Calling All Devs - Hangars, Interdiction & Repair

Tobias Johansson · Developer

So the short answer is yes, they will always be that small. They're supposed to be the smallest we have in the game. We're going to have bigger locations, and the next would be like a village or a city or something like Area 18 that you've seen in the CitizenCon demo. But the outposts are always going to stay in this, maybe a cluster of them, but in general, never bigger, like actual outposts.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

Got it. So that sounds more like a nomenclature thing. Things that we refer to as outposts will stay that small, but there will be other settlements, like you mentioned villages and stuff, that are bigger and use larger structures. It's just that the things that we refer to as outposts will always be small.

Tobias Johansson · Developer

Yeah, they will always stay this small. Because that's the point of them. It's like the first time we go to another planet and we're going to bring something, we can't bring a skyscraper. Or I mean, maybe we can. I don't know when we're going to do it. But I expect it to be something like this where it's just a box you pretty much snap down. And that's what they're supposed to be.

Dan Trufin · Developer

So I'll try to split it into segments. So whether we require special equipment, that is a yes and no. You can still interrupt someone from engaging their quantum drive by disrupting their quantum field that they're trying to generate around their ship. If they take enough damage, and especially if they take enough damage to the quantum drive, that field will disrupt. But you're not going to see someone in an Aurora shooting an Idris, disrupting their quantum field. I mean, maybe if they're already damaged or something like this, but it's most probably not going to happen. Now, if you're talking about dedicated interdiction tools, we definitely want to improve your chances of interdiction if you have specialized equipment. That is the idea. If you have specialized disruptor beams, you will be able to use them to disrupt that quantum field so much faster than just shooting them with normal weapons. And besides that, yes, if you have a ship that is dedicated to interdiction, you will have an extra layer of bonuses on top for that. But again, it's not required. We want to be able to allow this type of gameplay to be available to everyone, but people will be a lot better at it if they have the right equipment.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

If I understand, before you go to the second part, anybody who shoots anybody while they're trying to quantum has a chance of disrupting the field.

Dan Trufin · Developer

It's not a chance. It will be slowly damaging their quantum field pool that they're trying to build up. And when it reaches 100%, basically they're spooling. When it reaches 100%, they're out. Bye. You cannot stop them anymore. If you manage to basically do more damage than their quantum drive engine can actually generate to fill that pool, then you hold them there until they reach 100. You might be able to just delay them enough until someone comes and helps you, or you can actually disrupt it completely where they cannot even engage if you have enough firepower.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

And then you have specialized weapons that will make that more effective.

Dan Trufin · Developer

Yes, that is the idea. You will have specialized weapons that basically in a matter of seconds will shut down a field. So you might get that situation when an Aurora, maybe with a specialized weapon, is able to hold down an Idris, provided it doesn't get one-shot out of the sky. That Idris can at any point just point its gun at it and just blow it out of the sky. But if he's not able to spot it, or if it's at an interesting angle where the Idris can't really turn towards it and it takes forever to turn, it might be enough.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

All it's done is kept the Idris there so it can kill it.

Dan Trufin · Developer

Yeah, most of the time you want to keep the Idris there until your friends come in with the big guns.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

What about the second half of interdiction, pulling people out of quantum that are already in there?

Dan Trufin · Developer

So for this, we have a way more specialized tool, which will be a quantum interdiction field. See it as a device that you deploy, you basically chuck out of your cargo. And you turn it on, it has a limited power supply. And once you turn it on, on a giant radius, anything that quantum travels through there gets pulled out. And until they exit this radius, they cannot quantum travel again. Either they have to exit this radius or destroy the quantum interdiction field generator. It's either or. But you have to make it out of there. The fun part here comes when the guys that are trying to interdict you are most probably also going to be inside that bubble, because they have to be there in order to kill you and make sure you're not getting away and running out. So they will also be interdicted. They won't know what's coming. They might be getting a nice hauler full of nice cargo, or two or three Idrises fully armed just blowing them out of the sky. So it's going to be a bit of a gamble to set up one of these fields. But this is where our stealth gameplay will also come into play, where you basically can stay behind an asteroid and see what drops in your nets before you actually start going in full guns.

Ahmed Shaker · Publishing Operations, Austin

Most of the time, these are not patches. That's what we call a hotfix. And the nature of a hotfix, it's unplanned for. We did not really want a hotfix. We did not really want to add a new feature. If we were going to add a new feature, we were going to release a new patch. Most probably, we are mitigating issues, enhancing something, completely shutting down a major cause of problems. The majority of the time, there is not much for the players to test. In a lot of the cases we just realized that something is not working the way it should work, and we couldn't find a way to deal with it without releasing a new release, and we just go with it. Another thing is, it's very expensive when it comes to time consumption from different teams, because if you deal with it as a release where you involve everyone, involving the people who deal with patch notes, the people who deal with releasing the patch notes, then you are investing a lot of time and resources from the people who are already working on the new release. Because as you know, when we release a release, the next day we're doing nothing but working on a new release. Every single time the old release wants to take time from us, we're trying to minimize that as much as we can. So adding that to the fact that usually there is not much to be tested, most of the time there is not much to be said. However, there might be cases where we have hotfixes that would need patch notes, but that's not a matter that you and I can decide on. Usually it's going to be on a case-by-case basis. We are trying to be as lean as we can and move fast. We are not trying to set ourselves to a certain regimen, especially when it comes to fixing issues with a minimal amount of intervention, which is the hotfixes.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

Plus, it might be worth adding that the hotfixes are going to be related to features that were already in the patch notes. The patch notes are "we did this", and then a hotfix will be to tweak something that's listed in that patch. So you actually already have the patch notes. You already have the list of things to test. Just keep doing what you're doing and we're going to get the information that we need after each and every hotfix. So there's nothing real specific to point anybody at that's any different than the patch notes you already have. It's a question of fine-tuning a thing: instead of interdiction happening every two seconds, now it happens every five seconds. It's all the stuff that you're already aware of. We're just fine-tuning.

Ahmed Shaker · Publishing Operations, Austin

Most of the time, it's a correction. We're just correcting something.

Rob Reininger · Developer

So we've been putting a lot of focus over these last couple of years on making our art sets modular in nature. And as you know, the last time we did the hangars was a few years ago, like four years ago at this point, I think. And the way that they were built just isn't conducive to us inserting them into a lot of the different locations or building different sizes using the same art set. So we've been really focused on creating hangar pieces within our modular sets, which will allow us to do low-tech, high-tech, asteroid, all the same themes that we've got, but in our new modular art sets, which will allow us to incorporate them into our cities, which is obviously the big thing. Being able to fly down into your hangars, kind of like Levski, but that was still kind of a custom setup for us. So we really want to get those in relatively soon. It's going to be the later part of this year, maybe early next year, but look for them with the release of the first major cities.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

Following the progress, it's too early to say when. Obviously we'd love to have it in later this year, as you said. But it's not on the roadmap for a reason right now. That's like an internal goal: okay, if all things line up, maybe that can happen. But when we have a better idea of when the new hangars will come, you'll see them show up on the roadmap. That's basically your cue to know when something's going to happen: look for it on the roadmap. If it's not on the roadmap, don't expect it anytime within the period of that roadmap.

Rob Reininger · Developer

So a little more information. We've got them in white box phase right now, and they're currently getting their art pass. So once we can get those signed off, then that's when it's probably going to show up on the roadmap.

Rob Reininger · Developer

No, the intention is that they're going to replace them, because you're still going to have all the same functionality of being able to place your flair and park your ships in there. But it's just going to be with the updated art, which I think you guys will like. The new art looks amazing. So I think you guys will be super happy when you actually see them.

Rob Reininger · Developer

So 3.2 has salvage on the roadmap. Salvage, if you guys aren't aware of it, is being able to strip materials off of the hulls of ships. Repair is going to be, think of it as the inverse of that. So you're going to have a personal weapon using the PAW tool with a backpack that allows you to have a certain amount of materials in it, and you'll be able to go and infuse your ship with these materials again and kind of repair it. It's the first iteration of it. We look at being able to potentially put this tech on drones, so it's actually getting fixed in real time, because we've got our damage shaders that actually allow you to go down to the lattice underneath ships, right? So super cool tech to allow us to take it off. So we want to be able to put it back on. So that's the, not stretch goal, the initial goal for tier zero implementation. And then once we can prove out the tech at a personal level, then we can start looking at the larger ships that are repair ships specifically.