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[Qloos]

New weapons, weapon changes and so forth.

I feel collision and impact damage should be increased for shields and hull, (but not armor.)  Bare with me, I'm still on topic; imagine this tactic: blasting away a large vessels front armor, retreating and slowly shoving a large asteroid into him.  I did this just recently and was very impressed with my genius, until it bounced off his shields at high speeds, (over 250) harmlessly.  This wasn't no small rock either, I'm talking frigate sized.  If this were to be done, ramming could become a viable tactic and a strategic part of gameplay.

With this said, since the game has a physics system in place, point blank range weapons such as drills could be added.  Or on a more complex to program level: High tension cable harpoon guns.  Tether the bastard and tow him into a rock.

Another missing weapon type is rockets.  All current self propelled warheads are heatseaking missiles.  Torpedoes don't count, they're torpedoes.  Don't argue with me about semantics.

[Avan]

Make a mission with 9001+ speed asteroids, spanning 10-20% of the map. Try to survive in anything bigger than a frigate (frigates tend to get ejected outright before they can be destroyed because they are so light)
I'm actually kinda sad that asteroid collision damage is capped at just over 1000 as I recall... meaning an asteroid at speed 2000 does the same damage as one at 12000.

[Alex]

I agree that asteroids could be a more meaningful in terms of gameplay. I hesitate to make them a serious source of damage, though - it seems like the kind of thing that'd be very hard for the AI to handle. It being a single-player game, how tough something is for the AI to deal with is a real consideration. I wouldn't want to put that in and have it be a mechanic that only the player can use effectively.

Personally, what I want to see for asteroids is breaking into smaller pieces and creating temporary (but long-lasting) dust clouds. Specifically what those would do is TBD - could act like a nebula, block beam weapons, confuse missiles, etc. That would go along with the general theme of asteroids fields being used as a place to hide out in.

Another missing weapon type is rockets.  All current self propelled warheads are heatseaking missiles.  Torpedoes don't count, they're torpedoes.  Don't argue with me about semantics.

We've got the Annihilator Rocket Launcher that's in the game, but not used by any ship variants So you'll certainly see more in that vein.

With this said, since the game has a physics system in place, point blank range weapons such as drills could be added.  Or on a more complex to program level: High tension cable harpoon guns.  Tether the bastard and tow him into a rock.

Oooh boy. Nothing quite like rope physics. Tractor beams might be in order too, we've already got graphics for a tug, anyway.

[Blips]

Or on a more complex to program level: High tension cable harpoon guns.

Psshh, plz, copy my suggestions moar plz? k thnx. 

[Avan]

Hehe, well, it wouldn't /really/ affect the AI, so long as shield-bumped asteroids have a speed cap or something to prevent wonkiness in the physics system (ie, raising it at just the right point to make it go flying), as asteroids of speeds 1000+ are never seen in normal gameplay.

[Alex]

What I mean is, if asteroids did a lot of damage, the AI would have to know about it and try to use/avoid that intelligently.

Right now it's pretty tolerant of getting hit by asteroids, issues w/ frigates being too careful about it aside. Getting it to avoid a large number of moving objects at the same time while still doing something reasonable as far as actually fighting is tricky, to say the least.

[Avan]

Oh well... I'm just interested in having 'just for fun' hypervelocity asteroids whizzing about on screen blowing everything up

[Alex]

Ah I'd be lying if I said I hadn't tried the same thing for fun.

[Qloos]

What I mean is, if asteroids did a lot of damage, the AI would have to know about it and try to use/avoid that intelligently.

Right now it's pretty tolerant of getting hit by asteroids, issues w/ frigates being too careful about it aside. Getting it to avoid a large number of moving objects at the same time while still doing something reasonable as far as actually fighting is tricky, to say the least.

The easy solution as I see it is, have all the asteroids start at a drift.  When an asteroid is at drifting speed, keep damage amounts the same as current.  However, any asteroid that exceeds a specific speed will have it's damage multiplied and be targeted as an enemy by the AI and avoided with a vengence.  Non energy damage could also slow asteroids before they hit the target, this would become an effective anti asteroid defense for the AI.

[Avan]

Even energy weapons could slow them, as they heat up the surface, vaporizing it, causing it to slow down (beams would obviously be worse at this than say, a plasma cannon (though the plasma cannon would probably just vaporize them at full charge anyways))