Iron Harvest DevBlog #35 - February 2021

We Continued To Improve Gameplay With Adjustments To Heroes And A Reworked Reserve System!

• News: Heroes’ FOW and Revival!
• News: Reserves Rework!
• Info: February’s Highlights
• Info: Changelog 18

These are another two key community suggestions that we are happy to now implement.

You can now use infantry and foot Heroes to revive Heroes from allied teams who have valiantly fallen unconscious in battle.

Furthermore, the Fog of War revealed by unconscious heroes has now been reduced to prevent them from being used to spy on enemies while still allowing you to easily find them on screen and the mini-map.

Thanks to all your recent feedback we are ready to rework the Reserve System. This update aims to increase the variety of viable loadouts and encourage players to opt for having units in both Reserve I and II. From the data it is clear that Reserves have a huge impact on the game and are often the deciding factor. We want to reduce this on the games while maintaining the wow factor once it hits. Here’s how:

• The cost of a Reserve ingame now depends on which specific units it contains. This cost is still cheaper than building them normally through the Barracks or Workshop.

• Reserve Slots have been reduced from 3 to 2 per tier.

• Reserve Coins have been reduced from 6 to 5 per total.

• Exo-suits, Straznik, Grimbart and Ognivos can now only be picked for Reserve II.

• Instead of at least one advanced building and a basic building, deploying Reserve II now requires one advanced building, or two basic buildings.

• Deploying an empty Reserve costs 100 iron. It will still grant the player plus 25% maximum population capacity.
  

Improved Response Times

We recent improved response times between you issuing orders and the units undertaking them and it’s been encouraging to hear that many players can notice the difference. Responses time has been roughly halved, resulting in slicker gameplay.

Casual Community 3v3 Tournament

This should be a lot of fun and good chance to bring together players of all skill levels. Yours truely (The Iron Doc) has already signed up and I'm sure I'll be able to drag some more Dev into the fray.

Sign-ups are already open. Click here for the Community Tournament Discord Channel. GLHF!

More Accolades

After our runaway success at the German Game Awards, Iron Harvest was also nominated by the French “Académie des Arts et Techniques du Jeu Vidéo” for Best International Game alongside other top games. Looking forward to the result with fingers crossed.

General Changes

• The A.I. now spends the same amount of coins as those available to the player.
• The Rusviet’s Nagan and Polania’s Tur mechs chrome skins have returned to the cosmetics screen as intended.
• Prevented Destroyer Cannons from firing at targets that have disappeared into the Fog of War.
• Fixed a few instances where larger mechs would fall through the terrain. We’ll be keep an eye out for more of these.
• Enemy buildings within the campaign are correctly described in their tool tip.
• Fixed an issue that caused game freezes to occur in both single player skirmishes and multiplayer matches at around 10 minutes.
• Fixed an issue that would cause checksum errors on older machines.
• Fixed an issue that prevented resource display from correctly updating when building a HQ in campaign missions.

Balance Changes

Since the last update we’ve observed that the infantry changes had a lot of impact on the games progression. Mechs are closer to the state we want them to be and so we’ve decided to refrain from modifying them all and tuned back the infantry buff.

Gunners: have now been moved from the Barracks to the Advanced Barracks in order to make the counter of early mechs more difficult.

Advanced Barracks unit cost reduction has been readjusted: Engineers, riflemen, stormtroopers, vanguards, grenadiers, medics, and flamethrowers are cheaper when built through Advanced Barracks compared to the normal Barracks.

• Engineers cost increased from 100 to 125 Iron.
• Riflemen/Stormtrooper/Vanguard cost increased from 125 to 175 Iron.
• Grenadier cost increased from 150 to 200 Iron.
• Flamethrower cost increased from 150 to 200 Iron.

Mortar systems: Compared to Polania's and Saxony’s artilleries, the mortar weapon system couldn't hold their ground or find a role to fill. By comparison, their inferior range is now compensated for by more damage potential, especially against larger groups of enemies.

• Damage against unarmored increased from 50 to 65.
• Damage against Light armor increased from 93 to 100.
• Damage against Medium armor increased from 80 to 100.
• Damage against Heavy armor increased from 67 to 100.
• Mortar system’s explosion radius increased from 1.5 to 4.
• Mortar system’s outer explosion radius increased from 4 to 6.
• Mortar system’s outer explosion radius damage modifier increased from 0.2 to 0.4.

The Serp (Sickle mech): Against high skilled players, this monstrosity would not effectively reach their targets. Increased HP should help it survive long enough to inflict damage.

• HP increased from 1150 to 1400.

Prince Wilhelm: His Lay Waste ability now has a good portion of its former glory restored (#Bringbackthebrr), while still using an appropriate fire rate.

To make him more worthy of the Kaiser and better able to survive long enough to menace other mechs we have increased his resilience. Also, don't be mistaken by the flat damage values below, the increased Area of Effect of each bullet also contributes to more damage output.

• HP increased from 650 to 700.
• Armor class adjusted from Medium to Heavy.
• “Lay Waste” ability Splash radius increased from 1.5 to 2.5.
• Damage vs. unarmored increased from 40 to 50.
• Damage vs. light armor increased from 20 to 30.
• Damage vs. medium armor increased from 15 to 30.
• Damage vs. heavy armor increased from 10 to 20.
• Damage vs. structure increased from 7 to 15.

The Grimbart (Gatling Mech): This chonky boy now suppresses targets and is more effective against groups of enemies.

• Suppression added to its main weapon.
• Its “Sweep” ability suppression value and area has been increased.

Mechs and exo-suit Reserve coin costs have been adjusted as well:

Saxony

• The Grimbart and Eisenhans now cost 1 coin each.
• The Isegrim and Erlkönig now cost 2 coins each.
• The Wotan and Stiefmutter now cost 3 coins each.

Polania

• The Łowca and Żółw cost 3 coins.
• Śmiały and Mocny cost 2 coins.
• Straznik and Exosuits cost 1 coin.

Rusviet

• Nagan and Serp cost 3 coins.
• Kolokol and Nakovalnya cost 2 coins.
• Groza and Ognivo cost 1 coin.

The Battlefield Is Refreshed and Waiting For The Newest Strategies From A Versatile Commander

Stay tuned for the release of March’s Roadmap soon.