This week we were hoping to release a patch with the new interceptor for our Developer Access backers however it got held up by unfinished work on a new input mapper that has taken longer than expected. For those of you who have access to the prototype you probably have noticed that you’ve only been able to play with a mouse and keyboard. The new input mapper will allow you to use game controllers and simple joysticks (we haven’t tested it yet with HOTAS so your mileage may vary). This work should be wrapped up shortly and we expect to release the new patch soon.

The focus of the week has been a combination of iterating on our ship designs and discussing missile mechanics. In a modern fighter jet missiles are actually quite large relative to the size of the plane. For example a Dassault Rafale can carry up to 14 missiles which is quite a lot compared to most other aircraft. While we don’t want to be fully constrained by realism we do want our weapons to be balanced around concepts that are at least somewhat plausible. Availability of missiles will be limited and we’re currently debating whether or not an interceptor should have internal or external launchers. In the case of bombers and larger spacecraft they will be internal but interceptors pose a unique challenge due to a much smaller, heavily angled hull.

(A visualization of a blue external launcher and a violet missile.)

External launchers can potentially take one of two forms. The first is as a magazine fed rectangular box that attaches to the hull on a hardpoint as shown above. The second, which you commonly see today, is one or more missiles attached to the hull individually or as a member of a pod composed of tubes containing 1 missile each:

(A visualization of externally mounted missiles.)

This is something we’re likely going to play around with over the next few months as it has a significant impact on how the design of the interceptor will be finalized. As mentioned above bombers will use magazine fed internal launchers as visualized below:

(A visualization of a bomber with magazine fed internal launchers.)

A significant amount of rework is going into the corvette. Based on feedback and our own experiences playing around with the current mock-up we’re redoing large portions of both the hull and the cockpit which you can see below:

((WIP) Revision 2 of the corvette.)

We don’t have a specific timeline for when we’re going to integrate the mock-up for the next version of the corvette but it’ll likely be within a few weeks. After the next patch with the interceptor we want to focus on improving our net code a bit before we move onto weapons. We’ve also started on the 3D mesh work for the next version of the bomber so that should be ready within a few weeks as well.