[DEVBLOG#299] Gravship Artillery (Patreon)

Hey everyone!

One of the big goals of Vanilla Gravships Expanded has always been to make gravships feel like more than just 'a base on wheels'. They should be the beating heart of your colony, a true marvel of technology and something akin of a capital ship, and that means making space combat feel deep, dangerous, and rewarding.

That’s where Gravship Artillery comes in.

Whether you’re clearing out enemies before landing or engaging in ship-to-ship duels in orbit, gravship artillery will become a central part of your strategy. Let’s break down how the system works, what new mechanics it introduces, and the different kinds of weapons you’ll have at your disposal.

A New Stat: Gravship Targeting

To make artillery feel skill-based and not just “point-and-click,” we’ve introduced a new pawn stat: Gravship Targeting.This measures how good a colonist is at operating targeting terminals and firing gravship weapons.

It scales with Shooting and Intellectual skill.

Consciousness, sight, and manipulation all contribute.

It directly affects two things:

Forced Miss Radius → better operators land shells closer to their target.

Warmup Time → skilled crews fire faster and more efficiently.

In short, your best gunner isn’t necessarily your best artillery officer — you’ll want to train and specialize crew for this role.

Forced Miss Radius & Warmup Mechanics

To make space artillery realistic and balanced, we’ve built formulas that scale accuracy and fire rate with distance and skill:

Forced Miss Radius increases the farther away you fire on the world map. A skilled operator keeps it tight, while rookies might blanket a huge area with fire.

Warmup Time shortens dramatically with high Gravship Targeting, while unskilled operators might take twice as long to charge a shot.

World Map Combat

This is where things get really exciting. Gravship turrets aren’t confined to their own map anymore. They can now:

Fire across the world map at other generated maps. Their distance depends on the turret type.

Projectiles visibly travel through the world layer. That goes for your projectiles and enemy projectiles.

Hit their destination with accuracy based on distance and crew skill.

It’s important to note, though: in the initial release, only the player will have access to gravship artillery on this scale. You won’t face enemy world-map bombardments right away, with one exception — the mechanoid bombardment pods present in the starting scenario. Certain mechanoid platforms in orbit will bombard your gravship if you linger too long without escaping.

The real escalation — where rival factions begin using gravship artillery against you — will come later, in the second chapter of the mod, titled The Battle. That’s when large-scale gravship warfare truly begins.

Targeting Terminals

Artillery isn’t automated. You’ll need to build Targeting Terminals, manned by colonists, to operate your weapons. This should give us the cool visual of a bridge with many terminals operated by your gunners - something I really aimed to capture.

Terminals link to specific turrets within a 36-tile radius.

A manned terminal is required for the turret to function at all.

Without one, turrets display an overlay: “Can’t fire: Needs a linked targeting terminal.”

Each turret and terminal has gizmos for linking, unlinking, and selecting their pair.

We’re launching Gravship Artillery with four distinct systems, each with its own role and flavor:

Gauss Howitzer

A triple-barrel electromagnetic cannon firing uranium slugs.

Devastating volleys of three explosive shots.

Excellent against static defenses.

Vulnerable to point defense interception.

Point Defense Turret

Defensive-only, not linked to terminals, automated.

Shoots down enemy projectiles (only the ones that explode) and hostile drop pods only.

Interception chance scales with projectile velocity.

Javelin Launcher

A heavy missile platform firing salvos of 12 guided rockets.

Overwhelms point defenses by sheer volume.

Consumes astrofuel as ammunition.

Alternating left-right tubes for visual flair.

Anticraft Emitter

A continuous energy beam weapon.

Ignores shields and point defense entirely.

Burns through enemy artillery and hull plating.

Power-hungry: spikes to -10,000W during firing.

Together, these weapons create a layered arsenal — from saturation barrages to precise beam strikes — giving players meaningful choices in how to outfit their gravship.

As we move onto the next chapter of the mod, bigger and meanier turrets will also make an appearance!

Substructure Damage

Artillery isn’t just about killing pawns, it can tear ships apart.

Kinetic and missile artillery can damage enemy substructure, gradually destroying floors and anything built on top of them.

Damage radius is smaller than the explosion, meaning it takes sustained, accurate fire to truly wreck an enemy gravship.

Visual debris filth appears around damaged areas, making combat aftermath feel visceral.

This means ship-to-ship combat has lasting consequences: win or lose, the battlefield tells the story.

I'm really excited about all of this - not because it appeals to my power fantasies, but because it will also give these tools to our enemies. I think it's interesting to see the enemy use something as powerful as gravship artillery. When you're used to funnelling hundreds of enemies through your killbox, last thing you expect is for them to fire at you from the orbit with huge artillery batteries.

Let me know what you think, and I can proudly announce that the mod will be entering testing within a few days! We're almost done!