Another!...combat freighter? Sounds like more pirates.
But then again, it has that midline feel and look to it. Can't want to test it out.
EDIT:
That rear light MG sticks out A LOT in the exhaust light. Can something be done about that?
And a "few" things to sort out? I say it's released withing a week from now.
Another? It's pretty much alone in its role!
The rear MG... I don't know, I think it kind of works - also, this is with the maneuvering jets on, so there's a lot more glow than usual. The ideal solution would be to add some glow bleed here ("bloom" effect) but that's not in the cards.
I'm quite liking the look of the Mule there. From what I can see there, it appears to be able to take a fair beating, especially for a freighter, be it combat or no.
Yep - it's intended to be similar to the Venture in design. Quite likely designed by the same corporation in the early days of the Domain.
As an aside point, are thrusters ever going to be truly directional? I was testing earlier on with having a rear pointing thruster to see if it would only activate if I put the ship in reverse, unfortunately it didn't work. Such a feature would be one of the small details that'd make the combat that bit more flavoursome than it already is
Okay, I am going to draw attention to what K-64 said. I also really want to see directional thrusters. I don't think it would be that hard to visually have the thrusters activate when logically needed, but I do recognize that it might be a pain to deal with flameouts of odd-angle thrusters and how it affects the steering.
Also, I have a more tricky request. I would love it if we could set an "engine mount" sprite, and have gimbaling on engines. Kerbal Space Program has made me realize that having engines that vector thrust is an actual thing, a viable thing, and something that shouldn't be ignored. It would look awesome to have our ships swish their engines around as we mash the keys, and it wouldn't add any extra visual clutter to the battles.
I just don't see that happening. It's the kind of thing that has a lot of impact on the visual ship designs, and introduces a lot of constraints there. I can see it fitting into a game that was all about modeling thrust accurately, and while Starfarer has a few nods to that (spinning out of control when some engines are disabled, etc), it's certainly not a focal point of the game design. So, I don't see making it a key component of the ship designs, either.
What I can see doing at some point is being able to flag thrusters to go on/off depending on the keys being pressed, but in all honesty, that's not very likely either, as it'll involve some significant ship retro-fitting. Still, never say never and all.
Hmm, that changes my thoughts on the fortress shield quite a bit! How much hard flux is generated, or is that just the flux from incoming fire?
Also that sounds like a really good call on the maneuvering jets - I was happy when you made the same call with the missile launchers.
2.5% of the base flux capacity per second, plus whatever comes in from damage (at a 10x improved efficiency).
Yeah - cooldowns seem to get in the way a lot of the time. Sometimes they're necessary, and sometimes they work... but I'd say they're better for controlling the rate at which the player can do something, not for controlling
when they can do it, if that distinction makes any sense. I'm not sure that's good as a hard and fast rule, though.
Requests on coding or general gameplay?
Was just asking as far as the modding API.
Actually, yes, I do have one: would it be possible to make the value for the player's credits accessible? I'd love to be able to add or subtract from them, and create events based on a player's monetary worth.
I'd also love to be able to create simple text-only pop-up boxes that could be used for notifications (something similar to accident report pop-ups), as the current notification system in the campaign screen is a bit too subtle, and makes it easy for players to miss important notifications. Though, I understand that's a fairly large addition--perhaps for the next version of the game?
Added SectorAPI.getPlayerFleet() and CampaignFleetAPI.getCargo() methods - that should let you get a hold of the player fleet and then work with the credits using its CargoAPI.getCredits() method (which returns a MutableValue). Haven't tested it, though - advance apologies if something there doesn't work.
About messages - I think it's a good idea, but you're right, it's not exactly something I could just hack in. Have to make sure it plays nice with other UI code, which could be particularly tricky since a mod could call that at an awkward time.
Finally, the Mule looks pretty nice--it scared me for a second though, when I saw the scaled-down image, it appeared as some sort of Venture kitbash.
Thanks! Hmm, yeah - not sure there's any way around that, though. It's definitely in the same style, and is meant to be - and if you've seen a lot of kitbashing, then anything similar-looking is bound to make your mind go there for a second
So, will this ship be replacing a lot of the Buffalos in the pirate fleets? They could use the extra firepower.
More of a Tarsus replacement, but yeah, you'll see a decent number of those in the pirate fleets.