Thank you all for your feedback.
We will try to do better (we always are trying to).
Yes, Hinkel held the Community Manager in title, not as an actual job. It was a leftover special forum title from the the very early days when he joined the crew back in like 2013 or 2014 where he took a good part of his mod comunity with him and thus thought it was a good idea to also act as the official community manager of the game. We've never had a hired, full time (or part time) community manager.
This is from the field reporting regarding what sort of artillery features we're currently working on as well as what features we would like to work on in the future:
The very first artillery implementation which we’re quickly headed towards will be a work in progress (as most if not all things in an alpha are) and will thus feature both limited game mechanics as well as a lot of new exciting bugs for you to enjoy.
That being said, it will feature the core mechanics of functional artillery:
Different artillery classes with different tools and weaponry.
Unlimited artillery crew slots - if a team wishes to use all available battery pieces (or none) they can do so.
Pushable cannons (by wheels) by two players at once.
Ammunition and powder pickups from limbers.
Different types of loads (such as explosive shell and canister shot).
Horizontal aiming adjustments by lifting the tailspike of the cannon.
Vertical aiming adjustments by turning the elevation screw of the cannon.
Firing by fixing a lanyard to a primer and pulling it.
Recoil from firing will require the cannon to be pushed back to its initial position in order to maintain accurate fire.
Pushable limbers in order to make sure that the supply for the cannon can be moved with it should it be deemed a good idea to relocate the gun.
Here’s a short list of some of the things we’ll be looking to bring to the artillery system in later released iterations:
Artillery specific team damage punishment system (the first release of artillery will have friendly fire turned off).
Chance of normal and catastrophical misfires without proper maintenance of the cannon.
Dry sponge & worm tools for properly clearing stuck embers after firing.
Chance of explosion when hitting the limbers.
Chance of explosion when hitting the shell while it is being carried over to the gun for loading.
Vent hole plugging step while loading.
Fence destruction.
Horse drawn artillery.
Here's me going into details about the counter-attack mechanic design, the latest major addition to the gamemode several months before it was ready to be released, giving you direct access to our design doc which was thought up and created largely because of your feedback - as was the picket patrol mode earlier:
https://www.warofrightsforum.com/sho...ll=1#post97691
We do try to inform you of what we are working on - and I see several of you that feel the development is going too slow (as well as those that feel we should communicate more with you).
The question is if you would rather have more communication but less actual content (the money spent on a community manager's full time position can only be spent once). This will also mean that the communication that is indeed put forward will be largely filler based (one can only say "we're developing artillery" in so many interesting ways).
I see some of you ask for George videos and The Fighting Men of War of Rights ones too. While they did contain historical information, they were more PR videos than anything else (containing little to no game development related content).
We're not witholding any information from you that is super awesome and just about to drop or anything of the sort and we're most certainly not afraid of people stealing our ideas (or we wouldn't put out design docs months in advance even of their implementation).
As I feel like the two posts as of late I have made in relation to the status of artillery isn't what you're looking for I would like to ask you what kind of updates you would like to get from us.
I'm sorry to see there's now being spoken of an "Anti-dev camp". That is not a good starting point for dialogue at all I think.
- Trusty