Dev Interview Travis Day..

I think my favourite take away from the whole thing was "seed missiles".. Stealth hornet, hidden in the asteroids, missiles sown around in close proximity, waiting to engage..


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Link to the show:

1)Question about joystick control oversensitivity and if that's being looked at:

-They are working on finding the sweetspot.they have many curves that they're trying for different HOTAS.Also working on how the controls work in relation to the maneuvering thrusters.

-Additional info:Acknowledges that they still have to add a lot of audio/visual/HUD feedback that tells the player what's happening with the ship. Talks specifically about the sense of speed and how they need to communicate the sense of speed to the player.

2)"Right now you can only have lateral thrust in decoupled mode.Is there a plan to change that"?

-Absolutely.Even the base flight controls don't feel perfect right now.Lateral thrust is a "plus" control (more advanced flight control) and the focus right now has been on the base controls.But,yes,6DOF is coming,true Newtonian will be turned on.Right now you push one way and the thrusters will stop you as soon as you stop pushing with IFCS.They can do "no counter thrust" but it's just a question of getting it tuned to the point where people don't rage about it."

3)"What are the differences,pros/cons between Ballistic weapons,Energy weapons and missiles?How will they be balanced"?

-Ballistic weapons can penetrate the shield.They take a reduction in damage if the shield is up but do damage to the armor.Lasers have to deplete the shields first but do more damage on the armor while the shields are down. Missles are being heavily worked on.There are various types including:

-EMP missiles that take out shields -Missiles that lay dormant and then pick up on an identified target,so you can "seed" missiles out there.

4)Countermeasures:Are we expected to fire everything we've got and see what happens or is there an indicator here that we're missing,telling us what's coming at us?

• You will know if someone has a Heat lock on you,or Radar lock on you.You will know what countermeasure to deploy.Hasn't been added in the first release.Flares for heat locks,Chaff for radar lock.

5)Sense of speed: Are you satisfied with the effect or do you want to improve upon it to give players a better sense of speed?

• Spacedust needs to be improved.Maybe we'll make more dust or another technique to give that sense of speed.

-Another thing that is coming is more sound effects to help with the sense of speed.Right now for example when you activate your afterburner,you don't hear it.

-It's the total package that makes you feel like you're going fast:Rumble of the controller,screen shake,Hum of the engine and engine RPM.All of those are being looked at to improve the sense of speed.

-One of the things that will be changing as well is the MAX velocity of ships.It's still pre-alfa.Relative velocities of the ships (max speed for all the ships) will be changing."Maybe the 300i ends up going 400m/s".This is all stuff that will be WILDLY changing.

6) Power management: Are you intending to make it so that cranking more power to the engines breaks the speed limit?

-Yes,also if you give power to the engine you will also give power to the maneuvering thrusters,so you can arrest angular velocity a lot quicker,so you get a lot less sliding and a lot less sluggishness in the responsiveness."The HUD controls need to be improved greatly".

7) Weapon sound effects: Are they placeholders or are basic guns supposed to sound wimpy?

-First of all the sound balance is important and needs to be worked on (engines/lasers/explosions ect).Currently explosions are loud but engines are too soft.All of this will be adjusted.

-Bigger weapons will sound more powerful

-Sound effects will definitely be improved .

8)Ship balance inside Arena Commander:

• By design,not all ships will be as good in combat as others,which works for the PU.However AC is all about the dogfighting.They will probably use a Point System like in Warhammer 40k.Basic idea floating around "and please don't quote me on the forums or Reddit with this" is that an Aurora would for example be worth one point (speculative) and the Hornet 4 points (speculative).If you kit it out with extra weapons it get bumped up to 6 points (speculative).The matchmaker then takes the available ships in the queue and makes a balanced match where both teams have the same amount of total points.

-Another point that comes from this is that all ships must be made fun to play regardless of brute strength."It's like bot lane support in League of Legends,you have to make it fun or not enough people will play it".They are thinking about different game modes that incentives secondary (support) roles Mentions "Ferry the Cargo" game mode as a possibility:Centralized cargo depot that you have to capture,that has 10.000 metric tons of cargo.Suddenly a having a Freelancer that's protected by Hornets becomes a viable game mechanic,whereas normally people would just gravitate to just Hornets.

9) Are the Big ships currently being worked on or are they shelved to give priority to the smaller dogfighting ships because of AC?

-Compartmentalization makes sure that things are worked on in parallel.Manchester people are working on capital ships.One production team complements each other.Manchester team designs many of the ship systems since they make capships and gives it to the AC people.AC people concentrate on dogfighting mechanics,which the Manchester team takes and uses for Squadron 42.They also have [REDACTED] working on all the FPS and boarding mechanics the eventually will make it into AC.

"So we will be adding all those stacking layers where all of a sudden,Arena Commander is you flying from system to system and boarding ships,moving cargo,at a certain point,you realize this is the alfa for the PU".

10)When is Multiplayer coming?

• They are building the entire PU backend.They are working on their Network Operation Centers and removing any bugs that make the servers/clients crash.No hard dates

11) Will we be able to trade our fish?

• It's a good concept.Fish are just another commodity.Space Whales confirmed.

12) Any Economy news?

Austin Studio is pretty deeply into the Economy right now.Building an offline simulator to test the economy out.

13) Any Xi'an Scout news?/General thruster information.

• Externally gimbaled thrusters are safe and will not change.

-Some ships are designed to have less than optimal but more survivable thruster placement. For example,the Hornet has centerline maneuvering thrusters that are harder to shoot down than the 300i's.The 300i's can be shot off easier (more exposed) but are more oprimally placed for maneuvering.

-Completely unintentional functionality that came up during testing.300i got its main engine blown off easier than the Hornet.Turns out the Hornet's tail acts as a damage sponge.

14)Track IR implementation

-For now it's in the backlog but will be worked on.Working on base systems right now.

15)After we get the first planned multi-crewed ships (Freelancer,Constellation),will we see other multi crew ships (Retaliator,Caterpillar) become integrated into AC as they get completed?

-They are working on the ships by pledge popularity to maximize the people who can get their hands on their pledged ships.

16)Any ship being worked on to replace the Idris as a Corvette?

-Not at this point.

17)When are we going to get Stealth Gameplay?

-"We want to have this greatly improved by the time V1.0 comes out".Right now everything is dialed to 11.Radars pick up everything at maximum ranges and ships give of max signatures at all times.They have it like this as they debug the Radar/Stealth mechanics.They want it done sooner rather than later.

18) Co-pilot functionality.How will it work in AC?What do you foresee as "Co-pilot actions"?

"The way we actually program the HUD and IU elements was that with the intention they can be broken off into their different subsystems.Each one of those can be assigned to different consoles in different seats of the ship.The idea is that any subsystem control should be assignable to any command chair (for example on the Constellation bridge).The system is designed to have a level of complexity in being the pilot of the Constellation that lends to not arbitrarily having one guy controlling the shields and one guy controlling your radar system,but there are going to be so many weapons on the Constellation and so much intricacy to the subsystems that one guy just physically cannot do it on his on.So what you want to do,it is to have it to where your ship's efficacy is increased by having additional people focused on those subsystems".

-One of the coolest things is that the UI/HUD is displayed correctly even if you're not sitting on the appropriate chair.If you ask your friend to re-route power on the constellation,and you look over,you can see him using the actual power menus on his screen

19) Voice attack/Native support

They like voice attack and would like some native voice commands but too early to tell.

20) Gimbaled weapons/Aim assist:

They are actively looking to improve the ITTS system.Trying to move to a lead target indicator.From a design perspective,they want to let people be able to explore bad/good weapon loadouts (builds) in regards to fixed weapon combinations.Lead indicator "feels less like cheating".They want people realizing they're getting shot at by observing the "tracers" (like in War Thunder).The green diamond system always shot either on-target or behind so people never see any "tracers".

21) Are we expecting to see different User Interfaces based on ship manufacturer?

-"Yes,yes and yes"

They ran out of time but they're working on it.First pass will be a color shift.Moving on,they will be entirely different layouts.The aurora will use the LED Flatscreens.In the 300i,the "cupholders" beside the yoke are holo-projectors that will be used for information.

Helmet mounted elements will be dependent on whether you have your helmet on,or you will be able to transfer the helmet mounted UI elements to ship screens if you prefer.

22) Scanned targets functionality

Targets are scanned and docked in your computer.Total number of docked targets will depend on your avionics package.You will be able to give orders to your a.i wingmen like "Wingman no1,attack dock 3".In a big ship like the Constellation,the commander can assign different missiles and weapon groups to fire at different docked targets.

23)Is helmet flip coming back?

By V1.0 it should be in.

24)Final thoughts about Arena Commander?

-"It's not a scam"

-They are closely monitoring the forums,looking for feedback.

-300i bed only has space for one person.Aurora can fit two.