Today

No way, you haven't seen how fast those guys type!!!

As coding gods, they probably type fast...

And not much to show for it.

Because the same questions are being asked again, over and over...

Roadmaps... even though Uber stated from the very beginning that they will use an iterative process and so on.

What else do you want them to say, yes to everything you ask? Or pull answers out of their noses, even though they don't have them? I really don't understand this hysteria anymore.

The game is simply not stable enough for public release, and doing so will only harm the future of the game and your sales. It's the eternal struggle between short term and long term profits. With crowdfunding, Uber should be smart and make the correct decision. The game isn't close to ready.

The improvements and progress have been great, though. Don't take this as a criticism of uber or anything. It's not. I love the game. I am posting purely out of my passion and desire for what's best for it.

The stability is not good enough. The lag has been vastly, VASTLY improved, which was one of the hugest steps. Once the crashes and UI bugs and things of that nature are completely quashed, then consider it. But it shouldn't even be on the table for discussion until then imo.

Because even after those stability improvements, there's still some progress to made with the actual game. But that's getting close.

1.0 is basically what you see on PTE. What else can we tell you? We've said we're working on a few things we can't talk about. Sorry, but we only get to launch once. Almost all the rest of the work we're doing (which is the large majority of the team) falls under the following categories:

• Bug fixing
• Polish
• Performance
• Finishing features that aren't quite done yet (Polish-ey)

That is our roadmap for the next month. Yes, we have a bunch of post launch work we want to do, and we've made vague plans as to what, some of which has already been discussed, but no battleplan survives the first contact with the "enemy". No real enemy in this case, but the comparison is still solid.

I'm (and most others, probably) mostly just curious on the progress (or at least planning) made on the remaining stretch goals.

Gas giants?
Submarines?
...asteroid belts?

"1.0 is basically what you see on PTE."

And that is very good info. Info that we did not know. If we knew that, we wouldn't be asking a lot of these questions.

So based on that, we shouldn't expect big rock features or anything new, like subs, new units, specialized T2, astroid belts, matchmaking, multiple PIPs, multi-monitor support, etc.

Good to know. Disappointing, but good to know.

• Gas giants are actively being worked on right now. The plan is to give you more info on them at some point within the coming weeks, as we flesh them out.

• Submarines were cut after making an appearance in the game. That doesn't mean they're totally out forever (because never say never), but they introduced some pretty significant issues.

• Asteroid belts are being investigated. My gut says they'll be the next major feature to get attention, but what we prioritize changes as the project does.

Does that help, my man?

Yes but that makes sense doesn't it? Since PTE is the latest build... and we will get more PTE builds before 1.0 is being released. So the closer we get to the release date, the more accurate will be the PTE build compared to 1.0.

Nearly everyone I know that isn't playing anymore is just waiting for release, they haven't left, they're just on break.

Danke Brad.

I think the one feature that would be very beneficial *if* you guys can get it in for 1.0 is the integrated mod manager that Garat mentioned. Due to the early state of modding (and lack of API's) I think the mod manager should be focused at the more mature UI modding rather than server side stuff (no offence to RCBM or Sterata btw, just thinking about what's most important here).

The point of doing this would be it gives players easy access to PA Stats and System sharing. Both of these have become pre-requisite for the competitive scene and tourneys. Many people are worried about lack of a ladder, however Cola Colins PA-Stats system is very good and I think perfectly adequate, the issue with it as Garat mentioned is the barrier to entry.

I'm also aware you've got to consider how much potential support issues bringing mods closer into the game at 1.0 could cause, so I guess if this was something you did the in game mod store would have to be very minimalist and carefully curated to ensure compatibility (and potentially disabled in PTE builds)?

To be honest I think the *only* thing's that should be in there as a must are PA Stats, System Sharing and maybe the Server Mods viability tool.

I fully understand that this might *not* be possible, however I do think that it would solve the problems the community have been raising with respect to competitive play by simply utilising something we already have. I guess the critical question goes back to Garat's first point of Audience and if enough of the new players attracted by the 1.0 release will be interested in it or potentially lost due to it's absence?

And this is where our own perception and biases get in the way. Having done this so long, of course you spend the last X month(s) doing nothing except bug fixes, polish, etc, but that doesn't mean it's obvious to everyone else. Because it's only an "of course" because we've done it so many times.

And keep in mind, I did say we're working on at least a few things we can't talk about yet. And that generally means something significant, not just polish.

I'd say so.
It provides some clarity on the subjects and gives us a slight idea on the order we may see them come, which is a good start.

Specialized T2 is an important thing to get out before release IMO. When the game goes T1, oh look T2 is out, better get T2 or lose is going to drive the games meta into a much less diverse spread than T1 with T2 tactical choices over just having the eco needed to create your super units.

On Mods:

Are operating on a different timeline than the rest of our core release. Part of building a vibrant modding community is providing sufficient tools to make really awesome mods, and a way to get them out there. Once we've made a bit of progress on that, we can focus on building a highly polished mod manager that brings mods to all players. But there's still too much work to do on just the core modding experience to enable all the things we want to allow modders to do before we integrate a mod manager. For us to do it "right", we need to build a subset of what you basically see in the Steam Workshop, and that's not a small amount of work. And it's work that makes more sense once modding has more tools available to it.

Ideally, by the time everyone has their beta mods ready to really start playing, we'll have a mod manager in place that ups the exposure significantly, so you no longer need a mod to play mods. (You don't NEED a mod, but obviously things like PAMM make working with mods a ton easier, etc)

This is exactly the kind of information I (we ?) want. Just a general idea of what you think of those features

And multiply that statement by 40,000x opinions on what is an important thing to get out before release.

They're all important, but one of the things you have to do to ship a game is focus. We have modding so if you think our approach to T1 & T2 is totally broken, you can attempt to prove it.

(Sorry, Rainbow, not picking on you, but that sentence fragment is a very important one to highlight the problems with shipping any software or product )