Suggestion for Version 2.0

I'm in full and complete favor of an "Abort Jump" button. I've had that issue before as well.

I haven't done a lot with the Jump drive; but if Engineering moves the slider for the jump drive to zero and takes it offline, does that cancel the jump?

Yes but that isn't the problem. The problem is when you use a jump drive you have a counter that appears. It counts down til you are going to jump. If you tried to jump with zero power you are left with a 30 second timer that doesn't go away.

You also can get misfires were you thought you were going to jump and then you didn't and you have to start the process over again and you aren't sure when it is going to go.

By aborting the process and starting from scratch you could have less confusion. Not to mention that having engineering to it is against the point. That is like having your engineering take power out of warp, maneuvering, and impulse because you want the ship to stop. You don't do that, you just tell the helm to stop because it is their station and their responsibility.

Another problem we are having with the jump drive is the colossal energy demand. Some kind of middle ground needs to be found for jump drives because we keep on not having the power needed to fully jump somewhere due to the demands of combat. We are left turning down everything put impulse and slowly limping across the sector while we wait for our in-ship engine to recharge us enough to finish our trip.

A few ideas that were floated during our session were:
1)Jump drive equipped ships have a little more energy
2)Jump drive equipped ships have a slightly faster energy recharge time
3)Jump drives take a little less energy to make long jumps
4)Knowing how much energy a jump will use

The further you jump, the more energy you use. It was a while back when I did some testing with an engineer, but we did build up some results and found that at 100% energy, your usage increased as you attempted to jummp a longer distance.

The test results can be found here. I am unsure what difficult setting was used for these tests (probably setting 1), so a quick check would be required. The difficulty setting does affect the rate of consumption (see the multipliers on the Wiki Pages on the Energy page.)

As for utilising the jump drive, I use shorter jumps to get about. Use stations as "staging points" from which you can make short jumps to attack enemies. Take note of anomalies that you can collect enroute when making longer jumps. The best jumps may not always be the most direct jumps, or the longest. Think of it as taking a "pit stop" before launching in to battle.

Jump drives take time to get used to, so it may be best to keep at least 2 homing torpedoes in reserve as emerency energy supplies until you are confident. If you find you need to use them, thats when you need to get out of combat and make your way back to the nearest station/ source of energy.

I've skimmed through all of the replies in this topic - and I didn't see any discussion on this item from the "if I have time to implement list"

>game event log, so people can look at it for after-action reports


This brief mention isn't very clear on what this "event log" would be - something simple like a time stamped text file showing when someone fired and where - OR

What I'd really like to see is what other games have called "VCR Files".

Basically, the server records a snapshot of the state of all player stations and the ship's condition/location throughout the entire game.

After the game has finished - the game now has created for you - a "VCR File" which would allow you to play back the game (passively of course) and view the gameplay from any of the active stations in the game.

Ideally - you'd then be able to make this "VCR File" available on a website or via email to other people - so not only would you be able to brag about that awesome down-the-throat torpedo hit you made as the ship was falling apart around you but you could SHOW them.

It would also be great as a learning tool - for use by less experienced crews to view someone else's solution to that darn "Kobayashi Maru" scenario someone like Mike S. may have/will come up with...

Of course - to make this feature even more awesome would be if the server would record the state of the other ships (enemies) also - so you could view the damage you inflicted during your after battle analysis.

"VCR Files" that only required the stock media the game ships with could also be used as a marketing tool - allow the demo version of the game to play back example mission files - to give the potential buyer a real taste of what the game is like - allowing him to switch from one station's view to another - interactively - instead of watching something fixed like a youtube video recording of a gaming session.

I'd like the jump drive procedure to go like this: Helm sets distance and direction, gets a readout of energy required, relative to current engineering settings. Helm confirms jump and the countdown starts, representing the "spinning up" of the jump drives. Once the drives are spun up, helm gets "JUMP" and "CANCEL" buttons. As long as the jump drives are spun up they're draining a bit of energy, not enough to make it dangerous, but enough to make waiting too long to jump prohibitive. As soon as helm hits the "JUMP" button, the ship jumps. It could definitely be that the energy consumption to keep the drives spun up could increase exponentially or at least parabolically, so that the longer you wait the faster the energy drains.

As for the tactical/weapons thing, my concept of a tactical station wouldn't exactly be assigning a target queue but an active weapons target assignment. That would be a bit much for science to do if science is actively tracking threats in the whole system while the player ship is being attacked/attacking a fleet of ships. My idea of tactical would definitely shine against a group of fighters, since tactical would be able to see which firing arcs are ready to fire, so for example: A group of fighters is making strafing runs against Artemis. They're coming in successively (ie one after another). Fighter 1 takes 2 hits and tactical realizes that F1 is going to leave the starboard firing arc before the beams recharge, but F2 is just about to enter the starboard arc. Tactical removes the starboard targeting order for F1 and gives it to F2. Meanwhile F1 turns around and comes about for an aft-to-fore run on Artemis' port side, so tactical changes the port targeting order to F1.
Also this would be awesome for busting through the middle of an enemy formation, since you could shoot to port and starboard at the same time

The idea of a VCR file is pretty cool. But it seems like it would increase the computing power requirement for the server. I like the fact that Artemis can play on older, low-end hardware.

The VCR file would be especially useful to LARPers who want to play out an after-battle court martial scene. :-)

After some game testing with a player online on Sunday. Chaz, I believe. We tested the effectiveness of torpedoes as weapon and found them to be sorely lacking. This was the second time I've been able to do testing of their weapons damage. It isn't enough when you consider these MK1 homing torpedoes should be a valuable resource. As of right now I am willing to bet most everyone would use them as a disposable power source instead of a weapon of war.

After I brought up that I think the jump drive needs some improvements Xavier pointed out keeping torpedoes for additional energy. That should be a combat decision to make. To reluctantly turn a torpedo to energy for an escape or to ram it down the enemies throat and ask them how it tastes.
With much consideration I think that a damage of between 30 and 35 per torpedo would be enough to make them worth using in battle without undermining the role of energy weapons with in Artemis.

What difficulty level did you test, Taigia?

I believe that the MK 1 Homing Torpedo's warhead is intended to change based on the difficulty level you select. At difficulty 1 the MK 1 should hit pretty hard. At difficulty 10 it should be a marshmallow.

It's possible that the warhead reduction at high levels is a little too drastic.

When I did my first testing with my captain after a get together, we were at level 1 and unboosted levels it took 8 torpedoes for one Kralien Cruiser. That is the second weakest ship in the game.
I get that beams are so good because we want close in high tension battles where even the best tactics will still get your ship hit with s few shows, but in other sci-fi series the missile/torpedo weapon is your bigger weapon. What you use to finish things quickly.

With Chaz I don't know the difficulty and we mostly just threw munitions at each other. He dominated me in his Battleship while I threw volleys at him from my Missile Cruiser.

If sticking with the usual space-opera model, the torpedoes should be devastating, particularly once shields are down.
However; in those shows, each ship has a limited number of shots (like Artemis), but they are not readily replenished nor easily manufactured on the ship.

I am all for boosting a weapon's potency, but there must be a drawback to balance it.
Perhaps a torpedo could be fired "dumb"; replacing the guidance system with more payload and an impact trigger.
Not a guaranteed hit, but a more powerful punch when it lands.
This would reward the risky, long range shot as well as the in-your-face volley while discouraging the "park-and-shoot" tedium if the AI has access to dumb torpedoes as well.

We already have the disadvantage in that most the TSN ships have only two torpedo tubes. And the average ship holds 8 torpedoes. They are a limited resource that requires you to go all the way back to a station to get more, because turning energy into torpedoes isn't worth it unless in an emergency.

Your best bet is to lay an ECM Missle in there first; then ripple-fire the homing torpedoes. Most of the time we play at diff 8+; and, the homing torps are a waste of ordinance without collapsing the shields first.

I can't say that I'm in favor of increasing their power, though - at least not by much. There's already some pretty beefy ordinance in the arsenal; and, if the homings were too powerful, the option to use them as energy would not look as attractive. Also, all the ships would basically become missile cruisers, and the phaser crews wouldn't have anything to do, as there wouldn't be any reason to "Close & Hose"