Hi everyone,
Today we'd like to tell you about propulsion systems of our ships. In Feral Blue there will be a combination of several types of ships: steam-based, rowing and sailing. Some of the ships will even combine different propulsors at once. We know many such examples from history, like steam frigates or galleasses. This is a pretty complicated topic, and we did our best to find similar games to see how smart developers went about this. But it seems that avoiding systems like this is part of being a smart person, as we found nothing. If you can remember a game where you've seen something similar, please let us know — we'd be really interested to check it out.
So here's what we've come up with:
- Sails will become the most reliable and safe 'engine', but they cannot be switched into the boost mode. In addition, sails depend heavily on wind — we didn't dare to make a full-fledged simulator, so that we won't punish players for missing the wind directions. Still, a bad wind won't do you any good. In most cases, sails are the default propulsor.
- If the ship has a rowing deck, it will be possible to increase the movement speed — the speed of rowers will be added to the speed of sails. Rowers can also be forced to work faster — in that case they will go into the boost mode. The human spirit is stronger than weak body, and the speed can grow greatly, but as a result someone will dislocate their shoulder joint or get rupture of their aorta, and you'll have to let them rest for a while. Rowers can get 'overheated' and will go out of order. In that case it's a good thing to have a spare 'engine', or else you will be done.
- Steam engine is like rowers, but better — and it can't get a heart attack. But it can explode, so there's that. The 'boost' works pretty much the same, it's not really the 'nitro' from racing games, but works similarly — you get an increase in speed for a short time, risking breaking your engine.
- Rowers and steam engine will let you reverse the ship, no such thing with good old sails.
- Rowers need to eat and drink, steam engine requires fuel (also stokers who will throw this fuel into the furnace). Sails are environment-friendly, low cost engine, that only requires wind and fabric for repair.
At the moment we're passionately discussing how all of these tactical opportunities can be fit in one interface. We hope the initial version of it will be good enough to show in public in a week!
