Hi

Im doing a 2d top-down naval adventure game, sort of like a Pirates! or Freelancer but in a ww2 setting. You upgrade ships and buy new ones, run missions for the Japanese navy or help the Americans colonize Indonesia.

Problem is combat seems stale to me. In classic pirate games you would rotate to fire broadsides, and there is also boarding combat. That is not so in a ww2 setting with destroyers etc (I love the setting, i dont want to change that!).

So any ideas on how to make combat fun in such a game? (broad question i know but plz brainstorm).

Maybe control gun tilt to make aiming more complex? (tilt relates to range) But what else?

Erik

Do some more in-depth search on your setting and you will get more answers to your question then you think. For starters, in WW2 a lot of ships were carriers - they boarded planes Look up the U.S.S. Enterprise. You would get lots of technical references from there. For example, you could build an airstrike against an enemy ship - draw out the hit trajectory and a couple of seconds later - boom, an air strike. This is just an example.

It really depends on your own design in the long term. How realistic and time period correct do you want the game to be ? How accurate ? By the looks of it, I'm guessing, pretty close to the real thing, though are you in for some technical tweaks and strays from the time period ? I'm talking stuff like having planes, carrier style, on a larger battle ship. I'm talking about having really high level artillery on board, mostly equipment that you would expect to be found on different kinds of ships.

If you don't feel like going a bit overboard and want to stay accurate, just look up some vessels from the time period and see what they had in terms of tech and firepower. Look up the tech and see how you can turn it into a gameplay mechanic. You most certainly don't need to fire guns, rockets and underwater missiles the same way, so you can maybe think of different handling techniques for different fire types.

I 'd go with making it a (real time) strategy with plenty of fighting ships to destroy/sacrifice and some cargo-ships to protect/conquer.

underwater missiles? Like torpedoes?

Yeah, look at the types of ships used in WW2. PT Boats, Frigates, Destroyers, Carriers and Submarines and probably more. You could probably cull some of that, if for example, you didn't want to implement planes, you could nix carriers. (or just start without them, possibly add them later, in a sequel or expansion), so you could concentrate on making the 'core' game fun.

Without carriers, you get depth charges, cannons of various sizes, and torpedoes, and ships with different speeds/maneuverability, armor and stealth. With those elements, I'd imagine you can make a pretty interesting game.

underwater missiles? Like torpedoes?

Yep, torpedoes.