We wanted to give you an insight into how Victory Sea Pacific manages the Open World Sandbox Real Time Strategy game from the Bridge.
When we first started developing Victory At Sea Pacific we took the stance that it would be similar to the original, where you focused on one fleet. However as the scale of the game increased it became obvious that to really take advantage of this size change the player would be better off taking control of the entire Pacific Theatre.
One of the hardest aspects of building an open world RTS covering the entire Pacific war was creating a sensible system that would allow the player to manage the whole thing. If we had any brains we would have made the top level turn based, with the individual battles played out in real time.
To prevent it from being overwhelming the player is introduced to the Bridge in stages.
On the Bridge, each navy is split into fleets, or Task Forces. Fleets can be constructed at ports that have a shipyard and then sent out wherever the player wishes. Fleets can be constructed however a player wants allowing them to create specialised Task Forces, some may be great for raiding or recon, or might be better suited to destroying the enemy fleets utterly.
Knowing where the enemy is is another matter as the Pacific is a big place. Enemy fleets will appear once they have been seen, but will fade away after losing visual contact, giving players a last known position to work from.
Once the player has worked out their basic plan they have many options open to them. Some of these options include attacking an enemy fleet or launching an amphibious assault on a port, sending in landing ships that need to be protected until they reach shore.
The enemy is not idle of course and the player may be required to defend allied fleets or ports. To get a better sense of what is going on out there the player can also recon & raid enemy ports, a hit and run tactic that requires less resources but may be enough to draw the enemy in the wrong direction. Once all that is done the fleets can repair and resupply at friendly ports.
Ports have various military structures, which may be attacked like ships. Destroying a coastal structure deprives the port of its function, though it will repair over time, they are not defenceless however, with a formidable array of coastal guns and AAA emplacements to attack hostile ships and aircraft.
There is so much more about the Bridge that could be covered, keep an eye out for more information as we release it!