A question regarding Hydral signals...

[FortunaDraken]

...docking removing your shields sounds like it'd just wreck any chance of docking quests working, especially with the damage resetting turns AND if you're against a race you really don't want to lose influence with via ship kills.

I like how docking works right now, especially since I usually don't want to kill ships when I'm doing so. Why not make it that the missions with docking objectives require you to not blow up ships? Like...the scientist who's running away will only do so if you don't kill any ships, and with the stations, blowing up ships gives the race time to arm the station to explode or something of the sort so there's a time limit to capturing them? That way you have to manage docking while also trying not to lose turns and not kill anything.

[nas1m]

Misery, I think I am going to be enlisting your services in designing bullet patterns for the Hydral stuff as well as the spy probes.  Having a shifting pattern of stuff that you have to navigate through is absolutely a goal of mine still with the spy probes, so I may think of some other solution.  But for the Hydral thing, I think that it's a matter of probably the new style of bullet patterns.  Not Obscura-crazy, but like the stuff that is planned for the Burlust Warlords.

We'll see.  The docking mechanics are also something I want to reconsider.  I have an idea for that that I think will work, at least: have docking automatically hit your shields to 0, but otherwise that's it.

Allright, that sounds good to me.

Hm, is there something wrong with the docking then?  It never seemed that much of an issue to me, though at the same time, if I'm docking with something, everything else is likely already beaten...  On the difficulty I'm on at least, I've found that's pretty much the only way to do it (stationary = suicide!) so maybe I'm not the best judge...

Same here. For me the point is more to make the player try docking before everything is killed. The existing docking per se is fine with me....

[x4000]

Burlust are a higher priority, yeah, and I need to still set up the shots for the Hydrals anyway before I can give those to you.

And regarding the docking, to clarify: damage would NOT reset your turns to dock any longer.  The purpose behind the damage resets was to make it so that you couldn't just park somewhere, dock, and tank all the damage.  But that sort of "I got dinged by something, now I'm back to square one" is frustrating, so the thought of just making it so that literally you can't tank damage but it doesn't reset you was interesting to me.

Thoughts?

[Misery]

Burlust are a higher priority, yeah, and I need to still set up the shots for the Hydrals anyway before I can give those to you.

And regarding the docking, to clarify: damage would NOT reset your turns to dock any longer.  The purpose behind the damage resets was to make it so that you couldn't just park somewhere, dock, and tank all the damage.  But that sort of "I got dinged by something, now I'm back to square one" is frustrating, so the thought of just making it so that literally you can't tank damage but it doesn't reset you was interesting to me.

Thoughts?

Hm, yes, that all sounds good to me.   What about using abilities there?  Is that still going to reset?

[nas1m]

Burlust are a higher priority, yeah, and I need to still set up the shots for the Hydrals anyway before I can give those to you.

And regarding the docking, to clarify: damage would NOT reset your turns to dock any longer.  The purpose behind the damage resets was to make it so that you couldn't just park somewhere, dock, and tank all the damage.  But that sort of "I got dinged by something, now I'm back to square one" is frustrating, so the thought of just making it so that literally you can't tank damage but it doesn't reset you was interesting to me.

Thoughts?

That is another story. Sounds good .

BTW: Did you catch my humble request here?
Just asking, you know ...

[Misery]

Out of topic here, I know, but since you're already looking at this topic and because Yahoo is being a twit (and I've nothing completed to show today anyway), I'll mention here, I think I can have the Obscura Mothership and the Mite both done inside of a week, I think.  They'll take longer because of the seperate instead of incrementing patterns.... but after some experimenting, not really as long as I think.  I've gotten good at deciphering the mystical runes of the game's error messages when I inevitably leave some dumb mistake in there, and that's dramatically lowering how long it takes to do things.  Stingray took hardly any time, really.  But that's my current estimate, I figured I'd mention it just to give an idea as to how long it might take.  Though I get the impression there's no particular rush here.

Well, estimate as to their initial versions, anyway.  These guys might be.... difficult to balance.

Player reactions to those 2 should be amusing though.  Well, amusing to me, anyway.

[FortunaDraken]

I honestly don't like the idea of losing shields. I'd much rather keep the current set-up, since I've found if you circle in place you can usually luck out and get the five turns done, so long as a stray bullet doesn't hit you. Circling without shields sounds like a good way to die really fast, especially if you have strong opponents.

Probably in the minority here, but I'd much, much, muuuuuch rather the missions themselves be played with rather than the mechanics of docking. Right now they make sense: sit there, if something bumps you or you get distracted, you lose the connection and have to re-establish. Making a mission take longer in terms of docking time is much more favourable to me than having a mission cut short because you nearly died, and it seems a sure-fire way to have the Auto-resolve be abused more than it already is on those missions so you don't have to deal with the fall-out of losing a ton of time repairing.

[x4000]

Clearly the revised docking idea is controversial at best, and the current approach works well enough, so I'm going to leave that alone, heh.

Misery: all good on the timing, and sorry to hear that Yahoo is acting up.  I _also_ am looking forward to amusement at player reactions, heh.