Zodiac Legion, a turn based Tactical RPG of medieval fantasy guerilla warfare[in dev]

Release Date
Basically, when it is done, but it is currently in a state similar to the Battle Brother combat demo.

What's next?
I will "soon" put a demo online. It will cover tactical combat on a few unlinked maps (one outdoor, and two indoor).
After that, I will work on the strategic elements and on the progression (heroes, research, base building), then probably launch a KS campaign.
Early Access should happen in 2019, as soon as there is enough content for the game to be fun(and worth the EA price).

Team:
I work alone with occasional help and awesome contractors (for art, writing, and music) hence the slow progress.
I work almost full-time on it, but I have to dedicate some time to avoid starvation by applying to various programming jigs, usually not game related (because it pays badly, and everyone is looking for Unity developers when it comes to contract work).

Engine:
Moai, because Invisible Inc is awesome. Also, I like being able to tinker with the engine.

How exactly has X-Com and Jagged Alliance been inspired you and what similarities are there?
Is base building in and how does it work?

X-COM mostly inspired the "meta" element of the game: the focus on research and base building. I also want the game to be close to its spirit by letting you throw endless warriors into the meatgrinder to solve problems.
Territory control will work a bit like in JA2: once you get a region (by first weakening its opposition through some raid missions, then assaulting its castle), it produces resources for you, but it can be retaken. There will be some allied forces that will play the same role as Jagged Alliance militias (aka, serve as speedbumps), or provide you with an endless supply of redshirts in some missions.
You will also mostly be able to do some assault missions proactively.

Your main base will be the only one with magic reasearch and enchantment capabilities.
Think of the other ones as outposts (or interceptor bases), that provide a teleportation relay, and let you see mission opportunities around.
Both the main bases and the outpost can be fortified, but as much as I would have loved that, you won't be able to choose the wall layout. You will only be able to choose the type of fortification (like in Lords of the Realms 2 and not a detailed castle plan like in LOTR1).

How will tactical battles play? (explanation how many actions a hero can do in one turn, initiative?)
There is no initiative in the game: One side moves entirely, then the opposing side does the same.
Each character can move and perform a single action per turn.
As in XCOM, there are two movement ranges. The standard one allows you to perform most actions, and the extended movement range cost stamina, limits the actions you can perform, and gives you an ATT and DEF malus for the turn. It also removes your zond of control.
Some actions (like shooting with a bow) get a penalty as soon as you move. Other require you not to move at all. Some spells require you to concentrate one turn before being able to cast them.
There is no facing, but characters have a zone of control: It costs more movement points to leave a ZOC, and give the leaving character a malus.
Being in the ZoC of 3 opposing characters that are not in any of your allies's ZOC gives you an ATT and DEF malus.
A character is flanked when there are no tiles that are not in an opponen ZoC around him. Being flanked gives an ATT bonus to the opponents.

What stats/attributes will the heroes/enemies have?
We decided to use a limited number of stats, and offload most of the bonuses to perks and skills:
Stats are:
- Health
- Stamina/Mana
- Move
- Attack
- Defense
- Damage
Weapons and armors also have similar stats: (max stamina/health modifier), and have the following stats (some characters/creatures may have natural pierce and armor).
- Pierce
- Armor
- encumbrance

How many hero classes will be in the game?
The game will feature the main 4 DnD archetypes: Warrior, Support, Rogue, and Mage
Each can then be specialized into one of the 13 zodiac classes.

Do heroes have skills and how do they work?
There are no skills in the PnP RPG sense. Skills work more like feats/character class abilities.
Passive skills can do things like add flanking damage (or limit it), give passive stamina regeneration, encumbrance reduction, or improve some of the base actions.
Active skills cover special attacks (some will only work with certain weapons), spells, and utility.

How are damage and armor going to work?
During an attack, the attack and defense rolls are compared. If attack < defense, it is a miss. If they are equal, it is a grazing hit. If att>defense, it is a solid hit, and if att>defense+2, it is a critical hit.
a grazing hit removes 2 damage from the attack, a solid hit deals normal damage, and a critical hit does additional effect depending on the weapon (bleed, stun, or just extra damage for example).
Armor is substracted from the damage, but unless the attack is a grazing hit, or the damage is below -1, the character will take at least 1 point of damage when hit.
Encumbrance is deducted from max stamina, and can also limit your movement range.

How is magic going to work? Does every of the thirteen different zodiacs go accordingly to the four elements and how do they differ? What is the 13ht zodiac?
Spells cost an action and mana to cast. Some will only trigger on the next turn (the delayed fireball has a larger AoE and damage than the regular one, but only lands one turn later).
There was a plan to tie each zodiac sign to its astrological element, but it might be too limiting, so we'll see about that.
The 13th sign is Ophiuchus.

How will leveling be handled? (skills, perks, traits, increasing stats)
Every level will provide a perk or trait. Some level will also let a character improve a stat. There will be some randomness on level up (like in Blood Bowl: you always have access to your regular skills, but you can also pick other skills instead depending on a random level up roll).
Stats will stay in the 1-10 range.


How is mana working? How is it connected to stamina?
When you cast a spell, you use mana if you have some. When you don't, the cost is substraced from your maximum stamina.
You can replenish stamina by using the rest action, but you cannot recover mana or go beyond your modified maximum stamina this way.
Some mana fountains let you replenish both mana and max stamina.

How many weapon classes will be in the game and how many in total? What stats do they have? Can you enhance weapons? Are there unique/legendary weapons? How many weapons has the game in total?

The weapons currently in game are:
axe/greataxe (versatile weapon against both unarmored and armored targets).
sword/greatsword (mediocre penetration, but good attack and defense values)
hammer/polehammer (good armor penetration, can stun targets)
bec de corbin (very good armor penetration)
halberd (reach, and supporting bonus to nearby friends).
flail (havles shield bonus)
cudgel (low tech/improvised weapon)
bow
scepter (grants casting benefits)
Shield (buckler, round, knight, kite, and tower shield).
As I said in the stats/Attributes, they have the following stats:
ATT/DEF modifier (def can be specific to melee, ranged or magic too).
Damage
Pierce
2 Hander usually have better attack, damage. They also have a good melee defense, while one hander+shield give better generic defense.
encumbrance (most weapons don't have any, but the heavier shields do).
they also have critical effects, and can be enchanted (to provide on demand elemental attacks).
Unique/Legendary weapons will be split in several parts that will need to be reforged.

How will the strategic layer work? (diplomacy, events)
This part is still evolving a lot. It will basically play a bit like Star Wars Rebellion (or Twilight Struggle):

There would be 4 "sides" on the map:
- The "league of opposing sorcerers"
These are your main opponents. They will try to ally or subjugate the neutral kingdoms and destroy your organization. They don't rely on Zodiac Magic, but use more dangerous raw magic themselves, which has the unfortunate consequence of drawing demons to this plane of existence.
- The demons
These are primal forces that are drawn to this plane because of the influx of magic. They will raid your kingdoms and the neutral ones. Even though they are not technically allied to the league of sorcerers, the sorcerers are able to somewhat shield their own provinces from them.
- The neutral kingdoms
These are your regular feudal kingdoms that are ill equipped to deal with magic and demons. The task of the Zodiac Order is to protect them, but some might be tempted to join the League, especially if you do a poor job of protecting them. Other might be directly invaded by the league.
- The Zodiac Order
The Zodiac Order is based on the Teutonic (being summoned by local lords to deal with pagans, trying to turn into a local superpower in the process) and Hospitalier orders (because it is split between its 13 signs, like the Hospitaliers were organized around its langues).
They use a more controlled form of magic (which is heavily tied to their artifacts).

Gameplay wise, things will be "Roughly similar" to Star Wars Rebellion/Supremacy, or Twilight Struggle, but simpler:

You deploy resources (envoys, agents and armies) to regions.
Envoys allow you to sway minor factions.
Spies allow you to find mission opportunities (h to assassinate, facilities to sabotages, vaults to raid…), and to prepare them(ie get some benefits during the mission itself, like delayed reinforcements, sick guards, starting with the map of the mission…).
And armies are there to control territory. When armies face each other, they get slowly grinded down by attrition, but some mission opportunities will appear, letting you influence the combats.
Most armies will be static, and will represent feudal levies and garrisons.
So basically, instead of the usual dice resolution you'd have for ground combat in Star Wars Rebellion (or coup attempt in Twilight Struggle), the outcome of opposed challenges will be determined by tactical missions (if you decide to send a party to do it).

Events will either trigger missions, alter some ongoing non combat missions, and usually present you with either a moral choice, or a choice between several options.
We try our best to make sure all options are reasonable under some circumstances (so that you can really choose to take option A because you need more manpower now over option B which would have given you more resources, at the cost of some of your soldiers and workers for instance).

In order to avoid making the management part explode into a newish Total War abomination, the number of resources (envoys, agents and armies) will be limited by the territories you control, your technologies, and the facilities in your stronghold.


How is research going to work?
It won't be overly original. You find scrolls or tomes, that can either reveal other mission locations, or help you advance your knowledge of magic/enchantment/alchemy.
Magic gives you more options for skill up.
Alchemy allows to to brew potions and explosives.
Enchantment allows you to improve your weapons.

One use items are still free to use (the in universe reason for that is that potions have a very short lifetime, so what limits them is your access to alchemical resources and your number of alchemists).

How far is game development? May there be big/drastic changes like features getting cut or completely changed?
There is no functionning geoscape to really show, but a tactical module that works relatively well. So the strategic part can still change a lot, but the tactical part will mostly get added content and balance.

How many different mission types will the game have and how do they differ?
This can still change, but the following missions are planned:
- Assassination
- item retrieval(artifact, scroll…)
- Take and hold
- Sabotage (ie destroy something and get out)
- escort
- Assault/Defense
- (Dis)Activate objective
Most missions have a soft timer (increasing enemy reinforcements over time).
Some will have a hard one (Hold objective for X turns, or kill opponent before he can get out).
Some will also give you friendly cannon fodder.
Retrieving an artifact obviously requires the character who took it to get to an exit.

How many different enemy types will be in the game? Are there bosses?
There will be 3 types of opponents:
- Humanoids (which will have character classes similar to the player), guardians (skeletons, golems, gargoyles), and demons (minotaurs/satyres, winged beasts, shades, fireball scorpion).
Humanoids threatens your borders, or defend them from your operations.
Guardians keep watch over old ruins and other places to loot.
Demons raid your own territory.

All of the enemy also have access to every weapons and most armor, so two sekeleton warriors can differ if one is in heavy armor with a two hander, and the second an archer without any protection.

Opponents also have color-coded elites.

Bosses would play like the lieutenants of Descent: They will give a bonus to their warriors for all battles happening around them, and can sometimes physically be present during missions.
But we don't have unique non humanoid characters yet (and all humanoid characters are paperdolled).

Are the maps (tactical and strategic) handcrafted or procedurally-generated?
They are currently handcrafted, but the goal is to make them like in UFO or XCOM 2: a procedurally generated map but from handcrafted presets.


How much story-driven is the game? Is it open ended / can you chose to not advance further in the story?
It is mostly a sandbox, so it is as story driven as JA2.

As long as you and your opponent both have your stronghold, the game should continue.

How is loot / loot-dropping handled? Will "dungeons" have treasures?
Most opponents won't ever drop anything. Some champions might drop something cool on death, but not the enemy fireball fodder. I hate when games bury the player under a mountain of useless loot to sell to the shopkeeper.
Most of the loot will come from chests.
Most chests won't be on the most direct path to complete the mission, so it is a risk Vs rewards tradeoff.

There will be different kind of loot:
- Items that need to be studied like scrolls and grimoires that will either unlock mission locations, or allow you to do some research.
- Zodic "runes" that will work a bit like XCOM 2 add-ons/PCS (or Diablo 2 gems), and allow you to add some properties to items.
- Generic magic alloy that will allow you to craft enchanted arms and armors.

Will the tactical maps have buildings and to what extend? Will there be different height-levels?
There are only 2 tilesets at the moment.
Grasslands/forest and dungeon.
I plan to add buildings, and fortifications but that would require additional funding.
There would be elevation(for fortifications, hills, and cliffs) but only one height level per tile.
I don't want to have to deal with multiple height levels on the same tile UI wise. I find it always hard to get a good overview of who is where when there are.

Is demo Steam only?
I will make the demo downloadable from the game website too.
Do you plan the EA and/or the final game drm free?
Certainly for the final game. I am not sure about it concerning the EA. It might not be convenient to have EA split among too many platforms when it comes to gathering feedback.

Mac/Linux? (looks Moai supports it, in case of gathering some statistics - at least one linux fan over here)
The game used to run just fine under Linux, but I stopped compiling/testing under Linux quite a few builds ago. I will definitely try to make a Linux demo too.
Regarding Mac, it should be "easy" with moai, but I would need a mac to compile and test it, so I cannot promise anything yet. I will definitely try to support MacOs for the release, but I cannot promise anything for the demo.

What is the state of the neural network AI?
It has sadly been postponed, because there is a lot of UI work to do first, and then, the geoscape needs a lot of work too. It is something I would really love to do, but it will depend on the resources and time available in the future.