Once again, Star Citizen is thinking about space combat, which would make sense since it plays an important part of the gameplay loop and is a regularly iterative process to boot. It’s another dogfighting focused episode of Inside Star Citizen as members of the vehicle experience team take players through the changes that arrived to spaceship fights in alpha 3.15 and what CIG is looking to do in the future.
In terms of short-term goals for space combat, the devs are looking to reintroduce g-force exhaustion, continue to adjust shields and reintroduce shield variance, tweak the power triangle to introduce a “curve” to power assignment instead of hard straight-line adjustments, and continue the endless work of tweaking flight tuning for realism and spaceship character. The devs also recognize that turrets need adjustment and are discussing just what those adjustments should be, as they don’t want turret weapons to simply be better than regular weapons but agree that turrets need to feel more distinct.
Finally, the video outlines long-term plans for space combat, all of which are in the planning stage of development, meaning they haven’t been implemented in any fashion yet and could change as they arrive to the game. These space combat ideas include ammo management for ballistic weapons, adding an EMP operator mode, whether to include flak (ideas on its use include an area denial or anti-missile solution), adding new AI behaviors that copy real-life player actions, and deepening capacitor gameplay and functionality.