Hello,
The planes updates is here, and this means a lot of changes to the game.
Thanks to planes battles are more epic, do note however that balances changes and AI changes must still be done.
Let's dive right into the new functionnalities.
# New secondary mode
You can now set your weapons to AA mode as long as they are capable of engaging air targets. This is often the case for 127mm guns or smaller.
Light caliber guns can only shoot basic bullets, but large guns (above 75mm usually) have timed charges capable to explode in the air and possibly damage a plane this way.
AA guns will automatically start shooting at enemy planes, but if there are none, they will shoot at the targeted ship instead just like secondary weapons.
# 3 different plane behaviours
Planes come in 3 flavours at the moment : straffers, bombers and torpedoers.
- Straffers : deal very little damage, but can be useful to disable small weapons on ships or disable engines.
- Bombers : take high risk to damage the enemy ship, but can also deal massive damage if their 500kg bomb hits.
- Torpedoers : essentially the best type, they can drop a torpedo from afar and damage components right at the enemy ship water line.
# Catapults and flight decks
There are 2 ways to launch your planes :
- Catapults : allow to quickly send out a plane, but planes cannot resupply and will wander around after dropping their charge. Straffers do not need to resupply.
- Flight deck : requires a lot of space, but allows to host planes requiring resupply. There are light flight decks and armored flights decks.
When building a flight deck, an interface at the bottom of the screen will show if it is big enough to be usable. Larger flight decks allow to send planes more frequently.
To send out planes, you must place them somswhere inside your ship or on the side of the flight deck.
# 2 new enemies
2 missions were replaced to host 2 new enemy aircraft carriers : Weser and Graf-Zeppelin.
They can be found in Sheringham and Gothenburg.
# Final note
At the moment airplanes are wildly experimental. AIs need tweaking, airplanes need better balancing and lots of shells in the air can lead to massive performance issues.
I'll keep adding planes on some missions, to make them more interesting.
Don't hesitate to play around with planes, and don't forget we will keep improving them !
