Greetings Captain,
You know the drill. We're back with another reboot of the Developer's Diary series, indexed T# for third reboot. The last Developer's Diary was back in March, and the game reached its current version all the way back in April.
Although we were active in both our Discord channel and the Steam Community forums, we recognize that we have gone too long without a Developer's Diary. Therefore, before we get into the main subject matter of today's diary, we would like to explain the long bout of silence.
Those of you who follow our discussions on the Discord channel might remember that we mentioned working on a unit creator. The unit creator was meant to be a tool that would expedite the process of bringing models into the game as functional units.
Our thinking was that this would both help us add units into the game more quickly, which is something that takes quite a bit of time with the way Boat Crew is structured, and it would also be something we could release before too long as a modding tool.
A bit more than a month into the process, we realized that the unit creator would require a lot more work before it actually made things faster for us compared to performing the same process in the Unity editor. So while we are still interested in finishing it at some point as a modding tool, for now we had to admit it was a dead end and shelve it in the interest of not delaying 1.0 further.
Further complicating matters was that our lead developer, Cotanius, had to take an extended break afterwards for personal reasons. We're happy to say we are now back on track though, and we indeed have quite a lot to talk about, so let's get to it!
First of all, we have noticed a lot of discussion about how unfun planes can get in their current implementation, with relatively limited windows to dodge their shots and to attack them. Those of you with more experience in the game had the opposite problem, that they are trivial to deal with once you are used to them and also have some boats in your squadron. We have heard you, and we tend to agree going by our own experiences with aircraft in the game.
We will be modifying aircraft to move at varying speeds rather than at fixed speeds, and have them fly lower and slower in general to improve your odds of hitting them when they aren't directly moving towards or away from you. Their tracking will also be modified to give the impression of a human pilot struggling to stay on a nimble target, rather than having the targeting circle smoothly slide towards you. To compensate, their durability will be increased, so they don't get shot down as soon as you can hit them. Your choice of weapons when engaging them will matter more, as will your gunners' gunnery skills.
On the strategic map, there will also be changes. airbases will now exude a zone of control, in which air raids against you via the threat system will be a lot more common. But rest assured, outside zones of control, the chance to spawn an air wing against you will be reduced in proportion. This is something we wanted to do to make air wings, in a word, less spammy. Fighting air wing after air wing is not fun, and while it can cause tension to have an air wing pounce on you while you're on your way back from a long fight, it happened too often to not cross the line from tension generating to annoying.
Once the Big Update hits the Experimental Branch, it will have the aircraft related changes for everyone to test out, and we will be keeping an ear out for feedback.
What about friendly zones of control, you may wonder? What's that zone of control in the middle of the sea you see above? Well, we're happy to introduce our first Strategic Target (more on that later) class of ships, the carriers!
The carriers in Boat Crew will be limited to the light/escort carrier variety, with only the lighter carriers being risked in the relatively inland seas of the archipelago. Carriers, in addition to being tough targets with many planes to throw at you in direct combat, will also exude zones of control on the strategic view. Allied Navy aircraft will assist you in engagements that happen within an allied zone of air control created by a carrier, while allied Army aircraft, such as the P-38, will assist you in zones created by your airbases.
The Ryūjō-class light carrier will be the carrier on the enemy side, while the Casablanca-class escort carrier will be joining the fight on your side. We'll have more to say about carriers in the next diary, but for now, feast your eyes on the Ryūjō conducting flight operations!
In closing, we are excited to be back and to announce a new Big Update (v1.5.x), which will be lovingly called that, as per tradition, until it finally receives a name upon stable release.
That's all we have to share for now.
Fair winds and following seas,
Captain
T.T.
