Third look at early game

[keith.lamothe]

Yea, coarse-speed doesn't look as good, and is less "correct" in that under extreme circumstances a fast ship might pass "through" a short-range ship's range-bubble in one frame, and not actually ever be in range. But that's really an edge case. The onus is somewhat on the player to not break the game, and just use it to speed up things that would otherwise be uninteresting.

And yes, I know about the ships bouncing back and forth on coarse-speed. It's probably just a matter of detecting "that would overshoot your destination, so just snap to your destination".

[x4000]

Cool, that all sounds good.

[chemical_art]

By default, I would have the +/- buttons by default to be where they would in AIW 1: It is intuitive and follows the practice of most other games and I think for the majority of players be the optimal solution. I would resolve the more creative coarse speed to use ctrl +/-. It is a very powerful tool but not intuitive and can lead to perceived bugs without knowing the context. Having it be a bit more behind the scenes means that when a player does stumble upon it they are also more likely to simultaneously see the description to it.

[x4000]

That's a really excellent way of putting it.  You're right, that's how we should do it.