AirWars is a new gamemode developed by famous (sic) Russian Developer HellBox.
The game is centered around taking down other airships in a time based round system after building your own during the building phase.
Winning a round will earn you 10 points which you can later use to purchase swagger (sic) cosmetics.
You can find more info in the official discord where you'll be able to speak with the community and even give out your suggestions:
https://discord.gg/MMHHxnm

Below you'll find the link to the workshop addon which contains the gamemode, map, music, and models.
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1880144111
This gamemode is open source, if you're interested in dwelving into the code you can find it on github as well:
https://github.com/TheHellBox/AirWars

To join a server you're going to navigate your Multiplayer menu until you find the gamemode like shown below:

Being your main tool to work your way around AirWars, the HUD will be the first thing you'll learn here:


During the build phase the information shown is vital to getting your ship ready, here's what they resemble:

• Cost: Every piece you spawn will increase this value with the limit being 12000. The more health/utility a piece has, the more it will cost.
  
• Weight: The weight of a ship will affect how much propulsion is needed to reach higher altitudes and how many sails to move faster. Unlike the Cost, this value does not have any limits as you want to have this being as low as possible while keeping your ship functional.
  
• Force: The force is the speed all your sails provide you. The Speed of your ship is your Force divided by your Weight, the max Speed being 3. Your only responsibility here is to make sure it's not 0 as it will render your ship unable to move, turn or change altitude.
  
• Max Height: Placing balloons will increase this value up to 220. At the start of the round you will spawn at your Max Height. It takes more balloons the higher your Weight is to raise the value. If you reach 0 your ship will be destroyed, so if you see the red text like in the screenshot you won't even spawn during the battle phase.
  
• oh yeah woo yeah: This is the name of your team, in retrospect I could've just named it "Team Name" to make it easier to understand.

By holding your Q button, a menu will pop in the center of the screen, the first tab is where you'll be able to spawn anything you'll need to build a ship:


Hover over the props to view their health, weight, and price.
Picking up the props with your physgun will let you place them without any constraints wherever you want as the collisions between them is disabled.
There is no need to weld anything together because if the prop is not red it means it will appear and become part of the ship.
Your prop becomes red if it's too far from the center of the contraption or it's too much inside another prop (This was done to avoid stacking important pieces inside other props).

Here's what you're going to need to be able to start battling:

STEERING WHEEL:
Your steering wheel is used to move the ship, commands are displayed on the screen.
If you can't see the commands just press F1 and they will pop out, same way to hide them.





















SAIL:
As explained before, the sail is used to increase your ship speed.
Your speed is directly proportional to the amount of sails your ship has divided by your Weight, but they cost a lot!
The ideal amount is 4 to 6.


















BALLOONS:
The balloons are what increases your max height, they are the biggest target in your ship because of how easy they are to hit.
You should always have enough of them to reach the max altitude unless you know what you are doing.
Having a few spares is good too just in case people pop one or two.







PLAYER SPAWNER:
As the name suggests, this is where you spawn when you start the battle or die.
You only have 3 lives, after that you will respawn as a spectator.
The amount of spawners won't change how many lives you have and they are immune to damage (Not to crashing!) so there is no reason to put more than 1 unless you want a backup in case people destroy a piece of your ship.
Make sure you can spawn on it safely before starting the battle phase or else you will get stuck at the beginning.



WEAPONS:
(From left to right)

• Ammo: They provide ammunition to cannons and turrets, each ammo box contains 20 ammo pieces that slowly regenerate over time. Press your USE key on them to pick ammo and then USE on the weapon to reload it;
  
• Turret: A light weapon that shoots a volley of 20 bullets.
  
• Cannon: A heavy weapon that shoots a cannonball. Unlike the turret you cannot aim freely with the cannon as you'll have to rotate your ship to line up your shots.
  
• Bomb: A bomb that explodes on contact. As of now it's not working as it should and I still have to see it actually hit somebody. Unlike the other weapons you cannot reload this.

OTHER:

Megaphone: This will increase the distance at which people can hear your voice chat, good for mic spamming;























Flags: You will be able to display your team logo on these. While in the battle phase you can press your USE button on them to paint, this works on enemy flags as well, good way to ruin the enemies morale is to board their ship and change their flags into obscene imagery.








This is the example of a well balanced medium ship.

On top of the menu that pops out when holding Q you will be able to see different tabs, the seconds one is for the teams.
Here you will be able to see all the teams in the server, everyone is a part of one as you are assigned to your own when you join the server (Named after you).
To join the team of another player you need to send a request through the "Join" button on the right of the team.
The team leader will receive a popup asking permission to join his team.

Make sure to change the name of your team to some dead meme with the "Change Name" button.
The "Leave Team" button only works once you're inside a team where you're not the owner, it's pretty self explanatory.

MAKING A FLAG:


Opening the flag editor will present you with a 32x32 canvas and this color palette[lospec.com] to make your own team logo.
You are able to save the flag for easier access.
All flags are stored in your garrysmod/data/aw_sprites folder, you can also import them in the form of a 32x32 .png
If you import an image with a color palette that doesn't match the one available, all colors will be converted to their closest counterparts.

Playing the game will earn you a good amount of points.
Just being in a round will get you 2 points, winning it is 10 points.
You can use the points to purchase cosmetics such as hats and goggles.

While building you may come across the need of using on the tools listed below, they are in the 6th slot of your weapons.
Some of them can be customized through the 4th tab on the Q menu called "Tool Options"

REMOVER:
A tool to remove props, everyone knows how to use this.


PUSHER:
Used to push/pull props for precision building.
As of now there is no way to save ships so it's pretty much a waste of time to try and be precise.
Use your LEFT CLICK to push a prop and your RIGHT CLICK to pull it towards you.
You can go to the Tool Options to modify the push/pull amount.


STACKER:
The stacker is used to stack props quickly and precisely.
You can change the direction by pressing your R button or using the Tool Options.

After building your ship and the countdown reaches 0, you and your ship will get transported to the battlefield: An infinite map with floating islands around you.
You have basically 15 minutes to kill all your opponents or else a sphere will start shrinking, if you're out of the "zone" your ship will fall.

These are the only ways a team can lose:

• The team forgets a vital part of the ship such as the Respawner or the Balloons and don't spawn in the fight;
  
• Each member of the team has used up all their 3 lives or they all died after the respawner was destroyed;
  
• The ship falls into the sea;
  
• The team disconnects.

Here's some tips:

• Fastest way to win is to disable the enemy ship by targeting the balloons;
  
• The boarder is always at a disadvantage as you need to kill the targets 3 times to win, costing you lives and making you an easy target to other players;
  
• The best defence is to destroy the enemy's weapons as they are now forced to either ram or board you.
  
• If your target is bigger than you, try to destroy their steering wheel or sails taking away their movement. You later position yourself somewhere they can't shoot you and break them apart.
  
• If you spend too much time shooting you might end up wasting all your bullets leaving you without a way to fight back. The enemy will also aim for the weapon you're using to break it.
  
• Ramming is only a last resource as it's the only thing that can destroy your respawner and usually does more harm than good.
  
• Try to float above islands when the battle looks dire, that way you can crash into them and survive.

RADAR:
The radar is located at the bottom right of your screen, the red dots represent the enemies.
It doesn't tell you how far away they are or if they're above/below you, only the direction.











ISLANDS:
The islands have some strange hitboxes, so watch out around them.
Despite being a rare event, the Islands can be destroyed as well, so if you don't want to board an island to kill a survivor just start shooting it.

Support the developer!
https://boosty.to/the_hellbox

The gamemode will probably change so this guide might become useless in the future.
For reference this was made 08/10/2019