Hey everyone, it’s time for your weekly update. This week we’re going to discuss some of the gameplay ideas we have for weapons by going through a couple of different scenarios. To quickly recap we’re planning on implementing 3 broad categories of weapon: energy, projectile, and missile. Ships will come with a predetermined set of hardpoints which can be configured with different variations of weapons from those 3 categories. For our first scenario we will start with an interceptor on a recon mission. Sensors/radar are one of the least defined aspects of the game right now but one guiding idea we have is that radar will be dependent on line of sight – specifically it will be blocked by celestial bodies. Ships on the same team will share radar data with each other so you’ll be able to see around an enemy planet or moon if you have a network of scouts to act as relays.
A blue sunset over a desert planet
On a scouting mission you want to maximize for speed and radar capabilities – direct contact with the enemy is to be avoided at all costs. Interceptors don’t have many hard points so you must choose your weapons wisely. In this case a suitable loadout could be a handful of missiles, enough to give the enemy pause long enough for you to get away, along with blasters for their unlimited ammunition. In this case, due to the potential for being deep behind enemy lines without the ability to easily reload, energy weapons are probably a better last-ditch choice than a projectile weapon.
A lone interceptor on patrol
For our second example lets look at the destroyer – which is meant to protect cruisers and carriers from smaller ships such as the interceptor and bomber. A destroyer is designed to be outfitted with some combination of small caliber projectile weapons, missiles, and anti-missile systems. Where things get interesting is how you decide to allocate your hard points and for which type of weapon. A destroyer is frequently part of a fleet so maybe you can get away with more projectile and missile weapons since you can easily be resupplied from a nearby carrier. Perhaps you’re expecting to be a part of a prolonged battle and you can’t afford to be out of commission long enough to reload and therefore choose more energy weapons. Last but certainly not least how many anti-missile systems do you want? Each one comes at the expense of an offensive weapon.
An orbiting space station
Overall weapons can be summarized as trying to make the right set of trade-offs for the set of conditions you expect to encounter. We also want to allow players to make changes to their loadout in the field for certain types of ship by docking with the carrier. We may also have special types of destroyer and/or corvette that provide support in limited capacities such as reloading and/or repair – time/resources will dictate. Our goal is to make weapons easy to quickly get the hang of but somewhat difficult to master.
Just a suggestion:
It would be cool to know what is currently beeing worked on. For example, are weapons effects beeing worked on, is the missile feature beeing worked on, what is already ready to roll for the next patch etc… It would give us an idea when to expect the next update without you having to give dates.
Otherwise thanks for the update as always.
Any details regarding weapon type effectiveness vs. shields/armor/hull? I know that energy weapons drain the energy systems, and kinetic/missiles require ammunition, but I’m wondering if that’s the extent of the differences (which is fine) or if there is more planned for them.
If there was significant news on that front to report it would have been included . The groundwork is still being laid and with the holidays coming up the next patch likely won’t be until January.
There’s some disagreement on this front atm however it’s likely going to change a whole bunch. We’ll provide more details once a patch with new weapon systems is ready for release.
Some of us may take these updates for granted and expect you to say whatever it is we wanna hear. If not, then it’s trash. This however is like stepping into a part of each of your minds for a few minutes. It’s quite fascinating, actually. Well written as always.
Yes, good update Keith! Very interesting. I do like the concept of scouting, and equipping a loadout to match. It’ll be tricky to reward this though - perhaps if you’re scanning targets noone else is, you get a big reward, which decreases the more people also scan it.
Great to hear the function of a destroyer more clearly! Acting as a barrier against smaller ships suggests that cruisers will be mainly focused on capship combat?
A cruiser flies in, blows the enemy destroyers, opening the way for bombers to attack…
Yes cruisers will have limited hard points for light weaponry and anti-missile systems. They are meant to be used against other capital ships and enemy infrastructure.
This is something we’ve discussed doing however I’m not going to make any firm commitments at this time since it becomes another variable we have to balance and that takes time.
Will all weapons need to deplete the shields in order to damage the ship? I like the model from Nexus: the jupiter incident where some weapons (lasers) bypass shields to disable modules.
Also, have you considered emergency power charges to mitigate the capacitor drain from energy weapons and add some ammunition equivalent (more EVE-style this time)?
Are these scenarios going to be instanced separately for everyone? Or will each mission’s recon point be randomly generated in a different part in the system? Or will 2 ppl doing the scenario be in the same area possibly?
Aamzing heads up int o your thaughtprocess. cant wait to see laser(phaser) beams ripple through the skies. You are making our dreams reality.
You guys exactly know what is nececary today. I hope you can secure more funding.
We don’t know how scouting will work yet.
You seem to have a skewed picture of battlescape though. Infinity:Battlescape will be a multiplayer game where you join a server. On that server hundreds of players will fight to win the “match”. We don’t know what the default match lenght will be. Everyone inside the server can interact with each other.
The “scenarios” described are just examples of stuff that can happen during normal play.
In addition, these scenarios will not be in any way scripted (or predesigned/generated)*, if that was also an element of confusion. It’s literally as simple as a player deciding an objective they want to tackle, then going and doing it however they can!
There are targets, we go blow them up while opposing players attempt to stop us! Or vice versa!
*I realised I should add a disclaimer here: Unless I-Novae decide to add “events” that occur during a game, possibly involving NPC transports in a convoy or something.