Dev Blog #006 August 17, 2022

Hey all, this month I have been working on a new challenge system and ship cloaking/stealth.

Stealth

Stealth in AQ2 is a powerful tool for getting up close and ambushing, scouting or just escaping from a fight.
Stealth fittings will cloak the current ship, but Stealth field generators will cloak all friendly ships in a wide area.

Stealth has 3 stats, Full, Disrupted and Broken.
Full stealth, when flying around doing nothing with an active stealth fitting or inside a stealth field.
Disrupted stealth, when you are too damaged or you are being damaged.
Broken, when stealth should be active but you are firing weapons, you are fully visible.

Unlike most stealth systems stealth in AQ2 is not on/off, even on full stealth you can still be seen if another ship is close enough to you. During disrupted stealth that detection range gets much bigger.

Lets see how this would work in a simple ambush:
You activate stealth, giving you Full stealth.
You fly towards a target and start blasting, this breaks stealth and you now have Broken stealth.
The fight goes wrong and you try and escape, turning off your weapons your stealth will try and reactivate.
Your stealth reactivates but you have recently taken damage or you take some damage from an incoming shot that was already fired, this disrupts your stealth. Now you have Disrupted stealth, you can still be seen by the nearby ship(s) but you are invisible to ships further away.
You manage to avoid taking damage for a few seconds and your stealth can now properly reactivate, giving you Full stealth again.
You could also go from Full to Disrupted stealth if you are caught in an AoE.

I hope that makes sense, I'm not great at explaining this but it's very easy to pick up once you are in the game.

Challenges

One of the more passive features in AQ2 are the challenges, they allow you to earn rewards by performing different actions as you play. For example there are challenges for dealing damage, firing a certain number of shots with a weapon or mining a certain type of ore.

You have several of these challenges active at any one time, they are not tied to a certain npc or station and you are free to take as long as you want on them. Once a challenge is completed a new one will replace it in a few hours. You can also abandon challenges that you don't like or you find don't fit what you are currently doing.

Along with the challenges there is a monthly challenge reward. For every challenge you complete you earn progress towards bigger rewards, these counters and rewards reset every month.

Profiles

AQ2 allows you to have a visible character portrait along with a customisable frame, banner and player title. There are several default avatars to select when you create your character, the other customisations have to be earnt. You can earn new frames, banners and titles by completing achievements in the game.