Pods, ride shotgun

[Clarks]

We could use a verb to change driver in a pod. When the driver calls shotgun in a 2 person pod, the other passenger gets a pop-up to confirm that he wants to drive; while on a 4 person pod the driver gets a list of all other passengers to pick who he wants to switch places with.

[Captain_Bravo]

It'd also be nice if filling the other seats made the pod better in some way. Like, a co-pilot can man the guns, and is better at it, or passengers give boosts to pod health/rate of fire/etc.

[KikiMofo]

It'd also be nice if filling the other seats made the pod better in some way. Like, a co-pilot can man the guns, and is better at it, or passengers give boosts to pod health/rate of fire/etc.

A miniature game of FTL in a four person pod. I like it.

[UrsulaMejor]

Give the co pilot the ability to point-click the guns to shoot in the cardinal directions instead of limiting them to forward (as they are not distracted by driving), so you can have much more interesting pod battles with team coordination.

In four man pods, the second person in the driver queue is the co pilot

[UrsulaMejor]

Or let the co pilot rotate the guns with the arrow keys (sorry for double post)

[Captain_Bravo]

In a four-man pod, give one of the other people Thrusters. They can bump the pod in a cardinal direction 1 square, without changing the pod's momentum, at a rate a little less than firing weapons.

"It's right on our tail!"
"Take evasive action!"

[UrsulaMejor]

Basically, we need more intra-pod interaction. Let's start with the ability to change seats without having to step out into space to do so!

[Crumplehat]

There's still a lot of stuff about pods that behaves weirdly. They still act as if they're one square that just happens to have other squares attached. When you cloak, only the one square gets that little shield around it even though your whole pod's invisible. The guns tend to fire at different speeds, too, it seems, which is probably related to that; it was very bad a little ways back but I think it got evened out again. That said, I think issues like that would prevent giving pods that kind of multi-user functionality. As it is, a passenger on a pod already has the ability to fire the guns, and this more often than not tends to end very badly (although I agree it would be awesome if it could be worked out to have passengers aim guns for more epic drone battles).

Making an additional dialogue box for getting into pods seems like it'd make it more awkward, though, unless you made it so you could just click-drag yourself into a pod instead of having to go through that frustrating right click menu where the buttons never fucking work on the first try.

But still, it does sound cool. I'd like passengers to be able to do USEFUL things instead of just worrying that they're going to steal the pod the moment I step out of it.

[Sundance]

Making an additional dialogue box for getting into pods seems like it'd make it more awkward, though, unless you made it so you could just click-drag yourself into a pod instead of having to go through that frustrating right click menu where the buttons never fucking work on the first try.

It's seems pretty simple, I don't think r-click needs to be put in. Just add a verb "assign seats" on the right window, in which people can select a seat to sit in. It's nothing to do with the properties of the pod, the fact that it's not a true 2x2 object, you could do this with a 1x1 object too. The assign seat verb will pop-up a window, and you have a choice of 4 seats (given the ship). Selecting a seat that's already taken will bring up a further prompt:
"This seat is already taken, request to change seats?" Selecting yes, will prompt the other player to change seats. If the other player selects no, then the seats will not be changed, and cannot be changed for 2 minutes or so, to stop someone sitting on the co-pilot seat and spamming the request.

So the seats.. Pilot, Co-pilot, Technician, and passenger.
Pilot controls the ship
Co-pilot can do

Or let the co pilot rotate the guns with the arrow keys (sorry for double post)

.
Having a technician on your ship allows for certain things. It allows for when the pod is on fire, that the players within the pod can be extinguished (and thus not burn). It also allows for a booster, which was already suggested. He also repairs the ship, at a very slow rate (not useful if you are in a pod fight)
A passenger is just a plain ol' passenger, but he does have access to the ship's computer.

The great thing that is suggested that, a player can swap midflight. So a co-pilot can swap to be a technician if that is necessary. Another plus is that the pilot could eject himself from the ship, and the ship would just keep flying the same direction until someone swaps seats to become the pilot.

Addendum: "resisting" inside a pod should allow you to FORCE your way onto the pilot seat, and booting the pilot out into sapce. The pilot could resist back, but it's just a battle of the clicking at that point. This can be prevented with pod lock. GTA IN SPAAAACE.

[Captain_Bravo]

That's a great idea, Sundance! Let one of the seats be the technician, and able to use tools on the pod while inside. Fire Extinguisher to put people out, Welder to repair damage on the go, crowbar to swap out modules without having to exit the pod and watch it fly away. The last one should still require the engine to be turned off first, and any modules you remove will float off behind you in space, but you can maintain your momentum and still fix the pod if you don't have a spacesuit.

[Anticheese]

That's a great idea, Sundance! Let one of the seats be the technician, and able to use tools on the pod while inside. Fire Extinguisher to put people out, Welder to repair damage on the go, crowbar to swap out modules without having to exit the pod and watch it fly away. The last one should still require the engine to be turned off first, and any modules you remove will float off behind you in space, but you can maintain your momentum and still fix the pod if you don't have a spacesuit.

Goad a vigilante into chasing after your phaser pod, then swap it out for a 40mm cannon.

[Wydamn]

A miniature game of FTL in a four person pod. I like it.

This would be do-able if there was a mini z-level that you entered by boarding a pod. It would add a whole new level to pods, introducing new ways to handle modules as subsystems as well as the potential for pod hull breaches, on-board atmospherics, and cargo handling. But I don't think you can dynamically create z-levels in BYOND, so there would have to a bunch of z-levels prepared for each pod and any pods that get made, and then there would be a limit to that.

[Captain_Bravo]

That's actually pretty similar to something Sundance worked on a while back in his sprite thread, where he basically sprited up a small "Martian Mothership" Z-level, and there would be a giant mothership that flew around and shot people controlled from inside.

I think it was deemed too difficult to code, though, so doubtful it could work.

[Sundance]

That's actually pretty similar to something Sundance worked on a while back in his sprite thread, where he basically sprited up a small "Martian Mothership" Z-level, and there would be a giant mothership that flew around and shot people controlled from inside.

I think it was deemed too difficult to code, though, so doubtful it could work.

It was indeed to difficult to code (it was something like a 7x7 size ship holy shit), so I swapped that idea with smaller 2x2 ships, and I've sprited a "mothership" 3x3 too that i've yet to submit because effort.

I don't think the idea here however is to have an ftl style thing, I think the idea is that the pod just counts who's in the pod, and gives that person certain entitlements depending on what seat they are in. The seats are imaginary, as is everything inside the ship. There is no interior as such.