News - Full Invasion 3 mod for Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord

Version 0.2.0 of Full Invasion 3 is live right now! After a few weeks of beta testing, this brand new version contains a lot of improvements and additions to the base mod, clearing the way to add brand new factions in future releases.

Come join us on our Discord server to find other players and to stay up to date on news for future releases!

You can support us on Patreon to get early release to upcoming versions and other goodies!

Download links

Client download

Server files download (only needed if you host a server)

Changelog

Major additions

• Added 3 new maps:
  • Mecalovea by Sheepbitter
  • Norheim by Klassix
  • Ruins of Sasamu by Sheepbitter
• Added bosses to the invasion! Bosses spawn every 10% of the invasion healthbar, so there are 10 boss waves in total.
• Added cavalry to the invasion! Cavalry is only enabled on certain maps, to ensure they don't break. Future releases will support cavalry on all maps.
• Added healthbars to all agents (bots, players, horses, etc). These can be turned off in a new menu.
• Added a complex system of modifiers and powers that can be applied to many different game objects. Currently only in use on boss waves.
• Added a lot of sound effects to the mod to bring several features to life.

Minor additions

• The loadout UI has had a facelift, replacing placeholder assets with gorgeous new assets created by Czar.
• Added props to heal your horse and shields.
• Added a background system that automatically generates random weapons using weapon parts, to support random weapon boxes in the future. Currently used for... something else.
• Added the Battanian Scout class, a Soldier tier Battanian cavalry class.
• Added a lot more background features and systems to support future plans.
• Added a nice custom loading screen for the mod.
• Players can now ready & spectate if no spawnpoints are available.

Balance changes

• Bots now all get more health as the invasion progresses, starting at 100 health and ending at... more.
• Bots also get more health if more players join a server.
• Tweaked the balance between the amount of ranged/infantry(/cavalry) bots that spawns.
• Made several changes to the required levels of items for recruit classes.
• Made ranged AI a bit less accurate in general.
• Made several changes to XP gain, to even out the progression of item types more.
• Blocking attacks with a shield now grants XP.
• Added a fadeout timer for unused mounts.
• Shields now all have proper resistance values, making them more effective.
• Fixed several lances that couldn't actually couch.
• Added shields to all Sturgian classes.
• Buffed heavy crossbows to deal significantly more damage.
• Tweaked the health values of siege equipment.
• Numerous changes to the existing maps to make them more interesting and fix issues.
• Reduced the level requirement for the Commoner's ridiculous armor from 50 to 25.

Fixes

• Fixed an innumerable amount of crashing issues (most of which were added by the new features).
• Fixed the crash that occurred when leaving a server.
• Fixed using the armory counting as a death.
• Fixed the scoreboard not updating when it should.
• Fixed usable object markers not showing on the proper locations when using a non-16:9 monitor.
• Fixed the UI from showing all polearms as 2 handed polearms. They now also properly show whether they can be braced and/or couched.
• Fixed bastard weapons showing as 1 handed weapons in the UI.
• Fixed the class preview always showing male characters even if you're not.
• Various performance fixes that should help the game run smoother.

You read that right! We're releasing the 0.1.0 version Full Invasion 3 to the public on Sunday February 26th. We have a few things planned for the days leading up to the release, so read on for more. First, what have we been working on since the second progress report 2 months ago?

Progress

Aside from a massive amount of balance changes and bug fixes, these are the most notable areas of focus:

Invitational events

We've invited 300 players from our Discord server to join us in a series of tests to see how well the mod plays with large groups of players. The first event had a peak of 200 players on the server! We got some great feedback and data from those tests, which we've used to squash bugs and fix balance issues that otherwise would have gone unnoticed until after the full release.

A massive Thank You goes out to everyone who was able to join us for these events!

Refactored AI behaviour

A big change made during the last months was in the behaviour of the bots. During the initial tests, the bots never knew whether to prioritize players or objectives on the map. With this refactor, the AI will make proper use of the equipment they have available (well, mostly. Their brains are still a work in progress :P), properly prioritize objectives, and not create traffic jams in front of ladders.

New "Wardrobes" and Horse Troughs

We've recreated the old FI2 Wardrobes in order to change your class and gear selection without having to respawn. This time, however, it doesn't quite look like a wardrobe anymore, so they are renamed to Armories:

Release weekend

During the release weekend, the following events are planned:

Early Saturday: Full Invasion 2 Osiris Farewell Event

A final event will be hosted on Osiris as a farewell to the mod. We've worked on the mod for over 5 years, and we've managed to create and grow our amazing community through it, so we want to say a proper farewell to Full Invasion 2! This event will be public, and the factions of the event will be up to a poll. For more information about the event, join our Discord server.

Late Saturday: Final FI3 0.1.0 Invitational Event

As we've made some large balance adjustments since the last invitational event, we will be hosting one final Invitational Event on Saturday to test those final changes before the release. This event will not be public! We already have a large enough group of players available for this event. You can, however, join our Discord server to catch a livestream or two of the event.

Sunday (after final adjustments): FI3 0.1.0 Release!

On Sunday, after we've made some final adjustments based on the final invitational test, the public version of FI3 will be released! We will be hosting official servers in multiple regions right from the moment of going live, so you will be able to play on a server with a good ping right from the start.

You will be able to download the mod right from this Mod DB page, or on the Steam Workshop.

In our last progress report post, we mentioned that there are several large features still required before the first version of Full Invasion 3 can go live. Though we've had periods of less progression due to the holiday season and busy work schedules, we did make good progress on a lot of fronts, so let's go over the major points!

Progression system

As mentioned in the previous progress report, one of the major features we wanted to have ready is the progression system, and we currently have a first version done!

The progression system no longer makes use of gold, but instead makes use of two new terms: Mastery and Class Level. Both of these are gained by performing basic actions: hitting/killing bots (the only thing implemented for now), getting assists, healing allies as a healing class, etc. Let's break these terms down:

• Mastery: this indicates how much experience your character has in a certain skill. Using the skill increases your mastery, just like proficiency in singleplayer. Increasing your Mastery in a skill unlocks better weapons in that category, and is required to unlock higher tier classes. This means your Mastery levels carry over between classes too.
• Class Level: this indicates your character's experience with the current class they are playing as. Progression to your class level is made by gaining any kind of experience while playing as the class, and it's used to unlock better armour and horses for your class. Logically, your class level does not carry over between classes.

This system will of course be much expanded in the future. One of our goals is to include (almost) every skill from singleplayer in a meaningful way to Full Invasion (for example: Engineering for using/maintaining siege equipment, Scouting for... scouting).

Flag capture system

One of the major improvements planned for FI3 compared to FI2 is giving bots something more to do than just "Exterminate". For this we're implementing capture points, much like the ones being used in Siege mode in Native. Currently our mappers are hard at work implementing this system into the maps we have:

This system requires a few more tweaks (like determining when the AI prioritizes capturing a point over attacking a player), but it's essentially ready for the first version.

Additional improvements

The rest of the time we've spent on working on smaller additional improvements, essentially filling gaps in multiplayer (that really should have been handled by Native to begin with, but alas), such as showing spectators in the scoreboard, making arrow refill barrels work with throwing weapons, adding health restoration props, etc.

Required for the first release

The following features are still on our todo list as required before the first release:

• Create classes for the Calradia defender faction. We've currently only got Sturgian classes, but we have a good method down for adding more classes quickly (and let me tell you: it's a lot less of a hassle than in Warband).
• Ensure all maps make good use of the capture system. We've currently got 3 maps for the first release, with more on the way.
• Map rotation after a game ends. For some reason, this is not currently a feature in Native, so we have to ensure servers don't just reset whenever a game is over. Edit: this is inaccurate, as this is already a feature in Native, so less work for us!
• AI improvements related to the capture system. As mentioned above, the bots need to consider the capture system as their actual objective.
• Preliminary release testing. Once all systems are in place, we have to test to ensure we're not releasing something obviously broken to the public.
• Set up dedicated servers to play on. Pretty self-explanatory.

There are further points to work on in the meantime, but if those don't make it into the first release, that's less of a problem. Therefore our goal is to release the mod once the points listed above are done.

We will be tracking our progress on these final points in our Discord server! So join us there if you'd like to keep track of how much further we've got to go.

It's been two months since we ramped up the development of Full Invasion 3, and we've been making great progress. Though we're not ready for a public test yet, we figured we'd share some of the features we've been working on so far!

Classic Loadout system

One of the first orders of business was creating a new way to select classes and equipment in the mod. In the Native module, Bannerlord makes use of a perk based system, in which players select two perks to "customize" a class, leading to only a handful of variations. We were always determined to remove this system in favour of a system more in line with the possibilities in Warband.

While we were working on this, we found out that Bannerlord does not even take a look at the stats of the armour you are wearing! Instead, the class and perk combination completely determines your armour value and movement speed.

The system we made as a replacement for this is currently completely functional, and works just like it did in Warband, with some visual improvements:

Basic Invasion system

In order for us to have an actual game, we of course need an Invasion with an objective! This core system is still under development, but the basic parts (spawning the AI in groups, determining when to spawn which groups, etc) are in place.

There are several improvements in this area that Bannerlord allows us to make compared to Full Invasion 2:

• First and foremost, bots can be divided into formations, which can each have a different goal. While we spawned bots in separate groups in Full Invasion 2, they did always end up in a single blob of animosity. This system allows us to keep groups separate, increasing the strategic difficulty of the mod.
• Banners for bots! Bannerlord supports special banner carriers (well, sort of. It will support them in a future release), which we can use for the bot formations.
• Bannerlord allows us to set actual objectives for bot formations, other than "kill everything that breathes". This means the bots can attempt to destroy certain objectives, capture flags, or attempt to hold points. This greatly increases the variety of ways to play the mod, and has given us a lot of ideas that we're very excited about.
• Bots can make use of actual siege equipment now, which, if nothing else, is just plain awesome.

We've done a lot of work in this area so far, but we're still working on improvements.

Invader transports

One of the more exciting new additions is the use of transport vehicles by bots. These transports are fully destructible, and allow the bots to ride each other around, give them mobile shelter, or allow them transport across a sea!

To do before the first public testable release

There are still quite some features that we want to develop before we create a first public test release. Including these features in the first release will allow us to have a first version that already accurately portrays what the core of the mod will play like.

The following features are still in development, and will need to be finished before we can make a public test release:

• A flag capture system, allowing bots to capture certain areas of the map. This will tie into the "lose" condition of the mod: bots will attempt to capture flags, which will reduce the spawn options of the players (more or less like how the Siege gamemode in Native works).
• A progression system for players, allowing them to improve their equipment and class over the course of the game. We have a unique system in mind for this, quite different from previous editions of the mod, which we're very excited about. We'll create a different article specifically about this at a later point, to fully explain what our plan in this area is.

There are several other small improvements that we're working on in the meantime (better UI, extra equipment options, health restoration, etc), which will also likely make their way into the public test release.

If you would like to stay up to date with our progress, please join us on our Discord server! We regularly post sneak peeks there of what we're currently working on.

Our Full Invasion 3 ModDB page has been silent for a long time. This was unfortunately caused due to the fact that we were unable to properly begin developing the mod because the dedicated server files for Bannerlord were not released.

This has changed recently, however!

With the recent closed test for multiplayer testing (which our team got invited to) we've been able to get started on developing Full Invasion 3:

This also means the prediction we made in our last blog post (back in 2020) was sadly accurate: we couldn't get started until 2022.

Either way: over the past 2 months we have secretly been working on Full Invasion 3 in the background during a closed test with Taleworlds. Now that this test is concluded, we can share that we are working on the mod, and that we're close to ready to start with alpha testing! We are currently working on a Proof of Concept version of the mod, for which the development is looking very promising, and which will be released to the public when it's ready.

If you want to stay updated on the progress of development, join us on our Discord server! That is the main form of communication that we use, and also where we will be looking for testers for the mod. We also regularly share sneak peeks into our development Whenever important milestones for the mod are achieved, we will share them on ModDB too, but I don't look here nearly as much as I do on Discord.

Our team is extremely excited to finally get started on the development of the mod! We've been waiting for years to get started, and we're very quickly learning all the nuances of the systems we're using. We are very excited to share this with you, as you have all been waiting just as long as we have, so stay tuned for the upcoming public tests!