add new enemy: sawblade ship

[Riot]

Design concept by chancellorz:

Sawblade ship.

• With either shields or a great resistance against laser/energy weapons. May block those types of projectiles or absorb them in some way. Less effective against missles, mines and fuelburst. I assume it would be antagonized (i.e. spin faster) by a flamethrower because otherwise people would just wait for it rather than try to run away. Running away from something in 3D is where the fun begins! Physical and explosive damage would be a marked weakness.

• Somewhat comparable size to player ship. Definitely not an extremely small or big ship.

• Ship spins in a saucer-like fashion.

• Moves and spins faster the more damage that is taken by this ship.

• Aggressive enemy that will continue to engage over a large range.

• Chooses to charge and ram the majority of time in swooping "dive-bomb" runs. Rather than strictly left-to-right dive-bomb runs which is predictable something like drawing a star so that the angle of attack varies. Most things can pass you and come back to haunt you even in 3D. In this case it is not the result of the weapon but the enemy itself.

• Limited range guns. Because of range it generally strafes the enemy in accordance with its other behavior. Potentially clears a path with this weapon or shoots if it is rotating slowly.

• Has a preference to collide with another ship while rotating especially when at high rotations/velocity. I would presume that catching an enemy on the sawblade while rotating at a decent speed diminishes the ramming damage suffered by the rammer. There is some irony at work in this train of thought as to its weakness and greatest strength.

[Norgg]

The mechanic I'm thinking of going for with this is to have the ship be actually unarmed, but with a really high resistance to damage while it's spinning fast (probably reflecting bullets), followed by it charging the player at high speed, then being more vulnerable as it's "used up" the spin it had and resetting. The blade will be destroyable separately to the ship itself, which will attempt to flee if the blade is gone.

@SlowRiot: Do you think that matches chancellorz's description closely enough?

[Riot]

Yes that sounds like a good way to do it. But how about giving it a weapon it can fire once the blade is destroyed, so it's not just running away from you? That would make it a bit more boss-like.

[Riot]

Removing milestone: Beta (automated comment)