Can we get an update on the state of Maelstrom?asked by HotSplade
TL;DRMaelstrom is technically complete in Squadron 42 and is meant to replace the current armor system wholesale in Star Citizen, but still needs network integration and balancing, and is expected among the early features brought over.
Maelstrom, okay. So similar to the flight model, Maelstrom is technically complete within Squadron 42. All of the combat, all of the ships, all of our props in the environment are set up with Maelstrom. They all break apart. I mean, the Maelstrom on the ships is fantastic. The challenge ahead of us now is then transposing that into Star Citizen. Obviously Star Citizen is a lot broader, has a lot more, 200-plus ships in Star Citizen, a lot more scope. So obviously it will be the same system, but it will need to be network compliant. It will need to make sure that it's working in all the conditions that we need it from a gameplay perspective and a balance perspective. That will replace the current armor system wholesale. Damage is fully enabled with Maelstrom, so it takes the weight of the bullet, the projectile speed, the type of the bullet, whether it's an energy or ballistic. It calculates the kinetic force on impact. That is all working. All of the physics has been calculated. So that is fully complete in Squadron. Now it's about bringing it over to Star Citizen. And as Squadron moves towards its release, more and more resources, more and more gameplay features will come over. Similar to how we did a big push in 3.23, we brought those features over, we'll be bringing over another tranche of features, which is Flight Model and Maelstrom.
Maelstrom's going to be one of the earliest ones that we look to bring over, right? Because it's quite a chunky piece of tech, and it's going to need some integration with our network model.
I've seen it. I've played it. It is a very different experience based on the armor system currently. So that's exciting.
I won't go on too long about Maelstrom, but the biggest thing is just the feedback that you get when you're shooting a ship. It breaks up much more granularly. You get that feedback that you're actually making progress, that you're removing bits off it. You see bits of wing come off. You see bits of the ailerons come off. You get to see the visual progress.
It's that tangible feedback right from your cockpit, right? And that is game-changing.