Base Skirmish mode

Hey guys.

There's been more than a few requests for a "skirmish" mode (a fairly traditional RTS type game mode) and I usually tended to reply - that was the intention of the already existing battle editor (with some improvements that were planned in the future).

When I play RTS games I usually stayed away from skirmish modes (I preferred the story type game play) so I may have been a bit biased against including this, but the more I thought (prompted via your requests) about RTS games the more I realized that every one I can think of has a skirmish mode. So I decided to add it in.

So here's what "Base Skirmish" mode - in Void Destroyer - is:

• An quick and easy way to setup RTS style (base versus base) battles
• Player can add/remove friendly/enemy bases to the skirmish
• Player can chose map size (determines distance between friend and foe)
• Player can chose difficulty (determines starting resources, starting ships, starting defenses and AI ship/base building quotas/numbers)
• Player can chose whether research is necessary or all tech is unlocked
• Player can have the command ship in the mix - which is upgradable (or fully upgraded with unlocked items - player's choice)
• Enemy bases will build marine ships and defensive platforms
• Friends/enemies, upgrades, research is unlocked via playing the mission/story game
• Player can add special ships/platforms to the map (eg: boss ships, friendly hero ships)

So some of these weren't possible in the battle editor (for example enemy bases wouldn't build defensive platforms - a feature I disabled a while back to keep story mode from being even more "challenging"). But now are possible in both skirmish mode and the battle editor (skirmish mode is basically a quick battle editor configurator). So now maps created via the battle editor can have research, can have the command ship and enemy bases can be a lot more active threats.

The cool thing about skirmish mode is that you can really customize difficulty - for example - have an easy start, but have a one friendly versus many enemy bases - which still results in a hard game. Or if you want start a very chaotic game - start in a tiny size map with multiple bases and watch the constant stream of ships engaging each other.

I still have a bit to go on polish of skirmish mode, but the overall bulk of the work should be done so I wanted to release it out to you guys. As always hope you enjoy and thank you for supporting the project.

Paul
PS: I also improved arena mode - you can now add multiple types of ships in (both friend and foe) and can have the command ship in the battle as well.