0.3.0.0 Feedback

[INovaeFlavien]

Allright, my turn to address LyskTrevise’s feedback (was a long read). Will try to keep it as short as possible w/o quoting walls of texts.

USER INTERFACE, VISUALS, AND AUDIO

The current UI suffers from well-known readability and user awareness issues. Parts of it can’t be addressed until we get Keith’s new vectorial UI rendering, which is still months away. Some tweaks can be made in the mean time of course. Adding a dark outline to some elements is doable but I’ve had limited success. Indicators already have a dark outline and it’s almost invisible, due to the mipmapping of the indicator bitmap. Vectorial rendering would address all of that.

On the 3D velocity indicator: there’s already one, it’s a little circle indicator displayed in 3D in the direction of your velocity. Now obviously it does not work if your’re looking in another direction, as it’d be out of screen. Adding an indicator to the screen edge would be possible. But there are other hints about your movements, like the HUD travel lines ( look carefully at the space background when you’re travelling ). In the future I also want to add a more regular “space debris” particle effect which will give you a better sense of speed.

The 3D map is one of the major next steps that we’ll implement, along with the missions generator and objectives. It’ll show all the strategic locations with stats about your team, where the players are, where the battles are, and the status of various objectives ( % of destruction, where are carriers/spawn points etc… ).

I’d love to do the voiced fleet commander personally but I’m not sure it’s within our remaining budget/time to do it.

CONTROLS, AND CONTROL IMPLEMENTATION

There’s already a 3-levels zoom toggle, which is bound to the middle mouse button. The W key is used for the “cinematic” zoom and is mostly used for streaming / video recording / chilling out.

The free look already has a reset option: just double-tap the left-ctrl key ( or whatever you bound to it ). You can also leave that key blank in the input profile editor, and then it’ll reset automatically after a couple seconds. It can be debated whether it should be the default or not; IIRC it is on gamepads/joysticks, but it is manual on the keyboard+mouse.

GAME MECHANICS AND PLAYER INTERACTION

About the auto-warp. So here’s the thing: this was a community demand, however I believe it has now become obsolete. It was supposed to address issues with older versions of the warp which were very newbie unfriendly. We had multiple beginners try to fly to a planet directly, accelerating forever in standard flight, never realizing they had to warp to get there. By the time they realized it’d take forever to fly to a planet at conventionnal speeds, they engaged the warp and crashed into the planet.

The new warp ( which just got implemented in 0.3.0.0 ) should prevent this scenario from happening again ( I mean the crashing into the planet ). However new players still need to figure out that travelling to a far-distance location can only practically be done via the warp.

I think your suggestion of limiting the max speed and showing a message is a solid one, so I’ll probably remove the auto-warp and impmement that instead, soon.

For the meteorite damage: can you give more context as to what happened exactly ? It might be a bug, or it might be one of the ships not working well in warp ( do you remember which ship you were flying, and between which planets you were travelling ? ). Note that the automatic warp speed is well below the meteorite damage limit, so in theory you should not get damaged unless you manually override warp and keep accelerating over the safe limit.

This micrometeorite damage system was only recently implemented and might be a bit buggy. You’re certainly not supposed to die instantly, not understanding what is going on. The way the system was intended, you’d get some continuous damage over a long period of time until you get to a safer warp speed. So I need to figure out what you died almost instantly, that wasn’t supposed to happen. One theory is that you went over the automatic limit in the vicinity of a planet, which suddenly increased the density of micrometeorites, which suddenly increased the damage you’re taking. But that would contradict your scenario of “being in the middle of nowhere with nothing in sight”, so I dunno. I need a way to replicate that issue ( anybody? ).

There are far too many AI ships. So many in fact that I can barely tell where the actual enemy players are. I might as well be fighting NPC fleets exclusively. I personally think that the only AI in the game should be limited to installation defenses, and never to ships. I think there should be player ship combat only. At the very least they should be limited to defense only.

The way the system is designed, bots AIs replace missing players due to low player population. If the amount of players increased, you’d see less bots around. I don’t think the game would be particularly fun with a couple players flying around, attacking objectives alone ( because there aren’t enough other players to help ). Spawning bots for defense only is doable, but then as a single player you’d never be able to do any damage to the enemy infrastructure. It’d basically force players to gang up together. It’s debatable whether that’s what we want or not, in the context of lower player populations. Personally I’m not sure it’d make the game any more fun.

About squadrons: yeah, that’s totally on our todo list. We also want to give players more tools to coordinate together, with squadron leaders assigning objectives/targets, warnings when you get too far from a teammate, bonus rewards for staying together, etc… but that’s what alpha is for. We still have many important gameplay features not started yet.

Faction money should be paid out ala planetside. Each faction has a pool of resources, in the current case it is $Dollars. The name doesnt matter, it could be Schrute Bucks for all I care. In any case, each tick of say “X” minutes the faction should gain resources based on the amount and TYPE of installations held by that faction. Some installations should generate a lot of resources, and some installations should generate no resources.

That’s already how the current system is set up, except that only factories generate resources. At the moment they generate credits instantly ( based on their types, but also how many of their modules are damaged ), but in the near future we’re going to introduce haulers that navigate in lanes between installations, and those will be the main objectives of the game ( both for attacking or protecting ). Only when a hauler reaches its destination will it bring credits to the team, which then gets split and redistributed amongst players.

[INovaeFlavien]

BTW AI is fine and good, fix the missile spam and no one will have too much trouble with it.

Yup, I’m gonna patch a couple things ( server side only, no need to install a new client patch ) today before the community event.

I’ve been playing a couple hours yesterday, and in general I think the AI is still off, in terms of difficulty.

One of the reasons for that is that I haven’t separated installation-defense turrets from capital-ships/corvette turrets. So when I rebalanced static turrets defenses for installations, I increased their precision. In turn, this has made corvettes + capships a lot more deadly, which wasn’t really intended.

It should be possible for an interceptor to stay alive for a long time nearby enemy capital ships, unless they get very close. But at a couple Km away, they should have no difficulity doding the incoming fire. Right now that’s pretty hard, most of the time you die instantly without figuring out where the fire came from.

The missile spam in indeed annoying. I will implement missiles dying after they fail to reach their target, instead of coming for another pass or two atm. Also, I will add a limit to point blank range missile shots from AI. When this happens you die faster than you can react with chaffs.

More little balance tweaks will be done, but keep in mind, guys, that the alpha barely started. Balancing is supposed to be done in beta

[INovaeFlavien]

Approaching a planet in warp without touching the throttle always ends in micro meteorite death for me, only when I press deceleration on approach for some time I don’t end up slamming into the planet

Really ? I will have to retest this then. I’ve tested the new warp multiple times but so far haven’t got any issue.

One thing that changed with the new implementation is that the warp throttle is server driven. The latency betwen the client and server could explain some of these problems, as the client might be lagging behind by 100 ms, and try to fly at a higher than safe warp speed compared to the server. I’ll have to investgiate.

cap ships and turreted ships need to be able to fire in a straight line (ignoring the automatic aiming), otherwise destroying installations becomes really difficult

You can press backspace to unselect your target. The turrets reset to their default orientation ( forward ), unless they’re free-aiming at a nearby threat. There’s currently no way to disable free-aiming. In the future we’ll implement sub-system/module targetting.

modules on installations need their own targeting rectangle, and it would be nice to see their remaining health

Well I’m not sure about that one. It’d make sense for an ally installation, but should you see enemy’s ? At the moment to prevent cheating, the server isn’t even transferring these information ( same for enemy ships ) to the clients.

lot of turrets on installations float above them or are otherwise misplaced

I haven’t got the time to fix that in the alpha. It happens for all static defenses of mapped-to-terrain installations, aka factories and land bases. Stations should be fine.

chaff is weird to use, pressing the chaff releases a chaff, but almost always the missiles continue to follow me, maybe it is meant that way but there is no clear indication if the countermeasures even work

The missiles aim at any chaff within a kilometer radius. Chaff’s lifetime is 6 seconds. If a missile is coming from the front, it’s still aiming at the chaff behind you, and won’t avoid your ship (ofc) so you’ll get directly hit despite using a chaff. As far as I know, they’re pretty much working as intended.

Of course, one of the issues is that you time the chaff incorrectly, so the missile deviates to aim at the chaff for a few seconds, but is still on the course to your ship, overall. Then the chaff dies and the missile resumes aiming at you, and you die. Maybe the missile should die once locked on the chaff, instead of resuming its aim on you, I’m not sure. We can certainly try it out.

I never differentiate between secondary and primary fire and end up holding both buttons anyway, it would be nice to group weapons together in weapons groups

On the top-left of the screen you can see a circle with P or S, P means primary ( left mouse button ) and S secondary ( right mouse button ). Unless you mean the radial menu ?

it is nice that station/factory indicator icons now pop in when approaching a planet, but I think ship indicators should be switched off at larger distances, 1000 km away enemies should not be visible as icons IMO

Yeah, that’s part of fixing the HUD cluttering. Critic had a similar suggestion on Discord yesterday, I think it makes sense and would go a long way to address far-distance cluttering. I’m not all worried about these. However I am still worried about HUD cluttering in a nearby massive battles; it’s not like the indicators all sit on top of each other. I changed the HUD combat mode in this patch, now it will have a threshold of 20 Km OR a higher than 5% relative size on screen, to show up the target indicator. In other words, it’ll still show a capital ship 40 Km away, or an interceptor 19 Km away. But it won’t show an interceptor 21 Km away.

[Playbenni]

Thanks for the reply.

Maybe the missile should die once locked on the chaff, instead of resuming its aim on you, I’m not sure. We can certainly try it out.

That would be nice I think, it would reduce the constant missile warnings at least and makes sense.

On the top-left of the screen you can see a circle with P or S, P means primary ( left mouse button ) and S secondary ( right mouse button )

I would like the option to fire all guns with one button, instead of holding both buttons.

[mattk50]

This is intentional. Our goal is to strike a balance between realism and “fun” and when it comes to our HUD it is intended to operate like a real HUD projected onto the glass of your helmet. What this means is that if you stare into a really bright light, like a star or an explosion, you will absolutely not be able to see your HUD elements very well. That being said we could add a brightness toggle.

No, no no, don’t do that, especially not intentionally. The other recent notable game thats tried to do this, SC, has had a constant struggle with this, the HUD is unusable whenever a bright background or planet is involved and it’s completely pointless to do this.

This isn’t realistic, it’s just wrong. We already have tech to shade glass today to provide contrast for HUD elements, it’d be realistic to shade the whole cockpit to provide contrast but that’d ruin the visuals, but we already have dynamic local shading in working prototype phase in real life, and obviously the majority of hud elements dont move, and we obviously have technology already for local shading around stationary hud elements. There is nothing realistic about a hud nobody can see if they’re looking at the bright side of a planet, this is a pointless mistake to repeat, just use dark contrast on the hud elements background and borders to ensure they are always visible, it’s the realistic option, and the option that makes the most sense for gameplay. Furthermore, the game is combat focused, but combat focused players will not be interested in a game where their UI stops being visible because the HDR and/or background didnt play nice for a few moments.

There has been a lot of internal debate over this. To some degree the lack of feedback is intentional because in real-life you have no idea if your shots hit beyond what radar and your eyes tell you. Obviously our current implementation does not exactly adhere to that as it has an extremely annoying “ding” sound. An X popping up on the reticle, as you suggest, may be a happier middle ground. Either way it’s a WIP.

While you may want to add a visual cue, you should keep the audio cue as an option at least. Human reaction time is significantly faster to audio cues and a lot of people prefer audio hitreg cues in games for that reason.

I think your suggestion of limiting the max speed and showing a message is a solid one, so I’ll probably remove the auto-warp and impmement that instead, soon.

Limiting max speed to warp is very undesirable, at least have an override, or make the warp limit significantly higher than it is now. I dont think sacrificing no max speed is worth it just for the initiation phase for brand new players, maybe have a tutorial popup that shows the first few times you go over 5km/s without going to warp the warp keybind and that they can go to work at 500m/s, not 5km/s

We already have a flight path vector in the same fashion as modern jet fighters which, when combined with your speed indicator, gives you your velocity. What about that doesn’t work for you and what do you mean by a 3D velocity indicator?

a 2D projection of a 3D arrow next to the speed number could serve this purpose. It might also be nice to have another arrow that shows current acceleration rather than velocity, to more directly demonstrate the effect of the player’s movement especially in flight assist off mode. There are other options than an arrow too, you could use concentric circles with quadrants and fill in portions of the circle depending on the direction of movement, if being “Diegetic” like is more of a priority.

[INovaeFlavien]

Limiting max speed to warp is very undesirable, at least have an override, or make the warp limit significantly higher than it is now. I dont think sacrificing no max speed is worth it just for the initiation phase for brand new players, maybe have a tutorial popup that shows the first few times you go over 5km/s without going to warp the warp keybind and that they can go to work at 500m/s, not 5km/s

Networking kind of breaks at speeds higher than 2 km/s, so even if you could fly so fast at conventional speeds, combat would frankly feel bad/wrong. I think there needs to be a limit at some point at which combat is possible anymore, purely for technical reasons.

[Lomsor]

Networking kind of breaks at speeds higher than 2 km/s, so even if you could fly so fast at conventional speeds, combat would frankly feel bad/wrong. I think there needs to be a limit at some point at which combat is possible anymore, purely for technical reasons.

Just for marketing purposes I would suggest not putting in a speed limit in normal space, disabling all weapons would achieve your goal. If warp keeps setting your out of warp speed or capping it it will be a “waste” to accelerate further. I know it’s essentially the same but many people don’t want to hear “speed limit”,or if they do “light speed”. Ha.

---

Concerning micro meteorites. The problem is very simmilar to the airspeed situation. I think I can remember hitting mircometeorites while not overriding but I can’t reproduce it.
I think manual override has quite lasting effects and even 5 seconds after using it, it can (instantly) kill you because of the sudden increase in “mircometeorite density” as you call it. The more momentum a ship has, the less leeway.
I think feedback as to where the “safe speed” currently is, in a form of an indicator bar could help players that use override judge the “field” around bodies.

I can see how the behaviour could be frustrating. The consequences of manual override are sometimes not apparent, quite like when coming in too hot into an atmosphere. On discord some suggested something similar to collision warnings that were in the prototype. That the ship could look ahead and calculate if it still could safely slow down and if it becomes critical, warn the palyer a few seconds ahead of time.

Sometimes it drops you out of warp with like 5% left, I think the warp drive broke in that case, right?

[cybercritic]

I haven’t been playing much, sorry, but I see that the ease of use is being brought up again.

Casting ahead is great and giving a huge warning label that covers 2/3 of the screen should do the trick, the current ‘indicators’ are way too subtle, it needs to be blunt, really blunt. If the player is about to die in 10 seconds, he really won’t mind a huge warning label.

Another thing that I think will greatly help with perception of ‘distance’ or rather how much time you have to react is to put a ‘time to target at current velocity’ next to the active target, time is a much better indicator than distance or relative velocity, a person uses relative velocity to calculate a time, if you just give him the time to target it makes it a lot easier.

[Sociel]

Hey, congratulations on reaching an alpha. I tried the game for a while and had a good time, though I certainly didn’t help my team at all.

• I liked the feeling of flying out of a space station to the middle of a proper fight. I mean, that’s the dream!

• I was sometimes confused: something didn’t work and I had no idea why. For example, I tried a destroyer and had another human player in my scopes. I thought I’ll get a good shot at him as he was firing heavily into another direction, but my arms wouldn’t fire. There propably was a reason for that (maybe an other player damaged me), but I missed a “Your are disarmed because you can not fly and took a lot of damage” message. So basically, if some system doesn’t work, I’d expect the ship to tell me which and why, and even propably what I need to do to get it back. (wait xx sec, visit hangar etc.)

• After flying in warp to a planet it felt really slow to fly planetside, I barely felt any movement. Maybe, I mean obviously, I just can’t fly.

I was about to ask for a quick tutorial when I found out that Mattk50 has made one. I’ll look into that. I’ll try out the game occasionally and am really looking forward to see it develop. I’ve been lurking around since forever so it’s great to see you guys deliver.

[Sab1e]

Couple of quick thoughts:
(Disclaimer, I haven’t properly read most of the other feedback, so sorry if I’m repeating)

• I like the way warp works now, although it does feel extremely slow to accelerate away from planets. Plus it is a little frustrating when you have hardly any control over speed and you realise you’re still approaching too fast (experienced this largely on the destroyer). Tweaking needed.

• Intermittent firing and I’m not sure why. Can hold down fire and even though I have ammo/energy, the guns don’t always fire. Is this accidental after the change to make AI fire in bursts?

• I love how approaching station defences is now extremely risky, and you have a far better chance of disabling the guns in a small ship. Should encourage fighters first, before bringing in the capships.

• Bomber turned extremely slowly in atmosphere, but corvette seemed quicker? I know there’s no lift implemented yet but I’m not sure why the corvette would turn better. Mind you, I didn’t try for long so maybe I imagined it.

Loving the gameplay ideas so far, keep it up! Alpha is for trying stuff and improving, so I look forward to seeing the gameplay evolve at last No more basic sandbox!

[INovaeFlavien]

Intermittent firing and I’m not sure why. Can hold down fire and even though I have ammo/energy, the guns don’t always fire. Is this accidental after the change to make AI fire in bursts?

If you’re speaking of the auto-targetting turrets, it might be normal. Turrets do not fire unless in a cone around the target aim-at direction. So if you’re switching targets, turrets will take a few seconds to rotate to the new direction, and if you press fire during that time, they won’t fire until they’re correctly aligned ( preserving ammo ). The biggest turrets ( anti capships ) rotate slowly.

[Sab1e]

Fair enough, though I think I may have experienced it in the bomber too. Does it still have a gimbal and is that what’s affecting it?

Edit:

• One more thought. Could the radial menus be reorganized? I feel like I’m still struggling to use them after all this time. And the voice one needs its default keybinding away from the other two, not in between them.
  I feel like the three main menus should be: Flight (formation, lights, warp etc), energy (in its own menu) and weapons (activating groups etc). The third one would probably not be used as often, so does this even need a quick access menu next to the other two?

[Lomsor]

Further Bugs:

The Icons of Stations, Bases, Factories etc. that change ownership from a certain team to neutral are not updated until they get in scanning range of the player ship. I can’t remember if there weren’t any friendlies down there but I’m pretty sure they were, as otherwise the structure wouldn’t been flipped.

I don’t seem to get missions for some reason. The field is always empty. On the last stream I saw that it seems to work for Dan … anything I could provide? See the screenshots here: https://imgur.com/a/P5aK8dA

[SmellyTerror]

Came to say a few of the things here, especially auto-warp and a map. Good to see those are on the list, and I really like all the dev responses.

Mostly super impressed. Feels great, looks great. I will continue to test how it plays through the haze of lag that is Darkest Canberra.

One addition, and probably a bit much but… I don’t understand why anyone puts missiles in to dogfighting. It’s not fun. Do you have any countermeasures left / a bit of luck? Missile does nothing. Don’t have those things? You’re dead. It’s not fun to shoot the missiles, and it’s not (much) fun to dodge them. I want to dogfight!

What I’d love is for the only missiles to be big-lumbering things that are meant to kill capships and station components. Don’t even let them target fighters. Make them extremely damaging to the big ships, but able to be shot down. Sort of like proton torpedoes in X-Wing.

Realism? Say that missiles need to be heavily shielded to protect against the pervasive ECM. Small / light ones can’t survive.

Realism the other direction? Modern missiles already make fighter-based cannons close to redundant. Why dogfight?

Answer: countermeasures are so effective that there needs to be so much shielding on missiles that they can hardly see or steer. Fighters exist because humans are the best guidance system for something that nimble.

This is a very minor issue - I definitely love the looks of the game so far, and I won’t cry if there are missiles - but outside a single player game (where you can delight in smooshing a million enemies with swarmers), anti-fighter missiles just seem to make games less fun.

Overall, though, thumbs most definitely up!

(PS: and at least during testing, honestly I’d prefer buckets of AI ships, even if they’re dumb. I want to get some practice in. Actually: is there a command to spawn some simple AI ships? e.g. one stationary, one flies straight ahead, one flies / dodges but doesn’t shoot, one flies / dodges / shoots?)

[Skyentist]

Haven’t had a chance to jump in yet, but just my own 2c from what I’ve read from this feedback.

Imho, you can end that debate right here and now. Strong feedback is never wrong.

I dont understand. Are you disagreeing or agreeing with me? You are truly the master of playing both sides of an argument!

Wargrim. He’s obviously a wolf Lysk.

Of course, one of the issues is that you time the chaff incorrectly, so the missile deviates to aim at the chaff for a few seconds, but is still on the course to your ship, overall. Then the chaff dies and the missile resumes aiming at you, and you die. Maybe the missile should die once locked on the chaff, instead of resuming its aim on you, I’m not sure. We can certainly try it out.

For what it’s worth I like this way better. It adds a higher skill cap to learn how the flight mechanics work. Plus I don’t think there should be a magic button you can press to remove a missile. I’m of the opinion that players should have options and if you’re good enough to exploit them that’s a good thing. For example, lining an engagement up so that you fire a missile. If they attempt to chaff and dodge it puts them in a better position for your normal weapons to hit. Rather than “no I pressed x so that strat doesn’t work.” That sort of situation can be rare, but if a pilot can make it happen you can believe they will feel rewarded for it and feel great. That’s what playing the game is all about.

I do agree with the missile “dying” once it has been successfully dodged though. If that’s possible.

Limiting max speed to warp is very undesirable, at least have an override, or make the warp limit significantly higher than it is now.

Seconding this. One of the great things about space is that there are no speed limits. Now I know for game mechanics and hardware limitations there should be, but I would prefer that limit to be as high as possible. Maximum freedom for strategies etc etc.

Networking kind of breaks at speeds higher than 2 km/s, so even if you could fly so fast at conventional speeds, combat would frankly feel bad/wrong. I think there needs to be a limit at some point at which combat is possible anymore, purely for technical reasons.

Well I guess that’s it then and more than 2km/s is unfortunately badong… This is where I actually don’t know what the current limit is because I haven’t been on in awhile. Is it currently 2km/s?

Hoping to find some time tomorrow to hop on for actual feedback rather than piggybacking off the rest of you guys and cracking jokes.

[mattk50]

Posting some gameplay that i feel illustrates some of the earlier points i made. First, is the extremely low time to kill - i feel like i can burn people down way too quick, and get burned down before i can react if i dont happen to notice someone is near me. Optimally the length of a fight wouldnt be so long that it gets boring or your arms start to ache, but allowing enough time for a player to react to incoming fire is generally more fun for all parties involved. I have more fun when i have to work for a kill, and when it took more shots to kill an interceptor i had that feeling, opinions on this may vary.

Second, when im using the interceptor during this video, can you tell which thrusters im using based on anything on screen? The answer is no! There’s a subtle cockpit sway animation, but i cant even tell based on that and i recorded the video! There is no UI element that illustrates how im thrusting or which direction my current speed is in, and not only does it make intense, button mashing gameplay look boring to a spectator watching a video (or an advertisement livestream), but it’s also unintuitive for new players learning how to play. Visual feedback is really important for all that stuff! I know the UI is a WIP of course, i’d just like to harp on this point.

[Rifleman192]

Thank you for the prompt reply. I tried and tried to locate the INovaeInstall and my Framework 4 Setup logs to no avail. I went to my temp folder and even did a drive-wide search for them but could find neither of them. That might be my issue. Is it even possible that my framework 4 setup log isn’t there? As for the INovaeInstall log files I feel that it isn’t even getting to the point in the script to make the log files yet, possibly having to do with my missing framework debacle. I’m going to try to update it to 4.7.1 and see if that fixes anything. Thanks again for looking into this issue.

[INovaeKeith]

The one you need is actually 4.6.2: https://www.microsoft.com/net/download/dotnet-framework-runtime/net462

[Rifleman192]

Update I just installed the latest version of .NET Framework. I restarted and now it’s working! I believe I have an install of version 4.6.2 so I should be good. If not I will use the link you provided. Again, thank you for helping me out!

[LyskTrevise]

Allright, my turn to address LyskTrevise’s feedback (was a long read). Will try to keep it as short as possible w/o quoting walls of texts.

Ha. Sorry about that, I am really long winded on this forum. I went back to Lomsor’s archived version of the forums and I realized I used to type like a retard, but this forum made me adapt and become really good at typing things up. I probably spent more time than I should have on it, but eh.

The current UI suffers from well-known readability and user awareness issues. Parts of it can’t be addressed until we get Keith’s new vectorial UI rendering, which is still months away. Some tweaks can be made in the mean time of course. Adding a dark outline to some elements is doable but I’ve had limited success. Indicators already have a dark outline and it’s almost invisible, due to the mipmapping of the indicator bitmap. Vectorial rendering would address all of that.

Well obviously I am not a technical person, so I defer to you on this. I just think the current version needs some work, and it seems like you are aware of that. I am concerned though by Keith’s response by saying that the UI was intentionally unreadable at times due to realism. I do not think this is a good design choice, but again that is up to your discretion.

On the 3D velocity indicator: there’s already one, it’s a little circle indicator displayed in 3D in the direction of your velocity. Now obviously it does not work if your’re looking in another direction, as it’d be out of screen. Adding an indicator to the screen edge would be possible. But there are other hints about your movements, like the HUD travel lines ( look carefully at the space background when you’re travelling ). In the future I also want to add a more regular “space debris” particle effect which will give you a better sense of speed.

Uhh… Where? I just checked the screenshot I posted again to make sure I wasnt a retard (still possible), and I dont see one. I mean like… what? I have never seen an indicator of velocity RELATIVE to current ship rotation on my screen.

The 3D map is one of the major next steps that we’ll implement, along with the missions generator and objectives. It’ll show all the strategic locations with stats about your team, where the players are, where the battles are, and the status of various objectives ( % of destruction, where are carriers/spawn points etc… ).

Alright, fantastic. This is probably the biggest non-gameplay mechanic that is missing from the game. Its a core feature that needs to be there before beta launch for sure.

I’d love to do the voiced fleet commander personally but I’m not sure it’s within our remaining budget/time to do it.

I’m pretty sure we can find some willing fans who will do it for a couple hundred bucks or less… Put it in one of your email updates that you’ll be holding auditions for voice actors, hell maybe someone will even do it for free just so they can put it in their portfolio as experience. You guys are a small team, so you have to be willing to try out new talent. Just hold an audition and see how it goes. Maybe you don’t find someone, but at least you can say you tried to do it right? There are a lot of talented people with great voices in the community, just look at some of the skyrim and fallout mods. AAA quality doesn’t necessarily mean expensive.

I would also like you to consider that it might not be just a convenience. I believe personally that adding some character and pseudo-story to the game is critical to the immersion of the player. For example, my first impression of the game when i logged in was… Ok I’m at a space station… what now? I think players need to be pushed in a direction, but not forced. The commander can give them that push by saying “Hey maggot, get your ass to Zephyr station and join the fleet for operations! Move out!” I mean I’m exaggerating a bit for comedic purposes, but you can obviously make it any style you want. I do think you should have british or american voice actors though. Native english speakers seem to be the most acceptable to the mass market.

There’s already a 3-levels zoom toggle, which is bound to the middle mouse button. The W key is used for the “cinematic” zoom and is mostly used for streaming / video recording / chilling out.

Well why is the zoom feature split into 2 different methods? The zoom button should act the same way no matter which key you use. I didnt even know that MMB was a zoom until you told me because the key configuration says its Z. So… Thats a major issue! Consistency is key! Also, content creators can use post processing zooms, there is no need for a gameplay mechanic to be shoe horned in for their sake.

The free look already has a reset option: just double-tap the left-ctrl key ( or whatever you bound to it ). You can also leave that key blank in the input profile editor, and then it’ll reset automatically after a couple seconds. It can be debated whether it should be the default or not; IIRC it is on gamepads/joysticks, but it is manual on the keyboard+mouse.

I didn’t know that, again its not explained anywhere. The camera is just stuck for new players who are like “what happened”. I think it should default to reset on all controls.

I think your suggestion of limiting the max speed and showing a message is a solid one, so I’ll probably remove the auto-warp and impmement that instead, soon.

Hooray, I helped! lol

For the meteorite damage: can you give more context as to what happened exactly ?

I think every time I was flying from desert planet to cinder. I have no idea what desert planet is called. Anyways I was just holding W like one does to accelerate and then BOOM dead. In the destroyer I survived with 1000 hp and no shields because I guess my power got cut out from the damage and so i slowed back down? But I was basically dead so it was a huge waste of money and time. I closed the game for the night after that. I think it happens even if you have the throttle set to the “0” position too though without pressing W. But either way, W is the normal way of controlling speed, so it should not kill you…

The way the system is designed, bots AIs replace missing players due to low player population. If the amount of players increased, you’d see less bots around. I don’t think the game would be particularly fun with a couple players flying around, attacking objectives alone ( because there aren’t enough other players to help ). Spawning bots for defense only is doable, but then as a single player you’d never be able to do any damage to the enemy infrastructure. It’d basically force players to gang up together. It’s debatable whether that’s what we want or not, in the context of lower player populations. Personally I’m not sure it’d make the game any more fun.

Well me personally, and I’m not talking about NOW but for when the game launches or during beta, I am giving my feedback based on the expected server population of 100-500 people concurrently in game. This was what was pitched during the kickstarter, and I believe it would be disingenuous to do something different… If we have 500 people in a server there is no need for bots to attack enemy stations. Defense sure, because 1 single player shouldnt be able to take on an installation by themselves, otherwise whats the point. Installations should feel like floating fortresses in orbit, at least the military installations should. But attacking an installation should require teamwork and a planned assault, in my opinion. I also think that is the most fun way to play the game. Flying around by yourself fighting bots at some random installation isnt fun to me. I want to work with others to accomplish something hard, and perhaps to even outsmart other players.

About squadrons: yeah, that’s totally on our todo list. We also want to give players more tools to coordinate together, with squadron leaders assigning objectives/targets, warnings when you get too far from a teammate, bonus rewards for staying together, etc… but that’s what alpha is for. We still have many important gameplay features not started yet.

Great! I do think though this should be implemented at least in a rough way before beta.

That’s already how the current system is set up, except that only factories generate resources. At the moment they generate credits instantly ( based on their types, but also how many of their modules are damaged ), but in the near future we’re going to introduce haulers that navigate in lanes between installations, and those will be the main objectives of the game ( both for attacking or protecting ). Only when a hauler reaches its destination will it bring credits to the team, which then gets split and redistributed amongst players.

So… your main objective in this game, your vision… is to defend and destroy cargo ships? Thats it? We have a huge true to scale solar system and our main objective is to defend shipping lanes? I think thats a really shallow gameplay design, no offense. I personally feel like I would not be excited by that. I think we need to feel like we are part of a war, and each attack should feel important. Blowing up 500 cargo ships doesnt feel important. We need big targets that we have to fight for hours over, struggling in massive fleet battles until one side slowly wilts under the pressure and has to retreat to the next objective.

I will point you back to my original post, because neither you or keith responded to my lane-system. I think this isn’t just a gameplay suggestion, but something that needs to be in the game. Like, I cant see the mass market appreciating a game where their main focus is blowing up cargo ships for fake money. Like, im sorry but I just don’t. If you go back to my lane system, you see that if Red team controls Planet A, and they want to take Planet B from Green team, they have to fight a series of battles to take the objective. There is the battle of Logistics Station 1, which is a major choke point for supplies and spawning. That is their entry point to the theater of war. Then you have the battle for Martial Installation 1, in which the goal is to secure a spawn point in orbit around Planet B, so that they dont have to spawn so far at Planet A. It also breaks the planetary defense line allowing assault on the surface and low orbit installations that give the big bucks. So now you have this all out warfare in orbit over planet B, but its localized. If you’re at planet A you probably dont even know there is fighting going on, but at Planet B all hell is breaking loose. So you see how this creates a sort of dynamic story that the players create themselves, and it focuses players together.

You know we have had on the old forums MANY discussions about how to get players together, because we have SO much space. This is a HUGE sand box for our players, and we need mechanisms to bring them together, so we can have those big battles that create those cool videos and those cool stories you can tell at work to your co workers, or your bar buddies, or whatever. Theres no stories to be told about 3 guys blowing up their 500th cargo ship of the night. Yeah, high five guys, great game, good job all around… Nah man, come on. Think about it for even a second and you see the issue.

Please, please, please go back and read the last two items of my original feedback post. I even drew you a shitty picture to go with it! come on man i put effort into that!