to go ahead now and drop the change list.
0.4.3 change list
- Added description for the recruit class when clicked in the squad panel
- Changed the scout description slightly
- Added fluff with parallax for a lil more graphical fidelity in campaign mode
- Found and fixed an exception that would throw a nan in the career grading averages
- Increased the area of effect of antennas to 500 pixels (about 3/4 of the screen height)
- Cost of snipers reduced to 5 tp
- Cost of Jeeps reduced to 5 tp
- Cost of greyhound reduced to 10 tp
- Cost of m5 reduced to 8 tp
- Cost of Bofor reduced to 8 tp
- Cost of Stuart reduced to 12 tp
- Cost of fifties reduced to 4 tp
- LMG type of weapons accuracy is reduced by half at long ranges (effective range x 4)
- Heavy machine guns (fifty cal and ZB60) pin radius has been increased
- Fixed Heart of Germany ribbon not displaying right art
- Reduced chance of special weaponry for Volkssturm by 15%
- Cologne Back ground grass color is now the standard color.
- Increased chances for Jaggers by 10% to retreat when effectively engaged
- Fixed an occurrence where counter attack warning would not show up
- Fixed occurrence where Germans would fire rifle grenades from non rifle grenades capable weapons.
- Fixed a very rare possible false Branderburg
- Springfield now added to the gun menu in classic
- Resolved an issue that would make the game crash if you deployed a vehicle on close protection
- Disabled inertia effect when clicking a soldier portrait in Campaign
- Added a feedback sound when click mini map and soldier portrait
- Fixed an issue where soldier icons names would be faded on mouse over in campaign
- Camo loot items should be significantly more effective now.
- Added voice cues for Rangers when they resist the morale drop of incoming fire
- Added voice cues for field artillery when they receive counter battery fire
- Added voice cues for Bangalore torpedoes
- Added voice cues for moving armor
- Added reactive voices cues when the squad is mid way depending on how well your squad is doing.
- Goliaths are not visible from far and they don't produce dust when moving making them more sneaky
- Goliath blitz wave in classic
- Command abilities have been disabled during the boat ride in campaign. Safety first!
- Air bursts should affect troops in non roofed ruins now
- Stealth units will not carry over their effects in the next map
- Same with headshot
- Cargo crates have 5% to spawn a soldier in classic
- Hand to Hand skill of Germans increased in harder modes (NG+) proportionally to their combat skill
- Your troops will let you know when you are about to get flanked by Jagers in both modes now
- Fixed an occurrence where Jagers would not spawn in Campaign.
- Added feedback sound to menu buttons
- No more "stun save" on disabled or dead soldier
- Reduced coax accuracy on all vehicle by 20% for close range
- Fixed hair alignment on some portrait since LTHunter told me like 2 years ago.
- Hitting tab now hides all buttons and player skills and the minimap for them sexy carnage screen shots
- Ordering to toss a frag to a moving soldier will not cancel the action anymore
- You can now halt all infantry controlled by the player by pressing H
- Reduced how eagerly the Germans would blow up your palisade in classic by 40%
- Corrected the prompt text for when creating an extinguisher in classic
- Increased the deploy range for low wire entanglements in classic
- Fixed an instance where infantry could not target vehicle with IR weaponry
- New campaign medal for soldiers EOD medal. This is given when a soldier (engineer, sapper or a soldier with a shovel) clears 25 mines. future mines cleared will automatically reveal nearby mines within 200 px
- Increased engineers and sappers immobilization fix to vehicles by 100 px (300px)
- In campaign players can no longer call more than one Stuart at the time.
- Same for jeeps
- In Classic, commanders who set up too close to the end of the map might be attacked by the German HQ
- Increased the timer of Wespointer skill in campaign to 1 hour.
- Added campaign command ability French Resistance. You can call in a French quick reaction force.
- Added campaign Command ability Para drop where you can call in airborne troops.
- Added campaign command ability take charge where you can command AI troops in your AO for a short duration of time.
- Outskirt of Brest length was increased by 10 maps
- Brest actual was reduced by 10 maps
- New placeable in Brest "anti tank ditch" which acts as a glorified trench
- New placeables in Brest "Brest Wall" procedurally citadel walls that is found in Brest outskirts with some historical artifacts
- New Campaign Battle condition "H Hour" where you help a squad of the 82nd airborne face a German counter offensive.
- Added a lil icon when the HQ tent generates more TP
- Added spacing between screen announcement so they wont spawn on top of each others (like when you get 2 blitz waves at the same time)
- Reduced the size of the destroyed trap door sprite
- Tweaked German AI to have a more human like behavior in some circumstance especially when under tension (in a thick fight).
- Fixed an occurrence where Branderburg troops would have more Iron Cross saves than your troops have vet saves. (Brandies are supposed to mirror your squad)
- Added the new hills and Naval guns to other biomes where they applied
- Added special even in classic "Outskirt of Brest"
- Craters are now producing flying debris from explosions
- Added a bunch of voices overs from Yusti, MT and Lance these guys are legends thank you so much.
- Soldier in classic will wait to be at the front line to announce themselves
- +5% (so now 10% + xp) base chances for a Siggy, without an antenna nearby to complete a call.
- Added the Wespe vehicle to the German faction. This will act as counter artillery.
- New command ability Meat Grinder (call in a quad 50 halftrack in campaing)
- New command ability 105 ht, (call in the powerful 105mm to be fielded in your AO. Watchout you may draw the attention of counter batteries)
We will see how this patch behave, how the new systems interact with the old stuff and do a few adjustments and hot fox in the next few days. If you encounter a bug let us know in the discord so I can improve the game in the next hotfix.
Community highlights:
Check out RinPickles
running thru his first few fights
MT is has been going thru the campaign in hard mode check out
this very tough but meticulous urban fight in Brest.
Check out Lance
slugging it in AAchen
The unfortunate Jah Wuh
fighting the good fight until a pillbox Nuke
Welp this is it for me folks, I thank you for taking the time to read about this patch. I hope you will enjoy the new stuff. Stay safe out there and I will catch you all in the next drop.
Respectfully
urb
very uncomfortable I heard.
