Hello Citizens!

Welcome to another episode of DevChat, this time covering September 18th to 23rd!

First, a brief explainer. DevChat combs through the RSI chat logs, and picks out any interesting comments made by Devs. It amalgamates them, and puts them here, with quotes. While I try to provide context to the comments made by Devs here, these comments sometimes have a very off-the-cuff nature, and everything here should be taken, maybe not with a grain of salt, but for what it is. Interesting, helpful, though not always 100% official, information.

Remember. Unless it comes in an official CIG Dev Post, or comes straight from Chris Roberts’ mouth, it’s not ‘official’.

That said, here comes DevChat!

DevChat

By Erris

September 18th

Performance

Performance right now is a bit dependant on a few things, especially the number of different ships in the game.

(5:21:59 PM) CIG Matt Sherman: Something to consider with the performance, aside from being alpha-build, is that 16p matches have a higher chance of completely varied ships being loaded. (5:22:29 PM) CIG Matt Sherman: Co-op has 4 player ships, and fixed waves of specific vanduul, where 16p could have one of each of the current flyable ships which would really change load.

Component System

Component system should be getting some live testing soon!

(7:01:01 PM) CIG Matt Sherman: Woo, enough of the backend setup for the component changes are set so it can actually goto the live-implementation setup. (8:16:26 PM) CIG Matt Sherman: New components are going well, going to be starting more into the core implementation soon, so definitely getting there.

Mining

Mining will not be a day-1 addition to the PU. It’ll come later. [Note from Nehkara: Just to clarify, I’m certain Matt is referring to day-1 PU alpha, not release.]

(8:17:46 PM) CIG Matt Sherman: Mining would be something layered into the PU as the mechanics come online, it won’t be a day-1 gameplay system. (8:18:37 PM) CIG Matt Sherman: There’s going to be mining ships overall, just not day-1.

Loading Screens

The ‘landing through the atmosphere’ sequence that we’ll be getting will likely hide loading screens.

(8:21:03 PM) AceOfSpadez: ok Matt, maybe you can answer this. There have been 2 diff things said by devs about going planet side. 1. would be you fly through the atmosphere into the planet, and 2 was a loading screen like freelancer / destiny. Do you know which of these is more correct? (8:21:51 PM) CIG Matt Sherman: In part it’s both. Compared to when Freelancer first came out, there’s better use of interstitial load squences. (8:22:19 PM) CIG Matt Sherman: The ‘landing through atmosphere’ sequence would effectively be a hidden load screen without having to dump you out to a hard load-screen. (8:22:42 PM) CIG Matt Sherman: It’s not a dynamic/self-landing through the planet, so the automated routes would be masking the loads. (8:24:27 PM) CIG Matt Sherman: manually-controlled landings are something that would be more explored later on once things have built out a bit more. (8:24:50 PM) CIG Matt Sherman: It’s not off the table forever, but for now, it’s going to be the assisted landings.

September 19th to 21st

Nothing of note.

September 22nd

EWAR

EWAR and Radar / Scanning are separate systems. They can affect each other, but they’re separate.

(2:34:04 PM) CIG Calix Reneau: I think that e-war and radar/scanning are distinct systems (2:34:23 PM) CIG Calix Reneau: when we talk about e-war, we mean electronically affecting the state of another ship in some manner (2:34:45 PM) CIG Calix Reneau: discoverability would be on the radar/scanner operator (2:35:55 PM) CIG Calix Reneau: ewar affects radar insofar as you attempt to manipulate the data another ships radar sees (2:37:55 PM) CIG Calix Reneau: ok, projecting false radar information does fall under e-war, and is planned. (2:38:47 PM) CIG Calix Reneau: target sharing is also planned (2:40:08 PM) CIG Calix Reneau: all of this ewar stuff is only at the very beginning of concept, and is also not a priority

September 23rd

Flight Modes

New flight modes have been announced! They, and some other upcoming changes, should allow a lot more granular control over our ships.

(3:23:44 PM) CIG Calix Reneau: so glad to have the new flight modes announced (3:24:17 PM) CIG Calix Reneau: It’s in the RTV recap post (3:25:09 PM) CIG Calix Reneau: SCM will be relatively similar, although not completely the same, as what is in AC right now (3:25:40 PM) CIG Calix Reneau: space combat maneuver speed (3:30:16 PM) CIG Calix Reneau: You do not currently have access to any of the performance parameters of your ship (3:30:23 PM) CIG Calix Reneau: but eventually you should (3:31:00 PM) CIG Matt Sherman: Ya, long-term, and more so once we’ve got the new component and weapon reworks setup, the active component tuning/adjustment will be able to start getting built out more in terms of what you guys can mess with in-game. (3:31:04 PM) CIG Calix Reneau: yeah, that’s just the overclock system though (3:31:53 PM) CIG Calix Reneau: I would want your manipulation of engine performance to be the same as the rest of the components (3:32:16 PM) CIG Calix Reneau: so you could push your shields, power plant, engines, coolers, et al too far and have the same tradeoff going on (3:32:45 PM) CIG Calix Reneau: and I would want that sort of manipulation to be fairly fine grain, the kind of thing encouraging dedicated management

Coolers

Here’s an interesting bit about coolers, and power.

(3:36:16 PM) CIG Matt Sherman: Coolers would push more heat when ‘overclocked’ but there will still be ways to constrict them aside from just heat. Especially since they’d be chewing up even more power from your power plant to provide that cooling. (3:37:12 PM) CIG Matt Sherman: Ya, Components generate heat, Coolers pull that heat out from the components at the more direct cost of power from the power plant. (3:47:25 PM) CIG Calix Reneau: the coolers freak out a little when they stop receiving power

Shields

Apparently the long-term plans will make shields much more interesting over the coming months.

(6:13:55 PM) CIG Matt Sherman: For what’s being planned out long-term, Shields are definitely becoming more interesting, some good changes over the coming months to make their gameplay more interesting. (6:15:40 PM) CIG Matt Sherman: The shield changes would be something that we’d need the groundwork for both the Physically Based Damage along with the Component Resize in place to start setting up, but still should be good once its in.

Something Special

Today, thanks to an INN reader named Krel, we have another little batch. Krel sent us in a conversation that he had with Calix Reneaux, about the new Flight system mechanics. Check it out! For an image of the conversation, click here!