RFC: Thoughts on New Features

DirectorTsaarx · #1 February 20th, 2001, 05:42 PM

quote:
Originally posted by CheshireKatt:
<snip>
3. Weapon Mounts

There's a few things I'd be interested in here as well. The ability to adjust the rate of fire of weapons would be nice -- a mount that let a weapon fire more or less often, specified as a change, either a multiple/fraction or plus/minus of the weapon's normal ROF, (maybe even more than once per round -- I'm looking for a multiple-shot, less-damaging gun, used for crowd control of smaller ships, especially with engine- or weapon-targeting guns), or less often (for making a REAL wave-motion gun -- slow to recharge, but mindbogglingly powerful and long-ranged), would be WONDERFUL.

What about a modifier to the speed and range of seekers -- obviously, it'd only matter on weapons with speed and range, but it'd be a cool mod nonetheless.

<snip>

--Chesh

One answer: a few of the modders have tried the "multiple firing per turn" idea and it doesn't work in the current setup. That may end up being difficult to work out, although since MM has supposedly improved the AI's ability to mix moving & firing, it might be doable in the future.

And now, an observation about the seeker mounts. I know a couple modders had trouble creating those; and I may have come up with the reason why. It's possible that the range, etc. are not coded into the mount, but rather into the seeker itself. In other words, modifying the mount could allow the ship to target something farther away, but once the seeker is launched it no longer has the mount range/damage/speed bonus applied. From a programming standpoint, an attribute of the mount was not passed to the object created by the mount (the seeker). Just a thought; if anyone's really interested in this, maybe they could ask Aaron directly. Personally, I like the seekers as they are. At least until they're used against me successfully (ALWAYS research point-defense cannons early!!!)

CheshireKatt · #2 February 20th, 2001, 06:32 PM

quote:
Originally posted by DirectorTsaarx:
It's possible that the range, etc. are not coded into the mount, but rather into the seeker itself. In other words, modifying the mount could allow the ship to target something farther away, but once the seeker is launched it no longer has the mount range/damage/speed bonus applied. From a programming standpoint, an attribute of the mount was not passed to the object created by the mount (the seeker).

THAT's a good point. I hadn't thought of it that way, but it would make sense. I'll just make do for now with a Large Carrier with a shipyard, fighter bays, and piles and piles of kamikaze ramfighters. It's certainly demoralizing to watch.

quote:
Personally, I like the seekers as they are. At least until they're used against me successfully (ALWAYS research point-defense cannons early!!!)

I like them just fine -- but I'm also a serious "more features than I could ever use at once" addict. And this game has SO many features, it really appeals. Heh.

--Chesh

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We're all mad, down here.

DirkHowitzer · #3 February 20th, 2001, 08:27 PM

quote:
Originally posted by CheshireKatt:
1. Ship Portraits

The current implementation for ship design lets you choose an overall design (weapons platform, ship, etc), a hull, a design (just for grouping purposes), and name your ship. This works pretty darn well, overall.

However, there's still something missing for me -- when I'm in a large battle, it becomes increasingly difficult to remember which of my ships are which, at a glance. Sure, I can mouseover them and find out who they are. But I was thinking about ways to make ships more distinct, and here's what I came up with -- what if the "Design Type", instead of simply being a string used to group ships, also determined which ship portrait was used? This would also reduce some of the clutter in that list, as it would have to be done by type now -- which isn't bad, since it really doesn't make much sense for me to have a Destroyer-class Parasite ship with a design type of Colony Ship (Gas) anyway.

Choosing a design type would select you a design picture and a small combat picture (and while you can't fit too much detail in the small combat pictures, you could do enough to differentiate things -- the three dots I'd recognize as EEE fighters, whereas the three dots with little fins I'd recognize as bombers, or something of that nature).

This is pretty inconsequential in terms of gameplay, and a fair bit of work on MM (new ship portraits, new DISTINCT combat pictures, a redesign of the Design Type list and how it's used), so I'm not really holding my breath. But it'd rule, and I'm all for it if it happens.

This is something I've mentioned before that I would like to see implemented. Not only would it make combat easier(ie remembering which ships are what), but just this simple addition of multiple ship portraits for each hull size would add so much more color to the game.

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"He's dead, Jim."-- Lt. Commander Leonard "Bones" McCoy |Chief Medical Officer / USS Enterprise (NCC-1701)

Marty Ward · #4 February 21st, 2001, 02:16 AM

Couldn't you add additional ship types? I saw a mod where someone added additional ship sizes, corvettes and some others. Maybe you could add Escort1, Escort2,Escort3 etc as ship types. They would be available when the base type is researched. Then you could have different pictures for the same size ship.
This should work unless there is some limiter in the number of ship types allowed.

Instar · #5 February 21st, 2001, 04:02 AM

Well, having multiple pics for each ship would be nice, but if you added new pics for each ship size, (lets say 10), that would tremendously increase the size of race files. Plus all the work involved in making the pics. Sounds neat, I cant alwasy remember who is who

Husky65 · #6 February 21st, 2001, 04:09 AM

I'd like to see an ability to designate a fleet as a destination (waypoint) for ships.

If the fleet moves the waypoint moves with them, it would make sending reinforcements to a fleet a lot simpler.

CheshireKatt · #7 February 21st, 2001, 06:40 PM

I like Taqwus' idea better -- just a batch of portraits (maybe, 6 like Moo2, or more) per ship or unit type, rather than tying them to the design type. I make up new designs too, typically so I don't forget that some designs don't have guns.

Also -- I never thought of having a Fleet be a waypoint, but now that it's been mentioned, I REALLY want that feature. That would be SO convenient.

--Chesh

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We're all mad, down here.