Aerosub 2024-06-22 - fleet formation

FLEET FORMATION:

I didn't get a lot done on the game this week.  But the player will at least notice it's now a lot easier to start with a small fleet immediately.

Pictured: a fleet escort in Aerosub.

I wanted to do this right away, because I believe it's where the "fun" is in this game.  It's meant to put the player in a leadership role, surrounded by allies that are taking orders.  I haven't implemented any sort of orders yet, so the allies are pretty dumb.  They can only:

• LAUNCH from base.
• ESCORT the player by following them around.
• ATTACK any enemies in range.

What I'm aiming for is a feeling similar to the archers and foot soldiers in the Kingdom (2015) games.  For the most part, archers run around on their own, shooting rabbits and deer, running back to the kingdom walls at night, taking defensive positions in towers, and shooting any greed within range.  The player will spend much of the game defending.  However, later in the game, the player can command those troops to attack, with the pounding of a war drum!

Pictured: In Kingdom Two Crowns (2018), the player, on horseback, commands and leads a counterattack.

The player can support the troops defensively, and can sometimes do some attacks.  But the attack cannot succeed by the player alone (...usually).  It's the troops that do all the work, and the player's job is to initially command them, and sometimes protect them.

Aerosub aims to recreate that strategic feeling in a shmup game.  However, this means potentially weakening the player, or at least making it so that the player can't destroy the enemy bases/portals/carriers alone.  They should require a fleet to do that, and that isn't the case, yet.

Pictured: An overwhelming show of force in Aerosub.

There are a couple of features missing to accomplish this goal (these are all on my backlog):

• Player needs to be able to issue orders.
• The enemy base should be impervious to the player.  Maybe the player can weaken it, but can't destroy it.
• The enemy base should defend itself.  In Kingdom, this is done via retaliation waves.
• May need to have different types of allies, so that only a particularly weaker ally can actually destroy the enemy base.  Kingdom games do this by having the final battle require soldiers to defend a completely defenseless pair of carpenters transporting a bomb.  The bomber should not be available at first.  Rescue Raiders (1984) did this via an explosive van troop type, which was defenseless, needing to be escorted by tanks, SAM launchers, and infantry troop types.
• Day/night cycle length tuning, enemy base distance tuning, wave timing tuning, ally speed tuning (they can't keep up).
• An overhaul of enemy and allied AI.  They behave pretty stupidly once they are directly on top of their target, and the escort formation doesn't look elegant.

Pictured: The escorts in Aerosub are currently too robotic, and follow patterns that are too precise, such as this semicircle formation.

That said, I still think it's more important to give the player reasons to explore underwater during the day.  But that's taking a while.  In the meantime, I want any players to be able to have a taste of where I'm trying to go, by making it easy to start with a small fleet.

ETC:

Thus, features in this (small) release:

• Allies are cheaper, player can buy an infinite number of them, and the player starts with some resources.  This should allow the player to create a small fleet immediately.
• The horizon has a subtle reverse parallax.  This is a hint that the world may eventually wrap around, like a torus.
• The swarmer enemy now appears in earlier waves.
• Fish are in progress, but they are hidden for now.

See you next week!