This last week and for the next few days we are putting the finishing touches on the next release of Faction Wars functionality for DHMC. This release will put into place the persistent online war between the two online factions. At the heart of the system is the balance of power map that shows the current state of the war.

Balance of Power Map

Derived from DHMC’s predecessor Lore: Invasion the balance of power map allows players to see what the current state of the war is in the universe in real time. As sector battles take place the sectors will gain a battle icon and allow you to join the battles that are in progress.

As shown in the following image, players will also be able to see at a glance what the current status is of the sector, how close the attacker is to taking over the sector, and how close the defender is to defending the sector.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=436926286
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=436926515

Once either the defender or attacker reaches 100% on the sector it is successfully defended or taken over. If taken over the sector will change ownership and the attacker will now spawn as the defender in future conflicts.

In the future, contract raid missions will also show up in the missions select but for now only attrition and team death match style missions will be part of Faction Wars.

Faction Bonuses

As a reward for owning sectors, each faction player will receive a XP and credit bonuses based on which sectors they own. The bonus information will be displayed on the sector information and a player's total bonuses will be displayed in the player profile..

For mercenaries, they will get the bonus based on the missions they fight for each side in the current iteration. In future interactions mercenary units will earn bonuses based solely on their reputation with each faction. The plus for a unit is that their bonus will persist and not just be based on the mission at hand.

Mercenary reputation will be based on how successful the mercenary unit has been in its missions for each faction.

New in-game Lobby

To help make the in-game lobby more information, we have been working on a redesign of the lobby as seen below. This lobby may not be available until 0.0.8.1 but we will attempt to have it in for the 0.0.8.0 build.



In the future, Faction Wars battles will limit players to only 5 mech configs they can take into battle, so we will update the lobby to support this selection in the future.

AI Updates

AI will be continually worked on to help enhance both single-player and multi-player gameplay over the next several releases.

In the upcoming 0.0.8.0 Alpha release the AI will sport new configurations to help increase their effectiveness in battle. We are also working on trying to fix some of the AIs movement issues that we hope to have in 0.0.8.0 or 0.0.8.1,

Next level of AI improvements will be around working with its player controlled teammates more effectively. We will be updating some of the functionality of the laser targeting system to also give commands to AI from the player to attack specific targets.

Other Updates

Linux client - We are still trying to troubleshoot with Steam an issue with the steam overlay. In interim, right after the 0.0.8.0 release we are going to look to release the current Linux client in the beta channel. To NOTE, this beta channel release will not support the Steam overlay or SteamOS until we can rectify the issue with Steam.

New Missions - Faction Wars 0.0.8.0 update will ship with 2-3 news missions, with an additional sector mission available about 2-3 weeks after the launch of Faction Wars.

To ask questions on this DEV Diary please post on the following discussions:
http://steamcommunity.com/app/266470/discussions/0/620712364038235875

To be kept up to date on scheduled events we encourage you to join the OFFICIAL GROUP at http://steamcommunity.com/games/dhmc .