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[magellan]

most of the input goes through the keyin function found in prosIO.bas.
among other things that function checks against a string if the key is allowed and waits for another one if it isn't.
I therefore doubt that multikey is going to help, since you need it in a string anyway for the check. (and modifiying that codepart looks like a nice piece of work to me)

But: If you want to do it, and it works: Great! feel free!

Also: you looked at the code and you *didn't* go blind?

[codezero]

Heh, my code is just as bad if not worse, even though I've been using freeBASIC for a while. There's another keyword called ScreenEvent which I'm looking at using instead of multikey.

[Tormy]

Hm...my game has crashed after ~20 minutes of playing. Anyone had problems like these?

[magellan]

There has been that inventory thing, but that has been fixed. Other than that it has been fairly stable. though there is that one planet map algo that i suspect to go into infinity loops on rare occasion. haven't been able to pinpoint that one yet.
What have you been doing when it crashed? And did it freeze or crash?

[Muz]

How do you be a pirate or pirate hunter? I could never find enough ships, and the starting ship doesn't support good sensors.

[WorkerDrone]

I have to admit, I don't even think there's an inventory menu...

Or let me put it this way. If things work like described, and you equip the better equipment out of what you own, than theres absolutely NO FLAVOR AT ALL in the action that it makes it 'almost' pointless to have names for such equipment.

You might as well name the weapons in tiers, like zappy gun 1 through 5, and Super Secret Weapon Version 2.

Maybe its just me, in fact, its almost certainly just me, but there isn't anyway I can play a game with no flavor text at all. I guess I'll just have to stick with ASCII Sector, no matter how hard the game was for me.

[magellan]

You are right workerdrone
They are basically zappy gun 1-5, and they need to be because everything else leads to a micromanagement nightmare. Especially with the turnover rate those redshirts tend to have.

As to piratehunting:
There are quite a few things that influence pirate/merchant/patrolboat populations, so it is pretty impossible to predict how and where they grow/decline. But every (what was it, 6?) few turns a new fleet enters, so the later the game the more likely you are to run into other ships. 

[Muz]

Well, what's the point of killing merchants? They don't seem to give any money

[magellan]

What? don't tell me they dont give cargo anymore...

oh hell... they don't ... working on it

[magellan]

Fixed. also fixed the 2 shopbugs mentioned by codezero earlier, the dead pirate attacking bug, a typo or 2, made middleclass shis cheaper, and you need to inspect plants and corpses now to get biodata.

[beorn080]

I have a minor balance concern. Late game, the only ship that's worthwhile is the Battleship. It can get near max sensors, engines, and shields, and with 5 weapon slots it can match any of the other high end ships or surpass them, with the exception of the highend scout with sensors. Indeed, I just checked and it can be equal in passengers to the final form of troop carrier, 2 less cargo then the merchantmen, and only 1 sensor less then the scout with 50 more fuel. Plus its hull and other equipment also surpasses all the others. Even the destroyer is fairly close to the end game ships. Not sure how to address that though, short of bumping up the other ships in their specialties.

[Nirur Torir]

I agree. I feel that the battleship should be limited to L2 or L3 sensors, and maybe L2-L3 engines. It's a bit strange that a battleship is faster and more maneuverable than a fighter.

I also tried being a merchant, and feel that the starting merchant ship shouldn't come with all 5 security officers already hired. With the trade prices being apparently random, even a few bad could easily bankrupt the player early on. My best pure merchant game so far was one where a pirate attacked me and got a lucky strike in that just blew up all my security officers. 30 credits to dock is much easier to pay than 80.

WARNING: I know nothing of game balance.

[Neonivek]

Limiting it to lesser sensors and engines make little sense. Though it could be a justified gameplay element.

Engines though don't need to be limited it just has to come with natural manuverability issues.

Afterall in essence a Battleship is just a huge ship with thick walls.

[wallish]

While I really like the fact that you can now inspect dead creatures and get info, I have a few small requests/suggestions to make:

1) Since you now have to manually inspect every plant, could they maybe be worth more in data? Or maybe make the grass auto-scanned at 1 point and the trees/bushes manual scan at, say, 5-10 points like creatures?

2) This is a big one, and I'm not sure how simple it would be to do (not very, I'd assume).  Basically, it'd be great if we had a sort of database/encyclopedia/catalog of scanned creatures and plants.  When a player lands of a planet for the first time, let them name it (or just assign names to stars and then numbers to planets, e.g. Earth = Sol-3, or randomly QX-3).  Then as we scan creatures put them into that database under the star->planet->category they were found in.  So if I found a mammal on planet QX-3 the database would go QX->QX-3->mammals->[whatever].  This feature really does not seem like an anytime soon feature.  It'd require planet naming, creature naming, features for plants, etc.  It would be neat though

[magellan]

thanks to this discussion i just discovered a tiny displayglitch...
Shipstatus and the sidebar don't display movement points for spacecombat correctly. (In spacecombat it does however)

the formula is this: MP=3+engine-hullpoints/20
So while a 50 HP, engine 5 battleship is still pretty fast with 6 MP it really doesn't want to get too many engine hits

There are actually quite a few ways to balance here, wich is propably why its so easy to screw it up

Oh: and prices aren't random. there is a supply /demand thing that is random, and merchants

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

screw everything up by always loading the most abundant goods and haul them to the next station no matter what. Oh and if they meet a pirate there is a almost but not quite real battle fought in the background.

but you will notice that if you haul the same goods from a to b repeatedly the price will deterioate.

Spicing up botany.... definitely wouldn't hurt. thx for the feedback