CM gameplay has a lot of inspiration for the direction I want to take HS13. An asymmetrically balanced competitive PvP mode with player specialisation (classes) meaning teamwork is a large component of winning, and distribution of equipment can help or hinder those classes. Although these aspects are present in vanilla SS13, CM refined and focussed the design aspects to enhance them into a unique focussed gameplay environment. A number of our planned features are similar, but with the added goal of enabling and expanding on non-combat gameplay to better support roleplay.

Faction politics
- "Civilian" players are loosely affiliated and can sabotage, negotiate/aid or switch sides at will.
- Sometimes a greater threat can arise which will force bitter enemies to set aside their differences just to survive...

Added Support Player roles
- Fighters and bombers require refuelling, repairing and rearming after each engagement while pilots will require rest (or stimulants).
- Fighters and bombers need coordination and target setting from players in command to be effective.
- Marines are initially cloistered away in their barracks, their deployment needs to be coordinated via dropship with a pilot and a drop target (same with their extraction).
- Vehicles, weapons and gear are customisable so analyse your enemy's gear to determine their weaknesses.

New types of combat
- Dogfighting requires a different skillset in customisable vehicles.
- Capital ship combat requires careful positioning to maximise weapons fire while minimising damage. Players can crew turrets to help protect their ship.
- Electronic warfare, mines, targetting capital ship weakpoints and infiltration by boarding are all alternative options for defeating your enemy.

Electronic warfare
- Minimise your emissions to stay hidden, or simply lurk near something "loud" enough to disguise you.
- Encrypt your comms to prevent eavesdropping, but the more you talk the easier it is to decrypt.
- EMP weaponry can temporarily disable vehicles, weapons and components.
- Lock on missiles can be fooled or spoofed.
- Infiltrators can hack in to disable or overload systems. Particularly advanced tech can do it remotely...

SS13's legacy radio signalling works by simulating an actual data transfer network by sending "packets" (signals) of generic data via a global controller. Data transfer happens independently through generic interfaces which are fairly extensible with the actual processing of data signals handled separately by the end atoms. The transmission of radio signals operates across multiple process steps so immersion breaking artificial communication lag is introduced. To my knowledge, the only systems in SS13 using radio signalling are airlocks, some atmospherics things, bombs, and some of the underlying code for telecommunications (radio comms).

While this system is fairly robust and feature complete, it is also overly complex and time consuming to setup and produces some in-world conflicts with overmap (the global controller means there are no restrictions for distance, and there is no handling for interference or jamming). On the whole it's quite powerful but I never liked using it due to those over-complexities and the transmission lag.

I've experimented with replacement systems in the past for other projects, but now I've decided to develop a replacement system integrated directly into overmap called datanets. They are prototyped right now with airlocks and will attempt to emulate a P2P network topology (any device can communicate with any other device and there is no "master controller" except for a coordinator datum for handling meta aspects such as data transfer and machine linking/delinking). The idea is that the datanet simply determines whether and what is connected in a super light framework, then any data transfer or processing is handled fully by the participating atoms. It's not as robust as signalling networks under the hood but should be able to produce the same functionality with a significantly decreased workload for mappers and coders.

SS13 radio signalling networks have multiple steps to do, requiring a frequency to be set for all participating atoms then unique tags for each assigned and linked manually via the map editor. Datanet airlocks only need a single tag set for all participating atoms in that net to be set (along with a small amount of metadata) to be set via the map editor.

For the moment radio signalling will exist alongside datanets and they can both be used as normal (I manually integrated radio telecommunications into the overmap several months ago so that it behaves as expected) although they won't need or be required to communicate. Eventually I'd like to completely replace everything using radio signalling with datanets, then remove radio signalling entirely. The change should be invisible to players, but make maintenance + development + extension of the features much easier in the long run.

Post em if you got em! We need to give spriters some ideas. Here are some of mine:

• WW2 English fighter pilot
  
• Greek hoplite
  
• Roman Legionary
  
• WW1 English soldier (with the iconic flat helmet)
  
• Napoleonic era soldier
  
• Scottish Highlander regiment (with the tall fuzzy beaver hats, kilt and bagpipes)
  
• Any ordinary SS13 job as an easter egg (eg shaft miner, warden, medical doctor)
  
• Nurse
  
• Pirate
  
• Ninja
  
• Wizard/witch/cleric
  
• American Indian chieftain
  
• Egyptian Pharaoh
  
• Robin Hood (archer)
  
• Werewolf
  
• Vampire
  
• Zombie
  
• Queen/King (different eras for slightly different styles... eg Victorian vs Middle Ages)
  
• Bear
  
• Owlman
  
• Mothman
  
• Giant Rabbit
  
• Medieval knight
  
• Scholar (robes, beard, glasses, rolled up scrolls)
  
• Droid
  

It's been a while since we've done an official one of these hasn't it? Anyway, here's what's new:

• Due to issues, a new, smaller map is in the works.
  
• The resources system is on the back burner, but procedural asteroid field gen is done.
  
• The overmap is nearing completion
  
• The new fighter component system has been merged
  
• Docking is still Coming Soon
  
• We now have a Discord
  

I have not seen the server talked about on the subreddit but when people do they seem to think the server is a cool idea and concept and would love for it to be seen through and completed. But even these people seem doubtful. For example in this reddit post here  https://www.reddit.com/r/SS13/comments/5...ng_to_you/ one of the commenters said, "It'll be great when the Halo server comes out of development, well if. There was even a post asking if the project was dead." It seems some people are starting to become doubtful. Now I have one hundread percent confidence in the staff of the server to do a great job but I can get why people are doubtful, an Open Alpha was said to supposed to be released a while ago but has been delayed a few times. Like I said I have full confidence in this project and the reason I posted this was to see what everyone else thinks of what the subreddits thoughts are on the project.

As always keep up the great work!

Hi I guess....
My names Joe(if you couldn't tell) and I'm a pretty big Halo fan.Played all the Halo games(except 5) but I've read no extra lore except on some covenent races.I hope this server really takes off!.

Weapon selection and firing
https://gyazo.com/514a39d3bb76fcfc008ade2154e1c17f
https://gyazo.com/75268c0ca4e1b2069950eadaff5ac682

Adding and removing vehicle components
https://gyazo.com/0535bf301ad416b54600296957ec4da6

hi


https://gyazo.com/6742e16e5376269602817686f3f971da



sorry   

1. With so many gamemode concepts will there just be a 'standard' gamemode of Covenant vs UNSC battling it out over certain areas?


2. Will there be round continuation, as in will you remember icly each round like a mission log or will it be similar to CM in the respects that you don't recall anything about the previous round?

3. What kind of Jobs can we expect to be available?

4. Kind of tied to question two but not really, will there be round to round progression or is it very much each round you start at the bottom and work your way up again.
An example might be that in a previous round you were rewarded a medal, would said medal carry over to all continuing rounds/the next round or would it only be for the round it's given in.(Quite hard to explain what I mean, hope you understand.)

I Probably have more questions that I'll add at a later date but currently this is all I can think of.