RoVerse Development Newsletter #60

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

This week, we have some exciting new information about those civilian ships that we haven't heard much about before, some news about planets, as always, and news about the members of our dev team. Let's dive right in!

First up, we have the Civilian Class of Vessels. Civilian Ships are the other side of the coin from the Military vessels you all know so much about. Where the military ships are comprised of fighters and capitals, the civilian ships come in three categories - Cargo, Transport, and Mining.

Mining Ships come in a range of sizes, from small, single head drilling ships, to larger ships with multiple mining heads, with the possibility for even larger ones, designed to make on whole asteroids at a time. Right now, we are looking at two classes of mining types - mining laser drilling, that uses lasers to vaporize ore into small chunks, which are then pulled into the craft. The other class is your more traditional drill head, meant to get up close and personal with ore veins. A bit more efficient on the power side, and quite a bit better at withstanding the sudden shocks that come with crashing into giant chunks of rock.

Cargo Ships are your miner's best friend. While mining vessels have ample internal storage, all that mining equipment, hull shielding, and maneuvering equipment takes up a lot of room, that otherwise could be filled with chunks of valuable, valuable rocks. Cargo ships have an enhanced storage capacity, in exchange for reduced shielding and defensive systems, but are extremely effective at moving large volumes of whatever you happen to be shipping long distances. They lack any significant defensive systems, so they work best when paired with a fighter or two to guard them.

Transport ships are like Cargo Ships, but for people. When you need to transfer a group of people from station to station, or planet to planet, a Transport ship is your best choice. Where other ships might have room for a co-pilot, a transport ship can carry more than that. While we don't have the numbers finalized quite yet, we hope to be able to support large ships with as many passengers as we can. Transport ships can also function as a Military Vessel of sorts, able to act as a dropship for ground forces, though without the vehicle space or defenses of proper military dropships.

Idyllic's been working on a default version of a mining ship, which would be a step above the smallest type of vessels. This version uses mining lasers, as seen in the demo image above.

Planets are also progressing along nicely, and we hope to have another demo of a city generating for you next week. But in the meantime, planets have been successfully exported, and reimported, meaning that we should have fully generated surfaces to explore in no time.

As some of you may have heard, the southern United States has been having quite the time with the weather in the past few weeks. First, Sae'Tzar had to evacuate out of Houston, and has been otherwise occupied with relief efforts. Now, with hurricane Irma approaching Florida, two more of our devs have been put in harms way. We wish them the best of luck in weathering the storm, and rebuilding their communities in the coming months.

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: Will ships you built for your clan be accessible by people not in your clan, like would they have to buy your ships but not be in the group?

A1: You will be able to sell whichever ships you submit to members of your faction, or to whichever members of the public you want to have access to your ship style. Subfactions that are modeled after corporations would want to sell their specific line of ships to as many people as possible, while factions may wish to keep their ship styles private to their own military's personnel.

Q2: How many ships can a nation have?

A2: For the official release, it would be best for factions to have one of each ship type and size. While you may not need the bigger ones right away, eventually factions should have one of each. There is also room for different variations in ship models, say if you wanted a slightly different ship for each military branch. But since these ships would have to be moderated and imported, the number of variants should be kept within reason, don't expect to be able to make hundreds of ships for each member of your faction.
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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!