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Comments
Large commit. But basics are:
* On weapons, missiles now auto-aim towards your target when the lock button is enabled (default behavior)
* Missile projections are only displayed when a tube is loaded.
* Tubes can have different directions in which they fire. (Broad side tubes are an option now!)
* Mines now fire in the tube direction instead of in reverse. So I gave the default player ships with mines a specialized tube just for mines, which is rear faced.
Still need to make it clear which tube buttons are which direction.
It does make it possible to have missiles with different speeds and turning radi now. (homing, nukes and EMPs are still the same, but HVLI was already twice as fast)
This opens the door for more differentiation between ship weapons; one ship may have a single beam with a slow rate of fire but high damage, whereas another is more suited to handling fighters with a fast rate of fire but low damage output per hit. As it is if you give a ship a slow/strong beam there's no cost incurred, but a fast/weak beam chews your energy and cooks the crew
Ideally for me, only fighters would have front facing weapons, but be weak enough that even they have to make quick strafing runs and then get out quickly so shields can recharge.
I will try and get everything later this afternoon , Kwadroke's automated coding for build works pretty good.
With the recent additions to the AI so it can actually use broadside lasers, I think it only makes sense to expand on this as well.
And, Nallath has a good view on game design as well. Quite a few good improvements came out of his head. (And tons of ideas that are too much work)
@Flea11 feel free to throw ideas, don't even have to be completed templates.
I think we should even reserve room for ships that are currently not yet possible due to AI/game limitations.
Naval action is amazing
They ofcourse also have a lot of stuff like winds and certain ships performing better at certain angles from the wind, which would be a pretty silly game mechanic for space battles.
Another big change that i've been bugging Daid about is making stuff 2.5D, so that fighters can do "proper" attack runs (and actually fly over / under larger ships)
The different tube positions are fun. The auto aiming and switching between, is good. But still need to be weary of where it may end up.
Is the torpedo attributes hard coded or scripted? Just curious, I do not foresee changing any of this myself.
Also the new drop down menu between stations is nice, but it is a bit into the science scan button. Maybe moved the scanning ui and display down? I was quite surprised of the the new probes!!
That sailing games looks good, to bad I'm more of a undersea boat kind of guy. Do they have the turtle sub?
https://github.com/daid/EmptyEpsilon/blob/master/scripts/shipTemplates.lua#L29
Missiles themselves are hard-coded. (But I fixed quite a bit of that code to be more logical)
By the same way, we could use one of these new symbol for the "missile system" icon that look a little bit more Cartoonish than the other icons.
Tell me what you think...
Option A
Option B
Option C (with a differenciation for the "loaded/empty"
I don't see why we would need an icon to tell if a tube is loaded. The tube tells you what is loaded in it. If we can now have broadsides I guess we will need a completely redesigned display to show port and starboard load outs.
Maybe something along the lines of an icon showing the direction of the tube. A drop list of what can be loaded in that tube. Selecting from the list will load the tube. If something is in the tube already, selecting a different device will unload the tube and then load the tube with the selected. Then a fire button that becomes enabled when the tube is ready to fire.
Game balance may be an issue with lots of tubes. I don't think that Honerverse style fighting with thousands of missiles fired in a broadside is the best style of play for this type of gaming.
But on the current topic, wouldn't using more tubes in quick succession mean more heat management? If the ships are designed well, that should be a factor to prevent repeated firing of all tubes at once.
Also, I was wondering, would it be possible to have each weapon have it's own target instead of having all weapons firing on one at a time? If weapons really needs to be made more interesting, could more control over ships weapons be given to the player?
Setting a target per weapon can be nice, except that I have no idea how the UI would work.
How about selecting a target and then a tube. If no tube is selected it's just a beam target.
Or maybe a sequence of mouse clicks to go through the arc target zones when you are selecting the target. Say first time clicked
Selected is front arc, the 2nd and 3rd is port and starboard respectively. This is somewhat simar idea to what I do in role-playing games (star wars etc)
Still this would be tough as the ship rotates, or we can have target # next to a target, up to how many a ships computer can handle, and different arcs fire as the targets are entering the certain arc.