TL;DRThe command module's weakness is a bug, since damage is meant to pass through to the main hull; a fix is expected in an upcoming hotfix, though the developers call such fixes tentative.
I've seen a lot of discourse about it being artificially weak, which I think is not intended. It should be passing damage through to the main ship rather than killing everything. But there is some intent design-wise. The number one question everyone always has about the Ironclad is, why can't I fly it from the main bit? And that's never been the idea with this ship. You have this main block of a ship, same with the Caterpillar, and the command module gives you that functionality to fly around. That's the sort of USP of these sort of ships.
It's not the same as every other ship. There's always this assumption that you're trying to make every single ship be the ultimate ship, and it's not. The ships are supposed to have certain trade-offs. You get this, but you lose this. If you don't like it, that's fine. There are 200-some-odd other ships out there. The command module is interesting because it is, for all intents and purposes, a standalone craft. It can do everything a standalone ship can do. It can go to quantum. There was some confusion internally earlier, people kept referring to it as a parasite ship, and I'm like, no, if anything, the main hull is the parasite, because it needs the command module to survive, not the other way around. So as far as it being a critical weak point, that's something with the damage not being passed in?
Yeah, simply, it's a bug. The intention with the feature itself is for the command module to not be a critical part, clearly for gameplay purposes, because you don't want a very big, durable ship like the Ironclad should be to get shot down by whoever with the command module being destroyed in very, very few shots, because clearly the size difference is enormous. So the damage is going to be passed onto the Ironclad specifically, or the Caterpillar, depending on which one you are attached to. And all the damage to the components themselves would be passed to the Ironclad as well. So everything inside the command module would be in a dormant state, so to say. So basically the damage is going to be passed onto the main body.
Yeah, exactly, a suitable raft that you can immediately go away and flee from it. The cool stuff is that you can also trigger the self-destruct and then leave the ship and fly out with the command module. So have fun with that.
There should be a new series of fixes going out on Tuesday of next week that address a couple other things with the item recovery stuff. So if we can, we'll loop that in there. So that should be better for people before DefenseCon [ends].
It is clearly the intended gameplay dynamic that we want to reach, because clearly we don't want you to lose the ship, especially with the item recovery patch as well.
TL;DRThe Ironclad's balance centers on durability and large cargo capacity, with VTOL thrusters tuned so a fully loaded ship can still lift off, but only in VTOL mode.
So we have a couple of things that are interesting, I would say, specifically. One of them being clearly the durability. It's meant to be a very durable cargo ship with very capable SCU cargo capacity. And for that reason, since at some point we're going to have, for all the ships in our roster, the cargo mass affecting the ship, we also need to make sure that the flight profile handles it fine, that you can carry the cargo inside the planets or outside to the moons and so on and so forth. And one of the trickiest things for us on the balance side for the Ironclad has been trying to find a sweet spot without compromising the overall balance performance, in order to still let you lift off with the full cargo hold, because on the Ironclad specifically, if you have cargo on your cargo grid, the mass of the ship will change and the flight maneuverability will change as well. So one of them was basically tuning the VTOL thrusters and activating them in a way that you can still lift off with a full cargo bay loaded with all the goods that you can have, but only in VTOL mode. So when you're fully loaded, you have to use VTOLs, take off, go outside of the hangar, go outside of the planet, and then you can switch them off.
Well, clearly one of the trade-offs, as we mentioned, is the maneuverability. It's not a very maneuverable ship. It's somewhat of a brick, most of you might say. So this is probably one of the main drawbacks of the ship, which for a cargo ship can be quite severe, because whenever you enter maybe a dangerous area or you get attacked by pirates, clearly you maybe want that maneuverability and speed to get yourself out of it, since you cannot outmaneuver those bad guys.
Yeah, exactly. Also, clearly the components and the shields are quite beefy as well, because they are size 3. So you have capabilities to defend yourself and to let your turret gunners try to defend you as well. But clearly you cannot escape that easily. So you have to deal with it and somewhat fight.
TL;DRSmall snub ships are meant to threaten small craft, not bigger ships, with strong handling offsetting weak guns; the armor damage threshold is still subject to change, and balance will be revisited.
Well, our balance tuning will be revisited in the future, but in general, this is the deal. We want those little snub ships to be a threat to smaller craft like the Gladius, for example, and not a threat to something bigger, like mostly everything else on this table. So the question is more where you should try to employ those ships and what you should use them for, because clearly, on the other side, yes, you might say the gun size is a bit low, but the performance instead is outstanding, because the overall forward thrust ratio is very good. Maneuverability, the rates of rotation are amazing. The handling as well. It's very reactive. So you might have less powerful guns, but if you want to, for example, storm a couple of fighters and fight them, then probably it's a good tool to do that. Clearly there are downsides on the durability, it's Drake and everything else.
Yeah, you can use ballistics as well. But we now have, with the armor system, some damage threshold that you need to meet in order to apply any damage.
And also, nothing prevents you from going out in a group and using other types of ships to bring down the armor and then using other ships that have less powerful guns to then apply damage as well.
TL;DRThe M80 is a sleek heavy fighter tuned like an interceptor, comparable to the Scorpius, with very fast straight-line and boost speeds but weaker rotation and handling.
Heavy fighter, but not like all heavy fighters. It's very sleek, looks very, very fast. So we thought from the get-go, to be fair, with Giorgi, our other designer on the team, that the interceptor [tuning] would have been perfect for this type of ship. So basically you could expect this M80 to go up against the Scorpius in terms of performance. They're quite similar in role and with similar capabilities, with differences between the two, of course. But yeah, this is pretty much what you can expect. So very, very fast straight-line speeds. It's not the best in terms of rates of rotation and handling, but it's very fast, and especially with the speed that you can reach under boost, that is going to help you a lot, especially in group fights. It's going to be very, very interesting. So far, the Scorpius is, we know nowadays, one of the best heavy fighters that we have in the lineup in terms of balancing and tuning and feel. And we think with the M80, it was a good opportunity to try to dive more into this type of tuning and this type of experience specifically, to make it shine as well.
Yes. So basically what we intend in terms of interceptor tuning is that you're trading agility and maneuverability for forward acceleration and speed. So you can be faster. You're basically more of a boom-and-zoomer slash energy-fighting type of style. And this is what the M80 is.
Well, as the most veteran pilots can attest, the turret on the Scorpius is actually a plus and not a minus. So the fact of it being multi-crew is not a downside at all. So I don't see, specifically in this context, any problem in terms of balancing, to be honest. They're just going to be two different ships with different tools that are covering the same role. One is going to shine on maybe certain tasks, the other one on others. I'm positive that on the balance side it's going to be fine. It's going to be quite interesting seeing what people will prefer to go out and fight other people with.
TL;DRThe Tiburon is the anti-capital heavy gunship, with forward-facing turrets and deliberately sluggish handling so it isn't effective against smaller ships like the Perseus, and it is vulnerable to torpedoes.
The only thing for me to talk about is this completes the trifecta of heavy gunships. So you have the Hammerhead, which is your anti-fighter. You have the Perseus, which is your anti-large ships. And then this is your anti-capital. Everything is designed to face forwards with this.
The gunship mentality has always been engaging multiple targets. The Hammerhead and the Perseus are all about attacking multiple targets simultaneously. And this is the first gunship that's like, no, focus fire to take down capital ships.
It still has those four remote turrets, so it can spread its fire, but really you want all that fire going in one direction. It still has its anti-fighter turret at the very rear, just for a little bit more coverage, but realistically, your four main turrets at the front are designed to hit something bigger. You might be able to hit a fighter with it if you have a very, very good shot and the pilot isn't trying to avoid you, but realistically you're aiming at something big because you want to hurt it.
Yeah, and the tuning reflects that as well in general. From the batch of ships that we have for 4.8, this has been probably the most difficult one to tackle for us, because it has a very specific purpose, and you want, as a designer, to let the ship fulfill that purpose, and only that one. And the risk with this powerful weapon was basically to let it be too effective against everything else that it was not supposed to be, for example against a Perseus or against a smaller ship like the Constellation. So our challenge here was to make the ship interesting in order to go up against capital ships. So it was having enough maneuverability and enough agility to cope with an Idris and be somewhat safe just by orbiting around, keeping the distance, but also to not be effective against something smaller than an Idris, like for example a Perseus. The way we did that was basically playing with the overall feeling of the ship. The ship is going to feel way heavier than a Hammerhead, for example, even though they are similar. Clearly, you have a giant laser beam on top of your head when you're piloting it, so you're going to feel it. You're going to struggle to stay on smaller targets, because once again, the ship is going to be not responsive at all. But clearly you don't need it against a very giant target like an Idris or even something bigger. So this is going to be interesting to see come into play, because also it's not going to be as armored as the Perseus. So it can be potentially threatened by those smaller ships. So maybe a Perseus showing up in the battlefield would pose a serious threat against a Tiburon and could maybe nail it quite quickly if their gunners are very strong.
Ciao! The expected damage behaviour when the Command Module is docked to the Ironclad/Caterpillar is as follows: Armour: The Command Module inherits all armour values of the ship to which it is docked. Damage Propagation: When bullets strike the Command Module while docked, the damage is transferred directly to the host ship. This damage remains with the host ship and is not transferred to the Command Module upon undocking. Shields: When docked, the Command Module is covered by the host ship's shields and utilises only the host ship's shield items, never its own. If any of these behaviours are not respected, you may have encountered a bug. In that case, we would appreciate it if you could contribute to an existing Issue Council report or create a new one if needed.
TL;DRHeavy fighters are meant to be less maneuverable but tougher and more powerful than light fighters, and they feel slightly underperforming against other classes, but the devs are still evaluating making them more vulnerable once the updated flight model arrives.
So, this is a question for me, yes. So, we have been playing with heavy fighter tuning since 3.23, basically the Master Modes release, and our idea about the heavy fighter role hasn't changed much throughout the time. So basically what we think a heavy fighter is, is a heavier fighter that has lower maneuverability compared to light fighters, but increased durability and increased firepower. That's as simple as that, right? Currently, we have retuned the entire heavy fighter class, which includes ships like the F8, the new Guardian, the other Guardians, and so on and so forth, to fit a better spot. And in our opinion, the spot that the heavy fighters now actually cover is quite fine. We do notice that the heavy fighter class is slightly underperforming right now though, but we think it's related more to the relationship between cross classes rather than the heavy fighter tuning per se. So stuff, for example, like how the heavy fighter is dealing against a medium fighter, or a ship of a bigger size, like for example a Constellation or stuff like that. So we would like to dive more into the tuning for other classes first before assessing the overall heavy fighter tuning and whether that needs to be addressed once again. So currently this is the state of the heavy fighter class in general, but we have some even more updates or more ideas for the...
So the current ratio on where the fighters sit doesn't necessarily need to stay this way. We have the updated flight model coming and we're using that to basically, I wouldn't say reset, but reevaluate especially the relationships between the fighters. For example, from our perspective at the moment with the updated flight model, the heavy fighters just feel a little bit too tanky. Because they're still fighters, right? So we're currently evaluating whether or not we should make them more vulnerable. Because if you compare some numbers from, for example, a Gladius versus an F8, we're looking at like five times the health. That is quite a lot for a fighter class. So we're evaluating or reevaluating that once the new flight model, or the updated flight model, is coming online.
No. I mean, we can never really set it to a fixed thing. We can plan as much as we want, but whether our plans survive reality is a different question. Also, sometimes other things are coming, for example the upcoming armor system and so on, that will also change these dynamics and might just require some other adjustments somewhere else.
TL;DRThe devs don't promise the F8 will return to being agile, saying they're tuning it to its archetype and that the new flight model will give more tools, while balancing proceeds in steps rather than all ships at once.
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Richard TowlerLead Game Designer, Vehicle Experience Team
So it's about providing a tuning that fits the archetype of that ship. And that's what we're working towards: giving the ship the archetype. And as I said, it's always work in progress. And that ship in particular, it's got loads of guns, it's got loads of thrusters. And as you say, not all ships have to fit the perfect progression of balance in that sense. So we're definitely looking at what the ship should be with the new flight model as well. There's going to be some more changes there. Because a big thing with the new flight model is we're going to have far more tools at our disposal to make ships different. Whereas at the moment we've got tools, but we're quite limited in that context of providing ships that are quick but sluggish at the same time. So we're kind of in a box for the current balance a little bit in that regard, but with the new flight model we've got more tools to give us maybe a ship that can be really quick, but it actually takes a little bit longer to get there. The acceleration is a little bit slower, but it can move faster.
So we do know that at the current state, the overall heavy fighter angular velocity has decreased a little bit, but we think it's for the better. And once again, we think the feeling and the perception that we see on the player side these days is mostly related to, once again, the relation between those ship classes, right? In our opinion, once again, what we want to reach is a balanced and intended gameplay experience for the ship per se, right? So having a super OP, mega powerful ship can be cool the first time that you have it, right? But after a while, when it becomes the meta and it becomes the forced choice, game design-wise and gameplay-wise, I don't think this is a good direction or a fun direction. So what we want...
Now, of course, you're going to say that and Twitch is about to fill up with people saying, "But what about this ship? And what about that ship that's currently OP?" And the answer is, we'll get there.
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Richard TowlerLead Game Designer, Vehicle Experience Team
Yeah, and that's the big thing about the balance: it's a continuous thing. It's moving, it's evolving all the time. And we can't tune 200 ships all in one go when we figure something out. So it has to come in steps, which is why we're doing a pass on the mediums as well. We've done the pass on the heavies. And that'll keep evolving, but we have to do it in pieces because we can't move 200 ships at the same time.
And also it's more important for us to move those pieces step by step because we understand the dynamics that we generate inside the game a bit better as well. So we get more knowledge about it, we understand how players prefer to use certain types of ships rather than others. So moving those Lego bricks in tiny blocks is easier than just moving one, seeing how it performs and then trying to scale everything according to that. So that's what we're going to try to do, what we have tried to do, and what we are actually doing as well with the current monthly patches. So we always try to deliver something to address maybe a specific issue or a specific area of ship flight in the game.
TL;DRThe devs say balancing now is not futile because what they learn carries forward even if systems like crafting change things, and they say design and engineering simply take time.
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Richard TowlerLead Game Designer, Vehicle Experience Team
No, so I'd say it's part of the journey. And let's say we throw away everything tomorrow, we still have what we've learned along the way. And that's really important because we're constantly learning. It goes back to what you said earlier: I've been here seven years and my understanding of the game and the game mechanics has fundamentally changed in that time, as we've built more systems and added more to the game, and we do know the game's not complete. But it's kind of exciting because we're building towards that and we're always moving in that direction and learning more and getting better, hopefully, at what we do. So we change things along the way, and then we have other systems that come in and they might throw a curveball into that system that we've made. But we're learning along the way to build what we think is the best game.
I think I can add something on that from a different perspective, because I joined the team roughly around two years ago, so not as long as these other two veterans, right? But it's very important, as a game designer in my case, but in general I think as a developer, to have that knowledge and to be able to have that experience in tuning and getting accustomed to the game, getting to know how the game is working currently. Also to understand, first of all, what you can do and what you can plan to improve the game in the future, in the long run, and also be prepared for that when the moment comes. You know what to do, you know what to expect, you know what to manipulate in order to create the right experience. It's never a waste of time. And also, I guess you guys want to play the game as well from time to time, so playing a game that is in a better state is probably better than a game that is not balanced at all.
We know what we're doing and there is a plan, but those things change. We know what we're doing, but we learn more along the way, and those things that we learn change our perceptions.
I don't think that the vision has changed a lot though, right? I mean, the one thing you can't underestimate is engineering and design and development. It just takes time. I mean, seriously, 90% of all the things that players propose that we should do better, we usually thought about these already, right? Because this is what we're doing for a living. But it just takes time to implement these. If somebody tells me, "Oh, please add an altimeter" or something like this, then there's 15 different problems we need to solve. It's a lot.
And those are the easy parts as well, because a lot of the time players have very interesting insights and ideas about very complex systems that we can potentially put in place, but those touch such a vast amount of other features in the game, and organizing that type of work and getting everyone on board from completely different teams, especially in a company the size of CIG, is very difficult, right? But in general, it's very difficult in video game making, so it's not a unique problem for us.
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Richard TowlerLead Game Designer, Vehicle Experience Team
Yeah, we've got a very complex game, but that's very exciting because we are doing it differently. All our systems are real systems. They function, they work, and they do real things based on real physics mechanics. Most times. There's a few exceptions here and there. But most of the time, that works really well for us, because it's a really complex problem to solve. But actually, it makes Star Citizen, I think, really unique. And it makes it really fun to work on.
That 90% is probably a bit high. There are still plenty of times, being completely honest, where an idea has come from the community and we've been like, "Oh, that's a really good idea."
No, but I mean, we've all seen similar media. We've all seen similar films. We play Star Citizen because we probably liked Wing Commander or Star Wars in the past and so on, right? So there is a common understanding. So I think even for some things where we would say, "Oh, we had this idea," it probably just came from somewhere else. We incorporate a lot of community ideas in the designs as well.
TL;DRThe next flight model update covers thrusters, atmospheric control surfaces and the quantum experience, adding non-spherical velocity space, jerk, customizable IFCS assists, thrust-based speeds with no fixed top speed, and an IFCS core that can shut off after collisions.
So following the Master Modes release, we read the community feedback and so on. We had our own plans with this and basically decided what the next step should be. And there's three things, which are not just the flight model but the whole flight experience, right? So I mentioned before we've got the space flight model, which is how ships use the thrusters. We have the atmospheric flight model, which is the control surfaces, which we also demoed in the past but which got quite a big update now. And there is the quantum experience. So all of these things combined, they're moving the game towards the traversal vision that CR wants. Because the reason why we have Nav Mode at the moment, where you can go into this mode where you can reach 1,400 meters per second, is just there to navigate in these big spaces that we need to traverse, because we don't have the quantum code for that yet.
So in terms of the thrusters, thruster flying: this is not a groundbreaking "oh, we do everything else", it's just an evolution of the previous stuff. It's just building on what we already have. So the main thing for combat flyers out there is that we're going to have a non-spherical velocity space. This means we can go forward faster than we can go backwards or to the sides. This has the benefit that these typical six-degrees-of-freedom problems that we have in combat, like back strafing or kiting, are much, much reduced. From our perspective, this just feels better; the fights are closer and so on. Also we added jerk. So jerk is the change of acceleration. So instead of going within a frame from 0G to 9G, we're ramping this up now over a short amount of time, at least for the fighters. And this just makes sure that you have to plan a little bit more ahead, and the rotations feel smoother. What else is there? Oh yeah, and then we built in a lot of different steps for how to customize IFCS for you. So what you have in the game right now is more like an IFCS on training wheels, right? Where at the moment you can turn off a couple of assists like gravity compensation and G-safe. And these things in the future will actually always mean a little bit of a buff in terms of what your thrusters can do. So what you have at the moment in our internal builds: you can turn off gravity compensation, you can turn off the stability. So the stability, for example, changes the behavior of IFCS and gives your lateral thrust more importance than the longitudinal thrust, which means when you're in fights, it's easier for you to evade shots. But at the same time, it makes the flying a little bit more dangerous because it doesn't keep the TVI stable anymore. Well, that's more technical details.
I was looking at iCore102, who was like, "This doesn't sound like it's going to solve the problem when you're four minutes into a 20-minute exploration."
That's fine. Honestly, don't believe me. When it's available, play it and then you can judge it properly. The other thing, which is a pretty big chunk, or also makes a big difference, is that we don't have top speeds anymore. And now before you gasp, "Oh god, unrestricted speeds": no, there are still restricted speeds, but in the game data we don't have any top speeds anymore. The top speed of a ship is what your thrusters can achieve in a fixed amount of time that we define. But the good thing is when you have your power assignment and you put more pips into your engines, your thrusters will actually produce more thrust. And more thrust then means more speed.
Well, we need speed limits. We're a game after all, right? But this basically means, because it's based on physics, what will happen is: you have your Gladius and you fire a missile. The overall weight of the Gladius is reduced now. So your thrusters have the same thrust output, but your ship is now lighter. So you actually get more Gs. We had this before, but now you also get more speed based on this, right? And looking further ahead, this is outside of the new flight model, but when we have Maelstrom and so on, we're also going to have more realistic ship masses. At the moment, the Gladius weighs 55 tons. In Squadron it was up at 180 tons, which is close to a 747, right? But now the Squadron Gladius is around 20 tons, which means the weight of every missile and every component actually matters. So if you, for example, have your Gladius or any other ship and you just rip out the most important components, you will just get much, much faster.
This is going to be very relevant for smaller craft, maybe for racing as well. Having lighter components or removing weapons will give you that extra window of performance that you can exploit throughout the race.
That is basically just the space part of this. On the control surfaces, we have a fully licensed pilot on the control surfaces for now. That's Karim. He is working on the control surface support. What we already have ready is the unassisted aerodynamic flight, which means how the ship feels when you directly affect the deflection angles of the control surfaces. So you can glide. Your ship can be entirely off and shut off, and you still have control over your control surfaces, which means if you're getting distorted in atmosphere, you can actually glide down, you can flare and you can crash land your ship in a controlled crash landing. So for the core on/off thing which I just mentioned, we introduced a concept which is called the IFCS core. What you have right now in the game, where the ship is just constantly stabilizing, compensating for your rotation, means the core is on. So IFCS is actively working for you. But IFCS in the future can be slapped down or even turned off. And in this case, you have pure Newtonian flight, also on the rotation. And this also happens when you, for example, crash into something. For example, on the Gladius, let's say we know that the Gladius cannot go above, let's say, 20 Gs. Then we might have a limit in the IFCS code that says when that ship goes over 25 Gs, the core is slapped off for a couple of seconds and then it needs to reboot. So during this time, you still have control over your ship. You can still use the thrusters and so on, but it will not auto-stabilize. So it's more or less like flying in Kerbal Space Program. Which means you will tumble after every collision, and the ship will not recover as fast. And whether the core is on or off also plays a role in atmospheric flight, because in atmospheric flight when the core is on, we will have a fly-by-wire system that keeps the TVI stable, but when the core is off, you control the control surfaces directly. A lot, sorry.
That 20 and 25 thing: those were numbers off the top of his head to illustrate a point. Don't go and update the wiki saying it's only going to have a 20G tolerance.
TL;DRThe team is working on turret power and has already buffed ammo and regen, but says medium-range weaponry such as flak is lacking, and armor penetration may also stop small ships from damaging large ones.
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Richard TowlerLead Game Designer, Vehicle Experience Team
Yep, so the whole point of those turrets is that the ships can't defend themselves with guns, so we've got turrets, and we want the ships to be able to defend themselves with turrets. We are working on the general turret experience and how powerful the turrets are as well, and we've made some changes. Was it last release?
But there's this other thing. The thing that we're currently lacking is effective medium-range weaponry. Right now, a turret fires projectiles that are just normal gun projectiles. The thing is, we don't want to twist the projectile after we've launched it, right? So what we need is some medium-range weaponry. We have a plan for this. We would like to try out flak at some point, but it's not ready for multiplayer yet. But it can be effective beyond the range where normal gun turrets are effective. I mean, I guess the question comes mostly from, "Oh, I have this large ship and I'm getting shot at by fighters which keep their distance." But the other thing is, coming more to Torsten's work concerning the armor system and so on, there's also the question of whether smaller ships will actually be a danger to larger ships, because we are going to have penetration parameters on the bullets and we're going to have armor and so on. So a lot of these weapons that people use at the moment to damage larger ships, they might not be able to damage them in the future. It's like if you have a pistol and shoot at a tank, the tank says, "Well, okay." If the ships want to do actual damage on the larger ships, they probably need to get so close in the future that they can precisely destroy the subsystems.
Yes, it's in there. You can try it. Larger ships in general should be less affected by weather effects, and smaller ships clearly more. And yeah, you can try those effects already, which Yogi and Ethan have been trying to smash through and testing already in 4.2.
Yes, so for the targeting system, we are quite happy. It hasn't been easy to find a sweet spot for the targeting params of missiles specifically. Also, with torpedoes, the safety improvements to avoid certain unwanted behavior, like firing torpedoes too close to a couple of ships, are in place. And we are looking forward to players testing them and stress testing them as well. But in general, we are quite happy, yeah.
TL;DRTorpedo arming currently depends on distance from the launching ship, which is not the intended direction; the team wants safety mechanics based on distance traveled since launch.
Yeah. So basically, how it's currently working, the safety distance is calculated between the torpedo that you launch and your ship itself. So if your ship is moving and the torpedo is moving, and you're not 1.5 kilometers away from the torpedo, the torpedo won't detonate. However, this is not the intended final direction that we want. We have already spoken with all these peeps, and Pat and Team Jonny as well, about some updates on the safety mechanics, based mostly on the distance traveled by the torpedoes and also some safety...
Yeah, because that's a big change right now. It's important to say that we wanted to try this stuff first, because that was basically the parameter that we had in place for a long time, in order to see how the gameplay dynamics are looking. And now that we know that this is kind of the direction that we want to dive into, we can work on it further.
Right now, if you follow your torpedo or missile and you're too close, it'll just never arm. And that sucks. You want that distance timer to start from the moment you launch it. And then if you choose to get too close to it when it explodes, that's on you as a pilot. That's where we're going.
TL;DRGround vehicle physics were fundamentally changed but are not finished; collisions still feel poor, and the team wants to improve them and give vehicles more purpose through better weapons and systems.
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Richard TowlerLead Game Designer, Vehicle Experience Team
Wow, it's very subjective again. So we have obviously made a big change to ground vehicles. We changed the fundamental physics of the ground vehicles. But that still doesn't mean they're finished. They are still subject to the same physics as the rest of the game. And we do know that the general collisions don't feel very good, and we do want to improve that. But we also want to give more purpose to the ground vehicles. And that isn't just the ground vehicle itself. It's the guns or it's the torpedoes on the ground vehicle. So it's about improving those systems as well, so players have more of a reason to choose them, especially as we have more environments in the game that may limit where ships can go but not where ground vehicles can go. And also you may want to use ground vehicles to defend a certain area. So if you've got a Ballista, you can have Ballistas in a protection area. But that isn't just making that ground vehicle physically good. It's the systems on it. It's the torpedoes, and how those kinds of systems generate the gameplay we want.
That's why we already tried to bespokely tune the Ballista torpedoes and missiles to fit more into the anti-air role, as well as the Centurion turret, by the way. Now the turret has gimbals as well, so it has more range, it has more ammo, to try to enhance the peculiarities of the anti-air vehicles as well.
TL;DRThere is no single formula; ships are balanced by defining the intended experience, applying an Archetype performance frame, tuning bespoke factors, then iterating on feedback and gameplay statistics, with a deeper presentation planned.
Ciao Pheebs, thanks for asking and for being curious about what we do!
Balancing a deeply complex system like spaceships in Star Citizen is not an easy task, as our flight model is one of the most gameplay-rich systems out there, but I'll try to walk you through our process a little bit and hopefully clear up some doubts! (Spoiler: I wish it was just a single formula! But life is never that easy! :smile: ) As a starting point, we first identify the intended experience of the ship, whether it’s meant to be a big cargo hauler, a small and nimble fighter with low durability but high performance, or a heavy industrial vehicle. Once we have that experience defined from the initial brief, we ask ourselves: "What performance frame best fits the ship’s role to deliver that experience directly into your hands? To do this, we use our Archetype system, which generally defines a high-level ship’s performance frame by considering factors like its size and intended role. After that, we dive deeper into tuning to create a more bespoke experience, taking into account multiple additional factors such as the Manufacturer's design philosophy, special characteristics, lore consistency, and more. Finally, when a ship goes live (or when its tuning needs adjusting because it's not fully delivering the intended experience), we reiterate on it, using a combination of player feedback, internal reports, and gameplay statistics gathered directly from your play sessions!
I hope this post sheds some light on the process and satisfied your curiosity! Ultimately, our mighty Jared is planning a more in-depth presentation on this exact topic in a couple of months, so stay tuned!