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[Shadow]

testing Drox Operative - I've managed to escape death a few times in my escape pod

[PixelLord]

Originally Posted by Shadow

testing Drox Operative - I've managed to escape death a few times in my escape pod

I always get killed by a hoard of ships, and they wipe me out in the escape pod because there are so many ships attacking. The escape pod needs a cloaking device.

[Bluddy]

Originally Posted by PixelLord

I always get killed by a hoard of ships, and they wipe me out in the escape pod because there are so many ships attacking. The escape pod needs a cloaking device.

Perhaps it should spit you out pretty far from the ship + have a high 'escape notice' status effect (assuming that still exists). Chances are most ships won't even notice an escape pod. Getting killed should probably be more from stray fire than anything else. Also, it should be 'bad form' to shoot down escape pods -- against a captain's code of honor. Monsters won't care about that, of course.

[Shadow]

We kind of do it backwards right now, but it seems to work fairly well. Enemies will still notice and shoot you, but you only have to live for 10 seconds before being rescued. That's not the easiest of things to do, but for a second chance of not dying it's not too bad.

[Bluddy]

Originally Posted by Shadow

We kind of do it backwards right now, but it seems to work fairly well. Enemies will still notice and shoot you, but you only have to live for 10 seconds before being rescued. That's not the easiest of things to do, but for a second chance of not dying it's not too bad.

This approach favors small engagements. If you died against a whole bunch of monsters, your chances of surviving in the escape pod are very small since they'll all attack you. If you died against one or two attackers, you stand a much better chance of survival. This isn't necessarily bad, but it's worth thinking about whether this is the approach you want here: in a space setting such as star wars (and most others) escaping in an escape pod is seen as something that is mostly able to remove you from the battle by flying off into the inkiness of space -- you rarely see ships attacking escape pods.

An alternative would be to turn the escape pod sequence into a stealth game: as a tiny ship, you're not very visible. You need to stay in the blind spot of an enemy ship, perhaps by hiding behind it, until you can make your way far enough from all aggressors that a 'AAA' type ship can pick you up.

Alternatively, you could have the same mechanics, but the escape pod could shoot out really fast from a certain region of your ship -- perhaps the back. The skill would then be to maneuver your ship such that when you're about to explode, the escape pod will shoot out into a relatively empty region of space to give you the best chance of escaping. Once you're shot out, it's a race between you and your enemies to see if you'll survive (and the 10 second rule could still hold). This gives you a chance of surviving even if you're attacked by many enemies.

[Valgor]

Escape pods could have "mercy invincibility" for a few seconds after ejection, similar to when you get hit in arcade shmups.
This would be explained by the enemy not noticing the pod for a while amidst the debris of your freshly exploded vessel.

By the way, is one escape pod enough for the whole crew, or will the player need to equip additional pods as their crew grows in number?

[Bluddy]

Originally Posted by Valgor

Escape pods could have "mercy invincibility" for a few seconds after ejection, similar to when you get hit in arcade shmups.
This would be explained by the enemy not noticing the pod for a while amidst the debris of your freshly exploded vessel.

I like the 'few seconds' idea. Perhaps you could be invisible to your enemies for about 4 seconds, and then have to escape for another 10?

[Shadow]

testing Drox Operative - found a bug yesterday where some races appeared to be shooting logos instead of missiles at enemies

[Valgor]

Originally Posted by Shadow

[...]some races appeared to be shooting logos instead of missiles[...]

Aggressive PR.

[PixelLord]

Originally Posted by Shadow

testing Drox Operative - found a bug yesterday where some races appeared to be shooting logos instead of missiles at enemies

Saw that. I thought it was a new feature so you wouldn't shoot their missiles by mistake. Didn't like it much... glad to hear it was a bug.