Tutorial: Flanking

The main strategy in the game is to use cover and flanking. Soldiers sitting behind a tree or a rock will get less damage than soldiers without cover. This can be a problem if enemy has a good position and good cover.

The way to overcome enemy cover is to use flanking. This means attacking from multiple directions at the same time. Cover is most effective only towards the direction that the soldier is facing. So two soldiers facing each other will get full cover, where as attacking from behind will negate any cover.

In picture above, group Alpha (green arrow) is least effective Charlie (red arrow) most effective and Bravo (orange arrow) in between. In practice you will need to pin the enemy with one unit and then move other units to the enemy side.

Tutorial: Basic Controls

The basic controls are very simple: select a unit from the badge and and click on a tile to move the unit there. Units will automatically attack enemies in range so there is no need to do anything.

Only other commands are for using Grenades and Bazookas. There is no need to pick the target but the AI will automatically pick the best target at sight. For grenade it tries to pick largest group of enemies to cause maximal damage. For Bazooka it will try pick enemy mg spots, but will also shoot groups of enemies.

Update: v1.8

v1.8 is ready with following features:

• Improved graphical assets from Tank Invasion have been imported back
• Bazooka and Grenade no longer require you to choose a target, but AI picks the best target in range. Trying to pick right tile was quite hard and shooting a bazooka at wrong spot was not fun. In the end it was a lot of hassle and not much fun.
  
  On the AI, for grenade it tries to pick largest group of enemies to cause maximal damage. Bazooka on the other hand will try pick enemy mg spots, but will also shoot groups of enemies. 

It's a trilogy!

My third game in the theme is ready: Tank Invasion. In addition to introducing tanks as units, it takes inspiration (read copies shamelessly) from the classical Rock-Paper-Scissors. Each of the units will have an advantage over another type of unit and you will have to attack the enemy where they are the weakest and watch your back :)

Besides, anything is better with Tanks, so head on over to Tank Invasion!

Apple approved

Didn't actually take this long, just totally forgot to update

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/tactical-invasion/id572388224

v1.5 update

iOS is still waiting for Apple approval, but here is a new version with some changes

• Bug in final score
  A simple bug that caused final score to be counted incorrectly
• Bug in perk Haste
  I had a long running bug in that I was not able to nail down. It happened rarely and manifested so that  grenades and bazookas seemed to "bounce". I.e. instead of exploding at the target, they fired again traveled to a new target. Also it meant that soldiers with Haste did damage only rarely with machine gun.
  
  Finally with some luck I made the connection that the bug happens through the perk Haste, which causes the time that it takes to reload be reduced. Because this reduction was not considered in the weapon code (just player code) it was possible to fire the weapon again before reload was complete. This caused the final step of dealing damage and resetting the weapon to not happen
• Improved AI
  The AI works OK most of the time, but there are some cases where it does stupid things. For example the soldiers remembered the previous target even after respawning, which caused them to attack immediatelly without order when getting the enemy in sight. Multiple changes were done to improve the AI.

As usual, Android users get it now and iOS users have to wait for Apple to approve my work

It-s-a-live!

Happy to say I've finished my second game: Tactical Invasion! It's a sister game to my earlier offspring Infantry Invasion. It's essentially a zoomed out version of the same game where you command units instead of individual soldiers.


Even though it sounds like minor change, it actually changes the game a bit. In Infantry Invasion the goal of the game is to give your soldiers an advantage by using rocks for cover or focusing fire on a single target to more quickly eliminate enemies. In Tactical Invasion you can't control the place of the soldiers properly but you have to gain an edge by using better tactics to overpower the enemy.

In practice you have to attack from more than one direction. The mechanic introduced here is that cover from rocks and barricades is only good for attackers in front of you. If the enemy can flank you while you are tied to a fire fight, they can shoot past the cover. This means that when you find an enemy, you should always try to find an alternate route to them and attack from two or three directions.

In any case, check it out, play them both, let me know what you think. Android is ready now and iOS is pending Apple approval.