Polished and ingame ready, Xebec, Polacre, Rowring-Line and Galleass:
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Finally finished the Second Rate model, and modified abit the First Rate model.
From the left to the right:
- Warship (Antiquity War Galley)
- Ship of the Line (Elite Galley)
- Flagship (Leviathan)
I got one last ship to work on, the Tallship to replace the Antiquity Galley and then I’m probably going to publish the models on separated mods per ship reskins and also start working on the gameplay part.
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Those sails in front looks really weird.
On certain angles they do yes, I’ll try someday to fix them, but they are actually kinda historical, and they were weird.
I’ll maybe just remove one of the two, as I managed to have a unique identification feature on those ships. My concern beeing that people would not recognize what ship is what otherwise.
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Better like that ?
The two on the bottom are reskin of the Catapult Ship and Onager Ship.
So now the “Sailing Ship” of the Galley era… Need to find ideas for it, I’m still not sure how to make the model I want, maybe a blend of the Golden Hind and Carracks, if I can’t find historical depiction of Sailing Ships of that era.
So here is a first shot of the Sailship WIP (will be for antiquity galley replacement)
And final model completed.
Left: Line Frigate. Right: Sailship.
Now with a video showcasing the entire ship collection I’m gonna use so far.
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So here is a side-view showcasing of the ship selection so far, showing the idea I got in my head about the ship line upgrading / evolution. (they are sorted by hull design, not by upgrade-lines on the images)
I’ve based my choices on historical documentaries and podcasts and lots of wikipedia researches about what the middle age and age of sail warfare was. As I can’t really do some Broadside system outside of trigger modification of TWO units (not enought to fit a roaster), I’m gonna focus more on vanilla like combat type rather than historical combat style.
The Rower Ships will feature 4 units: Galiot > Galizabra > Bastarda > Lanterna, replacing the Lembos-line ships.
-(Class: “Ship”)-
They will be fast-moving ship, not very tanky but swift enought to do hit & run, basically it’s Cav Archer for water combat. They will have hooks for close combats and frontal Culverin, think of them like the Fire Lancer, having a burst shot to engage and then goes melee, while having the Hit & Run battlefield role of a Cav Archer.
The Galleass is going to specially counter the Rower ships, replacing Lou Chuan.
-(Class: “Long-Range Warship”)-
Historically the Galleass was invented to counter the Spanish Bastardas (3rd upgrade of the Rower ships) and were bascially galley-era BattleShips, where the Rower-ships were kind of sub-marines if you compare it to ww1 naval combats.So they’re going to be extremly tank and powerfull, but slow. I’m using the Lou Chuan so it will also feature a different attack against buildings, a Mortar ballistic style shot, while main attacks will be closer to the Hussite Wagon style.
The Fire Dromon is going to replace the Dragon Ship.
-(Class: “Fire Ship”)-
As the entire “Fire-Ship” line was designed in the original game to represent Byzantine Dromons, I made a Dromon inspired by AoE4 model, based on a museum model. The difference will be that I’m gonna give them the Greek Fire doctrina, spawning fire-area taken from the Mounted Trebuchet unit to make some “napalm like” vibe.
The Cruiser Ships will feature 5 units, split into two branch based on civs design: Hoy > Zabra > Galeoncete / Hoy > Brigantine > Frigate replacing Monorem-line & their Hero variant ships.
-(Class: “Ship”)-
Historically, the “Frigate” is a very old ship type, that was kind of a secret weapon. It featured low profile hull, meant for speed and boarding. So this ship-line will be mainly focused on boarding combat (melee attacks) while still featuring a ranged capability (charged projectile). The main difference between them and the Rower-Ships will be the fire-power. The Cruiser-Ships will have a strong ranged punch capability, designed to “wound” the ennemy (or to “disable” it) before boarding. Think of them more like Ratha/Immortal that can swap from ranged to melee, while the Rower-Ships are limited to the long reload of their ranged attack. The way of using them will be a compromise between risking to die from enemy ranged attacks, or from ennemy melee attacks. They will be agile, but not as fast as the Rower-Ships so not mean to engage-disengage, but not meant to sustain long fights. They are more slow-ship hunters, to counter the heavy combat ships.
The Dutchman will feature 2 units: Dunkirker > Pinace replacing Turtle Ships.
-(Class: “Capital Ship”)-
Those ship will be some more heavily equiped Cruiser Ships, slower but more tanky too, focusing more on fire-power than boarding but not bad at boarding. Historically they are not military ships that much, more some private people turning into fighters, some went rogue as pirates, but later the type of ship they used were incorporated into military navies too. They are a direct counter to the Cruiser-Ships, so you can think of them as Jinete/Genitor.
The Tall Ships will feature 5 units, split into two branche based on civs design: Sail Ship > Heavy Frigate > Ship of the Line / Sail Ship > War Fregata > War Galeon replacing Antiquity Galley & their hero ships.
-(Class: “Long-Range Warship”)-
To make simple: Broadsides. Those ships will be extremly powerfull in ranged combat, but also very tanky, and slow. While still capable of wild melee fights, due to the amount of crewman, their main purpose is ranged combat. The first ship will be kinda weak against Rower-Ships due to historical reason of technology evolution, and mainly because of their light-artillery fitting, the other upgrades will be artillery beasts. You can think of them as naval version of Teutonic Knight but if the Teutonic Knight was a ranged unit instead of melee unit.
The Indiaman will feature 2 units: Double Frigate > Man-o-War replacing Catapult/Onager ships.
-(Class: “Long-Range Warship”)-
Historically the first ships of that period to be designed from the start as War ships, featuring heavy fire-power and strong sail rigging. They are the ancestor of the Ship of the Line type ships, but are more recent than the Sailing Ships of the Galley warfare era. They were, if I recall correctly, designed to fight against the Dunkirker Privateers, so I’m gonna give them that Countering logic, to counter the Dutchman type ships. Think of them as the Camel, there to counter cavalry.
The Line Frigate will be a special ship, replacing the Thirisadai.
-(Class: “Capital Ships”)-
It will be a blend of Tall-Ship and Cruiser-Ship purpose, not as powerfull as a Tall-Ship while not as fast as a Cruiser-Ship. Designed specifically to counter the Cruiser-Ships, think of them as “Pirate-Hunter” ships, keeping the original Thirisadai purpose of “killing galleons” but extending it abit more. You can think of the “Scareborough” in Black Sails tv show for this ship, and in AoE2 unit equivalent, I’d say Cataphract in ship version.
The Flagship will be a First Rate ship, replacing the Leviathan.
-*(Class: “Long-Range Warship”)-
It will represent the most heavily armoured ships you can make, basically the fleet commander ships. While using the Leviathan, which already feature an Aura system, the goal is to boost friendly ships moral while the commander is there, but not yet sure if I keep the current bonus or if I’ll change them. If you need more specific idea of what this ship will be, basically: HMS Victory. Outside of Chronicle, the only unit I can think of to compare it is the Centurio, strong unit, boosting another type of unit arround it.
The Xebec will be a faster trade ship, replacing the Junk.
-(Class: “Ship”)-
I’m gonna try to see if I can give it combat capability without causing crashes, if I can’t, it will still be there to do trading.
The Polacre will be an even better trade ship, replacing the Merchant Ship.
-(Class: “Ship”)-
Same as the Xebec,but with a better rigging, eventually an upgrade of the Xebec, not decided yet.
I tryied to change the edmolition ship behavior but it seems their self-kill mechanic is hardcoded, so I may use their model on the “Boarding Ships”, as it was my base idea for them, making some monk type ships for piracy purpose.
In addition to that, I got a reskin of the Antiquity Transport ship, which will be bascially a better transport ship, eventually featuring combat capability if the game allows me to do so.
I’m not sure yet if I’m gonna change the other vanilla ships behavior, as my goal is not to do a Total Conversion but an “expansion” of the naval warfare with a thematic centered on european ship types. As you can see I sacrified some very specific ships, like the Turtle ship, not because I don’t like asia but that my project setting will mainly be the Caribbean, Medditerranean and waters arround Europe, Africa and America. As I could not do a proper junk design, and that I needed ships, I choose to sacrifice the Korean unique ship for the needs of my campaigns. Then why am I keeping the Longship ? For two major reason, the first beeing it’s difference in an attribut that I can’t edit in XS yet, which determing formation spacing, making them very close to each other. The second reason beeing a need for viking ships in one campaign setup.
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Small update as we’re getting closer and closer to Viking Sagas’ release. I’ve been playing a lot to Mount and Blade 2 Bannerlord recently, with the dlc Warsails, and I’m gonna rework the Fire-Dromon sails once the viking dlc is out, with a front lateen sail and back square sail. I’m also planning to work on some more models, like the dromakion, and other ships featured in their naval dlc.
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Alright finally I choose to reskin the viking longships and dreki with some lateen sail ships in addition to the custom dromon sail rework.
The ships replacing the longships will be: Dhow > Xebec > Polacre, meant for boarding parties and quick manoevering due to their sail designs. (with animated sails of course)
They will serve as pirate style ships to make the translation between the galley era and the full-riged ship era, etc.
I finally found how to bypass my demo ship hardcoded blasting issue ! I’m simply gonna use Admiral Yi and Vasco de Gamma as units to use the skins of demo and heavy demo ships, so I’ll have another unit line in addition to the lateen one, for the boarding parties.
Got some very small tweaks to do in the coming days and then I’ll be able to start working on gameplay. I discovered that the rotation speed can be used to do some interesting things but I’ll have to test it out further before knowing where it can lead me to.
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Here we go, first sorting of units to see what will counter what.
I made few mistakes on the naming in the recording but I got the right names on my .txt file so don’t worry.
All non-vanilla ships will be tied to their vanilla equivalent, with very similar stats but some tweaks and ability variation to allow players to easily handle the hecktons of new ships without beeing completly lost on how to use them.
I’ve also made some visual tips on what the unit will be for. The sails determine the movement behavior, speed, etc. The Hull shape determine the combat style, while some details such as the blue lines on the hull are there to say “boarding is my strength use me in melee !” so player can easily understand what they’re facing even without having to eat an entire naval encyclopedia when starting to play.
I’ll work on a naval testing mission asap, to gather combat datas from players and balance things asap before starting to work on any mission design.
So far, 45 different combat ships, and when adding civilian ships (without hidden in editor ships) it rises to a 57 ships in total including vanillas inside of course.
I’m gonna work on a very strong XS scripting method that will potentially even be update-proof, by grabbing stats from vanilla units and then apply maths operations without any hardcoded numbers so the balance stays as close as vanilla as possible, and will carry on over time even when devs do big balance changes.
More to come soon™.
In the meantime, here is an epic music that the author allowed me to include in the naval mod project !
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So a quick update on my progress with the script.
I’ve done the formation “CreateTable” so far. And while cooking I thought about somethin. In XS you can get object position, and even better, target of the current move. Getting the current position and the target position allows to get a vector that determine the current heading in °. This bascially mean I can add Wind to my scenarios and do some very deep naval mechanics for rpg style missions.
Not all scenarios of the project will feature such “simulation” mechanics, but some will have that, think of magellan’s voyage for instance where it’s not fighting and conquering but exploring, taking notes, gathering informations, etc.
More soon™
Lateen Galley line and Galleass first combat logic preview:
Stats are not done yet, only the visual and the combat logic.
The goal is to have a first shot from a long distance, then either wait for ennemy to come closer or move towards it and shoots projectiles to represent the crew onboard. The Galleass is a direct Counter to the Lateen Galley line, carrying lots of artillery pieces, will be a very slow moving fortress, weakness is its speed and eventually the reload time, I’ll have to tweak it abit probably.
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Cool.
Adding comment so op can post again without issue.
Unit combat behavior progress showcase, been working on projectile placement / behaviors / specificities, and I’ve started to do the big ships stats.
I’ve also started to think about some technologies to add for the mod, like high-velocity cannon to add pass-through damaging, red-cannonball for flamming damage what so ever, etc.