Greetings, Captain!
Today's an exciting day for Boat Crew, as we will be talking about our new system to dynamically generate engagements, opposed landings, and last, but not least, the latest introduction to our unit roster! This marks a big milestone in the development of the Campaign as we have officially resolved the part of Boat Crew's design that we found to be most technically involved. We're excited to be talking about it, so without further ado, let's go ahead and talk about it!
Current Situation:
First of all, let's talk about an observation we have made after our most recent changes to Assault behavior. As you can see, an American force takes Malapa by assault, which ends up becoming a low strength American base. This apparent weakness does not escape the notice of the Imperial Japanese forces that were already building up at the other side of Guadalcanal, who mount an overwhelming attack on Malapa and take it back as quickly as it was lost. The 21 Strength force that was the leftovers of the assault on Malapa leave early and do not participate in a likely doomed defense.
Our takeaway from this is that the current Assault mechanics, fairly reliably and naturally, lead to counterattacks as well as give the player a way to reliably guide assaults simply by going to a base with a few good men and shooting it up. That sort of impartial and incomplete control is exactly what we wanted to achieve with Assaults, and so we are gratified to see that the game already responds in that manner.
Of course, AI behavior is constantly being tweaked, and rest assured, the exhausted but still notable force that abandoned Malapa without a fight will be court martialed. Both because of the player factor and because of the inherent randomness that's a part of our auto-resolve system, we want the AI to be a little bolder in taking engagements that are close or even somewhat disadvantaged, dynamically generating occasions for the player to swoop in and save the day.
Now on to the most exciting part of this diary, dynamic map generation! This is an aspect of the game we've talked about having concerns about before, way back in the pre-reboot Developer's Diaries. We feel that we've finally had a satisfying resolution of this ongoing technical problem, and are happy to say that we can now generate chunks of the strategic map as a live combat map on the spot with reasonable load times!
The terrain of the generated area will match what it actually is in real life, within reason. These dynamically created maps have a fixed size and boundary distance, but they are large enough to allow for combat as well for escapes. The development of the system is of course ongoing, and we are sure there are improvements we can make. We're looking into having beachless coasts as many if not most coasts in the Solomons have the rain forests extending all the way to the sea. We'll see what the future brings on this front, but for now, we're happy to say that this problem is resolved and that we won't have to resort to our backup plan of making a grid of pre-made maps.
Next up are our bases, on which we can finally show some pictures! Most bases on the Solomons are little more than wooden piers connected to some sort of storage and a light garrison, which is what they will be in Boat Crew as well for the earlier stages of base development.
Of course, there will be more to show on this front and larger tiers of bases will get more elaborate and look more amenable to supporting large military operations, complete with paved surfaces and defensive installations powerful enough to deter all but the most daring PT Boat Captains.
Last but not least, we're happy to introduce the Type 2 Ka-Mi, the first Imperial Japanese amphibious tank. A light and somewhat weak enemy, large groups of Ka-Mi can nevertheless whittle you down with surprising haste.
Together with the playable base areas, they're the prelude to opposed landings we want to implement during Assaults. We'll go into more detail on that on future diaries, but for now, enjoy these little teasers!
That will be all for now, Captain!
T.T.