First some advice for some of you out there.
If, at a party, after too much to drink, you and half-a-dozen other people decide that playing cricket with glow sticks in place of a ball and an unsheathed machete in place of a bat is a good idea…………well it’s not.
In fact it is incredibly dangerous.
No-one was injured by the machete accidentally being let go during a swing (although that was hilarious) but, because glow sticks are much lighter and aerodynamically inferior than a cricket ball, it takes much more effort to throw them forcefully over a distance of 20 yards.
Long story short, my right shoulder and pectoral are rather sore.
And now here’s the news.
As a part of the damage/armour matrix revamp, I’ve decided on a couple of big changes.
The first, and by far the largest, is the removal of hardpoint destruction.
Completely.
In full.
Not a shred left.
I know that this will not please everyone, but, before you ignite a bag of dog faeces on my doorstep, please allow me to explain (some of) my reasoning behind this decision.
1) It makes things much, much easier on me; Instead of having to modify the health of each ships hardpoint to increase its overall strength, I can now just change the value of a single tag.
2) It, like the nerfing of Fighter Vs Cap Ship strength, will go a long way towards increasing the amount of strategy you will need to employ.
Even with the new damage/armour matrix, 3 or 4 bomber squadrons will destroy a couple of weapon emplacements on a Star Destroyer before being destroyed and, as such, they will still be thrown into battle willy-nilly.
But, by taking away the ability to target individual hardpoints, the amount of damage inflicted by those same squadrons before their death will be of significantly less value.
The second, and one that is a part of the ‘upcoming features’ section of SOTV’s summary, will
be weapon loadouts.
Those of you who saw the picture of the new damage table will have noticed that I’m including dedicated Anti-Aircraft (Are they aircraft in space?……………I mean there is no air……) weapons.
There will be at least some on all Frigates and Capital Ships, as well as those Corvettes which are not specialist/almost-specialist missile units. (Marauder, Broadside, Corellian Gunship)
I can’t promise that all ships will be getting new bones for this weaponry – although I’ll make an effort to do this for the Capital Ships at least – so most of the batteries will use existing bones.
And now, as a twist equivalent to the one in ‘Along Came A Spider’, a revelation of sorts.
You know that bit about hardpoint destructibility being completely gone?
Maybe not the case.
Maybe.
I’m debating whether or not to make the aforementioned AA weaponry targetable.
I'd like to get your input on this before I decide on way or the other because.........well because I'm just nice I suppose.
Until next time, keep watching the skies.........I mean skies.
AUS_Doug
A combination of the two might be a good idea:
You can make only some of the main/most important systems be targetable - like engines, shields, maybe docking bays. The defense as turbolasers, turrets, missle launchers, etc. either put them in a group (and targeted as a group), so the caps won't have more than 3-4 groups of weapons at most or disregard them altogether, like you intended to.
This way, people will still have a little strategy at what to target first, but the cap ship won't be covered entirely with targets and make the wanted target hard to select, just because the ship has 20-30 turrets in a small area.
So, an cap ship could have: engines, shields, docking bays, left side turbolaser turrets, right side turbolasers, missles and that is it. No more or targeting individual turbolaser turrets.
Also a possibility is to give the opportunity to target and destroy just one or two systems and hiding all others. So, the player might choose to destroy the shields or the docks, or one side of the turrets (so the ship could fire only from the other side), or something else... but only that one thing.
P.S. One of the many reasons I don't drink:
"If, at a party, after too much to drink, you and half-a-dozen other people decide that playing cricket with glow sticks in place of a ball and an unsheathed machete in place of a bat is a good idea…………well it’s not.
In fact it is incredibly dangerous."
At least if I die, probably I won't look like an idiot. And we all know how stupid people become after they drink a few cups more than they can handle.
waz up! if i am drinking whisky i watch how much i can take... burp i know it is so tasty and you feel so happy. where is my bottle?