Alpha test feedback March 22, 2014

All in all it looks great and was fun for the alpha of just the dogfighting features. It took me a little time to get in the mindset of piloting since I’m used to controlling a person on the ground, not a vehicle in flight. But the basic mechanics seem to work - I could decelerate to tighten my turn radius and accelerate to close distance - which I remembered eventually from old flight games though it was not mentioned anywhere. I did get the kill count up to 21, so it wasn’t too hard to figure out.

I had a bit of difficulty telling when someone was behind me though I imagine the radar features will help with that.

I notice that the “thrust” seems to give me a constant velocity so it is more like setting desired speed and letting the ship manage the thrust for you than controlling thrust.

I found it impossible to shake off some of my opponents. Were those bots or are some people that good?

In a battle we would eventually want to be able to coordinate with each other so it’s a little easier to stay alive. Approaching a group of hostiles alone meant certain death.

It was hard to get credit for a kill with so much exchange of fire. I know I had a few where just the last shot was taken by someone else. That would be annoying if it meant I didn’t get any experience for it.

I managed to get the fire key stuck when getting killed several times but tapping it unsticks it.

Hey James,

Cool name btw :smile:

Glad you enjoyed it; direct piloting can be hellishly fun, and at that level of concurrency and reactiveness it’s quite skillful to do properly, as well.

Yes indeed - deceleration increases turn radius. And yes, radar / situational awareness indicators will help massively… and are coming soon.

During the bit where we said there were bots ingame (they were static, though, and continuously firing) then - if you got close to them, they do indeed train their fire on you and that can mean deathsville pretty quickly! But there were also quite a few old school dogfighting players in there many of whom may have had a practice or two beforehand during the closed internal tests… I know there’s someone on twitter claiming 95 kills (though no screenie, so there’s a proof-test yet to be overcome!).

Co-ordinating through forming teams and awareness of team pilot locations is going to be critical and that’s a piece of UI we hope to have in place shortly.

On the “getting credit for a kill” front, yeah I know what you mean… tbh I don’t think anyone has ever seen this kind of direct-piloting dogfighting at this kind of scale ever before, and so it’s all a bit mishegoss atm as we find the ideal parameters for player population density and distance. That’s all going to change again as we start introducing different ships with different flight characteristics, weapon types, ranges etc - all as a precursor to introducing modular ship design for the full game.

Sticky keys is something we’re still looking at; we know it happens and it’s something to do with losing (and regaining) the browser window focus whilst in flight with a key depressed. Fixable, but needs some testing.

Glad you enjoyed it though, and please spread the word!

Best,

James Niesewand
CEO, Illyriad Games