Cannons!!!!

Current development now is on the armament systems.  Specifically on equipping, firing, and loading of a ship's cannons.  Early on in development a system was somewhat implemented to load and fire cannons, but it never took ammunition inventory, ship fittings, and crew manning the cannons into account.  It was just there so I could sail around and fire the cannons, so I could actually see what the game will look like, and to test networking systems involving syncing the launch of cannonballs from the server to the clients.  

Now that ship fitting, ship cargo, and ship crew systems have been fully on the ships, the armament system is being implemented to leverage those.  

Cannon View

The default view in the game is a 3rd person bird's eye view above the ship, where you can rotate the camera and zoom in and out.  This is great for navigating and situational awareness, but is not very useful for actually aiming cannons.  Rather than an RPG style of gameplay where you select a target and the computer just calculates a chance to hit, in Broadside you have to actually aim the cannons, fire them, see whereabouts they land.  Then you adjust your aim based on where your ordinance is hitting.  

The chance to hit then is just based on the range to target and the skill of the player.  A player with a top ship in the game is not much use beyond point blank range if they don't develop skills at aiming and firing the cannons, and as opposed to some other sailing games, Broadside purposely offers little in the way of hints to improve your long range aim.  That will be left as a valuable player skill to develop.  

To fire your cannons, you switch to one of the 4 cannon views.  This is a view from the deck of the ship either in the forward, aft, port, or starboard directions.  You get a very basic cross hair in the center and adjust the direction you're looking to adjust the aim of the cannons.  Press the spacebar to fire when you are satisfied, and then try to follow where the cannonball is going through the puff of smoke.  Then repeat the process.  You can also just hold down the spacebar to continuously fire, which is suitable at close range of the target.  

All ships, other than the Escape class dinghy (ship you end up in when your real ship is sunk), have room for cannons on board in the port and starboard directions.  A small number of ships also allow for a small number of cannons facing forward and aft.  

Cannon Fittings and Gun Decks

When you are docked in a port you have the opportunity to outfit your ship.  This includes outfitting your ship with whatever configuration of cannons you'd like, within the limits of what that ship can support.  While in real life a captain could come up with any crazy combination of cannons they want (which I considered allowing in this game), in Broadside for simplicity's sake your cannons are fit to individual Gun Decks, and each Gun Deck is allowed to contain only a single type of cannon.  That way when you press spacebar and fire a cannon, the next cannon in the queue is always of the same type, same ammunition, and same range as the previous.  

Ships with fore and aft cannon fittings have a single Gun Deck for each.  Most medium sized and smaller ships also only have a single Gun Deck on the port and starboard sides.  Mostly in the larger sized ships, such as the Ships of the Line, you'll have available up to 3 separate Gun Decks on the port and starboard sides.  This will allow the fitting of up to 3 separate cannon types or selected ammunition types for each side.  Ships with cannons in all 4 directions, and 3 Gun Decks per side, then would actually have 8 separate Gun Decks for the player to customize.  

The lowest Gun Deck, (Gun Deck 1), will allow for the fitting of the largest and most powerful cannons, while Gun Decks higher up in the ship will generally allow for smaller cannon sizes.  This keeps generally with historical accuracy, as fitting the heaviest guns high up in a ship would cause the ship to become unstable, tip over, and sink on its own.  

Players switch between firing from the separate Gun Decks on the same side with just a single click on their desired Gun Deck.  

The logical separation of cannons into Gun Decks allows the player to outfit their ship to handle a variety of situations all in the same ship.  A player could for example outfit 1 Gun Deck for heavy hitting short range, and another for long range, and switch between the 2 Gun Decks as they close on the enemy.  

Cannon Sizes and Types

In Broadside, cannons come in various sizes and types.  All cannons have a rating in pounds (LB), which was a standard historical rating based roughly on the weight of an iron cannonball the cannon was designed to fire.  Rather than weight, the LB of a cannon actually indirectly refers to the size of the cannonballs themselves.  All cannons and ammunition has a size in LB, and any ammunition in that size can be fired from any cannon of that size.  

All cannons, and any other ship fitting in the game, also has a fitting size.  These are Small, Medium, Large, and Extra Large.  A Gun Deck will have a fitting size it will allow up to, and any cannon of that fitting size or smaller can be fit to that ship.  Generally larger ships can equip the larger fitting sized cannons.  As cannon LB size goes up, so generally does the fitting size.  

Now besides the size of the cannons, they are also broken up into two major types of guns.  Long Guns and Carronades.  Long Guns have a much longer barrel and are designed for long range fire, while Carronades are designed for significantly shorter range.  The advantage of Carronades is in comparison to a Long Gun capable of firing ammunition of the same LB size, the Carronade may have a smaller ship fitting size, so you can fit guns that can fire larger ammunition onto a smaller ship or onto a higher Gun Deck than would be allowed a Long Gun.  Also, the few very largest sizes of ammunition in the game are only available for Carronades, making for extreme heavy hitters at close range.  

Ammunition

In addition to the various sizes, ammunition also comes in a variety of types useful for different specific purposes.  

• Iron Cannonball
• The standard ammunition type in Broadside that all other types are compared against.  The Iron Cannonball has maximum range, and is designed for damaging ships.  There is a size of Iron Cannonball for every cannon of every size.  
• Stone Cannonball
• Generally the cheapest ammunition type, and the type of ammunition equipped by default in your starter Bremen class cog.  Stone Cannonballs have slightly shorter range than Iron, due to needing to be fired with less powder to prevent them from shattering in the barrel.  They also do somewhat less damage to ships, but since stone can shatter they have an increased chance of harming the crew of the enemy ship.  
• Double Shot
• Effectively you're firing 2 standard Iron Cannonballs, each having similar damage potential as a single, but at significantly reduced range.  
• Chain Shot
• 2 Iron Cannonballs attached together by a chain.  These have significantly reduced range, and less damage potential to the hull of a ship than Double Shot, but are designed to damage ship masts, rigging, and sails, so do so with maximum efficiency.  
• Heated Shot
• A standard Iron Cannonball heated red hot.  This has all the same damage characteristics of a standard Iron Cannonball, but with an increased chance of causing a fire on the opposing ship.  Unfortunately, using Heated Shot creates a chance of lighting your own ship on fire as well, so can be very risky.  
• Grape Shot
• Grape Shot is basically using your cannon as a shotgun, hitting the opposing ship with very short range pellets.  These pose almost no risk to the enemy ship, but have the highest chance of injuring the enemy ship's crew of any ammunition type.  
• Explosive Shot
• A very specialized ammunition type that is extremely expensive compared to all the others.  Explosive Shot is basically launching a bomb at the enemy, potentially causing massive damage.  It is the ideal ammunition when attacking either ironclad warships or fixed fortifications, but presents a slight risk of an inadvertent explosion on your own ship when using it.  It is only available for a small number of very large guns.  

So the variety of ammunition types and sizes in combination with the variety of cannons available, allow for a lot of customization by the player to build out their ship's combat capabilities to fit with their desired tactics.  As an example, you can load a gun deck for example with Long Guns and long range ammunition, a second Gun Deck with Carronades and short range ammunition.  As you approach the enemy you use your Long Guns, and as you close you switch the Long Guns to short range ammo, and while those reload you switch to your Carronades.  Light them up with your Carronades and while you wait for those to reload you switch back to your Long Guns fitted for short range.  

Alternatively you can mix up Chain Shot and Grape Shot to disable a ship and then attempt to reduce its crew, to prevent its escape, and then when it can no longer flee you move to a safe range and pummel it with your Long Guns until it is sunk.  Your tactics are yours to make in Broadside.