I didnt get much time to test today (curse the fact that i’m always busy saturday mornings) but i do have a few points of feedback.
The dual circle/dot crosshairs i actually thought was for the guns at first, but it also works for the missiles. Good stuff, but its not immedately obvious what they are or that they represent missile locks.
Not a fan of the anti-drift thing.There was a technique in SC for a few really awful patches called “peak accel”. Basically the way it worked in such a way so that accel depended on velocity, there was a specific velocity where you could get better accel and therefore better evasion… connecting the dots, this is very similar to what we’re getting now. Unfortunately it drastically limited the number of possible movements, basically you either stick to the peak accel zone or you were at a disadvantage, it’s also somewhat contradictory to the goal of Newtonian combat. I don’t like the idea that my ship will respond differently to an input depending on current velocity. It also seems to act much more strongly in flight assist on than flight assist off (or maybe it doesnt act at all in FA off) which causes some issues with higher accel being available in FA-on.
In terms of actual negative gameplay effects i would need more time and some pvp, but just against some npcs it was very annoying to have them seem to get sudden bursts of accel they shouldnt have. Especially when in an inty against larger ships like the corvette it’s very dangerous to have them to have anti drift accel as they slingshot and you lose your main advantage being higher accel for some moments.
I have to also give a big negative to the random shield penetration. The last thing we need in dogfighting is purely random elements deciding whether you live or die, i dont really see the purpose of this change. If this is really just for visual effects later i can’t say it’s worth it in terms of gameplay, it would be better to have a fake probabilistic visual that sometimes looks like it penetrates and sometimes doesnt but still do the same percent based damage bleed.