I think it would be interesting to force the player to plan their moves ahead, and reward players who have an understanding of the enemies.[li]
They way to go about this is to increase the time required for each combat card and then have the time reduced based on the amount of cards played before.
Basically you would play 4 cards in an order and for each turn a card is on the board before it’s played it loses 1 second of charge time.
The intent is to add a new level of complexity and planning to a rather stark, card based combat system; rewarding players for careful planning and combat experience while at the same increasing the difficulty.[/li][li]
edited by LetumComplexo on 7/20/2014[/li][li]
edited by LetumComplexo on 7/20/2014
Okay. Congrats, the shark just instakilled you.
Don’t forget, the enemies have the same combat system too.
Unfortunately I think combat is too variable at the moment - will that flare I used raise illumination above 50 or will I need to use 2? How many damage points will that harpoon cause? Yes you get into a more or less set pattern as you gain experience and strength but you still need to be able to react to what actions your enemy uses.
The number of times my initial flare has hit 49 illumination on monsters without flares… argh.
What I’d really like to see is some range of what each option will do, or even just the median value so I have some concrete idea of what’s going to happen…
[quote=cheshster]The number of times my initial flare has hit 49 illumination on monsters without flares… argh.
What I’d really like to see is some range of what each option will do, or even just the median value so I have some concrete idea of what’s going to happen…[/quote]
^This
It would be nice to see how much base damage a gun brings to the table, cause i cant help but think that the starting pea shooter you get shouldn’t be able to one shot a pirate. no matter how high your irons are. Also as a note, you dont even need a proper cannon to do a salvo or a devastating salvo. i had my first 1000 echoes and accidentally bought the cadamus harpoon gun instead of the big cannon and it turned out it allowed me to do the salvo, devastating salvo, wild salvo(since my irons went above 50) and the harpoon attack
Yes, everything can do normal/wild/devastating salvos; harpoon guns enable flensing and, in theory, cannons should enable a cannon-specific attack (but I don’t think they actually do) (and torpedos, of course, have a special-and-expensive torpedo attack). You made the correct choice, as flensing attacks do great damage against all zee-beasties, even ones that don’t seem fleshy like lifebergs, and against crew – it’s much faster to do 15-20 points of crew damage than it is 100-150 hull damage on things like pirate frigates and khanate trimarans.
Yeah… I saw an update that said it reduced the range of actions (flares, salvos, etc). However, as everyone has noticed they are still incredibly random. Illumination can rise as much as 60 or as little as 30 with the same value… when we are dealing with a range of 50-150, a swing of 30 is horribly imprecise!
I would also love to get a tooltip indication of what range (flare, 30-40) so we can have a better grasp about how our stats affect play.
What I’d like to see is keyboard shortcuts in combat.
The problem is that a modicum of RNG is good (will I hit illumination 50 or not?), otherwise you would always know in advance the exact steps required to win a combat against a given enemy, and even if you matematically can’t win at all. But right now it’s unclear what that RNG depends on, is it just luck? Is it luck and equipment? In theory it’s the latter but the equipment part never really seems to come in effect because there is not enough itemization in the game to make it relevant.
The system would work better if there were many more item choices to upgrade your ship, so that for example you can focus on a ship that doesn’t hit very hard but illuminates a lot and in a "failsafe" way (the downside being that if the enemy evades a lot you will be in for a long fight). It would also give you many more choices on how to spend your money.
edited by Freemark on 7/22/2014