Alpha975

Don't worry. I'll upload the model once it is in a decent state Also, new screenshot:

Another tiny update: It's slowly starting to look like a proper warship I hope you like the progress

Hm, I can create some capturing animations if that helps. Also some tiny update on the 3D model:

Hm, yea, makes sense. Perhaps ships would ram automatically when an enemy ships comes close to its prow and is in front of it and then go into a cooldown for 10 seconds or so before it can perform the next ram?

Ok, a tiny progress report with screenshots. My recherches showed that during some of the biggest naval battles of antiquity (in the first and second punic wars), the main ships of the punic and roman navies were quinqueremes. The romans also had hexeremes as command ships, while carthage used some septiremes (that they bought from greece). Both navies also used smaller ships (Hemiolias, Trihemiolis, Liburnias, Triremes and Quadriremes) though these smaller ships were not the main fighting vessels and had tasks like troop transportation, scouting etc. In carthage, for instance, at 219 B.C., a squad of ships was made up of 50 quinqueremes, 2 quadriremes and 5 triremes. So what I wanted to start with is roman and punic quinqueremes. Here are some screenshots concerning the (about half way modelled) roman ship: It's based on a reconstruction from the naval architect J.F. Coates and on the way to being improved with images from coins, parts of ships that have been found since then and some literature that has been published since then. If anybody is interested, I can also provide a little background to the ships, if people enjoy it Yes, I agree: naval combat alltogether needs some overhaul. I've looked at a few multiplayer-matches on youtube and have not found a single one with mayor naval combat. Is it perhaps possible to enable ramming, ranged attacks and boarding as three seperate attack modes for ships? I also though of having ship models as 4 seperate parts (left right, front, back) that could be damaged individually, and depending on the part that is destroyed first, different death animations. I also though of having the option to change the armament in the ships after they are built. E.g. heavy naval artillery (light naval artillery also was on almost every large ship) <-> corvus (for roman quinqueremes) <-> siege artillery (a squad of roman ships that had siege artillery equipped just before was ambushed in the first punic war and several cities were bombarded from ships in antiquity) <-> archer towers <-> nothing (for extra speed and maneuvering) <-> fire pots (rhodesian navy used them for a close in battle once). I can certainly provide the necessary 3D models, textures, animations etc I've also found somebody asking about LODs somewhere. I'll also provide some LOD models in case this will be implemented in the future (and then people can have truly massive naval battles).

Hm, yea The picture with the solders on top the ships actually looks really good! I'm on it. I've already collected a lot of information on the ships of the timeframe 200-300 BCE (thanks for the wikipedia page, I've already extracted a lot from there, additionally from the german, french and greek pages, navistory.com, some forum and blog entries, three books). From this I'm on the way to build a framework to produce ship-models for the roman, greek and punic ships (later for the eastern mediterranean). If you like, I can post a few screenshots later (mainly 3D sketches and measurements at this point). I hope that with the framework it should then be easy to produce as many ships and ship-types as the heart desires. For greek ships (and similarely for roman and punic ships), for instance, I have found that in the timeframe Triaconters, Biremes, Triremes, Quadremes, Quinquereme, Hexeremes and possibly Septeremes were used. Reconstruction of the precise measurements is slightly difficult due to conflicting and/or missing data for most of these. Penteconters seem to have not been used in a large scale anymore in the timeframe while the half-type ships (e.g. Hemiolia and Trihemiolia) just about came into service from the eastern mediterranean (and were often simply classed with the Biremes or Triremes). Perhaps one could even designate a few of the really large ships as hero units, so players can only build one of these at most or something I'm also thankful for any additional information people have on this complex topic (besides the sources I've already mentioned). Or do we even have an expert on ancient naval vessels around? I'm not sure how interested everybody is in this, but on request I can also put up summaries of the stuff I've found in here.

Ok, I just checked ingame, and there would not a large scaleup of the ships necessary (perhaps 10% or so) to bring them to scale with infantry. So would you all enjoy a deck crew on the ships? Hm, it's probably best if I just start modeling a type of ship that is not ingame yet, with different possibilites (same as the current ships / with crew) and a few animations that could be used ingame. There is also the possibility to model the ships combat ready (currently they are all ingame with sails set etc., not how they would actually combat, but more visually appealing to the player). What are your thoughts on that? Should I built a test for both? Or an animation of a ships getting combat ready? Is the target poly-count still around 2k for ships?

Ok, that makes sense Thanks Alright, I'll give tiny rowers a try. I'll probably also try to model ships from around the second punic war instead of the imperial age (the ships ingame look more similar to the ones used then).

Hello everyone. I've been playing 0ad for a while on and of and I'm enjoying it. I like the progress the game is making and I would like to give a little bit back to the community. I was wondering if there was an update planned to the naval units ingame. Currently they look ok, but empty (nobody on deck etc.). Is it perhaps possible to increase the size of the ships ingame and at the same time put infantry units onboard the ships (similar to how it is done with walls) as an eye-candy? Or use this system where there are several 3D models for a unit to increase the variety of the ships? And could ramming be done? In any case, I could take a shot at the 3D models/texturs of the ships, if that is ok. Perhaps as a teaser a slightly older model of mine: (a roman monoreme as used in the battle of actium, no textures, around 5k polys)