TL;DR (Too Long; Didn't Read)

Summary

• The show is live! Hosting today is Jared Huckaby, and from the U.K. Studio, specifically the ship balance team: John Crewe, Lead Technical Designer and Tech Designer, Andy Nicholson.

• [Will Capital ships have capabilities for BVR, Beyond Visual Range] Yes. It exists in game as most targets you can lock onto initially are barely a pixel to you. As the ships get bigger, the range in which they can lock on gets bigger. This will also bring game play to ships like the terrapin or similarly equipped to relay targets to the larger ships.

  • An idea is maybe around 50km

• [Will Cargo ships be able to achieve a higher top speed, but slower acceleration, or will pilots be forced to self destruct to avoid being intercepted by an interdictor] No. The way they want the game play to be for cargo haulers to an extent is like the navy where your bigger ships are slower and vulnerable, but have escorts. So if you wanted to go into a less secure space, you have a risk versus reward and whether or not you want to pay for the extra escorts.

  • Also when the PU expands greatly, some of the ships you encounter won't be there without support like carrier borne fighters like the Hornet, Gladiator, Gladius, etc because their range is short. So unless they have a refuelling ship nearby, stay close to certain areas or fly a long range fighter(but that comes with its disadvantages) You can find a way to figure out which lanes are safe and which aren't.

• [Is decoupled EVA a reality in the games future?] Yes it will happen, the current system doesn't seem very fluid when it comes to aiming and certain situations so it's something being worked on.

  • Related, they're also talking about making fps heads decoupled to where you can aim, but also move your head like in Arma.

• [Can we please have weapon groupings back in game] Where did it go? Perhaps it's broken in certain ships? No intention to be removed if it was.

• [As larger or medium ships have greatly reduced agility and speed, is this based on their capacity being full or empty?] They've been basing it off of a capacity that's full or close to it. So performance will be better empty, but they're still tweaking things. They want the end result for ships to still feel weighty.

  • The IFCS will restrict ships to a safe speed, but some ships will have an extra boost you can use, but Starfarers will not be as nimble as M50s

• [Given that Constellations are flyable by Pirates later on in Pirate Swarm, will players be able to fly them in AC soon?] The reason why they're not in is because they need a way to properly load in people onto the same ship as the Constellation is about mutli-crew gameplay as are other ships, but once multi-crew lobbies are a thing, then it will be in.

• [When considering changes to flight models, is shifting attention from gimbles and turrets to flying the ship, what has been done to achieve that?] With changes to boost and g-force changes, that has given ships the ability to be nimble, but still chase ships. Weapon has played a part in that as well for 2.6.1.

  • Initially 2.6 didn't have acceleration times fast enough, so they adjusted that for 2.6.1

• [Many of us feel with pilots flying ships with mouse versus joystick has taken away from what the game was originally pitched to be. What steps are being taken to remedy that?] Well neither is better than each other. Joysticks have advantages as do Mice. For aiming, the mouse is better because that's what a mouse is designed for, but HOTAS is generally better at flying. They don't want to gimp one control scheme for another because they want people to only use a certain control scheme.

  • You could play Wing Commander with a mouse and keyboard even back in the day, even a SNES controller. In the end they don't want one scheme to be "Best" overall because they want to support a variety of devices, but they'll take steps to ensure they're balanced as best as they can.

• [When will gamepad users get some love?] They're looking into it! They know it's not where they want it to be, but it's a difficult battle to figure how to keep controllers aligned with the other inputs. It's possible there might be a separate control scheme, but they're working on making a solid default setup first.

• [Currently the Xi'An scout isn't matching the description it was given as the nimble, race winning fighter, when will it be brought to it's proper advertisement?] For racing maybe a slightly higher SCM speed, but it's agility it's quite good and where they want it. They know there's an issue with weapons in it and the targeting makes it difficult to hit, but they'll resolve that. Also with racing the tracks were designed before the Scout came into the game.

• [What's the difference between double clicking and a two key press?] They need more code support to enable better customisation to be able to have keys being a modifier and then having action keys. It's something they'll try to figure and update down the line.

• That's the end of the show for today. Check out ATV on Thursday and Friday featuring the RSI museum with Ben Lesnick. Also questions are still being taken from subscribers for the 10 for the Chairman episode coming up.