Star Citizen: Reverse the Verse LIVE - New Flight Experience

David Colson · Gameplay Programmer

A flight model is the set of rules that we use to move the ships. I guess that's probably the simplest way to do it. I mean, that's super broad, right? The underlying movement of the ship is physics. It is genuine, real physics. And we sort of have this set of rules for the mechanics of how the ship is going to propel itself and how you're going to control it. And that sort of link between your control and what the physics is doing is the flight model. So in the case of IFCS, it's a bit like a fly-by-wire system that you have in a modern jet fighter, where you don't have direct control over thrusters or control surfaces or anything like that. You just have your desired movement that you would like, and then a computer simulation will interpret that input and move the ship for you. And that little jump there of that interpretation is super, super important to the gameplay. It completely defines how the ships fly and feel. And I guess on that topic, another side part of this is that what the limitations of the ship are also comes into that, because obviously the ship can't do exactly what you asked, because it has physical limitations. And those physical limitations are also part of this flight model.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Content Manager for Global Video Production

So basic ship mechanics, you've got the main thrusters generally found in the rear. You've got the maneuvering thrusters spread throughout the ship. Each ship has a different kind of size and shape and whatever, and the maneuvering thrusters will be in different places. And IFCS, what does IFCS stand for?

David Colson · Gameplay Programmer

Intelligent Flight Control System. I don't actually know where that acronym came from. It predated me starting at this company.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Content Manager for Global Video Production

So IFCS takes the input that you make on either a joystick, a HOTAS, two sticks, a mouse and keyboard, a gamepad, and then figures out the combination of maneuvering thrusters, how hard it needs to hit the main thruster to achieve a goal that's in line with what you're trying to do with your control scheme.

David Colson · Gameplay Programmer

Yes, and within the limitations of the ship.

David Colson · Gameplay Programmer

So I think one of the biggest things under this topic is that, because the flight model is obviously super core to how you fight in ships, a lot of the other combat-related mechanics tend to be thought to be tightly related. But the flight model is purely just moving the ship. So things like the gunnery, the weapon balance, the shield balance, armor, all of that stuff, that is not the flight model. That is something else.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Content Manager for Global Video Production

So game balance, as it were, whether this ship can beat this ship, whether this ship is more maneuverable than some other ship, that's not flight model. That's game balance, and that's handled by a series of designers. If you've been following the project, you've met 100 designers over the course of Star Citizen's development. Those are the ones that will take the tools that something like the flight model provides them and then tweak them and change them for each individual ship.

David Colson · Gameplay Programmer

It's worth noting as well that those things are not balanced and designed in isolation from the flight model. They're just different things. So you sort of have your shield balance and your weapon balance and your flight model balance, and the combination of all three of those goes into the balance of combat.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Content Manager for Global Video Production

So when we see a lot of questions about how will this ship fly or how will that ship fly, that's not necessarily in the wheelhouse of you and your team. You're working on the general overall model, and then the designers will go in and take the model that your team has created for them and tweak it for the individual ship parameters.

David Colson · Gameplay Programmer

I want to give the idea of how much of a collaboration this is. Obviously, to get the best result out of the flight model, I work with designers really, really closely, and I sometimes work with the other ship balance tasks just so that we can make sure that everyone's on the same page and we're all working towards the larger goal, which is the game.

David Colson · Gameplay Programmer

I'm afraid, Jared, that's not how this works. You would probably describe me as the owner, the technical lead of the flight model, but other people work on it, and obviously I'm not the primary designer either. You can send me your complaints about weapon balance, but I don't program weapons. I can't do anything about that. I need to give it to someone else.

David Colson · Gameplay Programmer

Sort of, but in this case, no, we're not going to see any changes to this in 3.5. It's really, really difficult. There are actually two parts to this, because there are multiple seats in ships, and as far as I'm aware, other seats can feel the G limits, but there have been some bugs. For example, if you're in a turret of a ship and you rotate the turret 180 degrees, you will get G effects in the opposite direction to what you're actually facing. So that's obviously an issue that we need to solve, and we will. But obviously, people walking around inside the physics grid of the ship is a separate issue, and that's really hard. Not in terms of physics or anything. It's easy to just apply force to a character. The issue is that you have to animate the character to react to that, and that's what's really, really hard. And not only that, but say we do that. Maybe we have the players animate, so they're doing this sort of thing. But then it's just annoying. If you're inside a Cutlass, the Cutlass can maneuver quite hard, and you're trying to go about your life inside the back of the Cutlass and you're just getting thrown around constantly. It's just impractical.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Content Manager for Global Video Production

We talk a lot about how we want multi-crew gameplay to be akin to something like Star Trek or Star Wars, where folks are running through the interiors of a ship to replace a component or whatnot. And if there's too much shake, if there's too much being thrown against the walls, then the players inside won't be able to accomplish their goals. So there has to be a balance there between what might be super realistic and what is actually acceptable for the type of gameplay that we want to engender with multi-crew gameplay.

David Colson · Gameplay Programmer

This is not something that we've got in 3.5, but the conversation at the moment is that the inertial dampeners of the ship interior have limits. And so for the most part, in usual maneuvers, you won't feel anything, but if you slam into an asteroid or another ship slams into you or you pull a really hard maneuver, then the character will react and you'll get hit feedback or you'll be moved or whatever.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Content Manager for Global Video Production

There's a threshold?

David Colson · Gameplay Programmer

Yes, there's a threshold. So above that limit, the inertial dampener just can't help anymore.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Content Manager for Global Video Production

That sounds like a way to have our cake and eat it too.

David Colson · Gameplay Programmer

I hope so, but obviously it's a difficult compromise to make.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Content Manager for Global Video Production

So basically what they're talking about is you've got a ship here and then you've got another ship. They want to know whether this ship can position just out of their firing range, and as they're turning, if they can keep their positions and basically stay out of gun-to-gun range.

David Colson · Gameplay Programmer

Exactly. So yes, that is what is being talked about here, and this is a really difficult balance, because we have reduced the rotation velocities of ships in 3.5, but we've also reduced the accelerations of the ship, and that is bringing the two numbers down and not really changing the ratio that much. So it depends on the ship. We've obviously got some variation between the ships. But for the most part, the ratio has gone up a little bit, so that distance is a little bit further away, but it's not a huge amount further away than it was previously. And it's just purely because to get that distance that you need to be at to be able to do that, if we were to get that above 100 meters, we would need rotation rates that are quite a lot slower than we're comfortable with. So what we're going to try and do is have larger fighters that have these slower rotational velocities, and in that case we can do that. And so the smaller, lighter ships can probably do this sort of thing, or at least they will be able to track targets that are following them, and certain ships won't be.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Content Manager for Global Video Production

So this sounds like it'll be on a case-by-case basis depending on the situation. Some will be able to maintain that advantage and others may not.

David Colson · Gameplay Programmer

Yeah, this is something that is super top of our priority when we go to Evocati and test this out. This is what it's like in the current iteration that we're going to put out in Evocati, and we are 100% up for changing this and tuning this in the next month or so.

David Colson · Gameplay Programmer

So basically the simple answer is 100% yes. It's really, really cool. I'm really happy with it. We have taken some compromises with respect to realism, because the way atmospheres scale off as you go higher is actually quite complicated. And so at the moment we have an exponential decrease in atmospheric density as you go up, which is somewhat realistic, but it's not realistic because of all sorts of weird physics things. And so as you fly lower, I think the easiest way to see this is if you take a really aerodynamic ship like the Gladius and you make a tight turn low in the atmosphere, you will get some really strong lift forces, such that you can black out really, really quickly. And then if you fly a little bit higher in the atmosphere, that eases off and you can turn harder and use your thrusters a little bit more and not black out as much, because there's not as much air. And then as you get right to the edge of the atmosphere, it scales into what is effectively space flight in a nice, smooth transition. It's really, really cool. I'm really pleased with it.

David Colson · Gameplay Programmer

So afterburner and boost have been sort of combined. What we previously called afterburner, which was this thing where you press Shift and, if you're going in a straight line, you would accelerate past your top speed and go into cruise speeds, that's gone. What was boost is now called afterburner, and it is also the same thing as overpowering your thrusters. We talked a little bit about this at CitizenCon. You effectively pump more power into these ion thrusters, which will cause them to ionize more gas, and you'll get more thrust out of it. It is pretty much exactly as boost was previously. It's an afterburner, I guess not really like a gas engine afterburner, but you get more acceleration is the point. And we've also tuned the heat systems of thrusters so that there's a limit on this. So if you continue to hold down afterburner, you'll get a warning on your UI saying thrusters are starting to overheat, and your ship will start to get a bit more sluggish. And if you keep doing this, then it'll go full red. Your thrusters have overheated, and your ship will just be drifting, not able to move. And then you'll have to wait for it to cool down again, and then you can fly off.

David Colson · Gameplay Programmer

So in terms of that, aside from the tuning and balance, it actually hasn't changed that much, because we found that it plays really, really well. Some of the ships are a little bit hard to shoot the thrusters on, and we're working with the ship artists to try and have thrusters that are exposed as the weak elements. And so when you shoot a thruster, you start losing thrust and you get a reduced acceleration. The new flight model is a little bit more lenient toward ship balance. So previously, if you were to shoot a thruster on one side of the ship, then every time you tried to move it would spin, because it was just out of balance. We don't do that as much anymore. We give you a free pass in that respect, just to make the game a little bit easier to manage. So what you will feel is reduced thrust in a certain direction. The ship will still be quite stable up to a point, obviously, when you just completely lose everything. The ship will be quite stable and you'll just lose thrusters or you'll lose acceleration. And so the result is that it feels sluggish, and you might find that it's asymmetrical. So it's sluggish strafing in one direction and not the other, which feels really cool. It forces you to change how you're flying in the middle of combat, which is fun.

David Colson · Gameplay Programmer

We are seeing changes. They don't behave any differently in terms of mechanics, right? They're only different in terms of tuning, and they're really slow and really sluggish. And some of the really big ones have so little thrust that they are impractical for atmospheric flight, which is kind of what we originally wanted. If you have something as big as the Bengal, you can't come into the atmosphere. Well, you could, but it'd be suicidal. If you have something as big as the Bengal, don't get excited. So I think the example that's in 3.5 is the Reclaimer. That's the salvage ship, right? If you come into the atmosphere in the Reclaimer, it really slowly drifts down, and you can pump up as much as you can, it'll just keep drifting down. It just won't be able to. Don't bring it into the atmosphere, I guess, is the tip. You won't be able to get out.

David Colson · Gameplay Programmer

Yes.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Content Manager for Global Video Production

I guess that's why we have a tug ship. Is that intentional?

David Colson · Gameplay Programmer

That's intentional. As ships get larger and larger, they get slower and slower until eventually they reach a point. For example, I think the Starfarer can get out of the atmosphere, but it's really slow. You can see it struggling and struggling, but it will do it. It just takes ages.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Content Manager for Global Video Production

Something like the Reclaimer has pretty obvious landing gear. The whole VTOL engines go and it has a landing profile to it.

David Colson · Gameplay Programmer

Yeah, so if you're on a rest stop in space, then it works fine. Or if you're on a low-atmosphere planet like Delamar, which I think is pretty low gravity, then it works fine, and you can land and you can take off and it works as you might expect. Like Hurston, for example. For example, the Starfarer can escape from Daymar, but it can't escape from Hurston.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Content Manager for Global Video Production

So we're not saying that it can't land on all planets.

David Colson · Gameplay Programmer

Yeah, it's just ones that have gravity strong enough that it can't get out.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Content Manager for Global Video Production

So a Reclaimer could land on something like Yela?

David Colson · Gameplay Programmer

Yes. I haven't actually tried that, but I've tried Daymar.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Content Manager for Global Video Production

So what we're saying is that there will be some planetary atmospheres where you're not going to want to take something like the Reclaimer and land, but moons or whatnot that don't have particular atmospheres, it still won't be the easiest sell in the world.

David Colson · Gameplay Programmer

You can't do it.

David Colson · Gameplay Programmer

So the first thing you'll notice is that the throttle HUD here is different from what it was at CitizenCon. We've actually re-evaluated the way the throttle worked since CitizenCon, and we have a new method, which I'm actually really excited about. So now, instead of how it used to be, W and S, or your default forward and back, is actually forward strafe, which I know a lot of people used to bind previously to forward and back. So when Christopher is pressing W, he is actually strafing forward, and if he lets go of W, he will actually slow back down to zero. So you might wonder then, how do I cruise at a certain speed? Well, if you press the cruise control button, you'll see that little arrow pop up on the HUD, and it will auto-thrust to whatever speed you set.

David Colson · Gameplay Programmer

So this HUD is now your true speed indicator. If you strafe left and right, it is telling you your velocity in any direction that you're going. And furthermore, as a result, and I think there's another question there, you can actually change that speed limit. So Christopher, if you move your scroll wheel up and down, you can actually change that speed limit up and down. And so the ship will try. In the moment, because you're strafing, it is actually struggling to get itself back to the speed limit. But yeah, you can actually change the speed limit now, which is a pretty big change. I know a lot of people have asked for that. And so you can set it where you want. You'll also notice that it goes red. When it goes red, it means you're above the combat maneuvering speed, which is the recommended maneuvering speed for combat.

David Colson · Gameplay Programmer

They're gone. So if you wanted Precision mode, if you want to come in and land or whatever, you can reduce the speed limit to as low as you want. You can go down to zero. If you want to make a really nice, soft landing, you can set the speed limit to one, and then the ship will really slowly move down and land. Or you can set the limit up to 1,200 and fly at what used to be Cruise.

David Colson · Gameplay Programmer

There's an interesting balance here, because the combat that we have is still pretty fast-paced compared to other space games, but previously accelerations were so fast that it was almost too difficult. For example, when you were trying to aim, it was almost impossible to get a target on someone, because they could just do this. It really struggled. By lowering the accelerations, we've made that a bit easier. Then the rotational velocities have also come down to try and get a better rotation-to-acceleration ratio that is a little bit higher. In certain larger fighters, you won't be able to track targets that are moving too close to you and too fast. And I think that was pretty much the goal, right? If you have rotational velocities that are super high and rotational accelerations that are super high, it feels like an FPS shooter, and that's not what we want. We want you to feel like there's some mass and you need to swing the nose around and stuff. It just makes the combat require a little bit more foresight and a little bit more planning and tactical thinking rather than twitch shooting.

David Colson · Gameplay Programmer

That is not changing with 3.5. It is something that's obviously on our radar, and part of the reason that I actually came to LA was to try and prototype some solutions to this issue. And we're really excited about that. It is really, really cool what we're going to do with that to try and solve that issue.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Content Manager for Global Video Production

But we're not quite ready to share that.

David Colson · Gameplay Programmer

We're not ready yet. It will come in 3.6, presumably.

David Colson · Gameplay Programmer

This is true. There are changes to hover. We have completely redesigned the actual hover system, and so it feels really, really different now. We did do an ATV a month or two ago about this, and I think it probably didn't show it off as well as I would hope. But hopefully we can give you an idea of what it's like to play here. And then shortly in Evocati you'll actually be able to try it for yourself, and you'll understand how different it really does feel.

David Colson · Gameplay Programmer

This comes under the same topic of solving the issue of ships hovering at weird angles, because the hope is that the VTOL engines would direct all their thrust down and it would change the flight handling. So we are going to do that, but not in 3.5.

David Colson · Gameplay Programmer

Straight away you'll notice that it doesn't bump itself up every time it comes into an obstacle like it used to. So the hovering tends to be a lot lower than it used to be, and you get this feeling of being a little bit more attached to the ground. We also have variable grip, effectively. Obviously, it's not tire grip, but you can change the hover height with Control and Space. If you lower the bike, you actually get more lateral turning grip, so you can do tighter turns if you're lower. And then you press Space and you'll hover a bit higher, which is safer, and you can travel without bumping into things, but you also can't turn as tightly when you're hovering a bit higher.

David Colson · Gameplay Programmer

Yes. First of all, the ship can be knocked, which I think it was able to do previously. So if you get hit by a missile or whatever, the ship will shake and be knocked around. Maybe it'll start spinning, whatever, then it'll recover and you can go on. But on top of that, the damage that we mentioned earlier is also coming into this. So if you get bumped by a missile at the back of your Gladius and it destroys the thruster, you will feel that straight away. The ship will feel more sluggish. Maybe it won't be able to strafe to one side or whatever. And so that is probably the secondary effect that you'll feel out of bumping a ship with a missile or whatever.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Content Manager for Global Video Production

I think famously, Tyler was playing once where he was trying to do a flyby of somebody, and he had that person targeted so he could see where they were. He skimmed the surface next to them, and the ESP pulled his ship a little too close, and he ended up colliding instead.

David Colson · Gameplay Programmer

So ESP has been weakened generally, so that effect is not as apparent as it once was. Although what we want to do with ESP, which won't be in the first Evocati, but it is a super high priority and it will be done, it'll be out in the next version, is having a little bit more nuance to the control of ESP. So for example, if you try and pull off the target, ESP will know straight away, oh, he actually doesn't want to target this person, and it'll just back off. Or likewise, if you're not putting any inputs at all, then it will not do anything, because it knows that you're not trying to aim right now.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Content Manager for Global Video Production

It's cool for things like formation flying, when people target the leader and they fly by, and the ESP helps with formations and stuff.

David Colson · Gameplay Programmer

I think it's a little bit too annoying when you're aiming, though. This is our priority, right, is combat.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Content Manager for Global Video Production

I guess they're saying, can you take a Dragonfly from space and take it down to the surface?

David Colson · Gameplay Programmer

You can, but you'd be an idiot, because you'll hit the ground and you'll blow up. Previously Gravlev used to thrust from quite a height to soften you. But now Gravlevs don't work unless you're quite close to the ground, and so you'll fall at full speed until you hit the ground and there'll be a big explosion. You can try it if you want, but you're probably going to die.

David Colson · Gameplay Programmer

This is a really good example of how the bigger ships work. If you try and turn, you'll see straight away that it's so much slower than the Gladius. It also is not nearly as aerodynamic, so it's not getting as many of the lift forces that you get with aerodynamic ships. And so it's sluggish and it's difficult to control. This ship actually has enough thrust to hold itself up in the atmosphere, so you can escape. But yeah, it's just really, really slow. It's slow and sluggish, and you have to think quite far ahead before committing to moves.

David Colson · Gameplay Programmer

You can do that. Christopher can actually show it. The issue is more that a lot of the ships are like jet fighters. If you cut the engine in a Eurofighter in real life, it'll glide, but it's going to fall quite quickly and you don't really have that much time to do anything about it. So if you get up to speed and then you just cut the power, the ship will glide, but you'll end up crashing. There you go. Ship glides. It will do this for quite a while, and then... Yeah, it works. You just don't have that much control, and you will eventually crash.

David Colson · Gameplay Programmer

Absolutely. We do simulate what are called lifting bodies, so surfaces that have the sort of geometry to support lift but are not necessarily wings can generate some lift, but not very much. And you will feel that difference. So the Gladius can obviously glide a lot further than something like the Aurora.

David Colson · Gameplay Programmer

We mentioned that previously. The SCM limiter is the left bar that is moving up and down there. That is controlled by the scroll wheel now. At the CitizenCon presentation, we had the acceleration strength, or the acceleration magnitude, controlled by the scroll wheel. We've actually removed that, because we found that it just wasn't that useful. In the middle of combat, you always want to be at max thrust. It had limited use cases, maybe landing, but really, we found in playtests that no one used it, and we found that modifying the speed limit was actually far more useful, and so we've gone with that instead.

David Colson · Gameplay Programmer

We can do that. It's a matter of what's important on the UI. It's pretty easy. I think we actually have that value internally. We use it for things like ground effect turbulence and stuff like that. If we wanted to show that on the UI, it would be trivial. But it's a matter of, is this important information, because we don't really want to clutter the UI. It becomes this question of, is this useful information that is worth taking space on the UI for? Right now, I don't think it is, but I'm open to discussions on that. In future iterations, maybe we'll revisit that.

David Colson · Gameplay Programmer

That is total velocity indicator. I'm not actually sure what ATVI is, though.

David Colson · Gameplay Programmer

Oh, anti-TVI. That's what it is. It's for going backwards. It tells you the opposite of your velocity. We want to do this. It's probably not going to be in 3.5. It requires a little bit more thought in how we're going to do this in a way that's both useful and also not totally intrusive on the screen. We've seen some games that have these streaks on the screen, which we explored, but we decided that it was just too much clutter on the screen. So we're exploring ways to do that right now, and in a future version of the game, we will absolutely do that.

David Colson · Gameplay Programmer

This has been under discussion. It's pretty difficult to do, not in terms of implementing it. It's difficult to do in terms of it would be quite a large change to the flight system and how the flight system manages the ship. And so we have to be quite careful about thinking if it's actually really something we want to explore. But it's definitely on the table. So we'll continue exploring it and we'll decide if it's worth it.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Content Manager for Global Video Production

The smart answer is trial and error.

David Colson · Gameplay Programmer

I think the easiest way to do that: there's a G-meter on the HUD now, and so if you just maneuver out in space, you can see what the accelerations are. And you would think, oh, okay, so this ship is only accelerating at two meters a second upward. It's clearly going to struggle when I get to Daymar, which is three and a half meters a second.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Content Manager for Global Video Production

The less smart-aleck answer is that as resources like the Galactapedia come online, as more information about the different destinations of the Stanton system, and by extension the Star Citizen universe, comes online, just like a normal pilot would have to prep for any journey, you'll have to sit there and say, okay, my route takes me to this and to this. What is the local gravity on that planet? What are my landing options, and what ships do I have that can complement that? The answer is planning. Right now, in the state the game is currently in, that would be a little more difficult, so that's where you get the trial in there. But ultimately, we intend to have all kinds of resources available to you, the Galactapedia, your discussions with other players, to get you the information you need to make the most important decisions in that regard.

David Colson · Gameplay Programmer

No. With Gravlev, it doesn't really make that much sense. In terms of flying on Gravlev, it doesn't make that much sense, because you've got all sorts of other aerodynamic effects and stuff like that. In space, yes. In space, they function just like a spaceship, and so they have decoupled flight in space. It's just on Gravlev it would make them almost impossible to use, because there's so much going on to try and keep you hovering and keep you stable that you would just crash immediately if you had decoupled.

David Colson · Gameplay Programmer

Yeah. It really hugs the ground, and so there's this tight balance between whether we want it to hug the ground and be really tight, or whether we want it to go a little bit higher and be lenient so you don't bump into rocks. As you can see, what happens when you bump into a rock sometimes is not entirely desirable. So there's a really difficult balance between getting really close to the ground and also just being practical and fun. There was a point where you hit every single rock and it was just not fun, because you couldn't move anywhere.

David Colson · Gameplay Programmer

I'm afraid not. That will be for future patches.

David Colson · Gameplay Programmer

Not in terms of gameplay mechanics. It functions like it did, except we fixed loads of bugs with it. There was an issue where when you were in decoupled and you came back into coupled, it would convert your decoupled speed into your coupled throttle. It doesn't do that anymore. Lots of issues with swapping between the two modes causing the ship to nullify your inputs. There were just a lot of issues with it, so it wasn't a very clean, nice experience. And so we've just cleaned it up. We've also got another option in the settings, which is not on by default, but if you want it, you can turn it on. It will make decoupled a hold action. So you press down the button and hold, and it'll be decoupled. And then when you let go, decoupled will disengage again, which is an interesting way to fly differently. So that option is there now if you want it.

David Colson · Gameplay Programmer

It's different for all of the ships, and this is mostly for gameplay balance, because say, for example, you have an interceptor ship that's designed to catch up with other ships. It obviously needs to have a higher speed limit so that it can catch up to things. And we justify this as certain ships are better at coping with higher speeds and are better able to control their accelerations at higher speeds, and so they get higher speeds.

David Colson · Gameplay Programmer

It is actually preferable, like what is happening right now. In atmosphere, you can turn harder like this than you can otherwise. If you just yaw for a second, you'll see straight away. Can you rotate with your mouse yaw? You'll see that the ship gets pulled back by the air, and you can't turn nearly as tight as you could if you were to roll and turn. In space, it depends on the acceleration balance of the ship. So ships that have stronger downward accelerations will be able to turn tighter if they roll, and other ships may not have that capability.

David Colson · Gameplay Programmer

Ship collisions, ship-on-ship and, say, ship-on-asteroid collisions, have a dampener purely for gameplay purposes, because otherwise the ships just spin uncontrollably. And so we try and nullify situations where the ship would just be spinning out of control. That was a bug that we saw previously that needed to be addressed on that topic. And then in terms of the actual collision resolution, I know we have some bugs. Sometimes you'll crash into the planet and you just bounce. Those are just bugs. We need to just fix those.

David Colson · Gameplay Programmer

Not a huge amount. I'm hoping that we get a lot of feedback and can nail down this experience over the next month. That's my biggest hope right now. We put a lot of work into testing this and making sure this is as good as it could possibly be when we actually go to Evocati. But I don't think we're done with this, right? We can keep working on it and make it even better with the feedback that we get from players, and that's what I'm hoping for.