Re: Announcing release of Interceptor by Valiant Galaxy Associates
Jeremy here,
Themadviolinist,
Dark's suggestion about how much more of the differences can be seen in longer duration and longer range combat with higher class ships is valid; the obvious counterpoint of well yeah, but they need to die right now is also valid.
Concerning your remarks about the user guide being more specific: that is quite probably a good observation. You are not the only person who has noticed shortfalls in this area, and as I am the half of the team responsible for our documentation I am currently whipping myself with an old USB cable until I learn better. In all seriousness, I'll have a look at it again, and see where I can tighten it up; the nice thing about using online documentation is I can update it and everyone has the same documentation immediately.
Rockets do ignore deflectors in all cases except one, and this point is brought up in an oblique way in the documentation. Rockets do not arm until after app roximately 10,000 meters. Thus, if you fire a rocket too close it's just a big hunk of metal that the deflector then intercepts.
As to the optimal strategy discussion: There is a post I made earlier in this same thread about a strategy I tried of using a rocket to damage opponents, then pot shot them with the particle beam from farther out. This worked well enough, except when ships were too close for whatever reason. In those cases, I defaulted to the smash the deflector and blow them up strategy. I think there are other ways to play it, but I agree that unfortunately, it's appearing more and more, as we hear from a larger group of players, that this was a place where the code could have been better designed. This is a definite place we'll revisit if we update Interceptor.
As to telegraphing to the player more of the difficulties the opponent is having from damaged systems: I'm not sure how to really t elegraph this either without more descriptive text. Their systems impact them exactly the same as the players' systems impact them; for an example that is easier to track, destroy a ship's waste disposal system, then give it time to take damage from it. You'll see cockpit integrity, life support, and the reactors all suffer gradual damage. Some other examples are damaging rocket pods cause them to eject disabled rockets, etc. Some of the effects are very subtle and difficult to see, even if you know they are there. For instance, I have a good idea of how damaged targeting computers have to be before fighters start missing significant amounts of time, but that was a matter of trial and error and playing hundreds of games in the beta testing. If anyone has good suggestions on this, I"m all ears.
There are differences between the different classes of ships, both in system layout and in complexity of AI. This is not at all very obvious to the player however, and some of it comes from playing a lot of games, and some of it comes in seeing a fighter use more intelligent tactics. In beta testing I came to loathe betas. I always had the most trouble with them, I'm not sure why.
As to the ECM suggestion, we actually have played with adding this, and it's one of the features in our if/when we update/do another Interceptor style game file.
As to simultaneous pops of ships, I agree. When we first designed the game, frankly, we had no ideas on how to manage this. Now that we have done more, we have some ideas on how to tackle this, and intend to try it out when we get a chance. It'll be a ways down the road though. There's still technical issues to work out.
As to your surmise about how we are tracking distance you are correct. Again, a limitation of the state of our abilities at the time we started on the game. By the time we could have fixed this, the game was too far in development to really make changing it viable.
As to how to handle the maneuvering, that would obviously require some combination of the factors you suggested. This is doable, and it's something that we will definitely revisit.
The Mad Violinist:Is it a bug or a feature that there are times when I can hit enter and countermaneuver against the opponent approaching or evading, and there are times when I cannot?
Jeremy: It is a feature. If the ship is merely maneuvering, you are not given a chance to cut it off. In a perfect world, you could have done so; but again, our state of knowledge did not equal our desires at this point. The only time you can cut it off is when the game announces name of ship evading. This is the signal that the enemy ship is trying to gain distance to repair.
The Mad Violinist: Is it a bug or feature that the mother ship repairs systems without having to disengage from combat, so that a deflector I knock down in one shot is back at 100% when Igo to hit it again?
Jeremy: That is a feature, and a very annoying but fun one.
As to the computer assisted shot issue. I agree except for one thing. If you factor in smart sights, smart weapons, and greater and greater use of various filters, displays, and computer assistance even in our own fighter aircraft, I think that having computer assisted shot as a quick option isn't that far off for 1000 years in the future. Also too, when you lose targeting computer or scanner, you suddenly appreciate it so much more that you do that that option:)
I'm glad you are enjoying the game. As you play more games, some of the other features will come into play more. For instance, if you ever are put in a position of having to chase several fighters on a nonrefuel level, then face as many or more fighters on the next level, fu el becomes an extreme worry. Also, being hit with multiple rocket attacks changes the game immensely.
As to the catastrophic repair failure: if your engineering droid is damaged, you already get less optimal repairs than you would otherwise. Depending on how bad it's damaged, it also has a chance to temporarily crash and be unable to repair. Again, these are things you see when you've played more games.
We're very glad for the extremely intelligent critiques and suggestions we've received. For those of you who have checked out the other forums for our games, you know that we do release updates, and sometimes rapidly, so an update to Interceptor is not a nonstarter at all. Right now we just finished updating TKS to version 6, which will be released soon. Once that's done, we have a bigger project we're working on, but it's possible we might update Interceptor over the next year as well. A lot of this hangs on how much time we have and what RL things blow up on us. Thanks again for the support and suggestions, we appreciate them.
Take care,
Jeremy
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