RoVerse Development Newsletter #260

Hello everyone! Welcome to the 260th issue of the RoVerse Development Newsletter, where we keep you updated on the progress we've made over the past week.

This week, Idyllic patched some bugs, , and we've reached the moment of truth on the live challenge stats feature - we get to see if it kept track correctly or not.

Unfortunately, Idyllic's dedicated coding time was rudely interrupted by a storm this week, and the resulting cleanup meant that they didn't quite have enough time to complete a 'pretty picture' feature for this weeks newsletter. However, a contribution from Fang of a custom faction hangar, will serve as substitute.

In the dogfight, we've patched several bugs related to the custom faction hangars, including one that let you drop your ship into another faction's hangar quite easily. While this didn't have any impact on any gameplay, and was quite entertaining in some cases, all bugs must be quashed eventually, as this one has. Semi-related, whenever you'd load back into the game with a faction ship selected, it wouldn't update the hangar to the special one. Now, the hangar is loaded properly when joining, as well as when you exit ship selection.

Last week we got live stats working, but as with all new code, you must test them to make sure they work as expected. With the datastore saving turret kills in-game, and showing them on the fancy new menu, there was always the potential for the numbers to get out of sync and not match up with the official stats Idyllic keeps updated in the spreadsheets. The moment of truth is at hand - will the automatic system match the numbers from the old system?

Last Week

This Week

We were incredibly close. By the official reckoning, we should be at 1,037 outpost kills, and 553 non-missile kills. Being off by exactly 1 on both numbers is suspicious to say the least, and we suspect that it is due to a testing kill we made when testing the system out, so we'll keep an eye on it. And if in the next two weeks we somehow pull off the challenge by a single point, we'll give the community the benefit of the doubt.

This week in the dogfight there were 142 kills, 4 with auto, 4 with beam, 0 with laser, 43 with plasma, 0 with railgun, and 91 with torpedo. The most dangerous ship was the VSa1-1_Kazan with 134 kills, followed by the Outpost with 4. The most dangerous map was Pillarum with 138 deaths, followed by Frostland with 4.

And now, the moment you've been waiting for...
The three players that topped the leaderboard were FangABXY, with 95 kills and 1 deaths and a 95 KDR; IdyllicDestroyer with 43 kills, 2 deaths and a 21.5 KDR; and n_nqy with 3 kills, 1 deaths, and a 3 KDR. They have unlocked the exclusive ship Cosmos Novikov 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 104)

Calexian Community Challenge

Before the end of Cycle 15, the community must strive to complete the following two challenges to unlock a Calexian ship for all to use. 
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​The challenges are: 6000 Outpost Turrets, and 3000 Non-Torpedo kills.

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

Q1: In the recent newsletter, it said “Faction leaders in their command mode will be able to look at any given planet, select cells to view information about it, and direct troop movements from afar.” Is this ‘command mode’ something that only Faction Leaders would be able to utilize? Or could this be a power delegated to say, everyone in a group rank 250+, for example.
Also, assuming ‘troop movements’ refers to actual players as troops, do you mean for this command mode to be more of a tactical oversight or having a method of issuing instructions and orders through it to all soldiers in a cell ?

A1: Yep, real people have to do your conquering. Like a RTS where the units can decide not to do what you say. 'Faction Leaders' was meant to refer to anyone that is a high rank as well. On the last question, its a bit of both - you get info and make decisions, and send messages through it to nearby squads as needed. You can see a bit more info from afar, but its less accurate due to access/update rate limits. Also important, you can mark cells as targets, or locations to build stuff. For example - “Build a city here” “Attack enemy here” “Build defenses here.”

Q2: Remind me how we take over colony cities? Same take over as many structures as possible? Or do we have to take over a center or importance? It seems to me that if it’s the former, a low density city will be harder to take over since more structures will need to be seized.

A2: Taking over colonies will not involve going building to building and capturing the structure - most buildings in a colony will be a solid shell, rather than an accessible place with rooms, but they will be destructible. The final process for capturing a colony has not been determined, most will just get blown up and replaced. Theoretically, there will be a central point where the city was first created, which could be a building or a landing pad or a resource dropoff point, that could be open to capture.

Q3: What happens if an enemy faction makes all their players fill a server, so the opposing faction members can't defend? Like for a period of 3 days?

A3: Besides being impressed at their dedication, we've been working on a system that reserves a set number of spaces for each team with territory in a system, as well as for those unaffiliated. Approximately 30% will be open to any passing traveler or invading army, while the remaining 70% of max capacity will be reserved by percentage for factions with territory - the more your faction holds influence, the more spaces you get.

Q4: What would be the fastest way to travel across a planet? Can we build teleporters? I know that an invasion will have to use trucks and stuff, but what about well established factions?

A4: I'm not sold on teleporters, because of the problems that arise when you establish that technology in-universe. Also, you'll miss out on all the scenic vistas we're making. The fastest will likely vary a bit, but between transport ships or fighters on planets with really rough terrain, potentially having rail systems on smoother ones, light jeeps or hoverbikes, and watercraft eventually. The goal is for the trip to be interesting, not just a bloop.

Q5: Do we get to determine what cell we land in when we de-orbit our ship? If so, can we just fly up and then enter atmosphere at our destination's square? A good maglev is epic but they're known to fall behind high speed air travel.

A5: You wont necessarily pick the square specifically, but we will do angle math to where you approached the planet. Using this to travel around a planet would work, but would also involve hopping servers twice with a significant load time, I'd expect. Flying a fighter around like in Daedalus would likely be much more efficient, provided there's a place to land. Shorter distances might benefit rail or vehicles more than extreme distances.

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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!