Huh...I'm only just discovering this. But the sprites are just wonderful, it would be a shame for them not to be used somehow.
Made the main post considerably shorter so that people interested in certain areas can quickly look at them without having to scroll so much.
Yeah, but I couldn't find a good sprite of it since the lighting of the other ships were affecting its real colors. Edit: Working on Respawn Animation.
I've been thinking. . . about gravity manipulation and signature weapons, so I came up with this thought. I think the Drale's signature weapon should be a Chakram (essentially a bladed frisbee.) Unlike Terraria's Chakram, it doesn't bounce by default though. It looks like this: It is the Drale's signature weapon because it is so versatile (And it involves gravity manipulation, which would be completely awesome for the Drale.) The Chakram is also their first "own" weapon. The Drale engineered them from knowledge about antigravity that the old race knew. It's become a symbol of pride and progress for many Drale, they take it as proof that they are now inventors and discoverers, fit to explore the stars, as opposed to mere scavengers. You can throw it and it returns to you like a boomerang, travelling though and dealing damage to an enemy twice. But more important is its alt-fire. After you throw it, you can alt-fire, and it generates an artificial gravity well that pulls you toward it, flinging you through the air, though normally it doesn't have the energy to throw anything else. You can control the alt-fire by just releasing it, causing the Chakram to instantly return to you. Whle the initial Chakram is useful, it can be made much more powerful as you progress through the game by upgrading it, which requires the Drale's minerals, Crimzon for the red Chakram, Lusterium for the Cyan one, and Agatite for the purple one. The Red Chakram is the most easy-to-understand upgrade. It deals more damage and its alt-fire now affects everything, enemies, you, and projectiles that respond to gravity. this allows you to cluster enemies up to throw a grenade in their midsts. Though be careful, as the Red Chakram pulls you toward it too, which might result in a very Fun moshpit. Though its alt-fire turns off its attack, so you can't kill a nice big cluster of enemies in one shot. (Yet.) Upgrading the Red Chakram makes it deal more damage and when its alt-fire is on, it doesn't turn off its attack, ensuring that everything that touches it (including you if you're not careful.) takes the damage of one hit. This will slaughter groups of enemies in easier worlds, and deal good damage to groups on harder planets. The Cyan Chakram turns the chakram into the Terraria-style bounce-fest. It'll bounce off of X walls, every time it hits an enemy, it deals damage, making this weapon insanely powerful in corridors. To make it less situational, every time it bounces, it aims itself just slightly, making it easier to use, but it only homes-in by about 5-10 degrees, so if you don't aim it at all, then you're still going to waste several potential hits, and make this weapon feel quite underpowered until you see it in the hands of someone whose good at it. Upgrading the Cyan Chakram increases the number of bounces it has and increases its homing ability substantially, it now can change its bounces quite a bit, like 20-30 degrees, making it viable in many more situations (Although the additional homing isn't quite as amazing in caves as it is outside, so it shouldn't be overpowered.) the Purple chakram is merely a range bonus and an alt-fire power incease. The first upgrade doubles the range and power of the first unupgraded one's. At this point you should watch out, because messing up your pull/superjump could deal a lot of damage. The purple's upgrade doubles its range from the first Purple Chakram's range, making it 4x longer ranged than the others. You can throw it across the screen and then some. At this point you could probably one-shot yourself with fall damage (Provided you have no damage mitigation) by throwing it up and activating its alt-fire at the peak of its range. I was really bored, mining in EVE and in a skype call with my friends, so I decided to make pixel art for these things. I'm surprised they turned out so well, actually. EDIT: Is there a way to delete the "Attached Files" box without uploading them to some image hosting site? I'm lazy and don't want to create an account at one of those.
Wow. But there was a problem with terraria's "Boomerangs" If you stand right next to an enemy you can fire unbelievably fast.
One of the reasons they don't just bounce off of enemies, and instead travel through them. Clairified my post to make that a bit more obvious.
So, let's say the Drale still have wings. Who says they have to do anything? It's the race's armour that gives them their specific powers. Also, a suggestion for what the armour's power could be is a sort of jump boost. The Avians already have glider armour, so a jump boost could be good without being too similar to the abilities already there. Forgive me if I'm rambling or simply being stupid, it's late and I've only just though of this now.
This is nice, I'll probably add it to the OP. Though the color scheme you used implies that it's a late game item. I'm not sure if some races have pros and cons that directly affect gameplay. If so, then I will move some of the pros towards the armors I have planned out.
I was thinking it was the first "late game" item you'll get. You'll probably be able to craft it somewhere around early mid-game if you wanted to, and just mid-game if you weren't rushing it. I think it should seem very early compared to others with that color scheme because it's the first Drale-invented item, and therefore probably simpler (and obviously smaller) than armors and other inventions.
Well they did make stone tools first, maybe a predecessor could be a scrap chakram? A scrapkram? And instead of direct gravity manipulation, I think it is more along the lines of magnetism.
I'm fairly sure the devs said that the races don't have any specific pros or cons that affect gameplay. Each race's armor sets will have a specific bonus unique to their armor, however you'll eventually be able to craft other races armors as well.
But for the most part, magnetism is simply gravity for metallic objects (Except much, much stronger, 10^36 times stronger. For those of you who aren't into math, that's a lot.) But gravity manipulation is more exotic. And we know it exists in the Starbound universe, as our ships probably have artificial gravity. The Drale just utilize gravity manipulation more than the other races. This is due to a few factors, one of the largest intact vaults of knowledge they found contained research and information on gravity manipulation technology. (As well as a prototype ship, that eventually became one of the first spacefaring Drale vessels. While other types of ship appeared shortly afterwards, standard rockets and nuclear pulse propulsion, wealthy Drale prefer the classiness and sleekness of design that is provided from simply manipulating a local gravitational field to travel. More utility-oriented ships rely on the agility of being able to accelerate in any direction equally well. Although Drale society does not have the infrastructure to mass-produce such items, so large gravity manipulation remains very exclusive to the high-class.) The local gravity manipulation factor was very useful in combination with the Drale's wings, as it would lessen the energy required for flight, allowing them to essentially doublejump, and with enough power and changes, sustained flight. This was an incredibly useful trait that high-end Drale technology applies.
I really love this race and your work. Totaly original and just fit perfectly with SB design. Really hope to see them in the game one day.
