Infinity : Battlescape FAQ
Q: What is the current state of development and when can I play the game ?
A. The game is currently in development, in pre-alpha. Alpha will be launched on the 15 June 2018. Beta is scheduled for end-2018, but no date has been announced yet. Early access on Steam will come soon after, with a final release around Q2 2019.
Q: When can I play the game ?
A: This depends on your pledge tier. People who pledge the Developer Access tier have immediate access to the builds and can already play. Alpha backers have to wait for the alpha release the 15 June 2018, but we’ve organized “alpha week-end” events a few times already, just no permanent access yet. We’ll probably organize such events for beta backers after the alpha is out, but permanent beta access will not happen until end-2018. Finally, the game will arrive on Steam and digital platforms in early 2019.
Q. Is this game an MMO
A. No. It is match based, although a match can potentially last hours/days. It is a team-based solar system conquest/domination mode where you cooperate with other players to destroy (or protect) your team’s infrastructure (space stations, bases, factories… ) and participate in massive battles to do so. Think of Planetside or Battlefield, but as a space-sim.
Q. How many players can you support in a single battle ? Or in the entire solar system ?
A. Although we haven’t had the opportunity yet to test the game with hundreds of players at once, we have stress-tested our current server in real Internet conditions with up to 400 bots, each consuming cpu resources and bandwidth. The game should scale up to a few hundred players concurrently without any problem. Our goal is to support massive battles between players.
Q. Is the game using server instancing ?
A. No, all players are physically part of the same world. You can be navigating in an asteroid field and look down at that planet in the distance and there might actually be players flying in the canyons, mountains or cities that you can see from space !
Q. Huge procedural planets are nice, but what is there to do on these planets ? Won’t that be boring ?
A. The primary goal of planets is to provide a wide variety of environments (and gorgeous landscapes) for players to fight in. Different planets will have different atmospheric models, conditions or weather. Landscapes can vary from deserts to green valleys, tall snowy mountains with canyons, gas giants with crazy lightning, volcanic planets with lava, etc…
Many “Battlescapes” will provide objectives on the surface of these planets, such as cities, factories, ground installations, military bases. You could for example imagine a large artillery gun array defending a factory from capital ship orbital bombardment that players would have to scout/attack by flying under radar detection, using terrain to provide coverage.
Q. Is there going to be an off-line / solo campaign ?
A. We will offer an off-line sandbox mode where you can freely explore, train your skills, test out various ships/weapons, and we’ll probably offer more sandbox elements and easter eggs. There will not be a single-player scenario campaign though as it would totally be out of scope for our budget goal.
Q. Is this a one-time buy, or will it be free to play / pay to win, or have a monthly fee ?
A. No, you’ll just have to buy the game once and that’s it, you can play for as long as you want.
Q. Will there be player-hosted dedicated servers, or only official servers ?
A. Players will be able to host their own servers and to mod them. Official servers will of course be the default choice, and will feature official stats tracking and achievements.
Q: Will I be able to land on a planet, get out of my ship, and walk around?
A: You will be able to land on a planet but you won’t be able to get out of your ship and walk around. We currently do not have the budget to implement such features and want to focus on our core gameplay.
Q: What are the minimum system requirements?
A: At this stage of development it’s difficult to estimate what the final system requirements will be as we still have a lot of optimization work to do. That being said our current minimum system requirements are roughly the following:
- OS: Win7 64-bit or later (DX11)
- Processor: Intel Dual-Core i3 or i5 3.4GHz or equivalent
- Memory: 8 GB RAM
- Graphics: Geforce GTX 780 or Radeon HD 7970 (3 GB VRAM) or equivalent
- Hard Drive: 20 GB available space
Q: Can I explore other solar systems and galaxies?
A: The I-Novae Engine is capable of allowing you to explore billions of solar systems as well as other galaxies however Infinity: Battlescape will be restricted to a single solar system. This will allow us to focus our resources on ensuring that it provides the best experience possible. We may offer additional solar systems after the game ships.
Q: Will Infinity: Battlescape support VR headsets such as Oculus Rift ?
A. We have already added support to VR headsets such as the Oculus Rift in our I-Novae Engine. However it would take a lot of effort, money, and increased risk to solve problems such as performance (VR pretty much halves the framerate) and a separate UI dedicated to VR. This is why we aren’t making any promise at this stage.
As VR enthusiasts ourselves this is definitely something we will try to add on our own, especially if we are able to hit our higher stretch goals.
Q: Will Infinity: Battlescape be available on Steam
A. Yes, we will be releasing the game on Steam, in Q1/Q2 2019. Price will be in the $30-$40 range.