i think it would be easiest if the NPC race had an empty shield texture. it would look alot better than, say, one ship with blue shield and another with orange. when they are supposed to be of the same race…
Hmmm its a nice idea…
Another option is an almost invisible white shield, at least that should look better than everything stopped by an invisible wall.
O god… some ideas came into my mind when i heard about a planet… imagine a scenario called “the conquest of earth” and u have the earth planet as a VERY HUGH sprite full of missile launchers… like orbital satellites (if u make a super awesome sprite u can make even the turrets really appearing like orbital defenses…). Well i had the borg cube which is 800 in size (i did it a bit bigger) , i suposse a bigger sprite like 1200 will be work perfect!
Well, thats the reason it is a planet, it CANNOT move, and the only defenses it will have are missiles (that are very good choice for very big sprites). Of course it will have no shields, so i dont see any problem related to the big sprite size!!
When i talk about cruiser movement im talking about the cruisers that will shot at it, they will be crearly pushed out when they get close to the planet, it is just a minor problem, the problem is if the cruiser is shotting at the planet and some of the “hit points” (not hp) are too far from each other, and some out of range of the cruiser. I think…
Dude, its a planet, is logical that in some moments, a ship need to over fly the sprite… so if a ship needs to fly over the planet to reach a hardpoint, thats ok the only thing bad, as u say is that the cruiser will move making evasive maneouvers xDD, but i think the final result will worth it.
I think the idea of a boss battle were you conquer the enemy’s home planet would be quite cool and if its in the npc race you wont have to worry about cost cost-effectiveness ect!