Your browser does not seem to support JavaScript. As a result, your viewing experience will be diminished, and you have been placed in read-only mode.
Please download a browser that supports JavaScript, or enable it if it's disabled (i.e. NoScript).
@darthkev, on 14 February 2012 - 09:46 PM, said in Your game functionality wishlist:
I still don't know why that was in CTC.
It's a reference to one of the worst video games in existence. The fact that the victory screen omits the important word "the" is proof enough that the game was poorly made.
This post has been edited by king_of_manticores : 15 February 2012 - 07:24 PM
@king_of_manticores, on 15 February 2012 - 07:22 PM, said in Your game functionality wishlist:
... one of the worst video games in existence...
That explains why I still don't know what you're talking about.
Back on topic, how about a new damage type? Specifically, crew damage. When a ship is under fire, it's not just the outer hull that's hit. Power surges and failures cause explosions inside the vessel, as well. Those explosions will inevitably injure crew members. This way, even if a ship has nearly impenetrable armour, it can still be disabled if one kills off enough of the crew. You could even make weapons with radioactive warheads that may not necessarily do much shield our armour damage, but instead irradiate the crew in an attempt to kill them off while leaving the ship itself intact. You could even extend crew damage to ship capture odds; the more crew damage a ship has taken, the easier it would be to capture.
Interesting idea, but we might be venturing into the realm of complexity for complexity's sake. I would, however, be in favor of weapons or outfits that are disabled at certain armor damages.
@darthkev, on 15 February 2012 - 09:55 PM, said in Your game functionality wishlist:
Back on topic, how about a new damage type? Specifically, crew damage....
That might be solved by allowing multiple types of ionization, and allowing the dev to choose what the ionization does (disable at 100%, slow down X%/%, stop weapons firing...). That would allow us to cause overheating, crew death, ionization, a plague of rats...
It'd probably just be flexibility for developers though, not a main feature.
Complexity is overwhelming when it's all injected in one go, but you'd be surprised how much complexity people can happily deal with if their introduction to it is staggered well enough.
Reductions in overall performance--speed, acceleration, weapons not working, etc.--shouldn't be that complicated to implement. Heck, even Ambrosia's first game, Maelstrom, could do that. I've always thought it was kind of odd that battle damage was so easy to fix: just wait for your shields to regenerate and your fuel tanks to refill, and you're back in business. At the very least, there should be an extra repair fee when you land.
Off-topic: The picture comes from Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing, which is, indeed, a truly horrid game, though the trophy and the text is a bit of a minor meme. If you want to see how bad it is, here's a hilarious review of it: http://www.gamespot....directElement=1
On topic: Crew damage can be interesting, but how would it affect the player? Getting sent to a game over screen without your ship exploding in an extraordinary fashion would be annoying, especially on strict play. Making the player immune would also be pretty lame. It might be better just to expand on ionization and allow for developer-made status effects. Acid Missiles could slowly eat at armor after they hit for a little bit, a Gyro Destabilizer could cause the ship to spin out of control briefly, the Ion Cannon can do it's good old trick, and so forth, whatever the developer decided to make.
I wonder if it could be like Tom Spreen’s Rescue! , where enemy damage could knock out individual systems — a weapon, one of the engines, the transporter, the long range scanner, and so on.
If we're thinking about internal damage, I'd rather see the ability to damage (or target and damage) ship systems first. That was something I enjoyed about the X-Wing/TIE Fighter series, even if it was way too easy to neuter a Nebulon in your TIE Interceptor.
This may be getting past the realm of what you can reasonably put in the game and throw at a player, but I've also entertained the notion of some ships having better protection for their systems. Like turrets that can retract having +100% durability on their turrets, or a shielded sensor array having an extra X amount of strength before it gets taken offline.
@joshtigerheart, on 16 February 2012 - 11:47 AM, said in Your game functionality wishlist:
Crew damage can be interesting, but how would it affect the player?
Well what if you couldn't kill ALL of the crew? Just enough to make it impossible/improbable for the remaining crewmen to operate the ship alone. This way the player would still be susceptible but also wouldn't die from it. Basically, a ship would never die from crew damage. It would just be a way to disable ships without the risk of blowing them up before you can loot them.
Edit: Ooo, another idea. What if, instead of the auto-destruct system to prevent ships from being boarded, it was an issue of hull stability? In short, the less hull/armour damage a ship had taken before being disabled, the lower the chance the ship would destabilize and blow up while being boarded. That would add extra usefulness to crew damage since one could potentially disable a ship without hitting the hull much at all, considerably lowering the chance of the ship blowing up on you.
Also, I actually wouldn't mind if the player's own ship could also blow up while being boarded by the AI or even be captured by the AI. In the latter case, the player would either be killed or jettisoned in an escape pod.
This post has been edited by DarthKev : 16 February 2012 - 08:58 PM
Another one: ally support weapons and outfits. Including stuff like ECM Jammers that affect allies, missiles that restore shields to the ally they hit, a pulse that increases the rate of fire of allied ships within range, and other such stuff. While it might be hard to explain for a setting with a more realistic focus, it'd still open up lots of gameplay potential and could force a player to do more than decide between destructive capabilities and cargo capabilities of escorts.
@joshtigerheart, on 23 February 2012 - 08:44 PM, said in Your game functionality wishlist:
While it might be hard to explain for a setting with a more realistic focus, it'd still open up lots of gameplay potential and could force a player to do more than decide between destructive capabilities and cargo capabilities of escorts.
Actually, there are easy ways to explain it. Such as large, space-borne creatures such as my space squid that release pheromones or other chemicals into the surrounding vacuum to communicate and possibly enrage, heal, or otherwise benefit their fellows. My space squid don't do this, but it would be a way of explaining the function in-game.
In fact, I don't really see a problem explaining any of your examples for mechanical ships, either, with the exception of the rate-of-fire boost field. Unless there's a way for one ship to act as a heat sink for surrounding ships. Then the heat sink ship could absorb the heat from its allies' weapons, allowing them to fire faster.
I took this list from my post from the old topic-locked "EV4 Wish list" and revised it:
Spoiler
I will say I like most of Coraxus' ideas, but a few rubbed the wrong way.
@coraxus, on 12 March 2012 - 07:25 PM, said in Your game functionality wishlist:
62. Ships can collide and potentially cause damage to one another
Eh... this is EV, not Ares, I like having 20 ships on top of each other and not worrying about collisions
65. Add "Sell All" and "Buy All" buttons in outfitters 89. Add "put in kart" when players buy weapons and outfits
Not sure the point of this with alt click.
75. Strafing 76. Retro thrusters 77. Ares ship maneuverability
Strafing doesn't really work unless you add in mouse control, and that puts me off this sort of game, and I prefer the EV style approach to handling
87. Leech weapon, to extract shield power, fuel, or other traits
Not sure this fits EV as currently it's about getting outfits and such while landed, then using what you got to the max, not changing it in combat, besides, overall I think this doesn't really fit space games in general
94. Electronic warfare like in Battlestar Galactica
Sounds like it would be either op, or up and prolly would add little to combat, if not just make it more boring
98. Ships can spread contagious disease
Why???
92. Weapons that do not invoke targeted ships
That seems like it would only be useful for healing weapons
@evweb, on 12 March 2012 - 08:03 PM, said in Your game functionality wishlist:
Lets say you wanna ditch a couple of dozens of missiles, a few turrets, and other weapons and outfits, you can do it all in one stroke. This is ideal if you're trying to gut out the ship and fully customize it to your specification. The Add kart can be helpful when it measures out how much all of the outfits and weapons will cost.
Quote
You can assign a button to hold down while you press either the left or the right button like shift for example.
Not exactly understanding what you're talking about. The leech weapon is basically stealing a targeted ship's shield energy for example and using it to augment the players' own.
Not if the AI does electronic warfare as well. Also, it isn't limited to offensive measures, you can have defensive measures as well too, even have outfits that momentarily enhances a ship's performance or those of your allies or escorts.
LOL why not?
I don't know. It's also useful for not pissing off governments, or to end up sicking an entire mob of fleet on you because you picked a wrong fight.
@coraxus, on 12 March 2012 - 08:24 PM, said in Your game functionality wishlist:
Hmm... maybe, but it still doesn't take that long.
I tried this making SD, it doesn't work well, trust me, you're better off just turning and thrusting.
Yeah, and I'm not sure that it would feel right in an EV style game with ships, where it's more about dodging and firing accurately, not about the pure numbers like WoW.
Why would it enhance performance? Basically, it already exists in EV as jamming, maybe extend that to turrets and such and maybe hologram ships, but anymore than that and I think it would be odd.
Because it would add little to nothing, but take time to implement?
Yeah, but I like that you have to pay for being a moron.
This post has been edited by EVWeb : 12 March 2012 - 08:41 PM
@evweb, on 12 March 2012 - 08:39 PM, said in Your game functionality wishlist:
In an electronic warfare, jamming missiles aren't the only thing you can do. You can also affect a ship's targeting and navigational system. Though some of the aspects is likely to happen to the player and not the AI ships. But electronic warfare can also attack a ship's maneuverability as well, and the ability to fire weapons. Even affect static outfits like jammers or cloaking devices themselves.
On the flipside, there can be outfits that act as firewalls to protect the ship from such dangerous hacking. But on the other hand, it can also improve a ship's performance, like maybe make missiles fire more accurately, accelerate a ship faster, or increase the energy output of energy-based weapons for more damage.
I'm pretty sure others will have other ideas to make use of this feature. It's not a necessary one, it was just thought out randomly when I did the EV4 wishlist a long time ago.
I'm on board with ECM features to a point. Jamming is good. But, if it gets too advanced, you're throwing a lot of obstacles at a player all at once. I don't mind added complexity, but only if it serves to advance the gameplay. For example, my idea to have orbiting planets. It should be an option, but not necessary, because if it's not done well, it only serves to annoy and not enhance. Really, most of these ideas are that way. I like the idea of having that option , even if it never gets used (and in many cases, probably shouldn't.) This happened a lot with EVN, such as planet-type ships and weapons.
Drain-type weapons I'm iffy on. Like EVWeb said, EV is more about piloting than simple numbers. I do want the ability to in-flight augment shields/armor regen, though. I'm also iffy on the cart idea, but perhaps a good compromise could be reached with something like a control-select feature so you can select multiple outfits, or a little "how many" box in each outfit box, then a tally at the bottom of mass, price, and number.
I don't get the point of strafing. You can already do that (so long as you're not in an inertialess ship,) by accelerating and turning towards the target. Needless complexity.
I'm definitely on board with being able to have different locations per spob (perhaps up to three spaceports, with a quick dialogue on landing for which one to head to.) I'd also like the ability to have maybe 2-3 different bars per location, and to label them in the bar dialogue. Maybe it's just because I'm from Wisconsin, where you can't officially be considered a town unless you have two or more taverns. I'd also like for the player to have to go to the Fluffy Duckling or the Golden Pony and not just "the bar."
@krugeruwsp, on 15 March 2012 - 07:59 PM, said in Your game functionality wishlist:
I'd also like for the player to have to go to the Fluffy Duckling or the Golden Pony and not just "the bar."
Easily fixed by naming the bar in the bar dësc.
But then how to you decide you needed to be in the Fluffy Duckling and not the Golden Pony, and then go to the Golden Pony after visiting the Fluffy Duckling?
Edit: You could just have the mission change the bar desc to the appropriate bar. Durr. Disregard this post, but I still think it would be fun to introduce that little bit of "oops" factor.
This post has been edited by JacaByte : 15 March 2012 - 10:32 PM