A Cool Ship...

from StarControl Forums

I've had this vision in my mind for the last few days.  While working on one of my own games, this idea started to hit me about a ship for Star Control.  Star Control ships are very simple, so they are always easy to describe.

There could be a ship somewhat like the Thraddash, but very different.  This ship "has too much power to hold" and must ALWAYS be releasing it's massive amount generated power in some way or it will explode.  So it is always discharging its massive overproduction of power through either moving, or shooting.  The slower the ship is moving (if there is a reverse thrust that can adjust speed, if not ignore this part) the more brightly it begins to glow, and if it moves below top speed for too long it will eventually glow brighter and brighter until it explodes.  When moving this ship ALWAYS leaves a fire/exhaust trail like the Thraddash did on afterburners.  But this ship leaves this trail as normal movement... releasing all that extra energy it always must be releasing.  When you fire... this fire/exhaust trail basically just changes direction.  When you press the fire button thrust stops (but the ship still drifts in the direction it was going) and the fire/exhaust trail is now "shot forward" like a flame thrower as the ships weapon.  The secondary ability releases all of the ships energy as an Expanding Sphere weapon (damage based on how much energy the ship had when it was activated)... a ring of fire emanates from the ship damaging ships and destroying any fighter/missiles/mines it contacts.

This ship is very different from the others, because you basically MUST move at top speed at all times.  Any time the ship is moving less than it's top possible speed it starts to glow.  It is also ALWAYS "firing a weapon" either with it's thrust or through "inverting it's thrust" as a weapon (but it does not thrust backwards when firing the weapon).  This would be a pretty cool ship in Star Control.

 

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Reply #1 from StarControl Forums Top

Now, aside from the obviously cool super-melee play... have you considered what it means for the in-world implication of the ship? 

"Sir, we're trying to stop at that planet and send a landing party."

"That's a negative, we can't stop."

 

Reply #2 from StarControl Forums Top

Engineer room, this is the Captain. Full power to stop!

Elemental: Reforged
Reply #3 from StarControl Forums Top

Quoting HenriHakl, reply 1

Now, aside from the obviously cool super-melee play... have you considered what it means for the in-world implication of the ship? 

"Sir, we're trying to stop at that planet and send a landing party."

"That's a negative, we can't stop."

 

Okay, here's what we do. We launch the lander at 34.5 degrees as we pass by. If we're lucky, it won't impact and they'll be able to safely land. If not, we'll have a nice memorial at home.

Reply #4 from StarControl Forums Top

This ship would glow whenever it's energy bar was full.  Normal thrust removes 1 energy so that the ship is not at full energy.  Firing the "flamethrower" quickly drains the energy, or using the Ring of Fire empties the energy.  So you can fire all your energy away and then have a brief period to do things that you need to stop or slow down for doing things like launching shuttles to land on a planet.

This ship would be cool because it is backwards from how all the other ships work in most ways.  I guess it is probably inspired by the Andromedans of SFB (but I wasn't thinking of them when I thought of it) who are from another galaxy and so were designed to be the opposite of the ships of our galaxy.  They also "have too much power and must dissipate it", but nowhere to the degree of this "often glowing and about to explode" ship.  The "glowing to explode" thing is from an old arcade game of "Robot Footall" (can't remember what it was called) where the ball would glow brighter until it exploded which made the QB get rid of the ball during that time.

 

Reply #5 from StarControl Forums Top

For some reason this made me think of a ship that doesn't move... Star Castle!

You could have a quest that results in a Star Castle scenario.  And you control the Star Castle to defend something and complete the quest.  It would pretty much be a Star Castle level, that is the whole point.  Call it a base, instead of a ship, and through the quest the player is put in control of the "base"... to play out a "Star Castle Level".  That would fit into the game very well, and be a unique quest as it provides access to the one-of-a-kind "Star Castle Base".

And just for history's sake... before you modern gamers called it "turtling", we called it "Star Casteling".  Just like how before you called it "Rock, Paper, Scissors" we called it a "Nemesis Balance":-)

Reply #6 from StarControl Forums Top

;P  For History's sake the concept of Rock, Scissor, Paper is older than computers..... what others call "turtling" or "Star Casteling" I call it "Turreting".

 

Pretty good strategy in a dog fight where I have the longer range weapons and stronger shield but less mobility I would just park my spaceship and use it as a turret.

 

It was pretty effective for Elite...... there are also many ships in SC2 that can take advantage of this strategy.

 

The enemy ship keeps on flying towards and it has to turn away or fly by. Therefore it has to stop shooting at a certain point.

That means you get more shots at the enemy before it has a chance to do another flyby.

 

This strategy also useful when you use homing missiles.

Reply #7 from StarControl Forums Top

Yes, it is, but Rock, Paper, Scissors only began to be used as a game design term in the early-mid 90's by computer game makers.  In the hobbyist game industry we had called that same thing a "Nemesis Balance".

In a well design combat environment sitting still is normally suicide.  But there are some rare cases that are exceptions in certain situations.  This is actually a big problem in most space ship games.  Sitting still is very often the best thing you can do, which makes for a broken and not very fun combat environment.  There is a specific matchup that is familiar to all trekkies that is an illustration of a good design for a ship that works like that.  The Romulan ship that fights Enterprise in the TOS episode Balance of Terror, that we call a "Warbird" (and so does Star Trek, after having taken the name from us) is specifically designed to fight at low speed, and is a very good and fun fight.  Especially against a Federation CA (Enterprise).  But this is a rare exception.  You generally don't want "turteling" to be a valid tactic in most situations for what I think would be pretty obvious reasons.

 

Reply #8 from StarControl Forums Top

:meow:     :banhammer:    :frogboy:

 

Yeah.... the concept of sitting ducks...