Set Sails!

Hello Patrons,

Today I would like to share a little bit of information about a small project I have been working on over the past last two weekends. (Also last Thursday but mainly weekends) 

Scorilo, from the Ancient Civilizations mod, was kind enough to offer to make a ship model for me for my small tests. And he created a really great looking bireme ship for me.

Now you might be saying "Yeah, it's just a model. Nice one, but it is still a model; many other mods have added such things to the game," which would be correct. 

But, some of you who like to look at things in more detail might have already noticed that soldiers are on the ship. And yes, that's exactly what you're thinking - this is a ship designed for battle! I know some of you don't like long texts, so I won't go into details of what this is, but I will just mention what I have done so far with the visuals! :) 

• Ships have full animation on their oars, along with splashes and other visual elements. I know some of you like visuals, so here it is.

And these small animations are not just limited to the oars, no - I also added a sail mechanic that opens and closes on demand and during boardings.

• Full semi-spherical camera controls and the ability to switch back and forth with the game camera.

It is really nice to see all these animations from this angle, as it gives the feeling of battle commanding on another level.

• A completely new engagement and boarding system. Once you get close enough, you can initiate boarding and your soldiers will immediately go and fight with the enemy. And you can also join them! This is exactly the same for AI ship commanders as well.

• A completely new boarded troop AI system for full-on battles on boarded ships, regardless of their orientation. Under normal circumstances, AI does not work on such elevated non-navmesh surfaces, but with this new system, they fight like they are fighting on the ground (this took an enormous amount of time)

• A sinking mechanic. Now ships that are fully boarded and taken over will sink after a certain time once units are moved back to their places. Due to the crappy nav-mesh in the game, I simply wait 10 seconds before initiating this. This means some troops can go down with the ship, which is fine. Also, this does not happen when you board the ship as a player (so that we don't force you to rush back to your ship). When you take control of the steering, it gets triggered.

• A completely new AI system for ship commanders that finds their targets, pathfinds (sort of), and boards enemy ships. Even if you are down or not commanding a particular ship, the AI will do their job and engage with the enemy.

• Reactive new UI for seeing your fleet and enemy fleet. Colors of the unit cars change based on the color of the banner of the faction. If I wouldn't alter faction banners in here, for example, Imperial would be pink/purple and Aserai would be lighter yellow tone. Unit cards are taken from Rome II: Total War. Barbarian, Persian, Roman and Hellenic units have all their different types (also ballista units..)

I also added ballistas to some ship types, so that your troops can use fire ballistas to other ships while moving. That is not fully done yet though. I'll finalize it before showing anything.

So I believe that is it! Now you might be wondering why this is not a video but a post, because I really didn't have time to record and create a video yet, but video will come soon when I have some free time. And once I can iron out some of the small bits, I'm planning to share this with the Patrons as well so that you all can try this. No ETA on this though since I don't know how much time the bug fixing will take.