SHIP FIGHTING PLANS: RESTRICTIONS ON WEAPONS FIRING
by Hazed
In the first issue of the year I told you about some of the ways ship fighting will be different from the way it used to work in the old version of Fed. Here’s some more information about the differences.
You will only be able to fire your weapons one at a time, and there will be a delay of 1 second between firings, to allow for recharging.
However, if your ship has a level 6 or 7 computer you can ‘ripple’ fire all your weapons at once. Then there’ll be several seconds to recharge before you can fire again.
Of course, you can stack up several commands by typing ahead, but that’s risky because there will be no way to cancel any commands that haven’t been executed yet – and your opponent might do something that changes the situation.
At last, there’s going to be a reason to have a high intelligence, because the more brainy you are, the higher level computer you can install in your ship – and that translates to better fighting ability, particularly if you can use the new ripple fire. So you’d better start thinking about increasing your intelligence, which involves visiting a mad droid deep in the Mercury caves.
Ship fighting leaves a lot of junk floating around in space, what with spent missiles and bits blown off ships. This can easily become a shipping hazard. Whoever starts the fight pays a penalty to cover the cost of cleaning up the debris – regardless of whether you win or lose! The only way to escape the fine is to die dead-dead. One more thing to consider before you go into a fight with all guns blazing.
I’ll have more details of the new plans next week. Remember – all this is subject to change when Alan actually starts to code ship fighting!
