Last I played you could click on unrevealed sonar pings to see if they were creatures or not, without having to get close and illuminate them.
You could also tab target between them for the same effect.
Have these issues been addressed?
Kind of? As far as I can tell, Failbetter fixed this by making you unable to click on unterzee monsters to initiate combat. So yes, you can’t click on pings anymore to find out if they’re monsters – which is fair.
However, even when I get close to a monster and illuminate it I’m still not able to initiate combat by clicking on the beast. I’ve found that in order to start a fight, I have to get the zee-beast to notice me so that the combat screen automatically pops up (but only when I’m underwater, regular zailing battles are fine). I like to play with a veils stat of 160-170ish, so this is really difficult, and has made underwater combat extremely frustrating for me. The horn doesn’t work underwater either, so I usually end up having to ram the beast with my zubmarine just to get it to notice me. This causes me unnecessary damage and also puts me at a disadvantage by causing me to start so close to the beast with weapons that haven’t been loaded. It’s frustrating because I feel like I’m being punished for having a high veils stat, which I feel like should allow me to start off battles with a sneak attack, as it does above water.
Strange - In my case (also high veils player), as soon as I illuminate enemy (so it stops being just a sonar "ping), I can charge attacks, no matter if enemy is aware of my presence, or oblivious to it.
// Edit
After some more testing, I determined that ability to target creatures before they detect me is due to using "target next enemy" button (see revamping controls). Funny enough, it still can be used to target far-away sonar pings, if they are ships/creatures, just like clicking on them did before update (probably, FB forgot about that feature) so not abusing it is entirely up to player’s own honor system (personally, I found no problems with using it only after I determine what the ping really is).
edited by CatLady on 10/16/2017