f13.net forums - Jumpgate Evolution :: Spaceships Types Revealed! (Now with more screen shots)

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July 13, 2025, 01:12:44 PM

we're back, baby

In this day and age when people are constantly bytching about solo play, if you dont have built-in comms you're gimping your game. You just gotta have it. Blizzard realized this fact and put it in WoW even.

A community I play with who pretty much has the top 2142 and Arma servers around ALL use in-game VOIP to supplement TS (which is only used between matches). You cant run an effective server w/o it, because w/o it you're gimped to only having organized play within the guild, and games end up becoming disorganized blobs of unfun. It's also much easier to recruit if you can break the ice with in-game VOIP.

Lastly, how do you figure one types while playing a space shooter?? You basically just cant PUG such a situation w/o in-game VOIP. If we were talkin a turn-based diku RPG than yah, it's not as much of an issue. But, an FPS or shooter?? gotta have it...

Quote

MMORPG.com:

How will PvP factor into the game's lore?

Hermann Peterscheck:

It depends. There is fiction behind the various battlespace scenarios, so that is one of the factors. In terms of open space there are less specific ties since we can't really predict what is going to happen. More likely, we will respond to PVP events and feed them into future fiction as opposed to trying to force it down one path or another.

The other direction is how the lore itself influences PVP. Here we consider that the three major nations are in a conflict with one another. It's not total open war, but they are definitely competitive. The personality of the nations is reflected in things like ship design and general attitude. For example the Octavians are much more regimented and militaristic whereas Solrain is more motivated by profit and gain. What we want to do is have the players feel that they identify with their nation and it's goals.

MMORPG.com:

What kinds of PvP will make an appearance in Jumpgate Evolution? One on one, 100 vs 100, etc.?

Hermann Peterscheck:

We have determined that large numbers of ships is certainly more fun than one on one battles in big, open space - though that is possible. Once you support huge scale battles, smaller battles are simply an issue of player preference. I suspect we will have many different sizes to the battles, but we are assuming that massive space combat will be the most compelling.

Here again, each nation's personality is represented. In the large scale battlespace, for example, each group has their own distinct capital ship which they need to protect, while attempting to destroy the other group's ship. The look and feel of these ships is very distinctive and helps players identify with their nation.

MMORPG.com:

Will there be an area that allows for open free for all PvP?

Hermann Peterscheck:

There are so-called "unregulated" areas in space. Here, you are basically always flagged as PVP and can freely attack, and be attacked by, anyone. Also, battlespace has various rules, but it is certainly open PVP in the traditional sense.

MMORPG.com:

What loot reward systems are in place for PvP in JGE?

Hermann Peterscheck:

Loot rewards will be sold to you by special vendors which require you to have a certain amount of renown to gain access to. Additionally you get XP and credits for kills, contribution to kills and other objectives which you can complete as part of PVP.

MMORPG.com:

What experience reward systems are in place for PvP in JGE?

Hermann Peterscheck:

Currently you get XP, Credits and Renown for all PVP kills. Depending on how well you do and your contribution determines how much of each you get. In the case of battlespace, winning the round will give bonuses. In the case of open world PVP, the winning nation gains control over that part of space which has consequences and benefits we have not specified.

MMORPG.com:

Will there be consequences to losing a PvP battle?

Hermann Peterscheck:

It depends. In the case of open space you lose the outpost and control over that part of space. In a battlespace battle, you will not get the rewards that the winner gets (renown, bonus xp and so on). We don't want to take things away since that means that fewer people will PVP. We also track individual and nation wide statistics. This means that as your nation rises and falls in the ranks you can feel that you are contributing to a greater cause and increasing the influence of your nation and it's values.

MMORPG.com:

What systems are in place to prevent "ganking" behaviours?

Hermann Peterscheck:

It depends what you mean by ganking. It will be possible to play Jumpgate without getting yourself into a situation where you can be ganked. Once you enter an open PVP area you are sort of electing to put yourself in danger of being killed without expecting it. I think the important thing is that players are able to make choices. Ganking is only really terrible if there's nothing you could have done about it and so that's the real issue to address.

MMORPG.com:

In February of 2008, you said in an MMORPG.com dev journal that you were considering different PvP rules for different shards. Is this still a possibility?

Hermann Peterscheck:

It's always a possibility. That's based on what other MMOs have done in the past and has been successful for them. There's many ways of dealing with the differences between PVP and PVE and we are open to exploring whatever makes the most sense for our game. Of course everything really depends on the results from ongoing testing where we expect to find out what players wants.

These devs need a case of STFU until they have a beta to announce.

Quote from: HaemishM on July 17, 2009, 01:03:00 PM

These devs need a case of STFU until they have a beta to announce.

It's convention season. The time of year when devs. use cons as an opportunity to do the least amount of work possible while masticating, drinking, and gaming themselves half to death on ITB passes.
I'm starting to think this is why so few games seem to release in the Summer these days. People are just too damned lazy and too busy partying.

Quote from: http://us.jumpgateevolution.com/news/article/9190

This week brings some great news for budding pilots of the Skein. Jumpgate Evolution has passed 250,000 unique Beta sign-ups since opening the sign-up floodgates last year.

We have thoroughly enjoyed obtaining valuable feedback from the people in our Friends and Family test, helping us to take the next major step towards launch.

No real news just PR fluff but the the screenshot page has been updated.

Co-worker passed on some news the developer blog was updated (click on Combating Combat).

Here's some bits snipped out.

Quote

Early on our lead systems designer, Jay Ambrosini, came to the correct conclusion that all of the preliminary balancing was best done in a PvP context. The reasoning is that in PvE, the player needs to feel powerful, but in PvP the fight needs to feel balanced. Once ship classes are balanced in PvP, its not as hard to make the player feel powerful in PvE, but the opposite is not true.

After many months of playing, some people on the team become quite proficient at playing in very advanced ways; small changes in weapon damage, range, ship speed and anything else. It's difficult to decide between reacting to feedback from a change and having the patience to wait and see if the initial feedback changes after a few days of getting used to it.

People want meaningful and strong choices and not lots of meaningless, empty choices. Currently we plan to have 4-6 classes, but they will each have nearly endless possible configurations within those groups. I also suspect we will continue to add more classes and equipment which will continue the balanced and varied tactics available. Much of this will come from more extensive testing as many thousands of players will provide much better information than our group of developers working alone can.

Can we stop here and point out they haven't nailed down the classes yet swamp poop

Holy shit! Isn't this supposed to be out by the end of the year? And they don't have classes?

I don't think they said they don't have classes. Considering the flow of what he's talking about, I'm going to safely assume they're deciding whether or not to expand the current class set for balance purposes.

I'm not sure I get how important your 'class' is compared to other MMOs. Like with ship types also in the equation I could see it being just as important (if ship types are restricted by class) or less important (if ship type you pilot is independent of class.) This has probably been answered somewhere already though?

EDIT: Never mind, I see my error - ship type IS class.

Quote from: NiX on July 31, 2009, 04:36:24 PM

I should have phrased that better. obviously they have classes but they haven't set the number? And if they haven't set the number that would follow that they haven't set which classes are in the final product. This is stuff you do before this point in development.

The whole saga of this game has been develop-as-you-go.
Was like that at day 1 even. Should've just been called "Ambiguous Online."

Should've been called "Oh Look, Another NetDevil MMO"

This is feeling more and more like Vapourware to me.

Quote from: Sir T on August 05, 2009, 05:24:55 PM

This is feeling more and more like Vapourware to me.

I can tell you it's not, since I've played it. But who knows what they're doing now.

Jumpgates release date on EBStop has changed to next year. Not that EBStop is a good indicator, but someone obviously told them to drop the date previously given.

Quote from: NiX on August 13, 2009, 09:50:05 AM

Jumpgates release date on EBStop has changed to next year. Not that EBStop is a good indicator, but someone obviously told them to drop the date previously given.

then

Quote from: Sir T on August 05, 2009, 05:24:55 PM

This is feeling more and more like Vapourware to me.

Actually, it's a good thing EBStop changed their date. In my whole time working there I had never seen them adjust dates until the company told them differently and in some cases they maintained a date even though it had passed and the product still wasn't released. This means someone at Codemasters or NetDevil made a call instead of just letting it go silently.

Quote from: Hawkbit on August 13, 2009, 12:07:46 PM

Quote from: NiX on August 13, 2009, 09:50:05 AM

Jumpgates release date on EBStop has changed to next year. Not that EBStop is a good indicator, but someone obviously told them to drop the date previously given.

then

Quote from: Sir T on August 05, 2009, 05:24:55 PM

This is feeling more and more like Vapourware to me.

They had already said the game was delayed, the videos I posted were somewhat recent. They are still showing it at conventions.

Hasn't this reboot of the game been in production close to forever? Jumpgate launched ages ago, did nothing special, and now this sequel/redo/expansion whatever has been dragging along.

Is it time for a pat on the head and a shotgun blast to it's ear?

Supposedly we've got folks in the beta or whatever that say it's good.

It's being pushed out too far, but they're likely scared of the Aion/FE/ChampO mess that the end of this year will be. It's all going to be a wash anyways when Blizzard announces WoWxpac 3 in a week or two.

Quote from: rattran on August 14, 2009, 11:32:30 AM

Hasn't this reboot of the game been in production close to forever? Jumpgate launched ages ago, did nothing special, and now this sequel/redo/expansion whatever has been dragging along.

It started as an expansion. I suspect their level of investment exceeded the success they'd have gotten from merely talking to what audience they had, so that pushed it to a full retail SKU. And into the realm dominated by WoW.

I doubt they care about ChampO or FE, but I could see some concern for Aion. As to WoW expac 3, I don't think that matters to JG:E either. They're not directly competitive in a way an EQ3 would be.

In my eyes half the beauty of this game was the original release day. Now that is out the door by a YEAR == impending demise.
There's no way this thing will be able to compete in the 2010 market unless they put so much spit and polish on it that it's unignorable.

What other space games are out in 2010? They'll be fine.

I think Black Prophecy is a likely candidate for 2010. I'm not sure they're similar games though. Last I heard BP was aiming to be more casual friendly.

I'm chopping and editing it up just to make it readable and not scroll up and down two posts swamp poop

Quote from: http://us.jumpgateevolution.com/forums/showpost.php?p=59897&postcount=19

Q: Can you fully explain how the unregulated space station and factory system works and give us the planned benefits for participants? Are there any special rewards planned for the guilds who will form the consistent backbone of these operations to take, construct, and defend space stations in unregulated space?

A: Right now any benefit will be nation based. We don't specifically track which Guild took over which area although that is something we could do. We don't have the specific details implemented so I can't tell you that either. A lot of this is still preliminary as we are working on the system itself right now.

Q: What plan, if any, is available to provide player or squad owned space stations and how do they function in relation to the rest of the game world?

A: Player owned stations are not currently planned for launch.

Q: Assuming item loss is off the table, is there any plan to introduce some kind of decay system, and if so, can you provide details?

A: We've discussed the advantages and disadvantages of this. Currently there is no planned item-loss mechanic based on time or death.

Q: A number of pre-launch squads for JGE have formed with fairly large member bases and would like to know what content is being designed explicitly for the consumption of people who are members of squads. Could you provide this information in detail?

A: The main thing here is the PvP and larger PvE content. We have a system for making "boss" type enemies in the game and we can make these as complex and difficult as we want. We expect this to be the core of what makes compelling multi-player PvE. PvP is likely to automatically encourage this kind of thing.

Q: What mechanics exist, if any, to keep people who die in world pvp from returning to a space station husk so quickly that their death has little effect on the overall battle?

A: Right now it's just map design, although I can tell you that we recently added a spawn timer in instanced PvP to deal with this and similar problems so it's likely that kind of thing will exist in world PvP.

Q: How do the devs see piracy working without cargo loss or friendly fire with the sole remaining factor being ship repair fees?

A: We don't. That's the problem with a piracy system... to make it compelling requires that you have lots of sheep and very few wolves. Sheep don't like to play that much when there's too many wolves around and as a result systems that allow players to negatively affect other player's experience with no easy way of avoiding it tends to result in chasing those players away. We don't want to chase them away. We could make a PvE piracy system but that seems like it frustrates everyone.

Q: Are they willing to setup a place for us who have been pirates in the past in many other games to try and throw up some ideas if the dev's have none?

A: Yes. I've seen lots of them on here, but none that I can see solve the problem above. How do you design a pirate system that is fun for the pirate and doesn't drive away the victim? I encourage people to think of this from the victim's point of view instead of what is just fun for the pirate. How can we make PVP piracy fun for the victim?

Q: Squad warfare has been something talked about by both the community and the occasion developer discussions, so with the possibility of 'safe zones' is squad warfare being considered as a alternative method for allowing more open-PvP for those that wish it? For example if two squad declare war on each other, could perhaps the 'safe zone' rule be overruled as to allow the squads to play as they wish if both consent?

A: We could do something like that. We just don't have it planned or implemented that way right now. The rules for PvP are likely to become more complex as the game systems evolve. Right now we have to focus on getting the basics working.

Q: What role squads will actually play outside of simply providing a communications channel and a player tag, has been greatly overlooked in developer discussions outside of sparse mention of squad ladder ranks. Can we expect squads to actually have a impact on realspace events outside of PvP games and ladder ranks(which are irrelevent on a world-pvp standpoint.)?

A: That's a complex question. Currently there is no direct tie to squad activity and in-game systems. In this sense squads serve primarily as a social mechanic for organization and communication. We've got lots of ideas on how to expand on things like leader boards and so on. I've also seen lots of good ideas on how you can tie squads to the game systems more, but it's hard to evaluate those without seeing squads active and that is not something we currently have the testing population to do. I know we COULD have that population fast, but there's enough other things to work on that it's just further down the line.

What I'm getting at is that rather than design all the details of exactly how we have squads affecting the game I'd rather get the basic system working and then see what people actually do. This way we don't implement something that people don't want and have to rip it out and re-do it.

Summarized:

Interviewer: Will you have this EVE Online feature?

Interviewee: We are not trying to be EVE Online.

I wonder if mmorpg.com had anything to do with the video?

Also, I wish I were in this beta. I want a space game but I always quit EVE after a few weeks and X3 looks...daunting.

Wow, that video definitely got my hopes a little higher, seems NetDevil are really trying to make this game as good as they possibly can and they're prepared to take as long as it takes to reach that goal. It was pretty obvious by the amount of information that has slowly trickled out over the past year or so that if they did release it this around now it would have:

a) possibly been downed out by the Aion launch as well as the whole winter season game release extravaganza

b) just been a solid game, lacking polish and wasting its potential

Fingers crossed they can pull it off.

Originally, I think they got a bad initial response to the game and hence delayed the game because of it. All you have to do is sift this thread and you'll see examples... regardless of our passion for a good space MMO.

And remember, they'll inevitably be competing with a revamped EVE, STO, SWTOR (the space portions if there is any), and the indie game Black Prophecy. Sure, there's nothing like JGE right NOW, but that wont be the case later... so they have to get it right.

What I liked about the video was the way you shoot things. Initial vids. were very uninspiring in that aspect, but granted in this one they were using an endgame cannon. It just felt more interesting this time around. The ship trails were also toned down a bit and I appreciate the old-school space-shooter style "AI wars" that you take part in. (reminds me of Indedpendence War). Using the ship's systems to disburse missions was also a nice touch, as long as it's appropriately simmy.

The more simmy it is the better. Although their "easy to learn, difficult to master" mantra is a bit counterintuitive to this fact.

A bad initial response from who?