By Reto.Ogssan, Gameplay Programmer
Notice the train in the right side of the screen? That’s your target! We’re working on a new mission type called ‘Interdiction’. An Interdiction-mission is triggered when a Fighter Squadron Assault Team intercept enemy supplies on the strategy map, thus giving a greater strategic importance to securing your supply lines. The mission is thought of as a single player mission where you play against time and AI controlled Anti-Air Guns in order to find and destroy the train transporting the resources to the front line.
The loadout of the train will vary depending on the type and amount resources being transported. So for instance if the supplies you intercept are for an Armor Assault Team, then there would be a few wagons carrying tanks and a few for the crew.
In our current design the mission will consist of three phases.
- Scout the huge 10x10km map to find the train while avoiding enemy ground fire
- Secure the area ahead of train so you can safely attack it
- Destroy as much of the train as you can
In order to make this possible we will also try a new way of resupplying planes; instead of having to land at some secret spot on the map, you will just fly your plane out of the map in the direction of your airfield. Once you are sufficiently far out, your current plane will fly on without you and you will be transferred to a new one that is on its way back to the battle.
No more ground resupply, instead you get a new plane on it’s way to the battle fully loaded
To make it more challenging players will be limited in their amount of planes, so they can’t just destroy the engine and then spend all day slowly destroying all the wagons. So it is up to the player if he wishes to spend a couple of bombs on the engine and then have fewer bombs for the resources.
The mission is currently in a quite early state, but it might soon become a priority. So we would love to hear your input and ideas, so we can make the mission as fun as possible from the start.
By adding more things that you can do with the planes we hope to gather valuable data and feedback from both the servers and YOU, the players on those servers. This will help us pinpoint how we should focus our efforts on the next iterations of the airplanes handling, physics and flight model. Stay tuned for more airforce in a future post.
sounds like a fun idea but i honestly don't think it'll last. to make it more fun/challenging maybe in the future once this feature is working properly there could be a possibility for the enemy to send someone over to try and intercept you. but that could make it really hard if not impossible if the defender is a really good pilot. won't know till you try though. can't wait to test this out :)