Ship Stuff

I played SCO for a few hours today.  Here are just some raw notes I took down for a few of the ships...

 

Scryve – His flak guns lose to tiny little measured AoE weapon in a knife fight, this is backwards. This ship demonstrates that “bigger” doesn't mean “badder”, it means “easy target”. Its one of the easiest ships to beat due to size alone, but my guess is that it is supposed to be the “big scary Urquan-DN ship”. So this is also backwards. This ship will be hard to balance because it is all wrong. It should turn very slowly compared to the rest if it is this big, but it's primary weapon is all wrong for that. It is an easy target, slow turn rate would make it an even easier target and harder to aim its sustained beam weapon. Is there an AoE weapon, or maybe it shoots an “energy net” to briefly hold a ship within its flak radius out of that big cannon it has, that would still match with the lore for this ship? Change the “flak guns” to “shrapnel cannons” so they sound like primary weapons make them the primary weapon and the “energy net” the secondary.

DaNath – The way this ship, and Trandals, hold their orientation when they turn makes it impossible to aim with any precision. This does work as a means of balancing AoE/Wide-Effect weapons like the Black Hole and Bola. I get it, and it works for me. But many players are not going to understand that this is a part of the balance of the weapon, they will see it as “I can't aim, this is broken”. It works, and makes perfect sense to someone who understands the point, but a lot of people are going to dislike it because they can't aim exactly where they want too and it feels “broken” too them. I can't even tell what the Gravity Wave is supposed to do, but I assume with pull the enemy closer or push them away. With the long range AoE Black Hole weapon you wouldn't want to pull them closer. This should either push them away or do some other gravity related thing. A gravitic mine, or “repel” from Subspace would both work well for this ship. Something noticeable, because whatever the Gravitic Wave is supposed to be doing really isn't very noticeable.

Trandals – This is actually a really good ship. Boost is probably too fast once the ship is made more effective. Weapon should be a little wider, because it is so hard to aim with the “held tilt” maneuver like DaNath has. Same as DaNath, this works as a means of balancing powerful AoE weapons but some players might be frustrated by not being able to aim effectively and think of it as being “broken”.

Tywom – This ship shows something important... guns are the most fun! This is, by far, the most fun ship to use. The most fun fight is Tywom v Tywom. You should think of this ship as your USS Enterprise, the standard that you compare all other ships too. Balance the other ships around this one, and try to make each ship as fun as this one. This last part is probably not attainable, though, because straight-up guns like this ship as are always the most fun! Drones don't launch a lot of the time when you have the energy to do it. I think this is because there is a “recharge time” to launch them, but it comes off as the button just not working. Any weapon or secondary ability that has a recharge time should have a meter on the ship card to show it, so the player knows what is going on and when they can and can't use things. You already have the space for these meters where you show the “L/R” buttons below the ship cards.