"In brief, it's all behind the scenes. Having it be tactical could be nice - but it could also be something of a chore for the player, depending on their preferences. Doing it "right", like you said, is a big task - and it'd probably need to be skippable for someone that's just not interested in it. To be honest, I'd rather focus on adding features/making improvements to the combat and the sandbox, rather than spreading the effort too thin over an extra game type."
"Guys - I appreciate the thought, but I really don't feel like Starsector is ready for this kind of exposure. Please don't do anything on my behalf to make that happen - I think it could end up causing serious problems, both for the development of the game, the community, and, indeed, my mental health :) "
Re: cosmetic stuff (crew members flying out, escape pods, ships splitting in half, etc)
We'll be making various cosmetic improvements here and there as time goes on. However, just now I think it's more important to focus on features.
This idea does come up a fair bit. The reason it's not in the game, well... let's take a look at what ships would be prime candidates for it, conceptually.
Anything with lots of front-facing firepower is a decent match at first glance. So, the Dominator, the Onslaught, maybe the Hammerhead/Eagle/Falcon. Perhaps a few other ships. Note that most of these (all the ones listed, at any rate) already have front shields. Combined with frontal-focused firepower and engines being in the back, it's already a great idea to flank them.
So, gameplay wise, what would this actually change? It'd either make the ships tougher from the front (which you could easily do within the existing framework by adjusting the shield stats) or make them even more vulnerable from the back (which isn't a good thing - they're already very vulnerable.
To top it off, ships aren't exactly like tanks. They're more like, well, ships. The nature of the combat means that hits to the back are at least as likely as hits to the front in anything other than a 1-1. A ship designer would probably go through great pains to make the engine section of a front-shielded ship as durable as possible - that's the Achilles heel of a large ship, after all.
The current system serves its role - rewarding surgical fire my making repeated hits to the same area more effective. Varying armor by location... well, I'm not going to say it would flat out be a bad thing. But at the same time, I don't see what compelling gameplay it brings to the table, and it does bring complexity. All this information would have to be conveyed to the player somehow.
Thing is, shield locking - especially on small, nimble ships - is even trickier. I've tried it, and it felt like a complete mess.
As far as increasing the zoom level specifically, that's not likely - we're building the game around playing at those zoom levels, as far as both the graphics (the "Supreme Commander" problems show up faster than one might expect) and the actual combat mechanics. But other improvements to help with general tactical awareness - such as improving the usefulness of the radar ribbon, for example - are certainly on the table.
Just very briefly (in the interest of going back to hammering down the rivets in 0.6a!): this is something I've given some thought to. I'm going to take another look at it once the campaign is much farther along, basically, the campaign mechanics need to drive how this is going to work, not the other way around.You can find that discussion here (http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=6532.0 (http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=6532.0)), and another similar discussion here (http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=4354.0 (http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=4354.0)).
I can pretty much promise that free-for-alls won't be in the picture, but, multiple-factions-per-side battles (with two sides total) are a possibility.
Ye beet me too it gothars... did you use our .txt file? I'll find it fer you if you haven't.
I think.
It was a fair collection of links and explanations about frequent suggestions.Ye beet me too it gothars... did you use our .txt file? I'll find it fer you if you haven't.
I think.
I only vaguely remember some textfile, what was that all about?
As far as increasing the zoom level specifically, that's not likely - we're building the game around playing at those zoom levels, as far as both the graphics (the "Supreme Commander" problems show up faster than one might expect) and the actual combat mechanics. But other improvements to help with general tactical awareness - such as improving the usefulness of the radar ribbon, for example - are certainly on the table.
Good, all typos must be found and destroyed.
It's an alternate spelling of Phosphorus. Also, if you want to report typos, there is a thread for it in the Bug Reports & Support subforum:Good, all typos must be found and destroyed.
"Phaosphoros"
May or may not be intended as is, but it looks like a mis-spelling of Phosphorus.
A 'reroll ship name' button when you own a ship and want to change the name but are too lazy to come up with a new one. ::)
Gothar for Moderator +1