3549

Their model looks pretty good too.

3550

So I continue my sporadic play of a Galactic Empire campaign and tried one with a starting Oathbound hero. I have a recollection that there’s a way to get a hover vehicle as hero equipment for your heroes (requires Piloting skill) pretty early on. IIRC it’s the Paladin Marquis vehicle, which is more or less in the place of the motorcycles and bikes of other factions. You can get one for your starting hero by choosing that package in hero customization but I could swear there was a way to make the Marquis a buyable hero item (like any other vehicle which you’ve researched) but the thing is, the Marquis doesn’t seem to have a tech associated with it. How do I get access to it? Does it have something with Galactic Empire progressions? Or is my memory failing me?

3551

OK I figured it out. It turns out if you customize your starting hero to have the Paladin Marquis vehicle, then you gain the Paladin Marquis as a vehicle that any hero can purchase (assuming they have basic Piloting) for 60 energy. The significance of the Marquis is that it is a floating vehicle and if all of your heroes can buy it, you can have highly mobile heroes very early before you have the tech or the cosmite to build flying units. Combined with a Heritor special tech and the Condemn to Drained Op you can field swift floating armies very very early. But your starting Hero needs to have the Marquis as part of their customization.

3552

So what is Triumph working on next? I tried a bit of the Googling and found very little. I’m quite interested in further Age of Wonders type games (either fantasy or sci-fi or even other - I’d love a Pulp/Steampunk AoW) and also in further development of the Galactic Empire mode they introduced (in an incomplete and somewhat flawed fashion) at the end of the development of Planetfall.

What are they up to?

3553

I asked them on Twitter a few months ago this very question and got a bit of a cryptic reply.

image

3554

I think I remember reading it won’t be AoW related next time. Or maybe that was just HBS and no one else.

3555

The replies to my question on Twitter were 100% people convinced it was Overlord 3. I never played the Overlord games, I would have been a lot happier with another 4X offering myself, but I’ll try to keep an open mind regardless of what their next project is, as they make games I specifically enjoy.

3556

I hope they go back to AoW, but don’t bring over the component system from Planetfall. I really should go back and play more AoW3 since it was so good.

3557

Overlord is owned by Codemasters so that’s completely out of our hands and considering that EA took them over last year iirc, it means that the rights for Overlord now lie with them.

Obviously we don’t have anything to share on our next project yet but I do post the occasional leek on the PF Fan Discord.

Before anybody reading this freaks out, it’s just me posting pictures of a Leek vegetable. Like this:
image

Things are in the works though and I can’t wait for the moment it all kicks off proper image

3558

giphy (1)

But seriously, thanks for the update - it’s enough to know you guys are in the kitchen cooking us up something!

3559

I believe if they toned down the complexity of the component system a tad, it could still be very viable. For example, for a fantasy theme, I could see just two slots for the basic units instead of 3.

I think I would also limit “special ability” components to certain units. As an example, I could see classes of components in a fantasy game: “gear” and “enchantments” both of which confer passive bonuses and “spells” which would be the active buff/debuff/etc. type thing that caused so much synergy (and so much pain in Planetfall - “IEEE I’m BLINDED!! Again!!!”). Different units would have different slots - like most units would have a gear slot and an enchantment slot and only special spell caster units would have the spell slots. (And you could differentiate that further - units could be “elemental casters”, or “arcane casters” or “divine casters” and could only equip the appropriate spell mods.

I believe the problems with the component system in Planetfall were twofold: 1)just too much of it, leading to a brutal “learning cliff” which put off many gamers and 2)the presence of so many “FUCK YOU” or “OH NO I’M FUCKED” type mods (too many damn stuns and aim debuffs in particular - I had too many experience of my fighting dudes behaving like eyeless quadriplegics in combat). I could still see having the nasty stuff in game, but more constrained, in particular combined with glass cannon type units to give some counter opportinities.

For the heroes, go crazy, IMO. Weapons, armor, rings, etc.

3560

I enjoy leeks in many foods. I used to go to this Mandarin breakfast place in Monterrey Park when I lived in LA, and they had this “leek pancake” thing I used to love.

3561

Something like this Crispy Leek Pancake?
image

3562

Yep, those are them. A nice onion/leek flavor combined that non-sweet Chinese pancake taste. So good.

3563

I do recall reading that HBS next project is definitely NOT Battletech (sadface for me) but I don’t recall reading anything like that for Triumph. But giving how cagey they are being anything is possible.

I get the impression that Paradox is trying to tamp down the speculation/hype/vaporware type “odeur” that has plagued them over the years and is trying to control announcements and only announce projects with relatively solid development and at least semi-firm deadlines. If they actually follow through on that, that’s a good thing IMO. I feel like both HBS and Triumph have good track records (especially Triumph) so I’m willing to be patient.

3564

Definitely. Paradox is very much aiming to release within a year of announcement, with Vicky 3 being the only recent exception as it’s PDXCON announcement put it more at 1.5 years. If you follow Paradox a bit you should know that there’s currently 15 unannounced projects in the works, all at different stages in development, and obviously we are one of those.

If there’s anything high level somebody would like to know, I might be able to give extremely vague answers? Otherwise I’ll just be No-man

3565

Maybe something more constrained would work. Perhaps if for units, most followed the standard method of this unit has these abilities / strengths / weaknesses, but some subset has some aspect that could be tweaked. Heroes get the standard equipment and such, and there are spells of course. I just don’t know if we need regular units that can have so many permutations.

3566

Here’s a nicely high level question - are you folks still working in the turn based strategy area for the next project?

3567

Or something like 1 slot for tier 1 units, 2 for tier 2 and so on. Keep the little guys constrained and within a certain range of predictability but allow for more complex hefty dudes.

3568

I’m looking forward to when they finally announce what you are working on, and what @Rod_Humble is working on.