Hi

Im working on a post-ww2 adventure/pirate/naval game in Asia with RPG elements of building your wealth and getting larger ships. The main factions are US, UK, Japan and Germany. Its single-player only.

For the ship roaster ive built from the small ones up. I have patrol ships and corvettes (not all nations used corvettes so for now all of them may use the same flower or castle classes).

But for larger ships (frigates, destroyers, cruisers, carriers etc) i might do the same. It might be to much hassle to include unique classes for each nation (and harder to balance).

What is your thoughts on this? And if i use same ships for each nation would it make more sense to call them general names such as "large destoyer" instead of "fletcher class" (which was an american destroyer class).

Or should I use national ships but have fewer of each type so i can handle the assets? Its hard to decide:)

Thanks

Erik

I think the important thing here is to keep working at it. You could, for the time being (and to fill out every nation's roster a bit) keep with the generic ships... for now.

Balancing is all fine and dandy, but I honestly think that'll be a lesser evil. Once you've got your base meshes up and running, you can think about fleshing them out a bit :).

So I personally would start out with placeholders.

Rather than spend a lot of time producing a different destroyer for each faction (after all, from a gameplay perspective, one destroyer is much like another), I'd suggest you stick with generic ships for the most part, and splurge on unique faction ships if you have the resources.

For example, the differences between US/UK/German battleships are for the most part not that obvious, but if you include the Bismarck, people will recognise the uniqueness of it.

There are also a handful of faction-specific classes that may be handy to differentiate. For example, the Japanese navy was unique in not using torpedo boats (they used that designation for mid-size destroyers, instead)...

I like Swift's compromise. Certain faction ships are very unique looking, while really, even after playing WoWS for a few months on and off, I can't distinguish between faction ships very well.

I think you need a way to make some difference between factions otherwise why play again as a different faction. Unless you have the time and resources though to make a large number of unique ships that are different just a couple of special units per faction is probably the best way to go. Remember it is usually that a smaller amount done well is better than lots done poorly.

Having said that though it also depends on how much the differences of the ships matter in your game. From the style of game you mention I get the impression that it won't matter a great deal of the differences between ships of the same class. However if it was more of a naval simulation where gun position, firing arcs, caliber, etc played a part than you would want the large number of different ships of the same class.

This game you're creating, are you thinking Sid Meier's pirates but in your WWII setting or something more large scale? This seems very interesting. Also

*snip*

Remember it is usually that a smaller amount done well is better than lots done poorly.

*snip*

This.

It IS not very different from sid meiers pirates in some ways.

You dont play as a faction per see, you can align with them for a period and run missions for them. The different factions control different parts of the map and fight for control of ports (just like in "pirates" or like in the original "mount & blade").

I might do unique faction ships just for battleships to start with. These work as end-game prestige ships. I need a large amount of frigates and destroyers and making faction ships in this size-range will be too much to start with. (its just 2d graphics but im alone so I wanna be realistic).

Good input guys!
E

it all depends on how much work you want to do.

least work: generic ship classes with generic class names (not faction specific) and identical or similar stats and graphics.

less work: genric ships + some faction specific ships (bismark, yamato, etc), as described by swiftcoder.

most work: faction specific ship classes with faction specific class names and unique stats and graphics for each class - all properly gameplay balanced of course.

at the generic end of the scale, you still get strategic gameplay, despite identical unit types for all sides.

at the faction specific end of the scale, you get the additional gameplay of unique unit types.