Next on the list is improved interdiction. What does improved interdiction involve?
TL;DRImproved interdiction already has AI ships carrying a quantum jammer item, and the plan is to let players use jammers and buoys later, with AI service-beacon responses, to make travel challenging but not annoying.
Well, okay. Well, first of all, even in 3.1, we've done some interdiction improvements to make sure that when you get interdicted, the AI are close. So it's not like someone's 10 or 8 kilometers away, because in 3.0, it was just a fixed number. And the fixed number was determined by the biggest thing, which was the scenario that I think had some asteroids. And so it had to be a big distance. So now the distances and the arrangement of the ships is more dependent on the kind of scenario you're getting pulled out into. And we've always planned to have a quantum jammer, which was going to be an item which could either be on a ship or it can be a sort of mine or a buoy that you could put out. And so we actually implemented that for AI. So the AI ships in 3.1 that interdict you, one of the ships will have this item. And I think it's not in the PTU right now, but it will be by the time hopefully we release next week. You should be able to see which one is actually jamming, and you have to disable it or destroy it, and then you'll be able to jump again, right? Or get far enough away from the jamming signal to be able to do quantum again. So with the interdiction improvements, we need to finish off the item functionality, make it available to players to equip the component, or deploy or launch a buoy. So in 3.1, we don't have the buoy. We would have the buoy in 3.2. We have a very simple version of the component, the item, in 3.1. It would be a much more sophisticated one that pulls more power. Obviously if you got the power, you could see maybe the EM signal of the ship would be much greater, and you'd be able to go, okay, that's the one that's jamming my ability to use quantum. And then we're also going to enable it so players then can deploy this and pull other players or AI out. And so that's going to be kind of fun because, if I'm a pirate, I can deploy it and maybe I don't catch players, but I can catch AI-generated cargo haulers. Attack them or go and take their cargo. And then we have another feature that would tie into this, which I think is the service beacon thing, which ties into another one we're talking about, but we'll also want to make AI ships be able to also do our service beacon responses. So you could have a nice feedback loop where a player puts a quantum buoy out, captures an AI cargo hauler, who then generates a service beacon help request that brings in another player or another AI. And that's a core gameplay loop. I mean, if you play Freelancer or you play Privateer, the whole point is there has to be some risk or challenge to get to locations. And obviously in more dangerous areas, you get paid more for your cargo or whatever, but then there's a higher chance of being interdicted or attacked. And so we need to make that gameplay loop of going from point A to point B challenging, right, but not annoying. So in 3.0, definitely annoying. 3.1, I think it'll be better. And 3.2 is, again, focusing on that core, because that is the core gameplay loop in a lot of space sim games and space trading games.
So it's not just new tech for the interdiction. It's actually an increased variety in the type of scenarios.
Yeah, no, definitely. So again, we'll be building more fluid scenarios, making them more emergent, and there's a feedback loop between what AI and players do. And so I think it would make the world just feel more alive and more things going on.