Feedback thread will be unlocked for comments after a few hours of testing Hello PTU Testers! Starting tonight with the new build we are enabling the a new Arena Commander game mode to test Engineering gameplay! This game mode is a special limited test used to collect feedback on several new features being developed for the upcoming Engineering gameplay for Star Citizen's vehicles. It is not representative of the current Persistent Universe or intended final version of the game. This test will run on the EPTU servers in Arena Commander. Access will be limited depending on currently open waves starting with Evocati. During Evocati phases, Please do not PVP in Engineering Free Flight game mode. Use this as a familiarization ground and save PVP for the other Engineering modes in AC. New Features 3 Game Modes Duel (A2 vs A2) Squadron Battle (A2 vs Gladius) Free Flight Fuses Each player has fuses in their inventory. These can be used to fill empty slots in the relay or exchange broken fuses of the relays. Engineering Panel This panel gives players an overview of the state of components and how they are connected. Here players will be warned about not sufficient power and if items are damaged and require repair. Additionally, players will see the states of the relays where warnings will be issued for missing or broken fuses. Players can interact with the items to gain access to the control button for the item (Here on/off) and the status overview of the specific item. Hull Penetration Damage done by attacking ships will now penetrate the hull and will damage ship items below. Players now can target the areas of ships where the ship components are placed. The penetration effect is strengthened by first bringing down the integrity of the hull (Health pool). Disclaimer: For testing purposes Energy weapons will penetrate the Hull a little. This is not intended for the actual release! Power Management Power Management is partially present in this experimental mode where the focus is on simply turning items on and off to achieve power balance on the ship. The ship will start with all items on and will start consuming power directly from the batteries. To recharge the batteries players need to make sure that there is more power produced by the power plants than it is consume and the batteries are switched on. Repair Players have the Multitool with them to repair damaged ship items using the Salvage Repair mode. This mode will consume the RMC canister to bring back the health of your ship components. Additionally, we will use this mode as a test bed for some weapon balancing experiments. How To Play 1) On the Frontend, select "Arena Commander" 2) These modes are playable in Offline, Online and Custom matches. Pick your preference 3) Select one of the three game modes: Engineering: Duel Engineering: Squadron Battle Engineering: Free Flight (Non-consentual pvp is disallowed in the Free Flight variant for this test during Evocati phases) 4) (Optional) Invite players to your lobby 5) Launch! As part of the A2 crew you will spawn on-foot. To win, you must work together with your crew; filling the roles of Pilot, Gunners and Engineers. - Access spare fuses in your inventory. Each player has a limited number of fuses, use them wisely. For this test we are interested in feedback on players’ survival times. How much longer does a fully crewed A2 survive against a fighter attack versus how long does it survive with no item maintenance. Additionally we would like to gather data on the lifetime of your ship components and the frequency of fuses breaking. All vehicles featured in this test are non-customizable and purpose built for this test. Please give each a try and let us know what you think in the feedback threads. Developer Questions Duncan and Thorsten have a few questions for you all! let them know what you think! What was the item that got damaged the most on your A2? How many times did you lose an item completely? How many players did you have running around repairing your items? How much RMC did you consume roughly in your playsession? Did you ever run into a RMC deficit which resulted in you starting to lose items? Did you assign a dedicated Engineer? What difference did it make in your own words? What difference did it make in your own words? How many fuses did you replace? What Items did you turn off to have a positive power balance? Was there a reason for your item choice? What effects did you notice when running items in low power? What effects did you notice when all items were on and you were still running all items all at once? For A2 vs A2 Did you notice a difference in your lifetime depending on your crew setup? For A2 vs Gladii Did you notice a difference in the A2s lifetime with no Engineer versus an Engineer? Disclaimer The Engineering screen did see a big overhaul compared what you saw at Citizen Con, that is not part of this test, you have here an adjusted engineering screen. We intentionally do not have the full power management activated yet, since the changes we did are tied to the UI update that is not ready yet. The focus in this experimental Mode as stated above are the lifetime of ships. You will already encounter some malfunctions, but those are limited to affecting the health of the item. If you have any feedback or suggestions let us know below!