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[Sharmanti]

Hey Alex,

I'm new here and don't know if this have been posted before, but during my first playthrough this has been a major issue.

I want to do an ironman playthrough, but without this feature it must be very unforgiving.

My suggestion is much like the other abilities of your fleet. Something you can activate/deactivate like sustained burn. What does it do? Depending on your decision either; when a fleet is within a certain range (preferably a range that allows me to react properly) the game is paused so you can take a decision whether to run away/fight OR when a fleet is actively targeting you (or hostile fleet), the same thing happens. Either one would be fine, for balance or coding ease.

It happens a lot that I look away for a second while travelling to a point that a fleet engages me, and I have to manually pause and take a decision if I notice it in time, and if not, well I'm ***, even though I'm a faster fleet. With this feature, I can relax and take these decisions when the information is available. It's a simple quality of life change.

Thanks for reading!

[Alex]

Hi! I've thought about this a bit on and off, and I'm not sure I could really make it work well. It'd feel weird for this to be an ability-style toggle, but it's also difficult to correctly identify which fleets the player would care about and which they wouldn't. Meaning, it's certain to get it wrong a substantial portion of the time.

Something that pauses the game automatically has *a lot* of potential to annoy and misfire (i.e. say it autopauses right as you were pressing spacebar, or just pauses when you didn't really want it to) so, honestly, this feels like it'd be trouble.

[Chaos Farseer]

Maybe it could be an option in the settings menu? Or, maybe the first time it triggers, you get a little popup telling you why the game is paused and whether you want to keep the auto-pause feature on?

[Alex]

Hmm, I don't think making it optional really factors in here. I'm not very keen on adding too many options in the first place (lots of potential for bugs, increased testing load, etc), but in this case, it's more a question of the feature likely being "not good" than it being a question of personal preference. I mean, that's of course a subjective judgment call to some degree...

[Lord Asriel]

What about some kind of warning overlay or sound when a hostile fleet is chasing, visible and will intercept within 2-3 seconds if no course changes are made on either side? Basically give enough reaction time for the player to pause and hit the e-burn, or ignore it, etc.

[Grievous69]

Metal gear solid alert sound or nothing

[Alex]

What about some kind of warning overlay or sound when a hostile fleet is chasing, visible and will intercept within 2-3 seconds if no course changes are made on either side? Basically give enough reaction time for the player to pause and hit the e-burn, or ignore it, etc.

Yeah, that could work!

In general, I feel like the problem more often comes up when you actually don't have that kind of warning time while the other fleet is visible - if you're going in its direction at full sustained burn, and it rushes towards you, oftentimes you wouldn't have 2-3 seconds - but that's more of a "maneuver more carefully" situation... For example, if you're going directly at a jump-point, and a hostile fleet might be patrolling around it, that's really asking for trouble - a more oblique angle of approach is safer.

So I'm not actually too sure how much this is about a lack of warning/not noticing something vs how much it is about not maneuvering carefully in the first place. Thinking back to my most recent playtesting, I don't remember having a lot of trouble with this, but I'll definitely keep a closer eye on it.

[Sharmanti]

I can see how it activating on and off whenever a fleet dashes in and out of range. But some fleets are dead serious on going for me as soon as they sense my presence.

But still. It would be nice to have something that activates on every fleet. Since you could toggle it, it's something you can choose to have. If you hate it, just turn it off. In an ironman save, I'd just say, better be annoyed than lose everything.

Small remenant fleets and such can be ignored. I don't know how the coding works, or how difficult it would be to code this, but there's something that tells a fleet that it can take on you or not. And if that can be develoeped into this, it would be perfect.

Anyways, thanks for your answer alex. You're god damn awesome.

[SafariJohn]

You could get like 90% of the effectiveness of a perfect warning system by just putting a visual callout, like quest objects already have, on hostile fleets and intercepting fleets.

[Timid]

Is it possible to Transfer Command on Fleet allows me to transfer my officers as well beside me.

[Morrokain]

You could get like 90% of the effectiveness of a perfect warning system by just putting a visual callout, like quest objects already have, on hostile fleets and intercepting fleets.

I really like that in principle. +1

I also like the warning bell idea when the fleet in question becomes "visible" (up for definition I think) to the player. Its viscerally satisfying and provides in game function as well if you happen to be glancing at stats. Best of both worlds, yes?

I wonder if it would even be out of the question to have the bell sound simply when "scanners" pick up an intercepting fleet even though you can't see them on visual (such as in a nebula ambush). Would that provide fun tension or confusion? I'm not really sure... hmm.