Postby Gencool » Wed Jul 20, 2016 12:37 pm
So, this is an odd thought, but I figure I'd throw it out there;
How about having combat mirror the ship battle system?
You click on a target and a window pops up, like a cross between V.A.T.S and pokemon. You can use different attacks and target different body parts, depending on the classes involved.
The crew sprites are still active in the ship, and you can move around to effect things like ranged attacks- if you move out of line of site the window closes.
You'd have a handful of abilities that take different lengths of time to charge, and have different effects and bonuses.
E.g.
Humans:
Rifle (high damage, low accuracy, can be used at any range)
Melee (Low damage, high accuracy, can only be used close range)
ConcNade (aoe knockback, high accuracy, any range but may effect self/teammates)
Spiders:
Pounce (ranged only, stuns and moves you next to the target)
Fangs (high damage, medium accuracy, melee only)
Entangle (slows/ reduces accuracy of target, low accuracy, melee only)
Then you click on a bodypart to target (or maybe on an annotation box that points to the part in question)
Different parts might have different effects; head is extra damage, but harder to hit, legs slow the target and decrease their dodge, arms/weapons are extremely hard to hit but can stop their attacks from charging for a short time.
If there's multiple targets in range, you can switch between them with some arrow buttons on the sides of the window.
You could also aim at systems in the same way to attack them, some might have screens and panels you should attack in a specific order to deal the most damage. Some may have security systems you can knock out temporarily, or power boxes for the doors so you can choose your priority.
This way the rotations don't matter, but if/when you add them they would add to the visuals, while this method may be more friendly to online play where lag can really mess about with aiming.
Some classes could even customise these attacks a bit (I can see humans swapping their rifles for pistols/shotguns)