Airships: Conquer the Skies News

• Massively improved ship editor performance on ships with many modules.
  
• Slightly improved combat performance.
  
• Updated player-created Chinese translation.
  
• Removed the "Launch with System Java" launch option, as it's no longer useful or used by anyone.
  
• Mods are no longer automatically enabled when they're installed. Instead, newly installed mods are listed in the main menu, and you're prompted to enable them in the mod manager. This is to prevent the game from choking on attempting to load dozens of mods. Especially if you installed the game on a new machine, it would try to load every single mod you ever subscribed to.
  

So yesterday I promised I would show you an actual villain from the upcoming DLC. Here's Gwalo. He makes good money selling human beings, and he's happy to help you.



He slightly raises unrest in the city he's assigned to, but he also increases production by 50%, allowing it to churn out ships much faster.

And if that's too slow, he has a Forced Labour edict, which really speeds up production. It doesn't make your empire look very good, but if it delivers a defensive building in time before an invasion fleet arrives, maybe it's worth it.



And if you don't care about your reputation at all, he's happy to help you make some quick cash by enslaving the local population. There's some long-term consequences, but who cares about those - you have a world to conquer.



He'll become more loyal the more cities you pillage, giving him opportunities for his business, but he rather despises kindness, gentleness, and any kind of scientific or educational endeavour, which he does not understand.

So what does "the empire showing kindness to another" mean? Well, sometimes there are diplomatic incidents - another new feature in the DLC - and sometimes there are opportunity to be kind to another empire, such as rescuing their people from pirates, or giving them food when they're starving. Gwalo really hates it when you do that.



Anyway, that's all from me for TactiCon. I hope you enjoyed the DLC preview, and I'll just ask you one last time - to appease the Gods of Marketing - to wishlist Heroes & Villains.

Today's DLC preview post is about Vex:



Vex is a druid who often appears at the same time as some spiders or gargoyles settling into your territory. They can be hired as an airship captain, providing a number of magical spells:

Sinkhole, which spontaneously produces a massive hole in the ground, causing whatever was standing there to crash down. Great for taking out small buildings or making landships lose their footing.



Crosswinds, which for a time entirely prevents a ship from moving, letting you move your ships into an optimal position.



Air Support, here in the form of a flock of eight gargoyles, which will tear apart the enemy ships with their acid spit.



So what does Vex want from you? It's pretty simple, really: wipe out pirates, mad scientists, cultists, machine cubes, and other such blights upon nature, and leave the animals alone. Even if they're giant animals that like to eat people.

And it won't be as simple as keeping your captains' and governors' loyalty just above zero. Even before they quit, low-loyalty characters can be amenable to persuasion from other empires...

As a design note, there's no magical abilities that do direct damage, because I felt that in a game that already incorporates cannons, the ability to cast fireball wouldn't be all that exciting.

Instead, many magical abilities are about battlefield control, and they're generally "plausibly deniable". Maybe the ground did just give way? Maybe there were some unfortunate winds stopping this ship from moving? Maybe some angry gargoyles just happened to fly past and decided to exclusively attack one side's ships because they smelled wrong?

We're pretty sure that was all Vex, but we can't be certain.

Finally, I realised that I have now shown you three heroes, or at least ambiguous characters. Given that the title of the DLC is Heroes & Villains, I will do one more post tomorrow, showing you a very bad man you might nevertheless want to hire.

So yesterday we looked at Commander Bertelli, an airship captain. Today it's the turn of Viviane Garcia, a city governor and ardent socialite.



When assigned to a city, she reduces the local level of unrest, makes it significantly cheaper to build upgrades such as universities and shipyards, but also makes the city much more vulnerable to enemy spies.

She can also be called upon to organise a fabulous masked ball, raising the spirits of the citizens and granting you a bit of reputation. Of course, while everyone is wearing masks, spies have an even easier time.



The masked ball is a city edict, a temporary event that governors can invoke. Other governors have edicts such as declaring martial law, organising a scientific symposium, or using the population for unethical experiments.


(Note to self: commission a version of her portrait where she's wearing a mask.)

She has two stats, loyalty and experience.

Her loyalty is direly tested whenever you perform a spy action, but the very worst thing you can do is hire a man called Pyle McMorley.

Who?



This is McMorley:



As you can see, the antipathy is mutual.

The other stat is experience, which she gains through diplomacy, signing non-aggression pacts, defensive pacts, and alliances.

Once she reaches 100 experience, she transforms into Dame Viviane.



Now she's less interested in masked balls, and she's learned to find out and stifle enemy spies in her city - though she still despises McMorley. And now she has a fame stat, which rises slowly over time, delivering victory after about seven years - if someone doesn't get there first, or sabotages her rise to fame...

So several readers have understandably expressed concern that winning the game through fame will be overpowered. A quick victory that bypasses much of the actual gameplay. That's not the intent here - fame victory should take time and effort, and other players should have the chance to resist it, much like with coronation and worm age victories.

With a DLC like this, I think it's important that the power level of the new features is carefully adjusted. If they're underpowered, the DLC ends up not mattering, and if they're overpowered, the DLC obsoletes the gameplay of the base game. If the power level is right, though, the DLC makes the game more complex and interesting. So that's what I'm aiming for. The heroes you see in these posts will go through plenty of testing and balancing before the release.

Tomorrow: Vex! Combat Magic! Gargoyles!

Fixed a small graphical glitch with the new Suspendium Disruptor.