Mothership Week #3 news

Mothership is being made in Construct 2 and this has its ups and downs. Arrays and javascript are quite difficult without proper plug-in editing. After we jumped through some hoops we finally got a system working. The player's inventory is stored in an array. Once we receive it we can see what items we have:

Some items are more rare than others. We set up a different rarity tier system than from the usual. There are 7 rarities in the game and 8 sub-levels to each for a grand total of 56 upgrade levels! We thought we should go for a militaristic research theme instead of the typical common- rare-epic nomenclature . The tiers are from left to right: Basic, Advanced, Experimental, Developed, Improved, Augmented, and Excelsior (the bottom two are invalid and empty slots). Your weapon's projectile will change color depending on its rarity.

The upgrade level of the item goes from No upgrade, to 7 upgrades. The final upgrade will increase the item's rarity and return it to a no upgrade status. This is an upgrade system seen in some mobile games that will fit the game well. Once at the max upgrade level of Orange+7 (Excelsior Infinity) The item will have reached its maximum potential.

Modules can roll different stats and some have better chances than others. Most modules have a special effect. For cannons and turrets the effect has a chance to be applied on their projectile. The chance for these effects to trigger will scale with their level. The values will not scale. This means that a Plasma Cannon with a 0.5 base stun duration will continue to have a 0.5 second stun at max level, however, the player could find a cannon with a higher stun duration. This gives the player the incentive to continue to try for their favorite cannon to try to get higher rolls while also leveling their current modules to ensure they can clear stages.

Here is a cannon with a stun attribute. The enemy cannot attack or move until the lightning bolt fades (WIP).

Here we have a ship affected by a burn. If you look closely you can see its hp dropping. Fires will ignore shields but not armor (% dmg reduction). This can be very handy as burns can stack.

This pull effect is great for melee built motherships or to help group enemies together. It causes the enemy ships to bounce off the hull!

Push threats away with this special attribute. Be careful not to push them out of firing range!

More to be shown in the future.

Orbs have various stats that set them apart from other modules. They have a distance from the ship that they stay at and a rotation direction. They also have an orbiting speed. Various combinations of orbs at different speeds and distances can give you better defensive as well as offensive options. Combining orbs with other modules will form the main strategy of your mothership.

Varying orbs and distances. Shuriken orbs deal damage on contact and would be better for dealing damage at a set distance. Other orbs can provide passive bonuses to better aid your ship (similar orbs can stack buffs too). A few examples of passive abilities include:

Oh right you are Spanner. Cannons, turrets and orbs all have hp and they can be destroyed! When they are destroyed your ship will gradually get weaker. While this may not be a problem for the early game this can become a drastic change for late game ships! Also, in hardcore stream mode, when a module is destroyed you have a small chance of losing it. Forever. If your ship is destroyed you have a chance to lose it as well! So be careful! Cores will be another topic for another day.

~ Andrew Barontini - Lead Game Developer - Mach V Gaming

Twitter - @Healstation Discord - Mach V