End of August Update - Ships and Field Artillery

Hello everyone,

Seeing as everyone voted for a tie between working on more naval content and more field guns and artillery, that's what I've been working on.

First off, naval units.

We are aiming for something a little bit closer to accurate scaling for units, and thus naval units will be quite large. Of course, as mentioned before, there will be a number of engine fixes needed to make these units work properly.

While naval units can possess multiple guns/turrets with their own independent firing arc, the upcoming render engine changes will be needed to make it all look correct. As you can see from the above GIF, turrets and muzzle flares often clip over the rest of the ship incorrectly. Z-depth maps will be used to prevent this visual error from occurring.

There's also the issue of collision size.

As you can see, the kamikaze boats need to target the center of the frigate, which is a bit awkward. All units (except for infantry, which occupy subcells) can only have the movement collision of a single ingame tile. This will need to be changed to allow for units to occupy multiple cells, which will prevent units from clipping through eachother, and of course make it so that a large unit actually possesses the physical size appropriate to its visual size.

Also note the landing pad on the back of the frigate; the engine will need fixes to the way unit aircraft landing works, so that helicopters can dock with it to reload. There will be a type of sub-hunting helicopter that is supposed to function in tandem with this frigate, though it can also work in tandem with other helicopter types to function as a kind of mini aircraft carrier that can rearm and reload friendly aircraft.

Submarines also need some additional functionality. While a diving mechanic can be approximated using existing stealth mechanics, it would be more realistic and visually sensible to add an actual diving system, so that submarines need to take a moment to submerge or emerge from the water. This would also help prevent them from being overpowered, as they tend to be in other RTS's.

Landing ships also need to have some additional engine logic applied to get them (and transports in general) to work correctly. Currently, while units can be loaded into other transport units, they will enter and exit from any position. In addition to looking a bit strange, this also makes transports a bit overpowered, since they can instantly deploy every single unit they are carrying. Ideally this would be changed to a system where transports have an explicit hatch opening/closing animation, a point and direction from which units enter or exit transports, and also a rate at which carried units are deployed.

Another feature that will be needed will be a system so that, when naval units are destroyed, they will rotate to a specific position and begin their actual death animation, rather than just exploding into oblivion. This will allow us to create sophisticated death animations while keeping the sprite sheet relatively small.

Now onto field guns.

While not as much work was done in this area, we have a few new units to show. 

A powerful TOW-like missile launcher, good at killing enemy armor and (to a lesser extent) enemy structures. 

An anti-tank railgun. Excellent at destroying enemy armor, and can also target aircraft when deployed (note that this feature has not yet been implemented). 

A pneumatic artillery launcher. Good for destroying infantry and light vehicles, as well as enemy structures, but lacks accuracy. Is more effectively as a force-multiplier to work in tandem with other units during assaults.

Note that, as with naval units, field guns will require further engine changes to work correctly. There need to be changes to the way unit movement works to allow for certain units to tow field guns (and other objects), as field guns by themselves move exceptionally slowly. This will greatly factor into gameplay. While much cheaper than vehicle units, they totally lack mobility and armor, and thus are effectively glass cannons, to be used as base defenses or a means to fortify existing positions on the map. Towing them will allow players to move them around (relatively) quickly, so a player could have them moved up to the outskirts of an enemy base to use them in a siege. 

Also, they mostly need to deploy to actually fire. While a few deploy animations have been completed, these are time-consuming to produce, and likely most of these units will not have their deploy animations worked on until near the end of development, during the polishing phase.

Anyways, in total, the naval and field gun unit list so far includes:

Empire:
- a "midget" submarine with a small crew and weak armor that can fire a single torpedo. Effective as an anti-naval swarm unit.

- a gunboat with multiple cannons and MG's. Effective for amphibious assaults, but can hold its own against small naval craft.

- a massive lander, for moving large groups of infantry and vehicles around. Includes a few MG turrets for anti-air defense.

- a Corvette for anti sub defense. Includes some anti-air defense as well.

- a Destroyer, for general anti-ship and anti-air defense. Includes a torpedo launcher (another feature that will need to be added, as the engine doesn't quite support this yet)

- a small infantry quad-mortar for general light artillery purposes. Can be upgraded to fire gas shells for anti-infantry use or to clear out enemy buildings

- anti-aircraft autocannon that can be used against ground targets as well

- railgun for anti-tank and anti-air duty.

Warband:

- kamikaze speedboat for anti-ship duty. 

- "turbo lander". Can carry a large contingent of units, but functions as a ramming vessel for anti-ship duty. Includes jets that can be toggled on temporarily to increase speed.

- Pneumatic rocket launcher. Fires incendiary shells to destroy light vehicles, infantry and buildings.

NWO:

- Gunboat for patrols and small amphibious assaults. Includes some anti-air ability.

- Frigate for anti-sub duty. VTOLs and helicopters can land onboard to reload and rearm. Works in tandem with anti-sub aircraft.

- Missile sub. Stealth naval rocket artillery unit.

- TOW missile launcher. Useful anti-tank unit, and can be used as an anti-structure siege unit.

Note that this list is hardly exhaustive. There will be additional naval and field gun units, such as an amphibious lander and laser destroyer vessel for the NWO, and amphibious tank/infantry transport and submersible cruiser for Empire, and a giant bouncing cannonball artillery and flamethrowing patrol boat for Warband, to name a few.

That's all for now. I'll return in about a week with the next community poll, as I'll be out of state until next Monday.