Roadmap Roundup

Happy Friday, everyone!

Each and every week, we accompany the Roadmap update with a brief explanatory note to give you insight into the decision-making that led to any changes. This is part of an effort to make our communications more transparent, more specific, and more insightful for all of you who help to make Star Citizen and Squadron 42 possible.

With that said, let’s go ahead and dive into this week’s Roadmap Roundup!

-CIG Community Team

Notable Changes for October 30th, 2020

This week we’re adding seven new cards to the Roadmap for Alpha 3.12, mostly related to the addition and improvement of Stanton’s security. With the release of Alpha 3.12, a Navy Idris will now be the final line of defense at Armistice Zones of rest stops. Should criminals with a high enough combined CrimeStat enter the Armistice Zone, a Navy Idris will be called to deal with them.

• AI Fire Mode Usage and Targeting Priorities | Implemented functionality that allows ship AI to charge weapons and use several fire modes and rates of fire, such as burst. AI turret target priorities were changed to vary according to the type of ship the turret is on, the size of the turret, and angular range, assuring they focus on high priority targets they are effective against, and able to hit.
• AI Intercepting Torpedoes | Adding functionality allowing Ship AI to intercept and shoot down incoming torpedoes. This goes in line with making the torpedo gameplay more challenging and realistic, and scoring hits more rewarding. Shooting down incoming torpedoes will help defend capital and gunships from bombers.
• AI Accuracy Convergence | Ship/Turret AI accuracy changed to a convergence-based system allowing for more believable accuracy that rewards players for taking evasive action.
• Capital Ship Combat Behavior Improvements | Improvements to ship AI, focused on maneuvering, targeting, and weapon use of the Capital ships. This involves ensuring that the Ship has full awareness of its loadout, available turrets, and the size/number of combatants it is facing. The Pilot will react and position the ship accordingly to each combat scenario.
• Capital Ships, Turrets, and Torpedoes VFX/SFX Improvements | Improvements to destruction deathmasks, turret firing, missile trails and torpedo visual and sound effects, to enhance the look and feel of combat against and destruction of capital ships.
• Counter Measures v1.1 | With these improvements to countermeasure gameplay, the amount of deployed countermeasures will play more of an important role in the chance of spoofing missiles. Single countermeasures will be less effective, but players will have the ability to choose how many should be fired with each burst. Different missiles will have varying degrees of countermeasure resilience.
• Torpedo Attack, Counter-Balance, and Behavior | A rebalance of the Size 9 Torpedoes. They are now much deadlier, with only a few direct hits required to bring down larger ships. This extra damage comes at the cost of speed, however, affording the opportunity for ships to counter-attack by destroying them.

• Mining UI Refactor | This update adds a brand-new user interface for all mining-capable vehicles, which will provide the player with a clearer overview of what they are currently experiencing, including: Mining Consumables – What you have equipped, their current state, and their duration. Cargo – Your cargo pods now show their contents and update in real-time as you extract materials from mineable deposits. Volatile Cargo – The health and estimated time that the cargo will last in your cargo pods before collapsing, and volatile cargo itself is highlighted in the UI so that you can’t miss it when you collect it. Flight UI – The current flight and gimble settings your ship has active are visible at all times. This new interface is built entirely using the new BuildingBlocks system which will allow for quicker development, iteration, and testing of new features for the Mining System.

• Gemini A03 Sniper Rifle (Behring) | The name of this card has been corrected.
• Law System v2: Surrender | Having reviewed the progress made on this feature during the quarter, we have decided to remove it from the Roadmap for the time being, as more work on Visual & Audio Feedback is needed.
• Grin Multi-Tool Tractor Beam Attachment | Moved the card to the “Gameplay” section, as that’s the focus rather than the attachment itself.
• Mercury Star Runner | Moved into Polishing.

That’s all for this week! Join the discussion on Spectrum.