Order drones to lower/raise shields

[madpeople]

For some reason I had some random ideas this morning I don't expect them to be implemented bit I figured I would post them anyway.

The first idea is to allow a team* to order their drones to raise/lower their shields. Opening chat to a drone and pressing "s" would auto complete to "Shields up" if the shields are down, or "Shields down" if they are up, pressing tab would toggle between the two auto-completes (say if you had a group selected with different states and wanted to change them all to have shields up/down). If you have a group selected and issue that order it would default to the "shields up" command.

It might be better to use the existing command system - two chat commands Shields up/down (if issued to players gives them press insert to accept, pressing accept will attempt to perform the action on their ship if possible (shields down on a player with shields up and free cargo space will work, if their cargo is full then the player has to figure it out them selves).

I'm not sure about assigning two crtl+[key] command buttons for these commands hence my suggestion about chat auto complete for drones.


The second idea was for probes to remember who dropped them (parent player) and for a small fraction of points to be assigned to the parent player for pod rescues / ships detected ? / kills?? (similar ideas as this have been proposed before I know).

[HSharp]

QUOTE (madpeople @ Feb 20 2012, 01:03 PM) The second idea was for probes to remember who dropped them (parent player) and for a small fraction of points to be assigned to the parent player for pod rescues / ships detected ? / kills?? (similar ideas as this have been proposed before I know).

Kills by rix pods and TF Plasgens show the correct killler so there is already something there for probes to know the parent player.

[Spunkmeyer]

I thought of implementing the shield up-down idea - but in the end, there isn't much reason for a con to have shields up unless it's of the "will be seen anyway and it's a really short run" variety. So mostly what we'd be doing with this is to lower con signature significantly for most runs, which would be an undesirable gameplay change I think.

Admittedly, it is more interesting for miners.

[fuzzylunkin1]

QUOTE (Spunkmeyer @ Feb 20 2012, 08:21 AM) I thought of implementing the shield up-down idea - but in the end, there isn't much reason for a con to have shields up unless it's of the "will be seen anyway and it's a really short run" variety. So mostly what we'd be doing with this is to lower con signature significantly for most runs, which would be an undesirable gameplay change I think.

Admittedly, it is more interesting for miners.

How much do you think gameplay would actually be affected? I doubt it would change scouting much, for a good scout anyway. It could affect probing and ints that go miner hunting blind.

I think it would just end up making miners easier to kill, assuming current balance.

So I think it could work, but balance changes would be necessary definitely. What about the concept of minishields, etc, for drones?