Before I'm booted on Monday/Weekend(?), I'd like to ask a few simple Q's to the devs;

1) Why was the ship engine slot removed? If it was to allow more versions of each ship, then surely this can now be accomplished by modifying mass, armour, and cargo capacity alone? I'm convinced the old engine/battery combos made for better gameplay.

2) Do you have any intention of re-balancing homers/seekers/flares?

3) Is there any plans to re-introduce a nation chat channel (or a distress channel)? I think it would help build a closer relationship among pilots of the same nation, and would be especially useful during activites such as defending/attacking the nation convoys.

There's prolly more, but those are the main things I can think of that I'm confused about. Anyway, thanks for 2+ years of Beta testing, its been a laugh...

Good Luck with Vendetta,
Icarus

i wouldnt mind knowing these answers

-CyborgGamma-

I too would like to know!

Same here.

apparantly seekers/homers were re-balanced. I have not tested it though so don't know heh.

the rebalanced homers are nice. still requires some work to avoid in a prom, but aren't uber anymore.

You're in a prom, they should have a fairly good chance to hit.

Hi. Icarus, you and others who sent us PayPal donations are going to get free time. FYI. I haven't had any time to announce this sort of thing yet, since I haven't had any time to figure out how it will work.. or.. anything else. Yay. But it will happen shortly.

We removed the engine slots because it was problematic to tune engines to be used by all ships. We would run into the "Centurion" scenario, by which the ship couldn't have its mass reduced beyond a certain point without the control system destabilizing.

Instead, we decided to create custom-tuned engines for each and every ship. However, we haven't done that yet ;). So it's kind of lame at present. Also, the fact that we won't have globally-swappable engines doesn't remove the prospect of having a variety of engines that can be equipped on a *given ship*. We will probably add this sort of configurability back in, or at least it's my intention to do so. Have like 5 types of engines available for a given ship, but each ship (or ship class, potentially) would have unique engines specific to that class. That lets us configure a set specifically for the Centurion and other light ships, and sets specifically for heavier ships. It works out better overall.

Yes, we intend to retune the missiles. Andy just.. made them better (smarter at hitting things, that is), and we haven't tuned anything about them yet. Usually, I did that sort of thing.. but I've been buried in things like "how to ship a retail game" and "why isn't gamestop sending out keys" and "how to get enough marketing to not go out of business".. so I haven't been doing squat for gameplay work lately. Which, frankly, sucks.. that stuff is what I *want* to do. Anyway..

Nation-specific chat is something we can definitely add back in, and considering how many people have asked for it, probably will. It should be pretty quick to implement. We'll probably just set up a given channel where you can only hear your own nation (every nation uses the same channel, but you can only hear yours).

"Icarus, you and others who sent us PayPal donations are going to get free time."

Are you serious? Sweet...

yarr ... IIRC I once cleaned out a paypal account to GS. Was .. uh .. about 5 Euro. :P

Incarnate, I don't know if you've thought of this already, but if you make 5 customizable engines for each ship specifically, it might ease confusion on the player's part if all engines not for the player's selected ship are hidden from view (5 engines to choose from, as opposed to how many? 60? 70?) . True, this would make it harder to tell what stations carried what engines, but I don't think that's much of a problem since there are enough of us around that we could probably end up compiling a list eventually, just based on what ships we fly, and what locales we frequent.

Another alternative from what CrippledPidgeon was suggesting could be to have the engines selectable with the purchace of a given ship, with radio buttons perhaps. That would require you to buy an engine when you buy a ship, but what good is a ship without an engine anyway? I suppose you wouldn't be able to swap out engines in that case, but I don't think you would lose much by making different stations carry different ships/engine configurations instead of chosing a ship, and hunting for an engine that you want.

Incarnate, thanks for the update. I hope everything goes as smoothly as possible for you guys.

i am all for the nation chat channels, that would be awesome!

and incarnate, the fact that you guys still find time to answer us during such a hectic time is a testimate to your dedication. <insert superrior being here> fobid it, but if yuou guys ever need paypal donations again i'd send some cash to honor your dedication.