Official SE5 release date announced - September 12

[Captain Kwok]

One of the things to keep in mind is that with adding weapon arcs and facings, you make it much more difficult to balance individual shipsets. Unlike Starfury where you might have to balance a dozen or so ships, SE:V has about 150 to worry about. With the directional damage, once shields and armor are down (or special damage types are in use) it plays a minor role such as in a pursuit, where a fleeing ship tends to be hit in the engines first etc. Lastly, fleet battles tend to end up in melees anyway, so if most of these features were active there wouldn't be much difference in the end result.

[AMF]

So...speaking of battles...are the combats now greater than 30 turns, and floating? (ie, don't have corners, so you can do that pursuit thing you allude to...)?

I just keep up with the pestering questions, don't I...

[Captain Kwok]

Combat is time-based and there are no corners. If a gap between a chasing ship and a fleeing ship reaches a certain distance the combat will end.

[Ed Kolis]

Yay! I kinda suspected that you could flee combat in that manner but it's good to hear confirmation of that!
Presumably that distance is moddable, and perhaps it might even be a formula, so for instance if you start with Chemical Rockets going 20 km/s or something and eventually get Hyper-Quasar Drives going 100 km/s then the distance required to retreat could increase throughout the game as the average player's tech level advances? Or is it time-based - based on the speed of the fastest ship in the pursuing fleet? (e.g. "if the enemy ship can't reach your current position within 30 seconds the combat ends")

edit: clarified from "can't reach you" to "can't reach your current position"

[RonGianti]

I just assumed that some shipsets would be better than others, and that you would have to pay for better ship sets the same way you pay for any other advantage at the beginning of the game. Oh well.

So now we have to pay for maintenance on fighters? Oh great. Are they completely useless then? Are they just a little niche item or just something to bypass completely?

[Ed Kolis]

They are now individually targetable, rather than stacked in groups, and the lack of area-effect weapons means that ships with only big guns will be wasting a LOT of firepower trying to blast those little buggers out of the sky

99 drushocka fighters in space, 99 drushocka fighters
Shoot your DUC, blow one up, 98 drushocka fighters in space!
WHAM! 98 structural damage!
98 drushocka fighters in space, 98 drushocka fighter...

[Captain Kwok]

One complaint overhead early on was that fighters were too strong...

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Ed Kolis said:
They are now individually targetable, rather than stacked in groups, and the lack of area-effect weapons means that ships with only big guns will be wasting a LOT of firepower trying to blast those little buggers out of the sky

99 drushocka fighters in space, 99 drushocka fighters
Shoot your DUC, blow one up, 98 drushocka fighters in space!
WHAM! 98 structural damage!
98 drushocka fighters in space, 98 drushocka fighter...

I suggest that be the new, official unoffical SEV theme song.