RFC: Thoughts on New Features

[DirkHowitzer]

quote:

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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.

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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]

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]

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]

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]

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.

[Trancejeremy]

What I'd like to see is pretty simple to implement:

Basically, I'd like each ship to have a different name picked from a file when it's created, not just the classname plus a 3 digit number.

Perhaps a text file with the same name as the class name (or hull size).

If it's there, anyway. If not, just use the numbering system.

Basically, it's a bit useless, but it does give them more personality...

[Spoo]

You can rename individual ships with the "name" button.

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Assume you have a 1kg squirrel
E=mc^2
E=1kg(3x10^8m/s)^2=9x10^16J
which, if I'm not mistaken, is equivilent to roughly a 50 megaton nuclear bomb.
Fear the squirrel.