Equip hammer in hand and fortify your position with the new sapper class! Construct well-placed defences, earthworks and artillery to turn the tide of battle in your favour. Carry explosives to breach the adversary’s strongholds, repair damaged artillery pieces and more.
Come check out our latest update release! There’s more to this update than what has been mentioned above but before you do so, have a look at the trailer.
Sappers! Construct, Repair & Destroy
With our focus set on bringing forth more game-play oriented features as we develop our way through Holdfast: Nations At War’s eventual full release, this update brings with it a whole new slew of additions.
Sappers are now your go-to class to freely construct a multitude of defences, carriable swivel guns, fusible explosive barrels and repair damaged artillery pieces. It’ll surely become a favourite amongst those looking to play a support role! This class also comes equipped with a blunderbuss and sword.
French Sapper
British Sapper
Prussian Sapper
Constructing Defences. Fortify
But how to go about constructing these defences? Here are some of the steps you must go through to get things going. Be sure to spawn in with the Sapper class beforehand.
Equipping The Hammer - Stage 0
Similar to what needs to be done with the musicians, one must first press the ‘Q’ key to equip the hammer used to construct as well as repair player-built defences.
Selecting Your Construction - Stage 1
Once you have a hammer in hand, hold your ‘Right Click’ mouse button and you’ll be presented with a radial user interface allowing for quick navigation between different constructions. Constructions are split into two categories, artillery and defences.
In this example, we’ll be constructing a palisade which makes for the strongest of all the available defences but takes longer to build and requires more materials to construct.
Placing Your Construction - Stage 2
Proceed to ‘Left Click’ on the palisade construction present in the radial user interface. A representation of the palisade indicating the position as to where the construction is to be placed will appear.
Once you find a suitable position to start constructing your defence, ‘Left Click’ once more. You can also rotate the defence by using your ’Scroll Wheel’ before placing it.
Building Your Construction - Stage 3
Now that your construction is in place, start hitting at the palisade with your hammer to begin its construction. In order to finalise the construction, you need to land enough hits on the palisade until the entirety of the circle UI representing the defence’s health fills up.
Other fellows playing with the Sapper class can also assist with building your defence. Once its construction has been completed, the circle UI will turn from an orange colour, indicating that the defence is under construction and therefore more easily destructible, to green.
Reinforcing Your Construction - Stage 3
Some player-built defences can be reinforced further bolstering their defence. Sandbags, for instance, can be placed atop earthworks providing for greater cover from enemy fire. A platform can also be attached to the palisade for players to shoot from.
Player-Built. Defences, Artillery & Earthworks
Palisades, gabions, explosive barrels, earthworks, sandbags and the list continues. There’s a vast selection of defences, artillery and explosives to construct. Unique to each and every player-built object a set of materials or limit is applied.
Materials play a role within this new mechanic to restrict the number of constructible defences that can be present at any point in time during a match. Larger constructions such as the chaveauxs deplete more resources than their smaller counterparts.
Chairs now make part of the selection of constructible defences. Albeit not being as useful of a defence, it’ll certainly provide you with a neat resting place to view the ongoing onslaught as mayhem ensues.
Here’s a list to put things into perspective.
Defences
- Infantry Stakes
- Gabion
- Chaveux De Frise (L)
- Chaveux De Frise (S)
- Palisade
- Palisade Platform
- Chair
Artillery
- Explosive Barrel
- Carriable Swivel Gun
- Ammobox
- Rocketstack
Digging
- Earthworks
- Sandbags
Deconstructing Defences. Rebuild
In a constantly changing battleground, we ought to provide players with the capabilities to move defences elsewhere even after they have already been enacted. Deconstructing a defence will retain back its material points allowing sappers to make use of those materials to build the defence once more.
Open up the mode selector by holding the ‘F’ key and select either the option to ‘Deconstruct’ or ‘Undig’.
Destroying Defences. Explosives
Contributing further to the strategic element that this update brings with it, destroying the enemy faction’s emplacements through the use of various artillery pieces, explosives or melee weapons will deplete materials from their pool and bring them into yours.
Sappers can then make use of these materials to further solidify your defensive positions. They can also be pretty effective at destroying enemy defence with their relatively bigger hammer whilst in ‘Deconstruct’ mode.
It’s ticking like a time bomb, the fuse is running short. There’s plenty of scenarios were the above-mentioned explosive barrels come into play. Construct, carry, set a fuse and make quick work of enemy emplacements.
Don’t break your jaw in aw just yet as you better watch out for enemy fire while carrying these volatile explosives or they’ll be sure to blow you to kingdom come.
Repairing. Field Guns & Defences
Should a defence become damaged, sappers can equip their hammer and repair the emplacement back to its original state. Field guns, rocket launchers, mortars, swivel guns and long guns that have seen better light of day can similarly be repaired as well by the same class.
Artillery pieces that remain unrepaired on the battlefield, will respawn back to base after a set amount of time.
Siege. Fort Doors & Windows
With this update’s release, the attackers whilst playing on the Army Siege or Coastal Siege game modes no longer gather instant access to a fortification by casually opening up a fort’s door. Instead, they must now topple them down using artillery, explosives or melee weapons.
Similarly, windows now shatter if hit by projectiles from firearms or stricken by a melee weapon. The destruction of doors and windows is not specifically restricted to the Siege game mode.
Coastal Siege. Gameplay Balance
Coupled with the same update, we’ll also be pushing forward changes aimed towards balancing gameplay on Coastal Siege scenario. Attackers will find it easier to disable the enemy’s guns and eventually land ashore.
All the specific changes we’ve undergone are detailed further down below in our changelog.
Community. Join The Discord!
Looking for a good bunch of fellows to play the game with? Do join our Discord! Linebattle events were players are encouraged to play in formations relevant to the Napoleonic era are hosted by the community through the week.
Discord is a great place to be to stay in touch with the game’s development. Feedback is always greatly welcomed. We look forward to seeing you there!
Changelog 33 - Game Version 0.31.7109.30173
New Game Features
- A New Class. Sappers! Your go-to class to freely construct a multitude of defences, carriable swivel guns, fusible explosive barrels and repair damaged artillery pieces.
- Player-Built Defences. Fortify! A vast selection of defences, artillery and explosives to construct.
» Defences: Infantry Stakes, Gabions, Chaveux De Frise (L), Chaveux De Frise (S), Palisades, Palisade Platforms & Chairs.
» Artillery: Explosive Barrels, Carriable Swivel Guns, Ammoboxes & Rocketstacks.
» Digging: Earthworks & Sandbags.
- Deconstructing Defences. Deconstructing a defence will retain back its material points allowing sappers to make use of those materials to build the defence once more.
- Destroying Defences. Destroying the enemy faction’s emplacements through the use of various artillery pieces, explosives or melee weapons will deplete materials from their pool and bring them into yours.
- Repairing. Should a defence become damaged, sappers can equip their hammer and repair the emplacement back to its original state. Field guns, rocket launchers, mortars, swivel guns and long guns that have seen better light of day can similarly be repaired as well by the same class.
- Fort Doors & Windows. Whilst playing on the Army Siege or Coastal Siege game modes, the attackers no longer gather instant access to a fortification by casually opening up a fort’s door. Instead, they must now topple them down using artillery, explosives or melee weapons.
» Windows now shatter if hit by projectiles from firearms or stricken by a melee weapon.
- Target Dummies. Dummies present at the shooting range on the Training Grounds map now provide feedback when shot at. They can also be spawned using the spawn override commands.
» Have a look at our Wiki for more on how to spawn this object.
Gameplay Balance
- Reduced the health points of all coastal cannons. If you manage to land a single shot, the cannon will be no more.
- Reduced the coastal cannon’s range and projectile travel velocity. Increased the time it takes to reload coastal cannons by 2 seconds.
- Reduced the health points of Fort Imperial’s walls.
- Improved the effectiveness of the smaller variation of the grapeshot. This was done by increasing its effective range and shots it fires.
- Carpenters are now playable only on naval and coastal scenarios.
Server Configuration
- Server administrators can configure limitations per buildable object as well as the starting material points.
» Have a look at our Wiki for more on how to make use of this new functionality.
- Included a new model as part of the spawn able object selections that ships can collide with.
» Have a look at our Wiki for more on how to make use of this new functionality.
Bug Fixes & Tweaks
- Solved an issue which caused the map rotation to cease functioning if more than 250 objects are spawned using override commands.
- Solved an issue which caused a specific user interface element to remain on screen after interacting with a spawn-able firearm ammobox.
- Solved an issue that enabled players to clip inside one of the ruins present on Fort Schwarz.
- Solved an issue with a red-line showing underneath the water in naval scenarios.
- Solved an issue which caused swivel guns present on all coastal scenarios to be indestructible.
- Reduced the volume of specific destruction sounds.
Be sure to stay tuned! There’s more gameplay-oriented in the works.
Once again, thank you for your support and until next time, may good health be yours. We’ll keep you updated.
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Once again thank you for all of your support from all of us on the Holdfast: NaW team,
- Refleax, Rycon, Dreas, Wrexial, PingPong, Walki, Cameron & Rejenorst
Anvil Game Studios
