Some are from the SMXworkshop, some are from Gimp, dark green background is smxworkshop while light green background is gimp so yeah it’s not as it look ingame.
For some reason, smxworkshop transform the shadow on prewview. But also some part of the models are upscaled / downscaled abit, so some part may be “less clean”. Maybe one day I’ll rework all pixel per pixel, but not today I’m too lazy for that.
I’m soon gonna start work on the real gameplay, here are some ideas I’m gonna use.
-Boarding Ship Logic-
Instead of using the actual boarding ships within the dataset, that would requieres a custom datamod for the scenario trigger to be able to target them, I’m gonna “fake” the mechanics using seven things:
- Ghulam “frontal” area effect mechanic, so damage are only done in front of the shop that board the other.
- Conversion Task, capturing a ship is just changing its team so conversion task.
- Aura task, affecting only ennemy, on a small radius, multiplying their movement speed by 0.01 to make them “very slow”.
- Ratha “switch weapon” mechanic, to swap from ranged attck and boarding melee attack, to represent cannon fight / boarding fight.
- Looting task, granting gold on kill, or other resources, I can fitler what unit drop what.
- Ram “speed-garrison”, those ship for the boarding mod will probably be some modified rams that will have their top speed increased by the amount of sailors carried.
- Garisson task, allowing units to board those units, even if they are not able to from the start.
It won’t be perfect, but it will be enought, I hope, to represent piracy boarding.
-Broadside Battery Ship Logic-
So here I’m gonna do a funny trick, there is a cool unit in the game that absorbe damage passing over its hitbox, the Hussite Wagon. But the cool thing is not that, it’s how this unit attacks. It’s the only unit that can attack 360° without changing its rotation angle, so it can make a ship attacking with broadside guns, left-right-front-back facing ennemy. This will be used for the heavy gun loaded ships, Frigates and Battleships.
The main restriction here is that there is only the Hussite and the Elite Hussite Wagons able to fight like that, so two unit per player. For the player, I can use tricks with triggers to allow multiple variations of the same unit for the stats, but for the IA, it will be harder to allow them multiple battleship types.
My key idea for those ships is that they could fire either all at once for battle drilled crew or chaotic gun shots for non-battle-drilled crew, to “fake” the idea I’ll be using six things:
- Kipchak “bulk volley”, the current parameter on the Hussite Wagon fires all at once.
- Chukonu “sequence shot”, as it behaved originally, Hussite Wagon used to fire in a sequence.
- Ratha “switch weapon” mechanic, to swap from all-gun “kipchak bulk” volley to gun-by-gun “chukonu sequence”, for crew able to fight in the two way, the all-gun will reload faster but may be doing more miss shots, while the gun-by-gun will be longer to reload but more accurate shots.
- Scorpion Projectile “pass-through”, I have to test it, but I think I can give any projectile the same behavior as the scorpion one, by altering the attribute of the projectile rather than the unit firing it to have it passing through units in a line.
- Castle/Forum “garrison projectile”, I have to test that too, but I think I can increase the number of secondary projectile shot by the unit garissoned inside.
- Garison task, allowing those untis to transport sailors, will have to make tests to see how balance it corectly.
For a balance matter, I won’t give the heavy battle ships “100 gun” capability…Because they would be able to fight front, back, left, and right with all their 100 projectiles and it will not be good. In constrast to the boarding ship, which will have speed increase based on the sailors amount, this ship will have firepower increase based on the sailors amount.
-Fishing Ships Logic-
I plan to give the fishing a funny gameplay, using the oysters and others things, maybe shipwreck gathering, it’s still blurry in my mind but I’ll test ideas once I have them. Nothing realy huge to say about those ships, they will follow the basic fishing ships mechancis, maybe having ratha like swaping capability to have abit of combat capability, all depend if I can give those ships combat capability without swaping or not.
-Merchant Ship Logic-
Flyut, flyut, flyut… Basically, trading gameplay, will more be based on quests and economy than real gameplay mechancis, nothing very special to say about them for now.
-Raft Logic-
I’m gonna try one idea, when you ship sink, survivor will spawn on a raft and you’ll have to reach an island asap to survive and continue the fight. I’m not decided yet on how I’ll manage the food consumption, but it’s more gonna by trigger logic than gameplay logic. The idea is mainly to avoid the simple “oh you’re dead, defeat” and focus on the idea of, sometime risk are worth the try, while sometime you’ll have to restart from nothing cause you were too greedy.
-Treasure Logic-
I’m gonny try modifying resource like bush, gold, stone, to have them droping a chest that provide gold on pick up using let’s say villager. It’s more of a ground gameplay than a ship gameplay, but with oyster and fishing ship, it might be a ship logic too.
That’s bascially where I’m going too from now on, with sail color changing when you decide to become privateer for spain or france, and I’ll probably go silent for sometime as the ship models work is pretty done and now it’s gameplay and then releasing the mod.
Once the mod is released, I’ll probably start a new topic about the naval logic I’m gonna use on multiple scenarios with the same balancing ideas.
First scenario will take place in the Carribean, on a map that some may find familiar. (I’ve contacted the author to have authorization to reuse his work already ^^)