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Title: Interesting Mmrnmhrm quirk Post by: Shiver on October 13, 2008, 05:10:03 am Minor details of super melee normally aren't of interest to the Star Control community at large, but I got curious about something and ended up e-mailing Paul Reiche III over it. It would be wrong for me not to share his response with everyone.
Quote from: Shiver Hi Paul, I have a question for you regarding Star Control. During a session of net melee I somehow managed to coat someone else's Mmrnmhrm Transformer with limpets. When the other player switched from Y-Wing to X-Wing they had regained full mobility of their ship while in that other form. I thought this might be a bug specific to The Ur-Quan Masters, but I tried replicating this in Star Control 1 and everything worked out the same way. Was this a deliberate design decision, and if so how exactly does a Transformer negate VUX limpet cocoons attached to it while using an alternate form? - A huge fan Quote from: PR3 Hey Tristan, I should probably come up with some good rationale, but game-design-wise I think we were looking for ways to encourage the player to shift forms. When play-testing the Mmrnmhrm we noticed that more advanced players would engage in a very slow and (to some) boring strategy of remaining at long distance, constantly shooting missiles. By allowing the limpets to be negated in the alternate form, the player would be more likely to shift in order to avoid the limpet slowdown. So for a rationale, hmm... Perhaps the Mmrnmhrm ship has total redundancy between key functional systems for its 2 forms, including hull plates. That way damage, besides loss of crew, would not affect the functionality of the alternate form. Either that or it's a Wizard. Keep up the invasion! - Paul My devious plan of convincing the core team to fix this quirk is in ruins, but I'm not complaining. 8) Title: Re: Interesting Mmrnmhrm quirk Post by: Anthony on October 13, 2008, 07:59:02 am Hmm... That's a pretty fascinating discovery. I never knew that about the X-Form. And yes, people here do care about minor details about Star Control :D.
I'd love to see the inner workings on an X-Form... Title: Re: Interesting Mmrnmhrm quirk Post by: Alvarin on October 13, 2008, 11:01:56 am Somehow I feel this explanation (redundancy) is ... misleading ?
Being mechanized race , the Mmrnmhrm should have efficiency high on the priority list , so having entirely redundant systems seems unlikely . An explanation I can offer is shifting form dislodges the limpets , but to make this claim I need to know , whether the slowdown occurs on switching back . Title: Re: Interesting Mmrnmhrm quirk Post by: Valaggar Redux on October 13, 2008, 01:56:06 pm Quote to make this claim I need to know , whether the slowdown occurs on switching back . Basically, there are two separate "limpet counts" as far as calculating slowdown is concerned -- one for the X-Form, the other for the Y-Form. So if the X-Form has 10 limpets and the Y-Form has 50 limpets, the X-Form will not be so slowed down, while the Y-Form will be more slowed down, and changing forms won't reset the counts. Title: Re: Interesting Mmrnmhrm quirk Post by: Shiver on October 13, 2008, 06:17:01 pm It was an odd design choice but I don't see how he's being misleading with his answer.
Title: Re: Interesting Mmrnmhrm quirk Post by: Alvarin on October 13, 2008, 08:11:10 pm By "misleading" I was referring to the total redundancy of ship functions .
Title: Nawm the Mmrnmhrm are just that good Post by: PakoPako on October 17, 2008, 06:27:49 pm My memory isn't the best in the world, but I think I remember when changing from a limpet-covered X-to-Y, the Y-Form was slowed down a little. (the email said from Y-to-X)
-=PakoPako=- Title: Re: Nawm the Mmrnmhrm are just that good Post by: Shiver on October 17, 2008, 07:19:11 pm |