Suggested Changes to Mechanics - MarcelineVQ/endless-sky GitHub Wiki

##mechanics

• If you need 200 fuel to jump and you have 100, asking for help from someone who can only spare 100 should give it to you, currently they have to be able to spare 200 since that's the cost of a 'jump' for you I believe

• non-arrow-key buttons that interrupt autopilot should only do so it they're success full in their action, land should only interrupt board if there's a planet to go to, b should only interrupt land if there's something to board, etc

• a ship that beats you in melee should repair their own ship so it can do things

• Map will say "You have not yet mapped a route to this system." if you select a place you can't path to but have visited.

• handtohand outfits should probably cost mass when they number greater than your crew count, currently they can be used as currency when dodging the bank mechanics

• hitting f on a target you already hit f on should tell your escorts to expend ammo to take it out

• Crew Salaries row in bank should list owed salaries

• there's a lead-time issue when mixing beam and projectile weaponry

• ships with only enough power to turn or to thrust should alternate which they do per tick while under player control, the movement AI (such as docking or landing) seems cable of doing this

• turrets that require crew should be able to track independently of the ship's main target with a priority to attack things that have been marked by 'f'

• rep losses should depend on the cost of a ship as well as crew, this lets you gain rep with enemies of automatons

• map outfit panel should show fractional outfit space, they do it's just that ammo doesn't take up outfit space just mass

• escorts can plot routes that run them out of fuel instead of refueling on the way in easy places

• The route to Aya'k'k from Alnilam goes through Arneb but it would make more sense to go through Hatysa, is Hatysa somehow counting as more dangerous than Arneb despite not having a pirate planet?
  Does this change if you're friendly with pirates?

• The text for planet names in the map minimap can overlap the frame if large enough, specifically noticeable with Scheat, Charybdis Station

• no one seems to care if you're flying an unliscenced ship despite outfits referencing that as an issue

• you take off and don't have room for fighters but ships parked on the planet do they should store them

• ships not in your system due to being out of fuel should travel to their system's centers to maximize ramscooping

• autofire will shoot at boarded targets you undock from, AI also tend to do this but that doesn't mean the player would prefer it

• [pay all] should probably ask for confirmation

• the claoking shader isn't very interesting, consider some sort of transperency and/or wavyness in motion

• you can park fighters or drones so fighters and drones should be forced to park instead of being sold off if they can't take off with you?

• clicking on a ship twice to go to the ship info panel while landed should count mouseup's not mousedowns, so you can drag a selected ship

• capital ship should change right away when moved in the info panel list, otherwise park/unpark is kinda odd
  it does change, what is odd is moving a parked ship to be flagship, taking off will not choose that ship as your flagship automatically
  either unpark ships moved to the top right away or allow leaving in a parked ship if it's the first ship in the list
  additional oddity, if your first ship is parked your second ship will be unable to be parked, as though the check for flagship starts at the first unparked ship
  additionally a ship moved to the front of the list in the outfitter should be unparked when you exit the outfitter

• escorts can ask for refuels from friendly races you don't know the language of, kind of odd but who knows what races you've hired

• the effectiveness of interference plating should depend on cargo hold size, or ship mass to make it more general since there's both illegal cargo and illegal outfits
  currently it's just a flat equation, which when true means the scan fails:
  Random::Real() > 1. / (1. + ship->Attributes().Get("scan interference")) where Random::Real is between 0 and 1
  this means as your plating increases the likelihood of the random number being the larger, and the scan failing, increases

• with autofire, when a ship has a variety of shot speeds which affect its aiming lead it should prefer to pick a lead that gives the best dps, if your ship has two beam laser and an energy blaster the lead for the blaster will tend to cause the lasers to not hit the target
  is this based on range?

• an escort ship refueling on a planet during a journey should recharge shields and possibly hull, especially if the date ticks over during

• ships spawned by escort missions stay in the system if you disable them and land, random spawn ships disappear when you land, oddity

• during escort missions you should have to wait for escorts to be ready to jump, in a similar way to how your fleet must wait for you when you hold 'j', escorted ships are essentially invulnerable if you're not in the same system as them so a mechanic to make them spend more time with you like this should be desirable

• a lot of file related code doesn't care about the extension of the file it reads as long as it ends in a 3 letter extension, saves typically

• capturing a ship before it releases its fighters (and probably drones) will jettison the fighters, which makes sense for manned craft but what about unmanned?

• escorts are currently aware of wormhole and system connections the player isn't

• dead ships shouldn't cause yellow course plotting, they're dead not 'unable to jump' or 'out of fuel' - fixed in branch 'travel-route-fixes'

• outfitter should check if you have a slot free to equip a weapon/turret before saying you don't have space for it

• enemy ships should try to capture you when you're disabled, otherwise the capture defense stat is very limited

• when you request fuel from an escort and it can supply enough for your jump but won't have enough for itself after, it should still provide you with it

• when you have deploy-fighters toggled off, fighters you have just captured try to dock but when in combat they don't trigger their parent to stay still so they can dock quickly, typically causing them to get disabled/destroyed due to their low hp

• having just a single ship causes yellow course plotting on map - fixed in branch 'travel-route-fixes'

• you can scroll the outfits/ships farther with arrow keys than mousewheel in shopscreen

• hold position should probably hold a position, not just halt