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[00lewnor]

Pretty much what it says in the title.

I've been playing with safety overrides a bit and I keep on finding myself trying to active vent, nothing happening and then taking half a second to realise I have safety overrides and can't active vent; given how quick passive venting usually is with safety overrides by the time I want to use active venting I only have the hard flux left that I can't get rid of with shields up. I imagine I will break this habit soon but it may be a nice quality of life improvement for attempting to active vent in a ship with safety overrides to lower sheilds.

[Alex]

Hmm. This has come up before (I believe Gothars, and maybe a few others, have suggested it). On the one hand, I see what you're saying. On the other hand, this feels like low-level controls trying to be smarter than they have a right to be. Having a hard time putting into words what I mean, though. It just doesn't feel right. Apologies for not have anything more concrete to say!

[orost]

@Alex: you could think of V as a button with two functions: venting and cancelling shield/ability. The latter is a side-effect of the former, but it's also useful on its own, so it makes perfect sense to happen anyway if venting is for whatever reason impossible. I think you've already taken a step towards that by making V cancel burn drive even if there is no flux to vent, right? This would be simply taking that further to its logical conclusion.

[Alex]

That's an argument against it, I think. Not being able to vent also means SO ships can't cancel out of burn drive, which makes sense - when you read "disables venting" you'd expect that to also mean that you can no longer do the things venting causes.

And would it then be labelled as "vent flux, lower shields, and cancel some abilities" in the controls screen? It just gets messy. How it is now, it's clean mechanical interactions.

(Side note: I'm not terribly fond of burn drive cancels - only added it in for now because you could do it anyway by firing anything and then pressing V, and that wasn't very good. The ideal solution imo is to make burn drive prevent venting... which is actually simpler now codewise, hmm.)

[Taizo Puckett]

The ideal solution imo is to make burn drive prevent venting...

Which also has been suggested.

[Megas]

This is the primary strike against Safety Override for me, being unable to lower shields with the vent key.  Now, I use SO only on lone smuggler ships (so they can run from everything) or for AI ships with Aggressive officers.

[Gothars]

I see your point Alex, conceptually it is cleaner. However, I don't think conceptual cleaness is an end in itself. It is good because it helps guide player expectations, thus making things less confusing and more fun. In this case, the (learned and ingrained) expectation to go into a "wind up state" far outweights the expectations that the higher concept of "venting is a primary action that causes secondary effects, so if I cant vent I won't have those either" might generate. That you have to explain the one while the other is what people expect half-proofs the point.
And in the end, what generates most enjoyment is right, isn't it?


Regardless of that, burndrive preventing venting would be good.

[Cycerin]

The ideal solution imo is to make burn drive prevent venting... which is actually simpler now codewise, hmm.)

It's a really nice quirk of how the game works and how burn drive works, that makes burn drive way less situational and committal. I would be sad to see it gone.

[Gothars]

It's a really nice quirk of how the game works and how burn drive works, that makes burn drive way less situational and committal. I would be sad to see it gone.

Mh, isn't the commitment part of why it's a good system? I'd like it to be a risky decision to unfetter those powerful old-fashioned engines. Fine control is for mid- and high-tech.

What I don't like about the current implementation is that you can stop it for free with low flux, but only for a time cost if you have flux, which often mean you can't stop it safely at all. Those two things don't seem like they should have anything to do with each other.

[Toxcity]

Not really a fan of burn drive disabling venting. It takes away a lot of utility the system has atm.

[Megas]

I like burn drive-vent cancel.  Feels like the good ol' days of move cancelling in Street Fighter II.

I also vent-cancel other specials at times.  For instance, high-energy focus if I use flux hungry weapons like plasma cannon.  I fire plasma cannons, then I need to vent.  Don't care I have more time left on high-energy focus; my flux bar is high, and I need to vent (spam) NOW!

The only reason to not to preserve vent cancelling of any special (burn drive or any other) is the AI does not take advantage of it.

[Alex]

The only reason to not to preserve vent cancelling of any special (burn drive or any other) is the AI does not take advantage of it.

That, and there's an argument to be made that needing to commit to using a system for the full duration - such as burn drive, for example - adds to the tactical thinking required to use the ship system well. Where being able to cancel takes things in a more twitch/reactive direction. Given that combat - especially in larger ships - is supposed to be about thinking ahead, not being able to cancel burn drive fits in better there.

It doesn't seem super important either way, though, so I don't really see spending time on it right now.

[Serenitis]

Tbh, I don't think having the burn drive be "all or nothing" would be that bad.
9 times out of 10 you're going to want the full duration anyway.

So long as passive dissipation still happens during a burn, taking that away would be pretty horrible.

[Schwartz]

I think tying together the ability to vent with the ability to interrupt ship systems is just a mess of a discussion that's not really on point. The power of V is the result of an oversight that's made it into the game as a 'well, why not' because it's convenient, not really because venting has *anything* to do with ship system interruption on a technical level. And the best and most logical thing here would be to un-tangle that mess and 'fess up, one way or the other:

Either make V work globally to interrupt *all* ship systems as well as lower shields, or completely reduce V back to what it was originally intended to be. A vent button that also disables shields, because having shields off is a requirement to vent. Nothing else.

The latter would probably be better. Interrupting burn drives takes away all of the risk that's part of using such a strong ship system. The AI doesn't interrupt, either.

[Megas]

I vent-cancel systems frequently when advantageous.  Lately, my flagship has been Dominator, and I vent cancel burn drive frequently.  I use burn drive to approach target, vent cancel, and let my front three or five Vulcans (and dual Mjolnirs and Maulers) brutalize the target.

I do like the twitch-y arcade-like combat.  Combat does not feel quite fast enough, especially since Helmsmanship 5 no longer boosts top speed.  However, combat has been sped up in other ways, which I will discuss further in a feedback topic to come.