Suggestion for Version 2.0

the homing torps are a waste of ordinance without collapsing the shields first.

I understand that but to collapse their shields you normally close the distances and open fire with your beam weapons. Once their shields are down you hardly ever bother using torpedoes. If you have been strafing and have your rear to them thought you'd drop a mine instead of firing a torpedo.

if the homings were too powerful, the option to use them as energy would not look as attractive.

It shouldn't be an attractive option. It should be a decision that you live or die with. Will the damage done be worth giving up one hundred energy? Do I want to run and possibly lose DS3 because of how close they are or try to fight them off?

all the ships would basically become missile cruisers

All the ships wouldn't be anything like a missile cruiser. They still have the same torpedo room in the armory and still have the same number of tubes.

The 50% to 75% increase in damage I proposed would only put them a little bit a head of unboosted beams while keeping the weakness that you only have 8 torpedoes maximum on the average ship. They are a very finite resource. If a Light Cruiser tried to play like it was a Missile Cruiser it wouldn't do enough damage fast enough to the enemy fleets once they started to group together into super fleets.
A "phaser crew" will still have plenty to do and if the crew doesn't like torpedoes they can continue to use them as AA batteries.

I'm simply saying that, in my experience, with the crews that I have been a part of, the tendency has been to use ordinance weapons either predominantly or exclusively, rather than beams. Most of the other captains only order a beam attack when the enemy is disabled, or they run out of torpedoes and need to run through the enemy to get back to the station to reload. Increasing the power of the torpedoes, IMHO, would only increase the tendency to continue that behavior.

BTW: The fact that a that light cruiser doesn't have 20 torps on board doesn't mean that it's captain won't run it like a missle cruiser!!

A suggestion for expanded Comms roles, without requiring a Comms officer for a full game, would be to have the ability to inform the docked station that the ship wishes to disengage.

Currently, a ship can un-dock simply by engaging the engines. I imagine that the docking crews in the transfer shaft would be a little upset to suddenly find themselves looking out at open space.

For this I would suggest that the Request Dock button on the Helm's station would indicate that docking is complete by turning to a Request Disengage button, one which needs to be pressed to be able to leave the station. As targeting is currently disabled while docked, this feels a little more thematically correct. As for Comm's role in this, like dock a transfer can be sped up by fore warning the station of the ship's intentions, disengaging from the station can work the same, allowing the ship to immediately leave space dock as the crews have been given a heads up. Thus, perhaps a 3 second delay could be programmed if Helm has requested disengagement procedures, but communications has not given a heads up to the station crew.

Just a thought.

hmmm...Makes sense. Maybe comms could be in charge of managing affairs at station. Example is if you dock comms can request what they handle first. Like load munitions before you recharge our energy. That way everything doesn't instantaneously fill up. More realistic that way.

I second the last two posts.

I definitely like the request for undocking.

As far as the munitions request, doesn't the ordinance load at the same time energy is replenished? Having to request all your stores might become a little tedious. The game assumes that there is a master chief acting as a quartermaster who takes care of the details, leaving the officers free to go on shore leave at the station.

I'm simply saying that, in my experience, with the crews that I have been a part of, the tendency has been to use ordinance weapons either predominantly or exclusively, rather than beams. Most of the other captains only order a beam attack when the enemy is disabled, or they run out of torpedoes and need to run through the enemy to get back to the station to reload. Increasing the power of the torpedoes, IMHO, would only increase the tendency to continue that behavior.

With all due respect, given the relative power of beam weapons and torpedoes, that's just a dumb move on your captains' part. Homing missiles definitely need to be beefed up, then I might actually use them for engagements with single Skaraan vessels.

In general, I think 2.0 should start to "level the playing field" between computer and human controlled ships. Optimally, I'd like to see this game in a place where 6 players could connect locally and then connect to a list of global servers (supported in-game) and take battles on a semi-massive scale. To that end, I think the main game mode should be modified to include alien space stations (to be replaced by enemy, human-controlled space stations down the road) for a territory capture or destruction type of game. Defense mechanisms should be created for ships to protect themselves against nukes (and torps in general).

I guess this isn't aimed specifically at 2.0, but I think creating smarter or more specialized AI may be unnecessary if this thing could take off as a fully multiplayer game.

I'm surprised no one has had anything to add in a few days. so two things:
1) Hopefully PAX East will bring plenty of new players.
2) Still want to see new weapons in the future, like a Rail/coil/gauss gun on a playable ship.

I was playing Artemis at a con last weekend on touchscreens, and found something sorely missing while I was playing Engineering - those two lovely little keys, Spacebar and Return. By not being able to reset power levels to 100% and coolant levels to 0, I found myself flapping around all over the screen resetting levels.

I know that's part of the fun; but, it sure helps out to have those two failsafe keys available. With the release of the tablet versions of the game, and since more and more systems are going touchscreen, could we possibly find space on the Engineering screen for power and coolant reset buttons in v2.0?

Touch-screen is also missing presets for Engineering. Having up to 10 presets for various forms of encounters or events or moving around and what have you makes the whole experience that much better. Missing them on the touch screen version adds to the difficulty, but more in the annoying way than fun challenge way.

Maybe just have a small 1-10 on the screen somewhere, like a drop-down menu. Save / load preset 1-10 would help with this.

Regarding engineering being more "touch-able": hear, hear! I've seen 17" 1280x1024 touchscreens for less than $200 now... tempting!

I could imagine the DamCon 3D image being shrunken down to 25% in the upper right corner to make room for Power Reset, Coolant Reset, and preset buttons. Then when you tap the DamCon image have it enlarge to full screen to make it easier to work with; tap its upper right corner "X" to collapse it.

Bonus: make enough screen real estate that the presets could be labeled with user-specified text to indicate what those presets are intended for. Oh wait, touchscreen, no keyboard... hm... going to have to rethink that one! Maybe have a standard set of labels which could be edited in the .ini file?

UI behavior idea: tap/click a preset button to activate it: tap/hold for 3 seconds to "program" it.

Where did you find those touchscreens for under $200?

I went and made the previous post using the wiki as a reference. Apparently this option may have already been included by browsing through the mission directory. Just ignore me.

I've posted details about a $200 17" LCD touchscreen in the Hardware forum here.

for anyone wanting the homing missiles to be stronger, you can change that in the artemis.ini file