Going a bit off topic, but: If a boarded ship is broken-down enough (increased hull repair costs, D hullmods, and/or you might even have to to some work on it to use it in combat at all), the costs to reverse the damage could thin the margin between buying and boarding pretty quickly.
That's a very good point, will keep it in mind.
To Alex: are you intending to add missions that make use of this mechanic, or revise existing missions to make use of this mechanic if such would make sense? Oh, and could we get a different color for the allied units? I think the yellow used for allied units is a bit too close to the green used for the ships the player owns; perhaps blue would work better? Or perhaps stick the friend/foe/ally colors into the options menu with a few predetermined options, so the player can configure it themselves?
Not for this update, at least. As I mentioned in an earlier reply, it's not 100% supported in missions - it mostly works, but some of the battle-end conditions (i.e. "you retreated but your allies haven't" aren't being handled properly.
Alex, how do allies get implemented for the enemy side? Is it just added into one big fleet? Do separate commander AIs run their ships? If not, do the CP get added together?
One big fleet, isAlly() returns false on all ships, one admiral AI in charge using the CPs of the commander of the "primary" fleet, which is either the first fleet on that side in the battle, or the largest fleet if that one is not present.
I think the yellow looks quite different.
However, people with most sorts of color-weakness or color-blindness will disagree.
agreed, the yellow looks fine to me, but many people have problems distinguishing green from yellow at a glance, especially when both are at low saturation, like in this ui. and blue is probably a bad idea because much of the ui / background itself is a light blue.
what about a pink-ish purple? it might not be the most intuitive color for "ally", but i think neither is yellow. and it should provide good contrast to both the player's green and the hostile's rusty orange.
although ultimately all three parties can still be distinguished solely on the square, rhombus and circle shapes, even for people who wouldn't be able to see colors at all.
Well yellow has been the long industry standard for allies in rts games.
Right - it's standard, also distinguishable by shape, and there's text ("allied" on the reticle) where the shape doesn't show up. In color-blind mode, it uses gray instead.
also, hello forum!^^
been lurking for some time, finally decided to actually post. so excited for the coming update! :]
Hi, and welcome to the forum
