I wrote:Seconded. Also, It would be nice to have an option of "test driving" the weapon, but I'm sure it's not nethackish enough of a mechanic to make it into Vanilla.
if there will be core systems in 2.0 then there will be also aliens in there, to make the game exciting, before leaving the human space i should get a translating device(in 1.09), to talk with the aliens
A more intelligent system for dealing with reactor overloads would be nice. For example, the present system is (I think) either "What's the piece of equipment with the highest power drain" or "what are we using that's overloading it"..then shutting down that piece of equipment.
This leads to things like the Wolfen's shield shutting down in combat in the early game because someone installed a collimator, or got into a heavy battle where they need to move around AND shoot AND fire missiles AND recharge the shield.
While it might take a while to process(and thus be untenable), it might be more helpful to have:
-Check how far over the reactors power limit we are
-Check how much power each piece of equipment is drawing right now.
-If a piece of equipment (eg. The Jotun deflector on a bad setting) is drawing more than the reactors power-limit, shut it down.
Then, if we haven't fixed the problem:
-Prioritise shutdown order somehow to keep stuff running. Shut down passive devices first (high power level first, then lower levels), then most power-draining weapons, then lower draining weapons, then shields.
Alternatively, weapons we're not using can be shut down, but that might end with us having our 500mw super-gun overloading our reactor when we've got a 70mw gun disabled that'd work just fine.
Or something like that anyway (configurable priority would be REALLY nice, but I'm keeping this semi-realistic). It's really annoying having the ship kill the thing you really NEED when running away, rather than the myriad of little things that would do just as well (Eg. For the collimated stock wolfen example, the collimator and launcher, and possibly the main gun. Shields are important in the early game, especially when running from a frigate, for example.)...on a lot of ships, there's other stuff we can try to kill first to see if the power drains can be brought within limits much earlier.
It might also help to check for any 'temporary' drain items first. Weapons, ICX mounts, and to stop using it for a short time first (make a delay settable in the ship menu? 5secs default?). With a warning displayed that would sometimes be enough to let the pilot know he's trying to do too much at one time. Loosing your weapon at a critical time might be bad, but not as bad as loosing shields!
Shrike wrote:A more intelligent system for dealing with reactor overloads would be nice. For example, the present system is (I think) either "What's the piece of equipment with the highest power drain" or "what are we using that's overloading it"..then shutting down that piece of equipment.
This leads to things like the Wolfen's shield shutting down in combat in the early game because someone installed a collimator, or got into a heavy battle where they need to move around AND shoot AND fire missiles AND recharge the shield.
Give the Wolfen 15MW minimum when starting a new game. 10MW is a joke and not enough to power all of the Wolfen's starting equipment.
Download and Play in 1.9 beta 1... Drake Technologies (Alpha): More hardware for combat in parts 1 and 2! Star Castle Arcade: Play a classic arcade game adventure, with or without more features (like powerups)! Playership Drones: Buy or restore exotic ships to command!
Other playable mods from 1.8 and 1.7, waiting to be updated... Godmode v3 (WIP): Dev/cheat tool compatible with D&O parts 1 or 2.
Shrike wrote:A more intelligent system for dealing with reactor overloads would be nice. For example, the present system is (I think) either "What's the piece of equipment with the highest power drain" or "what are we using that's overloading it"..then shutting down that piece of equipment.
This leads to things like the Wolfen's shield shutting down in combat in the early game because someone installed a collimator, or got into a heavy battle where they need to move around AND shoot AND fire missiles AND recharge the shield.
Give the Wolfen 15MW minimum when starting a new game. 10MW is a joke and not enough to power all of the Wolfen's starting equipment.
running out of power in the first place (which does need fixing, I agree). This is about what happens when you DO use too much energy for your reactor, and could also do with being looked at.
Aside from skipping 1.9 and releasing 2.0 in the next couple of weeks, the update that I really want most is allowing the gameplay area to scale with screen resolution or possibly resolution independence. Simply expanding the viewable area based on selected resolution would probably be the easiest, so higher resolutions than what was common 20 years ago are available. If that poses a problem with too much to render on some systems then it's easy enough for lower powered computers to use the windowed mode.
A resolution independent Transcendence would most likely have to wait until the game moves from a sprite based engine to a 3D renderer.
Oh, yes! I want Transcendence to fill a big screen. All of that beautiful screen area... wasted!
Download and Play in 1.9 beta 1... Drake Technologies (Alpha): More hardware for combat in parts 1 and 2! Star Castle Arcade: Play a classic arcade game adventure, with or without more features (like powerups)! Playership Drones: Buy or restore exotic ships to command!
Other playable mods from 1.8 and 1.7, waiting to be updated... Godmode v3 (WIP): Dev/cheat tool compatible with D&O parts 1 or 2.
It has often been discussed why Transcendence does no have a larger viewport, or why it does not just grow it's viewport to fit the screen. As it stands, the current 1023x768 size is set based on a minimum viable screen. It might be interesting to open up the question as to whether that does not match the current generation of players. As to the question of the viewport being resolution dependent, the argument that it is unbalancing still stands. Perhaps we should suggest an upgrade to 1280x720?
1280x720 from 1023x768 would be a viewport reduction because it needs to be square. This might be a good thing since some netbook users have had problems.