For the first time in several years,Cloud Imperium Gamesdecided to share more in-depth details aboutSquadron 42in the latestCitizenCon eventthat went live yesterday. During a long interview, Chris Roberts and the game director behind Squadron 42 revealed many new mechanics for the game that will be coming toStar Citizenas well.
During CitizenCon 2952, Cloud Imperium Games officially revealed a new flight system that will be coming to Star Citizen in Alpha 4.X. The new flight system will be divided into two different sections. The SCM or Standard Control Mode will be mostly used in combat and the QCM or Quantum Control Mode will be used for traversal. Currently, one of the major issues in Star Citizen is the fact that ships feel much faster than they should in combat situations, which makes it really hard to target enemies, especially if you are using rail guns rather than missiles. The new flight system is coming to address this particular problem.
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With the new system, when you are in the SCM mode, your ship will be slower, but you will have better control over it, and you may maneuver much easier. The SCM mode will allow players to gain access to all the combat-related capabilities of their ship, including missiles, guns, bombs, and shields. On the other hand, when you switch to QCM mode, it increases your speed and unlocks a new boost system which is called Quantum Boost. While Quantum travel will remain a key feature in ships for long travels, Quantum Boost will be an upgraded version of the current boost in ships that will provide a high speed for a short amount of time. Quantum Boost will have a charge bar, and it will last less than 30 seconds. With Quantum Boost, you can point your ship anywhere and activate the boost instantly, which allows fast travel to a point that is maybe tens of thousands of kilometers away. This is also an ideal way to escape from a combat situation, rather than trying to use the normal Quantum Travel that needs to spool and then lock on a target, which is a highly time-consuming process.
That being said, there is a big risk in switching to the QCM mode. Whenever you turn on the QCM mode, all your combat-related options will be disabled. You will even lose your shields. The developers call it a risk/reward system between the modes. This will always challenge you between staying and fighting till the end, or turning off your combat mode and escaping.
Moving over to the AI system, Chris Roberts explained that the current awful situation of the AI in Star Citizen is a result of an old development system that is not capable of upgrading at the moment. The CEO of Cloud Imperium Games did mention that this will never be the case with Squadron 42, as they are building everything from the ground up for this game in the case of UI.
According to the game director, the AI in Squadron 42 will act on a systemic basis, which means enemies will have their own logic, and they will decide based on this logic, rather than following a single scripted path.
According to the developers, this is a systemic behavior, and it works in every different location and situation, which is why it is much better than a scripted AI system.
Finally, we also got to see a new version of MobiGlass for Squadron 42 that includes a cleaner vision of messages, logs, missions, and character parameters. Chris Roberts revealed that this version of MobiGlass is a military-focused version that will be used for Squadron 42, but an expanded version is also in production for Star Citizen covering more areas. One of the great parts that the developers didn’t mention, but viewers spotted during the stream, was an ability to remotely retrieve a ship, which has not been explained, but could be a revolutionary feature in Squadron 42 and Star Citizen.
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