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Post news Report RSS Report 049: Sea Control

When the Daggerfalls, the Captains of the world's navies will once again rise to action with or against you. These are the ships which they will claim the seven seas with.

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The new report is here, as it was mentioned before it will be solely about ships.

I will also take this opportunity to talk about the current build and actual release.
At the moment the game is in QA improving and fixing any issue. The idea is to release it as polished as possible and a lot has been done in that regard, but there are still some issues remaining and some of these were requested to be resolved in order to the game to be released.

At time of writing these are the issues that remain to be fixed:

  • There is no draw screen received by the players during a multiplayer session after the multiplayer session timer has ended and none of the players have made any kills.
  • Sensitivity is too high on the stick controlling the camera that the feature cannot be used while playing the game with a controller.
  • The volume control panel is not functional.
  • The controller doesn't work in the sub menus
  • The controller doesn't have a default configuration.
  • Using the machine gun greatly decreases frames per second
  • Users unable to see the person who joins whilst someone is respawning
  • The team lives count from the scoreboard doesn't work in Last Team Standing game mode in a multiplayer session.
  • The client hits on the host do not count during the first kill on the Deathmatch and TeamDeathmatch multiplayer modes.

So as soon as these issues have been resolved the game I’ll enter the release process and the VT page on steam will likely turn visible.
I’ll also let you all know as soon this begins.

Also related to this I apologize, I’ve been less active in the past weeks because I was focused in resolving all the issues as quickly as possible. Now that there are only a few left it shouldn’t take long to go back to the normal activity.

Now onto the report itself, but this time the actual report was written by FlyAwayNow.

The introduction of aircraft in warfare has, among other things, sidelined the battleships that have reigned supreme over the seas and oceans. This is no truer than in Vector Thrust’s world, where in fact aircraft have become the go-to method for most militaries to strike targets in general. That hasn’t meant that warships in their entirety have been ruled out of the equation, and even as the constant threat of Anti-Ship aircraft descend upon battle fleets of the more archaic thinking military commanders, they won’t go down without a fight, as is the testament of every good captain of any worth.

Battlecruisers, arsenal ships, destroyers, landing craft, carriers of all sizes and specializations, Vector Thrust does not lack in the naval compartment, and the roles they serve in the world are no different than in ours.
Despite the rule of aircraft, the ships of Vector Thrust do serve a very critical role in the world in the form of an international effort in the f‡ x+q0%úºcre Å x5110x9))-7110x740x690x6 of îüö: ¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦.
On that note, here are several of these ships which will be at the helm of that blockade, and indeed in most of the notable navies.
Looks like we’re back where we started. This is FlyAwayNow, your local Black Ops pilot, providing you my analysis of some of the naval units in VT.

- Sovermeny

Currently one of the larger conventional ships we have in the inventory, and I do stress when I say conventional, this is also one of the older designs, predating the Great War. With enough maintenance and upkeep this anti-surface warship has become the mainline naval powerhouses for some navies, even four decades after its design was drawn up. CIWS on this naval ship, and indeed present on most of the larger surface combatants up the survivability on this class of ship considerably, both in point defense, anti-munition, and of course you pilots who dare try to strafe.

It’s certainly no battleship, not many of those that class of naval ship are left in the world, however for you more privateering mercenaries, there is a considerable bounty on one such ship that’s even older than these Sovermenys…
These ships are a step up from the Karel Doorman-class frigates, competing with the Arleigh Burkes in the same role, however the stars of this report are ships that are bit more… exciting.

- Sea Jet

A smaller ship, more intended for recon in coastal regions and rivers, for those of you who are well read with ships of this particular design, the Sea Jet was the test bed for the more advanced Zumwalt-class destroyer.
Unlike the Zumwalt however this ship poses no tangible threat, given you aren’t flying a prop or give anyone that has a firearm on this thing any time to get a bead in your gloating flybys.

Still it has stealth properties and a low profile, so anytime you do see one of these things, you best hit it because they’re probably ferrying some sort of spec ops team and what not.
You see one flying a black and gold flag and a pretty looking mermaid on the bow though, don’t hit it, that’s mine for when the agency lets me have a weekend off.

- Sea Shadow

A stealth ship of similar scope to the Sea Jet. Unfortunately, despite its looks, it is not a set piece of a secret spy movie in which a media mogul plans to control all of the….
I digress.
This ship is a tad larger than most ships with its radar signature, but as no real point defense. Any pilot worth his or her weight should be able to knock this thing out with little difficulty.
You either put out enough firepower to call the bluff of some pilots or you don’t be seen at all. A common trend, a trend have personally observed so far in unit testing.

The radars across the entire spectrum of aircraft is not penultimate, a lowly radar set on a MiG-21 cannot compare to the F-22s or the Typhoon’s electronics, and even then our fifth generation fighters can hiccup when it comes to unit detection. This is one of those units that can give advance radar systems a run for their money, especially since the Sea Shadow’s signature is only as big as one of a fishing boat.

- Visby

A corvette which has been designed within the last few years. Its main responsibility is patrol duties and ASW (Anti-Submarine Warfare). Equipped with enough munitions to make a bad day for an unprepared cruiser, submarine or soldier on shore leave on a beach, these ships usually hug the coastal areas of their respective navies, and are seldom seen out deep within the oceans.

As with most predatory creatures of the oceans and seas, they hunt in packs, and as such you’ll get off easy if you only see one of these things on your radar on sortie.

- LCAC

Not as much warships as they are landing craft, these things spearhead most coastal invasions. Needless to say that taking them down, or defending them, is imperative in such an operation. These things go hand in hand with the escort carriers.

That being said the next few are such ships.

- P-48

Definitely on the smaller side of warships capable of launching and receiving flying machines, the P-48 is armed with a multirole turret up front as if to dissuade any attackers from interfering from its helicopter, VTOL, and UAV launching capabilities.

- SC-1D

On the surface, this would appear like an upscaled Sea Shadow with an added armament and a helicopter platform.
Well its face value pretty much is its true value.
Another stealth frigate with the capability to launch helicopters and the sort from a flight deck in its rear, its design and skids speak to a low profile and a low radar signature, just barely higher than the Sea Shadow’s.

It packs a punch on its own from a dual five inch gun and I have some of the more idiot pilots get shot down trying to hit one of these things, so, despite how small these things might look, if it has a modern fire control system, for God’s sake, don’t go in thinking your twenty millimeters will beat out that thing’s aim. Unlike the damn Udaloys or Sovermenys, these things were developed rather recently. No captain of one of these things will want a MiG-21 taking one of these ships out unless you ram the ship with it.

- NAM-16

A monster of an escort carrier, it’s probably the widest ship we have on record if we don’t count any of the EOS plans, and even then I’m pretty sure it is still the widest target out there in terms of naval targets.
Supporting helicopters, UAVs, STOL aircraft, and VTOL aircraft, this could be classified as the command center for any naval or landing operation. As such you are cordially invited to drop as much ordnance as you can on this thing.

Now this thing doesn’t have the full capability afforded to it like the Nimitz or the Admiral Kuznetsov, however it’s a bit more capable than the L-61 type.
If you’re looking for firepower and capability however, some of the more exuberant and well financed nations have put forth the following designs.

- Arsenal

As big as the battleships of old, these arsenal ships basically have a twenty five kilometer kill radius with the massive payload of several hundred missiles of all varieties. Hull redundancies have made these things hard to sink, but not much lends itself to any point defenses admittedly.

Anything with such a long stick however, and a competent escort fleet, wouldn’t need point defense now, would they?

Of course such a ship would have an impressive defense fleet, so dealing with the Arsenal ship itself won’t be your only problem.

However the concept of the Arsenal ships leave it vulnerable if the electronic advantage is not in its favor. Arsenal ships are named such in large part due to the armament they carry, however the amount of missiles they cram inside themselves doesn’t leave for much else. Aegis cruisers or even AWACS aircraft are required for the combat effectiveness of this ship to be fully brought to be...

_end of ships report.

Probably you may have been looking forward to this, but the EOS-04 wasn’t included in this report.
There were two reasons for this, one is that the weapons systems are still being studied and tested, and the other, a boss unit should deserve its own report.

Also I wasn’t able to include the Zumwalt on time, but that can be saved to another report, also I feel that even with all these ships, the current selection and variety is still small but that will be improved over time.

And finally to conclude this report, just to say the next will be the report 50, to celebrate the number that report will be special.

Stay tuned, more reports will follow.

Post comment Comments
SpootKnight
SpootKnight

From a gameplay perspective, how nice do the arsenal ships play with the engine? I know some games have limitations to things like the number of movable subobjects and firing points in a model.

If I counted the VLS covers right, the G-2 has 734 firing points. The G72, however, I can't even count because they're pixel-sized in comparison. Is each missile port going to be usable?

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timeSymmetry Author
timeSymmetry

At the moment each cell group can fire only at the center, but that is something I plan to change somewhere in the future and apply that to ground rocket launcher systems as well.

I’ll add something like a virtual grid were is specified the number of X and Y firing points and the constant distance between each point, this will make the weapon automatically cycle to all points, the only down side of this is that it won’t be compatible with odd layouts, but if that ever is needed I will try to add some alternative system.

Also, it wasn’t mentioned in the report, but each cluster of cells, turrets and CWIS can be destroyed; this will be applied in the previous ships as well.

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jakejakejake55
jakejakejake55

When can i play the game? will i have to buy it?

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Shazer22
Shazer22

yes you have to buy it like any other game..

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キレックス
キレックス

>Using the machine gun greatly decreases frames per second
This reminds me, my father told me once that the GSh-23 in their ground attack planes when fired killed some of the speed on their planes.
According to him the rotary cannons were even worse, able to almost screech the plane to a halt when fired.
Will firing your cannon affect your flight speed at all in the game?

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timeSymmetry Author
timeSymmetry

I want to add the possibility of sub weapons affect speed or cause stress games since forever, but every time someone remembers me that I never take note and end up forgetting again. But this time I already took note, so yes some sub weapons will affect speed, others cause stress damage and others simple overheat.

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キレックス
キレックス

Another one, another one. Will there be planes without guns ata all? Like the MiG-25 for example lacked a gun because it bugged down the aerodynamics and took away some top end speed, speed from a plane that was all about speed.

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SpootKnight
SpootKnight

We have a few even in .2264; 19 if I'm not mistaken.

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MyHatismyFriend
MyHatismyFriend

F-35C, F-15JK+, ECR, tonnes of planes lack cannons. Special examples include the J-35 Mod 4 which can only fire its cannons when the canards are folded.

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Nergal01
Nergal01

For the lulz, I'd like to see WW2 era ships like Fletcher, Iowa (both classic and modernized version), King George V, Bismarck, Tirpitz, Akagi, Yamato and so on as cameos.

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flyawaynow
flyawaynow

I allude toward such a ship in the report. For good reason as well.

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timeSymmetry Author
timeSymmetry

I went for the easy route this time; add clean modern ships with little details to be easy to make and quickly fill some roles. Old ships are absolute works of art, however they require a lot more time, I do plan to make some, but not until I feel there is enough variety in the available ships.

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KnX
KnX

Will there be sinking animations?
I remember playing Silent Hunter (on easy difficulty) and just taking a minute to see how a ship breaks in half and starts sinking slowly while huge dark smoke clouds filled the sky. Made me ask myself how many people i just killed and felt kinda sad about that.
But maye we wont have much time to admire that stuff while flying...

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timeSymmetry Author
timeSymmetry

Unfortunately no, at the moment there isn't anything special happening to the destroyed ship, but is something I´m sure it will be improved.

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IbizenThoth
IbizenThoth

So does the CIWS implementation mean that launched units can be shot down now?

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timeSymmetry Author
timeSymmetry

I´m not sure if I understood your question.

Do you mean if is it possible,
to shoot down the missiles fired by the CIWS?
for the CIWS to shot down incoming projectiles?
or
to destroy each individual CIWS?

For the first two the system is around 80~90% done, but has been disabled in the release until it is fully finished. But the third question is already true.

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IbizenThoth
IbizenThoth

I mostly meant the second one. I can't wait until the feature get's implemented though, since it never sat well with me that most ground units are doomed as soon as the missile leaves your rack.

On another note, have units launching other units (aircraft launching UAVs/decoys or ships doing the same) seen any success? I know there was that missile with a gun on it a few reports ago, but I curious, since I assume the challenges of implementing such a thing would be a little different.

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Count_Crapula
Count_Crapula

I haven't followed this game much, so this question might be stupid - but can you actually play with the ships or are they just AI controlled?

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Nergal01
Nergal01

I think you can mess with ship controls via debug mode since very early alpha.

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