Flesh and Drone

The most important change in my daemonic wargame, Flesh and Drone, might involve how daemons modify drones. Power is no longer infinitely increased by the blood spent on a drone type's auction. Instead, the total power of each drone type remains constant. Daemons can then redistribute that power so that the drones are stronger or weaker against different types.

Previously, the relative benefit of modifying a drone in the late stage of the game was quite small. More importantly, there was the threat of building up a drone type's power just to end up with the same 50% chance of killing a drone.

Now, the benefit of modifying a drone is unrestricted by time and a drone's success in battle is always being threatened. The value of modifying a drone type depends on summoned pieces and plans as it should.


I also focused on polishing the interface. For instance, I stopped using grids because I have a constant number of cells, I'm not outputting atoms, labels stretch better, and buttons require less explanation. I also redesigned the options displayed on the map to be more symbolic and removed the mouse click hints. (Other than spells, there's only one option that requires a right-click anyway.)

These pictures were taken from different matches so pardon the color differences and chat.

Old => New
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Here's the change log as posted in the game:

• When modified, drone type stats now swap points instead of merely increasing.
• The help file was updated with the above mechanical change, CSS changes, more concise language.
• Players who can't modify drone types now have their turns ended automatically during the Modify phase.
• The player limit is now displayed above the Join button.
• Hosts and single players on unhosted instances are now greeted with a note locating server options.
• Player options are now explained on the map with symbols instead of words.
• The Drones tab is now a simple table with buttons for summoning selection.
• The Bid tab now uses symbolic buttons and labels instead of a grid.
• The Modify tab now uses a separate tab of symbolic buttons and labels for each drone type.
• The Battle tab has been redesigned to explain the new HUD.
• The last winner should no longer look smushed when the window is resized.
• Various borders and colors were changed in the skin.
• Various tab icons were changed. Sometimes the tab titles were removed.
• The player logout timer was fixed.