Ten Ton Hammer: One of my personal favorite things to do in vehicle based RPGs is to find the right consist or loadout of equipment of my ship for the task at hand. Would you describe how players can mod out their ships in JGE?

Peterscheck: Sure, okay. There’s guns (lasers, stuff like that), missiles, shields, engines, and then there’s these special things called mods. They do all sorts of things. Really, our goal is to build configurations that players can discover. As an example, one of the earlier tests we had… it was really frustrating because you’d get this missile as a drop, but you’d didn’t have quite enough energy to use the missile if you bought these two other guns. So we turned up the energy just a little bit so you could barely equip it, because everyone was running into that wall.

Kitting out your ship for the task at hand is a big part of specialization.

I think the way to do it is… if, for example, you’re going to make a heavy fighter, it should handle like a heavy fighter, that is, harder to turn. And then you should build 6 missile hardpoints on it and four heavy guns. And then you could have a light fighter; it only has two missile hardpoints and two heavy guns, but its faster, it has a higher engine output. I think its very important to build those things in advance so players can find them as opposed to hoping for the best. Hoping for the best just doesn’t seem to work.

So hauling type ships have big engines but not a lot of guns, Mining vessels have room for lots of mining lasers, but they can’t have many missiles. So the goal is to enforce group play through that mechanic; you’re incentivized to work with me. You can accomplish things better with me, but you can accomplish them on your own. That’s the magic of MMOs these days; you have to hit both.

Ten Ton Hammer: Will keyboard or voice be the preferred chat medium in Jumpgate Evolution?

Peterscheck: We plan on integrating voicechat into the game, because I think that a game that plays the way ours does needs it. The conflict there is that if we don't build voicechat that's better or as good as Ventrilo, no one's going to use it. We have to make sure that whatever we use is implemented better than anything else out there.

I think that people will communicate in any way that you give them. But most people are resistant to voicechat unti they start using it, then they become addicted to it -especially if they're coordinating with other people. My guess is that there will be lots of keyboard chat and lots of voice chat.

Ten Ton Hammer: So are you seeking out any third party middleware vendors to cover voicechat at this point?

Peterscheck: Potentially. We're talking to several potential partners right now and trying to figure out what the best solution is. Writing our own voicechat isn't really something I want to do.

Our thanks to Hermann Peterscheck and the entire NetDevil crew for their time at Connect '08. To discuss this article, please visit the Ten Ton Hammer forums.