per 9 - Well, I get that the asteroids are kinda a suspense generator. But making the defences shoot them is not a bad idea - real ships would always shoot them, especially if their ammo is infinite. Actually, making the defences shoot the asteroids would even add suspense and create a good visual effect. This would in no way harm the menacing character of the asteroid sector. Some asteroids can have tonns of HP so that however the point defences fire at them, they won't be able to break them, but this will add much visual logic to the situation. And, on the other hand, if, say, 1-3 of 10 asteroids would have the HP low enough to be destroyed by weapons, this would also increase the enterntainment. Like, there could be a very inspiring situation when I, having like 1% of my HP, with an asteroid flying at me, and engine almost recharged, manage to break the rock down, and get out of the sector just before the next one flies in my place. That's suspense too, and it will leave much less sense of predetermination and make me consider myself lucky and increase the involvement with the game.
Also, as an idea - some event like "micrometeorites" can be created for some of the meteorites, just like there's the storm even in the sector. The micrometiorites cannot be avoided and will definitely make some damage.
per 10 - I was wrong, I am sorry. It was late in the night and I was getting sleepy
The weapons do track enemy ships. The situation that I described was happening when the targeted ship was destroyed. I.e. I have 5 fighters around me and 1 big laser. After the laser destroys a fighter, it returns to the heading direction and only starts tracking the next fighter when it recharges... imho targeting should be independant of recharging because the couple of seconds wasted on turning the weapon can be the difference between life and death sometimes.
Also, after a warp-in, some weapons rotate around the circle once, returning back to their frontal heading. It looks like initially they are aligned with the ship direction and then they try to find the shortest arc to turn to their own frontal direction, but the program fails to calculate the shortest arc and sometimes chooses the wrong one, so weapons often just circle around on a warp-in. This looks very funny, please fix this
I know the triginometry and the atan thing and arcs and stuff can be a real pain, so I don't blame you, but if this is fixed, it will seriously add to the visual solidity of the game. I am sure it's some rogue minus sign somewhere in calculations that causes it to choose the wrong arc - I have experimented and it always depends on the ship heading and in which quarter of the circle the weapons are facing - for example, if the ship direction is in the I quarter, the weapons that should face the IV quarter are always the ones who get affected by this "bug". Or this effect can be removed as a whole by simply keeping weapons always aligned to their own nominal frontal heading. Its cosmetics so idk if it's worth investing time, but OTOH cosmetics is a whole industry out there..
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12. When warping in on an autotravel which gets cancelled by an unexpected hostile presense, the text says "AUTOTRAVEL CANCELED, HOSTILES PRESENT!", and the words "autotravel canceled, hostiles" are on the first line and the word "present" is on the second. The whole text is aligned left. I think it is more logical to simply separate two phrases on two lines and make the text alignment central, like
Code:
|.......AUTOTRAVEL CANCELED.......|
Code:
|........HOSTILES PRESENT!........|
13. I'm playing with BSE Achilles now and have 2 gatlings installed on the front point defense mounts. Surprisingly, but when I am trying to approach an enemy that fires missiles at me, to get in range of my devastating lasers, Achilles simply keeps accepting the missile punches in the nose, the two gatlings remain silent - their firing arcs do not cover the prefrontal area. This is really disappointing since Achilles is a warship and having no point defense at its nose is strange because warships *have to* approach their targets, they cannot allow themselves to stay aside, showing only one side to the enemy like carriers. This misfeat can be considered a part of gameplay, but it really does not have much logic behind it..
All in all, it is very hard to judge on weapons arcs and range. Often it is a game of guessing if I have turned enough and am close enough for a particular weapon to be able to target an enemy. Although with time I get some habit with how to align the ship to target the enemies, it's not that easy with various kinds of ships and their arcs.. but idk, maybe it's a part of gameplay that requires developing the prediction skill.
14. I had a mission with 3 objectives and one of them was to find an item, and it was a Distress Signal Beacon. I have found it, but not yet completed the other points of the mission. And when I was on a starbase, I tried to sell it, the game said "Are you really want to sell a mission item?" - ok, good. But then I found another beacon, stacked it with the mission item and tried to sell - it sold without a question. Idk if it would have any consequences on my mission, but I bought it back and finished the other two tasks of the mission and received the reward. So, this stacking of mission items is a bit misleading.. what if I would sell it by mistake and forget? Idk if the mission would be considered complete.
15. My mission included finding a storm sector, but it did not specify which one, it had "???" instead of the sector name. I suppose this means "any new, yet undiscovered, storm sector"? Because I had one discovered already, and I simply had to discover one more for the mission to be completed.
16. When accepting a mission, there's a list of objectives on the left. If I click an objective, it becomes green on the map on the right. This is good, but if I scroll the list, *without* picking another one, the green turns back to red although the objective is still selected. It should remain green unless deselected explicitly or another one is selected.
17. In addition to 16 - the map with objectives shows only systems of interest for the mission, omitting all the rest of the map.. idk if this is good.. feels a bit disorienting, but the main peculiarity is that sometimes little parts of irrelevant systems still get in the view. Looks like you cover the map with a black quad and simply cut out circles around the relevant systems with alpha from the black texture, so that if a part of something else gets in the circle, it becomes visible. Idk if all this is intended or not, but I thought I'd mention it as a bit strange thing to see.
18. On the main map the mission-important systems are signed with an exclamation mark - this is good. However, there's no way to know, which exactly mission(s) does this exclamation mark belong to. Also, when listing through a missions objectives, the map scrolls, trying to put a particular system in the (center of?) the view, but it does not really work well, I get the impression that the centered system is not really in the center, but sometimes left to it or even a bit more misplaced. Maybe some better centering or an additional visual indication would be good...
19. Make more enemy fighters! Systems with more enemy fighters.. or something else with fighters.. because I always play on hard and the enemy fighters, be them alone or with bigger ships are always no more than merely a hindrance. It's been just a time or two that schillae plasmatic fighters posessed a real threat to me.. Playing on hard with a non-carrier warship usually creates the closest systems with 2-3 weakest fighters, and then just like 1-2 warships.. but this is sad.. een 5 fighters are nothing... it's hard level after all.. make me retreat to the base a couple more times... make me think of a strategy.. it's roguelike right?
20. Enemies have become smarter - they're travelling more, trying to spread their presense.. but they are disorganized.. what if some sectors be of a particular interest and enemies desperately wanted to be present in there and protect? For example, they could be mining something. Currently they just travel by 1-2 ships in a line, so I simply sit and wait and kill them 1 by 1 in a row.. And if I kill all enemies in their sector of interest, they might be wanting it back and fighting for it.. so for example, if humans would begin installing their presence in the sector, I'd have to protect them.. and would get additional points for holding our presence in the sector.. like king of the hill or something.. just trying to think of a more complex topology for AIs global map behavior...
