For those of you who've never played Ultima Online, you may not know where I'm coming from with this article. There are a few distinct industries that I believe will be prominent in Bellicose. First will be manufacturing weapons and armor. Another will be transport services. Another will be a combination of the two, manufacturing transport devices. In my mind, I see this as the most expensive, but also most lucrative career.

Weapon/armor development really doesn't need much of an explanation.

Transport services will be a large portion of the game. This will be enforced by the fact that there will be no teleport technology. Firstly, it's unrealistic. Second, a large part of any war or battle is getting troops and supplies to their proper locations, and interfering with the enemy's supply routes. Granted, this job can and will be performed by government robots which will do (at best) mediocre jobs. Namely, they won't be very smart. They'll fly straight to the destination and will be fairly predictable. Granted, via research they can be improved, but even the best/smartest/most-technically-advanced government transports will still be based on a basic AI. For this reason, even if you need to wait, a human transport will always be preferred. Humans can evaluate a situation and adapt. If an ammo dump is desperately needed and human will wisely choose a fast ship. If it's a simple yet valuable resource shipment, a human will choose an the safest route. Why will a human do this? Because they get paid to successfully transport their cargo. Since humans want to get paid, they'll avoid battle when on transport missions. And because they'll avoid battle, they choose fast, flighty ships. They'll want the vehicles that can fly faster and have better armor.

Enter the Transport Manufacturer. This guy probably started off building weapons, then as his skill (if I use a skill system) and money increase, bought larger facilities to produce armor, then mobile armor. Now he owns a large workshop and has a large reserve of resources to begin building vehicles. Of course, he'll start with ground (wheel) based rovers. Eventually, he'll move onto arial-based craft.

Now, here's the point I want to make. In most games, if there are craft that you can fly, then the model number tells all you need to know about it? (I probably could have phrased that a little better.) For example, in Tribes (one of the best games of all time), there are three craft you can fly. The smallest of which is called a Scout; it fires an inaccurate missile, flies very fast and has tight maneuverability. However, in Tribes, a Scout is a Scout is a Scout. Namely, if you see a Scout, it'll have the exact same flight capabilities, exact same weapons load, everything.

In Bellicose, a vehicle will not be a single object. It will be a combination of other objects. So let's have a look at the major components that will comprise a vehicle:

• Chassis The frame is the most important part of a vehicle. The frame is the part to which all other pieces will be attached. This will determine the basic shape of the craft, the number of mount points the craft will have, and the maximum payload space of the craft. Mount points are places on the craft that addons can be attached, including guns, shields, radar, etc. Each frame must be researched before it can be created. There will probably only be 15 to 20 distinct frames in Bellicose.
• Engine/Motor This will determine the crafts speeds. More than simply its maximum speed, it will determine the craft's acceleration rate and power, running temperature, noise levels, and movement type and fuel consumption. The acceleration rate is fairly straight-forward; combined with the power, it will determine the speed that the craft can get to full speed, and gain in altitude. These will be affected by the overall weight of the craft. The temperature will vary depending on the strain on the engine. An engine can (and will) overheat when stressed. Overheated engines will shut down and must cool prior to being started again. Running temperature can be detected by thermal scanners, so cooler engines would be preferable when attacking a technologically rich defense. Noise levels are important to monitor for stealthy attacks, as large and power engines can be heard from miles away. (I like the concept of hearing the hum of an engine from many hills away.) Movement type is essentially by ground, by air, by water, etc. Fuel consumption is detailed below.
• Cooling System This goes hand-in-hand with the engine. Beef up the engine, and you've got to keep it cooled. Or, get a more powerful coolant system and you can burn your engines much more often.
• Motivators This is essentially a general term for what moves the vehicle. IE, rockets, wheels, or propellers (for water-based craft). Larger, higher-quality motivators beneficially affect the acceleration rate (larger wheels make you go faster), while smaller, lower-quality motivators will negatively affect the acceleration rate.
• Body/Housing The body of a vehicle can is actually many parts. The body is composed of forward-, rear-, mid-, upper- and lower-right and -left panels, etc. Actually, it depends on the chassis how many body panels are used for a vehicle. The body determines the vehicle's armor. In this way, each piece of the armor will be damaged separately. Namely, damage can be applied to the engine housing (body plates) and then to the engine without ever damaging the wheels or cockpit. Each panel's armor level and weight is dependant on the alloy it's constructed from. This material will also determine the color of that particular plate (if unpainted).
• Power Source Every engine needs a source of energy, and the power source will be dependant on the type of engine. Some engines use rocket fuel, while others use expensive radioactive fuel rods. Just like cars, the size of your power supply determines how long, how far, and how furious the craft can travel. The Power Source will also be responsible for powering each of the energy dependant addons placed onto the mount points, such as energy beam weapons.
• Cargo Space This will be a tough one to put in, since I want ships to be able to transport both resources *and* personnel at the same time. The amount of cargo will, of course, be determined by the Chassis.
• Mount Points These are used to add upgrades to a vessel. For example, on the two front Mount Points you could add large guns, while on a rear mount point you could add a gun-pit (a manned gun), or something. I guess things like that would require multiple mount points. You could also add radar to these mount points, or any number of developed technologies.

Now, the funny thing is that I didn't plan to completely detail vehicles today. All I wanted to illustrate is that vehicles would be separate and there would be a thriving Transportation Manufacturing class. Namely, in Tribes, if you buy a Scout, that's what you've got. However, in Bellicose, you buy a Banshee Class (engine) SkyDemon (chassis) with Molybdenum Plates (body) and quad-plasma blasters (mount points used). In this regards there will be a large variety of transportation choices.The thing that sparked my desire to make this post was to illustrate that each body panel can be a different color. This may not seem important, but when you have a vehicle that is composed of one distinct color scheme, it can add a sense of pride... such as in Ultima Online (Look! I'm coming back to my first sentence!) characters can build armor, but there are something like 30 different shades of the colors that compose the armor. Getting one set of all the same shade is a matter of pride. It looks good. It makes you feel good. Many vehicles in Bellicose will be hodgepodge, and repaired and matched with other parts to make "mutts". A vehicle that's all one piece will make a House Pilot look good.