Hey folks!
So we have our first six alpha testers in, quite a very small batch at this point, but they're already racking up the mantis issues and getting us some really helpful things on combat. I've also been having a lot of thoughts of my own, and so there are some major additions to combat coming -- both ones we had already been planning on and had not had time to get to, and some ones that are newly-minted as ideas.
The combat seems to be enjoyable already for folks (I certainly love it), but to really take it to the next level so it has staying power over hours and hours, there are a couple more ingredients needed. Aside from just general balance work. There is a revised combat interface that also we're going to be working on implementing in the next couple of days, to provide more information in a more orderly fashion that is also more condensed. That sounds like a paradox, but I think you'll like it.
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Combat is, in a lot of ways, the meat of the game. Sort of. I mean, it's where you spend most of your time... sort of. It depends on how much time you take thinking about things and making deals at the meta layer, I guess. In terms of code and simulation complexity, the meta layer is vaaaastly more complex than the combat part of the game, and it's where the real spirit and soul of the game come from. This isn't just a combat simulator. But in terms of how you enact your will in the solar system, there is a lot of shooting stuff that comes into play, and so the combat really needs to hold up its end in all ways.
This isn't an RPG at all, but I think a good analogy is actually Final Fantasy in terms of the ratio of "combat" to "rest of the game." The rest of the game is what makes Final Fantasy so special (the good ones, anyhow), and you spend quite a bit of time in non-combat areas. That said, there is combat all the time and repeatedly, and if the combat were incredibly dull or got too repetitive (which in some FFs it definitely does), then that makes it a chore to get through to get to the next part of the outer game. Our goal is to make sure that both things are as solid as possible.
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So! Right now what that means is that we are putting more effort into building out the combat a bit more and refining it more in the next few days than I had expected. I had kind of figured that we would do the overall AI for the fleets (which is coming tomorrow) and do some hotkeys and some balance tuning, and leave it at that for combat in the short term, then focus on the meta portion of the game. Instead we're delving a lot deeper with the combat for a half week or a week here, and are really going to get that tuned up.
Meanwhile I will still also be testing on the meta layer myself, and continuing to work on GUI stuff there with Blue, so that that is fully ready to go when we hit the point we want to be at with combat.
What that means, schedule-wise for the alpha, is that probably we are looking at early next week before we add more players to the alpha, unless our first six are getting weary of testing before then (guys, just let us know if you need relief). We only need so much help in testing the first rounds of combat-only stuff. Though as we add more features to the combat, we might add another tiny batch (6ish again) on Friday, I'm not sure. That's still a decision-yet-to-come. Right now we have over 70 some-odd people who signed up for the alpha, with more people still coming in.
Anyway, either way the metagame portion of the game will start opening up either early or mid next week, depending on how long we wind up iterating on the combat portion in the very short term. Once the pressing combat work is mostly done, we'll be better able to focus on the metagame with you, and then kind of divide our attention between the two portions of the game for the rest of the alpha period.
Right now we have about three weeks until release, so it's an aggressive testing/finalization timetable. But I feel good about how this is evolving quickly and in a linear direction, versus jumping all around. In other words, it's getting further and further refined, not redefined.
So that's where we are right now!
