bobbleheads in cockpits? Good to know that cockpits for some ships at least are confirmed
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Even though it might be a bit extreme: why not make “mod tools for everyone” a separate stretch goal from “mod tools for backers of tier X 'n beyond”? You could fluff it up for the people who paid more by granting them rights to sell mods (which iirc was also a thing). Then, after the game comes out, make the “selling rights” an addon.
edit: never mind, didnt read up to genes post before posting ^^’
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Cockpits will be available for all ships sized corvette and smaller. Larger ships will have a 3rd person view.
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Would there be the potential to add larger ship cockpits with multi crew?
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Hello Sean! Glad to make your acquaintance.
Maybe we’ll see more lurkers come out of the woodwork. 
That’s okay.
If you want to give more, the way kickstarter is set up is that you can pledge your amount, then select any reward tier at or below your pledge lever. Theoretically, you could pledge 10 grand, but only have the 5$ reward.
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We have no plans to add multi-crew support. While we want to create a first-person cockpit experience unlike anything you’ve ever experienced before with the smaller ships - our goal with the larger ships is to provide a high level tactical/strategic experience rather than ultra immersive first person. Capital ships are critical for the destruction of enemy infrastructure and thus make a natural fit for providing the strategic core of a fleet. Lastly since we want to have massive space battles it is, from a gameplay standpoint, more advantageous to force each player to have his or her own ship instead of having 5 people occupy a single ship. Five hundred ships with guns ablaze is a lot more exciting than one hundred ships.
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I cant like this post enough…
After you take all my Imperial Credits, I’m going to have to start saving up for a good joystick to fly said ship around.
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I have to ask. Does this mean that we’re going to be seeing a mixture of twitch and point-n-click control schemes or is everything going to be fly-by-wire? Or is that info you’re saving for the KS?
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Can’t really see huge capital ships having completely twitch controls, since such things would be controlled with more than one system.
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I keep getting my hopes up only to see them dashed on the rocks of WTF.
I can only assume that your target demographic is teenage males.
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The nitty gritty details will ultimately be determined by play testing however the design direction we have in mind is that capital ships will primarily be point and click and they will play more like an RTS. There’s no way any one person could micromanage 10’s or 100’s of individual weapon systems. Through the miracle of computers and automation the captain of a capital ship will be able to define parameters that augment the default programming of an individual weapon system. For example a light rail gun will be predisposed toward targeting smaller spacecraft however you could override its default programming and direct all weapon systems to focus fire on a single target regardless of effectiveness.
Capital ships, even the offensive warships, primarily fill a strategic support role through some combination of rearming, refueling, repairing, and spawning smaller ships and/or bringing heavy weapons to bear on hardened targets (i.e. orbital bombardment of ground installations).
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We are trying to design for a number of different play styles from twitch based pew pew to strategic support roles. Building a proper 5-person bridge simulation would be a tremendous drain on resources. That being said that’s why we really want to support modding. We hope modders can fill in that gap!
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I’m going to assume cap ships will play like a more complex version of Dreadnought? That would be a good starting point for me.
Until there is certainty that the Infinity MMO can be realised, I don’t want to bother with the larger scale ships.
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We’re already developing this game on a shoe-string budget. And unlike Everspace, Star citizen or other Kickstarted games, we do not have investors waiting to give us $ if the KS succeeds.
This means we can’t do everything. We have to make choices and cut features so that we don’t exceed our budget.
I’d love to develop multi-crew ship support and bridges. Do you have an extra million dollars in your pockets to give us to develop that ? If not, you’re going to have to cope with reality.
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That’s not what Keith said. He said that “five hundred ships with guns ablaze is more exciting than one hundred ships.” Who is that true for? Certainly not me. Every game I’ve ever played or seen played with more than about 20v20 is just a spam fest of the two sides blasting away at everything and anything that moves. That’s not gameplay - which is the impetus that Keith begins with: “from a gameplay standpoint”.
My “WTF” comment was directed at the fact that for nearly a decade I’ve been describing at length all sorts of gameplay variations, principles and designs. Durable ships. Crewed ships. One player, one target. And many more besides. Then Keith posts about what I see as a spam fest. For me, that’s a WTF moment.
As for bridges and other such visuals, they are completely inconsequential - further emphasizing the chasm between your perceptions and mine. I’m perfectly happy to work with a ship having crew that operates entirely on third person views because what I care about is the gameplay.
Is your game doomed? On the contrary, I think you may do very well indeed because there are plenty of people who are drawn to the idea of five hundred ships blasting away at each other.
I just figure that every battle will end up the same when there are more than about 50 players involved.
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The number of people is meaningless. Especially when you consider that you have a gigantic planetary system to fill. It’s more important to see how the gameplay is going to be, what reason the players will have to come together and fight, what kind of difference a single player or a group of cooperating players can make, how powerful big ships are, etc.
EDIT: I think respawn time, respawn point durability and the ability of a ship/character to survive for long and make a difference is what makes the biggest difference in these sorts of things.
Custom makes me think personalized/unique decals. If you mean “limited edition” it may be better to use some other term than custom, but if you don’t, that’s (potentially) a lot of custom decals!
As for the other tiers, things offering visual benefits ($500, $150, etc), please do show sample images of what you intend to have be different. Concept art or mocked in-engine, either way, but my first thought is wondering if they’re changes I’d even want to spend additional money on.
I’m glad to see the progress you guys are making towards the KS, from the blog post it sounded like it’s coming this month. It’ll be great to see these past several years of effort begin to take a tangible form for you all!
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As examples of your point you are posting extreme examples. One is a tech demo with the sole purpose to get 1000 players in the same battle, after which it was shut down. And the other was a world record attempt, which while possible within the game, Planetside 2 most certainly isn’t balanced around. In larger battles you can quite literally be killed by invisible characters, because the game severely limits the radius of characters being loaded after a certain number of players in an area.
As an example of a game being built around massive battles would be EVE, there are severe drawbacks to being able to accommodate such a battle and they are probably not very fun for most of the involved because of these drawbacks. However they most certainly are very tactical and strategic.
In short, mass battles are spamfests only if a game is not designed to provide something deeper. Whether or not Infinity will be able to no one can say, it is too soon to tell. I sure would like to see them try though.
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The size of the game room is also meaningless. As you say, it has to do with the gameplay, and Keith has just stated that they want to see 500 ships with guns blazing. Well, if there are only 20 ships in my part of the game room with guns blazing and the other 480 are elsewhere then I’m not going to see 500 ships with guns blazing.
My understanding is that the goal is to have epic space battles in a cinematic style, which I assume to mean stuff like this
This is the key point. If they have a solution to the problem of large scale PvP shot spam, they should be teasing that - not “500 ships with guns ablaze”. As Keith started with the latter, I assume the worst.
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Me.
For nearly a decade, all of us here (well, half of us) have been describing, at varying length, all sorts of gameplay variations to make an MMO a better, more strategic experience. Some of those can be, fully or partially, employed in order to make Battlescape a more strategic experience - for example I’m inclined to believe a high Time To Kill (part of Durable Ships), clearly identified objectives (many many discussions about sensor systems), and more than 2 teams (IPO warfare) are good ways to, if not directly affect strategic play, then at least make the Zerg unwitting participants in stratagems of smaller groups.
Some of them will have to wait until the financial success of this game will, hopefully, result in a larger game where designing the gameplay mechanics that make multi-crew ships fun is worthwhile. Designing the bridges of those ships is maybe a quarter of that million $ @INovaeFlavien mentioned. Art is expensive, but not that expensive.
It occurs to me that my wording should possibly be extended to emphasize it only applies to daily builds of software developed by INE. I mean, I assume you wont be offering daily builds of Discourse, or whatever IDE you use for coding.
Specifying how long the daily build access continues might also be an idea. As I see it, there would be very little cost associated with continuing it in perpetuity for as long as daily builds happen, but also very little point once alpha starts, so it becomes mostly a matter of managing expectations.
Needless to say I think extending it all the way to, and including, potential future Infinity-related games would be a great idea. Yes, it would mean that some of the most die-hard fans of Infinity the MMO might not be forced to contribute as much to it’s Kickstarter, but most are still going to (because we really want that game to happen), and anyway you are, financially speaking, almost certainly better off getting the money now (because if nothing else you can put it in an interest-bearing account and you’ll have more money in the future).
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