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At the players' disposal will be a host of vehicles, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. "To avoid the situation where one vehicle is perceived as the best," says Widdows, "no single vehicle will be overpowered". Since every mission in Hostile Waters is situated around a group of islands, it becomes easy to see why all the vehicles in the game are either amphibious or airborne. No doubt, the island hopping tactics of US admirals during World War II had a tremendous influence on the game design of Hostile Waters. And just like the attack structure developed by the likes of Nimitz and Eisenhower, the vehicles in the game represent a three-pronged attack tier: Heavy carriers that bombard enemy fortifications, light amphibious assault vehicles to secure the beachhead and airborne units to provide ground support. From these three groups, Rage hopes to have twelve distinct vehicles, each with a modular counterpart (light assault tank, medium assault tank, and heavy assault tank). At this stage in development, the vehicle list includes amphibious light tanks, assault tanks, spotting planes, fighter/attack planes, transport helicopters, attack helicopters and the carrier.
Players not content with the vanilla vehicles will have the option of researching and developing a range of weapons that can be mounted on almost any vehicle. Each weapon will take on the qualities of the host it is attached to. A laser cannon mounted an a fast-attack land based vehicle will fire at a faster rate but cause light damage, whereas the same cannon mounted on a heavily armored tank will pack more of a punch at the expense of a speedy rate of fire. "Obviously," says Widdows, "not all vehicles will be able to use all the weapons, but there will be a great degree of interchangeability between the various passive and aggressive components". These components will include weapons such as the laser cannon, the plasma cannon, surface to air missiles, air to air missiles, carrier guns, plasma guns and mini guns and tactical objects such as radar dishes, scavenging pods and targeting pods.
Resources won't be as readily available as other real-time strategy games. Players start out each mission with only a few units, and they must be used wisely. Resources are found in the form of destroyed enemy weapons, vehicles and fortifications. The players' own equipment, should it be destroyed, can also be used as scrap. Hostile Waters has an added facet to its resource management as well. Since weapons and vehicles are independent of each other, with separate hit points, a destroyed rocket launcher-mounted tank doesn't necessarily mean a destroyed rocket launcher, thus leaving a bounty of scrap as well as a new weapon for any scavenger that would happen to chance by this find. "Scavenging will be mostly automated", says Widdows, "with the player having to use judgement as to which parts of a vehicle to destroy and which not to destroy".
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