Creating your fleet: How to use the fleet and ship editors
Welcome to the third part of the Leviathan: Warships development diary. This time I will go through two major parts of the game where you will spend considerable time fine-tuning your fleet and ships.
This post will consist mostly of screenshots as it’s the easiest way of showing you the editors. We will start with the Fleet Editor.
The Fleet Editor
This is the fleet selection screen. I have accessed this from the main menu, but you can also access this screen when you create or join a game. The fleets listed are default ships we have created for those players that quickly want to explore the game and don’t want to make their own fleets or ships just yet. In versus games we have several fleet sizes to choose between when creating a game, each bringing a different tactical game with it.
As you can see, you have many pre-configured ships available which you can modify as you wish.
It’s easy to build your fleet. Choose the ships you want it to consist of. You can easily delete ships and clone ships you like from this view.
We also provide detailed views for each ship. Some information here can be really important, like if a ship has a deep keel. Ships with deep keels cannot travel across shallows and as a result, can become grounded and take damage. For blueprints, we provide even more detail, like listing all armaments equipped and what kind of hull section the ship uses.
The Ship Editor
The Ship editor gives you lots of flexibility when you are building your fleet. The choices you make here directly correlates to the strategic options you have available in the game.
Here is an example of how a basic Scout ship looks when you have customized the hull sections. In order of left to right they are: Balanced, Light and Armored sections. You can mix and match different sections so you don’t have to have a “pure” version of a ship.
Here are some examples of defensive armaments. In the next development diary, we’ll go through each armament in more detail.
And of course we have our offensive armaments. This ship should be a good long-range ship with a powerful forward weapon and some smaller weapons on each side of the ship. I have also equipped a shield for increased survivability. Next, I should name the ship (important!) and save it (probably even more important!).
Doesn't it look beautiful? Compared to a standard scout, it sure packs a punch.
Here are some examples of hardpoint placement on some of the larger ships. 3x3 batteries enables placement of the larger armaments including the heaviest autocannon and the railgun.
And when we save the fleet we can now see how much points we used and that it is classified as a medium fleet. We would probably want to equip some of the other ships before we take this fleet out for a spin, though.
That's it for this development diary. Next time I introducing the offensive and defensive armaments of Leviathan: Warships in more detail!
Welcome to the third part of the Leviathan: Warships development diary. This time I will go through two major parts of the game where you will spend considerable time fine-tuning your fleet and ships.
This post will consist mostly of screenshots as it’s the easiest way of showing you the editors. We will start with the Fleet Editor.
The Fleet Editor
This is the fleet selection screen. I have accessed this from the main menu, but you can also access this screen when you create or join a game. The fleets listed are default ships we have created for those players that quickly want to explore the game and don’t want to make their own fleets or ships just yet. In versus games we have several fleet sizes to choose between when creating a game, each bringing a different tactical game with it.
- The Menu bar contains options to clear all ships from a fleet and save options.
- You can name your fleet to whatever you want. We also display the current point limit of the fleet is including how many ships you can use. As this is in free build mode, we set this limit to the maximum size of a fleet which is 8000 points.
- The fleet size bar display how much points you are currently using and it is updated live.
- You can choose to use the standard ships with no equipment. If you choose blueprints, you can choose between pre-configured ships we have created.
As you can see, you have many pre-configured ships available which you can modify as you wish.
It’s easy to build your fleet. Choose the ships you want it to consist of. You can easily delete ships and clone ships you like from this view.
We also provide detailed views for each ship. Some information here can be really important, like if a ship has a deep keel. Ships with deep keels cannot travel across shallows and as a result, can become grounded and take damage. For blueprints, we provide even more detail, like listing all armaments equipped and what kind of hull section the ship uses.
The Ship Editor
The Ship editor gives you lots of flexibility when you are building your fleet. The choices you make here directly correlates to the strategic options you have available in the game.
- If you are satisfied with a specific ship design, you can choose to save it as a blueprint. You can then access it from the Fleet Editor when you are choosing ships.
- The name if the ship is probably the most important item when building a ship, right? The arms meter here is also important. You can’t just throw armaments on a ship as each has a limit on how many arms they can carry. The larger the ship, the more arms they can carry.
- You can customize your ship hull. Each ship have four sections: Bow, Mid, Stern and Top. You can choose three variants for the Bow, Mid and Stern. Each selection specializes a ship slightly. A balanced section is a good start choice there are no pros and cons to it. An Armored section lowers the speed of a ship and its maneuverability, but have heavier armor and more health. The Light sections is all about speed and maneuverability.
- Each ship contains lots of hardpoints. We refer to each group of these as batteries. They’re available in three different categories. Offensive Batteries, Defensive Batteries and Hybrid Batteries. A hybrid battery allows both offensive and defensive armaments to be placed on them. Their size is important as each armaments come in different sizes like 1x1 up 3x3.
- Each section or armament have detailed stats available.
Here is an example of how a basic Scout ship looks when you have customized the hull sections. In order of left to right they are: Balanced, Light and Armored sections. You can mix and match different sections so you don’t have to have a “pure” version of a ship.
Here are some examples of defensive armaments. In the next development diary, we’ll go through each armament in more detail.
And of course we have our offensive armaments. This ship should be a good long-range ship with a powerful forward weapon and some smaller weapons on each side of the ship. I have also equipped a shield for increased survivability. Next, I should name the ship (important!) and save it (probably even more important!).
Doesn't it look beautiful? Compared to a standard scout, it sure packs a punch.
Here are some examples of hardpoint placement on some of the larger ships. 3x3 batteries enables placement of the larger armaments including the heaviest autocannon and the railgun.
And when we save the fleet we can now see how much points we used and that it is classified as a medium fleet. We would probably want to equip some of the other ships before we take this fleet out for a spin, though.
That's it for this development diary. Next time I introducing the offensive and defensive armaments of Leviathan: Warships in more detail!
