Mud and Blood update for 14 January 2022

Good morning folks urb here,

I hope you guys had a good holiday stretch. After some time off and enjoying the cold Canadian north It was time to get back in my Igloo, hang my hockey stick, take a sip of maple syrup and start punching some code.

So here comes the 0.3.0 patch. She is a lil chunky but in a nutshell, the game has now an independent progression system for the classic mode with a total of 13 ranks that unlocks diverse deployment options. If you are familiar with MNB2 then you should be right at home since it is exactly the same with 13 ranks and 6 deployment options. The classic mode uses NATO-style command positions as its rank structure giving the game a sweet militaristic flavour without having the player hold two separate ranks.

The next big thing in 0.3.0 is that now any vehicle bigger than a car is blocking line of sight. So in Campaign (or Classic), you can hide behind a Sherman while advancing towards a menacing hedgerow or shelter your squad behind any armour while crossing open terrain. Be advised, however, the Germans will do the same. You can see how big is the Line of sight blocker of any vehicle by pressing F9 to bring the tactical view.

Speaking of tanks our German friends have a new toy that they threw into the fray. The Stug III. This turretless assault gun was Germany's most-produced fully tracked armoured fighting vehicle during World War II. It features a very low profile which facilitates hiding tactics. It also packs a very good punch one of the most kinetic rounds in the game. The Stug will also switch ammunition depending if it fires on infantry to a vehicle. Its only drawback is that it doesn't have a turret and no coax mg.

Be well advised that Stugs will sometimes be hidden, engine off, in places the Germans think they can catch you off guard. A vigilant commander, however, will be able to hear metal clunks indicating there is a tank dug in somewhere ahead. Also, as usual, having a scout in your squad will reveal any hidden troops in his line of sight.

Speaking of ambushes, the Germans are getting smarter and will now use cam nets in corners of the map they judge would be conducive to ambushes. This can happen in Classic or Campaign. It is uncommon but if they find a good spot they will get a cam net up and the nearby Axis troops will hide under them and wait for your squad to walk into the ambush before opening fire. Having a scout in the squad and a few soldiers with SMGs will definitely help you counter these treacherous shenanigans.

Finally, I want to point that the Classic mode had an inject of 10 ribbons which will be yours to discover. Note that Classic ribbons have a horizontal bar on them and Campaign ribbons have vertical bars. Usually, a ribbon gained in a mode will not affect gameplay in the other mode besides a few exceptions.

There is a ton of other stuff in the patch so take a gander at the patch notes:

0.3.0

• Fixed a crash introduced with the new smoke grenades particles
• Fixed erroneous intel report about the number of fausts in the map
• Fixed an exploit with the yield command
• Fixed a crash related to vehicles sanity check function
• Fixed an error when vehicles would be hit by airbursts and spawn dead bodies
• Fixed an error that was triggered by the new flaming ammo in Classic mode
• Fixed wooden bunker appearing in preview when building a concrete bunker
• Fixed the angle of the trench preview when building in classic mode
• Fixed a fault where tactical opportunity (reroll the battle conditions) player command ability was selectable in the menu after a map was started.
• Fixed an occurrence where concrete bunkers could spawn in the water
• Reduced spawn rate of smokes on German troops by 20%
• Medics improvement: A medic will now heal 2 hp per action instead of 1 if they are over 50 xp
• Medkits can be carried around by soldiers for 25% per action to heal 1 hp (So 4 soldiers with a medkit would be equivalent to a full medic)
• Hidden soldiers who fire a Faust will unstealth.
• The size of pink mist (blood spray coming off a bullet exit wound) is now proportional to the damage sustained.
• Stug III can now roll on the battlefield in order to help the German infantry. Additionally, Stugs can "hide" with their engine off and lay ambushes on careless troops. Hidden Stugs can easily be spotted by scouts that has line of sight or troops if they make a successful roll under their experience divided by 3
• Allied infantry will call vehicles more often by their name when spotting them.
• Dirt and cobblestone roads have been removed from classic mode map generation.
• Intel and maps will not spawn in classic anymore (they were of no uses in that mode)
• QoL: Increased the buttons refresh rate by 100 which should prevent some rare occasions (especially when clicking a button while moving the screen) where buttons would not be functional when clicked and result in moving troops instead.
• QoL: In classic mode, dead allied soldiers paper doll (mouse over) will be deactivated after 15 seconds.
• Reduced the delay for heavy mortars by half in classic and campaign. This will allow the mortars to fill a role that is closer to what I wanted initially. Filling that quick but unprecise support tactical gap.
• Qol: Swapped the yield and retreat in the menu in order to prevent unfortunate miss clicks
• Qol: Ranks and titles names are now displayed on mouseover in the career panel.
• Added classic progression which is independent of your campaign story. There is currently 13 ranks in classic and they unlock deployment options.
• Fixed an occurrence where the game would just keep spawning 6 men counter waves in classic
• Any vehicle bigger than a car will now block the line of sight.
• F9 (tactical view) will now display smoke and vehicles' Line of Sight (LOS) blocker radius.
• The offroad speed of all vehicles have been increased by 20%
• Added flavour voice acting to the deployment of specialized troops in classic and campaign.
• Added Taunts voices for classic mode.
• Added mortar skill (heavy infantry tier 3 skill) voice cues.
• Added bipod skill (gunner tier 1 skill) voice acting.
• Added voice warnings for when you are about to get counterattacked in campaign mode.
• Added voice lines for when a soldier is the only one left in classic and campaign
• Intro speech for Achtung Minen, K rats, uphill, cold day and eastern veterans Battle conditions added.
• Reduced the number of mines by 50% in map generation
• New mechanic: Ambush sites, Germans will place cam nets where they believe they can ambush the players and hide a few troops under them. Scouts can detect cam nets within their line of sight if they roll a d100 under their experience points at any distance. Normal soldiers can detect cam nets based on their experience x 10 and roll under their XP as well.
• Wood bunkers will now protect from airbursts
• Added 10 ribbons to classic mode
• Increased mine detect chances for engineer/sapper classes by 10%
• Classic mode Ranger training now cost 4 tp
• Fixed a couple of command decisions buttons that moved soldiers in classic
  0.3.0a
• Primarily fix for classic XP
• Fixed a typo in the deployment option page
• Ranger training description says 4tp now
• Fixed a bug where medkits wouldn't drop if picked extra loot
• Fixed some inconsistencies with the support calls cost in classic
• Fixed a bug with profiles if a user would click back on pre-deployment options
• Fixed line of sight issues with vehicles
  0.3.0b
• Removed debug code for all the ambush to spawn at the same x coordinate
• Brought back the road spawns to pre debug values. (two roads side by side would generate some pretty hectic war situations)
• Fixed an issue where infantry wouldn't target nearby vehicles
• Remove visual indicator of LOS blockers for non-blocking vehicles (mostly stationaries)
  0.3.0c
• Soldiers that stand too close (like very close) to their squadmates will hinder each other affecting their combat skill.
• Troop movement and selection while the game is paused is now disabled.
• Enemy med kits drop rate reduced by 50%.
• ZB60 Heavy machine gun accuracy reduced significantly.

So here we are folks, I hope you enjoy the new improvements. I'm very excited for the year to come and grateful to have such a passionate community. You guys hang tight out there, fight with everything you got and be merciless. I'll go back to my igloo and work on the next content drop for our little chaos simulator.

Respectfully,

urb

Some community highlights:

Sweet vid about MNB steam by Boggie5

Some good tactics in Vire from MT

Commando DDAY speed run !!