Beta Closing Statement

Sandro Sammarco

Lead Designer
Frontier
Hello Commanders!

As some of you may have noticed, we’ve decided to hold back on a couple of elements that we trialled in this beta: specifically changes to shield booster stacking diminishing returns, hull armour hardness increases for the “big three” ships (Anaconda, Federal Corvette and Imperial Cutter), and linking gimbal tracking angles to ship sensors.

Regarding the shield stacking and hull armour changes, we always said that this was very much an experiment that we were just as likely to back off from as go live with. The feedback we received for these changes was, in the round, extremely positive. But In the end, we felt that we didn’t get enough of it, or the time to finesse the changes further at this point to risk pulling the trigger on such a significant change.

We believe that it’s on the right track though, and we’re likely to look into it again in a future update, when we can add to the feedback we already have, and plan for more tweak time as part of the beta.

The reason we held off degrading gimbal weapons was because, again thanks to feedback, we felt that it was too blunt a tool to try and create better parity between fixed and gimbal weapons. The extra weight from upgrading sensors, and the general sentiment that the change made game play feel less appealing, lead us to hold off letting this change go through; it is certainly not our intention to entice players to consider fixed weapons by making gimbal weapons less fun.

We appreciate that the idea of linking the effectiveness of gimbals to sensors in some way is appealing, but we want to spend a little more time looking at options.

Finally, thank you again for all the feedback we received, it has been invaluable in shaping the results of this update and improving the game, we hope everyone can enjoy the results.
 
Hello Commanders!

The extra weight from upgrading sensors, and the general sentiment that the change made game play feel less appealing, lead us to hold off letting this change go through; it is certainly not our intention to entice players to consider fixed weapons by making gimbal weapons less fun.

This could easily be made less severe by adding lightweight sensor mods. *wink wink*
 
Hi Sandy,

Whilst I know we have a beta for major releases, has this beta been successful enough for you chaps to consider going down this route more often and for mid sized patches?. Speaking from a "gamer" point of view I've found it more helpful than doing things post patch release.

I also think that the way that Brett has organised feedback forum has hugely improved the effectiveness of how we convey information back and forth.
 
Thanks for the statement Sandro. Absolutely loving the Engineers without commodities, it's fun now!

Any chance of a statement about the state of the Formidine Rift bug? It was top item on the change log after all...
 
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The combat crew screaming was noticed, and overruled. :)

Somebody noticed that all the sturm und drang over gimbals was just spinning PvP wheels, and penalizing everyone with heavy sensors wasn't going to fly with traders and explorers.

The shield stacking problem remains, and they acknowledge that it is a hard one to fix.

This could have been posted 24 hours ago, saving uncounted electrons... :)

But, that isn't the Frontier Way. :) Why bother explaining ahead of time?
 
Fine to see that FD take the right amount of time to modify the game.

I am pretty confident for that changes to appear again in 2.3 with some good adjustments :)

Hull change for the big 3 is a good idea.
I hope that sensors will be used for gimballed may be with some weight decrease.

Keep it up like that !

Cheers
 
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I think the only problem I still really have with Gimbled weapons was the fact they can lock onto sub systems too easily. Maybe just removing that and their firing arc a little might be all that's needed.

Really appreciate the upping of the Fixed weapons (although I know not too much), That gives us fixed weapon fighter pilots a bit more punch.

It's a pity about the shield boosters, but if you didn't get enough test data that's fair enough, but all in all. I think this little play balance test and update was well worth it and looking forward to 2.3 (And maybe adding chaff and heat sinks to the synthesis panel hint hint)

;)
 
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Indeed. I for one would welcome a PTE (Player Test Environment) where Fd can try out new wacky ideas and new features to see how the community responds to them.
 
Kudos to the devs for the good changes which were made, for not enacting changes without feeling certain that they had been sufficiently tested, and for not being pressured into making detrimental changes.
 
Thanks for the statement Sandro. Absolutely loving the Engineers without commodities, it's fun now!

Any chance of a statement about the state of the Formidine Rift bug? It was top item on the change log after all...

Yes please Sandro. We're getting antsy out here!
 
I had hoped we should see the shield booster changes to bring parity in different tiers of combat ships, from the pure blood pvp, pirate (must have manifest scanner), bounty hunter (KWS) etc, I hope we see the booster changes continued to the next patch and ignore the crying of the 6k mj cutters and 2.5k mj fdl.
 
This could easily be made less severe by adding lightweight sensor mods. *wink wink*

Yeah, right.
But rather Frontier couldn't get it right, as it has been tested in beta that different sensor types didn't alter the gimballed angle in any way.
 
So most of the things we did in preparation from the last beta towards the release could be thrown out of the window. Well :)

My prediction is that changing things constantly keep people playing / engineering things, which is good for gameplay and marketing reasons, and puts a load on us players to constantly monitor all changes and put relevant updates/engineered stuff on the ships.

This is time consuming for the people that want to find the "best builds" for their ships, while others just wait for them to complete the tests and use the "best" combination for their ships - until the next beta or updates to blueprints.

My personal idea would be to hide those changes behind a small storyline in Galnet. Something like "Engineer xy has been on a 1 week seminar "How to remove the flaw of the focus crystals" and found out XYZ for the N weapon". This would bring a new kind of gameplay into the game.
 
The game feels good.

On a separate note and to make things more realistic, standard ships would not stay as they are for years without being upgraded in some way?

I realise we have the Mk3 and Mk4 Cobra etc but this happened over hundreds of years.

A special (black market) limited edition FDL which has engineers upgrades but costs a lot of credits to allow a buy into an enginered ship, but it would only be competetive for a while as different upgrades come along (like F1 GP).



and a special limited edition Annaconda with engineered hull and shields would keep me happy for trading.

Is is probably all relative at the end of the day but once a year to find and buy an upgraded ship would be fun.

In reality there are not many people that take their car to a hot rod shop for upgrades.
 
JUST FIX THE TORPEDO PIERCING SHIELDS DOWN IN 10 SECONDS and SHIP CRUSHED IN 30 SECONDS (Corvette e.g.) and EVERYTHING IS FINE

The rest is ok. But piercing is INSTA KILL (ar least for regular non modded players) !! Why dont they realize that?
 
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