We've had our heads down for awhile working on 1.05 and will continue in that mode until it's finished. We have a lot (and I do mean a lot) of details to finish up on this version, but most of the major chunks are there and it's looking good. This will be our biggest version change to date.
The fleets are sailing around and we have the waypoint and command structure in place. The person with the highest overall ranking in his country gets precedence in commanding the fleet but it's their option whether they want to or not. Waypoints are inputted through a clipboard map. Issues such as how close you can bring the fleet to land are handled automatically and invalid waypoints are not accepted. While the carrier system will produce some interesting dynamics in the main arena, its use in special events will be even more interesting. CMs will have the ability to place carrier groups wherever they want them at the start of an event and then turn over control to the COs.
The manned gunner system is also in place now. You'll be able to man the 8", 5", and 40mm batteries on the different ships in the fleet. To man the different guns, you just need to go the carrier and select the manned gunner option just like you would select a plane. This will then give you an overhead view of the fleet and you can then pick out the ship and gun position that you wish to man. Gun positions are either player-controlled or automatic, not both. The large guns such as the 8" will only be player-controlled. Smaller weapons will primarily be autoguns but there will also be some player-controlled guns of the smaller type although we may not bother with anything smaller than the 40mm's. We also changed how the autoguns work and it acts and looks a lot more like you would expect. The 5" guns are dual purpose and players will be able to use them against shore positions and other fleets or against aircraft with their proximity fuzes. Although we're not doing it initially in 1.05, this system can also be used at any of the regular airfields or bases to put in player-controlled anti-aircraft and anti-tank guns. Fire-control is a pretty complicated subject that we're keeping simple. For the long-range heavy guns, you'll be able to mark targets on your map to give you rough range and bearing information. You can then use that information to get your shells in the neighborhood. Cooperating with a spotter plane will be a big help though.
The score system is being completely revised. We will now have separate rankings for fighter, bomber, attack, and vehicles. Each of those categories will have separate stats and different ranking formulas. The attack category is new and somewhat different than the other categories because many planes can fit into that category in addition to their main role. For those planes that have a secondary attack role, you'll be able to designate how you want your sortie scored prior to launching. So if you're loading up your fighter for some air-to-ground work, you'll probably want your sortie scored as an attack sortie rather than a fighter sortie and you'll be able to select between the two in the hangar. The overall ranking will be an average of these individual rankings.
The perk system is also in place. We don't have any perk planes going into 1.05, but we'll still have the system up and ready. It's been awhile since we've discussed the perk system so I'll describe the basics of it again. On the outside the perk system is a way for us to introduce some interesting but otherwise unbalancing planes on a limited basis but the benefits go deeper than that. Perk planes (and vehicles) would be things like Me 262s, Ta 152s, Tempests, B-29s, Ar 234s, Tiger IIs, etc. These are interesting rides but would be very unbalancing if they were available on an unlimited basis. So there won't be unlimited availability but they'll be available as bonuses or perks every so often.
You can earn a perk by accumulating perk points (or whatever we call these points) until you have reached the value of the perk plane that you want. You need to have the required amount of points to fly a given perk plane, but you do not lose those points unless you lose the perk plane, so survival is important when flying perk planes. These points are totally separate from the regular scoring system. There are three separate point totals, one for fighters, one for bombers, and one for vehicles. Flying fighters earns fighter perk points and those points can only be used on perk fighters, not perk bombers or vehicles. That's true for all 3 categories. Points are awarded for both kills and damaging and destroying enemy targets. This in turn is weighted by the type of plane that you and your opposition are using. Flying the less popular planes will get you more points whether you are in air-to-air or air-to-ground mode. Likewise, the higher quality the planes of your opposition, the more points you get for them. If you shoot down lower quality planes with higher quality ones, you don't get much for doing that but you do get a lot for the exact opposite. This makes shooting down a perk plane double rewarding as you deprive somebody of a perk and get more points for doing it.
The controls in the perk system are in how fast points are accumulated and what point levels the perks are set to. Perks can be set to be fairly frequent or very infrequent. That is something we'll have to adjust as we tune the system for the best gameplay. Because these points have a real and redeemable value, they're useful to influencing the flow of the game. Aside from making it useful to fly less popular planes, we could do things like awarding points to the side that wins the war or dropping perk prices when your side is greatly outnumbered. I think most players will find it to be a useful and flexible system that broadens the game.
That's about it for now. After this next version we're going to concentrate on plane production for awhile. We'll be pretty busy and low-key until this version is crunched out, but we're really looking forward to it. As to the when, don't ask because we don't know.
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Doug "Pyro" Balmos
HiTech Creations
