General Category > Starward Rogue Alpha Discussion

Energy system has been removed?

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Pumpkin:

--- Quote from: Patchnotes for Version 0.136 ---* The energy drops have been removed from the game, and energy pickups in general. Energy pickups that were in the map editor are now "random minor items" that might be missiles, health, or more likely a small number of credits.

--- End quote ---
If I understand it well, there is no more 9V batteries and items no more consume energy. Far be it from me to question argue over this decision. However I'd like to question interrogate this decision.

Which were the design perspectives that leaded to the removal of this mechanism of play?
Why?

I'm asking that because I'm interested in game design and I would like to understand better the deep reasons and motivations of the decisions that shapes a game.
Just being curious.

I thank you in advance for the time and effort you may put in detailing these reasons; I know your time is precious in this busy period of alpha-test.
Thanks.

ptarth:
My guess is that special weapons will be converted to a per weapon ammo system, which effectively is energy, just without the same units. But then again is a guess.

Misery:
Well I'm confused already.

x4000:
I'm not done yet with those changes in the changelog. ;)

The overall design on there should be a lot clearer once that's in place.

TLDR:
1. Ammo weapons are annoying in that you tend to hoard ammo and not use the weapon.  Even if the weapon is good, it "feels bad" partly because you can hardly use it.
2. Automatically regenerating ammo is what we've chosen to go with instead of finite ammo.
3. This basically just makes it a cooldown timer, BUT with some nuances that make it more interesting than just a simple cooldown timer.
4. In order to make this make sense in the larger scheme of things (why use both your main gun and your more-powerful secondary?), we've come up with a very simple combo system that rewards using both as well as constantly laying damage from your main weapon onto enemies even if it's not very much while you're prepping for your next secondary blast.
5. The goals here are to keep people using both weapons for fun and profit, and to not have "dead times" where the player has nothing to shoot with that is interesting.

mrhanman:
That sounds great.  I was not really using secondary weapons at all for exactly the reason you mention.  Which is a shame because I thought a number of them were pretty cool ideas.

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