Thanks very much for the update. It sounds like this is a pretty ambitious one and worth waiting for.

While a bit disappointed by the delay, it was a pleasant surprise to see that damage effects will be applied to ships in this next release. And I can't wait to see what "some other graphical and effects changes" means. Maybe the guns will be visible on non-special ships. Maybe non-special ships' poly count will be increased. Or maybe some of the weapon effects will just change. Aside from all the eyecandy, however, the most needed feature right now is that ship balance. Alas, we wait another week. I trust that it will be worth it.

PS: Can one of the devs perhaps slip in a preview shot of the damage effects? Sounds cool. I caaaaan't wait.

=b

ooo visiual damadge... yay... oh wait... you mean somebody will know when I'm all beat up and about to dock : (.

Sounds like a cool update. Thanks devs.

Hmmm... My questions:

1) Will it have "damage zones" yet? No? Well, it was worth asking.
2) Will the guns have different sounds?
3) Will the damage effects be permanent, or will the "fade" after a couple of seconds?
4) Will the AI still issue in sector 14 non-stop?

1) I don't think so
2) prob not : (
3) I assume they would stay until repaired (it'd be wierd any other way)
4) that's the whole point of better pathfinding.

Changes to ship hull levels, as well as agilty and whatnot, are fairly simple I imagine...at least to implement in code and/or cfg files. It would have been cool if they split the update in two, a mini one for balance, and then within the next two weeks the opengl and other things. However, since the whole idea of this test is to improve the game engine, I understand the delay.
Still, Id prefer being thrown a bone with balance. I am glad they update the in progress page though, and I understand how twitchy the development cycle can get.

When the update does arrive, we should not only be testing ship balance, but the engine enhancements as well. The update sounds a bit technical, so it may be hard for some people to understand what they should be looking for as they adjust grahpic settings and check extensions with thier cards or whatnot.

It would be a piece of cake to add generic gun ports to ships (like we see on the specials). However, I think the devs might have something different in store for us. Remember the info? We can just visually look at a ship and see what it's meant for. This means we'd be able to tell if that Valk was flying with triple-flares/gauss or some other loadout. Or if that Hog had an Avalon launcher or gatling cannon. I think we will have dynamic gun ports very soon! :-D

SirCamps: That sounds reasonable. We know from previous conversations that dynamic models depending on your configuration are in dev's desired feature set, but I had know idea that they would be coming so soon. If you are right, it is indeed a very cool enhancement.

You should be able to trade in a large weapon port for 2 small weapon ports, or 2 small weapon ports for a large weapon port. or 1 small weapon port for 2 extra cargo space, or a large weapon port for 4 extra cargo space, or 4 cargo space for another small weapon port, or 8 cargo space for another large weapon port.

"You should be able to trade in a large weapon port for 2 small weapon ports, or 2 small weapon ports for a large weapon port. or 1 small weapon port for 2 extra cargo space, or a large weapon port for 4 extra cargo space, or 4 cargo space for another small weapon port, or 8 cargo space for another large weapon port."

Not that I'm opposed to this in concept, but I think your balance leaves alot to be desired. Do you really want to see Marauders mounting 7 sunflares?

I think you should be able to leave a large port empty to gain 2 cargo space or a small port empty to gain 1 cargo space. That causes me no real problems. Maybe there could be a 'improvised cargo box' 'weapon' that altered the ship in that manner.

But I don't particularly think you should be able to trade small slots for large slots or vica versa because that greatly reduces the differences between the ships and might lead to uniformity and banality in ship configuration. I also don't think that trading cargo space for weapons is in and of itself balanced with any of the ships we have now. For one thing, you yourself have the oddity that you can trade a small weapon for 2 cargo, but to obtain a small weapon you have to trade in 4 cargo. If space is space, why the descrepency? Even so, this would lead to 7 sunflare configured Marauders, and 5 sunflare + 2 adv. gatling Ragnaroks, and so forth.

I'd like to assume that the ammount of volume that weapons can be usefully mounted in is somewhat proportional to the cross sectional area of the ship, in that weapons have to be mounted in hardpoints in the ships surface and generally speaking (turrets aside) have to be mounted facing forward. On the other hand, cargo can be mounted anywhere in the total volume of the vessel including deep inside the hull in spaces that you could never usefully mount a weapon (unless you consider shooting your own internal structure useful). Also, cargo spaces don't need power linkages, control wiring, mounting hard points, sensors and so forth. You can store cargo in basically any empty space with a box around it, but weapons can only be mounted were the ships layout permits it. This means that weapons can basically only be put where the original design intended, but cargo can easily be put somewhere that a weapon was just by removing the weapon and making a relatively simple hatch/container around the freed up space. Rerouting major power couplings, adding internal framework, hooking up new control wiring to the cockpit area, and so forth ammounts to creating a completely new ship EVEN if space were available to mount a new weapon. Like I said, the hold of the ship spacious though it may be may not be a great place to put an adv. gatling.

I forgot all about weapon models....

Back on topic.

The only problem with dynamic modeling is cache. Remember the bug with the frigate respawn? Wouldn't you have to cache every weapon? Would this substantially increase loading time? I'm no developer or coder, so I have no idea, but it sounds like it would.

I doubt there'll be visible weapon models in the next release. I think there's a very good possibility that it'll be implemented later though. At least judging by the Prometheus sketch in the ships section of the official Vendetta website. There also seems to be some tradeoff of weapons and cargo space with the planned modularity. So it seems like modularity isn't fully implemented yet.

(punting this thread up higher on list)

/me looks at pheonix's post

havnt i been stressing that since about a month ago... and other people longer?

There would be a max on how many weapons you can hold so you don't see a maurader with 7 sunflares. And, you would lose space by changing one thing to another because you have to install new stuff, reroute wires etc.

There are other ways to limit a ship from being over-armed, also:

Energy weapons: altered weapon slots are less efficient, so all energy costs are slightly higher. I.e., you could add lots of guns, but wouldn't be able to take full advantage of all of them at once (at least not for long).

Missiles: The process of altering a weapon slot would require retrofitting that would in turn take up ammunition space. So more missiles could be launched at once but fewer overall missiles could be stored.

Or: All weapon alterations require a re-work of the ships energy system which reduces the total battery capacity by 10%.

Or: All weapon alterations cause ship imbalances, which require extra compensation by maneuvering thrusters, and thus the total maximum speed drops by 5m/s.

etc...

Speaking of over-armed ships and banality and what not...

Isn't one potential solution to having some ships that are more powerful/better armed than any others to make them cost an exorbitant amount of money? People are always talking about how the prometheus and the valkyrie are unbalanced... what if the valkyrie cost 1 million credits and the prometheus cost 2.5 million credits? Would people really be wrecklessly pirating in a 1 million credit ship? I know there are some players who have, like, 50 million credits but if they lost 1 million+ credits every time they died they wouldn't be millionaires for very long. The same goes for more powerful weapons and better upgrades, just make them cost an arm and a leg. I personally think that when it comes to weapons and ships the price gradient is far too shallow. You can get enough money for a fully tricked out prometheus in 2 or 3 trade runs. This is probably purposefully done since this is a test game and the devs want to see all ship types in many different player's hands. But I'm looking forward to the day when a player can save up for weeks for that 100 million victory class battlecruiser. Of course the weakness in this idea is that the players who had enough time to save up for a victory class battlecruiser could blow the heck out of other players who didn't. It just seems a little boring to have all ships have about the same value. Perhaps in the real game you would need special clearance from a certain government to buy a cruiser, and with it would come responsibilities to that government's navy. Maybe you would have to pass tests to get your certification to skipper a cruiser class vessel. Perhaps for pirates there would be a black market for more powerful ships, but if any unauthorized ships were spotted they would be attacked on sight by government bots.

Just some random ideas and daydreams...

-Phaserlight

The reason everything is so cheap at the moment is to give us all a chance to test it, not just those online for hours at a time trading (or pirating :P)

In the actual MMORPG, things will probably cost a LOT more.