How do you determine how well or bad a vehicle handles?

Richard:So when we have a ship in concept in phase We basically outline what the purpose of that ship is And then from that we discuss what loadout it should have What weapons it should have What size components it should have And then the ship gets concepted So we're in control of that And then when we go through like concept of phase and the visual art style The art starts to lead some of where the ship goes as well So we've got like the purpose of the ship But then the look of the ship It needs to feel a certain way to match its kind of visual appearance And then we've got like a really good kind of matrix of like Where our current ships are Both in terms of the flight, the combat power As we learn more about the game as well And how we move all the ships As we learn the systems more and more And improve the core features of the game We change the balance So we're moving all the ships together Then we look at where that ship should fit And we don't just want every ship to be the new best ship in the game That does everything the best There's always choices And that can be manufacturer based choices That can be visual kind of choices on the ship And where you put the thrusters Where you put the wings And how they look So it's really a lot of different factors That come into this And it's where we put the weapons It's where we put the turret Well if a ship doesn't have a turret It's where we put it And that defines how good that turret system is on that particular ship And then there's just We've got kind of core numbers of health for example So we've got a really good idea of where the current ships are So we go right, well we want the ships for here So it requires this But it depends how the ship's built So the different parts on the ship And how the damages propagate throughout the ship So we have to work with all these factors So yeah, that's kind of how we balance And then obviously we put We do do some testing internally To make sure the ship kind of fits What we originally set out it to be And make sure it fits in that particular area But it's not I don't like to say This ship's just better than the Vanguard You know for example I like to go Well it could beat the Vanguard in this situation If you did this If you did this particular thing And that's the difficult balance I guess Hopefully that's a good enough answer

Good answer Now how do you build I'm going to follow up Because you did so well with that How do you do that Knowing new systems are coming down the pipe Like master modes and resource management and stuff How do you take that delicate calculus You just described And do something for the game today But also leaving yourself room for tomorrow

Yeah I mean that's That's one of the really difficult things About doing this is We've got to think about the game now We've got to think about the game We're going to have for the next release But then we've also got to think about You know kind of really long term as well So we kind of We kind of do the current game I mean you know We kind of have a base understanding Of where the current game is And where the ships are And we try and do our best to maintain that But also include a little bit of Future proofing ourself really that We don't have to go back and redo Every single ship in every single release for example So we'll try and move certain ships That's why sometimes probably You know we do get questions About certain ship balance not quite fitting But that's probably why Because it is a work in progress game You know this is a game where We can't just retune a hundred and something ships Every single you know release It's just not possible to do But we do try and keep it as one unit that's moving And then we look at You know we look at things like master modes And stuff like that So what we try and do is We try and have these things in the game Now for us And we will balance the game For the future as well And then when it comes to it We can turn those systems on You know for the players Which is what we've done with the experimental modes You know we've got the Gladius there Well we did have the Gladius there And basically what we did was We just turned it on with master modes on And the tuning was there So we're kind of moving the game towards that For the future like that But it is a very fragile piece sometimes And it is quite challenging There's days where you're like Oh my god I've got to throw all the balance out I've done over the last five years at this company You know for these new features and stuff Because we've got so much coming in the game And so much is going to change But it's also really exciting Because it's a constant challenge as well So sometimes