Hi everyone, this month let's take look at shooting and how chance-to-hit is calculated.

A big part of the tactical sandbox I'm trying to build is letting you shoot physically persistent bullets anywhere you want. Not just at enemies or predetermined targets, but literally at any position on the battlefield.

Besides just being fun, this freedom makes shooting more interesting. It's no longer about just hitting a target. Things like fire superiority and suppression become just as important. For example, in this game there's no special "Suppression" action or ability. You just point and shoot, and bullets flying close to someone will apply suppression to them.

This enemy is hiding behind good cover, but you can shoot at the air above or next to them to apply suppression.And with physical projectiles you have to be mindful of the background. If a bullet misses its target or a rocket veers off course, it will keep flying until it hits something. As the great Vincent Hanna (Al Pacino) said in the movie HEAT: "Get clean shots. Watch your background!"

The poor Martian civilian workers are always catching strays.


That said, this is still a turn-based strategy game. So chance-to-hit is calculated using dice. However, it's done in a way that reflects the physics of the tactical sandbox.

When aiming your gun, the game generates 100 trajectories from the barrel tip toward the target's center of mass, forming a cone. The diameter of the cone is based on various factors including the shooter's skill. So when the game shows you have a 49% chance-to-hit, that means 49 out of the 100 trajectories are intersecting the target's hitbox.

The cone as shown in debug mode. The idea is to combine dice with physics-based ballistics.

Next, when you pull the trigger, the game rolls a D100 die and picks one of the trajectories for the bullet to follow. For example, with a 49% shot, if you roll 49 or lower the game will choose a trajectory that hits the target, while rolling 50 or higher will result in a miss.

Finally, in the case of burst or auto-fire, for most guns the game also rolls "recoil dice" for every subsequent bullet in the shot. Each recoil die can produce a positive or negative value depending on the shooter's skill. This is added to the prior bullet's value and a trajectory is chosen based on the cumulative total. The idea is that the soldier is rolling dice to try and control the recoil.

The battle log shows the first 4 bullets missed, but the last 2 hit as the shooter fought the recoil to bring the spray back on target.


What I love about this whole system (shoot anywhere + persistent bullets + dice + physics) is how guns naturally take on their real-life roles. For example, the LMG is excellent for suppression not because of some special flag or ability, but because of its high fire-rate and large magazine. And the system doesn't arbitrarily limit your tactical options. There's nothing stopping you from using other guns for suppression too -- it'll just take more shots to pin an enemy down.

Another example is the shotgun. It doesn't need recoil dice because it fires all bullets at once (buckshot). So each bullet rolls its own D100. This is a big deal because rolling many independent dice means statistically there's a higher chance that at least one bullet will hit. In other words, similar logic to real-life.

The shottie is great for taking down drones, which are small and hard to hit but take just one bullet to bring down.

Well that's it for this dev log. I look forward to your thoughts and questions in the comments!

Follow and Wishlist here for these dev logs to appear in your Steam News section (they do not appear on the store page). You can also follow me on Discord[discord.gg], Reddit, Twitter[x.com] or Bluesky[bsky.app]. Lastly, if you just want an email alert when I make a post on Steam you can sign up here[forms.gle]. THANK YOU FOR YOU SUPPORT!!

-Yuji

Prior dev-logs:

• Dev Log #01: Vision
  
• Dev Log #03: Personality System
  
• Dev Log #04: Grenades
  
• Dev Log #05: Destruction

Hi everyone, today's topic is destruction which is a big part of Mars Tactics.

Almost everything on the battlefield is destructible, even the terrain itself. For example, if your troops are pushing into an area with no cover, they can throw a high-explosive charge to create a foxhole to dive into.

Explosives are abundant on Mars as they are used extensively in mining operations.

And when defending an objective, your troops can create trenches to fortify their position. Of course, AI troops are aware of landscape changes and if given the chance will use your trench against you.

Rebel workers in a trench keeping watch for corporate forces. Big trenches like this are not trivial to make -- this one was created by a strafing airstrike run.
Besides grenade and bombs, environmental objects can also trigger small and large explosions. The game will communicate which objects can explode, so keep that in mind when taking cover.

Chemical tanks can be damaged by direct fire or remote hacking. The blasts are powerful enough to leave craters.

For some special objects, explosions will rip them apart creating debris that can be used as cover. Falling debris may push units and even hurt them, although never fatally.

Construction crane blows up into smaller pieces, each of which become cover. Please note this feature is still in the experimental stage.


Destruction is permanent across the world. When you revisit battlefields, you will see familiar craters and trenches (although they will be eroded over time by sandstorms). Likewise, damaging buildings will reduce their productivity in the strategy layer, until repaired. Infrastructure is precious on Mars, so you should weight the cost/benefit of using destruction.

Preserving detailed destruction data across the whole world map creates gigantic save files. Optimizing this has been a very big challenge.
All of that said, I just want to be clear that explosions and destruction are not themselves the end goal of gameplay. They are just one aspect of infantry combat. To that end, you cannot dig tunnels or create caves. And destruction only goes a few layers deep (every map has an indestructible rock bed). And some objects and ground types cannot be destroyed.

Underground facilities like these are heavily fortified and cannot be destroyed. (On Mars everyone lives under the surface to escape radiation.)So the goal is not to re-create Minecraft, as cool as that would be. The focus of Mars Tactics is firmly on turn-based infantry combat. But I hope destruction is a useful and fun part of the tactics sandbox that allows you to be creative.

Timelapse of a hilltop fortification slowly getting decimated.

Well, that's it for this time. Let me know your thoughts in the comments. This game takes place just 20 years from now during the very early stages of the corpo-colonization of Mars, so there's no terraforming or much human settlement. That means you should expect to fight through lots and lots of sand maps. But I hope the destruction system will help make each battle more memorable and fun.

Follow and Wishlist here for these dev logs to appear in your Steam News section (they do not appear on the store page). You can also follow me on Discord[discord.gg], Reddit, Twitter[x.com] or Bluesky[bsky.app]. Lastly, if you just want an email alert when I make a post on Steam you can sign up here[forms.gle]. THANK YOU FOR YOU SUPPORT!!

-Yuji