A couple of things I was mulling over while considering bugfixes and the like. I was thinking about whether or not that doofy bug had been fixed where a capship can fire its beam weapons during its last stages of destruction (leading to silly shots of beams being powered up and fired from disintegrating ships, or even empty space). I'd -still- like to know the status on this, actually.
I got to thinking. Would it be possible to plug something into the AI that would make "spinner" ships--fighters that fly off their axis when they're destroyed, instead of blowing up right away--randomly fire off some weapons as they're spinning around? It would have no practical applications, but it would add a touch of depth to dogfighting... and I think it would be really cool to see a dying Mara go
pchew pchew pchew before it blew.
On a related note, I thought I might make an attempt to resurrect the push for some flashier damage effects--things like fire and/or smoke venting from heavily-damaged craft. This is
purely eye-candy, with no weird damage modifiers or gradual deterioration... just something pretty to look at, for prettyness's sake.
This is partly inspired by 3DRealms' old combat sim, Terminal Velocity. I always got a hoot out of taking shots at enemy fighters above the clouds... then following them while they spiraled toward the earth, guns firing and engines ablaze, and crashed into the ground.