Topics

1

Feedback and Suggestions / Sky Nets

« on: September 10, 2013, 05:35:26 am »

I was thinking something along the lines of a mine launcher, but instead it would fire a large wire net with small balloons tied to the top corners and weights at the bottom.. basically creating a wall that if crashed into would substantially slow a ship for a number of seconds (or perhaps temporarily bringing them to a complete halt by breaking all of the engines).

Like the mine launcher I reckon it would have to be limited in the number that it could be deployed any one time.. perhaps 3 nets at most.
Once a net hit an enemy and was removed from the deployed count, there would be a fairly lengthy cooldown time to prevent people spamming it and locking their enemy in place (it would probably have to be slightly longer than the minimum time required to repair 3 engines).

2

Feedback and Suggestions / Engine name markers

« on: September 04, 2013, 11:42:45 am »

This is a minor change that I think would make Engineers lives just a tiny bit easier - add individual markers to each engine icon to identify which one it is, so players can determine which engine is down without having to look around to see which location that icon hovers over.

While I know most ships keep the manoeuvring engines together, there are some ships (like the Mobula) where the player is required to run the entire width of the ship to reach each engine. In most ships the main engine is separate from the others as well. However, there's no way to tell which engine is down at the moment, and it can be a little annoying have to jump off of a gun or repairing a component to check where the engine is (and if the task of fixing it is better delegated to someone a bit closer).

A single letter would work well (such as 'M' for main engine, 'L' for left engine and so on), although in the interest of making localization easier, symbols could be used instead - perhaps a ◀ for the left engine and ▲ for the main engine etc, etc..
They wouldn't have to be large symbols, I was thinking perhaps overlaid on the edge of one corner of the original icons. Just enough to provide a bit more information without getting in the way.

3

Feedback and Suggestions / Sandstorm Sound Effect

« on: August 27, 2013, 05:51:10 pm »

While the damage sandstorms cause is pretty evident the moment it hits, it'd be nice if around the edges of the storm the wind picked up and there was the sound of sand blowing against the hull, until you were right in the middle and the wind was really howling (maybe even the noise of the engines spluttering as they become clogged up with sand - although I'm not suggesting change the mechanics of the clouds themselves to cause an effect like that).

Other than looking slightly different from other clouds, I don't know if there's any way of determining if a cloud is a sandstorm or not without flying into it. Certainly I've had my fair share of encounters with clouds that looked dangerous only for them to have no effect, and likewise have been seriously damaged by clouds that looked no different from their surroundings.. so visually assessing them is a bit hit and miss.

While making them visually more distinctive would make it easier to avoid them, it might make it too easy.. with a sound effect it would be more subtle, and would only really make navigating them easier when out of battle, when it is easier to listen for.
On top of being more atmospheric (literally!) it would give experienced & cautious crews a slight edge over the more gung-ho crews that charge through clouds blindly, since it would leave their ships in slightly better condition when entering fights.