Abandon Ship - top-down Age of Sail ship simulator

[Merlkir]

http://abandonshipgame.com

Spoiler

PoEII competitor? ;P

 

[Infinitron]

http://abandonshipgame.com/

Be the Captain. Survive on the Edge in a World with Consequences.
In Abandon Ship you take command of a ship and her crew, exploring a diverse, procedurally generated world, taking on quests and dealing with random events. Frequently, you will end up engaging other ships in combat, the player having to employ their best tactics in order to out-manoeuvre and out-gun the enemy.

The game focuses on “Age of Sail” ships in a Fantasy setting, framed in an Art Style inspired by classic Naval Oil Paintings.

Ship Destruction is not the End.
Life in the world of Abandon Ship can be brutal. Death is permanent. But the game doesn’t end if your vessel is destroyed. You are the Captain, and as long as the Captain is alive, there is always hope. By escaping to a Lifeboat, or even being stranded, alone in the water, there is still a chance to survive and fight your way back to the top.

Snatch Victory from the Jaws of Defeat.
Combat is tactical and savage. Each battle is hard-fought, always on the edge of defeat. Your only chance of overcoming the odds is to employ every advantage you can and utilise all the tools at your disposal.

Reap What You Sow.
Explore a fantasy world that reacts to your actions. Quests may drastically change the environment. Make decisions that create friends or enemies that may later come back to help or hinder you.

 

[PulsatingBrain]

I hadn't even heard of this yet. It looks fantastic

 

[Space Satan]

looks like Sunless Sea that does not suck

 

[catfood]

Looks p. cool to be honest. Worth keeping an eye on.

Overboard/Shipreckers is still the best ship game though.

 

[Jimmious]

Looks p. cool to be honest. Worth keeping an eye on.

Overboard/Shipreckers is still the best ship game though.

Holy shit, I had forgotten about this one! I loved it when I was young but I think I was constantly playing the demo of it?? Wow that was a blast from the past

 

[Deakul]

FTL with boats? Count me in.

 

[Quigs]

I don't understand why they'd bother with a tall ships game only to ignore wind almost completely.

 

[wyes gull]

FTL with boats? Count me in.

Exact same reaction, even before I read your post.

 

[Infinitron]

Releasing on Steam Early Access on Wednesday the 21st February.

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2018/02/21/abandon-ship-early-access-review/

FTL-like Abandon Ship hasn’t found its sea legs yet

‘FTL but on a…’ is a formula that sounds like it can just keep on giving, but it’s entirely telling that the creators of FTL have moved onto whip-smart micro-turn-based strategy instead of more ship management-based roguelitery. People keep making these things – on a train! on a post-apocalyptic battlebus! also on a spaceship! also on a post-apocalyptic battlebus! – but I can count the real successes on one hand.

Sadly, it seems I won’t be grafting an extra finger with ‘Abandon Ship‘ carved into it onto that hand – not unless this Cthulhu vs pirates take on the vehicular surviv-o-RPG format can perform some serious course-correction during its voyage through early access.

Abandon Ship hit early access today, with a full release planned for some point during the next year. It is not, to be clear, a finished game, and the dev claims that more and better stuff is due for it, but right now all I can speak to is whether or not your funbucks buy you a satisfying shore leave right now.

In terms of story, it’s about a nameless Seadog With A Destiny who escapes from a group of murderous cultists then flees across the ocean in search of safety and answers, becoming embroiled in naval battles and conflicts with oceanic horrors in the process. Strictly speaking, you’re not a pirate, but with its heavy focus on pursuit, cannons, ramming, boarding, on-deck melee scuffles with fishmen and tussles with a bloody great Kraken, Abandon Ship is pretty much Pirates of the Caribbean: The Roguelite.

It makes a few tilts towards simulation, with the likes of ordering crew to bail out water caused by hull breaches and toggling ship-to-ship range in order to make certain types of weapon more or less effective. Silent Megasquid Hunter it is most certainly not, though. In the main, it’s about the preservation of hull health and the acquisition of gold in order to buy upgraded gear and crew, with an undercurrent of permadeath and massively punitive random events. Same as it ever was, same as it ever was.

This borrows most of FTL’s ideas and mechanics wholesale, everything from crew specialisms to praying the hull will hold until you can find a repair station to having to make a certain number of ‘jumps’ before you can move onto the next area. But outside of theme, there’s not much fresh invention in the mix. Instead, there’s a thick layer of blubber wrapped around the tried’n’tested formula.

Let’s take those ‘jumps’ as an example. In FTL, you have no direct flight control, but instead hop between a certain number of points on the galactic map before you can move to the next system. At each step along the way therecould be a fight, a multiple choice dilemma, a freebie or a shop. To its credit, Abandon Ship strives for something more involved and freeform.

You’re not jumping from point to point – you click to steer your ship around a large and roiling ocean, prettily presented as if within a vast and animated picture frame. Each new area is occluded by a canvas-like fog of war when you enter, which you clear by slowly and painstakingly moving through it, increasingly desperately hoping you’ll uncover one of a handful of icons before you enter a fugue state. It looks very nice, but, like catching an overnight ferry from Dover to Calais, the initial excitement gives way to an abiding tedium. Some of those icons attain needle/haystack status – it desperately needs more of them, and perhaps for them to be roaming ships rather than static icons.

Once found, each icon will trigger either a fight, a handful of gold, a shopping port or a random event. Complete a certain number of these encounters and the gate to the next area will magically open. There’s little attempt made to justify this, which is sensible given that there are only so many ways one might say ‘Because reasons.’

And that’s it. That’s all there is to sailing in this boat game. You click tediously around this pretty-but-empty map, waiting to stumble across an icon that will make something happen for a brief moment, and when you’ve done this enough times you get to go and do it all again. Icon variety and frequency does amp up somewhat as things wear on, plus there’s a deathclock which results in pursuit if you’ve not moved on before it expires, but it’s still a slog. FTL has the same structure, but where that was punchy and rapid, this suffers from an inordinate amount of downtime and hollow repetition. One’s a bullet train from Tokyo to Osaka, the other’s a National Express coach from Coventry to Middlesbrough.

Devs Fireblade Software seem conscious that there’s work to be done, claiming in their release notes that “while all areas of the game will be added to and improved, we expect the exploration mode to receive the most attention.” I.e. more locations, quests and events and, I hope and pray, a sense of dynamism and life rather than a dour icon-hunt.

Unfortunately, in terms of what your money gets you right now, combat is not the saving grace it needs to be. Again like FTL, it’s ship-to-ship battles in which you order the crew around rather than directly manoeuvre the craft. Your vessel is locked in place at the bottom-centre of the screen, with ‘speed’ interpreted as selecting from four buttons to affect how close or far away you are from the enemy ship, which it is forever perfectly parallel to. Where FTL got by on abstraction thanks to its simple-but-effective 2D art and use of frames and cutaways, Abandon Ship’s faintly impressive full 3D makes the ships seem as though they’re unnaturally frozen, which robs the battles of any urgency and hammers home the fact that all you’re really doing is waiting for cannon timers to expire.

Fights are real-time but dependent on cooldowns and rapidly re-assigning crew between weapons and repairs. Oxygen leaks are here replaced by flooding, which means you need to assign someone to pump the invading sea out in addition to patching up cannon-fire holes in the mist of a fight. There’s familiar and vital desperation to this element, but the broadsides suffer from the same hollow waiting that exploration does, as well as a sense of powerlessness.

You can pelt the enemy with cannonballs every thirty seconds, sure, and choose whether to target sails (to prevent escape or enable you to move close enough to board) or crew with ancillary weapons, but right now there isn’t much in terms of minimising hull damage. You just have to take your lumps, hope you don’t get killed too quickly and that you can randomly stumble across enough gold-icons to fund fixes and buy upgrades afterwards.

Clearly in this pre-technology setting we can’t have healing rays or countermeasure drones but some option to manoeuvre might make it feel less like slow death by unavoidable attrition. If you’ve got a crew member assigned to the wheel, you can choose to flee, ram (if close enough) or turn around, but the latter is only really useful if you’ve got different weapons on the other side of the ship. And all of these are on long, long timers too. Too often, death felt like a blessed release from waiting to be allowed to press a button, which is the last thing you want to feel in a game that is specifically about avoiding death.

In some respects the slowness suits the theme, but when it’s there alongside the glacial nothingness of exploration mode, it all adds up to a sense of time-wasting rather than masterful and commanding thrills. And the less said about the tragically formulaic and repetitive kraken battles the better, I’m afraid.

All that said, this is but the first volley from an early access cannon that will apparently keep firing for 9-12 months, and with every intention of addition and improvement. There is most definitely a platform for good things here, particularly in terms of the often delightful presentation, but I fear it needs a significant revamp of its desperately dull exploration mode, while the realtime combat needs to feel less like mechanical turn-taking. So don’t book passage on Abandon Ship just yet, but let’s hope its hearties will be capable of more avast further down the line.

 

[Infinitron]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...he-ftl-formula-to-the-seas-with-great-results

Abandon Ship takes the FTL formula to the seas with great results

Abandon Ship, a seafaring strategy game with more than a smattering of the occult, has dropped anchor in Steam early access and personally, I am very impressed with how it's looking so far. I made a video about it earlier this week. In fact, you can view it below.

If you've not heard of Abandon Ship before, the core message in a bottle is that it's a game about taking flight from a murderous bunch of cultists very much in the same vein as FTL. As the captain of the ship your goal is to explore each new environment, balancing your supplies, money and morale while navigating a series of deadly encounters and preparing to make the journey to new waters.

Ever looming on the horizon are the forces of the cult from which you have so boldly escaped - they hound you constantly as you try to win your freedom with everything at their disposal, from cannon and shot to terrifying fishmen and an honest to goodness kraken. Here be monsters indeed.

What I really like about Abandon Ship is how readily the combat mechanics from FTL translates to a historical setting. The system powering FTL's ship-to-ship battles seems so intrinsically married to its dreamlike, floating setting with its airlocks power nodes and faster-than-light jumps that it's difficult to imagine a setting more divergent than that of Abandon Ship - and yet, it works.

In Abandon Ship, you control each member of your crew as they dash about on deck trying to keep the ship from going under. There are cannons to load and fire; the ship needs a steady hand at the helm in order to steer it close enough to ram the enemy or take it out of range of its close-quarter weapons; there are holes in the hull to patch, fires to put out and floodwater to be pumped. Crew members might be pulled away from their designated tasks to repel boarders, fighting for their lives before rushing back to preserve the life of the ship they serve. It's a frenetic and beguiling combat system that is no worse off for having been punted millenia into the past - in some ways, in fact, it has some elegant refinements that give it the edge over FTL itself.

For one thing, the power distribution mechanic from FTL has been stripped out - after all, there's no electricity aboard a tall ship. Instead, this part of managing the ship is rolled in with its crew placement, which is to say that none of the ships' stations is automated. Whereas stationing a crewmember in a particular room in FTL will give a buff to that particular function, Abandon Ship requires a crewmember to be present for that part of the ship to function at all.

It's obvious enough when you think about it - a cannonball can't load itself, after all - but it provides a more hands-on approach to surviving each fight that's really exhilarating. Suddenly the meter showing how close a weapon is to firing becomes a much more important consideration, and prioritising which crew member is going to deal with what crisis can be a really tough decision. You won't last with a hole in the hull, for instance, so it definitely has to be patched - but who's going to do it? Will it be the person currently loading the grapeshot cannon and trying to kill the other crew members, or will you stop trying to get the first aid bay back to a functioning state and hope that nobody needs to heal up all of a sudden?

It's not so much that the pacing is drastically different in these encounters, you understand - you can pause the game at any moment as in FTL - but successfully navigating a combat encounter in Abandon Ship is definitely more of an involved fair. It is, quite literally, all hands on deck, and it grants a sense of immediacy to proceedings that I had never noticed was missing from its spacefaring counterpart.

Getting suckered in

The exploration side of Abandon Ship is also a markedly different experience. Instead of jumping between single-screen nodes on the map, each marker actually expands into an enclosed area (set out like a navigation chart) with a number of locked gates on the sides. These gates will only open once you've survived a certain number of encounters, forcing you to stop, look around and actively go looking for trouble. You can be cautious under certain circumstances, but there's no such thing as a safe playthrough in Abandon Ship - it's a pirate's life for thee whether thou likes it or not. This sense of gathering trouble is only compounded by the fact the cultists chase you relentlessly - instead of a steadily advancing line on a map, the cultists' pursuit is represented by a small meter at the bottom. When full, they will either dispatch a boarding party, an elite ship or the aforementioned kraken to try and send you to a watery grave. These encounters are unavoidable and provide a real sense of threat, making the cultists a constant presence throughout the game. Indeed, it's hard not to be fascinated by them and their dastardly ways as you glimpse little bits of their lore between stoving them in and sending them to meet Davey Jones.

Abandon Ship, in other words, is a game that plays with FTL's winning formula in some very clever ways. It eases off on certain elements, allowing you to look around and get a sense of exploration, while ramping up the intensity of other elements. It's a game that makes you stop and really think about certain parts of your journey, while relying on gut instinct to see you through others. For something that's just launched in Early Access it's remarkably well realised, and I look forward to seeing how shipshape it is once the voyage to completion is finally done.

 

[HeatEXTEND]

 

[gaussgunner]

FTL at sea, yawn.

Doesn't have any of the fun things about naval warfare.

 

[Jenkem]

Seems like a game to keep an eye on. Hope it gets the attention it needs.

Wishlisted.

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.pcgamer.com/ftl-like-sea-adventure-abandon-ship-shows-great-potential/

FTL-like sea adventure Abandon Ship shows great potential
Flee from cultists and try not to be eaten by the kraken—but maybe wait until after Early Access to give it a go.

Even with Into the Breach releasing this week, we want more FTL-style games. Abandon Ship, which hit Early Access last week, brings us an evil cult, a summoned kraken, and a managerial high seas adventure that will, possibly, be great. It's heavily styled after FTL, with cannons and sails in place of lasers and shields, and concise, effective Lovecraftian prose, but right now the tuning is off—it doesn't produce quite as fearful, exciting, or creative an adventure as its inspiration.

The world of Abandon Ship is a web of maps, framed squares of sea which are connected by gates. Opening a gate requires completing certain number of encounters which are discovered by zipping your little ship around and uncovering icons hidden by the fog of war. Mostly, I've been fighting or fleeing cultist ships and pirates in pausable real-time combat, though the maps are also populated with narrative encounters—opportunities to trade or seek repairs, or sometimes ambush a friendly vessel to the detriment of crew morale. After a couple tutorial maps, a danger meter also appears, siccing aquatic monsters on your ship if it fills before you unlock a gate and move on.

Abandon Ship is less economical with space and time than FTL was. The sea maps are pretty, but they're canvases for icons, not rich play spaces unto themselves. I don't like that I feel rushed not to make a decision, but simply to paint the map with my ship. I might choose to flee an area without repairing and buying ship upgrades if it's taking me too long to find a port, and that's 'a decision,' but it's dependent largely on luck.

Taking too long without sinking a cultist ship fills up that danger meter, which when full results in either a kraken attack (slash at its tentacles until the 'flee' meter is full) or a sea monster boarding party. To kill the latter invaders, you'll pair crew members with enemies and watch life bars deplete, occasionally sending one or more of your tiny men off to heal (there's no way to zoom in, which would be helpful). It's a tedious punishment for unluckiness.

Cannons and mortars
Ship combat is far better than exploration. Crew members must be assigned to parts of the ship, aiming and reloading cannons or specialized guns, steering (which allows for special maneuvers like ramming or fleeing), making repairs, bailing out water and so on.

The fastest way to sink a ship, I found, is to ram it, and the best way to minimize damage to my own hull—which is the only thing that doesn't automatically regenerate between fights—is to inflict wounds on the opposing crew such that they have to abandon their cannon posts to heal. And so I developed a strategy that, while not foolproof, works well against the many low-level encounters I've had to run through so far.

First, I upgraded my sails, which makes it easier for me to close in on captains who try to maintain their distance (some will come right at you, while others prefer to constantly retreat to the maximum distance). If they hold me off anyway, I bombard their mast until they slow enough that I can enter ramming range. I send one of my gunners to an anti-personnel gun, injuring enemy sailors as much as possible to encourage them to visit their medical station. Once my maneuver bar fills (everything's a bar) I ram them. Repeat as needed.

I've managed the last ten or so fights in the main campaign with this flowchart to mostly unfettered success. Any complications that arise—a hull breach, an enemy invader, a crew member with dangerously low health—I can solve by taking one gunner off his cannons for a moment. It has become somewhat rote.

There are theoretical decisions I could be making. For instance, if I focused my upgrades on anti-personnel weapons, I could kill the opposing crew or knock them all overboard without sinking their ship, securing better loot. But the high prices for new crew members and new guns and ship upgrades have kept me conservative—better to hit hard with more cannons than be underpowered if I encounter a bigger ship. Boarding and going hand-to-hand is worrisome, too, as losing a crew member is a big set-back.

Volcanoes and lightning
How precisely to make the ship battles more puzzling, to deepen the risks at every level and dismantle rote solutions, I don't claim to know exactly, though Abandon Ship's alternate 'combat' mode, which discards exploration for a series of increasingly-difficult ship battles, contains hints.

Where the main adventure beefs up opposing vessels too slowly, the combat mode quickly turns encounters frantic as hull breaches let in water and fires break out. Improved enemy weapons are paired with environmental calamities, such as lightning strikes and an active volcano raining fiery rocks on the deck. A heavy rain means my fire-starting weapons are a no-go—I have to improvise. And my simple ramming technique is in constant peril of being thwarted, as no maneuvers are possible if my mast has been cracked.

I like these more trying battles better, as I'm rarely sitting and watching meters fill without doing anything—through directing every minor repair goes a little too far. There's a balance to be found in how often my plans should be stalled by damage or weather, as right now it feels either too little or too much. That's one knob to turn.

Balancing those extremes can't be the end of the changes, though, as neither is fully satisfying. I still want to puzzle out different strategies for different ships. I'd love to stock one side of my ship with close-range flamethrowers, and the other side with long-range cannons so that I can run two attack styles, and to have a larger library of maneuvers. Perhaps a reworked, less stingy upgrade system could begin to open up the potential for that creativity.

For now, Abandon Ship is pleasantly engaging busywork. As your crew will happily stand next to a spreading fire—or worse, in the fire—doing nothing, they must be directed at all times. And there are so many little details to manage (each crew member has specialties, like in FTL, for instance) that it does effectively pass time: I played four hours without noticing them go by.

I'm excited to see how Abandon Ship develops in Early Access, because it doesn't need a total rewrite (except maybe in the exploration portion). Most of the details that are there have been combined to make great games before, and the same can happen here. Changing their values may have a dramatic effect. Like some other Early Access games, there's probably a better game on the horizon, and I don't want to play this version much longer for fear it'll spoil me on what's to come.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

There is another age of sail themed game coming.


This one is from developers that made Vietnam '65 and Afganistan '11.

 

[Infinitron]

http://abandonshipgame.com/major-update-01-treasures-from-the-deep

Major Update 01: Treasures of the Deep


Greetings Captain!



Our first major update focuses on feedback from the community, and we’ve added some big systems that substantially improve the game. These concentrate on the following areas:


– Implementing an alternate solution to insta-killing crew in events
– Offering ways to get out of the ‘downward spiral’ that could occur if things were going badly or recovering from ship destruction.
– Supplementing the save system outlined in the Roadmap.
– Adding a “Quick Start” option that skips the opening section.



These issues often compounded each other and could prove frustrating. The post below describes our solution to these problems, and there is also a short video that explains some of our changes here:






Before we dive into the latest changes, some important house-keeping: Because we’ve had to change the world to accommodate these new systems, your saves from previous versions will not work with this latest update.



If you are mid-playthrough on the original version and wish to continue it, then you may switch over to this older version of the game via the Beta Branches system:


– Go to your Steam Library
– Right-click on Abandon Ship and select “Properties”
– Go to the tab marked “Betas”
– In the drop-down box, select the one called “Launch Version (0.5.8082)”
– Wait for the game to finish updating, you should see the branch name listed after the game name.

Spoiler

Badly Hurt
Events no longer insta-kill your crew! Instead, they will make them “Badly Hurt”, which means they are unavailable in combat until you have revived them in an Apothecary.



This removes the feeling of unfairness while still making player choice important – and crucially, recovery is under player control.



Crew Traits System
There is now a Traits system, which gives your crew more character. Traits can be either Physical or Mental, and Positive or Negative.



When crew become Badly Hurt, they will gain a Negative Physical Trait. They will also gain one if they become Incapacitated in Combat.



Traits provide a small bonus or penalty to actions in Combat and stack up in ways that can affect your tactics in battle.



We’ve had a lot of fun coming up with Traits, and we’re sure the community will have plenty of fun ideas too



Apothecary
If your crew member is Badly Hurt, you’ll want to head to the new Apothecary in Ports to revive them.



Apothecaries can also cure Negative Physical Traits.


Prisons
If you’ve survived Ship Destruction or escaped a battle with barely any crew, it could be extremely tough to work your way back to the top. Now, if you’re down on your luck, head to a Prison.



Here you’ll be able to get cheap crew by paying their fine so they can serve on your ship. Prisoners are base-level and have several negative traits – one Mental Trait means they will never gain experience, so while Prisoners can get you out of a tight spot, they’re unlikely to hold a permanent spot on your ship.




Magistrate & “Magistrate Saves”
Accessed via the Tavern option in Port, the Magistrate offers you the chance to create a manual save (what we call a “Magistrate Save”). To perform a Magistrate Save, you must use a Captain’s Log. These are finite items spread throughout the world that you must find.




Your Magistrate Save and Autosave are tied to the same playthrough. If you die, you no longer have to resume from the start of the game, but can now continue playing from your last Magistrate Save. You have one Magistrate Save per playthrough, so performing a new Magistrate Save will overwrite your previous one. Your moment-to-moment progress is still constantly autosaved as it has always been.



We feel this method retains the danger of loss should you die, but takes the extreme edge from having to restart the entire game, potentially losing so much playtime that it became frustrating. Now, you have a decision to make: Do you expend these rare items to create a Magistrate Save, or keep going and risk losing more progress?



The Magistrate is where you can also submit your charts of the local area and be paid Gold in return. This is a low-risk way to earn money, particularly helpful if you’re recovering from ship destruction.



Shipwrecks and the Diving Bell
There is a new upgrade available from ports: The Diving Bell. This can be used to gain access to new events scattered around the world: Shipwrecks.



Aside from the more common standard shipwrecks, there are rarer, former Empire flagships to find. If the player uses the Diving Bell on one of these “Golden Shipwrecks”, they can obtain a Captain’s Log, which is required to perform a Magistrate Save.



Golden Shipwrecks are rare. You’ll find one in an entire region, or two in the largest ones. Some regions have none. If you’re lucky, you may happen across one, otherwise you’ll have to go looking for them.




This ship icon denotes which map you commence a Quick-Start game from.
Quick-Start
We’re aware that some players starting a new game wish to just dive straight into the action, so we have created a Quick-Start option. When you commence a new game, tick the appropriate box to be spawned in a place where you can immediately get going.



In order to teach all of the new mechanics in this and the previous update, we have made some adjustments to the start of the game. Now, once you leave the area where the Cult attack the Port, you will be funnelled to a map where new players will be taught everything. We’re also expecting to use this map as an opportunity to teach systems we have planned for the future. Outside this new port in the fourth map is where a Quick-Start game commences.



Difficulty
While some of the changes in this, plus previous updates, have made the game less frustrating by removing friction points, we’re aware that some players find the game too easy.



In this update, we’ve made Hard mode spawn tougher enemies in combat. Throughout Early Access we’ll be continually tweaking the difficulty, plus adding options and systems that offer a tougher challenge for those that want it.



New Ships
We’ve added two new Ship Classes to fill the gaps in the roster: The Corvette and Cruiser. This smooths out some of the sudden jumps the AI make in ship size.




The Cruiser & Corvette, and their Cult equivalents.
As part of our roadmap plans, we’ll be offering more ship variety that affects gameplay and player choice in what they upgrade to.



Miscellaneous
There are of course a whole host of other bug-fixes, polish and quality-of-life improvements included as part of this update, and you can read the list of these here:


https://steamcommunity.com/app/551860/discussions/9/3211505894123943351/



This update is just one step along our voyage through Early Access, and we’re already working on both improving what is already there, as well as adding some really exciting things.



We’d love to hear your feedback, so please join us in our Steam Community Forums, and thanks to those who have left us a Steam Review. If you haven’t done so yet, please do!



Thank-you for the support, Captain. It is much appreciated



The Abandon Ship Crew



PS – For those players that stay up-to-date with the Beta Branch versions, thank-you for your assistance and feedback while testing the above.

 

[Infinitron]

http://abandonshipgame.com/major-update-02-the-perilous-bounty

Major Update 02: The Perilous Bounty

Greetings Captain!



We have just released a Major Update: The Perilous Bounty.


This packs in a bunch of exciting additions to Abandon Ship, and the post below explains these in greater detail.


We have also released a trailer showing the new features, which you can view here:





Before we look at the latest changes, some important house-keeping: Because we’ve had to change the world to accommodate these new systems, your saves from previous versions will not work with this latest update.


If you are mid-playthrough on the previous version and wish to continue it, then you may switch over to this older version of the game via the Beta Branches system and following these steps:


– Go to your Steam Library
– Right-click on Abandon Ship and select “Properties”
– Go to the tab marked “Betas”
– In the drop-down box, select the one called “0.5.8433 – Treasure from the Deep Version”
– Wait for the game to finish updating, you should see the branch name listed after the game name.


If you’re up-to-date on the Beta Branch (i.e you already have the items listed below) then your saves will be unaffected.

Spoiler

Here are the major new features in the update:

Sea Forts
Sea Forts are a new type of enemy you can battle. As giant stone structures, they cannot be sunk, so you’ll have to defeat them in other ways.






They have an outer-ring section which can be damaged and repaired just like a ship. This can house up to 4 mortars and 2 Sick Bays.


The inner-ring section is a raised stone platform that houses a new weapon – the Mega-Mortar.


The Mega-Mortar is auto-fired and auto-reloaded from mechanisms within the Sea Fort. It cannot be mounted on a ship, as the recoil would tear the vessel in half! This weapon will continually fire at you, and as well as the devastating damage it causes, will also momentarily halt the movement of your ship.


You can disable the Mega-Mortar by damaging all 4 inner-sections, which cannot be repaired. Once the Mega-Mortar is disabled, the Sea Fort will surrender (although it should be noted that Cult-owned Sea Forts will never surrender).

Attacking a Cult Sea Fort


Of course, you could always charge in, board the Sea Fort and slaughter the crew to win as well, but the Mega-Mortar will make it tough-going for you!


Sea Forts provide a slightly different challenge for Captains to overcome. Victory provides a high reward, but you will take damage trying to defeat one – so only attempt hostilities if you’re in a strong position. In our playtesting thus far, we’ve found that specialised builds are more effective, so make sure you’re able to either get in super-fast and finish the battle quickly, or are set up for anti-crew warfare, or are extremely powerful at long-range and can disable the Mega-Mortar before it causes too much damage (the new Catapult weapon is handy for this).


Sea Forts are immune to ‘Brace’ tests and cannot be rammed, so if your strategy is heavily reliant on those tactics, you’ll need to change things up. Also, the imposing structures rise above the highest waves, so Tidal Waves have no effect on them.


In exploration mode, the Sea Fort will open fire on you if it’s hostile. While they won’t sink you, they will whittle your hull health down. Also, if you engage in battle within range of a Sea Fort, an off-screen bombardment may come into play. This could be a help or hindrance depending on the combatants. For example, if you battle a Cult vessel in range of a neutral Sea Fort, the Cult ship will be bombarded. If you fight a pirate in range of a Cult Sea Fort, you’ll both be bombarded.


Wanted Levels
If you engage in lots of piratical acts (or attack neutral Sea Forts) then the new Wanted Level will rise. As it passes certain milestones, negative-effects will come into play. Previously neutral Sea Forts will open fire as you sail into their vicinity, and Bounty Hunters will be dispatched to bring you to justice. Depending on your notoriety, they may offer to collect the Bounty in money, or prefer to shoot first and ask questions later!



At Wanted Level 1 and above, neutral Sea Forts will open fire if you sail too close
You can reduce your Wanted Level by doing good deeds (either in events or liberating Cult-owned Sea Forts), or heading to the Magistrate in Port to pay your fine.


Side note: In order to fit in this new functionality, the old Magistrate menu has been changed to the “Explorer’s Guild”, just in case you’re looking to file your charts and use your Captain’s Log Saves.


Trade Routes
Trade Routes snake out from ports, and little trading vessels sail along them to their destination. You can raid these by sitting on the dotted line and pressing the “Raid” button.


Doing so will increment your Gold, but will also raise your Wanted Level.







Trade Routes can be raided by Pirates – in which case they’ll appear yellow, or completely blocked by Cult vessels (where the dotted line will appear red). If you displace these ships from the Trade Route, your Wanted Level will decrease.


The dotted lines of a Trade Route are also a handy navigational point – you know one direction will always end in a port!



Racing to a Floating Outpost with a Bounty Hunter hot on our heels!
Floating Outposts
If you reach a high enough Wanted Level, Ports will close down and not allow you access. If you reach this position and need to get those pesky Bounty Hunters off your back, then find a Floating Outpost.


These neutral places act like mini-ports and are open to even the worst pirates. They don’t have the full range of options you’d find in port, but you’ll be able to boost crew morale, purchase supplies, patch up the worst of your hull damage and most importantly, pay off your wanted fines.


New weapons and upgrades
This update also includes 5 new weapons, and two new combat-upgrades.






Gargoyles spew flames onto vessels at boarding range, while Anti-Boarding Spikes damage crew as they leap between vessels. Perennial boarders beware!


The Catapult is an extremely powerful weapon that fits in your cannon slots, however it can only be fired at the furthest range.



The Timed Bomb is a Mortar whose shell sticks into the enemy deck, a fuse burning down. If the bomb is defused by crew, it is harmless – however if it goes off, it is quite devastating. Employ weapons that disrupt enemy crew to ensure a detonation!



Three new Swivel Guns include the Lightning Gun, which chains minor damage across multiple crew, and provides a small interrupt to their actions. The Web Gun traps crew in a cocoon that blocks the area they’re standing in. This is a great weapon for harassing enemy crew, as it’ll often drag in their companions to chop away to free them sooner. Finally, the Berserk Dart enrages crew enough to attack whoever is closest, even allies!


Passage of Time
All maps will now repopulate their events over the passage of time, so you’ll no longer revisit previously explored places to find them empty.


Repopulation is handled through transitioning between exploration maps, or by waiting. You can wait by pressing the new button on the right-hand side of the screen – but be careful, waiting can result in being ambushed.


Kraken
The Kraken has received some love and attention. When it chases you throughout the game, it’ll now perform additional attacks on top of the standard hull-grab – so be prepared to deal with other things while you’re cutting those tentacles.



Several other attacks can disrupt your attempts to fight off the Kraken.
The Kraken will now ‘Aggro’ in the Boss Battle – once they reach a certain health they’ll play an aggro anim and from then on, attack more aggressively.


We’ve also improved the effect of the Kraken chasing you in exploration mode!



Expanded Crew Sizes, New Skills
This has been a popular request, so crew size is now dependant on the ship class and on the larger ships, goes up to 8.


We’ve also given the rest of the crew unique skills to differentiate them further:


– Captain: Leader. Provides a passive bonus to whatever action the crew on your ship are doing.
– Navigator: Evasive Manoeuvres. When manning the wheel, reduces the accuracy of enemy fire.
– Marine: Dodge. Reduces the damage received.
– Sailor: Special Repairs. Provides a bonus to extinguishing fires, repairing hull cracks and pumping water.
– Gunner: Accuracy. Increases the chance of hitting when firing cannons or mortars.


The Surgeon of course already has their ‘Heal’ Skill.


Autofire & Targeting
Another popular request: every single weapon in the game can now be toggled between manual fire and autofire!



Weapons set to Autofire will have a gold highlight that circles the Weapon Button. Right-Click the Weapon Button to toggle Autofire on and off. Targeting the enemy ship with cannons will now display a red highlight to show which section you are aiming at.
Cannon Targeting has now been visualised with a system which is much clearer to read.


Key Bindings Menu
You can now re-map your keys in the new Key Bindings menu!


Iron Captain Mode
In previous updates, we added Explorers Guild Saves; a way of manually saving if you found a rare Captain’s Log. ‘Iron Captain’ Mode is something you can select when creating a new game and means there are no Captain’s Logs in the game.



Miscellaneous
We’ve fixed a load of bugs and made lots of other improvements to the game.


We have also been re-balancing from feedback and the new features. In particular, combat should feel less attritional when targeting sections, the AI should be more aggressive, and we’ve made some big changes that should greatly reduce any leftover feelings of “I got a new ship and so did the AI”.


For the patch notes on everything that was changed, you can check out this post on our Steam Community forums here:


https://steamcommunity.com/app/551860/discussions/9/1736589520009196666/


Of course, as we continue to improve the game we’ll refine everything even further.

We hope you enjoy everything in the new update. It’s been a lot of fun creating it.


Next, our focus will turn to unlocking a new region, including special gameplay associated with that area. The ETA for that is mid-to-late October.


We’d love to hear your feedback, so please join us in our Steam Community Forums, and thanks to those who have left us a Steam Review. If you haven’t done so yet, please do!


The Abandon Ship Crew


PS – Thanks to everyone who provided feedback from the Beta Branches

 

[Dickie]

I had forgotten all about this game until Steam told me it was on sale right now.

 

[Jenkem]

is it good or is it shit? no one has played this trash the only posts in this thread are shilling

 

[Burning Bridges]

Look at the Steam reviews and specifically the playtime. 5-10 hours, 20 max.

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

Every time I see this game pop back up I'm reminded of Seaworthy, which leads me to trying to remember what exactly the fuck Seaworthy's name is.

 

[Dickie]

It's version 1.0 now.

 

[Infinitron]