I know everyone's super excited for 2.6.0 but I wanted to set appropriate expectations. I don't like to speculate (as you know) but we're looking at several weeks of work that have to be done which likely puts us into October before we're ready for Evocati testing. Please be respectful of your NDA status and keep this information to yourselves. No need to stir people up unnecessarily.
As soon as we have more information on it, you'll be the first to know!
September 18, 2016
Will "Soulcrusher" Leverett: We’ve got a very special announcement to make. As early as this Monday afternoon North America time/Monday evening Europe time (but potentially Tuesday, depending on the fixes required), we’ll be opening up a special closed test session of Arena Commander for Evocati Test Flight on PTU to test out a near-complete overhaul of ship mechanics and combat.
* Please note: This is a closed test only for Evocati. No livestreaming, no screenshots, and no discussing outside our group. *
Please also note: This is a first attempt at overhauling ship combat; it’s not perfect right out of the gate and we will make many tweaks and changes as we go along. But your involvement is super helpful, and this is a really cool test to be a part of. As these changes inherently represent a massive strategic shift in how ships should perform, it will significantly alter combat tactics. Evocati Test Flight is intrinsically involved in the feedback process to get this right.
What specifically has been changed?
Complete rebalance of SCM speeds and ship handling. Complete rebalance of all shields for all ships. These simulate the item 2.0 shield item values that will come with a future patch. As such they are approximations of the intended default loadouts. Complete rebalance of fuel consumption and fuel tanks for all ships. Afterburner and boost consumption rates have been adjusted. Once fuel is depleted you are kicked out of afterburner until enough has regenerated. Complete rebalance of all missile loadouts for all ships. All new missile racks have been made. Every ship has had its missile rack hardpoints adjusted. All missile rack hardpoints are now editable and missile rack items can be exchanged again.
Every ship in the game has been given a new SCM max speed which is approximately half of what they were before in order to condense the scale of speeds to roughly between 100 and 200m/s. This crunched range has allowed us to keep combat much closer and tweak every ships acceleration (lateral and rotational) to give them all a better feeling that you would associate with a ship of that type and role. Up to now, certain ships were held as a gold standard, meaning that we had to force values for new ships far beyond where they should naturally sit. Our goal is to nominalize speed and reset the balance across the board. Reducing the SCM speeds has allowed us to keep/tweak the afterburner/cruise speeds close to what they currently are and to put a resource on boost fuel and its management to hop between engagements.
Alongside the flight speed changes, we’re also putting in an early approximation of the shield items that will come online in a future patch for early feedback and a revised default missile loadout for most ships. With the revised loadouts, we’ve created all new missile racks and re-enabled the ability to swap them out.
Why have we made these sweeping changes? As more and more ships have gone into the game, the speeds have slowly crept up to make room for them. The end result is that combat in SCM mode has progressively got worse and further apart. With these increased speeds, undesirable sliding when turning comes in, and with that, more unintended collisions and a general requirement to not fly near any of our cool setups in the world. The changes mean that the management of this boost and afterburner going forward is once again become a viable combat tactic.
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Firstly, I fail to see why any of this is being kept so hush hush and under a NDA. No big deal here. Rather mundane really.
I agree with the proposed general attempt to keep combat at a closer range and tweaking ships acceleration to create a better feel between different ship types. Boost and Afterburner fuel management will now apparently become a bigger factor in ship combat management. Combat, in my opinion, should be a tactical challenge and not just a quick twitch shooting exercise.
Slowing everything down will probably make flying in combat more enjoyable or easier while allowing us to get closer to our enemy craft and better take in the beauty of the craft (as we obliterate them) and look at our other surroundings.
I like the direction CIG seems to be going.
There is no doubt that there will be problems with the planned changes and there will be further tweaks that will follow but overall things look promising to this old space pilot.
I agree completely. I have always thought that the combat system was a little to quick and quite honestly hard for my eyes to follow. This does indeed sound like a step in the right direction.
Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you, and be sure of this, I will be with you always even unto the end of the age. Mathew 28:20
Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you, and be sure of this, I will be with you always even unto the end of the age. Mathew 28:20
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