My ideas for making battles more interesting and rewarding
Posted: Thu Oct 04, 2012 5:56 pm
There's a lot of talk about how targeting weapons first is usually a good strategy. This isn't always the case, of course - personally I tend to target the bridge, shields, medbay, or engines pretty often as well, depending on the situation. But for the most part, if you're playing conservatively and especially if you don't understand the game mechanics very well, attacking the weapons first seems like a no-brainer and probably makes a lot of people think the game is a lot more repetitive than it really needs to be.
I like how successfully boarding the enemy ship often provides better or even unique rewards. I think it makes combat a lot more interesting and varied so I'm thinking, why not extend this concept of extra rewards for "style" to regular combat? Here are some examples of how I envision this working:
- Targeting the enemy engines reduces the chance of getting fuel and the amount of fuel you might get.
- Targeting the enemy oxygen (to a lesser extent their medbay, and to a much lesser extent their doors) reduces the chance of getting a boarded ship's survivor to join you. Doors being damaged reducing the possibility of survivors makes sense because survivors wouldn't be able to escape fires or rooms with hull breaches.
- Targeting the enemy weapons reduces the chance of finding a weapon and reduces the number of missiles you might get.
- Damaging the enemy hull reduces the amount of scrap you might get.
- Targeting the enemy drone controller reduces the chance of getting drone parts, likewise for enemy drones being destroyed.
- Targeting the enemy bridge reduces the chance of finding a map of nearby locations. (this would be a new reward, and it would tell you what's in any systems within one FTL jump, basically like getting a long-range sensors snapshot)
- Targeting the enemy scanners, cloak, or teleporters (high tech stuff) reduces the chance of getting an augment. Because, uh... they're all connected by the same plasma conduits... Sure, that'll work.
- (Maybe it's already like this but I'm not sure) I think that enemy ships that have a missile launcher should be the only ones that have a chance of giving you missiles. It not only makes sense logically but more importantly from a gameplay standpoint it rewards a player for fighting a ship that's more likely to cause lasting damage than one only equipped with energy weapons.
- To reduce the frustration of drones attacking the "wrong" systems for what you as a player most need as rewards at any given time, you could have drone attacks only cause 1/2 or even 1/4 of the reward loss compared to regular weapons. Coming up with a technobabble excuse for why this is the case shouldn't be hard - maybe something like, "Drone weapons need to cross a shorter distance and so are more accurate and lower-powered, reducing the chance of collateral damage."
- The probability of lost rewards should be based on how severely the system was damaged. A level 10 weapons system that takes 3 points of damage shouldn't be as "damaging" as a level 3 weapons system that takes 2 points of damage, for example.
- Since beam weapons are so awesome, maybe they could have a slightly greater chance of causing collateral damage. After all, you're slicing through a whole section of the ship rather than making a precise strike. Missile weapons could also have this property since naturally a giant explosion will be more likely to cause unintended damage. This would make the player need to consider the cost/benefit of equipping different types of systems, even if they're otherwise a good choice.
- Ion weapons of course would not cause ANY damage or loss of reward.
- Random idea: Make engines more resistant to damage and make it so that if you outright destroy (turn red) enemy engines, the enemy ship immediately explodes more violently than usual and you lose almost all chance of getting scrap. This would mean some minor changes, like making the final boss's engine impossible to completely destroy and making the condition to prevent enemy ships from escaping be destroying their bridge rather than engines (which makes just as much sense)
- Add a section to the tutorial that says, "Depending on how you fight an enemy ship, you may receive different rewards and bonuses." This will encourage the player to explore how combat works more without spelling it out for them. This would be a good thing to add even if you don't implement any of the other ideas, since they might think to try capturing an enemy ship instead of just destroying it.
- This is less directly related, but adding a weapon property called "accuracy" would be interesting, I think. I notice that a lot of the time, enemy attacks scatter across my different rooms rather than all hitting the same place. Maybe you could make certain player-usable weapons have this property too, like the variants that primarily damage the hull for example. Less accurate weapons would still hit the enemy ship if the enemy fails to dodge, but would have a chance of hitting the wrong location. They would also have a greater "collateral damage" effect than regular weapons even when they hit the correct location. This could open the possibility for "inaccurate" weapons that charge just as fast as "accurate" weapons, but which would be best saved as a last resort. This leaves EMP weapons of all sorts as "surgical strike" weapons, which have an appropriately greater risk when you use them.
I like how successfully boarding the enemy ship often provides better or even unique rewards. I think it makes combat a lot more interesting and varied so I'm thinking, why not extend this concept of extra rewards for "style" to regular combat? Here are some examples of how I envision this working:
- Targeting the enemy engines reduces the chance of getting fuel and the amount of fuel you might get.
- Targeting the enemy oxygen (to a lesser extent their medbay, and to a much lesser extent their doors) reduces the chance of getting a boarded ship's survivor to join you. Doors being damaged reducing the possibility of survivors makes sense because survivors wouldn't be able to escape fires or rooms with hull breaches.
- Targeting the enemy weapons reduces the chance of finding a weapon and reduces the number of missiles you might get.
- Damaging the enemy hull reduces the amount of scrap you might get.
- Targeting the enemy drone controller reduces the chance of getting drone parts, likewise for enemy drones being destroyed.
- Targeting the enemy bridge reduces the chance of finding a map of nearby locations. (this would be a new reward, and it would tell you what's in any systems within one FTL jump, basically like getting a long-range sensors snapshot)
- Targeting the enemy scanners, cloak, or teleporters (high tech stuff) reduces the chance of getting an augment. Because, uh... they're all connected by the same plasma conduits... Sure, that'll work.
- (Maybe it's already like this but I'm not sure) I think that enemy ships that have a missile launcher should be the only ones that have a chance of giving you missiles. It not only makes sense logically but more importantly from a gameplay standpoint it rewards a player for fighting a ship that's more likely to cause lasting damage than one only equipped with energy weapons.
- To reduce the frustration of drones attacking the "wrong" systems for what you as a player most need as rewards at any given time, you could have drone attacks only cause 1/2 or even 1/4 of the reward loss compared to regular weapons. Coming up with a technobabble excuse for why this is the case shouldn't be hard - maybe something like, "Drone weapons need to cross a shorter distance and so are more accurate and lower-powered, reducing the chance of collateral damage."
- The probability of lost rewards should be based on how severely the system was damaged. A level 10 weapons system that takes 3 points of damage shouldn't be as "damaging" as a level 3 weapons system that takes 2 points of damage, for example.
- Since beam weapons are so awesome, maybe they could have a slightly greater chance of causing collateral damage. After all, you're slicing through a whole section of the ship rather than making a precise strike. Missile weapons could also have this property since naturally a giant explosion will be more likely to cause unintended damage. This would make the player need to consider the cost/benefit of equipping different types of systems, even if they're otherwise a good choice.
- Ion weapons of course would not cause ANY damage or loss of reward.
- Random idea: Make engines more resistant to damage and make it so that if you outright destroy (turn red) enemy engines, the enemy ship immediately explodes more violently than usual and you lose almost all chance of getting scrap. This would mean some minor changes, like making the final boss's engine impossible to completely destroy and making the condition to prevent enemy ships from escaping be destroying their bridge rather than engines (which makes just as much sense)
- Add a section to the tutorial that says, "Depending on how you fight an enemy ship, you may receive different rewards and bonuses." This will encourage the player to explore how combat works more without spelling it out for them. This would be a good thing to add even if you don't implement any of the other ideas, since they might think to try capturing an enemy ship instead of just destroying it.
- This is less directly related, but adding a weapon property called "accuracy" would be interesting, I think. I notice that a lot of the time, enemy attacks scatter across my different rooms rather than all hitting the same place. Maybe you could make certain player-usable weapons have this property too, like the variants that primarily damage the hull for example. Less accurate weapons would still hit the enemy ship if the enemy fails to dodge, but would have a chance of hitting the wrong location. They would also have a greater "collateral damage" effect than regular weapons even when they hit the correct location. This could open the possibility for "inaccurate" weapons that charge just as fast as "accurate" weapons, but which would be best saved as a last resort. This leaves EMP weapons of all sorts as "surgical strike" weapons, which have an appropriately greater risk when you use them.