Dev Log 73 - Playtest 2 -

Greetings!

We are entering the finalization of the Playtest 2 update, still a few weeks out as we want to make sure it has everything we want. But I'd like to take the time to explain what's included in this playtest and how its going to go down.

TECHs (Era's)

The Tier system for both parts and battles is being replaced with TECHs or otherwise known as Era's. These are going to be larger groupings of parts representing a specific meta, theme, capabilities, and constraints. The aim is to go from effectively 5-6 Tiers to just 3 Techs in the foreseeable future. (T1, T2, T3) With the possibility to add more in the far future. Each Tech is ment to represent a time period of technical progression: T1-1935+, T2-1955+, T3-1975+... These Techs will be balanced in such a way to be mutually exclusive from each other. Parts from one tech wont be considered/compared vs. parts from another Tech. Battles will be fought of equal Tech level vessels. This is achieved by setting the vessels battle Tech to be equal to the highest Tech part in the design. So by placing a T2 part in a T1 design will automatically set it to T2. Making it impossible to down Tech a part, however the inverse is still possible but not recommended. As part's costs reset for each Tech increase, meaning a entry level T1 cannon has the same cost as its equivalent in T2. So there will be no *on paper* advantage to under leveling a part, but still possible in cases where outright performance/capabilities isn't a factor.

The aim of this new system is to allow us to create distinct battle environments where there is a limit on what technology can be encountered, allowing for more options for later additions that wouldn't otherwise be viable. These Techs would include a larger variety of parts per level compared to the old tier system. Meaning there will be a cost progression from the light-cheap parts, all the way to heavy and expensive. Still allowing for cost compromise/trade-offs within a Tech. But due to the cost resets per tech, the cost numbers wont scale to ludicrous amounts in later techs.

Battle Classes

This is a new system meant to complement the new TECHs. As instead of having a Cost-Limit (LP) determine what Tech a design lies, it determines it's battle class. Each battle class will have the following limits: Cost (lp), Weight(ton), Parts(count). Going over in any one of these limits will bump you to the next heavier class, similar to the old tiers. Hence each class will have bespoke caps that can be balanced individually. Some caps like weight may increase with each Tech level. Starting out we'll have 3 main classes (Light, Medium, Heavy) with the provision to add more in the future(maybe mid playtest). The intent is each heavier class is more complex/powerful then the previous by a strict/deliberate amount. You can think of these as mini-tiers, with the big difference that they are expected to encounter each other in battles. Also Structure/Module/Decor Points are going away for now, they may return later in a different form if needed.

During the playtest we want to trial different forms of distributing/limiting classes across teams. As we want to make it impractical to stack a full team of just 1 class(especially the heavier ones). As in doing so we can comfortably increase the battle size from 5v5 to something like 8v8 or even higher. We are trying to create a power dynamic within battles to increase variety in designs and playstyles at the cost of absolute 'fairness'. Of course there will be mechanisms to balance out the heavier classes such as respawn times and of course the aforementioned team comp limitations. But in a 1v1 all things equal a Heavy should beat out a Medium/Light. So its the players objective to create situations which favors their designs.

Ingame Guides

This is an entirely new system for handling guides and tutorials ingame. To start these are focused on the designer for obvious reasons, but can be expanded easily to include many other aspects of the game. There will be a common menu with bespoke bite sized courses for each topic. Each course will include step by step in designer walk-through's, utilizing part placement ghosts, menu highlighting, part highlighting, placement checks to progress each step, and the ability to go back to a previous step. And of course a nice description explaining each step. Each course is a open XML file, and hence nothing is 'hardcoded' allowing for user translations and custom workshop guides in the future.

Ingame Workshop for Blueprints

A new dedicated ingame workshop menu for browsing, rating, and sharing blueprints more easily. Search the entire public workshop using normal search criteria like: name, tags, ratings, friends, etc. And directly import them into your garage. You can share blueprints with the entire community, just your friends or just keep a blueprint unlisted for safe keeping. We've also added the ability to save blueprints straight to your steam cloud storage. Much more to come from this front in the future.

KOTH Gamemode

A new gamemode will be trialed over the playtest, this is setup to be 3-4 teams of 3 vessels fighting over a single central capture point.

Rebalance/Rescale

With the aforementioned Tech and Class system this commands are complete refactor of all existing parts in the game. While we are at it we'll also be adjusting the scale of a lot of parts to ensure they are the correct size relative to each other. Blueprints may still be imported fine into this update, however they will need to be adjusted to fit the changed parts.
Due to the large scope of all the parts in the game, it would be foolish to update every part in one go. So in order to give each part and Tech the attention it deserves we are going to be updating ONE tech at a time per major update starting with T1. Part selection will be limited to include only T1. Work will begin on T2 after Playtest#2 and should be ready for Playtest#3 just before our Early Access Release sometime in December. T3 will then be the first major content update afterwards including a bunch of new stuff: Autoloaders, ATGMs, Multiple composite materials, turbines, chainguns, etc.

Each Tech will get a raft of new parts and systems to properly set it apart from each other. This way we can properly establish a baseline balance for each Tech before moving on to the next. And due to the way that the Techs are setup they wont stomp over each other like the old Tiers. Expect a lot of your favorite parts to be temporarily removed in order to be updated and assigned to their relevant Tech's(T2,T3) in a later update. So hold on to your old blueprints.

Playtest#2 will include reworked versions old Tier 1 & 2 parts. Including a bunch of new parts to fill out the tech:
- Engines
- Tracks
- Cannons
- Armors

As for other balance changes we'll be doing the following; (some are unique to T1)
- Reduced mobility
- Durability normalized across parts
- Damage normalized
- Mass normalized
- Changed critical health distribution across parts
- Armor effectiveness changes
- Overpressure damage
- and much more

If you have any questions we'll be happy to answer them in the discord or in discussions linked to this post.