TIDYING UP THE LAST FEW FIGHTING LOOSE ENDS
by Hazed
The fighting code is almost finished now. There’s just a few loose ends that need to be sorted out, that Alan will be working on in the coming week.
The first is to do with weapon selection. Right now the game assumes you just have one of each type of laser, and it will fire the first one in the list no matter whether it is damaged. If the first laser, tl or ql has been reduced to zero, then you won’t be able to fire it.
The plan is for the game to pick the least damaged weapon from the one you specify, and fire that. This means it will be worth having more than one of whatever type of laser you intend to use, so if one gets damaged you can switch to an undamaged one.
The second thing is to do with escaping from a fight. At the moment you can get away from your opponent by simply moving out of the location, no matter whether you are in open or close range. However, that makes things a bit too easy!
The intention is that you won’t be able to just move away from the fight if you are in close or intermediate range. Instead, you will be able to use the ‘FLEE’ command to move safely to the Interstellar Link. You won’t be able to flee from close range – you will have to open the range first to intermediate. It will work at either intermediate or open range. Fleeing has an advantage over just moving to a new location, because it automatically puts you in a non-fighting zone. Even if your opponent follows you, they won’t be able to continue the fight. The downside is that it uses a lot of fuel and may damage your engines.
The code for both of these issues will be in soon.
That will leave two jobs for me to do. I have to update the manual, adding in a new section on ship fighting and tweaking all the other bits of the manual that are affected. That’s quite a big task so will take me a couple of weeks.
The other thing I have to do is install a plaque into Jarrow Shipbuilders listing the names of those generous players who contributed to the fighting fund. That will go up in the next few weeks.
