Huge new alpha build 0.204!

[x4000]

Of course recoil is per-weapon and tweakable in xml.  What do you take me for?  

[Pepisolo]

Of course recoil is per-weapon and tweakable in xml.  What do you take me for?  

Ah! There it is, kickback_strength. Somehow missed that one. Doh!

[TheVampire100]

2. The pushback when you are firing your guns is indeed intentionally pushing you back.  However, that may no longer be needed because we are going to be adding a recoil animation to the guns themselves.  So that will give the sense of weight and pushback without actually needing to push you back.  Thoughts there?

I think that the having a real recoil feature would be useful for weapons design if it were tweakable in the xml in a similar way to how knockback is. For example, if you've designed a real monster of a weapon then adding some real recoil to that might be nice. For the main guns, though, recoil animations only would probably be better. They're only pea-shooters after all.

Exactly this. it feels currently a little weird anyway. this wouldn't be a problem if you would still play a hovering spaceship but now you are mech standing on the ground and getting pushed back little by little looks so weird.
like Pepsilolo suggested, a weapon with a bigger recoil 8because it hase some impact) would be better, something like the Heat Buster from Mabinogi.
It deals a lot of damage in close combat but throws you backwards (it's literally a close combat explosion).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jos8F63zy6I

[keith.lamothe]

The self-knockback on the main guns feels at odds with the shmup need for precise control, especially when weaving through boss bullet patterns and desperately trying to keep firing at the same time. That can turn a situation where I only needed to move vertically (to dodge bullets) into one where I need to also consider my changing horizontal position (to get back in range of the boss, having been pushed away by firing a few hundred bullets).

Does make sense for a big gun, though.

[Misery]

Various responses:

1. Glad that people are happy with the mechs.   We do plan on adding legs to a variety of enemies as well, and having a mix of hovering and walking ones.  Just have not had time yet on that one, and it's a fairly minor detail compared to the player stuff.

2. The pushback when you are firing your guns is indeed intentionally pushing you back.  However, that may no longer be needed because we are going to be adding a recoil animation to the guns themselves.  So that will give the sense of weight and pushback without actually needing to push you back.  Thoughts there?

3. The mech art is super temporary, I should remind you.  It was stuff I cobbled together from IGB to test out sizing and general feel, not actual art done in the proper style of the game.  Except for the feet -- those were done by Blue for the actual game.

4. The laser coming out of your mech's inactive gun is a laser sight.  If it's confusing I can turn it off, but it is the place that either your missiles or your special weapon will fire from.  I figure it's a good guide so that you don't blow yourself up (plus it looks cool).

5. In terms of some enemies being to crazy sometimes, Misery, I think that's not an indictment of the categories system -- but rather, an indicator that some new categories are needed.  No big thing.  If there are certain enemies that you have that you would like to see used only in certain ways, and we can make a new category out of that, then let's definitely go for it.

6. I'll check on the glass pots.

7. Most of the new enemies don't have actual art assigned right now, I should also mention to folks.  We have a huuuuge amount of art completed, but I haven't had a chance to integrate it yet for these guys.  I was out of the office all last week.

8. Now I have commentary that is conflicting: we need longer-range guns, and we need shorter-range guns.   Honestly, I feel like shorter-range guns are the order of the day, and then grow up from there.  I agree that something like 10% is not a good addition.  Instead we should do something that is actual distance-based, like "add 100px to shot range."

8.a. In terms of enemies that have spreadshots that are too dense... well, that's pretty much just bosses.  I guess we either need to make those lower-floors-only, or provide holes, etc.  In general I don't want to be sniping enemies from way far away, because that is far too easy and boring.  I want to be having to move into mid-range, where the big fun is.  Too far away and it's too easy.  Too close and there's not time to react to stuff that is emitting.  Some of the bosses are holding me just too far away from themselves at the moment.  Possibly simply making it so that their initial shots come out of them from slightly further back on their bodies would fix that completely, to be honest.  We can make visible guns on them and put those further back on the boss so that it visually makes sense.

9. Mantis is all kinds of buggered.  I'm working on it.

10. Understood on the narrative issues.

11. I like the idea of surfaces that do various things -- very nice.

12. The shift to mechs might seem like a drastic change, but the core thing was that it was a paradox before: I wanted it to move like a mech but look like a ship.  Other people saw it looked like a ship and felt like it was buggy/cheap when it didn't fly like a ship.  I never wanted it to move like that, honestly.  So this gets back to the original way I wanted it to move, but without people complaining it seems cheap, hopefully.

13. Points taken on the weapon switching, but we're kind of out of room there.  There may be something better we can do, but I'm not certain yet.

Lessee... the categories thing, definitely, more of them would help alot.  In some cases, it might be good to have a few more specialized ones that wont appear very often, or will only appear in certain types of rooms.  For example a type that's meant for somewhat more cramped maze-like rooms (the Charger would fit such a category, that's what it was designed for actually) and not to be put in big open ones, or specifics like that.  Anything that can be done to keep these monstrosities from appearing in places that makes them more nightmarish than they should be is a good thing.

The bit with the bosses and the spreadshots, yeah, that's a nice easy fix in most cases, to just set some of the guns back, for the bosses in the horseshoe rooms.  Though at the moment some of them also just need a bit of tweaking.  Mirror in particular is a bit messy, I cant even exaggerate my level of irritation with that stupid thing at this point.  The stuff added to it's pattern in this update just need their angles tweaked.  MOSTLY though, all of the bosses were designed with the knowledge of how close the player was going to have to get.  If there's really specific ones that are giving everyone trouble though, that's easy enough to fix, just gotta figure out which those are.  In some cases a mere change of bullet sizes will probably help.

I definitely dont recommend shortening the player's base range any further though: that *will* mess things up.  A couple of the bosses will break down entirely (as will a number of enemies), among other things.    I personally prefer to have long range available, but if that's a no-go, the current setup is fine, really.  The shorter it goes though, the more simplified (and slower) the patterns have to be.

Also I'll support the "surfaces that do things" idea.  If you've got a game like this.... it's just not right if you dont have like, spikes or something.  Electric spikes even. 

[Pepisolo]

After a bit more play, I'm getting worried about this whole mech thing. It just doesn't seem to work for what the game has grown to be. It feels out of place. Everything up until now has been designed with spaceships in mind. You've got all the other enemies floating around and you shuffling along on your legs, the room designs seem to be created in a very open space way due to the windows, which seem weird when you're walking around on them, the title screen is spaceships, the game has a very spaceship sounding title. The heart of the game is just not a mech or walking around game.

If this is to be turned into into a mech dungeon crawler then I think that the changes that are going to be needed are going to much more sweeping than just replacing the main player. Ones that initially come to mind are all the enemies are going to need to be re-evaluated to make sure they fit with the new theme, all rooms are probably going to need the windows replaced by real floors, the title of the game needs changing,  the story needs rewriting, and probably lots more that will unfortunately only be uncovered further down the line as little bits of unexpected surgery come to light as a result of trying to change the game into something it's not.

It just doesn't seem worth it. The old ship movement system was almost there. Almost... the only major problem being a disparity between using the afterburner with a keyboard and a joypad. Using ships is what the heart of the game is and has been for a long time, back since it was called Airship Eternal. Walking mechs? Where'd that come from? Might as well just make a Bionic Dues spin-off. If the original ship looked a bit better, then this change would probably not even be on the cards. Make a Hydra or something....but a mech...meh.

[Bluddy]

It just doesn't seem worth it. The old ship movement system was almost there. Almost... the only major problem being a disparity between using the afterburner with a keyboard and a joypad. Using ships is what the heart of the game is and has been for a long time, back since it was called Airship Eternal. Walking mechs? Where'd that come from? Might as well just make a Bionic Dues spin-off. If the original ship looked a bit better, then this change would probably not even be on the cards. Make a Hydra or something....but a mech...meh.

I think this is a very good point, through I assume Chris has thought this through. The current mech controls very similarly to a suggestion I made on Mantis, and I think it would be possible to go back to that suggestion and have a fast aiming ship that can move laterally if need be. I do really like the look of the mech - I think the extra animation is really nice and it has a great look - but at the same time, this would have to become a mech-centered title. Is Arcen ready to do that?

The dissonance with the name is worth thinking about. Not only is it not in space (the first expectation of the new player), it's also not a ship.

At the same time, I don't feel like there has been any strong narrative put out so far. Not that these games need much narrative, but setting this game at the end of the universe isn't particularly compelling and has nothing to do with what's in the game. Here's a more interesting narrative (IMO) I just came up with: the hydra has been trapped by an malevolent multidimensional entity capable of destroying dimensions and bent on cosuming the power of the last of the hydras (bear in mind, I don't have TLF and I'm not well-versed in the lore. I'm going to possibly expand that lore and say that the hydra exists in all dimensions, somewhat matching its multiple-heads theme.) Every time you die, you *really* die in that universe, and another (dimension) is doomed by the entity. The only way to stop this is to defeat the entity in one of the dimensions. Of course, once you do, you find out that it's not enough, and you have to go even further (a la past Isaac's Mom) to finally destroy the entity.

[crazyroosterman]

It just doesn't seem worth it. The old ship movement system was almost there. Almost... the only major problem being a disparity between using the afterburner with a keyboard and a joypad. Using ships is what the heart of the game is and has been for a long time, back since it was called Airship Eternal. Walking mechs? Where'd that come from? Might as well just make a Bionic Dues spin-off. If the original ship looked a bit better, then this change would probably not even be on the cards. Make a Hydra or something....but a mech...meh.

I think this is a very good point, through I assume Chris has thought this through. The current mech controls very similarly to a suggestion I made on Mantis, and I think it would be possible to go back to that suggestion and have a fast aiming ship that can move laterally if need be. I do really like the look of the mech - I think the extra animation is really nice and it has a great look - but at the same time, this would have to become a mech-centered title. Is Arcen ready to do that?

The dissonance with the name is worth thinking about. Not only is it not in space (the first expectation of the new player), it's also not a ship.

At the same time, I don't feel like there has been any strong narrative put out so far. Not that these games need much narrative, but setting this game at the end of the universe isn't particularly compelling and has nothing to do with what's in the game. Here's a more interesting narrative (IMO) I just came up with: the hydra has been trapped by an malevolent multidimensional entity capable of destroying dimensions and bent on cosuming the power of the last of the hydras (bear in mind, I don't have TLF and I'm not well-versed in the lore. I'm going to possibly expand that lore and say that the hydra exists in all dimensions, somewhat matching its multiple-heads theme.) Every time you die, you *really* die in that universe, and another (dimension) is doomed by the entity. The only way to stop this is to defeat the entity in one of the dimensions. Of course, once you do, you find out that it's not enough, and you have to go even further (a la past Isaac's Mom) to finally destroy the entity.

for the record I always liked the way the ship looked I also like the robot (although the laser sight seems pointless to me and worse at times is actually very distracting) but I think I agree pepisolo thematically(and just logic wise) it doesn't really make séance I mean why in reality would the hydral ever choose a manned robot that's stuck to the ground over a ship that(in reality obviously it doesn't work that way exactly in the game for mechanical reasons but in reality that ship he was using before patch would be going in all sorts of angles in the room of the ship but I digress) that can move all over the place and is just over all faster also to bluddy I think the reason the narrative isn't very pronounced is probably because the games in testing mode the narrative will probably be focused on more later down the line. ps for the record I don't like his narrative idea that's just silly a creature that powerful wouldn't even really care about the hydral sure the hydrals pretty powerful but he's not god level powerful like the creature you imagined clearly is.

[mrhanman]

I like the mech better than the ship.  It makes more sense for the environment.

You know, it could be a transformer with the mech form having advantages and disadvantages over the ship form.  Or maybe there could be two types of rooms.  Enclosed spaces like we have now for the mech, and more "space-y", open rooms/levels for the ship.  You could maybe even have a more traditional SHMUP level between stages.

[Misery]

The mech was necessary.

There was just too much of a problem with the ship design.  It creates an expectation of a type of movement that, in the end, wasnt viable and would have broke half the game.  As I explained to Chris, *all* of the boss patterns and the majority of the enemy patterns, as well as most of the rooms, would have to be COMPLETELY redone, from the ground up, to make that movement (which needed to be a heck of alot more exaggerated than I'd originally thought, in order to meet what people expected from a ship) work in the context of dealing with them.... and it wouldnt be very interesting.  Even the most difficult of boss patterns, for instance, would be extremely simplistic, because nothing else would work.  They would be outright BORING.  Simpler than any other game of this type, and I absolutely mean that.  And as someone that's played this genre and anything even remotely like it absolutely to death, I'm 100% sure of all of this.

If the ship design had remained, it would have just created too many problems and done too much damage.

And in all honesty.... the ship didn't make much sense to begin with, for two reasons.  1, it had that shape despite CLEARLY not being an "aerial" vehicle, but being one in space (making the wings, for instance, utterly pointless), and was plenty capable of simply stopping and hovering in place, a behavior not exactly associated with something that has wings.  2. Ships in general dont make a whole lot of sense within the internal "dungeon" environments that the game takes place in.  Yes, you could say that the enemy designs are an issue, but if you look at them, many of them ARENT shaped as what you might think of as a ship of the type the player uses.  There are a few winged enemies, but not enough to make an issue.  They still make enough sense in an environment where wings arent necessary.  And if necessary, they can probably be altered a bit as well to fit it better.

[Bluddy]

Just to improve my narrative suggestion a little bit, I think that it's a shame to have a sci-fi setting without using some sci-fi ideas that really suggest themselves for this kind of game. The idea of infinite dimensions fits perfectly with the concept of many lives, as well as the fact that the layout is different each time. It's not that the ship is changing -- it's just a different ship in a different dimension each time!

The other point I wanted to make is that the end of the universe is *boring*. There's nothing at stake since everything is gone. The point of my initial narrative suggestion wasn't to suggest a complete narrative, but to push in a more interesting direction. For example, suppose the hydra has helped the federation form, and now a robotic race intent on wiping out the multiverse has arrived. The hydra needs to infiltrate the main ship and stop the race from carrying out its plan, but the chances of success in any particular dimension are miniscule. Fortunately, the hydra has some communication between dimensions/exists in multiple dimensions, and is therefore able to learn from its mistakes in one dimension (which is now doomed since it's dead there) to do better in another dimension.

We could even have some power-ups that capitalize on the multi-dimension aspect, such as inviting other hydra mechs to join us in attacking for a limited time.

[Pepisolo]

The mech was necessary.

There was just too much of a problem with the ship design.  It creates an expectation of a type of movement that, in the end, wasnt viable and would have broke half the game.  As I explained to Chris, *all* of the boss patterns and the majority of the enemy patterns, as well as most of the rooms, would have to be COMPLETELY redone, from the ground up, to make that movement (which needed to be a heck of alot more exaggerated than I'd originally thought, in order to meet what people expected from a ship) work in the context of dealing with them.... and it wouldnt be very interesting.  Even the most difficult of boss patterns, for instance, would be extremely simplistic, because nothing else would work.  They would be outright BORING.  Simpler than any other game of this type, and I absolutely mean that.  And as someone that's played this genre and anything even remotely like it absolutely to death, I'm 100% sure of all of this.

If the ship design had remained, it would have just created too many problems and done too much damage.

This post might have made sense a few weeks ago when people were saying that the ships felt very off, but in the context of the recent changes with most people saying the ship was now absolutely fine, I don't understand your point. Why would things need to be completely redone when things were already working very well? I myself must've racked up 10 hours or so under the latest ship incarnation and it controlled completely fine, the sense of movement was there, the precision was perfect, indeed the end result was a really nice and interesting control method. There was a tricky problem in getting the feel people wanted while maintaining the precision of a SHMUP and you pretty much nailed it, barring a few tweaks. You can't unnail it now and say that things never worked and that all the patterns would need to be redone if it'd stayed.

And in all honesty.... the ship didn't make much sense to begin with, for two reasons.  1, it had that shape despite CLEARLY not being an "aerial" vehicle, but being one in space (making the wings, for instance, utterly pointless), and was plenty capable of simply stopping and hovering in place, a behavior not exactly associated with something that has wings.  2. Ships in general dont make a whole lot of sense within the internal "dungeon" environments that the game takes place in.  Yes, you could say that the enemy designs are an issue, but if you look at them, many of them ARENT shaped as what you might think of as a ship of the type the player uses.  There are a few winged enemies, but not enough to make an issue.  They still make enough sense in an environment where wings arent necessary.  And if necessary, they can probably be altered a bit as well to fit it better.

1)

Then just do a better looking ship. Make it more circular like a flying saucer. Give it hover thrusters like a jump-jet. No need to go straight to mechs just because doing walking things is a bit easier than doing flying things.

2)

Yeah, ships inside dungeons is a bit weird, but I'm presuming that has been part of the design for months if not over a year. Surely this had been thought through -- I'm assuming it was, which is why the levels have that open starscape feel about them. It's unusual, yes, but if it's only just now being realized that spaceships inside structures is a bit odd then that doesn't say much for the design process. This must've been accounted for already.

If the design is going to change to a mech-based game then let's all realize that the existing vision is dead, and everything will need to be overhauled. From the title of the game, the story, the enemy designs, the tilesets, the existing weapons etc. Thinking that you can just swap out a flying ship for a walking mech at this stage and everything's going to be fine, is crazy.

[Misery]

The mech was necessary.

There was just too much of a problem with the ship design.  It creates an expectation of a type of movement that, in the end, wasnt viable and would have broke half the game.  As I explained to Chris, *all* of the boss patterns and the majority of the enemy patterns, as well as most of the rooms, would have to be COMPLETELY redone, from the ground up, to make that movement (which needed to be a heck of alot more exaggerated than I'd originally thought, in order to meet what people expected from a ship) work in the context of dealing with them.... and it wouldnt be very interesting.  Even the most difficult of boss patterns, for instance, would be extremely simplistic, because nothing else would work.  They would be outright BORING.  Simpler than any other game of this type, and I absolutely mean that.  And as someone that's played this genre and anything even remotely like it absolutely to death, I'm 100% sure of all of this.

If the ship design had remained, it would have just created too many problems and done too much damage.

This post might have made sense a few weeks ago when people were saying that the ships felt very off, but in the context of the recent changes with most people saying the ship was now absolutely fine, I don't understand your point. Why would things need to be completely redone when things were already working very well? I myself must've racked up 10 hours or so under the latest ship incarnation and it controlled completely fine, the sense of movement was there, the precision was perfect, indeed the end result was a really nice and interesting control method. There was a tricky problem in getting the feel people wanted while maintaining the precision of a SHMUP and you pretty much nailed it, barring a few tweaks. You can't unnail it now and say that things never worked and that all the patterns would need to be redone if it'd stayed.

And in all honesty.... the ship didn't make much sense to begin with, for two reasons.  1, it had that shape despite CLEARLY not being an "aerial" vehicle, but being one in space (making the wings, for instance, utterly pointless), and was plenty capable of simply stopping and hovering in place, a behavior not exactly associated with something that has wings.  2. Ships in general dont make a whole lot of sense within the internal "dungeon" environments that the game takes place in.  Yes, you could say that the enemy designs are an issue, but if you look at them, many of them ARENT shaped as what you might think of as a ship of the type the player uses.  There are a few winged enemies, but not enough to make an issue.  They still make enough sense in an environment where wings arent necessary.  And if necessary, they can probably be altered a bit as well to fit it better.

1)

Then just do a better looking ship. Make it more circular like a flying saucer. Give it hover thrusters like a jump-jet. No need to go straight to mechs just because doing walking things is a bit easier than doing flying things.

2)

Yeah, ships inside dungeons is a bit weird, but I'm presuming that has been part of the design for months if not over a year. Surely this had been thought through -- I'm assuming it was, which is why the levels have that open starscape feel about them. It's unusual, yes, but if it's only just now being realized that spaceships inside structures is a bit odd then that doesn't say much for the design process. This must've been accounted for already.

If the design is going to change to a mech-based game then let's all realize that the existing vision is dead, and everything will need to be overhauled. From the title of the game, the story, the enemy designs, the tilesets, the existing weapons etc. Thinking that you can just swap out a flying ship for a walking mech at this stage and everything's going to be fine, is crazy.

For the first thing you mentioned, hmm, I dont think I quite phrased all of that right.

Remember BEFORE the most recent changes?  When the ship was zooming around alot more, with alot of momentum and stuff?  This would have been right before Chris recorded the video that he put up on Youtube.   At that time, the ship was moving around alot more like you'd expect one to behave, all zooming and whooshing around in big turning arcs and stuff like that.  THAT is what I meant but probably didn't explain properly or I explained the wrong thing entirely.  Basically, when people look at the player ship, and they see the image that it was before... mentally, they EXPECT it to move in such a way that it meets what they associate it with in their mind.  Something that looks like the original player ship just LOOKS like it should be moving like it did when it was all over the place.   If it was left that way (as in, the sprites were unchanged), yet was using the movement that the game has for the player NOW, it's basically inevitable that people would complain a whole bunch about it once the game released.  You know how people are... they absolutely WILL complain about things like that that are ENTIRELY based on some visual or even psychological aspect rather than on the actual functionality of it.   This is why the ship was changed to a mech.

Though I do agree that things like flying saucers wouldnt at all be a bad idea either, but I'm not the one that makes that decision, heh.  Besides, having the mech DOES allow them to do an extra thing, which is to have special floor tiles that do things.  From a gameplay standpoint, that could get pretty neat.  Could add alot to the structure of all sorts of rooms and keep things extra interesting.  Floor tiles wouldnt make sense if you are flying though.


I dunno.  It's all subjective, I guess.  I personally am fine with the mech, but I would probably be fine with a giant pig or something too, so I might not count here.

If you have any specific suggestions for Chris though on stuff that might help (this certainly aint my aspect of design, heh, so I sure cant do much), by all means, write up anything you can think of.  It could end up helping out a whole lot. 

I personally dont have any ideas for it myself though.  But I'm totally open to any changes that might be made if it's determined that they should be made, to keep this making as much sense as possible.

[TheVampire100]

I prefer the mech style a lot over the ship style. When it comes to this, this is just a personal taste matter and not what "fits" better. they fit both in their own way. The mech fits better the whole "interior" thing and it also looks a lot better. The ship fits the space design of the game.
In the end it's Chris' decision what he want to use, either the mech or the ship. Talking about "what's better" won't do anything about it.

[Pepisolo]

Remember BEFORE the most recent changes?  When the ship was zooming around alot more, with alot of momentum and stuff?  This would have been right before Chris recorded the video that he put up on Youtube.   At that time, the ship was moving around alot more like you'd expect one to behave, all zooming and whooshing around in big turning arcs and stuff like that.  THAT is what I meant but probably didn't explain properly or I explained the wrong thing entirely.  Basically, when people look at the player ship, and they see the image that it was before... mentally, they EXPECT it to move in such a way that it meets what they associate it with in their mind.  Something that looks like the original player ship just LOOKS like it should be moving like it did when it was all over the place.   If it was left that way (as in, the sprites were unchanged), yet was using the movement that the game has for the player NOW, it's basically inevitable that people would complain a whole bunch about it once the game released.  You know how people are... they absolutely WILL complain about things like that that are ENTIRELY based on some visual or even psychological aspect rather than on the actual functionality of it.   This is why the ship was changed to a mech.

Ah, now I get your point, thanks. If the early very first high momentum version of the controls was used, then yeah, I could see that causing all kinds of screwy problems with regards to bullet patterns and enemy design etc, but in the very next iteration the tweaks made seemed to really work. You pretty much achieved that subtle illusion of movement with the precision of a SHMUP. The only thing I was concerned with at this point was the disparity between the keyboard and joypad afterburner controls. I don't think that people ever really wanted a super momentum based floaty ship like in Asteroids, they were just searching for that feel, that subtle illusion that felt right. You pretty much got that in the second round of tweaks. I can't erase my brain and get a fresh impression of the refined ship movement to see if I would get a feeling of things not being quite, right, but I suspect not. After all, in pretty much every SHMUP there is very little actual momentum, it is all illusion. Nobody complains about the Gradius ships not feeling right because there is no actual momentum. Or ships of practically any other SHMUP because usually the illusion works, as it seemed to be doing for Starward Rogue after the second iteration.

Getting this feel correct is not easy, granted. I imagine you'd probably still be tweaking and refining things for a while in order to get things absolutely perfect, but what's the alternative -- just switch to walking, I guess, that'd make things easier. Who cares if mechs weren't in the original design and that they look out of place amongst all the other enemies and starscapes of the tileset or all the other inconsistencies that will probably arise as a result.

Here's a small mod I made to improve the main sprite -- I simply moved the wings back to a more aerodynamic (hey, seemed to work) position. The whole thing looks better, turns better, feels better. This is just a minor tweak that a completely cack-handed non-artistic fool made. If more effort were made to create a nicer looking and feeling main sprite then that would take things up another notch. Heck, maybe have the artists do super rough ship prototypes and put it to a poll to see which one the community prefers.

Though I do agree that things like flying saucers wouldnt at all be a bad idea either, but I'm not the one that makes that decision, heh.  Besides, having the mech DOES allow them to do an extra thing, which is to have special floor tiles that do things.  From a gameplay standpoint, that could get pretty neat.  Could add alot to the structure of all sorts of rooms and keep things extra interesting.  Floor tiles wouldnt make sense if you are flying though.

This could be done in a similar way in a flying environment, instead of tiles you'd use particles and do gas or a nebula. A floor filled with ice plasma particles that slows you down or messes with your thrusters etc. There's lots of cool stuff that can be done in a flying environment or in a walking environment, I don't think it's a particularly good reason to prefer mechs over the original vision.

The biggest thing that would make me accept the mech changes is if everyone somehow only just realized that having ships in structures is a bit unusual and doesn't quite make sense -- I really think that this probably would've been accounted for in the overall design, already, but you never know. With regards to this change NEEDING to be made because of the momentum problems, that argument doesn't work for me. The old ship controls and feel was really shaping up nicely.