Dark Coder -
Quote: "It's very cool! I found mission 3 very hard until I decided to only use missiles against ships then it was almost too easy! Perhaps if both sides had some missile countermeasure like flares and if you made the main cannons shred enemies apart easier it'd encourage more aggressive tactics.
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Thanks dude.
I agree missiles make the game way too easy. I think there are too many available, and the range is maybe a bit too much. I should at least power up the gun like you say. The game is a bit broken at the moment. You can like you say just hunt for missiles, stay far enough away from the enemy ships for them not to come after you, and fire missiles. They should at least come after you if you do that!
Other broken tactics include weaving predictably left and right in front of the guns, and just flying straight ahead! I should work on the enemy targeting algorithms!
For a "coutermeasure" i intend to make you able to shoot down enemy missiles. Perhaps there could be laser anti-missile defences, that wear down (and regenerate) like a shield..
Quote: "Also the maps seemed quite small, but I imagine you can make them bigger as I initially thought it was some giant map with almost endless enemies until I saw the whole thing was tiling around."
i'd like to make the map bigger, but it wouldn't not that trivial to do. It would also mean slower collision system, a larger image for the minimap etc. It maybe no problem, and i have some ideas to get around these problems, but like i say it's not simple.
Quote: "
I also think you should have more weapons, maybe not all equipped at the same time but before the mission you get to pick your primary and secondary weapons. Also the larger ships should maybe drop shield powerups as they are a little hard to take down with only guns as you often lose quite a lot of health, especially when others fly near them."
The choosing weapon load thing could be pretty sweet. I might well do this. I don't want to overcomplicate things, but a small selection of weapons, or ships could be quite cool.
Quote: "
It's really quite a nice engine and with more varieties in enemy types it could have a lot of fun levels. And by varieties I mean more than just moving objects that fire nothing, guns and/or missiles, but maybe ones that fire missiles into the sky that impact the ground around you like artillery, or ones that repair the ground turrets etc. "
Thanks.
I want to make artillery type enemies. It requires more complicated targeting algorithms and 3d collisions, but i think i can do it. I want to have spotter planes linked to artillery, vertical launch batteries in submarines, ground silos etc.
The idea of "medic" enemies is pretty sweet. Or maybe mothership enemies. It would be another reason for the player to go on the offensive, rather than dawdling hunting for powerups or waiting for shields to recharge.
Quote: "Lastly, to make it more arcade like maybe you could have shield strength and hull strength, where the shield has little health but regenerates after a few seconds that way if you have very low health you're not totally screwed when attacking enemies."
I'll think about this. As the game is, this would mean the player could hit and run, spending a lot of time waiting for shields to recharge. However, with the right mechanics, this idea could work! Thanks for the thoughts.
