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[Blips]

Oh my, more ideas? Tell me it ain't so.

I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that.

• In-game Zoom: a relatively minor but potentially great thing to implement. Rather than giving the player an arbitrary zoom distance when playing (not talking about the tactical screen), make the maximum zoom a function of the ship's size. In other words, small ships might be able to zoom out only 2x, while vast capital ships may be able to zoom out 8x.
• Ship Explosions: this might be difficult. And it would be mainly aesthetic, but it might be awesome to split up ships when they explode, causing debris, both small and large to remain from a destroyed ship (and potentially collide with surviving ships).
• Physical Collisions: this was touched upon within another thread, but asteroids should pose a larger risk to ships in order to add some depth to the battlefield. Fighters can ignore asteroids, but a capital ship plowing through an asteroid field should take significant damage. Likewise, collisions between ships should be devastating events (hundreds of thousands of tons of metal colliding is usually a bad thing).

[Avan]

• Physical Collisions: this was touched upon within another thread, but asteroids should pose a larger risk to ships in order to add some depth to the battlefield. Fighters can ignore asteroids, but a capital ship plowing through an asteroid field should take significant damage. Likewise, collisions between ships should be devastating events (hundreds of thousands of tons of metal colliding is usually a bad thing).

Set the asteroid speed to 7000.

Fly an Onslaught through it.

Try to survive.

[Fishbreath]

Collision mechanics are really a matter of taste, and I disagree with letting capital ships zoom out further--weapon ranges are just the same regardless. Maybe make it something moddable, but the ships are too pretty and weapon ranges are too short for 8x to be worth it.

I do like the idea of breakable debris/asteroids though. Seeing a Conquest come apart down the centerline when a torpedo goes down her throat would be really cool.

[Avan]

Given the use of full top-down sprites, doing debris like that actually could be plausibly done well....... Much more plausibly than in most other game engines anyways.

[Blips]

Collision mechanics are really a matter of taste, and I disagree with letting capital ships zoom out further--weapon ranges are just the same regardless. Maybe make it something moddable, but the ships are too pretty and weapon ranges are too short for 8x to be worth it.

I do like the idea of breakable debris/asteroids though. Seeing a Conquest come apart down the centerline when a torpedo goes down her throat would be really cool.

No one would be forcing you to zoom out. And it's not about weapon ranges but the fact that capital ships take up a far larger portion of the screen than a frigate. I want to be able to see what is going on around me. No one is going to be admiring how their ship looks (despite looking great) when surrounded by enemies.

[Ivaylo]

@Blips: Thanks for the suggestions. You're aware of the "Z" key, right? It's the thing that lets you "see far" currently.

Anyway on the topic of zoom related to ship size, we actually did talk about that a while back. Like 6 months or more. I forget what the thinking was though, although, obviously the idea isn't in the current build. It's interesting you've arrived at the same idea.

The thinking I have on the subject is this: Seeing far, fog of war, etc, is an integral part of an admiral's strategy. Being able to see farther was actually something that I thought could be a ship's system, in fact I argued that the "Z" key oughta not work UNLESS you have that system installed on your ship (system or hull mod).

It's an inherent part of gameplay, something that balances itself out. The farther you see, the less you are able to see of what's happening as a whole around you, much like a hunter who is looking through his binoculars.

That's what's in my head anyway

[Flare]

About the zoom issue, I think you should make the distance which you can zoom out much greater. Though I realize this may impact on the pretty graphics due to the fact that you can't really see the ship details that far out, it does leave a lot of room for modders to work with.
You don't have to change the present mechanics at the moment, meaning you don't really give all that much reason to zoom out more what we're zooming at the moment, I just think that a lot more things can be done if there wasn't a restrictino on how far the zoom function can work.

[Alex]

• Ship Explosions: this might be difficult. And it would be mainly aesthetic, but it might be awesome to split up ships when they explode, causing debris, both small and large to remain from a destroyed ship (and potentially collide with surviving ships).

I am *so* looking forward to when I can devote a couple of weeks to doing this right It still wouldn't be too frequent, btw - part of the idea for having disabled ships mostly-intact is they'll be salvageable after battle, to various degrees - depending on luck, player/command staff skills, equipment, etc.

So a ship would fall apart like that when it would currently be simply destroyed by overkill damage (if you keep shooting a hulk, it will eventually explode).

About the zoom issue, I think you should make the distance which you can zoom out much greater. Though I realize this may impact on the pretty graphics due to the fact that you can't really see the ship details that far out, it does leave a lot of room for modders to work with.
You don't have to change the present mechanics at the moment, meaning you don't really give all that much reason to zoom out more what we're zooming at the moment, I just think that a lot more things can be done if there wasn't a restrictino on how far the zoom function can work.

Hmm... interesting point. If I'm understanding it right, you're saying that someone might want to make a mod that shows a lot more area around your ship. More rts-y/strategic, say. But in that case, it seems like they could just make their ships small Existing content isn't going to work well at a far away zoom level either way, and if you're re-doing content to make it work when it looks small, you might as well just draw small ships/weapons/etc to begin with - save yourself and the graphics card a lot of work.

On the other hand, if you're talking about something that requires a wide range of zoom levels to work, that would really require LOD support in the engine to look/perform ok, which isn't something I'm planning to add.

[tinsoldier]

• Ship Explosions: this might be difficult. And it would be mainly aesthetic, but it might be awesome to split up ships when they explode, causing debris, both small and large to remain from a destroyed ship (and potentially collide with surviving ships).

I am *so* looking forward to when I can devote a couple of weeks to doing this right It still wouldn't be too frequent, btw - part of the idea for having disabled ships mostly-intact is they'll be salvageable after battle, to various degrees - depending on luck, player/command staff skills, equipment, etc.

So a ship would fall apart like that when it would currently be simply destroyed by overkill damage (if you keep shooting a hulk, it will eventually explode).

Mmm overkill.  I had that same thought yesterday when I was playing with the anti-matter blaster.  I desperately wanted it to rip through the back side of the hull.