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Ten Ton Hammer: Two of the fifteen new “fluff” elements that are being integrated into the game were mentioned in the “Funderdome” dev log (PvP flags and lootable costumes). Could you describe one or two more of those fifteen “fun” features that are being added into the gameplay?

The FLS team is adding a horde of new ships to the game, including powerful, career-specific ships.

Kevin: Sure, I’ll talk briefly about two of them.  Naturally, as with any feature still in development, they may change significantly before release.

We’re adding difficulty sliders to the game, so that you can increase the challenge you’ll face in a mission.  This also applies to group size, so that in a large group with the difficulty slider set to the maximum, you can expect to face extremely challenging battles in every mission.  Some of our players find our ship combat to be inherently challenging, but others want harder fights with more risk and more reward.  We’re trying to accommodate both tastes.

We’re also in the process of adding a tremendous number of new ships to the game – variants of almost every ship in the game, as well as more powerful career-specific ships.  Our goal is that at every level you have a reasonable choice of at least two ships that match your play-style.  David is working like mad to tune the new ships, and I’m working only slightly less frantically to add them to the economy.

Ten Ton Hammer: The second developer log “Swashbuckling Boarding” really describes, in detail, the sequence of events involved in a boarding encounter. This is incredibly exciting information! When did you know that actual avatar boarding could be accomplished, and when did it finally make its way into the client code?

Kevin: Drew spent months tuning and revising avatar combat based on weekly reviews, constant playtesting, and many hours put in on weekends.  I knew we could do boarding when that process started to wrap up, and the resulting avatar combat was essentially fun and interesting.  The technical side of boarding – which has to do with how the various game servers manage multiple combat environments that can all ‘talk’ to each other – took a very long time to get working.  After the system infrastructure was in place, we started iterating and polishing the actual encounter.  In that sense, ‘boarding’ as a distinct unit has been in the game since late March, but the key elements of the system – the avatar combat – have been working for quite a bit longer than that.

There are 120 different combat animations in the game.

Ten Ton Hammer: Pirating was a savage profession that employed equally savage people. I don’t think it comes as any surprise that you have implemented a “swashbuckling” system into the game that allows for avatar vs. avatar combat. Has anything changed to the way swashbuckling works? Do we still have a “Balance” meter and that sort of idea?

Kevin: The essential avatar combat system is the same.  What’s new is lots and lots of refinement, and lots of content.  Huge amazing stacks of content.

Ten Ton Hammer: How many total combat animations will be available in June?

Kevin: Drew guesses about 120 different combat animations, including attacks and responses.