just a few thoughts (some annoyances, some quality of life stuff) that aren’t bugs but I feel should be voiced regardless. Would be nice to have some of these, I guess.
-regarding explosions-
size of explosion proportional to damage - As is a fighter peashooter hit generates the same hit effect as say a heavy plasma sling (which launches projectiles LARGER THAN THE FIGHTER ITSELF). This both makes heavy weapon hits very underwhelming (plasma impacts have smaller explosions than the torpedo that caused it) and make fighter strafing somewhat… absurd… to watch as the ship is covered in explosions or the entire shield lights up. I feel like say a plasma sling would generate explosions that cover a significant part of the ship while fighter weapons should be little more than chicken scratches on a cruiser’s hull.
ship light flicker threshold - Another thing when fighters (or any other pulse weapons) are firing on a single ship is the light flickers constantly. (which can be turned off, I realize.) I feel it would be better if instead of that, there’s a threshold of how much damage the ship has to have taken in any given hit (or in any given period of time) for a light flicker to occur. That or if the ship is under sustained fire lights stay off completely.
-visual ship design-
more room to work - this speaks for itself, I think, it’s nigh impossible to add a large-ish engine flame to the back of some hulls as it stands
zoom-in/zoom-out - it would be a lot easier to work on some smaller details if only we can do that
scaleX/scaleY - allowing us to change component height/width independent of one another would be great too
change center of rotation - there are a few visual modules that would look awesome spinning around somewhere that’s not the center, allowing us to set that would be great
-mid battle interface-
save lighting, damage number settings between battles - I like my space battles dark and without damage numbers, but as it stands I have to change them at the start of every battle. would be nice if that can become permanent
easier ways to close ship detail popup - as it stands the (very intrusive) ship detail popup that appears when you right-click a ship can only be closed by hitting a relatively small (and often moving) x button. I think easier ways to close it (like esc key or right-clicking empty space) would be more user friendly.
-challenge stuff-
return to deployment screen on quitting battle - as is the game returns you to challenge screen if you quit mid-battle and you have to pick that challenge off the list again if you want to tweak your fleet and try again. this is not the case if you stay until you’re defeated and exit the battle from there. That is slightly annoying on those REALLY hard challenges that takes you 10+ tries to complete
mass download challenges - considering the size of each challenge file, I feel like most computers can handle a large number of them on their hard drive. thus it might increase off-line playability a lot if challenges can be downloaded in bulk and played offline. This could either be in the form of a “download all new challenges” button or some sort of shift-select system in the challenge screen itself
that’s all i got for now. keep up the good work cliff
