Hey everyone!
Just a quick arty update this time around as I promised we'd have one for you this week.
We're now down to a single release blocker holding us back from inviting you all in to test the artillery. (it is of course always possible that new or even old additional release blockers are encountered between now and the public test during our internal tests). Please note that the initial artillery test is going to be having plenty of bugs and issues - it's just going to be bugs and issues that we have accepted are not bad enough to be release blockers.
The feature list of the initial artillery release has been expanded due to us having time to work on more stuff while our programmer, Mike, is working on cracking the release blockers.
We've implemented a dynamic fuze system that is tied to the elevation screw into the first version of the artillery. You'll get the fully dynamically updating table of fire shown in the UI as you turn the elevation screw up or down (range, elevation, time of flight, fuze timer). This is our initial suggestion as to a simplistic, non intrusive fuze system that won't require dozens of rounds to be adjusted manually at the start of each skirmish area. We also believe it will help make the artillery task more viable to use for more players. Note that the range to the target as well as a clear trajectory of course still needs to be taken into account. During our limited internal testing we've found that it is most certainly still hugely challenging to land an accurate shot.
We realize some of our community will probably want a full on hardcore fuze system (having to remember the table of fire, having to manually pick up each round and adjust its fuze) and so the above dynamic fuze system shouldn't be looked at as an absolute set-in-stone feature (nor should any other artillery related mechanic really) - we expect to get a lot of requests and feedback from you all when the public test build goes live and we are of course very much open to change things around based off of it and what we are seeing in-game ourselves as well.
We now support ricocheting rounds. This tends to happen when the angle of impact becomes rather shallow; in short, the closer to a purpendicular impact the more of a chance of the round not ricocheting and instead burying itself into whatever surface you've hit, eventually exploding as the fuze timer burns out. A ricocheting round will also explode when its fuze timer runs out.
We've added a light trail of smoke in the wake of a fired round. This can be seen in several live firing artillery demonstrations and is caused by the fuze burning. It is a neat way of tracking the trajectory of your shot as well as spotting any kind of ricocheting rounds in-game.
- Trusty