Bandit LOAF: Message 3 appeasing and 4 taunting I can understand, but how does 1 and 2 add to the current state? If a ship is neutral towards you, how does it become more neutral? Doesn't 1 and 2 just not have an effect?
Maybe it's in the way I've programmed ships' attitudes: I've just given each ship an attitude rating where -120 to -20 is hostile, -19 to 19 is neutral, and 20 to 120 is friendly. Sending an appeasing message will increase this rating (most of the time), whereas sending a taunting message will of course decrease it. I can't see how I can make 1 and 2 add to the current state, without moving towards the friendly or hostile state?
Anyway, how about message #1 you can send to a hostile Kilrathi ("We can avoid a fight.") -- isn't that appeasing?
ljuin: The way I've made it now is that you can just have 1 gun on a fighter (not counting guns on turrets!). I might add some kind of mechanism for you to have more guns and being able to switch between them (maybe having a period of time where you can't fire a gun, while the other gun is activated), but for now you can only have 1 gun on a fighter. I know this seems odd compared to the original Privateer, but I feel that it fits with the Ascii nature of the game. However, I might chance this based on feedback from the demo...