PAX Alliance Streamed Content

[BlackenedPies]

For the testers: is disabling balanced? From the footage I've seen it seems exclusively centered around killing quickly and flechette especially doesn't appear very useful. What are your thoughts on disable and non brawl tactics/strategy?

[DJ Logicalia]

For the testers: is disabling balanced? From the footage I've seen it seems exclusively centered around killing quickly and flechette especially doesn't appear very useful. What are your thoughts on disable and non brawl tactics/strategy?

I was discussing this exact thing with some of the other testers. In PvP, most of the ships are difficult to kill quickly, so you need to try and wear the crew down in some way. Straight up kill ships work too, you all obviously know how this game works. The thing with Co-op is, most of the AI ships don't have very prominent balloons or components and they die very quickly. On top of that, they die so fast anyway, it's safer just to bring something that can kill as fast as possible or it just feels like you're shooting carronades at a brick wall. On top of both of those things, there are a LOT of ships that spawn. To say the least, it's impractical to keep many of them disabled for long periods of time. The best strategy is to engage one, kill it, and move on.

I flew a blenderfish to test this exact thing, and by the end I found myself using the side gat and side banshee more than the carronade. 

[Daft Loon]

Can lumberjacks on the crusader use stamina to tip over backwards?

2 vs AI = goodbye wait times.

[BlackenedPies]

I was discussing this exact thing with some of the other testers. In PvP, most of the ships are difficult to kill quickly, so you need to try and wear the crew down in some way. Straight up kill ships work too, you all obviously know how this game works. The thing with Co-op is, most of the AI ships don't have very prominent balloons or components and they die very quickly. On top of that, they die so fast anyway, it's safer just to bring something that can kill as fast as possible or it just feels like you're shooting carronades at a brick wall. On top of both of those things, there are a LOT of ships that spawn. To say the least, it's impractical to keep many of them disabled for long periods of time. The best strategy is to engage one, kill it, and move on.

This sounds like my biggest fear for balance. One option is to simply buff the damage/modifiers for shatter and flechette in Co-op for the players. A carronade may be useful to shotgun blast a group of enemy fighters, or an artemis to target AI artillery. Due to the covered balloons heavy carronade may need to one shot balloons with extended range, and due to many enemy guns artemis may need a high burst radius similar to old heavy clip hwatcha. To balance between the two damage types shatter might have a higher modifier against hull and flechette higher against armor. The goal would be guns that are highly effective at disabling and competent at killing.

Affecting damage+modifiers and tweaking gun stats seems the only simple solution to me. The game can't be released with guns that are mostly useless. I hope you guys have ideas and will share them with Muse.

[Richard LeMoon]

I would replace the red break with fire, smoke, and falling bits, halfway between current armor break animation and death animation.

[Queso]

Can lumberjacks on the crusader use stamina to tip over backwards?

I believe that you can get beyond world vertical yes. All thanks to the magic of quaternions.

[Daft Loon]

I believe that you can get beyond world vertical yes.

Double lumberjack uppercuts will clearly be the winning strategy then 

All thanks to the magic of quaternions.

Learn something new every day

As far as armor break animation maybe scale the effect based on the size of the ship/building, making it less blatant on the larger targets where its easier to see anyway.

[Dementio]

I liked the armor break animation with the smoke from the live version more than the red glow of doom. It feels more like GoIO.

Maybe disable works better in 3 player coop? (Will that even be a thing?) One ship disabling the guns on the big guys, while the other two focus on getting objectives while mortaring through the smaller ones, or something, I guess.

Also: Rydr approved

[Kamoba]

Apparently from insider info, disable builds will hold a better home within the Hell mode, as there will be way too many enemies to legitimately kill, also boss battles will allow meta or disable builds to work, obviously we've only seen a fraction of what Alliance will have to offer, but I've been assured that balancing will be double checked before release to make sure it is not a meta fest.

[Saull]

Also with Friday's stream we were able to see, more or less, what every faction's fleet looks like save for a few boss ships and that the last and only public image of the yeshan fleet was an untextured WIP. So any thoughts on how the factions look? Has anyone thought of switching sides now based on the kind of ships/weapon they could potentially be unlocking? Personally in the earlier days after the kickstarter I had thought I'd be more of a Guild man but looking at the Baronies fleet and the Crusader I maybe switching my initial allegiances. Angleans are pretty neat too.