Moving seedlings

[wogan]

I've noticed that when you order seedlings to move from one asteroid to another, the infobar reports the same number of seedlings. They're only "moved" once they enter orbit around another asteroid.

What's annoying is when you have a limited number of seedlings (say 15), you dispatch 5 to other asteroids, and when another 5 have generated, you plant a tree. If those seedlings you moved haven't reached their target asteroid yet, they stand a chance of being sacrificed.

I imagine every asteroid has a unique ID, and every seedling is associated with an asteroid ID. If seedlings in motion between asteroids could be assigned a null id (like -1), it would prevent them from being counted as resources on any asteroid until they've reached their target - which only makes sense, imo.

[Alex]

Yeah, that's exactly right and very perceptive. The seedlings need a limbo state where they're not associated with any asteroid. Additionally, the effective radius of an asteroid's atmosphere is way too low at the moment, so the battles only happen near the surface, which is lame, and the seedlings only "land" at an asteroid when they get really close, which is also a bit cack.

[wogan]

Actually, that's another imbalance I ran into. I tried attacking an asteroid with 200 enemies, and I had upwards of 250 seedlings at my disposal, all anchored on a single asteroid.

Seedlings only deploy (and start firing) when they enter orbit, but the enemy seedlings tore mine to shreds as soon as they came within range. Taking out any sort of asteroid with a large number of seedlings suddenly becomes a bit ridiculous.

IMO, only make attacking seedlings fire-on-able when they enter orbit and deploy. That will at least make the battles fair.

[Alex]

I'll be raising the atmosphere cap anyway, so this will be less of a problem. There's work to do with the battle mechanics regarding some of the features we've got planned, so it shouldn't remain a problem forever

[crazeh.monkeh]

What you could do is increase the atmosphere radius, but keep the seedling hover distance about the same. That way the attacking seedlings can attack at the same time as the defending seedlings.

They should probably go into some kind of limbo state, though... Actually, if you just assigned them to a null asteroid and there were two different groups moving past one another wouldn't they (in theory) attack each other as they passed? That may or may not be good... I'm not really sure what I think about that. Lol

[wogan]

Actually, if you just assigned them to a null asteroid and there were two different groups moving past one another wouldn't they (in theory) attack each other as they passed?

Probably not. Seedlings fold their wings for inter-asteroid travel, which makes them incapable of attacking (hence my point earlier). So passing eachother wouldn't start a fight.

[Alex]

They operate with a finite state machine. Certain states check the surrounding area for enemies; the travelling state isn't one of those. However, if attacked the seedling will currently pop into attack mode around the asteroid around which its attacker is based. That's the reason sending past asteroids is currently less possible than it was in previous builds (it was a common complaint before).