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Pilots! The UMC department of historical research presents a special interactive diagram which chronicles the events in our world. The diagram shows a chronological sequence of events that have occurred in the world from the emergence of the Signal to the present day. All data was recovered using materials that survived the Alien invasion.

So with the impending release of Custodian and the drip feed of previews from Mr Orca my inner ‘arm chair developer’ has woken up and raised an eyebrow or two at the state of some of the Custodian’s modules and furthermore… the plasmatron as a whole. So then – first point of concern: This is a ship we’ve been grinding for over 100 days for If it’s kit deploys in an overly underwhelming state it’ll be passed off as fodder and overall a waste of effort. So for the sake of comparisions I’ll be drawing parallels to Boremys a lot during this thread as it is as a whole; Custodians direct competitor and potentially just an outright superior version of the ship. Second point of concern: Frontal shield looks pretty damn small In Orca’s preview video as well as the Custodian’s roaming dreamland one thing has caught my attention consistently – protective barrier doesn’t cover enough of the ship. Why is this a concern? Unlike Boremys which is a federation guard, Custodian is Jericho and furthermore inherently slower by design – unfortunately including rotation speed. I get that Custodian was designed to be played aggressively akin to Boremys but the kit overall does not support such a play style. Fighters can outmaneuver the shield/Custodian Frigates can simply splash through the shield Destroyers can splash through the shield and punch through it with modules Interceptors can simply go outright behind the shield and shoot your hull directly One suggestion would be to make the shield cover a small portion of the side of the ship, perhaps 5-15% of the hitbox extending towards the back and furthermore lower or remove the shield resistance debuff. There are so many sources of damage able to bypass the barrier it simply isn’t warranted. Second point of concern: HOLY HECK THAT THING IS BRIGHT Need I say more? The current frontal shield FX is so bright it’d outright give away the Custodian’s position in darker maps and highlight what portions of the shield are exposed to LRFs. Suggestion: Make the effect closer to diffusion shield/frontal shield. This would make the Custodian less visible as a target and make the exact area of the barrier less clear from range, making LRFs miss potentially easy shots. Now for the glaring issue: PLASMATRON LOOKS HORRIBLE Not only is it tied to the Custodian – a ship teased for over 100 days, but the projectile speed as both Rakza and I feared, is far too low. In the demo although implants were not shown (not that it even matters) the projectile could barely hit a near stationary frigate at medium range and a bot fighter at CLOSE RANGE. This is both an inherent issue with being a thermal weapon as the damage type lacks any kind of ammunition that boosts projectile speed (an old issue made more and more obvious with the further releases of projectile based thermal weapons. The passive of the weapon (projectile speed increase based on charge time) also seems to be too weak if the fear is the ship will too easily bully interceptors then need I remind you Boremys has access to ‘Aim assisted cannon 17’ which literally homes in on the target upon connecting the first shot. Aside from projectile speed issues, the damage looks too low for the fire rate/charge times – the innate lower critical modifier looks nearly unwarranted given how hard it is to land a shot. Orca was leading targets perfectly in the demo and more than 75% of shots MISSED. This is also further exaggerated by the fact the Custodian has only 1 CPU slot and no passives for crit chance. It simply isn’t possible to make a crit build for this ship without the aid of a Dart. And for the last panic thread comment: Custodian doesn’t have access to Conformist booster. This is literally the modifier that lets Boremys shield tank massively before stacking its special module on top of it. If Conformist was turned into a standard modifier that only allowed for one to be installed it would bring Jericho guards slightly back up to date and able to compete with well… Boremys. It’s basically the de-facto guard right now. And that’s all for now – I’m going to continually internally scream for the next four days and then cry on the fifth. <If you haven't seen Orca's preview video then check it out>

Easy peasy suggestion: remove bots from PvP. They are very un-fun to play with. If we want to play against bots we will select vsAI mode.

Pilots from the fringe sectors tell many stories about a phantom ship. Some claim that they have repeatedly seen it both on radar monitors and from the cockpits of their ships with their own eyes. However, there is no real confirmation of their words — on-board computer logs suddenly end up empty, and memory cards fail. But all the tales of the phantom ship are alike. And they all end in tragedy... An encounter with the phantom ship always takes place away from the main galactic routes. It slowly emerges from the blackness of space. A broken mast, rusted towers and huge barrels of the main calibre scare all the pilots who see them. Slowly, the phantom ship swims past, and woe to those who dare attack it. There is no historical evidence of where the phantom ship came from or where it goes. Many believe that this is one of those ships that were sent from the legendary Earth back in the era of the construction of “Frontier”, a giant booster complex for travelling to distant worlds. Others say that such ships were used by fanatics of the so-called “Divide” during the heyday of the Direktorium and the first galactic religious wars. Back then, original designs and engineering solutions flourished, and engines were put on anything that could potentially become a warship. Another story that survived to this day claims that the phantom ship was created by the genius of the land of the rising sun. His small team of like-minded people dreamed of finding answers to all the questions of the universe. In an old ship graveyard, they stumbled upon an almost-intact destroyer of ancient American construction. The ship's hull fit perfectly to accommodate an experimental propulsion system developed by the genius. Having decided to give their spaceship an unusual appearance, they made it resemble the original naval ship and named it in honour of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto. Having built the ship, the genius and his team left Earth and set off on a long journey across the galaxy. Their ultimate goal is unknown. But according to rumours, the Yamamoto team was supposed to reach a distant star system in the Carina–Sagittarius Arm of the Milky Way galaxy. Allegedly there they could gain secret knowledge of the universe, the path of humanity and the Signal. The ship disappeared on the way, and no one knows if the travellers were able to reach their goal. Now the phantom ship Yamamoto is just a legend among pilots and mercenaries in the fringe sectors. They say that seeing it leads to misfortune. To the death of relatives and friends. It is said that this ship has incredible power and impenetrable shields. They say that no one has yet been able to defeat it in battle. But times are changing. And some pilots boast that they controlled the phantom ship themselves, and some secret shipyard even takes orders for its production for all pilots.

Well, today is the technical 'free' release day of Custodian and apart from the servers sh*tting themselves again, IT LOOKS LIKE 'OL DERP WAS RIGHT. IT F*CKING SUCKS And before I go absolutely insane let me say this: I wanted to like this ship; I wanted to like this weapon; but I can't. The model is fantastic apart from one gripe I have that I'll append to the end of the post which is more of a question that I might ask Mr Orca to forward, the unique sound is lovely, the weapon effects are amazing - but the stats are just SO. DAMN. BAD. I can't even remain positive in the positive section of this post I'm so burned. PLASMATRON WHAT'S GOOD? Base damage is high You can charge energy converter with the self damage effects + sounds are nice WHAT'S BAD? Literally everything else about this weapon. Projectile speed is too low Crit damage is too low Crit base is too low Self damage scales with modifiers Self damage scales with ammunition Fire rate is too low Lead marker doesn't update dynamically Charge time is too long Overheat cycle is too long Overheat in general is too short Now then let's run down how horrificly abhorrent this mongrel of a weapon is. The plasmatron is the first charged explosive precision weapon in Star Conflict which everything of that description is wrong. Precision weapons aren't explosive so they can actually damage interceptors as the trade off for having low fire rate in general is high base damage, high crtical and generally high projectile speed. Plasmatron threw literally all of that out the window. It has lower than average critical damage, extremely long charge time, extremely low projectile speed (it takes 7 seconds w/o acceleration coils for an uncharged projectile to reach max range) and is explosive - inherintly meaning it does next to nothing to interceptors as they take 25% less explosive damage thanks to their modifier before resistances. I know the balanceing team generally like to take things slow (look at that 10% speed boost to fed dessies when every other dessie needed it more) but Plasmatron needs either a massive buff or to be completely reworked. If I was the sorry soul to be responsible for tweaking the stats of this weapon to make it somewhat competitive outside of low level sectors in open space I would probably: -Lower base range to 4500m -Increase uncharged projectile speed by 250% -Increase charged projectile speed by 150% -Remove damage scale with charge -Reduce max charge time to 2 seconds, holding projectile for 4 seconds makes the AoE -Increase the critical damage to 50% -Make the AoE unable to crit -Make the AoE not explosive damage -Make the AoE unaffected by external damage multipliers -Lower the cooling cycle by 1 second -Either make it EM or give thermal weapons some projectile speed munitions finally In case you didn't notice. That's a big list. With some big numbers. Because this weapon is f*cking trash right now. It barely can kill bots quickly in medium level sectors in open space. Holy crap. I hate it so bad. I wish I could like it. Another thing to note - the changes to the AoE. Turns out, 4 seconds for two blasts can't even kill a Falcon-m with nearly 0 thermal resistances. Why? Because the AoE is explosive. It took less damage simply because it was an interceptor. Also you'll die before both detonations trigger because 90% of interceptors can kill a frigate in under 10 seconds and you just dealt 24,000 thermal damage to yourself. Even more if you were under crystal infiltrator. PURSUIT ALGORITHM WHAT'S GOOD? Decent cooldown time Good active time Speed boost attached to it Radar invis on a guard WHAT'S BAD? Shield resistance debuff (yes, another) Speed boost is too low to actually 'pursue' stuff This one is a short one because I can almost like this module. The only things bad are also completely stupid. Why does this module have a resistance debuff when adaptive camo doesn't? Frigates are bigger and easier to spot than an interceptor so you sure as hell aren't going to be sneaking into an enemy team and slaughtering them all and furthermore the Custodian has a MASSIVE HITBOX so the resistance debuff just gives less reason to use this module. As for the speed boost being too weak, going from 230 m/s to 330 isn't going to help you actually pursue even a Federation engineer - even closing the gap on an Empire LRF is difficult because they'll just Reverse thruster and dump a torp on your face whilst you have lowered resistances. How fix? Make the speed buff stronger a bit Remove the resistance debuff or do everyone a favour and move it across to adaptive camo. Okay. DEFENCE ALGORITHM WHAT'S GOOD? Low cooldown Hull restore effect, even if low Shield resistance buff Low energy consumption Obvious effect WHAT'S BAD? Speed debuff (again) Classified as an 'Active module' instead of multipurpose That's really my only issues. In the situations you actually need this module the speed debuff will get you killed and it should be multipurpose because it fits that definition in the literal sense. It has multiple purposes. Otherwise this module is good. The Hull restore effect is just large enough to come in handy and the shield resistances are just large enough and last long enough that they can help you in an engagement. The only thing dragging this module down is the two aforementioned negatives. You should get it. THE SHIP AS A WHOLE IS REALLY UNDERWHELMING. Fresh out of the box we have some issues with the base stats being bad. 1. Shield capacity doesn't move at all with synergy increase which yes; it does have a healthy value, but that value means nothing because you can't repair that massive shield on your own because: 2. The capacitor is tiny Even with a max volume +20% synergy bonus it is tiny. You barely have enough energy to move around and use modules let alone keep emergency shield booster active and pop a normal shield booster. 3. The passive shield regen amount is tiny in comparison to shield size. The Custodian can have a shield as large as an Archon but has an innate quarter of it's passive regen and even less capability to passive boost it. 4. It's stupidly slow. Like really slow. Like holy hell it's so slow. Custodian has Boremys as a direct competitor and not only does Boremys have the bonus of being federation but it's special module is useful and has a low cooldown and actually gives a significant speed boost. Custodian has none of that coupled with poor energy economy, bad passive slots and being Jericho. What speed boosts it does have with Pursuit Algorithm and Protective barrier are too weak to be seen as significant because the base speed is so low. As already stated over and over - Custodian has to compete directly with Boremys and currently Boremys is an outright better choice. It's premium which means 0 repair cost and bonus credit and synergy gain, it has access to unique modules, it's faster, the special module is far more useful, the primary weapon is effective against all ships, the unique module is effective in most scenarioes and has no drawbacks, it has better energy economy, better hull capacity and is able to hull tank with it's special module rather than being restricted to shield tanking. So what needs to change to bring it to the par at the least? One basic fix all is to make Custodian a fully customisable ship - or in other words let players change the passive modifier slots as well as the synergy bonuses + special module. This would alleviate any complaints about the horrible passive slot selection for the weapons + modules the ship has access to. As for base stat issues: -raise the passive shield regen to 200-300pts/s so the ship doesn't have to crutch on shield regen modules constantly(rotating ESB + SB) -Increase energy regen by... well I'm not very good with energy regen numbers since there is a curve. I guess 15pts/s would be safe? And I don't even know about speed buffing because if pursuit gets touched up the ship itself wouldn't need a speed buff. I've been typing for so long I'm not angry anymore. Help. Oh right Protective barrier Protective barrier currently is weird. It's good but also useless but also amazing. So the problem right now is all explosives negate the shield completely - missiles, torps, photons you name it. Even with your shields down they splash right to your hull which in that case you just died because the shield tripled your hitbox when your shields were down. However the passive resistance buff is amazing. The psasive +65 lets Custodian compete kind of without the usual guard crutches like Adaptation mechanism and Conformist booster. The only reason I haven't really thought of anything to fix this is I feel like this has to do with how explosives work as a whole. Also singularities and phaser spheres go right through it which is annoying. REE. As for my question about the model: Are the afterburners supposed to be missing? I don't know how I only realised this today. The image we've been looking at for the past 100 days every time the game boots up: Notice the afterburners missing? They should be where those random spikes are. It's been bothering me since I realised it. Same with the railgun Mk5 model in the Atlas vs on the ship. Okay I'm done now. Help. Please confirm my lack on braincells somewhere. I'm so burnt from trying to get Plasmatron to work.

It would be very nice to be able to sell cargo without leaving a sector in space. It could even be made a feature of some "mini stations" in every sector that you can "dock" to like on a Ze'Ta and open a "shop" menu that let's you buy and sell things like ore and modules. It would be an extremely simple addition and would make space feel more active and useful. Maybe some stations could sell unique ammo and weapons and modules that you can only get by buying them there. For instance mining sectors could sell mining equipment and ores. Scientific sectors could sell ship parts or modules etc. I still am waiting for a mining laser that you fire at asteroids to spawn ores to pick up.

Greetings pilots. I have a couple of questions and requests for you as well as unasked for commentary. As for the suggestion, I think that you should be able to preview the reward paints. Pure and simple. I was sorely disappointed with the Harvest paint and thought that the Pyre was really mediocre. As a result, I'm curious about how the lightning paint looks. I was considering dropping the moon pass for stage 3 for it, but I'm curious if I'd better not even bother with it at this point. Would someone be so kind to post a picture of a Singularity zoomed in with the scheme? That one in particular has some suspect coloration banding with these schemes. I'd also like to see a Mammoth or equivalent with it, and a destroyer of any kind. I still think the Harvest scheme was a complete bust, as the previous Halloween schemes are infinitely superior. I was expecting a wicked pumpkin. I feel these icons are grossly misrepresentative of the final product. The only 2 that have been honest thus far are Memento and Desert Camo, the latter of which I greatly enjoy. See you in the fringe sectors, and thanks for any intel you can provide.

This is another time that this issue happens, it was already described once on TheDarkRedFox post here: The problem returned, again. 1. Description of the problem, what happened. Server connection freezes, you can fly around but you can't shoot, everyone flies in the direction they were flying at the moment of freeze. Then after few seconds you are "teleported" to the point when the connection froze and you can play again. 2. What did you expect to happen. Flying in Open Space. 3. The conditions during the situation. Nothing extraordinary, regular flying in OS. Don't know if it happens in PvP. 4. Further details on the issue. 5. Frequency of occurrence. Random but it seems that there are frequent freezes or none at all. 6. Logs + screenshots or a video (Including a description of the issue, where to and how to reproduce it) Included: 2019.10.05 12.11.58.552.zip

There were also issues with the loot after battle, it took way too long to get the reward, regular ones dropped nothing, and it costed 67k GS for double iridiium.