FIRE AT WILL*
by Hazed
The next part of the ship fighting code has now been put into the game, allowing you to fire lasers at your opponent.
The ‘FIRE’ command lets you fire your laser, twin laser or quad laser once you are in close range. The command is, as you could probably work out, ‘FIRE weapon’ where ‘weapon’ is either ‘laser’, ‘tl’ or ‘ql’.
Incidentally, ‘FIRE MISSILE’ will also work as an alternative to the ‘LAUNCH MISSILE’ command, but only when you’re in open range. It doesn’t work the other way round, though – you can’t launch a laser. (Not even as a last ditch effort in which you throw the equipment at your enemy.)
Right now the game assumes you just have one of each type of laser, and it will fire the first one in the list no matter whether it is damaged. If the first laser, tl or ql has been reduced to zero, then you won’t be able to fire it. Eventually the game will pick the least damaged weapon and use that.
When you fire a laser the usual calculations will be made to determine whether you hit your target, taking into account any sensors you have which will improve your targeting (jammers have no effect on laser fire). If you do hit then the laser will inflict damage on your opponent’s ship – generally lasers do half as much damage as a hit by a missile, twin lasers the same amount and quad lasers twice as much.
However, the damage can be mitigated by shields. Each point of shielding will reduce any incoming laser strike by two percent, which means that the standard 10 points will reduce the potential damage by 20%.
At the moment you can escape from somebody’s laser blasts by simply moving out of the location, but the plan is that if you are in close range or either intermediate range you won’t be able to move your ship but will have to flee. Alan will be coding that once he’s sure the laser fire code is working.
So have fun blasting each other with your lasers, and as always, if you find any problems please email feedback@ibgames.com (don’t forget to put Fed2 in the subject line).
* There is a Commander Will in the game, but please don’t fire at him!
