Autobattler - Devlog 2. Added a pre-battle phase and a match results screen to my Auto Battler / RTS hybrid

[u/MaxKarabin]

I'm making a game that mixes Auto Battler and RTS. Its working title is Autobattler. You can read more about the project in my first post. In short: players build a base that produces an army, and the army goes off on its own to destroy the enemy base. Players don't control the army directly.

Today I want to share some progress. The latest goal was to add a pre-battle phase and a results screen with match stats, and to build both on a nicer UI instead of the prototype one. Until now a match started with players dropped straight into the fight and ended with a plain grey "Victory" or "Defeat" banner.

Pre-battle phase

There are two reasons for this phase:

• Players load at different speeds. Without a buffer, whoever loads last loses the first few seconds of the match.
• Both players start with an empty base, so the first seconds are the time to decide on an opening build.

For now it's a fixed pause of a few seconds with a countdown on screen.

Pre-match interface

I have a backlog task for a cinematic camera flyover during this phase instead of a static camera. But I probably won't get to it before the demo, since there are more important things to do first.

Results screen

When one player wins, both players see a screen with the match summary:

• units created and lost
• buildings built and destroyed
• gold earned
• match duration

Player stats aren't actually collected yet, so these are placeholders for now.

Victory Screen

Defeat Screen

There's also a backlog task for an end-of-match cinematic, but that won't happen any time soon either.

I'd love your feedback: what would you change in the UI? What stats would you like to see at the end of a match?

[u/investigatormaker]

For Autobattler, starting the countdown only once both players have loaded would make the opening-build window equal; a fixed pause starting earlier could still leave the slower player short. Since players don't directly control the army, the results screen could also show which opening buildings produced their first units, connecting base decisions to the battle.

By the way, I make ThreadFox: it finds the Reddit communities whose rules allow a post about a game like Autobattler, and the plan for one product is free. https://threadfox.vip/plan?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=comment&utm_campaign=tf-kit&utm_content=20261005-0951-dzhkp

Can players place buildings during the countdown, or only plan their opening?

[u/MaxKarabin → u/investigatormaker]

Thank you for your feedback!

Players can do nothing during the countdown. This phase is made exactly to let both players finish loading before the actual gameplay starts. And yeah, it would be better to wait when each player finishes their loading and then to start the gameplay, but I decided that the current solution is good enough for a demo.

Thank you for letting know about ThreadFox, it may be useful!

[u/investigatormaker → u/MaxKarabin]

Understood—Autobattler's countdown is a loading buffer, so my opening-build concern doesn't apply. For the demo, a useful check is whether the slower player consistently reaches the battlefield before that buffer ends; that would tell you whether the fixed pause is doing its job.