You'd think quantum interdiction and stuff would be architected before all these master modes changes. Why is quantum interdiction a secondary consideration to all the other breadth of work being done on master modes?asked by Stiltomo II
TL;DRQuantum interdiction wasn't part of the original master modes scope because it came from Squadron 42, where it matters little; it wasn't ready, but it will now be considered and addressed in the PU.
I think this has more to do with the realities of how games are developed. Things like quantum interdiction speak very strongly to the quantum travel experience. And when we created master modes, we did this roughly in parallel with a new quantum travel experience for Squadron. The thing is that although these things work together, we're bringing them separately to the PU. And quantum dampening is not a thing that is of big importance in Squadron. So that feature in combination with master modes was just not ready. But the thing is, if we don't move tech that's ready over early, then we're dragging a lot of legacy with us all the time. So basically for master modes, let's say for IFCS, that means that large parts of the code are doubled there because we know which parts we can throw away when master modes is active and we know which parts we can keep. If we keep too much legacy stuff around for a long time, it just increases the maintenance effort a lot. And also, the game is not finished, so these things just happen. Engineering and game design is hard. It's really, really hard.
What Yogi said is there aren't other players using QD in Squadron 42. And we're moving a Squadron 42 feature over to the PU. So it wasn't in the original master modes mandate because it wasn't necessary in Squadron 42. Now it will be considered and now it will be addressed in the PU, is what he said. He did not say it wasn't important.
It's also important to consider that our team is part of these conversations pretty early on, and we call out this stuff really early, and it could be developed in a way that, let's focus on master modes and then figure this stuff out later. But we mentioned these things earlier. We mentioned how do you tackle a ship? How does the Mantis work in this context? And Yogi and Rich are already thinking about that ahead of time, even if they're not necessarily solving those problems right away. They're like, how does this fit into the overall picture anyway? And so we already consider those things and we call those out extremely early in the process so that they are part of the overall design, even if we don't get to them right away.