Better Damage Feedback

Gratuitous Forum Gratuitous Space Battles
1

People have said that its frustrating and confusing not knowing how much (if any!) damage your weapons do. I agree, and thus I’ve experimented with floating damage numbers.
Youtube video: (crappy youtube res)
youtube.com/watch?v=2UrhkhoMzv0

Original video (WMV, higher quality, 30MB download)

positech.co.uk/gratuitousspa … edback.wmv

Text never comes out well in videos. It looks better ‘live’. I’m making it a graphical option, and it toggles off with the UI switch anyway.
What do you think? I think this is MUCH better than having nothing, and just guessing based on the visual effects. Especially for situations like beam lasers reflecting, or for fighters attacks bouncing off armor inside a shield bubble.
I’m very tempted to add this in the next patch (maybe after 1.40) which will be all about usability and learning the game more easily.

2

Great idea Cliff!
As long as there isn’t a “Missed” popup each time a shot fails it will be great (it’s always frustrating seeing that in rpgs).

Keep the great ideas coming :smiley:

3

Honestly, I never really had trouble discerning if a target was taking damage or not… The visuals indicate that well enough. The main exception is armor absorb vs armor reflect, both which use appear to use the same hull redflash graphic to me.

We’ve always had to guess at the scale of that damage, though, which I guess this solves.

Have you considered stylizing the text to reflect scale? Bigger font for those 60 damage megaton hits?

4

As long as there’s a way to toggle it on and off (possibly off by default at the start of battle, with a shortcut to turn it on) it’s okay. Now, this doesn’t look much gratuitous to me. The game is about big 'splosions, not whether that big 'splosion was effective or not.

5

Scale or background colour would help - yellow is minor, red is major, something to that effect.

6

I think throw in an option to turn it off or on mid-battle, make the text size correspond to damage done (Min and Max sizes, but also the recommended font changes)

As for color, I think that might be better for showing what kind of damage perhaps, with blue, green, and orange like the integrity indicators during battles for shields/hull/armor, respectively.

7

currently the colors show what sort of damage was done, green is hull, red is armor, blue is shields. white for ‘no effect’

8

DAMN I’M GOOD

9

I would also agree to having this but I would also suggest an option for turning it off.

10

This could be useful, but on the YouTube video I had trouble even seeing any of the numbers. It wasn’t until there were a bunch of “No Effect” tags that I could tell what I was supposed to be looking for. This is probably mostly due to YouTube’s hi-res nature, but still…

11

I like it.

12

I like. But there’s no reason to display this type of feedback for attacks that have no effect.

Also, I agree it should be toggle-able. The info would be very useful when things aren’t going as expected, but it isn’t pretty.

13

That’s to discern them from missed shots, especially with kinetic weapons.

14

I think it is an great idea but it should be IMO merged with another great idea: all battles should be saved so you can watch them back rewind, pause and then you can click on option button(show damage)

15

I freaking love the looks of it, but I would have to use it a bit to see if it would be as great as it looks.

16

Agreed in full. I would want that level of tactical intelligence.

17

Was this included in 1.40? How do I toggle it on and off? I may have missed it, but did not find this in the manual.

18

no, it will come in 1.41

19

I would like to be able to pause the battle and be able to mouse over the damage indicator and get even more information like which weapon on which ship fired that shot.

20

That’s a real sweet enhancement…I want it! :smiley: