A while ago, before the baby PU, there was talk of a 'Pirate Swarm' much like Vanduul Swarm. I know in some way that is what we find at the Com arrays in the PU but is there still a chance of getting that in Arena Commander? I would love to hone my skills and test weapons on ships after other than Vanduul, and I would love to see the larger ships in solo play.asked by Heavy Metal
TL;DRPirate Swarm effectively became the Crusader encounters, and Arena Commander isn't getting much work in the short term, though more challenge modes and better matchmaking are planned longer term.
So, Pirate Swarm essentially is what we got in Crusader. So, we were sort of building . . at the time when it was just Arena Commander, we want to change it around and have maybe some other modes to fight some other enemies. In reality the Crusader map, which is the mini PU map, which is really going to grow into the Stanton star system map, where we sort of decided to put these different encounters whether it was with AI or you could find other players to fight. And so that's essentially where Pirate Swarm went.So, in the short term we are not really planning on doing a lot of work on Arena Commander, because we really want to get the base game play and functionality into the proper large world map, the proper mini PU. Get the various rock, paper, scissors aspects, the various different professions, the various different forces in opposition, and the various mechanics that keep people aligned whether you're good or bad or whatever. For us Arena Commander, now is a good place to test some of your dogfighting skills.Longer term we will add to it.We will probably add some more challenge modes and definitely do better matchmaking and make that more of a competitive practice area. Of course we'll do the same thing with Star Marine, but right now we really just sort of want to get everything into the mini PU because that's sort of our foundation for the overall game. Then things will trickle later on into features for Arena Commander or Star Marine, which are really meant to be ultimately training modes for you to train in certain aspects of the game. Potentially also to test your skills against other players without having the same sort of risk you would have in the proper Persistent Universe because it's persistent. So if you lose things or die, you will lose them, whereas in Arena Commander or Star Marine you won't.