Well, its time to Drill! 

I have started created the powerup system for the game. My first idea was to have a level in between battles where you were in hangar and you walked around as a pilot. From there you would grab weapon and ship upgrades. And choose the next level. And I really enjoy this idea but that complicates my current design and adds a lot more work to a simple game. So I am torn.

Right now I have an in game powerup system where ships and obstacles will drop chest carrying a weapon or upgrade. But they will cost ZQF to open, so you have to manage killing ships, taking hits on the Planetary Defense Line while deciding if its worth it to get a chest. I like it and it makes the design much easier in some ways. But, it also adds in some issues to overcome. 

As a reminder, the ZQF is your currency you have to manage between getting and dropping. You have to keep it above zero or game over. So, when ships are attacking the Defense Line, you need to attack the ships to generate ZQF. When they hit the Defense Line ,you drop ZQF. And when you pick up chests, you also pay in ZQF for the chest. So it is a constant battle of managing your resource to win and stay alive.

One of the issues with a in level powerup system is the random drops by the enemies. I have to figure out how to ensure a powerup drops randomly from an enemy but not too frequent  and ensure it only happens once or so a level. As these levels are arcade levels which means quick fights.

To  overcome this, I have an idea. I can use my existing GameMaster script to store a bool. This bool will say if the level has spawned a chest from an enemy. Each EnemyBase script will check this value and if it not then a random coroutine will start and decide if it spawns a chest. If so, the bool will be ticked true and no other enemy can spawn a chest for that level. 

An issue. I have to make sure two or so chests don't spawn at once. And I have to decide if I want a random chest or set chests per level. 

But it's an idea, so I am going to work on this and continue to fix issues as they come.

Now, If I go with the hangar system, it will be up to the player to decide what upgrades to get. And i wouldn't have the above problems. But the hangar system requires a platform side scrolling code. Meaning, I have to basically create a platformer minigame. Which isn't difficult but time consuming and will present it's own challenges.

I am leaning into prototyping both and making a decision from there. But who knows, if I get the in level powerup system working well, I might just go with that.

Circling back to the drill. The drill power up acts as a missile that cuts through all enemies in a line. And does double damage. So a line of pawns could be demolished instantly and enemies like the Plow can take more damage while cutting through a line of smaller enemies.

Check out the GIF for the Drill Missile in action!