lots of good changes again, i only had a few things to mention.
During today’'s test i mentioned the cruiser shields are too strong, but thinking about it a bit more maybe it’s just the shield overcharge that’s too strong. Maybe if just overcharge on the cruiser was reduced to 100, and just shield overcharge on the dessie was reduced, it would be enough to make the cruiser feel less tanky. Right now shield overcharge is too often my go-to overcharge during fights, so maybe the issue is just overcharge rather than the cruiser’s base regen rate. Just reducing the rate might move the balance away from overcharging shields without affecting the “basic” survivability when not overcharged (which seems fine, usually).
I feel like the corvette is a bit too strong against smaller ships in terms of damage soak. Maybe it could do with a (small) shield regen reduction too, especially now that interceptors have shorter range and lower accel it seems that the previous situation (where interceptors could usually way too easily kill corvettes) has overshot the other way slightly.
I like the passive income reduction in the sense of less income overall, but it’s still very fast to get a cruiser. I had cruiser money in ~20 minutes based on my recording, and i only spent 10 of those minutes farming turrets efficiently. It is probably possible to get enough for a cruiser in 10 or less minutes if someone really tries hard, it just feels weird that killing 10 turrets can get you a ship that can then destroy the entire station. Maybe halfing or quartering the rewards from base objectives to match the lower passive income to fix the proportions of objective income and passive income would be enough here? not sure.
There were a few other points i forgot… but i gotta run for now. Hopefully will remember them later and make another post.
Yup, the income balance is still all over the place. I think I nerfed economy a bit too much, to the point destroying factories/haulers does not really affect you all that much. Overall the progression system needs a lot more work. I’m not too concerned about it yet to be honest, because we’re going to add more in the coming months ( ranks, experience, other credits sinks or incomes through missions ), so everything that gets balanced now will be thrown away in the coming patches.
I really liked the match. Lot of fun. It seems to be shaping up into one of those games where team play is really rewarding experience. But has the downside when server is empty of real humans.
As much as i enjoyed the survivability of a corvette, i have to admit it might be little high.
Some times i was just lucky that people stopped hitting me with last sliver of hull. But usually running away in assist off and occasionally strafing was enough to runaway in order to regenerate. And after some time regenerate back to full hull.
Perhaps slightly lower shield regen… or regen only at different conditions.
Oh and i found strange bug, throttle axis is working fine entire way except on last 2 milimeters, where it would be at full. It jumps back to zero. It might be something to do with launcher reporting error that : SetTargetSpeed is an axis but lacks primary button. Primary is throttle and secondary is nothing because mouse roller uses different input type(delta target speed). But it might be unrelated.
I’m not sure if it’s a bug or not, but I’ve been watching the haulers come in and it looks like I only get income from every 6th hauler that docks. I was the only person on my team for most of these, and then I noted one other person join and it was still only giving me credits every 6th hauler. Only getting 25 credits per hauler doc would be fine, but not every 6th hauler dock. Every docking should give you at least something if it’s being split
Feature request:
Please put docking indicators on fighter bays and corvette bays in a similar fashion to the capital ship docks. Only display the docking indicators depending on what kind of ship you’re flying. Don’t show enemy docking bay indicators.
I spend a lot of time flying around a station looking for those bays sometimes and it’s especially annoying when there’s a battle going on.
Hope you all had fun! Real life always seems to find a way of preventing me join these events!
I do agree about docking bays. We need entrance indicators of some kind. Could be like runway lights, or chevrons pointing to it on your HUD? But yes, make it ship-specific and not for enemy stations. Good suggestion, jag!
As for the economy, I’d say it’s helpful at the moment to be able to earn ships quickly. Makes it much easier to test all the ship mechanics. When they’re working and decently balanced in strength, then it would be a good time to implement proper progression.
Station defences are lacking right now. The capital defences are too weak to harm even a destroyer before getting blown up and they lack range to be anything more than farming material. They are dangerous for smaller ships though (bomber). Small turrets can down shields on a destroyer but apparently they have only blasters and need to rely on ships to finish the job.
I like the capital ship orientation indicator, but it seems to disappear when hitting WASD, it should move instead, and I find the effect too strong: the orientation target is moved too quickly.
I am still getting used to the new keys, I am unsure whether it is an improvement.
The shield flashing on damage is too subtle, I barely see it when looking for it. The heat meter is also not very obvious in my experience, despite the warnings and red color. An audio clue might help there.
I agree that shields overcharge is too strong. It is my default on most ships (but I avoid flying too twitchy ships as much as possible, not sure how efficient it is on them)
There is too little incentive to engage enemy ships ATM, not worth the risk when farming structures can pay for capitals quickly. Buffing station defences might help in that regard, along with missions.
I have pointed it out before, I think the destroyer has a frustrating rate of fire. Burst firing is cool but in the meantime Iam just holding the button for nothing, and when a cruiser comes along and dishes out a long stream of projectiles I feel really useless
Without a doubt the game is becoming more enjoyable with every update.
Still, here are my quirks.
Used to exploit planet warp landing by overcharging shields and manually thrust to balance speed and shield damage, but this update disallows that as any damage disengages warp.
Please switch to a mono-spaced font for rapidly changing numbers.
Coms: “Regroup” audio says “Form up on me” while still having a target in parenthesis, are you supposed to tell each squad member to regroup? Wouldn’t it be better to have just “Regroup!” with the mentioned target?
All ship thrusters are equally powerful. Such as side thrusters having the same power as the main. One of the reasons for easy escape.
Perhaps add the option to hire NPC interceptor and bomber ships? Though they would have to follow the player around everywhere, including warp.
I would love this. I always half expect NPCs to follow coms orders.
About burst fire (destroyer): it also makes it more difficult to manage heat, the burst bumps it quickly and a bit unpredictably. My solution: shorten the bursts, increase RoF and decrease damage per shot.
For exemple, if a gun has 12 shots bursts every 10 seconds for 100 damage per shot, make it 6 shots every 3 seconds for 60 damage.
Also ammo is too limited on the dessy at least. The medium sized long burst cannon is the first to get out of ammunition.
I’m wondering at what point (if at all before release) will we be able to select weapon loadouts? Because it may be that balancing the ship weapons becomes irrelevant once we can select the type of weapons we like.
As it is though, I would agree that it would suit destroyers to have faster-firing, lower-damage guns and therefore cruisers can have slower-firing, high-damage cannons.
Carriers currently have a problem of being massively overpowered (IMHO). They should have effective anti-fighter guns, but limited larger weapons. A cruiser should be able to destroy a carrier in a 1v1. The advantage of a carrier is providing a weapons platform to launch squadrons from (this needs developing - we could be launching AI fighters). It gives the other capital ships a job to do because they need to defend carriers from enemy cruisers/destroyers.
Edit: slight collision bug - just remembered that when I was last on, I had a problem with enemy AI fighters crashing into my carrier. They would sort of get stuck and vibrate, causing me to lose control of the carrier and take damage. One even glitched inside the carrier mesh. The actual collisions are working much better (as in interceptors don’t make cruisers spin round) but tangling still creates some issues.
Very nice patch as always.
Gameplay is super fun, especially interceptor vs interceptor.
My feedback:
love the new set direction function for capitals
the new set direction function needs to be a separate event in the profile config files. I have bound ship Y to an gamepad axis, using a capital with this setup is impossible because every little movement on the stick resets or reverts the set direction, I would like to assign it to a ghamepad button and continue to use the ship Y event with a stick axis.
I am not sure if this is the case but in capital ship control mode I want to be able to manually use roll, ship X and ship Y
the overall credit gain is much better, but I think fighting ships is a waste of time compared to farming turrets, I think credit gain for shooting ships need to be increased, and credit gain for destroying turrets and installations dramatically nerfed.
that ships are powered upon spawning is a nice change
Hmm but then you run the risk of people not moving anywhere and just farming for no reason. Instead of completing objectives.
Right now you are motivated to do so at least slightly.
I worry we got too comfortable to previous state.
Really like the slight buff to missile launch speed. Feels like I can actually use them and hit people with them now.
The hud, we could really use an adjustable HUD. If in no other way then just changing colors to be more readable still. Do you plan on letting modders / creators make HUD packs to allow anyone to change the way information displays? Or do you plan on having everyone using the same templates that you guys create?
Moving onto bombers. I feel like they need to have their default load out changed for the time being until we can edit them ourselves. Right now the missiles, even as a barrage of 6 is far to weak to do anything against bigger targets. It might knock out a corvette’s shields. But other then that? a few interceptors or other bombers are all it can hope to actually kill. Instead of 6 missiles, why not 4 torpedo or something that can actually hurt bigger ships. If the point of the bomber is to be a somewhat mobile anti-capital weapon platform.
Stations and other hard points are still far to easy to ‘kill’ As shown on the stream. Hutch by himself can destroy multiple capital launch bays with a single bomber. They need to be increased in HP / given some timer to regenerate if the entire station/factory isn’t lost in the attack. As it stands, a single player acting alone by themselves can easily cripple the enemy infrastructure if he wanted to. Considering how long it takes for someone to figure out it’s happening, let alone orient themselves in a manner to deal with it.
Otherwise, besides me wanting to get some dmg numbers to see how many bombers would be needed to realistically take out a capital ship. . . I really like this latest patch. (Ramming ship when?)
Hitting ESC in login screen (the one with a planet in the background and “press any key to continue”) escapes the game
Where can I get my current credits during combat and in spawning? I’d like to know whether I can afford a replacement for a ship before spending the credits, or whether I can afford an upgrade. Switching HUD mode is not an option, the TAB menu is the perfect place IMO.
External view for capitals: orientation is lost when switching views, aiming is off with external view. The camera offset works well (not so much for screenshooting). I’d like to be able to zoom out more.
Already destroyed capital defence turrets show up in the distance but disappear up close
Not fond of the new crosshair. I’d prefer an equilateral triangle personally.
More general observations:
Is there any reason to spawn at a landbase? I only do when one is under attack.
Weapons management is a nightmare. Most of the tedium would be solved with 4 groups (auto-aim blasters, auto-aim guns, manual aim blasters, manual aim guns). Or make auto-aim ones auto-fire too.
Edit: I have been able to play under the callsign of Cinder, Myron Stn and NPC_42. Is that ok?
Edit 2: Supply base destruction has an [N/A] in the notification.
There is currently a second star in the system: Aresthia.
I think there’s a few old tooltips scattered around from before the acceleration changes. I spotted the same thing with a warp error message saying I had to be flying at 500m/s to enter warp. Was true, but now it’s 250m/s
Indeed, I noticed the warp threshold inconsistency, but this seems to be another issue. 500m/s is the target speed set with ‘0’, if it is beyond the soft limit the scale of the ‘1’-‘0’ speed buttons should be changed.
I"ve been conflicted about that. Either we could interpret the numbers as being a throttle percentage. Either as a speed.
The problem with the percentage is that it suddenly becomes inconsistent between ships. If I press “4” in the interceptor I won’t be flying at the same speed than a “4” in the corvette. When players are trying to stay in formation, it makes it easier to synchronize with each other ( Dan’s been doing that for a while in his steams ).
I should test it again but I got the feeling it is already inconsistent (a bad thing IMO). Maybe I am confusing with the target speed to reach the warp threshold?
you’re controlling different ships with different characteristics of course it won’t perfectly match up. of course there will be inconsistencies in handling and throttle. or did you except the cruiser to achieve the same speed in 5 seconds as the interceptor? or to achieve the warp threshold at the same speeds?
I will re-explain myself: I got the feeling (not yet re-tested ingame) that target speed buttons don’t set the same speed on all ships. If it is the case, target speeds are already inconsistent and each step should be adjusted to match the available scale (0-200 instead of 0-500) IMO.
If, however, my impression comes from the warp threshold changes (which makes it so that, instead of reaching warp threshold at the same speed, all ship classes do it in the same time BTW), then it makes sense to keep it in this state, but there should be some feedback that the target speed cannot be reached automatically.
Could it be possible to have a toggle fire on capships, taking into account primary/secondary fire?
Like so:
click on primary fire to activate guns continuous fire
click on secondary to switch to blasters continuous fire
