Does the missile operator mode, along with the guidance and control rework, mean that co-pilots are going to be able to aim and fire missiles in any or all of the ships in 3.14? What's the extent of this?
TL;DRThe intent is for co-pilots to use missiles independently in ships with co-pilot seats, with capacitor control a longer-term goal, and the related changes rebalance combat broadly, to be iterated on after 3.14.
Yeah, so missile-wise, the intent is yes, that co-pilots can use them. Certainly from my testing personally and the Ibukati one, there are plenty of ships there where a pilot can be flying along using guns, co-pilot can be there using missiles, so that really, probably for the first time, gives co-pilots something to do rather than just being sat there and looking at things. The intent is also for them to be able to control capacitors, but there are some technical hurdles we're working through there, so I don't know if we're going to get that in for 3.14, but that's certainly the longer-term goal. But missiles, definitely yes. In ships where there are co-pilot seats, you will be able to independently go into missile operator mode outside of the pilot and trade control of these things. To touch on the ninja changes question from earlier as well: people would look at the missile operator mode as just a way to control missiles, capacitors, or it's just an extra layer. Those things have necessitated us to change and rebalance every single missile in the game, every single weapon in the game, all the ammo counts for every weapon, every single shield, the default loadouts for every ship, the hit points for every ship, the maneuverability of every ship. So they are huge, wide-reaching changes. So 3.14 is going to be a vastly different combat landscape to 3.13. Obviously, with things of that magnitude, they are going to be iterated on in future patches, because we're not going to get the balance right out the gate for the magnitude of ships and component possibilities out there. Same for radar and scanning. So we have this new HUD, missile operator mode, capacitors, radar and scanning, and then all these other balance changes. There's a lot of big features at work there in 3.14 that are going to take a while to bed in, and the beauty of this project is that the people playing the game can help us dial that in, because there's obviously only so many of us, there's only so many QA, things will slip through. You guys are great at finding them in PTU, and hopefully we fix as many as we can before live.