Coming Along

I have actually been making a lot of progress lately, which is why there have not been a lot of posts. Well, that and the fact that Galactic Fleets is taking up a lot of my time (click that to sign up and I get points! W00t!). I am the type that easily gets addicted to games. I used to play MUDs a long time ago -- I would stay up all night long (after all, that was the only time you could tie up the phone line for hours on end without getting in trouble) level grinding to get the next bit of loot. (Yes, we had spawn camping back then which generally consisted of hitting the "." key every second or so to "do nothing"). That is why I have never touched World of Warcraft. It would be like poison to me.

Anyway, back to the point. I actually created and played through an entire game of Fleet Combat Online from start to finish the other day. Of course I have played a few turns at a stretch to test various new bits of code all the time. But this was the first where I started a game and didn't stop all the way through it. Of course, I was playing both sides since the AI isn't coded yet and I don't want to release the current version of the game.

It went very well. I didn't find any major defects and all the features worked as they should. It needs a little play balancing. I played with one Destroyer armed with a massive rail gun against a frigate with a guided missile launcher and a torpedo launcher. I thought for sure the destroyer would win because of the almost un-dodge able rail gun shots. But it totally went the other way. Even though I was playing against myself, the destroyer could not keep its distance from the frigate because it had to constantly maneuver to dodge incoming missiles. The rail gun on the destroyer only fires forward, so it was useless when the ship had to turn its beam to the incoming fire. So the destroyer went up in flames after inflicting only about 15% damage to the frigate.

Next I will test a larger number of ships, maybe four on two or something. Also, I have implemented damage control since the previous test game, so that may affect the outcome. I will post screenshots of the battle next week.