Magnate: Ability Tree Introduction

When given the choice, I usually prefer hearing the bad news before the good. I like ending things off on a high note. So, with that said, it is with regret that I must inform you of Greig's departure from the team due to personal matters. We send all our best wishes to him and his family and keep a candle burning in the hopes that he may return to us at a later date.

Now onto happier news!

First off, we'd like to introduce the man who will be assisting Lisa after Greig's departure, a mister Reuben Hinman. He comes to us with a background as a writer for a number of pen and paper adventures. He's already shaking things up with the story and will be two manning the main storyline with Lisa going forward.

Jynx has officially begun her tour with Magnate. Her first task has been to tackle the Ability Tree art and she's done an amazing job. With her efforts, I've been able to put this post together to highlight our Ability Tree and give you a glimpse of our current work-in-progress. In the coming weeks, she'll be creating all the icons required for the Ability Trees, 8 skills per class as well as the 21 class icons means she'll be drawing an incredible 189 icons in total! So talented!

Before I get into the details of the visuals, let us give some basic information regarding the Ability Tree and how it works.

Officers gain 1 ability point at level 3 and every third level thereafter. They also gain an additional ability point at levels 15, 30, 45 and 60. These are considered Key Levels as they represent levels which have the player determine the next class tier of that officer or the final ability. Once 5 points have been spent in a tier, all abilities are grayed out except for the last row which will either contain class choices or final ability choices.

And that's the basic rundown. I now present to you a work-in-progress of what an Ability Tree may look like in-game. I'll explain certain elements in further detail below the art. Of course, hovering over abilities will have a pop-up which will display the name and description of the ability in question.

 

 

A. This represents the classes and tier currently selected and available to the officer in question. As the officer reaches higher class tiers, they will replace the red hexagons and the player will be able to see points allocated to each class.

B. The class name is displayed here.

C. This represents the amount of points allocated to the currently selected class.

D. This represents the amount of Branch XP that has been accumulated by the officer. Branch XP is gained by purchasing abilities in the Ability Trees. Branch XP gained depends on the tier of the class.

E. With Branch XP, players will be able to purchase major abilities. These are abilities which are class type based. There are 3 types: melee, ranged and caster. When an officer reaches the level cap, they will have accrued enough Branch XP to purchase a total of 3 major abilities.

And there you have it! The Ability Trees! We've actually already talked and there are plans to tweak certain aspects. Once these changes have been finalized, I'll be sure to revisit the Ability Trees and talk about the what and whys.

Magnate: The Officers, Part II

I know I said we'd take a peek at Ability Trees this week, but the more I thought about it, the more I wanted finalized art to go with this post and we're not there yet. So, I've decided to explore officers in further detail!

Last week we touched on the reason we have 2 distinctive officer ranks (Generals and Town Wardens) and I mentioned that they serve as leaders of legions as well as keepers of the town. So, we'll be talking about the statistics that officers have and what they are used for! Here's an example of an officer, his portrait was done by Zelie Berube (she will be drawing all town warden portraits for us!):

In this sample, the level indicated in the top right hand corner represents the minimum level the highest level officer in the kingdom must be and Kadrin's starting level. If this level happens to be lower than the lowest level officer in the kingdom, Kadrin is automatically leveled to match it.

First off, combat stats! Magnate runs on 3 main combat stats: Might, Dexterity and Intellect. Along with being the main stat used to determine damage in combat, each stat also plays a secondary role. These stats have no hard cap.

Might is used to calculate damage for soldier type classes, critical chance for scout type classes and finally, used to calculate additional damage reduction for all classes.

Dexterity is used to calculate damage for scout type classes, critical chance for soldier type classes and finally, used to calculate additional damage avoidance for all classes.

Intellect is used to calculate damage for caster type classes, critical chance for Valkyrie and Virago and finally, used to calculate status effect duration and magic resistance for all classes.

As you can see, we try to make each stat beneficial to every class in the game. No stat is useless for any class. Hopefully, this makes each item and gear decision have a greater personal connection to the players. Of course, these are just the main statistics for combat. There are a lot more like damage reduction with armour or avoidance and magic resistance but these are all primarily derived from item and gear.

The other set of statistics is officer stats. This consists of Leadership, Politics, Charisma and Composure. These stats have a hard cap of 100 and have limited trainability based on personality traits. These officer stats determine the outcome of legion training and town improvements.

Leadership is used to calculate the outcome of Courage training for Legions and Town Patrols which increases Security in towns. This stat is also used to determine the amount of units recruited to the barracks for melee types.

Politics is used to calculate the outcome of Awareness training for Legions and Town Inspections which increases Maintenance in towns. This stat is also used to determine the amount of units recruited to the barracks for casters.

Charisma is used to calculate the outcome of Will training for Legions and Festivals which increases Happiness in towns.

Composure is used to calculate the outcome of Readiness training for Legions and Attend Court which increases Civil Order in towns. This stat is also used to determine the amount of units recruited to the barracks for ranged.

A legion is the soldiers directly under the officer's command and they also have 4 stats, each tied to the officer stats mentioned above. Legion statistics are Courage, Awareness, Will and Readiness. Each stat degrades over time and must be maintained through training. Each statistic plays a role in improving the legion's ability in combat.

A town also has 4 stats that are tied to the officer stats mentioned above. These are Security, Maintenance, Happiness and Civil Order. Much like the legion stats, town stats degrade over time and must be kept up through officer actions. Here, each stat helps to determine the profitability and stability of the town.

And there you have it! A basic rundown of the statistics officers have in Magnate. There are a lot of formulas under the hood and I didn't really want to turn this into a math lesson so I left them out.

Our UI artist should be joining the team shortly and once we have a finalized art for the Ability Tree, I'll dive right into it!

Magnate: The Officers

I've spent the last few days trying to figure out what I wanted to dive into and it's taken me this long to realize that I should just talk about what I'm working on. And that has been the officers of Magnate. As this is a strategy game, you'll be commanding a number of officers around towns and resources on the world map.

At first, we thought it would be most beneficial to limit the amount of officers a player can have in order to control the pacing of the game and to help predict progression to facilitate the story. And story is what really makes this title a challenge to design. Most turn-based strategy games have very little story, other than the typical "conquer the world" fanfare. But we wanted to tell an epic tale and inject RPG elements we thought would greatly improve the fabric of turn-based strategy games. So, in order to limit rapid world domination, we created two types of officers: Generals and Town Wardens.

Generals were officers who could leave the confines of the kingdom's borders and capture territories. Town Wardens had to stay within the owned land and protect the towns from rebels and bandits.

Originally, the plan was to make the main story cast take up the General's mantle and have miscellaneous recruited officers be Town Wardens. This was and still could work, but as I created the list of Town Wardens, it dawned on me. I'm about to create a large number of characters that the players will never really have a reason to connect to. And, we're forcing the player to use predetermined characters with their classes firmly embedded into their profile as their forward army. The more I thought about it, the more it irked me.

So, in a brilliant stroke of 5AM with too much caffeine in my blood, I figured out how I could turn the tables on this little predicament. Instead of limiting who can be a General by assigning a specific cast for the job, we'll add a stat in the game that will limit the amount of Generals our main protagonist can lead. There are only two exceptions to this though and that is Kira and Caitlyn. So, at the start of the game, Aiden will be able to have two Generals under his command and it'll be his sister and best friend. As the game progresses and his General command stat increases, he'll be able to promote a cast member of the story or a Town Warden he's hired to be a General in his army. This way, we still control the flow of the game for the story, but we allow the player to choose his forces. So, a gamer that prefers to have a lot of ranged damage in his army can do so or if someone is more defensive and likes a lot of tanks, that's also possible!

Town Wardens are defined by their personality traits and class. There are twelve personalities in total, each with their strengths and weaknesses as an officer. Officer stats help determine how well they can perform various duties within towns and their military training capabilities. There are a total of 96 Town Wardens, 8 per personality, that Aiden can recruit. More on officer statistics at a later time. :)

As for classes, there are a total of 21 classes in the game within 3 types and 4 tiers. Here is a table which explains it a lot better:

Progression through each tier is done through the Ability Trees.

Next week, we'll dive into the Ability Trees and their structure, something I'm currently finalizing! :D