One of the main features of Airship Academy is the aerial combat between ships. There is a lot of thing in this screenshot to unpack, though they would all make sense once you get used to it. Airship Academy is hardcore, so we respect our players' ability to cope with the complexity. Hence, we are going to make everything highly accessible without dumbing anything down.
Starting from the focal point in the middle of the screen, 2 airships are having a go at one another. The one with the circle around it is our ship, it is a combat corvette with red sails and a wooden frame. The opposite is a non-combat freighter repurposed into a combat vessel by some poor pirate raiders. You can notice that our ship is moving forward slowly by looking at the arrow icon in front of it. The line connecting the two ships meaning that we are engaging the other targeted ship. You will at one point, fight against multiple opponents in Airship Academy.
Each ship consists of many parts from weapons, ammo storage, power generators, to captain quarters and luxury lounge. Each part contributes to overall ships' performance and attack behaviors and can be targetted and destroyed in battle individually, causing ships to lose performance as more parts are destroyed.
To the top of the screen are our meta information. On the top-left, we have the current mission that the player is tasked with. In the middle-upper is the current area that we are in while the middle-lower shows who we are fighting against. The top-right is the date and time with a setting button neatly fitted in.
To the left side of the screen is the list of officers onboard our airship, you can notice icons next to them which are their currently active skills. We can ask the officers to use their skills to take the advantage of the situation or turn the situation around. We could also leave it to officers to fly our airship in battle by just right-clicking and let go of the helm.
To the right side of the screen are the opponent's officers, they came from many places and many backgrounds. They also have their skill sets that they employ in battles according to the situation. Smart ones could turn the battle against us very quickly if we let our guard down.
At the bottom left of the screen is our ship's high-level status. To the top is the name of our ship called "The Destiny". The circular GUI with a drawing of our ship is showing the firing and firepower status on multiple sides of our ship. If our ship lost a gun, the green area around the area edge of the firing arc would grow shorter. There are multiple performance parameters shown here, from top to bottom are 1) Mana Shield Integrity 2) Hull Integrity 3) Command Quarters Integrity 4) Propulsion Force 5) Power 6) Ammo Storage 7) Supplies 8) Crew's Morale 9) Ship's Velocity and Turn Rate.
At the bottom right is the same as our ship's high-level status but it is presenting the opponent's status. Normally this would not be fully observable and require our navigator's observation skill to uncover. You can subdue your opponents by destroying their command quarters, drives, powerplant, or get rid of all of their crews somehow.
To the bottom-most of the screen is the log that displays the information for things that have happened recently.
So? What do you think? Does the combat in Airship Academy too complex? Just right? Or too easy for you?
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