Messages

1

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Flare gun tool as a gunner (or possibly engineer) item

« on: September 28, 2013, 12:20:37 am »

Captains can already coordinate through grid coordinates. The last thing I need is some newbie shooting off hand held flares, giving away my position when I am trying to be all sneaky like.

Which is exactly why i said the flares would only be visible to your team. You can't see enemy flares, they can't see yours. I also mentioned that the only way to make it work properly would be to limit the actual flare beacons to the Commander slot of the ship, so crew can't spam them. Grid coordinates are pretty good, but on some of the larger maps, the grid coordinates don't really tell you much detail. I understand that there isn't really much call for having more precise markings, but I thought it would be a nice ability, even if you remove the whole flare thing and allow Commanders to mark small points on the map for allies.

not to mention that indicating where you are to your team on the hud doesnt really matter when the map shows where your allies are at all times.

The idea isn't about tagging where you are, because as you said, that's already on the map. The idea of this was to mark where you want allies to be, or to show where you intend to go, particularly if you don't  have a mic.

Personally, I don't really like the concept of having to deploy the flares, because that would be difficult to do over long distance. i like the idea of using it to tag mines, but i thought it needed more, and i figured it could just get rolled together with the Captain's pinpointing.

A lot of people have suggested that tagging mines could just get rolled into the Eyeglass, but i thought that being able to spot and track mines should require a bit more of a sacrifice, since almost no gunners or engineers ever bring actual pilot tools. I also figured that using the G-key 'Signal' system between allied ships would be pretty limiting, since it only gives you a direction, not a specific point. I'm sure there's some way they could easily adapt it to include more information, like grid coordinates or some such.

It would be neat if pilots could just click on points on the map to 'ping' the location for a short while, so allies can see, but i figured it would be nice to roll it into one tool.

Well, this idea is just to toss around, if there are better ideas, or reasons why we really shouldn't have these features, i'd love to hear them

2

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Flare gun tool as a gunner (or possibly engineer) item

« on: September 27, 2013, 04:17:36 pm »

well, i figured since the flare pistol wouldn't be as big or bright, and wouldn't illuminate any clouds (which i presume the main FPS drop comes from) it wouldn't impact performance much more than a deployed mine would

to cut down on performance usage, you could eliminate the visual effects of the beacon and limit it to the map and bracket, or only use the mine-tagging feature. I think if you take away the cloud illumination, the actual animation of the flare should be less intensive than the fire animations, and there are certainly enough of those seen in game =P

Without having a programmer here, i can't really back that up but it's always seemed to me that lots of flares don't slow my FPS down unless they're in clouds, and i've got a low and a high-end machine, both of which i frequently play GoIO on.

3

Feedback and Suggestions / Flare gun tool as a gunner (or possibly engineer) item

« on: September 27, 2013, 09:20:52 am »

Hey, I was thinking about ways allied pilots could signal without using microphones, and the idea popped into my head.

The flare gun would just be a small, handheld pistol that launches a harmless flare in the direction you shoot. Unlike the flare gun turret, this flare gun would not set anything on fire and would not illuminate clouds. Left clicking the gun could fire a flare, and right clicking could deploy it (or it could forcibly deploy at a set distance, or on contact). Once deployed, the flare would show up through obstructions with a coloured bracket (coloured for your team), similar to the brackets used to highlight enemy ships. The flare itself would also burn with the colour of your team.

This would allow you to pre-organise specific locations that you can tag in-game, or to use with chat/voice chat to assist in relaying tactics in-game. If you want an ally to go and guard a specific area, or lay mines in a particular part of a canyon, or to go and capture a certain point, or flank from a certain direction, you could just fire off a flare to show them exactly where you mean, rather than trying to use a grid reference on some of the big maps.

The function of this idea would work best if flares could only be seen by allies on your team, so the enemy cannot see your flare and act upon it. The flares could show up as a small star, or asterisk on the map, for your team-mates to view. Furthermore, if it is possible, each flare could be numbered by order of launch and possibly given a letter to indicate which ship fired it, to avoid confusion from the use of multiple flares.

This gun would work well for pilots, since pilots rarely have an opportunity to use gun turrets, and therefor usually have no need to bring ammunition in the gunners tool slot. It would also work well for crew in other positions, either a gunner who doesn't need all their ammo slots, or an engineer who isn't using any guns (or doesn't need ammo for the ones they are using).

As an additional feature, the flares could be used to outline mines. For this purpose the projectile would act like the projectile from the flare gun turret, and deploy on contact. preferably, this should not contribute to the numbered flare symbols on the map, but maybe just a small mine icon (spikey ball) instead, or not have any map symbol at all. In normal view, the flare on the mine would shine the colour of your team, and have the bracket outline to show you the location through any obstructions. It also means that if you are laying mines, you can flag them so your team mate(s) don't accidentally hit them.

Ideally, there should be a low maximum amount of flares per player (one or two I was thinking), to prevent confusion and prevent people from using them irresponsibly (as trolls are likely to attempt). The best possible anti-abuse solution i could think of was to make it so only the player in the Commander slot of a ship can use the deploy feature, to limit regular players to tagging mines. That way, there is  no way for regular crew to 'spam' the flares as a distraction, since the only thing they will be capable of doing with it is being helpful. Flares would most likely need a set duration, and they would need to 'burn out' when more flares are fired past the limit, the same way the oldest mine is destroyed when a new one is fired past the limit.

I'd love to hear some alternate ideas/modifications you guys have!

4

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Achievements?!?

« on: September 27, 2013, 08:34:04 am »

the kills are normally measured by your actual gun. you have to get the last shot on the enemy to make it count towards your achievements.

5

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: goldfish side gun platforms :D

« on: September 27, 2013, 08:33:01 am »

maybe not quite a trampoline, but maybe some rope netting or a rope rail or something? just so you don't slip through the gap, but not so much of a change that they need to edit the actual model quite as much

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The Docks / Re: Hey there GoI! Do you like Cake?

« on: September 01, 2013, 11:59:53 am »

I was flying with Andika and B'Elanna =)

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The Docks / Re: Hey there GoI! Do you like Cake?

« on: September 01, 2013, 11:09:54 am »

After sailing with some fine flavours of cake, I came to realise that I must quest to find my own flavour of cake. I hope you grant me this opportunity