I had an idea for a new spacecraft family and I wanted to see where it’ll go.
It’s for a new spacecraft family where the weapon pods are separated from the ship itself.
You move the weapon pods freely around the map, and the ship will always try to move towards said weapon pods in an obvious straight line.
The weapon pods themselves have no speed limit and can’t be collided with, but the ship itself still can. The farther away the pods are from the ship, the faster the ship tries to move back to the weapon pods. (and vice versa)
Satellites are still attached to the ship, and the ship still does all the collecting and getting damaged and stuff like that.
In Darkness levels, the light is placed where your weapon pods are, and the ship itself glows so you always know where your ship is and where it’s trying to move towards.
This is a more gimmicky spacecraft idea that has its own learning curve, but mastering it allows you to do things other ships simply can’t. For example: hitting enemies from behind, taking out enemies that spawn in way too close at map edges, …
Since the ship always moves towards your weapon pods, if you’re doing anything like this, you’ll have to act fast, otherwise you’ll be sending your ship to a guaranteed dead zone (Doing anything mentioned above requires moving the pods to where it can hit enemies, most likely somewhere that’s dangerous to go if it’s a different ship).
Remember, the pods can’t be collided with, but your ship still can.
As for the family, it’ll be the same as the previous ships: 3 variants, the later one enhances on something the previous one lacks. Will work on the details later.
I think this idea has some fun implications though.
What are your thoughts about it thus far?
PS: Some extra design ideas:
In universe, these are supposed to be ships that are built for hazardous environments. They had arms that lets their pilots control them from a safe spot but now they were repurposed and those arms became weapon pods instead.
Having that change made the pods more magnetically charged though so the ship always ends up moving towards the pods.
This extra stuff seems unnecessary, but Mullers used to be pizza delivery ships, BX are bombers, … The point is this stuff tends to go in the description of each spacecraft.
Here’s a prototype of what I mean by the ship’s unique playstyle.
The red being its weapon pods, and the green being the ship.
You move the weapon pods, and the ship slowly moves back towards it. If it’s farther away it moves faster towards the pods, giving you some control over where the ship actually ends up going towards.
A previous version of the idea would have the ship move based on where the pods was last, but keeping a mental path of where you last moved in your mind isn’t practical so I simplified it to simply be a line towards the pods. Which now that I think about it, does feel like bombers.
The general idea still stands - we don’t have a ship variant that offers something like this yet.
Designing the artwork for this ship wouldn’t be easy though - I can’t think of an in-universe way to explain this concept just yet.
Please read the post before commenting things like this.
None of the ships in the game currently offer the ability to fire at somewhere your ship is not in, (aka in universe as separated weapon pods), which is what this ship is about.
As for the bomber-like movements, I’ve answered to something like this earlier, see here.
Some more albeit minor tweaks about this new spacecraft:
In universe these ships are supposed to be “hazardous environment engineers” or something like that.
The idea originally came out of submarines with arms that lets the pilots control them from within the ship in a safe spot. It’s supposed to be that in universe, but with the arms modified for weapon pods so that they now work in space for other things.
Kinda like how Mullers were pizza delivery ships.
Naming wise, I’m thinking something along the lines of DW (Detachable Weapons) or AF (Attachable Firearms). Numbers could be 600 related if the previous names are chosen. (AF-650 sounds nice).
It could also be something else completely unrelated to the ship’s unique gimmick though, I just tend to name things based on their unique gameplay description.
The hardest problem remains to be the stats of these things, and in order to do that I need to prototype the dang thing which won’t be easy. Might have to clone some core parts of the game just to test this new spaceship variant, so the next reply might not be here for a while. Have edited the first post in the meantime though to add in these information.
Also, I’ll definitely need help with the artwork for this thing since I’m terrible at that.
As of right now I’ll pause the development on this since it’ll most likely not see the light of day even if I do keep working on it.
I tend to put a lot of thought into my ideas whenever I decide to work on them, but due to recent developments, it’s really unlikely that what I do here is going to have any impact whatsoever, so it’s just silly to keep on going.
If you really liked the ideas I got, feel free to keep maintaining these posts or add your own tweaks and modifications to the post.
For the time being though, I think I’ll head out once again. Thank you all so much for reading these, and have a good day!
If you think Ion would be OP, then you’ll lose it after thinking about using the ship with Photon, or — especially — Vulcan. One might have at least a slightly easier time clearing out comets, but that’s just my speculation.
In game design, letting players choose between a sniper rifle vs a shotgun is more interesting than choosing between 2 different assault rifles, even though the latter is much easier to balance.
Which is pretty much how I feel about the current ship options in the game.
It’s mostly the same infinite speed ship with some stat differences that doesn’t really affect how it feels to fly the dang thing. Bombers are like, the only exceptions to this rule, and has been for so long, so I wanted to change that.
I wanted to introduce a new, distinct way to approach the game, so I can do all the old levels I’ve seen time and time again with a new approach, one that I simply can’t do with the current tools the game has to offer.
This is why I started with this ship’s gameplay aspect first, then work on the rest of the stuff later on like visuals, stat balancing, testing, … - though I couldn’t get to do any of that before … well, I think the new category sums it up pretty well how I think the game’s going to go for the time being, so I stopped working on all of this stuff ahead of time to save me the headaches I’d be going through just to work on an idea that’ll probably never see the light of day anyway.
I still think that the game needs new methods to tackle the old levels though - beit a booster, a new weapon, or a ship family, because this I know is true: Introducing something that can be used across all existing levels provides a much greater impact than just adding new levels - even though the latter is much easier to do.
Or to put it simply: Imagine if BX didn’t already exist and someone makes up a new idea for a ship family that has double the firepower but moves slower, you can very easily say it’ll be overpowered, particularly on Boss Rush levels with Damage Amplifier on.
(that’s 6x the firepower, it’ll be way too OP, … you get the point)
But you can’t really deny the effects these Bombers has had on the game.
It’s unique playstyle is what sets BX apart from others, and you need to approach the levels in a completely different way then you would with another ship.
My point being that having an unique playstyle for a spaceship is the reason why the game is much more fun with BX, and we should strive for more ships with unique playstyles such as this.
If we want the game to be more fun for everyone, new things that can be used in old levels like spacecraft types, boosters and new weapons, adds way more to the game than simply adding levels can ever do - even though the latter is way easier to pull off. It also gives people who are new to the series, or someone who’s had it in the back of their mind for a while, a proper reason to come back.
That’s the shortened reason as to why I’m making these kinds of posts.
