My idea is that some areas you go to combat in would differ both aesthetically and would cause you to come up with different strategies.
For example: You attack a city located in a mountainous region, so in combat there would be mountains to impede your movement, and possibly would block some types of weapons.
Or, you attack a city that has a lower density of Suspendium in the ground, causing your ships to not go as high, and have you rely more on ground troops.However, this would also mean there would be no floating islands to block you.
Furthermore you could have island towns that cannot be attacked with ground troops, and if an airship crashes, the light ships will float, but if it's too heavy it will sink and flood with water, killing crew, and gradually harming systems.
Any feedback on this idea is much apreciated
Yes! There could be mountainous terrain impeding land vehicles when those get added, to go with the mountain background. Or milder terrain with a blue tinted mountain background to make it appear in the background. There could be rolling hills, flat land, boulders everywhere, big valleys and single big mountains in the middle that only Toads can get over. It would really add an extra degree of strategy to the game.
Ships in water with suspendium still offline could still "ground" and float, but without enough suspendium they would gradually sink, bottom to top.
There could be floating suspendium island towns/defenses!
I was actually thinking about making my own suggestion topic when I got around to making mockups about having different biomes in the campaign map. Whatever biome the fight started over would affect the terrain and background. When fighting over a forest there would be trees in the background and foreground. But when fighting near a forest there would be trees in the background but not the foreground. When the fight starts over the ocean there would be water and an ocean background. But when the fight starts near the ocean there could be a beach!
Similar climates could be grouped together. There could be marshes, autumn forests, red mountains, dead forests, ruined cities, scarred terrain of a past battle, mesas, deserts, plains, grassy hills, pine forests, snowy forests and tundras, etc!
There could be a city background, that would be behind the defenses!
I somehow missed this thread at the time it was posted.
Basically, yes to everything. :D Concretely, there's going to be a lot of implementation details, but stuff I definitely want to do:
Foreground trees, bushes, housed. Basically stuff to bump into. :D
Mountains that actually impede airship travel. So fleets won't just have a speed but also a service ceiling that may restrict where they can go.
Low and high Suspendium regions. Those will make sense once there's landships, basically.
That leaves water, which is something I have been chewing on. Right now, if you intercept another fleet on top of an ocean, land spawns spontaneously below you, which is pretty daft. And having a fight over water, or partially over water, would provide some interesting tactical differences.
So the main question is really what exactly happens when an airship hits the water. And leading on from that, if it's possible to encourage it to float. In practice, if you're going to be fighting over water, it may make sense to give your airship an actual watertight ship's hull, so it can just float. At that point, of course, the obvious next step is to just support normal water ships, much like I want to support landships...
Lore-wise, you could say that the tops of high mountains are too high for any suspendium dust to blow up there. It would make the strategic decisions in the map screen much deeper. Instead of just flying from city to city, fleets would have to be unrestricted and fly anywhere. That could lead to a bunch of strategic possibilities - like blockading a narrow mountain pass. Maybe there could be a "patrol" order, and if an enemy fleet flies into a certain radius, a battle would commence.
For oceans, lore-wise maybe a thin layer of suspendium dust collects on the surface, allowing airships to fly over them.
Maybe storms could appear occasionally, sweeping across the map and washing the suspendium dust away, creating temporary "dead zones" for airships until the dust returns. The dust could come back gradually, slowly increasing service ceilings in the area back from zero.
Ships caught in a storm wouldn't be destroyed, but they could be grounded until enough dust returns for them to get lift.
Here's some ideas on water I posted in another thread:
As for water, Airships with enough suspendium to fly at all would float in the water. Maybe the water wouldn't go over it's lowest tiles, wouldn't want all those open hatches to flood. If there's hull breaches on the lowest tiles, water could seep in, and crewmembers would have to wade. The airship wouldn't start sinking at all if it still had enough suspendium though.
If there isn't enough suspendium lift left to keep floating, the airship would sink. The speed it sinks at could depend on the number of hull breaches there are below water. Water could rush outward from a hull breach, pushing crewmembers away, and gradually flooding the deck.
Here's some different stages the crewmembers could go through when being flooded:
If the water reaches a crewmember's knees - they move slower
If the water reaches a crewmember's hips - Their movement speed would be cut in half, and a wading animation could display. At this stage they would abandon their weapons and climb to a higher deck, but some crewmembers will still come down to transport ammo and tools and things. Suspendium chambers would still be manned.
If the water reaches a crewmember's shoulders - A swimming animation is displayed, their feet no longer touch the floor. All crewmembers will swim for a higher part of the ship at this point.
A crewmember would drown after 10(?) seconds if water floods over their head.
Able Airman
My idea is that some areas you go to combat in would differ both aesthetically and would cause you to come up with different strategies. For example: You attack a city located in a mountainous region, so in combat there would be mountains to impede your movement, and possibly would block some types of weapons. Or, you attack a city that has a lower density of Suspendium in the ground, causing your ships to not go as high, and have you rely more on ground troops.However, this would also mean there would be no floating islands to block you. Furthermore you could have island towns that cannot be attacked with ground troops, and if an airship crashes, the light ships will float, but if it's too heavy it will sink and flood with water, killing crew, and gradually harming systems. Any feedback on this idea is much apreciated
Commodore
Yes! There could be mountainous terrain impeding land vehicles when those get added, to go with the mountain background. Or milder terrain with a blue tinted mountain background to make it appear in the background. There could be rolling hills, flat land, boulders everywhere, big valleys and single big mountains in the middle that only Toads can get over. It would really add an extra degree of strategy to the game.
Ships in water with suspendium still offline could still "ground" and float, but without enough suspendium they would gradually sink, bottom to top.
There could be floating suspendium island towns/defenses!
I was actually thinking about making my own suggestion topic when I got around to making mockups about having different biomes in the campaign map. Whatever biome the fight started over would affect the terrain and background. When fighting over a forest there would be trees in the background and foreground. But when fighting near a forest there would be trees in the background but not the foreground. When the fight starts over the ocean there would be water and an ocean background. But when the fight starts near the ocean there could be a beach!
Similar climates could be grouped together. There could be marshes, autumn forests, red mountains, dead forests, ruined cities, scarred terrain of a past battle, mesas, deserts, plains, grassy hills, pine forests, snowy forests and tundras, etc!
There could be a city background, that would be behind the defenses!
Aerial Emperor
I somehow missed this thread at the time it was posted.
Basically, yes to everything. :D Concretely, there's going to be a lot of implementation details, but stuff I definitely want to do:
That leaves water, which is something I have been chewing on. Right now, if you intercept another fleet on top of an ocean, land spawns spontaneously below you, which is pretty daft. And having a fight over water, or partially over water, would provide some interesting tactical differences.
So the main question is really what exactly happens when an airship hits the water. And leading on from that, if it's possible to encourage it to float. In practice, if you're going to be fighting over water, it may make sense to give your airship an actual watertight ship's hull, so it can just float. At that point, of course, the obvious next step is to just support normal water ships, much like I want to support landships...
Commodore
Lore-wise, you could say that the tops of high mountains are too high for any suspendium dust to blow up there. It would make the strategic decisions in the map screen much deeper. Instead of just flying from city to city, fleets would have to be unrestricted and fly anywhere. That could lead to a bunch of strategic possibilities - like blockading a narrow mountain pass. Maybe there could be a "patrol" order, and if an enemy fleet flies into a certain radius, a battle would commence.
For oceans, lore-wise maybe a thin layer of suspendium dust collects on the surface, allowing airships to fly over them.
Maybe storms could appear occasionally, sweeping across the map and washing the suspendium dust away, creating temporary "dead zones" for airships until the dust returns. The dust could come back gradually, slowly increasing service ceilings in the area back from zero.
Ships caught in a storm wouldn't be destroyed, but they could be grounded until enough dust returns for them to get lift.
Here's some ideas on water I posted in another thread:
As for water, Airships with enough suspendium to fly at all would float in the water. Maybe the water wouldn't go over it's lowest tiles, wouldn't want all those open hatches to flood. If there's hull breaches on the lowest tiles, water could seep in, and crewmembers would have to wade. The airship wouldn't start sinking at all if it still had enough suspendium though.
If there isn't enough suspendium lift left to keep floating, the airship would sink. The speed it sinks at could depend on the number of hull breaches there are below water. Water could rush outward from a hull breach, pushing crewmembers away, and gradually flooding the deck.
Here's some different stages the crewmembers could go through when being flooded:
If the water reaches a crewmember's knees - they move slower
If the water reaches a crewmember's hips - Their movement speed would be cut in half, and a wading animation could display. At this stage they would abandon their weapons and climb to a higher deck, but some crewmembers will still come down to transport ammo and tools and things. Suspendium chambers would still be manned.
If the water reaches a crewmember's shoulders - A swimming animation is displayed, their feet no longer touch the floor. All crewmembers will swim for a higher part of the ship at this point.
A crewmember would drown after 10(?) seconds if water floods over their head.
Commodore
Also - Maybe when over water, crewmen could refill water tanks by walking to a hatch and lowering buckets.