Beta 0.4.0.0 Feedback Thread

Beta is finally here! As usual, post feedback in the thread, that includes bugs, balancing observations and the like. We probably have many new folks here since the beta has only just opened up, in general it’s just good to post what you’re thinking, maybe it will be useful.

Hud

First, the hud. The darkish blue isn’t great in space or great for eyestrain (blue is typically a pretty poor color for eyes), and against rethe and sarake in particular it blends in too much. Feel like green was better, maybe green for the hud and team and a lighter green or cyan for players would fit better. The reduced scan lines are appreciated.

The movement lines in warp are just way too dense (in warp), they’re completely overwhelming. Need a better curve on the appearance of those particles.

The separate colors for players and npcs is nice, i still wish we had more specific ship icons, dessie and corvette are very different targets and it’s always a surprise when you guess wrong!

Capitals

The cruiser overheats after 1 second of firing with all guns enabled. its fine if the game supports better group control but as is it’s very annoying, additionally none of the current weapons are automatic anti-fighter weapons, leading to everything being manual and needing to try to spin the camera around to track fighters. It also means excessive weapon group management.

The interceptor/bomber/capital balance isnt working well right now, basically bomber torpedos and inty missiles are barely a threat to the cruiser, but at the same time without the point defense turrets cruisers have very little power projection to any nearby small ships. Basically, cruisers feel near invulnerable but also have very little power projection. It becomes an eternal stalemate, which is fine but with one caveat, one bullet from an interceptor can lock down a cruiser. it’s not a huge deal right now but it’s too easy to do and this will probably be done intentionally as the game grows bigger, just have one player in an inty follow a cruiser around while going full evasive, and it’ll never be able to warp away. Maybe a percent based warp break might be better. Something like “took 5% shield damage or hull damage” rather than one stay bullet from an interceptor from 4km hitting a cruiser.

Interceptors actually still seem mostly fine even after the changes, likely because of the weapon speed reduction to compensate for the accel change. However, interceptors have very limited utility in achieving objectives, the only real objective being killing small turret towers, which can now be done in about 100 ballistic ammo, which is very little and is maybe too easy. When we are able to target turrets and get a prediction point, those turrets will likely need buffs but for now it’s nice that the inty has something to contribute to a base attack. If bombers were more useful, maybe interceptors would get a stronger point defense role in defending capships, but if bombers can simply fire torps and missile volleys from 10-5km an interceptor escort won’t do much good without some additional mechanics, maybe something like shooting down torps more easily, shorter range torps, not sure.

npc carriers don’t ever seem to stop long enough to be spawnable, though this is the first patch they’re actually spawning since they’ve gotten their new role, so not super unexpected.

I don’t think i like the new capital ship control mode, i kept trying it and just going back to target mode. I hadnt tried it previously because it felt incomplete, now that it’s more fleshed out after trying it, it just doesn’t seem very useful. There just isn’t access to all the needed controls, you can hold ctrl to strafe but then you lose your rotation. Lomsor mentioned something like defining a direction to go to and just leaving it, that might be better. At least in the target mode, you can hold ctrl to freelook around the cap and shoot in any direction, even while strafing and rotating like mad.

I keep feeling like i wish there were Starsector-like autoturret controls on the capships, basically in starsector you can create a few weapon groups, say whether or not that group should autofire, and then quickly toggle autofire on and off for each group, and switch between groups. Applied to battlescape, say we created 4 weapon groups, auto energy, auto ballistic, manual energy, manual ballistic, we could use the left/right mouse button for the two manual groups as we do now, but then just have two keys or menu options to toggle autofiring of all small turrets on or off. Instead of just aiming automatically, these weapons would act as point defense and basically choose to aim and fire on their own, as long as they are enabled. Maybe even give them their own AI so they prioritize firing energy at shielded and ballistic at low shield targets.

Misc

Dark sides of planets are really hard to see on. Killing bases there is a serious problem, basically right now the night side of planets need to be ignored until the end. For some reason aiming down at the planet makes the HDR darker than looking up at the lit sky.

The heat/energy balance on the interceptor feels quite good, for me at least. The limit to firing one weapon group at a time is nice too, but only on the inty, bomber and corvette, it just feels like a bizarre limitation on a capital ship.

10 Likes

My first impressions and feedback.

  • Textured cruiser looks really good
  • I don’t like that the space dust effect appears at low speed, in warp it looks cool, but flying trough atmosphere at 600 m/s it looks unrealistic
  • some weapons effects are a bit small
  • the small turrets on cap ships are very small, they look too tiny
  • I like that the outside view is now the default view for cap ships, sadly it is not really usable because the hud doesn’t show
  • holding the “w” key in capital ship control mode isn’t practical, it would be better if pressing it once would set the heading instead of needing to keep pressing it
  • using the guns on the capital ships isn’t fun, It feels like the downtime between firing is way too much, I would prefer if the strengh was lowered and the amount of time we are actually firing was increased
  • orienting the cap ships during warp is too slow, when flying from one base to another base on the same planet a warp interuption to reorient the ship in space is often needed
  • the changes to speed are okay
  • the soft cap: to be honest I still don’t know when exactly the cap is off and when it is on, but the amount of times when I was going too fast was definitely reduced

Other than that the game is still one of the most fun games I ever played, so keep up the good work.

5 Likes

I’m heading to bed now, but I’ll answer all the feedback tomorrow. All I can say so far is that pretty much everything you’ve listed is known and will be addressed later on, and wasn’t done yet because timing isn’t right yet, or we lacked time to polish the beta ( as is usual with every release ).

Baby steps :wink:

Keep the feedback coming - especially valuable are first impressions from new players ! Thanks.

7 Likes

Time for me to pop in some thoughts as well.

I have trouble trying to figure out half the time what the heck is going on. There’s way to much radar clutter and feedback, and the range right now is literally everything that’s visible. The lower sphere radar is great. We need some way of limiting the ‘local’ battle so the front back actually displays useful information rather then a giant blob of colors. You might even be able to find a way to fit it side by side next to the 3d cylinder-dar. Them being on the top right and left is almost impossible to use, as you have to actively look away.

Another issue that might just be a “Me” problem and is actually implemented, is half the time I have no idea what my vector is. I know there’s a circle that shows where you’re going. And a back X circle that shows you’re facing behind. But it might be worthwhile to add some kind of arrow (Maybe even on the radar!) pointing at where you’re going.

Not to mention it’s very beneficial for you as the player to continue your momentum in the sameish direction (Unless you’re in an interceptor) and turn around to fight back instead of stopping and then going. It makes you far to easy of a target if you stop. Not to mention you can outspeed missiles / anyone else trying to engage you. So even more reason to add to the “Where am I going” arrow.

Also as for weapons. I feel like missiles are just way to easily countered by the ‘flares’ we have. I try to use it when in close range as well (I.E. 2KM) but they have a horrible tendency to overshoot if it’s not a capital I’m aimed at. So you can’t ‘sneak’ attack with them, and using them at the range where they won’t overshoot (4-5k) gives just about anyone enough time to press alt because they just aren’t fast enough. They accelerate way to slowly, and also don’t turn nearly as well as I think they should. I’m almost certain an interceptor with power to engines could ‘dodge’ them with a Boosted A or D press from full stop.Then just fly faster then the missiles can catch up. (To be tested obviously)

As for the core focus of the gameplay, it doesn’t make much sense to me either. It’s in the best interest of the enemy team to almost never bring capitals to the defender’s station. They’re too slow to get there (easily spotted), they can’t maneuver to get around to the ‘objectives’ to shoot at them. As for right now, an interceptor or bomber (A few at least) Can take down a station’s primary role by themselves. The turrets, then the respawn points. Corvettes and other ships with ‘warp jam’ ability are nice. But it doesn’t matter if you jam someone’s warp, if they just boost power to engines and just go in a straight line.

It seems to me, the best way to ‘win’ the game is to avoid actually fighting anything but that station itself. There’s no all in mechanic. And even if there was, ideally you’d only have to ‘all in’ with super fast interceptors or bombers that can 1-shot any theoretical inhibitor. (That we don’t have mind you. Just theory crafting)

I think we need more objectives, and a variety of things to do / fight for. Because if this is all that’s planned, without some major investment / making killing stations a huge deal that requires a real team effort. I can’t see the game actually picking up more then the cult following of supporters we already have. (I could offer ideas, but this isn’t the thread for this I think)

Otherwise as points listed already. Maybe make the hud a controllable slider for people, and have a default that’s not dark blue. As for energy / heat. I honestly didn’t really even notice it. But I prefer the smaller ships to the capitals anyways.

Positive note? It doesn’t crash (We don’t talk about the servers here) and is a real game. So you’ve already done better then 99.99% of steam greenlight ***‘games’***. It’s quite a bad day in gaming when calling something an “Actual game” is a compliment.

5 Likes

Huge patch like always. Always surprised. I went in with less “comparing” to older version and that went well.

Skins

Skins / Textures are sweet. I was a bit weary about the “photorealistic” aspect of the game. The station were always a bit of a letdown. The cruiser though is really well done and the quality/style is definitely sufficient.

"Spacedust"

I always was quite sceptical of “ingame spacedust”. It’s super cliche. It is quite spectacular though.

What really got me was when it was affected by lighting. When I flew behind Rethe prime and they all got dark it was one of those “wow, nice” moments Battlescape has many of.

It is maybe a bit too pronounced, yeah. I would have prefered it being a hud thing but I guess due to technical reasons the other option was chosen.

Lightspeed is … well … iconic.

When you drop out of warp while going fast and “error correct” pulls you back to where you should be you can see the “spacedust” going backwards. So it does its job well to show the movement. In the past it was only noticeable when close to stations.
I think it’s a rather fun effect. It could be explained in technobabble. Just a note of the effect for further refference. Don’t really think much must be done because of the “pullback”.

Weapons

The “only one weapon type” thing took some getting used to but once I noticed how it worked switching between the two worked quite well.

I personally didn’t have much problem with the smaller effect size. Subjectively it was alright for me.

What I did notice is that when firing sideways and not having a target selected the shots often land “somewhere”. Tryign to destroy bases and station is frustrating like that. I guess without a target convergence isn’t set correctly.

The MK7 guns I wasn’t able to get to fire most of the time. They are invisible because they are on the underside of the cruiser and their firing arc is hard to guesstimate. Often I used “Broadside” to attack station and apparently they weren’t able to rotate to that angle.

Weapon management in-flight is much to complicated. I think instead of increasing the wheel there should be predefined weapon groups. If that complexity is wanted it should be put into the loadout part of the game and not the “in flight”/“fighting” part. It’s too much.
Have two groups.Small and Large and All. I thought about maybe “mid” but honestly I only mostly need “small” and “large”. That would decrease the needed clicks from a couple to one. (Also 3 groups because if you just do Small and Large you would have to deactivate small and then activate large. That’s two click. And another two to revert it again)
All the kinds of weapons are cool and all. The medium ones (4 and 5) are not really used because of the hectic though. I would play with them if I could edit the load-out though. Like only mids and small or only small and large. Would never really do more then two weapon groups, maybe three sometimes (Small, Mid, Large, All).

Balance Changes

Balance wise it doesn’t seem too bad really. The whole gameplay loop is a bit wonky though and it really doesn’t work once there are less then hundreds of players around or when bots don’t participate in the main objective.
It is kind of tedious to do the “dirty work” of wiping out bases when sometimes as a player you might want to switch it up a bit.
Also. The whole meta around warping should really be thought about in the near future … I really have no idea what the plan is … keep it as free as now? I can’t see how that would work, maybe I am wrong now though.

Overheating seems alright in combination with limited weapon activation and the forced “one weapon type only” thing.

Scale change seemed to have worked. Engagements are a bit more in the visible range and that’s more fun in my opinion. Also, Stations seem bigger.

HUD

I feel the target colours are nice and readable. Yellow works quite well. All the colours are a bit confusing though until getting used to.

I agree that blue isn’t easy to read for a space game. I really had a hard time to see if some of the radial menu options where active or not. Never happened in the green version.

Capitals / 3rd Person

When it comes to controls I feel like they are halfway there.
The addition of “spherical moving centre” to the 3rd person did help a bit with visibility. Works well in directions front/back and around on that plane. Down and Up aren’t there yet though because most ships are long and the sphere that the centre moves along is not big enough to encompass the ship. Sometimes the ship still ends up in the centre of the screen. The less this happens, the better and freer it will feel.
I suggested an ellipsoid as an optimal form to encompass the ship. A oblate spheroid could also work though.

I feel like 3rd Person feels much better. Compared to the claustrophobic Bridge view it feels like an open field.

I find it weird that 3rd Person is chosen as default for capitals but all the vital HUD elements have not been moved over … what’s the point?

As mentioned in the chat. Having to have both situational awareness and aiming for capital ships makes it really hard to choose correctly as a cap pilot. For aiming you want to be maxed zoomed in but for situational awareness you want to be maxed zoomed out. 3rd Person helps as it allows you to see where enemy fire comes from more easily. Still for aiming you optimally use the zoom function which rids you of your view of the ship.
Smaller ships also have this problem to some extend they do benefit less from external view though because they need to identify a thread before getting hit anyway.

Also. When it comes to the capital control mode I still suggest making the "point towards my view direction’ a single click button. Look into direction, click once, ship will remember that heading and orient automatic towards it, player can do other things while ship orients itself to that heading.
Also. Pressing “W” should still override the main engines. “W” can be double bound with “set heading to view direction” and it would fire the main engines and constantly set the desired heading. Using any manual override would cancel the automatic heading manoeuvre. (Besides forward if it is double bound)

Bugs

Collisions are majorly broken. Once two ships touch a kind of back and forth vibration starts and all kinds of wonky results come out of that.

In 3rd Person at high speeds when “drifting” (pulling a hard turn in warp for instance) the center point shifts and only returns when slowing down, when accelerating to high warp speeds it can stay “beside the ship” for minutes.

Credits earned for Spawn Info is shown in red. Maybe bug?

Many already reported bugs from previous version still in this. Mostly small stuff.


6 Likes

Some good points raised above.

Not having gamed in now many years I feel somewhat rusty with space shooters. But from the live streams and videos and screen shots it does look quite complex to figure out what the heck is going on. Not being able to try it directly I can only rely on the live streams, videos, chats and screen grabs and feedback to form my own opinions. I do wonder how on earth myself or any new players will cope with just a gamepad, even a 3rd party xbox gamepad with plenty of extra buttons and paddles.

If I ever get to play the game, it will be only with a xbox like gamepad (with extra paddles), and also a HOTAS. Just a reminder to not forget about gamepad and HOTAS/Joystick users.

There is something quite nice and simple about how one can jump in and play a game like say Everspace. Balance and ease of play for newbies is a hard thing to achieve with space shooters.

4 Likes

Agree with all points except the cruiser/carrier gameplay from player perspective, as I have yet to use those and therefore cannot provide an opinion of that kind. However, I do agree on the shields being nerfed on the cruiser and the idea of a specified damage percentage needing to be reached for a ship’s warp to be disabled (I was in a tiny interceptor strafing under Matt50k’s cruiser, preventing him from jumping by merely using laser shots without any other friendly firepower against him). Also if the cruiser’s weapons overheat that quickly when they are all firing that could use a buff for sure

I noticed one or two people in the stream mentioned they didn’t like the space particles because they are unrealistic- so perhaps there could be an option added in the graphics settings to turn it off for those who would prefer that? I personally think it improved the feeling of direction a lot, which was often hard to determine before.

Although the Interceptor feels pretty useless against bases atm, inty vs inty combat (which I was mostly doing) feels massively improved and pretty addicting!

I can’t wait to see how things get improved between the rest of the ships. Really nice update overall, the whole thing is coming along and is looking even more promising by the update. this is clearly a talented team of devs who know what they’re doing and continue to impress proving what they’re capable of :+1:

3 Likes

good points on the objectives/base killing ideas. I noticed taking out many small enemy ships didn’t seem to do anything to the team standing

to add to that, maybe part of the solution could be taking longer to unlock bigger ships (so people can’t just cut immediately to mopping out bases with them), and having point values that effect the match progress from destroying the smaller ships? Otherwise, like you said, they can simply be ignored if you’re using a larger ship

2 Likes

I already mentioned this on discord but to me the projectile effects are borderline invisible and they need to be both bigger and have less of a fade so I can at least see that I am actually firing and where my shots are going, the bigger your ship gets the worse this problem becomes.

5 Likes

My first play impressions: I’ve played on my HP Envy laptop since I don’t have a gaming PC (i7-6500U CPU @ 2.50GHz, 8 GB RAM, shitty integrated Intel® HD Graphics 520). In order to have a good frame-rate I’ve played on 1024 x 768 with Low specs and was having a good frame-rate. Although my laptop has a 1920x1080 resolution, it is only 13 inch so the game was looking good even with a 1024 x 768 resolution. Even if it was on Low I’ve enjoyed very much the graphics of the planets and the stations. I’ve played with an XBOX joystick and the controls were pretty intuitive, apart from the circular menus where I found it hard to activate/deactivate warp, having to release the down button while selecting with the stick. Maybe with more experience it will be easier. As for shooting when I was using the bomber I couldn’t hit very well the enemy targets but with the Corvette it was easier. I managed to do 2 kills :slight_smile: Music was very nice, my favorite song was the one that is played in the Cruiser video and the guitar sound that plays when the team earns credit reminded me of the Starcraft soundtrack: very nice feeling! :slight_smile: Other misc stuff:

  • Sometimes I was following the colored indicators pointing to the other players but I didn’t understood if they were on the side of the planet that I was facing or on the other side so various times I had to go back in the orbit and continue the search.

  • When I was on the dark side of a planet I couldn’t see very much.

  • I didn’t understood precisely what the big arrows were indicating (were they pointing to battles??).

  • If I play in full-screen mode and do an ALT+TAB i cannot return to full-screen with ALT+ENTER.

  • At a certain point I couldn’t fire anymore with the Corvette whenever I liked but only at targets, didn’t understood why this would happen.

  • After having spawned at a base on the volcano planet I couldn’t move from my initial position with autopilot on. So I had to turn off autopilot, get outside the hangar and turn it on again

9 Likes

I disagree that bombers are optimal for assault, their dps is just so low and if you approach a station in the right way with a capital (kill the orbiting turrets, then approach and kill turrets from one angle, then just blow everything else up from the safe angle while shields are overcharged) it’s much faster, and you can also contest and kill other capital ship players (where otherwise you have no chance, for now at least). The exception is multiple bombers + corvette group, where you can rearm torpedos fast enough to do okay, but put a group half the size in capitals and it’ll be faster.

But what i do agree on completely is that games atm are coming down to shooting stations more. It seems “optimal” to just race down eachother’s stations while never really contesting, when i contest it’s because it’s fun more than due to trying to win. I think if we get some factors that motivate more concentrated battles, winning and fun will more closely align, and something i’m really looking forward to is the NPCs that shoot stations to maybe alleviate some of the need for players to do the heavy lifting in attacks. Shields should also encourage more concentrated fights, as you’d need to break the shield Regen so lone attacks might not be as effective.

One other thing i forgot to mention in my feedback in the OP is the economy is a bit odd still, it feels really easy to just go shoot some of the low-HP turrets down and get enough money for a cruiser very fast. I think i got a cruiser at like 10-15 minutes into the match start or less, which is way too fast. I think special rewards from objectives give too much compared to passive income. if passive team/freighter income is a solid 75% on average for people, there will still be some outliers in money and some who make less, but it means when a cruiser is finally achieved it’s more of an actual investment in time, something to be guarded by teammates, and something when lost cant be instantly replaced.

Also thinking about what JonnyRedHed mentioned, it will always be a good idea to preserve roles for players who don’t want to put as much effort in. Setups with heavy assist, support roles, passive things, capitals with mostly autoturrets are really good for that and the corvette might be the best example from what we have. However this is going to be a niche game, and the way niche games survive is having enough depth to draw people in and keep them coming back again and again pretty much forever as a playerbase builds up. So, the solution seems to have both kind of roles and try to guide players who want simple gameplay into simpler roles. After all, someone who just joins and hasnt learned about the game won’t even know what role to pick to suit this, without guidance!

6 Likes

So this might be simple, but on the installation side:

  • I can choose the directory for the launcher, but not for the game itself. I’ll try restarting just in case I missed it the first time, but yeah.
  • The error also says “gb bytes” which is just a grammar thing.

Thanks!

2 Likes

Nice patch, I spent last night in a bomber, some thoughts are below.

Missiles

  • There needs to be some indication of missile and torpedo reload time, blinking the weapon, filling it like a progress bar or adding a timer
  • Missile lock seems to break sometimes, you could be staring straight at a cruiser at 10km away and lock doesn’t register
  • Lock indicator is barely visible, make the ‘locked’ bold or add a lock icon

Resupply

  • It’s very inconvenient to resupply, for many reasons, making bombers a bad choice to play with
  • Stations are not clearly indicated
  • Small hangar entrance is not indicated at all
  • Docking bays are too small (bomber can hardly fit and then you are expected to turn 180deg)
  • Resupply ships are not indicated

All this makes it a huge pain to resupply, due to the time it takes to do so.

Controls

  • There needs to be a negative speed setting accessible by the mouse wheel, one notch would be fine
  • The mouse-wheel notches are too many, they equate to 2m/s per notch, it’s way too granular
  • Loving the capital ship controls, W-S should be direct pitch control, looks like W now tries to point towards cursor

Situational awareness

  • No way of knowing when you are in range
  • Target lead indicator should only show when weapons are in range
  • No feedback on damage done
  • Target should have shield/hull points visible (this could be 4 bars instead of percentage [one bar equating to 25%] 25%-50%-75%-100%, that would make it 4 bits per ship for network purposes)
  • Ships need HUD indicators that relate to size, the outline alone is not enough, 1-4 squares, triangle, circle, large square, next to the target outline.
  • Maybe I missed it, but it would be nice to get direction from which you are being shot at, like what is standard in today’s FPS games, little arrow on the HUD.

Other

  • You need to remove all bases and stations from night sides of the planets until ambient light is sorted, nobody likes to play in that setting, you are just hurting the game atm.
  • Order text is duplicated
  • Menu items should respond to [LMB]
  • Cruiser overheats way too easily

Really good work so far, keep it up.

10 Likes

here is some feedback that ive come up with that covers a few areas:

1, ive noticed that the blue recticle gets lost on some planets and while aiming at the lead pips
2, taerget closet ship/enemy ship (g) dosnt all ways work i can be ramming a ship and pressing “g” and it highlights a ship thats around another planet
3, my x52 pro dosnt work in game
4, the controlls that u may need are all over the keyboard for example u use wsad to move and the mouse to aim weapons but to fire missiles you press right control, plus where is the button for torpedos?
5, it would be nice to see more info on targeted ship like class etc
6, with some weapons its hard to know if your fireing until the target flashes/shield hits
7, being able to target sub systems like weapons on stations would be nice touch.
8, it might be me but i dont think ive come across any transports to kill so im either not looking hard enough or they arnt marked clearly enough?
9, with capital ship controls its really odd when u hit f4 to change view that your controls change completley …please just keep the controls the same for all views
10, im guessing cap ships is supposed to be sort of end game things? if so they need to be harder to get
11, when i installed the game it never added a launch icon on my desktop lol
12, theres no clear indication of when your in range of the target

im sure there is more but ill have to update/repost if i find more issues
UPDATE 1
when at a distance trying to read the names of planets can be hard thx to all the red/blue markers

1 Like

You got it to run on integrated graphics? Most impressive!

Can’t wait to try the new patch this morning, it’s been a while since I was on.

3 Likes

I too keep using target mode on capitals. It is really awkward to manoeuvre, manually aim and manage guns at the same time, especially with such lumbering ships.
I feel that they should either lock on the camera direction when hitting the forward key and keep orientating there or have a fixed orientation set continuously through WASD (like in Starshatter if I remember correctly - Edit: it is the current scheme actually, but the heading should be materialised on the HUD while the buttons are pressed. The forward key should be reworked).
I would prefer to manage navigation (set orientation and velocity vector, not aligned), targets and guns RTS-style, with no manual aiming and shooting.

How do I know whether a target still has shields? I don’t understand that shield icon, shield hitting effects disappears before it is emptied.

You can’t have both missiles and torpedoes active at the same time. It’s the same button.

Freighter routes for interception. Freighters go from land bases to space stations to generate team credits.

4 Likes

It seems the game crashes when hitting F4 (switch control scheme) in spectator mode (killcam). And no, I wanted to disable the HUD.

3 Likes

ah ok i guess i will need to look for the button to switch from one to the other then. thanks

It’s in the weapons radial menu.

Feedback: the warp threshold message (500m/s) is inconsistent with the actual threshold (~150m/s?)

Ah, good one, didn’t get caught in my earlier testing, thanks :wink:

3 Likes