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Suggestions / Scale, and notes about balance
« on: June 05, 2011, 05:53:33 PM »
I have played starfarer a few times, and so far, it is mightily impressive. However, a few things stand out to me as needing work, both visually and functionally.
So to start off, let's talk about scale.
By "scale", I am referring both to the size of ships in relation to each other, and also to the scale of background objects, such as meteors and planets.
Planets: In relation to the ships, planets are tiny. now the only way planets would be this small, is if they were very far away, and clearly this is not the case, as they are at the forefront of the parallax effect. This could be fixed by putting them at the back, but I think a much better solution would be to make them larger on screen. (like 5 or 6 times the size of the onslaught). maybe both, so they are further back of the parallax effect AND larger.
Space stations: This also includes things like beacons and such. These would also be more interesting if larger compared to the ships. especially if you can make the space stations as visually complex as the ships.
Meteors: i am not as sure these could be improved by rescaling, as they are at a good scale now, but perhaps the upper size limit could be increased a bit. Although something that could maybe be interesting is if there were just a few really really big asteroids, that could be used as cover.
Ships: Basically what I want here is to have a greater difference in size between small ships and large ships, so big ships are bigger and small ships are smaller, with variation in between. This would also make the zooming function have another purpose, as well as making the heavy hitters more formidable, with more visual space for weapon mounts.
Balance: This is the second part of things that stood out as "off". From reading other topics, I see that some of my issues are already being addressed, but there are a few that have not been brought up.
The first item on my list is top speed. I agree that the big ships should be slow, however some method of getting to where I need to be in a more expedious manner would be nice. The Idea I had was some sort of cruise engine, or a subspace drive, that increased the max speed by a lot, but also slowly increase flux while active. Also, the boost you get from lowering your shields could maybe be raised a bit.
also, once the campaign layer is added, perhaps in addition to outfitting your ship with different weapons, you could also outfit various other upgrades, such as more powerful engines or a faster flux capacitor. but that is all theoretical for now.
Next item is the ship/weapon rotation speed. for the big ships, the slow rotation wouldn't be as much of a problem if the rotation speed of the various turrets and things were raised to compensate. (though it would be just fine if you raised both a little bit, across the board.) This also counts for the directional shields.
The last thing on my list is weapon group amount. It seems like 4 weapon groups isn't very much for a big ship. it would be nice to have weapons mapped to more keys than that, to allow for more functionality. (I know the UI will start to get clonky from this, but perhaps instead of arranging them as a vertical stack, they could be arrayed horizontally across the bottom of the screen.)
side note, when I have a weapon set to autofire, and then fire it manually, it turns autofire off. perhaps it would be nice if a weapon retained it's autofire status even if I fire it manually.
I may think of some more items later, but this is a good amount to get started with.
So to start off, let's talk about scale.
By "scale", I am referring both to the size of ships in relation to each other, and also to the scale of background objects, such as meteors and planets.
Planets: In relation to the ships, planets are tiny. now the only way planets would be this small, is if they were very far away, and clearly this is not the case, as they are at the forefront of the parallax effect. This could be fixed by putting them at the back, but I think a much better solution would be to make them larger on screen. (like 5 or 6 times the size of the onslaught). maybe both, so they are further back of the parallax effect AND larger.
Space stations: This also includes things like beacons and such. These would also be more interesting if larger compared to the ships. especially if you can make the space stations as visually complex as the ships.
Meteors: i am not as sure these could be improved by rescaling, as they are at a good scale now, but perhaps the upper size limit could be increased a bit. Although something that could maybe be interesting is if there were just a few really really big asteroids, that could be used as cover.
Ships: Basically what I want here is to have a greater difference in size between small ships and large ships, so big ships are bigger and small ships are smaller, with variation in between. This would also make the zooming function have another purpose, as well as making the heavy hitters more formidable, with more visual space for weapon mounts.
Balance: This is the second part of things that stood out as "off". From reading other topics, I see that some of my issues are already being addressed, but there are a few that have not been brought up.
The first item on my list is top speed. I agree that the big ships should be slow, however some method of getting to where I need to be in a more expedious manner would be nice. The Idea I had was some sort of cruise engine, or a subspace drive, that increased the max speed by a lot, but also slowly increase flux while active. Also, the boost you get from lowering your shields could maybe be raised a bit.
also, once the campaign layer is added, perhaps in addition to outfitting your ship with different weapons, you could also outfit various other upgrades, such as more powerful engines or a faster flux capacitor. but that is all theoretical for now.
Next item is the ship/weapon rotation speed. for the big ships, the slow rotation wouldn't be as much of a problem if the rotation speed of the various turrets and things were raised to compensate. (though it would be just fine if you raised both a little bit, across the board.) This also counts for the directional shields.
The last thing on my list is weapon group amount. It seems like 4 weapon groups isn't very much for a big ship. it would be nice to have weapons mapped to more keys than that, to allow for more functionality. (I know the UI will start to get clonky from this, but perhaps instead of arranging them as a vertical stack, they could be arrayed horizontally across the bottom of the screen.)
side note, when I have a weapon set to autofire, and then fire it manually, it turns autofire off. perhaps it would be nice if a weapon retained it's autofire status even if I fire it manually.
I may think of some more items later, but this is a good amount to get started with.