New post to begin the new year, skills and broadsides

So development is not as fast as I'd like, but still chugging along.  Currently implementing the character skills system, which is about 2/3 done as far as adding skills, selecting a skill for training, and skill requirements for using items.  After that I need to hook in all the individual skill abilities, for example the Command skill will increase the number of crew your character can command on your ship (currently you can just set any ship you sail to max crew regardless of your skills). 

Skill training will be passive, similar to Eve Online's system.  You won't gain skills by doing things, instead you will purchase a book to study on a subject and add the book to your character's library.  Basically just purchasing/adding a skill to the character.  Then you can switch between available skills you want to train.  Training skills to higher level takes progressively longer amounts of time. 

Example below.  Higher levels include the amount of time it takes to reach the lower levels, meaning they are a total amount of time invested in training the skill. 

Level 1: 15 minutes
Level 2: 1 hour 30 minutes
Level 3: 9 hours
Level 4: 2 days 6 hours
Level 5: 13 days 12 hours

More advanced skills will take longer, even much longer, to train than the above example.  You'll be allowed to train a skill above level 5 for higher bonuses in whatever it provides, but no skill or item will have a requirement of any skill above level 5.  The code allows for skills to be trained up to level 20, but that would become prohibitively time consuming to train the skill that long.  Effectively though you can continue training skills up to level 6 or 7 on a realistic time frame.  There are also more advanced versions of skills that you can unlock for the same bonus effect, such as Advanced Command which becomes available when you have trained Command to level 5. 

Originally the design had the Tracker server handling skill training, but I've moved that functionality to the Zone servers themselves.  Any training to be applied to your character while you are offline actually occurs as soon as you log into the game based on the last time stamp when training was previously applied. 

Additionally after tester feedback I've redesigned the Broadside mechanic.  Originally the design was when sighting cannons you could press the Broadside button.  It would then fire off all loaded cannons on that side of the ship in the direction you were aiming.  Players though did not like that idea, instead wanting a way to fire cannons while in 3rd person mode (the birds eye view above your ship while you are navigating and not looking down the sights of your cannons). 

So now there are two button, Port Broadside and Starboard Broadside which you can press regardless of what view you are using.  When looking down the sights of the cannons on the side of the ship for the broadside button pressed, it will use the direction you are aiming.  Otherwise all cannons will fire with the aim centered. 

So I hope everyone had a good Christmas, or whatever holiday you celebrate, and have a happy new year.  It is looking now that Broadside will be ready for large scale testing in the latter half of 2019.