PirateShips Alpha!

Many of you are eagerly awaiting the release of a new Battleships/13attleships. Due to many unseen issues this has been delayed much longer than it should have been but all is now moving along nicely.

Pirateships will take the battleships genre the next step. You that are familiar with BS/13S maps will feel very comfortable and at the same time will be stretched to learn the new systems.

Where to start.....

Ships will be similar in that they are not true heroes. We don’t use attributes like strength, intelligence, and agility. Instead these will actually be replaced with 2 Ship Crews, Sails and Repair, and a Timber (Wood) field. Also Armor field will show HP base. Each ship will have a phoenix fire based attack as well as spell with cool down attack but no ACTUAL attack. Each ship can upgrade its sail speed, hit points, and repair speed as well as "buy" timber repairs for quick repairs.

Weapons will be mostly based on phoenix fire and can be both upgraded and combo. The biggest difference will be the relative realism of everything. You won’t see any lasers or magic in pirateships. What you will see are cannons from 2-20 lb shots that require AMMO. Yes AMMO. You can’t attack ships without ammo. Ammo will run out. You’ll want to stock up on ammo. Fortunately you have a cargo space with 6 slots in addition to your normal inventory. In addition to cannons you will also have MANA attacking weapons like bows and firearms. These weapons attack the CREW of the ship and thus don’t do structural i.e. HP damage but more of a moral/life of the crew damage. As you lose your Mana i.e. crew you will increase your chances of actually taking real damage to any UPGRADED crew members. When you lose a member u lose his ability and thus you have to go back to port and get a new crewmember. Basically this is a way to attack a boat and not kill it but do financial damage.

Spells will be very similar to what you have seen but with one big difference. There will only be somewhat realistic spells. You won’t see any sea monsters but you will see cutlass attacks, spells that slow by destroying sails etc.

Everything like in BS/13s will be based around items. What is really cool is that items in PS will be FREE when traders bring back actual usable goods.
Merchants will be involved in semi realistic trading where they get a credit line, go out to ANY wholesaler. Trade what they want based on how much credit they have and then return. On return they get the same type of reward but in most cases the ITEM is actually now available to the team members as well as opponents to be stolen. Remember this is all about pirate life so stealing IS ok.

Kills will be better balanced with regards to $ reward and will show ACCURATE $ gold rewards upon deaths for each party that receives the reward. Yes that’s right money will be broken out according to a fun but fairly fair formula that allows the people that do the most damage to get most of the reward.
Killing a Merchant will gain extra reward in that the item that they are carrying will have a % chance of being picked up by a surrounding boat be it an opponent or a teammate.

Merchants will also be getting many different types of items. In addition to items that every team can get there will also be COUNTRY based items that only the country your team is fighting for can get. This will be balanced but each country WILL have a distinct advantage in some area.

For terrain initially the map will be based most likely on a modified 13attleships 3.5b backbone but my goal is to have many different terrains with identical game play with one difference besides terrain on each map. The number of teams. I hope to have maps that play the same but allow for from 2-12 teams.

Probably the biggest questions for most of you will be how long till you see it and how big will the file be. I hope to make it less than 1.5 mb and yet have tons of custom icons and models as well as a loading screen and mappreview screen. As far as how long I can say I have been working on this for 3 months now doing several other things and my goal is to release this by the end of April. I HOPE to test this much sooner than that and will be releasing an ALPHA map to show off some of the game play here within the week.

I hesitate to give deadlines but that is the goal.

Anyways please post anything that is helpful including questions as well as actual help with ideas. I will be posting a spread sheet that shows off my current ideas on actual OE data. Units/Items/Abilities etc.

Thanks!

Rod

Sounds fun will those people be credited with ideas cough cough :P u know where to find me. ill look back from time to time to check things out

Of course credits for anything will be given including those that help with the alpha and betas.

hey RodOfNoD, do u still need beta testers? cus i was gonna originaly,but then u know, well if u need me i will be on as 13sD-Dak@lordaeron

Hey rod. Glad to hear that Pirateship isnt dead. Sad thing hapenned to 13s ...

Mhh, do you have some infos about the loading screen that will be used ?
( i had spent a lot of time in mine )
And will the weapons/ship names remain based on 13s members names?


BTW: Some additional infos for the old players ?? ( we could talk about it on msn )

Rod, do you have any list of weapons, ships ?? anything that will appear in the map ?? Do you need help from the .. "new" 13s clans ?

OFF TOPIC : Do you know what happened to old 13s members ( talking of those who didnt stay after 13s splitted ). Because it would be nice to meet more opponents for 13attleship games.

BTW: you're welcome to join 13sG rod. You were a good player ( even if u stole my supressor+ripley strat grr.. ( <- im not angry, in fact im -> ) ). And futhermore you have worked a lot on the Pirateship map, so it would be natural for you to join us !!

yes plz join us rod that would be pretty sweet lol

There wont be the personilzation that was in 13s maps but i will be giving credit as I have said above but in a more business manner.

Also I am not sure what loading screen I will be using.

I hope to release somethiung that will let you all know where I am at by late next week so....

What type of ships will there be and what theme will you get going with?

Previously I saw 2 themes
- Going by countrys .e.g Danish Ship etc.
- Going by name Black Pearl etc.

[quote=Fulla]What type of ships will there be and what theme will you get going with?

I just added a link. Because of some stuff I discovered today I expect potentially new look models with relative ease. For sure we will have flags showing the countries on the ship. These might be sails or flags out the back end. Or maybe flags on the mast.

Given that we will have 4 countries, Britain, France, Spain and Holland it will be both fun to look at as well as helpful to tell what team you are fighting by looking at the ships!

I will be giving out weapons etc details as soon as I have finished up some tables. But so you know I have spent ALOT of time coming up with original weapon implementations so..

Keep ?s coming so I know what you want to see SS of!

Sounds nice. VIve la france ( ill take the fr flag of course ).

BTW: if you still hesitate for the loading screen, i say take mine