Co-op Captains

[ronron]

Was thinking, to help promote the game through Steam remote play (like how I was convinced to buy Helldivers through it), what if there was a "captain" that thematically suggested players use Steam Remote play with a buddy. It could have -50% deployment cost and 2x mission rewards to allow twice as much income so both players could build a drone at the same pace. Two inseparable pals in the academy graduate with top marks to become co-captains of the Nimbatus, bringing with them the following drone parts:
-2 coolers
-12 small thrusters
-2 thrusters
-6 small fuel tanks
-6 small batteries
-2 kinetic blasters
-1 small magnet (teamwork time)
-1 decoupler (to allow player 2 to move on their own)
-2 resource collectors
-1 resource tank
-1 button
-2 cameras
-2 angle blocks

[STM]

Nice idea, but as far as I know multiplayer is something that is not planned.

[ronron]

Meant to instigate Steam Remote Play sessions, which are stable enough for Nimbatus without any real input from dev brigade. 

[Markus]

I can't say anything about implementing such a mode (we haven't planned yet what we will add to the game after the launch), but let me ask some questions for clarification

How would you imagine such a mode play out? Would there be splitscreen or would you imagine the camera zoom out as far as needed (so see both player at the same time? Even when it become so small that you can't barely see details anymore?). How would you like death to behave? If one player dies he has to wait? Or is it a shared drone core?

There's the technical limitation of only having one mouse input allowed. Would player 2 have to build a drone which has to work without mouse input? Especially in early game this might be very tricky  Probably for that reason alone such a mode would be very difficult to properly implement.

[Zixvir]

the solution would to be to have it be a dlc, it would require 2 engines running  at once so a paid for, dlc would be good, but you will need to beta test it, I volentier,  @ronron I understand you not thinking this would be a big ordeal, but either it needs special gaming equipment or an in-game dlc,  and more people like dlc's and the dlc would be harder to do, 

so some ideas on how this could work, @Markus there would be a beta-tested dlc that adds this captain and also says that it needs two mouse's and keyboards in-order to work, it would require massive programming as it would basically  be making a new computer system, so you would basically double the engine,  but the hard part would be letting it work with the computer,  the dlc can't be free as it will be an ordeal to make,  split screen would work best as zoom out would be unbalanced maybe it would turn into one screen when within range of the zoom radius and it would  stick at the zoom you set it to when it gets your drones close enough to zoom in more, there would be a zoom in bar for the   maximum zoom in, any complaints could be answered with advice, 

instead of making my own post i'm gonna ask, ronron,  would there be anything you want to change about this or do you like this as a good system, or do you wanna add on to it, this is basically your information so do whatever you want with it, no need to say anything about me. 

[Zixvir]

On 5/16/2020 at 8:18 AM, ronron said:

Was thinking, to help promote the game through Steam remote play (like how I was convinced to buy Helldivers through it), what if there was a "captain" that thematically suggested players use Steam Remote play with a buddy. It could have -50% deployment cost and 2x mission rewards to allow twice as much income so both players could build a drone at the same pace. Two inseparable pals in the academy graduate with top marks to become co-captains of the Nimbatus, bringing with them the following drone parts:
-2 coolers
-12 small thrusters
-2 thrusters
-6 small fuel tanks
-6 small batteries
-2 kinetic blasters
-1 small magnet (teamwork time)
-1 decoupler (to allow player 2 to move on their own)
-2 resource collectors
-1 resource tank
-1 button
-2 cameras
-2 angle blocks

also not enough fuel or thrusters, the limitation of weapons insentivisez the working together part but you need to be together to work together, 

[ronron]

On 5/18/2020 at 7:24 AM, Markus said:

I can't say anything about implementing such a mode (we haven't planned yet what we will add to the game after the launch), but let me ask some questions for clarification

How would you imagine such a mode play out? Would there be splitscreen or would you imagine the camera zoom out as far as needed (so see both player at the same time? Even when it become so small that you can't barely see details anymore?). How would you like death to behave? If one player dies he has to wait? Or is it a shared drone core?

There's the technical limitation of only having one mouse input allowed. Would player 2 have to build a drone which has to work without mouse input? Especially in early game this might be very tricky  Probably for that reason alone such a mode would be very difficult to properly implement.

The idea would be that the player would use the camera blocks to keep focus on both minidrones (assuming neither camera block was destroyed, and assuming splitscreen was never added as an option to camera blocks) so players could always know how to get to where they need to be to close the camera's gap.

Initially, there would be pressure on either one or the other player to keep the drone core safe while they hunt for an extra decoupler to let the core take off into space, though the non-core player would be pressured to keep their decoupler alive so their connection to the core would remain.

A single mouse input allows the team to apply focus to a particular area, however this captain does focus on keyboard access through Steam Remote Play. To counteract the issue, the players are given additional small thrusters to allow for strafe control at the start of the game so they can stay on target until they get more advanced parts to aim the guns independently from the mouse. Another possibility is that one player is a mouse-controlled super-turret that's stored in a hollow chunk of the main drone while player 2 controls the main drone, considering the additional possible drone size involved.

In the event of a single player, this captain remains a normal difficulty through the starvation of fuel tanks for its bulky drone designs instead of having the challenge of dealing with creating and maintaining two smaller drones that launch together. The single player will have to balance their weight against their anemic fuel stores for each mission until they're washed through a good chunk of the first and possibly second galaxy which co-op will have to figure out the most efficient way of teamwork to accomplish a given goal. I'd guess the biggest obstacle would be figuring out how to 2x mission rewards.