RoVerse Development Newsletter #215

Hello everyone! Welcome to the 215th issue of the RoVerse Development Newsletter, where we keep you updated on the progress we've made over the past week.

​This week, Idyllic and Galbotrix collaborated on building the larger tiers of Capital turrets, focusing this week on the VLS missile variants. Idyllic worked on Capital turrets, finishing up and breaking some code relating to barrel alternating, and devomega worked on the freeroam bounty system.

Starting off with a minor remodel to the original VLS missile silos, this week we've finalized the light and medium turret variants. Now they have bevels!

The new turret is the Medium VLS Missile turret, that launches larger, more destructive missiles. The concept of the medium variants is that they do the damage of 4 light turrets, but with an equal number of weapon firing calls as each light variant would. So instead of 112 turrets on an XXXL, it is simplified down to a more managable 20 mounts, but with the same destructive power those 112 turrets would have done.

Here is the medium variant situated on a Large Capital, in an admittedly odd location. While the ship wasn't designed for larger turret mounts, it can​ have a mix of light and medium turrets.

We've also worked on a rough iteration of the Heavy VLS Missile Turret, with the same 8 tubes, but a much more impactful missile barrage. Instead of 32 light turrets spread across this example ship's hull in groups of 3, each group could be combined together into one heavier-tier turret.

The two of them have turned into a pretty effective team - Idyllic is great at low-res iterations and creative ideas, while Galb specializes in detailing and polish, making the finished product the best of both worlds - a unique and creative model, that is finely detailed and ready for action.

This week, Idyllic continued his work on Capital turrets, making sure that we had the best system in place for barrel alternating on Capitals. Now that turrets can have more than one barrel, it's important that we get bullets coming out of both of them. Unfortunately, he ran into a slight problem with their performance - the primary barrel works perfectly fine, but the secondary barrel shoots the conventional projectile off at a strange angle.

After a bit of sleuthing, he has narrowed the problem down to the aim code, likely causing problems based on the original barrel pointing in a slightly different direction than the secondary barrel. Fortunately, the problem is also only isolated to the 'fake' projectile visuals - the raycast continues on in the correct direction.
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DevOmegaX has taken up the task of creating a bounty system that will be first deployed in Freeroam. Besides helping code the system, he has also helped hammer down the finer details of how bounties will work in-game. It is now time to go over some of those details, to see if we can get any community feedback.

Bounties come in two flavors - a naturally occurring bounty that you accrue through normal gameplay, battle, and conflict, and contracts placed on you directly by another player. For this, we'll mostly be focused on the bounties, rather than contracts which are straightforward.

Killing a player will increase your bounty based on several factors - kills in a system owned by your faction, will not increase the reward available to other players that may want to hunt you down. Kills in a neutral system will increase your bounty value in that specific sector - if things get too hot, you can flee across the galaxy and start over, but you might get hunted down by a lone gunman with a big iron and a score to settle. Kills in a hostile system will increase the bounty available to players in enemy factions looking to put an end to a fearsome opponent.

Killing a single player is intended not to raise your bounty any valuable amount, however, if you start off on a killing spree, bounty-hunters may soon take notice of your activities and decide that the danger is worth it.

Bounties will be able to be picked up at a bounty board at any station you have access to - neutral stations will provide sector bounties, while faction stations will provide faction bounties. Obtaining a bounty 'quest' will allow you to collect the full reward for eliminating the target of the bounty, however, if you kill someone without obtaining the 'quest' you will only receive a small percentage of the reward.

Piracy will make you infamous in the sector you're most active, but only the places that were affected by your piracy would have any gripe against you. Faction-on-faction battles won't effect your bounty in the host system, but only make the enemy faction want to eliminate you all the more, if you are a skilled pilot.

Overall, the system is designed to make bounties a bit more complex than one number defining your value to a hostile. Your bounty varies by location, from the neutral systems to the deepest faction space, and there could always be someone hot on your tail, if you aren't careful. Some could even see it as a leaderboard - who can become the most infamous outlaw this side of the galaxy without getting taken out by a faster gun. The possibilities are exciting.


​The community dogfight continued again this week, with members of the community coming together to blast each other out of the sky. Here are a selection of screenshots from the event - send in your own if you have them. Join us next week at 8pm EST and earn double credits for the duration.

This week in the dogfight there were 103 kills, 37 with Auto, 25 with beam, 17 with torpedo, 15 with laser, 7 with railgun, and 2 with plasma. The most dangerous ship was the Hayabusa III with 48, followed by the Excalibur with 26. The most dangerous map was Pillarum with 73 deaths, followed by The Great Hollow with 27.

And now, the moment you've been waiting for...
The three players that topped the leaderboard were FangABXY, with 50 kills and 13 deaths and a 3.48 KDR; devOmegax with 20 kills, 19 deaths and a 1.05 KDR; and BTHEQUEST2 with 10 kills, 3 deaths, and a 3.33 KDR. They have unlocked the exclusive ship Elysion Lethe in the Alpha Dogfight. Nice work pilots!

If you'd like to check out the rest of our data, you can find the spreadsheet here: Phase 1 Data (Week 59)

​Each week we compile a Q&A section here whenever there are any new questions posted on the RoVerse Community group wall or in the Community Discord Server. Be sure to join if you have any questions about RoVerse:

ROBLOX Group: https://www.roblox.com/My/Groups.aspx?gid=2948290
Discord server: https://discord.gg/npxBGwJ

There were no questions in the RoVerse Community Discord this week. Post any questions you have in #dev_questions, and we'll answer them here.

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​​You can support us by joining our Community Group or Discord server! So far, the community has been absolutely amazing, supportive, and very friendly. We are very appreciative of all the support you guys show us!

If you want to catch any of our developers streaming, you can always follow our official Twitch channel here!

Remember, we are always looking for new, talented builders, scripters and artists! If you’d like to help us you can always get in touch with us through RoVerse_Official on the ROBLOX website, or by contacting an Administrator in the community Discord! Don’t worry, we don’t bite!