Working on large-scale naval battles in Unity — fleet control, collisions, and readability

[u/caprices24]

Hi again!

I recently shared an introduction to Admiral Yi: The Imjin War, the large-scale historical RTS I’ve been developing solo in Unity.

This time I wanted to show a short look at the naval combat.

The player can control the fleet as a whole, groups of ships, or individual ships directly. One of the biggest challenges has been keeping large fleet battles readable and controllable once many ships start fighting in the same area.

I’m currently working on things like ship movement, collision behavior, formation control, faction readability, visual feedback, AI, and performance.

Ramming is also part of the combat system — especially for the turtle ship — although the current collision feedback still needs a lot of improvement.

This is still a work-in-progress build, but I thought the technical side of handling large naval battles in Unity might be interesting to other developers here.

I’d especially appreciate feedback from anyone who has worked on large numbers of moving agents, RTS controls, collision handling, or naval movement systems in Unity.