Auto-Acknowledge Friendlies

[chard]

Option request: Auto-acknowledge friendly ships.

"Captain, why do we keep going to battle stations when we encounter our own merchant vessels?"

[chard]

And, perhaps a "Allow enemy civilians (but not military, bounty, or pirates) to auto-escape."

[Cory Trese]

I will make the Acknowledge Button available on the combat introduction screen so that you can skip battle stations.

[ehkamp]

Awesome!

[chard]

Helpful, but I'd still prefer not stopping at all!

[Cory Trese]

Internally the game doesn't have enough information to know to skip or not.

Call me names for implementing it that way but Android is Android and you really have to take some shortcuts to make it work and work fast.

If we did enough calculations to know all the stuff we currently need to know in combat for the move-step you'd end up with a really choppy onDrawMovement().

I dunno, it sounds like I'm not very smart for not being able to code a simple "don't stop for friendly ships" routine, but alas, ST RPG is what it is.

[chard]

Give it a year or so, everybody'll have Hummingbirds or Tegras!

[bnoury]

I wonder if this could work if the reduced friendly encounters was made into a boolean for an alternate encounter system. I.e. normally, the odds of an encounter is say, 30%, with 10% chance of military vessel, 20% pirates, 30% smugglers, and 40% merchants. If the boolean is selected, the entire monte carlo scheme changes to a 10% chance of encounters with 40% military and 60% pirates, since those two will demand your attention every time. Instead of letting the computer decide to ignore an encounter it already calculated, let the player use only the dice they care about, and at least reduce the encountering scheme to those they selecetd plus those forced upon them.

[bnoury]

I forgot to say, this would obviously be an selection under the options menu. If it is a little incovenient there, well it's no more inconvienient than making a career transition from merchant to pirate, bounty hunter, alien hunter, etc.

[spike]

I don't think auto-acknowledge is advisable. Because of the open ended nature of the game, I might want to attack a friendly ship, because I'm a greedy pirate, or because I'm desperate for supplies, or just because I'm in a really, really bad mood.

[oldalchemist]

My Cadar Zealot would like an Auto-Acknowledge with Torpedo Volley button. I'm tired of sorting between friendly torpedoes and hostile torpedoes.

[Cory Trese]

HAHA. Soon every button in the combat menu will be on the introduction page =)

"If the peaceful ones get an Ignore button, Cadar pilots demand a Torpedo button. Battlestations? I'm the Captain, I'll hit the "LAUNCH" button myself, then tell the Crew. It is the CADAR way."

[sgtcookie]

A preemptive strike button might come in handy, you get to do some damage and then combat starts?

Also I had another idea as I was writing that one.
What if some enemy ships already have some damage done to them? Pirate ships would get into an awful lot of fights and would show the scars of battle.

Right now, every ship you encounter is fully healed. What, every ship in the galaxy is only attacking the player?

[oldalchemist]

I dig the idea of damaged vessels.

Also, all Cadar buttons should automatically assume torpedo launch. Disengage..and launch torpedo. Harvest...by launching torpedoes at the planet. Entertain...by launching torpedoes!

[slayernz]

Ha love the Cadar auto-launch option. It's definitely fitting with the psyche of the entire faction. I wonder if Cadar art exhibits often have displays of "the artistic remains of exploded torpedoes". I mean to say, they each have a unique but elegant peeled metal look"

I also definitely agree with SgtCookie. You would expect at least some of the ships you encounter to have battle damage, or even just space damage. Ships should not always have full crew, torps, or sails given that even if you go through battles unscathed, you often get damage in space with all those radiation storms, sail tears and floating pepsi can mine-fields.