DEVBLOG: INSIDE ARES, PART TWO

[NQ-Deckard]

 

This is the follow-up to Tuesday’s devblog, Inside Ares, Part One. Here we’ll go over the improvements and changes to warp sequences as well as docking and boarding. Even if you read the previous devblog about docking and boarding, you should give this a look; we’ve been finessing the original plans to make them even better. 

 

WARP IMPROVEMENTS
Based on player feedback, we’re turning the knobs down a bit on warp drive. The ability to cancel a warp at any time made it more powerful and flexible than originally intended. To curb that, warp speed has been divided by 4. Although it may seem like we’re overcorrecting, in effect it’s not as drastic as it sounds. Travel will take a little longer at the new rate; expect trips to be closer to the minute mark rather than 15 seconds. This will take it from “blindingly fast” to “still pretty damn fast”. 

The cooldown has been adjusted to 150 seconds (2.5 minutes). This will require more judicious use of warping as you weigh the convenience of using it against having it available in case of needing to bug out quickly if you unexpectedly encounter threats. 

Probably the most impactful change is that auto-align strength during the warp sequence has been reduced to 20%. This change will correct a situation where the warp alignment was way too powerful for larger ships. Keep in mind you can still align manually before warping and skip this step. We hope this will keep pilots more engaged and thinking about the warping process either by passive aligning to an extract point or actively aligning before warping.

We’re also adding spool-up time. Spooling is a post-align state in which your warp drive is spooling after aligning. This is intended to curb the purely reactionary defensive use of warp drives. Going into a PvP zone is a risk, and the risk vs. reward needs to reflect the weight of those situations. If you’re paying attention, hitting warp could get you out of most dangerous situations in a flash and we felt that this was a little too strong. Initially, the spool-up time will be set to 15 seconds.

Last but not least, weapon fire taken during the initialization sequence - be it starting the warp, alignment, or spooling sequences - will cancel the action. (Note: Hits taken once the ship enters warp after the spooling process will not cancel the warp and the ship will continue to warp.) This is a behavior players have requested and we've also intended to implement for a while. Although we don’t want to shift the risk-vs-reward ratio too far the other way, we believe this is a good change.

DOCKING AND BOARDING REVAMP

Since we published the Docking and Boarding Revamp devblog, we have continued to iterate on the design to make it even better. Before explaining the incoming changes, here’s a quick recap of what we previously announced.

 

The owner of a construct or ship is considered the “parent”. As a parent, you will now have more control of, and more information about, your current docking and boarding situation. On the information side, you will always see your current avatar/ship boarding/docking status. You are free to (un)dock/(un)board while in the immediate proximity of any construct to which you have RDMS rights. To get ''in'’ the construct, you will need to be docked/boarded to that construct or you will be repulsed.

 

A new widget will display your construct parenting information. This will also be available in the control unit data in Lua. We’re also adding a build helper window that lists parented masses (player or construct) to the inspected construct. This will allow you to evict any unwelcome guests. 

 

Thanks to your feedback, we’ve revisited our plans and made some additional adjustments based on your input. The introduction of two alternative docking modes to complement the existing default “manual” mode. 
To change your docking mode preference, you will need to reset it in the context menu action on the targeted new parent construct or by using the new shortcut to switch active docking to the closest docking candidate. 

 

• The "Automatic'’ mode will automatically dock you to the closest ship for which you have docking rights.
• ''Automatic (owner)'' will do the same if the ship is owned by the same entity as the pilot. 

 

The docking widget is changing to display these changes.  

 

New Lua functions will give you more flexibility to create docking rules for your constructs. 

 

Players also told us that having to use a context menu while maneuvering the construct felt awkward. To address this, we’re making changes to the reticle that will give more fluidity by allowing you to see the best docking candidate of the maneuvered constructs, using the same shortcut (Alt-T) so that you can switch docking of the maneuvered construct without using a context menu.

 

COMING SOON

Production to transition Ares from PTS to Live is well underway. It bears repeating that players, especially those who enjoy PvP, should spend a little time on the test server to see the impact these changes will have on their personal gameplay. 

 

We’d love to hear your feedback about Ares. Join the conversation in this thread.