Actually I think it is the pirate base: GrimHex. They're going to put ballistic weapons at GrimHex and energy weapons at Port Olisar which will hopefully encourage travel between the two (and that travel will be outside the armistice zone so you know what that means).
I'm still curious how they're going to squeeze in more content with the current net code issues.....but maybe that's what 2.4.1 is for (some minor optimization to free up capacity).
Personally I'm more excited about progress in ship components and the piping system. Hopefully shields will be available and the entire interaction between power plants, cooler, weapons, shields, scanners, etc. will start to get fleshed out.
Yeah that was an interesting Bugsmashers.....he didn't smash any bugs. Just showed off a new, in development, "feature".
new Bugsmashers shows actions from new item system, which will replace the 'use' key.
It's still in whitebox model mode, but you can see it in use.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DhqsTEuIuQI
Not sure how far back that means things are being pushed. I guess at this point it all depends on if it saves more time in the long run than trying to fix the existing system. I would also venture a guess that they made those calculations and decided it would be faster to replace now that they have some more data from the existing system.
Just wanted to say tonight was one of the best times I've had in this game so far. Kareah was really busy; lots of ships fighting and lots of fps action.
In one instance, after fighting it out with several ships just to get close to the security station, I quickly landed a severely wounded avenger down at Kareah. When the hatch opened, there was another player right there to surprise me with a barrage of bullets. I think I got a head shot with the shot gun though, as I was able to take the player out, emerge from the back, and haul ass to one of the airlocks.
Sure enough, as I exit the airlock and enter Kareah, there's someone crouching off to the side, ready to ambush. I bolted, making a quick right around the first turn, and engaged in a shootout with the player. I took a lot of damage, but again somehow managed to take them out with my shotgun.
I then managed to sneak around a bit, hack the security console (I was lvl 5 criminal status), and make it about 30 seconds before someone finally took me out in a hectic gun fight. All the while I could hear ships fighting and exploding outside, and other gunfire elsewhere inside the station.
Simple as it may seem, it totally played out amazingly well for me. I can't wait for this thing to be more fleshed out.
Posted this over on reddit but wanted to share here too
Gah....I miss playing, sounds like you had a great time.
60-70 hour work weeks and a 10-month-old are taking their toll on my SC time.![]()
The Bengal.....sweet mother. I knew it was big, but the scale, especially when inside the hangar bay is just incredible.
Also, the Caterpillar is looking fantastic. They're really getting the ship building pipeline down it seems, and every new ship seems to have a higher level of fidelity than the one before. I'm kind of glad they've held off on the Carrack until now, because at this point I have no doubts it will be off the charts.
GrimHex is also looking very cool. The look at the audio work going into it was very interesting.
I like where AtV is going, but I would really like to see more in the way of WIP game mechanics. The big 3 for me right now would probably be Exploration / Mining / Cargo. I would like to see who is working on these and at least something about what kind of stuff is being worked on - even if it's just (what many people would find boring) back-end work and planning.
I would imagine cargo would be first, as there are already a number of flyable ships that can haul.
I realize a lot of those mechanics would probably rely a good bit on prerequisite systems to support them (UI - really a big one, and also ship systems).
I think I would actually be more excited about being able to throw some boxes in my Freelancer and take them somewhere, or scan a couple of asteroids in Yela for minerals than I am about the outlaw base, but alas, I know it's coming.
While the Bengal is getting most of the AtV hype at the moment, to me the best part of the AtV was Zane's UI work. On one screen you can see an Aurora and numerous components for it. It looked pretty slick to me. As did the in-game star map UI.
And that audio work on Grim Hex. Oh my. Not sure I've ever played a game with this level of attention to detail.
I plan to get into this game at some point.. if I deem the success rate and content is worth it.. however every 3 months or so i look it up I have a very hard time determining just exactly WHAT kind of state the game is in, how playable, whats new, is development stalling etc.
Its hard quantifying and summing up the incremental improvements and it sums up to be too big of a mess (for me) to want to dive into every time. :/.
And that audio work on Grim Hex. Oh my. Not sure I've ever played a game with this level of attention to detail.
Not to mention they seem to be getting stuff out much more quickly, which indicates (as Tech noted), they're production pipeline is becoming much more efficient.
Ship and environment pipelines are definitely a few steps above yester-year. I do have concerns about the length of time needed to flesh out all the landing zones across all systems, but we'll see how they handle it. Hopefully it proves to respond well to parallelized workflows and they can just add more artists/designers as necessary.
