Invasion Machine: A modern-day RTS set in a fictional Middle-Eastern country

Invasion Machine is an upcoming RTS depicting an imaginary conflict similar to the ongoing battles in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Your objective is to keep order in a middle-eastern province, just as the main phase of the invasion ends and guerilla warfare starts to take root. With the main opposition force removed, the enemy transforms from a regular army into an insurgency, along with drug lords and criminal elements.

Both resources and manpower are limited - once you lose a soldier, he's gone for good, and the same goes for your vehicles and equipment.

You also have the responsibility of setting up roadblocks at key travel routes; those roadblocks will check the traffic coming into your area of operations, seizing any weapons, contraband, explosives, suspects, etc. If they succeed at their task, the enemy insurgency grows weaker, but if they go through unnoticed, don't be surprised if that one bomb truck you missed shows up later on at an inopportune moment during combat.

As you can see, it's still in a very early alpha state. The developer isn't a large team either, meaning that this guy's estimate of Q1 2019 probably won't come to pass unfortunately. Still, it reminds me of a crossover between Call to Arms and Afghanistan '11, and does look like it might have some promise.

Edited by SgtRicko on Sep 27th 2018 at 10:33:35 PM

Looks interesting. This game has a lot of potential to explore the conflicts and actors in the Middle East today, so hopefully the devs will opt for that route instead of the unfortunate implications that are all too common in games with this setting.

I like the idea of persistent soldiers and resources (Reminds me of the old Ground Control games).

Plus it's a good way to educate about the realities of fighting an actual insurgency - it's a grind.

I'd love a game where the enemy has finite resources - so the damage you do to an army would be great. A nice subversion of We Have Reserves.

Hi, actual invasionmachine dev here - just stumbled upon this post. Thanks for showing interest!

Yes - the enemy sort of has finite resources - if you give'em enough trouble in your AO, they won't be able to start any of the more sophisticated attacks against you. You can't deplete your enemy from resources completely, though - it's not a win condition.

Yes - it does portray a guerilla/coin conflict and it is a grind. Keeping your men alive is a big part of it, especially once press reporters start getting embedded with the troops and could write damaging war stories about the losses.

In general, I'm calling it an RTS because that's the closest genre, but the game will have many non-combat elements, like deploying convoys with hum-aid.

If you ever want to know more, you can take a look at my twitter: @pixelmachine3d

The game will be available Q1 2019.

Edited by invasionmachine on Oct 9th 2018 at 10:41:28 AM

Hey, thanks for posting!

I do have a question. Will Invasion Machine be Windows-only, or is there any chance of Mac and Linux ports? (A Linux version would make me very happy indeed).

So going by the "enemy's resources reducing" thing, we could expect, say, full-on guerrilla assaults with technicals, trucks, and heavy weapons to eventually break down into lone-wolf insider attacks and stuff?

I think I like the overall concept and the control scheme of the game. The sound effects are a little anemic though. I was expecting AK's to rattle off automatic fire and the M2 to be similar.

Yes, there is a chance for a Linux build. No Mac, though.

Pretty much something like that - you keep pummelling the enemy and kill his soldiers - he'll go to the more desperate lone wolf attacks. If you let the enemy operate freely - he'll kidnap the press, try to kidnap your vips and launch more advanced attacks like car bombs, etc.

I guess with the new Linux gaming virtual machine that Steam is working on, Linux-specific build will be less of an issue, soon.

Edited by invasionmachine on Oct 10th 2018 at 1:16:14 AM

Is there a "win" condition or are you going for a more realistic / cynical view? Or is it more "You can now hand this over to locals and draw down on your troops"?

It looks good and I like the idea of the challenge around it.

@invasionmachine: I would say that the RTS genre is broad enough to easily include this game. RTS games range from Empire Earth to Lemmings to Pikmin.

Well, with guerilla warfare, you can win such a conflict-it's just a big grind and a pain.

I want to see how the games resource systems work in action.

^^ Still, how do we win exactly? Make the local populace not wanting to trust the guerrillas anymore? Or trying to deplete their manpower?

Historically speaking, anti-insurgency tactics only work if some part of the country was already stable, the faction you're fighting against was absolutely hated, and the country has some sort of functional law enforcement and infrastructure... something Syria and Afghanistan lack.

And the other method... well, it works, but there's no way in you're ever gonna be able to consider yourself a part of the UN Security Council or a country who even gives two shits about war crimes if you go that way. Aww hell who am I kidding, Russia and China have clout in the UN yet get away with all sorts of illegal crap all the time and never get punished. :/

The main problem of a lot of global troublespots like Iraq and Afghanistan are that despite supposedly having a unified government the country is still heavily tribal, and each tribe has different customs and values. That's why the Taliban and Al-Qaeda have managed to gain big footholds there, cuz too much tribal enmity keeps the tribes from working together, not to mention the ancient divide between Shiite and Sunni Muslims.

And yeah, that's a big flaw in the UN; the biggest countries get seats on the Security Council and a "No" vote from any of them can hamstring a decision.

Edited by theLibrarian on Oct 12th 2018 at 9:10:49 AM

It's not even the biggest; Germany is bigger than France and the UK, but doesn't get a permanent seat because they lost WWII.

@onyhow: Not sure how it works in this game (I'd imagine something like 'kill enemy units' or something).

IRL, there's various factors involved, I'd imagine. I'm not a big expert, but I'll give my 2 cents:

One big thing would be depleting their resources. This is actually part of why guerilla warfare is a grind: You might have more resources than they do, but they don't need as many resources to survive.

Having good PR (or at least far better PR than the enemy) also helps. It makes it harder for the enemy to recruit and what have you. Also helping "stabilize" the region is very important (building roads, etc). Rich and educated people join terrorist groups (if not as often), but rich and educated locals are better equipped to stop them.

Now the game has a Steam store page, if anybody is interested: https://store.steampowered.com/app/964650/Invasion_Machine/

Somebody asked how do you win: there's 2 power indicators - relations with your own higher Command (keep it too low, and you will be fired), and relations with the locals (treat them badly, allow for them to be retaliated against, and you lose). The goal is to get through different stages of the post-invasion occupation, and remain in control of the province you're in. Every action you take will influence these two power indicators.

The stages (chapters of the campaign) go from the "just after the main battles ended", where you still mostly fight regular army enemies, to the advent of IED-planting narco guerrillas. The final chapter is you trying to hold elections in the province - if that goes well (the locals vote and no major attacks happen), you win the campaign.

Edited by invasionmachine on Nov 5th 2018 at 1:53:12 AM

This seems really cool! I'm excited.

Only high command and local populace relation? Why not your home public opinion too? That could make it even more interesting. Sure, lowering relation with high command might mean that public doesn't like your action and pressuring the government, but I think there might be circumstances that the action you do might be liked by both the locals and the high command, but the public won't approve.

Still, looking good.

Edited by onyhow on Nov 7th 2018 at 4:55:42 AM

I was thinking about adding political support points as well, but that's something more above your head. You're "just" a field commander in one single province of a bigger war, so whatever political decisions are made, it's above your paygrade and doesn't get pinned on you, personally.

The only exception is when a reporter gets embedded with your troops and sees something bad, like lots of your troops KI As - in that case you're gonna get a big command relations hit very quickly, because you're directly making yourself and your superiors look bad, back home.

So you have to be careful to not get to Vietnam levels of attrition.

Sounds like Command and Local opinions will occasionally clash, forcing the player to choose one over the other. I like that, it adds strategy on top of tactics. Plus moral dilemmas if you can pull that off.

You bring up a good point, will this game have Creedence Clearwater Revival's Fortunate Son licensed?

By the way, if anybody's interested in getting to know more about the game before it releases, feel free to join Discord, where we discuss the game's future all the time:

https://discord.gg/G4zX63s

Hm, one thing I think might be a possible issue-and I'm not sure if this is going to be addressed, but is there a Sorting Algorithm of Evil in play? In most games as you progress you get tougher and tougher enemies. Guerrilla Warfare tends to operate more on Combat Breakdown, however. For example, in this game you seem to be first up against the remnants of a regular army, then fighting drug lords.

Is the game able to compensate for this in terms of making things more difficult in later missions and the like?