Move and hit
Melee combat is fun to watch in a replay but kinda meh to play. To try to make the combat as fun to play as it is to watch. I’m trying out a new melee move where you move and attack at the same time.

Melee Reaction for Range Attack
In an effort to balance combat I changed the melee attack reaction to get 20% damage reduction when hit by a ranged attack. It just wasn’t fun to set a melee reaction just to have the enemy back off and use a range attack.

Melee Hit Effect
There are so few animations and sound effects that melee combat just didn’t feel good. I put in a slash effect similar to the explosion when you are hit by the blaster, which is an improvement but I don’t think it will work long term.
Victory/Defeat Stinger
While I was working on the melee sound effects, I found some stingers that would be good for the end of a match. So, I put them in.
Range vs Melee
A Range reaction was pretty much always the best choice. Especially if you pair it with reacting on movement. To give the other reaction a chance I changed which tiles a range attack can hit, specifically it can no longer target tiles immediately around the player. Now once the enemy enters a range reaction isn’t very useful. So, I may need to revisit this decision latter.

Auto end phase
To make the game easier to understand when someone plays for the first time I added phases to turns. First you use your actions, then you end the phase, then you use your reactions, then you end your turn. I like the phases but It is really annoying to hit end phase after you’ve used all of your Actions. To solve this I setup the first phase to auto end after you’ve spent all of your Actions points. If you want to end your action phase before spending all of your actions points you still have to push the End Phase button.

More reaction icons
Both the Dodge reaction and the Block reaction are considered defensive reactions and use the same reaction icon. When you are expecting the enemy to block but it dodges, it’s just not fun. So I went in and added a reaction icon for each reaction.

Reset Reactions
Sometimes when setting up reactions you make a mistake. You click On Movement, when you wanted On Attacked, I added a button to reset your reactions. If you make a mistake setting them up, you can just redo them now.

Piercing Range Attack
This is probably the first hard thing I’ve done in this version. I updated the baster attack to pierce though targets and hit up three game pieces. I also fixed a bug with the blaster attack where the game piece hit wouldn’t react until after the explosion finished. This doesn’t sound like much but I had to make breaking change to how the actions are resolved, which resulted in numerous bugs. Such as turns just not ending, range attacks not working, and damage not being applied to hit targets.

Logo Tweaks
I added some more detail to the logo with a little glow from the “Neo” on the Mecha. I also gave the Neo a core of lighter pink to try an make it look more like a neon light. I think the logo looks better but it still needs a little something.
New Version

Pervious Version

Smoke Reaction
Finally, I got around to fully setting up the smoke screen . setting up the smoke screen as a reaction. What I think is cool about it is that you could attack an enemy at range then use a smoke screen to prevent return fire on the next screen. It created even more bugs with range attacks but I was able tow work through those fairly quickly

Usopp AI
Time to test out different types of AIs. The first one up is a range focused AI. Using range for both attacking and for reactions. It didn’t workout well. The current version of range in the game is great for attacking, but when it is used for a reaction, it is way too easy to counter. I think this can be fixed by introducing a close quarters range attack but that is a task for another version.
George AI
George is a Mid range AI, he will move 4 – 5 tiles away from you, fire a shot then move next to you and use a melee attack. For reactions you uses a dodge followed a melee reaction when attacked. This one is pretty fun to play against. To avoid his shot you have to plan your dodge and to land a hit on him without taking a hit from him you have to to use both range and melee attacks, forcing you to use more then just a single strategy.