Let’s find out more:
How did the old hitpoint system work?
In the old system, each squad came with a fixed number of 5 soldiers, including the squad leader. Each of these “elements” brought 10 hitpoints to the squad's total hitpoint pool. Whenever the squad took 10 or more damage, one of these elements was killed, taking one squad weapon out as well. The elements essentially represented a squad's total hit points.
After combat, certain ship upgrades would heal a number of elements until the squad eventually was fully restored to 5 elements. After an operation, all squads were automatically restored completely.
The entire system was very abstract, not very immersive, and also failed to treat the fallen soldiers with the care and respect that actual human players would expect. It also somewhat incentivised occasional suicide attacks, especially in the final mission of an operation, as lost elements would be refilled anyway.
Flexible Squad Size
The ultimate reason for changing this system was the need for flexible and dynamic squad sizes. We were missing the freedom to create squads as we needed them for our individual tactical approaches.
Want to make a 3-Soldier mortar team or sniper-scout squad? Want to make a 9-Soldier Rifle squad? Well, you can't. Also, the supply cost for a squad scales heavily with the chosen equipment, especially the armor and squad weapons that you have to pay for each element. Being able to adjust the squad size makes it easier to balance your supply point budget before a mission.
With the goal of allowing for an increase or reduction in squad size, several challenges arose. Most importantly, what happens when a squad takes losses, but you can just increase the squad size after the mission to fill it up again? The solution was to add a persistent resource, which is the manpower you are drawing from, to both increase squad sizes and use it to fill losses after combat.
Persistent Manpower
We added a persistent manpower pool to the game, where a squaddie represents each element from the original system. A squaddie is an actual soldier with a certain name, nickname, home planet, gender, and look. We also track how many missions they have survived so far.
You no longer have to stick with fixed squad sizes, but you can add as many squaddies as you want, up to 8 plus the squad leader for a unit. Each of these squaddies gets assigned from your manpower pool, and of course, you can also choose which squaddy to add to which squad.
Whenever an element is killed in combat, that life of a squaddie is permanently lost. Each loss carries over, and there is no automatic healing or refilling of losses. You will have to upgrade your ship with a recruitment office to expand your manpower pool. There are also other chances to add squaddies to your manpower pool, like freeing them from a pirate prison on a mission or obtaining them through events.
Manpower is now the most important resource that ties together StarMap gameplay and tactical combat, as it is persistent across all levels of play. Losing too many Squaddies in mass assaults and employing units with large numbers of soldiers but no armor will be very costly and unsustainable in the long run.
Renaming Squaddies
The squaddies come with a name, surname, callsign, home planet, gender, look, and mission survived stat. We currently have over 1.300 callsigns in the game, so you won't run out of new names quickly.
Most importantly, you can rename and edit the squaddies to your liking. The most requested part of this is, of course, changing the names to those of your friends, family, or coworkers.
Engage, Explore, and Stay Informed
That's it for now! We'll see you next Friday.
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