Slow interceptor is really boring and cumbersome compared to before 
2 Likes
They nerfed it.
Warp effect suggestion:
If Iâm not mistaken, the warp tunnel effect seems to scale in intensity with throttle %. However, throttle velocity scales logarithmically up to the speed of light.
If this is the case, I suggest having the tunnel effect intensity scale as a percentage of velocity with respect to the speed of light (v/c) instead.
I like the reticule change on the Capital control mode. Makes it much easier to aim. Would love to have a zoom in the external camera too. Thanks for having an event for âsetheadingâ and not hardcoding it to the boost event. Thank you a lot. What is the point of being able to activate/deactivate auto heading again? I must have missed it. If I donât want to use it I can just not press the âsetheadingâ ⌠right?
I could understand if it would be âsetheadingâ works all the time and âauto headingâ acts as if âsetheadingâ is held down constantly, it does not work that way though ⌠so âŚ?
I felt small ship speed is alright. Was able to catch up to them and murder them. I find it a bit too easy to aim. Didnât have to try at all. Just aim at the general direction and get below 2km. Still would prefer a flak type weapon with constant damage as a starter weapon instead of this that scales so strongly once closer or on bigger targets.
Does damage dealt to destroyed turrets bleed trough now? I like the specific sound effects and noticed of the âcritical hitâ. Yet fear that some of the damage is tanked by destroyed turrets ⌠might even be wanted, who knows ⌠could be even alright that one shouldnât hit a destroyed turret, the enemy is at a disadvantage already anyway, not really that beneficial to make him even easier to kill. Time spent in a exciting âcloseâ fight are more exciting that quick finishers.
Itâs a bit hard to see destroyed turrets. I hope they get a âdestroyedâ texture in the future, make it emmisive for easier readability.
Thereâs one topic I would like to mention. That is gratification for achieved goals. Itâs one thing Flavien would like to work on as he noted a couple of times, adding new missions and such, which would be cool, I just want to note something in the current loop.
Kills and assist feel good. The explosion make a good satisfying âI / We did itâ effect. The red kill message is prominent enough.
End of match is alright. The music sells it pretty well and it is a slight achievement but mostly a relieve of finally having done it. Hard to guess with how seldom matches are ended, if the rest is fine it can work with the current balancing for a longer match ⌠it does make you play longer as you might be able to influence the end outcome.
Lastly the one I have issues with. A specific battle. I super often miss when these are over. I think this is due to the game being too âverboseâ with other battles and using the same style and sound effect even though you might not care.
I suggest only popping up critical battle notifications (start, win, loose (later two to show the consequence of your decision of not abandoning your current battle)) and installation lost notifications when already in a battle (the combat hud switch seems apropriate for that).
The battle you are currently in should have different style of popup and sound effect too. For added gratification.
With the tab menu we now have a way to check these battles and donât need to look out for them to be announced, especially not when we are busy, fighting.
I remember now that there war a mention of I-Novae wanting to add an end screen with stats and such, which would work of course too to set the end of the battle apart.
Further the âstatus info area in the top middleâ could be made less verbose.
The âplayer joinedâ on re-spawn is still a thing. I guess it slipped quite far down on the todo list. âPlayer killedâ status info isnât really needed for a game of this scale. Itâs not really a tactical shooter where you need to know what the other few guys playing are doing. Could allow to switch it on in a âgameplayâ setting if it is already in the game.
Itâs not just âhud clutterâ that is a problem, it is also notification noisiness that should be reduced a bit.
I think the removal of those two types I mentioned will do way with most filler notifications. The important stuff like âweapon destroyedâ donât get missed so much that way.
It is important to notice that we tend to slowly blur out Information that we canât or donât feel like processing, even if it is in your face and prominent. If these get changed it will take a while for people to adjust back to looking at them again, now that they arenât as noisy. I guess at least.
4 Likes
One thing of note concerning NPC corvettes: they are extremely vulnerable to torpedoes. I must have something close to a 95% success rate with one-shotting npc corvettes because they donât use flares.
I think a slight buff to the corvetteâs maneuvering thrusters could be considered. I noticed that when matching velocity with cruisers that it can sometimes be difficult to stay close to them without touching boost when they are executing a turn. The corvette tends to drift a little.
I would like some way to manually aim the corvette turrets. This is less to manually aim at target ships/stations than it is to target sub-targets. I missed being able to fly straight over a ground facility and manually shoot at stuff without having to turn the entire ship to face my target. Maybe a toggle in a menu, or simply have the turrets follow the cursor/view when nothing is targeted like the current cap ship system.
Is cap ship control âset headingâ function supposed to always follow the cursor, or can you set heading with a single tap and look somewhere else without the ship trying to follow where youâre looking? Iâm not sure how this function works, right now it seems like I have to hold the set heading button and look where I want to go, and only when the ship starts heading in that direction can I turn to look elsewhere.
1 Like
I had a good time Saturday.
We definitely need some tools for player organization. (Already mentioned) I was not on Discord and it was not hard to follow along on fleet movements. I heard the jump drive on the nearby ship spool upâneat! However, I played corvette and it was hard to tell who needed help. I.e. I canât see anyone elseâs health without individually targeting them and when Wargrim asked for assistance; it took time to figure out where he was. It was cumbersome to set the fleet destinationâhit TAB, search for the system, mark on HUD. Please remove any instances of similar place names or give us the ability to sort and filter in the list.
Eve has some pretty good fleet management mechanics including fleet warp.
Other thoughts.
Bomber without bombs. (create bombs)
Interceptors are not that fast. (probably needs to be 750 m/s to match the name and make their ability to target missiles and torpedos better) I tried defending capitals against everything. It was slow and not effective.
I still feel most of the small models slide or skid when turning tightly. When I turn 180 degrees, I come to a stop, then accelerate in the opposite direction. Can we get a selectable contrail so I can see what the flight path is? It doesnât have to be seen been anyone else.
You have a destroyer and cruiser, but no frigate or battleship. I think a lot more games that have capitals donât have them fly as fighters. Itâs visually appealing in this game but when you ignore the plane of the ecliptic, it invites a lot of control design issues and more importantly, gun placement. I like my powerful weapons on the spine for the best field of fire. I believe I would like ascend and descend better like Dreadnought. (what defines a cruiser or destroyer? Volume, energy production, length?) One solution could be to name the ship and let it go at that. That frees you from a well understood taxonomy.
I took a destroyer and cruiser for a spin yesterday. Full shields and I received multiple critical hits against my guns pretty fast. Not fun. Also, it was difficult to hit small stationary targets like those autoguns surrounding the station. Furthermore, those autoguns were not targetable. Furthermore, I also tend to lose awareness of what direction Iâm travelling with capitals and have to look around to re-gain attitude awareness.
Match. Matches in other games have various limits (e.g. time, tickets, players) and Iâm not seeing anything but a battle royale or king of the kill or death match with a station thrown in for good measure. Iâm thinking the team (in relatively equal numbers) with the station will always lose as the attacker has an unlimited ability to bring in extra forces and the station canât repair. The matches seem to have a time limit and a point bar up top, but Iâm not seeing how it works. (please clarify details on webpage)
Distance.
We have the entirety of a solar system but the missile weapons are limited to around 10 km and kinetic weapons to a few km at best. If youâve read David Weberâs Honor Harrington series, those missiles go millions of miles, accelerate at .83c and deliver death to anything around 25,000 km when detonated. That would be boring in this game but there are notions of capital ship warfare out there at great distances. World of Warships has greater ranges. (put up a weapons detail pageârange, speed, damage, missile turning ability, how missiles work i.e. locking) Boxing matches and knife fights are great but please confirm this is the intended design, <20km? (put on webpageâ"this game is about close range brawls at 10kmâ âexpectation management)
HUD.
I re-loaded House of the Dying Sun. A recent and a darn good single player space shooter in under 500mb. It has an excellent HUD design philosophyâcheck it out. In combat mode, Iâm not sure âTâ working on friendly forces in close with hostiles is a good action. I flow between offensive and defensive actions and targeting isnât there yet. My first improvement would be that I need âfast keysâ for ship type and distance. âInty closeâ, ânew bomberâ. I thought about a target list as in Eve, but that could get really long.
There is a really dark planet out there. Can you give it lighting storms on the dark side? Iâm not saying I ran into it.
For ground facilities and navigation. How about the light of Luxor (Las Vegas hotel) as an option so I can tell where this ground point is? E.g. a visual ray of light emanating from the ground and beams into space. I still canât tell if a point is in front or behind a planet.
To keep the pace of battle going; instead of re-spawning in station, can I take over like AI ship? And how about a check box that displays spawn stations that have a battle going on first? Or a de-select for ground stations as they take a few extra seconds longer to load?
2 Likes
Thatâs indeed how it was last weekend when I last picked it up (unless itâs changed). Make sure the Ship Autoturn function is âOnâ, then tapping the âSet Headingâ once should do exactly that. I used it exclusively last weekend - itâs by far the most effective way to control a capital ship 95% of the time.
I did like though that holding âSet Headingâ while Autoturn is âOnâ kind of overrides it and it continuously follows the mouse. It was good for the other 5% where I wanted constant input.
As I put elsewhere, I rebound Autoturn toggle to an unused key, as I donât think Iâll ever touch it. That meant Set Heading could be put on spacebar. Quick tap of spacebar = ship turns! Hold spacebar⌠= it keeps following the mouse!
Works very well.
3 Likes
Ah, that was what I forgot, thank you. 
1 Like
All ships strafe when changing direction because we use a Newtonian flight model. There is a forward/back vector on the HUD but it is not always very visible (looks like a circle for forwards and a circled X backwards IIRC). There are also dust particles to highlight motion.
More ship classes would be welcome but it is a resource issue for a small dev team and budget.
Not having a reference plane is one of the things that make Battlescape unique and more of a simulation than an arcade game. Gun placement is unrelated, you just have to position your ship correctly (to maximize fire, minimize profile or maximize evasion). Also keep in mind that you can have situations like your ventral turrets getting out of ammunition from overuse, you would the have to bring your dorsal turrets to bear.
I had the same experience last time I played, it was frustrating indeed.
You might have join at the end of a match, because each teams begins with an equal number of stations, asteroid bases and ground bases. These can be destroyed through direct action or by joining critical battles that, when won by the attacker, result in the destruction of the objective.
Iâd like a bit more distance on capital ship fights too, though I think it has been increased recently. The devs aim is to have fights at a distance were the target is clearly visible, so in the 10s of kilometers.
The system configuration is randomly generated for each match. It was probably a moon spawning in the shadow of the gaz giant?
Occluded objects blink (I think it works only for ships/installations vs celestial objects. A moon doesnât blink if it is on the other side of the planet).
Taking over AI ships could be fun, but I wouldnât want to pay full price for a ship that has suffered damage and spent some ammunition.
Please make sure that in the keybinding setup, Set Heading is actually called Set Heading. Right now it is called Capital Turn or such, which was confusing in terms of what that does.
The unification pass over inputs is still coming, probably next week.
The problem is that many events will be renamed; theyâll also get a proper name and description in the in-game menus.
Custom profiles will likely not work anymore ( most events will be broken ); and this time the changes are too big for the automatic version upgrade system to be useful.
Therefore everybody should expect to have to remake their custom profiles in the next-next patch 
I know it sucks but there are no alternatives at this point.
5 Likes
Thatâs no biggie. With the ingame menu now it takes a fraction of the time to test the setup.
Also. Often I should have slapt myself and just started from scratch instead of pulling allong year old bindings.
Yay. Looking forward to that.
3 Likes
Had a fly around earlier and had fun!
If the interceptor is going to be slower, reduce the gimbal arc on its weapons a bit please. Now that enemy intys arenât as nimble and hard to hit, itâs too easy to land shots.
Enemies that are attacking you, and incoming missiles/mines, need to be much more urgently highlighted somehow. They should demand your attention.
Is there a point to destroyers having guns? I was in one fighting an enemy destroyer in a full gun battle. It was agonisingly slow. Shields took forever to wear down in particular. I used most of my missiles in an effort to speed things up. The final 20% damage was done when the enemy released a mine and I scored a hit on it before the destroyer got to a safe distance.
TL:Dr, destroyer needs more punch for taking down shields.
1 Like