So far we have not shown much concerning Mothership's stream related features. While we want to do alot with streamer/viewer interaction we do not have everything set in stone yet. One thing we are ready to show off is reinforcements.
Reinforcements
While connected to the streamer's chat viewers can send commands to help out the mothership. The two main commands to do this are !fighter and !miner. Using minerals the viewer has acquired via their own play-through or from watching the stream itself, either command can be used to spawn ships to defend the mothership from attack or send out mining ships to bolster mineral reserves. These ships will have their own HP and can be attacked or targeted by enemies indiviually.
Using BOIDS Flocking, a Construct 2 plugin by tanoshimi (found on the Construct 2 forums), our little fighters can do some sweet strafing runs on enemies! It does have its limitations unfortunately. The main problem is that separate instances have to flock to the same target. For now, I am okay with sending a murderous squad of ships at our enemies! Maybe I can get Lumberchopman to tweak it later.
Ship Tiers
These little ships are so cute its hard to avoid making more of them. There are 7 tiers of ships viewers can summon. Each tier is more powerful than the previous but drastically more expensive. There are plans to have viewer ship skin packs based off each mothership design. The more the merrier I say!
Fighters
Fighters attack enemies on screen and near the mothership. They are relatively weak compared to enemies of the same size. The player can boost their damage and armor with modules and make quite a formidable army. It would be viable to make a build around boosting your viewer's ships, provided they have the minerals to keep reinforcing you.
When fighters get a killing blow the viewer who summoned it receives a mineral reward. Fighters last until they are destroyed or the level ends. Alternatively, the viewer who owns the ships can use !retreat to withdraw their ships (no mineral refunds) to allow reinforcements with new ones.
Such a vicious swarm! Stay out of the way!
Limitations
As satisfying as it is, there has to be a balance. A streamer with 1000 viewers cannot have 1000 ships. In the gif above only 200 fighters are swarming the poor pirate ships! This caused the framerate to drop from 60 to 30 fps! Every engine has its limitations so for our use we are still debating between 64-100 maximum viewer ships. This can be divided down into a per viewer limit controlled by the streamer. For example, if the streamer chooses 6, each viewer can request up to 6 ships as long as it wont put the total amount over 100. If the streamer chooses 1 then up to 100 viewers can each have 1 ship.
Conclusion
Fighters can be a powerful force to control. A healthy balance of fighters and miners can keep the army going for prolonged battles. I will go into more detail about miners in the future as I am still working on their AI (instead of flocking they will have something similar to enemies). If you are interested be sure to go to our website MachVGaming to sign up for alpha testing as we are getting closer to a test release. Until next time. Peace out!
~ Andrew Barontini - Lead Game Developer - Mach V Gaming
Twitter - @Healstation 
Discord - Mach V 
