RoVerse Development Newsletter #55

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

It's been another busy week as we get closer to some cool new updates for the Dogfight Alpha! After releasing the Capital ship demo video, we've been working diligently to figure out just about everything to do with Capital ships, both for an update to the Dogfight Alpha, as well as for the full game. We've begun documenting every ship we've made, scaling it to the appropriate size, and assigning it a class and various other baseline stats. In that spirit, this week's newsletter will focus heavily on everything you'll need to know to design your own faction Capitals in the future, with plenty of cool pictures to boot.

First up, we'd like to welcome SkinnyThePimp to the development team - he was admitted to the team and had an astounding turnaround to delivering his first frigate.

A lovely work of art - it's not just a deadly military vessel cruising the skies, its also a stylish one.

Most of our builders have been tasked with designing ships of all sizes over the past week, in order for the Capital Update to have as many cool options as possible, and inspire those who play to create their own cool ships. Some of the other ships created this week include these two by Vedrakkerous:

Sae'Tzar has also been hard at work, with several new Capitals either under construction or completed:

We've received several questions about the scale of these ships, from several requests for star-destroying superweapons to planetary rings. While we won't be accepting ships quite that large yet, we will be allowing some truly massive ships, with exorbitant costs to match. The chart below shows most of the ships we've constructed, as well as a few early submissions of faction ships that have been donated:

These ships include everything from the XXXL class superships, the XXLs, the XLs, the Larges, the Mediums, and the Small Capital ships, as well as a selection of mining ships, and heavy and light fighters.

You may notice that the smallest ships are barely visible next to the largest ships. See if you can find them!

While working on cataloging and scaling ships, we also worked on hammering out the details on class designations and cost calculations. While some suggestions were made that just the straight dimensions of ships would work, there's an inherent flaw in that system. A small ship with a decorative extension or ring would be sized a lot larger than the ship really is, causing it to be classed higher than it should be. The eventual solution to this problem was to consider the ship's volume. When grouped, Roblox helpfully includes a neat little function that lets you calculate the ship's volume based on its bounding box. While not exact, and with a few of the same problems of dimension calculations, it works for our needs.

If you happen to be building a Capital ship for your faction already, you can scale it to the approximate size you want, based on a 1x1x1 stud fighter as a baseline, then run the following command in the Studio command line. It will print your ships volume in the output window, and that will give you a basic idea of which class that sized ship would belong to.

M = game.Selection:Get() M = M[1]:GetExtentsSize() print(M.x*M.y*M.z)
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Our rough estimates of volumes and classes are as follows, and are subject to change:

S        -1,000-10,000
M       -10,000-30,000
L        -30,000-100,000
XL      -100,000-1,000,000
XXL    -1,000,000-50,000,000
XXXL  -50,000,000-100,000,000

For example, the second largest ship in the chart, a version of a UEE ship, would have a volume of approximately 88,700,600 units, making it an XXXL class Capital.

Further work we did this week included some rough weapons, cargo, and ship speed calculations, and we will be releasing a calculator for you to use soon, with the results for the UEE ship and the S class Bolitho shown.

Keep in mind that these calculations are very rough, and were just designed to give us an idea of the differences between classes, as well as show us any problems with our classing ideas at this point, rather than further into the future.

​​The ships volume is broken down into thirds, a rough guess for how much space would be allotted for the ships engines, the structure, and cargo space. This, of course, could change depending on how each individual Capital ship is kitted out at its creation. If you were to add a bigger, faster engine, that would cut into the space you'd have for storage or armor. Hangar space would be an even smaller portion of total cargo space, influencing the number of ships that a Capital could carry with it into battle.

You may have noticed a few updates to the Dogfight Alpha, including a fresh new thumbnail and game icon:

Also included as an update to the actual game, was the addition of a notification bot connected to the Community Discord, letting you know when there's a new challenger playing. We understand that the game is rarely full of players, and we are working hard to make the Capital Update much more fun both for quick games, and long-term gameplay.

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: How will setting up turrets work? Turret kits perhaps? (This is in regards to bases)

A1: Setting up turrets for ground bases will be fairly similar to building any ground structure - you choose a location and orientation, then bring it materials until construction is completed.

Q2: Will clans be able to assign certain VIP ships to High Ranks?

A2: If you want your faction to have specific ships designed as 'command ships' that only high-ranking members of your faction can own and operate, we will try to make that happen. We wouldn't want a new recruit taking command of the largest ship in the fleet, now would we?

Q3: What are the limits to "Cargo?"

A3: Cargo will take all shapes and sizes - everything from simple ore-carts full of raw ore, to gas canisters full of atmospheric gasses or air,  to rare gems and minerals. We will be releasing more details about what minerals will be out there in the future, once we finalize all the details.

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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! Don’t worry, we don’t bite!