Personally, I like knowing when one more blast will finish something off. I don't want to have to empty round after round into a ship and not really know at what point it's going to blow up. It's an important gameplay mechanic, because in that one moment, our minds are weighing the pros and cons of continuing to attack. Does the ship simply have too much health? Is its health regenerating faster than we can destroy it? How many more hits will it take? Will we be able to take it out before that megalithic cruiser that's approaching pulverizes us to a thin paste? And so on.
I don't like the idea of the green/red health bars - they don't seem to fit in with the rest of the game. The LTP seemed to do a good job of it, though - a simple ring around the ship, like Flatfingers said, that fades or turns dark as it's damaged. With that kind of health indicator (or even a dual-ringed health indicator, with the outer ring for shields and the inner ring for hull), it should be possible to tell after a few fights exactly when the ship is going to be destroyed.
(Oh, and, if damaged ships can't learn to run away from losing fights, Josh hasn't done his job with the AI well enough. In a world with pseudointelligent AI, getting kills is MUCH more difficult if you do it right, because they're actually trying to stay alive. I speak from experience. I've done a few things like this myself. I know this isn't quite the place for it, but. It needs to go somewhere.)
Post
Sat May 03, 2014 2:44 pm
#61
Re: Development Update #16: April 2014
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