Friends, as you know, we’ve been working on some new game modes. Today, we are going to talk about skirmishes.

Keynotes:

• Players get Victory Points for holding key points (KPs). If a player has taken over all the KPs and controls the map completely, they gain points at a significantly faster rate. This way, an obviously more powerful opponent will win faster instead of “torturing” their weaker opponent in a prolonged fight.
• If you completely destroy the enemy army, the game will end immediately – even if your enemy could have called for reinforcements.
• During the course of the game, players receive Reinforcement Points, which they can spend to summon reinforcements such as additional Units and fire support to the deployment zones.
• The bigger the army and the more Reinforcement Points a player has, the fewer Reinforcement Points they receive. This correlation is not linear but happens in 2 to 4 stages: e.g. 300, 600, and 900 Reinforcement Points. This mechanic allows a player who has lost a significant part of their army to recuperate fairly quickly, call for several Units at once, and get back to the battlefield.
• Using support in skirmish mode will be different from all of the other modes. Instead of the Support Point Bar, the player will have Charges. A player gets Support Charges with Reinforcement Points. The Charges then appear on the Support Panel. Once used, a Charge disappears. If that was the last Charge, then the support disappears, and the player will have to re-buy it with Reinforcement Points.
• Each side (or each player) has a small “base” in the deployment zone. The buildings inside let the player use support and summon reinforcements. We may add other features later on (e.g. equipment repairs, Ability Charge refills, etc.). Base buildings can be destroyed in order to cut the player off from their fire support and reinforcements. So players must keep in mind the need to protect their starting point, as well as captured key points.
• Neutral key points are considered captured once they are occupied by one and only one army. To capture an enemy key point, you must destroy all enemy units within it and then defend it during any assault. You won’t be able to hold all the key points at once, since that would require splitting your army. We figure that enemies will try to attack weakened KPs, making their own KPs vulnerable, and so on.
• There are various point of interest on each skirmish map, such as key points, player deployment zones, and neutral fortifications. These points of interest serve different gameplay purposes: some of them are a direct way to victory, while others are a more roundabout way. They make players split their attention and armies. They make them choose which points need troops and which are insignificant. In the future we are planning on a feature that will allow us to add special points of interest according to the map type: a tank factory, a radio facility for powering up your support, a hospital for restoring your squad’s health, and so on. We are also planning to add diverse landscaping including hills, rocks, forests, and settlements, affecting your tactical choices and battle gameplay.

So, what do you think of all this? What else would you like to know about skirmishes?