Can you make a video to show us what master-modes combat in 3.23 should look like?asked by Alfred_North

No, I will not make a video about 3.23 combat and that is for a number of reasons.

The most important one is that it doesn't matter how we "think" the game should be played, it matters how players actually play it. We will try to steer players in a certain direction due to the design and tuning values but whether it works cannot even been properly evaluated with experimental modes (which we had online for MM for two whole releases) ... it can only be seen once we playtest it with a wide user base that has very different capabilities, hardware equipment and play styles.

And this is exactly what we're doing right now by pushing the changes out to 3.23.
@Alfred_North, I think the reason why you ask your question is because you're unhappy with the current state and polish of the features. And you know what ... I would agree! :slightly_smiling_face:

Going a bit further on this from my dev POV it was extremely important to get all the SQ42 tech concerning master modes, aiming, ship re-tunings, etc. into 3.23. Doing this all in one quarter was "very" challenging and we said multiple times that 3.23. won't be the combat Jesus patch and that there should not be an expectation of a perfectly balanced game. It was just too much content for the team size we have. So while there is a certain risk to push a feature out early, the simple truth here is that it also saves time further down the line. First of all the features get a lot of exposure to players which gives us way more feedback and useful game analytics. Second it saves internally a lot of maintenance time as we don't need to care anymore about the legacy systems. So we opted for the variant to be bold and get the stuff into player hands earlier than keeping to develop it without feedback.

So ... based on that I am summing up my own feelings like this:
- I am VERY HAPPY with the progress of MM in 3.23. and I think it is good enough state to offer a better gameplay experience compared to 3.22. It was a huge challenge to pull all that tech into the PU and most of the ships are now in a better relationship to each other (specifically in group fights)
- I am NOT HAPPY with the overall state of MM (or shall we say the flight and combat experience) as we've not hit all the markers we wanted to hit.

And just to make it clear that we hear players, here are some of the issues we'd like to approach. Some of them are from our own lists, others come directly from player feedback, some from both ... in no particular order:

• Snubs fighters are not really where they need to be
• LFs are now too weak
• 1v1 dogfights are lacking
• Ability to evade shots
• Adding jerk back into IFCS
• Trying out an egg-shaped velocity space to suppress back strafing
• Iterating on the AI to make it hit less perfect when we want
• Teaching the AI not to over-rely on back-strafing
• iterating on the NAV-SCM spool times
• ESP not being as good as it needs to be
• Turret ESP being somewhat wacky on sticks
• make the piloting combat less about aim and more about flight
• Aiming system networking not performing well enough
• Issues with certain mining and salvaging ships not being able to use gimbals from cockpit seats
• Issues with g-force zoom effects being inconsistent
• Specific ship tunings that feel out of whack (e.g. Redeemer, Sabre, etc.)
• Iterating with the speed walls and ship tunings in general
• Missiles flying way too fast for MM tuning
• Integration of the flight mechanics and combat geometry with RN

So as you can see there is a lot of stuff related to the flight and combat experience that needs to be addressed. Once that has happened we might consider making a video. But that point is not now. And even when we reach it, I'd still say that our content creators will do a much better job than us bunch of devs working on flight and combat.

Hope that makes sense :slightly_smiling_face: