Falling Frontier + Nebulous devs being pals warms cold dead heart

Wow that track analysis feature with the grainy radar imaging is absolutely brilliant

Regarding fleet max size, I think Starsector's Combat Readiness really is a good way to soft cap how many ships you want to deploy. Ships deployed in that are selected by the player, and since any deployed ship has its combat readiness decrease at the end of battle at the very least, deploying any ship has a cost. This incentives the player to only deploy what's needed. In the case of different taskforces here, if engaging a task-force required all ships in it to go to general quarters, then it means that if you have one doomstack megafleet, the enemy can just harass you into bankruptcy because he entire TF has combat ready over and over.

Man when you pulled up that grainy image of the enemy force, I _creamed my pants._ This is a master class in UI, brilliant work!

This devlog does so much for me, as former infantry with intel analyst training... Also hell yeah Hooded Horse devs helping each other out! For the number of transport ships, though, I think having them convoy would be a reasonable solution. Groups of 5-10 freighters moving together for collective defence to make the shipping insurance providers happy sounds reasonable, and cuts down on map clutter at the same time. At the start, they might just fly in groups of 2-3, so that if any ship has an emergency they can at least rescue the crew or provide technical assistance, but after the war kicks off the groups get larger, and maybe ships start seeing decoy launchers, basic PD systems, and light armaments in the range of 100-120mm guns to fend off commerce raiding parties (probably with some kind of faction upgrades involved in those processes). Convoying the transports would *also* make it a lot easier to assign ships to escort duty along supply routes if you're in contested space. Sending one Raines a day with each single transport is terrible, but if you're launching 10-12 transports at once you can stick a Vauxhall, a Keystone, and two Raines in there as a good investment and ward off small groups of shuttles, or at least know you can give a larger enemy group a black eye and spoil their victory, if another task force can't respond in time. ...I also cannot wait to see the rivalry between Naval and Marine aviators launching from the carrier and assault landing ships; That'll be priceless, and I hope there's a little dialogue easter egg somewhere about it XD

Casually dropping "No missile cam in conquest" mid video. Love that change.

The intro music makes me happy.

5:56 RIP that salvo

I think this is the only game out there that lets a player be a staff officer and gives them the tools to do it. Hopefully the multiplayer campaigns will allow for players to, if they want, be dedicated ship drivers or staff wonks.

An INFOSEC system would be incredible. Imagine if you had a small wolf pack of stealth destroyers preying on shipping lanes. You wouldn't want a random order to reveal everything about said wolf pack, so you would change their comms discipline so that they send SITREPs less often or not at all. Restricting communications could have the downside of causing you not to know the situation of your own TF, delaying intelligence gathered by the TF, or delaying the execution of orders. You would also set communications to and from the TF to be highly encrypted, further delaying the receipt of orders and intelligence as you have to decrypt the info. The level of encryption could be variable, with higher encryption causing more delay. The enemy might still be able to detect the emissions of a communication, allowing them to get a track on the source of it, but they would also have to spend time decrypting the message, leading to the intel possibly being obsolete. You could even add an "encryption computer" part on a ship to encrypt/decrypt more quickly or have encryption/decryption speed scale with intelligence effort. Finally, you could set the classification of information related to certain TFs to be very high so that should the enemy intercept and decrypt a message, it would omit things like fleet disposition, fuel and ammo stocks, ETA, destination, position, etc. However, the commander will also be missing this info, causing them to have imperfect information. There could also be a command ability penalty or an order delay penalty related to a lack of information. It may be a tricky balancing act, but it would be rewarding to have small and slow-to-respond TFs that are nearly invisible, contrasted by large and agile battlegroups that practically broadcast their intel to everyone.

5:55 six hybrids, right into a rock. Classic

It makes me so happy to see a dev that cares about and enjoys their work while also not having to rush it because of publishers

What a labor of love. Excellent UI work without losing the esthetic. A masterpiece of dreamt gameplay brought to life.

Always good to see a Devlog drop. I noticed that Nebulous fleet command now has its game cover in the title section of YT videos. Finally!

It is rare to have a strategy game that has intelligence more complicated that "You have line of sight or you don't". That intelligence screen adds a ton of immersion; though it could get really repetitive investigating each contact one by one. Not clear if the intelligence officers do that for you or not.

god damn that UI is beautiful and feels like NEBULOUS

All of this really gives off a real "the Expanse" vibe, when in the serie the ships only being able to see the flares from the deceleration burns of incoming vessels, or the LIDAR images of varying quality. I'm so excited about it. I wonder if their will be an option to order a fleet to "go dark", limiting their use of main engine when in transit, to minimize the risk of ennemy sensors picking them and painting them with their radar. (I'm dreaming...)

fleet inteligenceulous

For the ground combat part I am thinking about the tabletop game "Dropfleet Commander" where victory points come from ground control. Certain ships can equip specialized orbital bombardment turrets to turn dug-ins into molten slags.

Two of my favourite developers working together on an incredible game, awesome! this and Falling Frontier are both my most anticipated games. I can't wait to play both finished versions.

Wake up babe, new devlog just dropped

This is incredibly cool. The final product could be among the best RTSes of all time.

After Homeworld 3 dropped. Neb def has a place on my hard drive as my go to place for simulated Space combat. This game is a gem.

I have no idea what this game is or why KZfaq recommended the video, but this game looks cool and your vision for it sounds amazing. I definitely need to try this game next paycheck, I’m honestly hyped for this conquest mode and I haven’t even gotten this game.

You mentioned that missile cams are gone in skirmish, would that apply to all missiles? I feel like leaving it just as a function of say Electro Optical missiles makes sense, and allows for a method of intelligence gathering

8:32 YESSS finally a game features IR imagery analysis, and you're going so in depth on it too... Honestly I didn't expect this from Nebulous, given the soft SF concessions, but I am so happy you're doing this, not least of which because I think it will inspire future games to have something similar.

I can't wait for the release of this, and carriers

This is truly a labour of love, everything speaks of the care and attention to detail you are all putting into this mode. I can’t wait to play it.

So, the era of fleet unintelligence has finally come to an end?

I've been biting my nails since the last log, so happy to finally see another one!

So excited, thank you for keeping us up to date!

Love how this game made by 3 indies is absolutely clowning on a bigger budget game made by "industry veterans".

Cheers Mazer, keep it up buddy. I can guarantee you that once people see those marines in game they will be screaming for live boarding but i totally understand why you've had to cut it (for now). Like the rest of the braying masses i can't wait to see how carriers will be brought to bear here. Especially with your real life logistics experience I'm sure that they are a whole entire floating (orbiting?) cities worth of complexity unto themselves.

With how greatly the Homeworld 3 launch crushed my soul I am glad to see that Nebulous is still doing great! I'm super excited for conquest.

Aaaah I'm so stoked for this! Loving the whole UI changes!

This game is one of my favourite RTS games of all time. With this and Manor Lords I'm well served for innovative and exciting RTS games right now.

This looks absolutely amazing. I can't wait to see that drive plume ID minigame.

The fuzzy picture display is so fucking cool...

I've been getting itchy for an update. I'm liking the balance changes.

New UI *feels* Nebulous. Gorgeous.

New UI looks great. The matching flare minigame reminds me of identifying subs based off radar signature in simulators.

To do drive identification i'd definitely have a look at the submarine game cold waters. There you have to identify enemy ships by the sound signature og the engines. So you compare the sound spectrum to a bunch of categorized spectrums

I can’t wait for conquest mode, thanks for the devlog!

инфракрасные фото в разведке очень круто и гармонично )

Really like intelligence images! Although I am a bit worried that in the end it will be like “go through all pictures, set hulls with one glance, close the window”

Nebulous carrier command one day

The multifunction side panels in the new UI remind me of the xcellent UI of Homeworld 2, and I applaud.

Intel system is SOOO cool. I love that

man I play games to get away from reading INTREPs, and here you go and do this to me? (heck of a job, it looks amazing)

Me be getting some Janes 688i H/K vibes with that Intel! Great work!

Love the intelligence features. It warms my ex intelligence analyst powerpoint heart

I desire convoy/commerce raiding, convoy tactics, etc. You don’t need to increase cargo ship capacity if you just have multiple go out at once together in a convoy.

Looking real nice, I really love those drive flare analysis and radar images!

I'm a simple man I see a new Eridanus Industries video and I hit like.

So excited for this game-mode!

Getting more and more of a Honor Harrington/verse vibe with this.

I love the degree of realism for the conquest mode but I'm a bit worried about it as well. In real life, it takes a lot of people to handle different tasks and make decisions. I like that the player has control over everything but at the same time, I hope it also have some automation or recommendations or advice because otherwise I may get overwhelmed.

i love that troop transport ship, dear god

8:48 That is soo cool I like the militaristic feal , but i think it would loook bettter in amber color , i mean the menu lines.

That new UI is really fantastic. Feels like like the graphics and holograms we see in The Expanse.

Incredible work!

One of the hardest parts of UI design is making something large (= easy on the eyes) while still maintaining a density of information. I'm sure you can think of plenty of applications that fail to do this (i.e. "let's just make the text bigger", but this is not a real solution). Not so here - that conquest UI looks great.

You designed the troop ship in 2008?? How long has this wonderful game been floating around in your head? :)

I bought a steam deck earlier this year so I haven’t been keeping up with the game, but I love these 25 minutes dev logs. ❤

Really cool work!

KEEP IT UP THIS LOOKS WONDERFUL

tanks and aircraft could also be on the landing ships for planets making it feel bigger and more like a battle over a planet

The ANS boxy troopboy looks great but now I'm wondering what the OSP equivalent(s) might be. Bulk freighter with a dozen berthing? Cruise ship converted to troop transport? The possibilities...

This is awesome, i am all the excite!

This looks so fine!

This game mode looks really interesting!

I love this This is awesome I am in awe

I'm drooling over the milsim aspects possible 🤘

Am in awe of this game!

Our last hope! Please save us

Umm, I haven’t played nebulous in a while- what is this!? This looks awesome!

for the jittery symbols, I believe everyone would be fine, if you merge multiple symbols into 1, at a predetermined zoom distance, and just apply something similar to bold for a thicker symbol/icon, which one can see that this is a "bigger" force/group. just my 2c

Very exciting news!

BEEN WAITING FOR THIS

Man I am so excited for the update to eventually come out, but man I do so hope one day in a new game or something we can get ground and space forces together in one battle, like say your attacking a planet you can command ships in atmo while also controlling ground forces while they fight each other and maybe also shoot down the ships while the ships shell the ground and fight other ships, would be sick watching a Vaux go down onto the ground battle while regiments of troops fight around the crash site.

the troop transport looks cool, the drive flare analysis looks cool, that's nice dunno if I'll enjoy conquest but I'm glad the update is gettin close.

Would be interesting if after a station is captured there is some disarray/delay before it's fully operational (maybe depending on the numbers of armies eg how heavy/easy the fight was). Maybe even reducing the defensive capabilities so that if there is a defending fleet incoming right now after the takeover it can reclaim the station faster (if the skirmish is successful and it has landing ships), tickles my "realistic" feeling. Edit: actually, you probably have to replenish the troops on the station somehow (dunno if this was covered somewhere) so that aspect is already counted in I guess (remaining troops form the defense, if it's a pyrrhic victory you are not defending the station anytime soon). Also also, enemy fleets present in the station system (without defenders) causing slow, over-time reduction in defender numbers, simulating the psychic effect of occupation/siege/starving-out - also traitors and stuff. Kinda like stellaris orbital bombardment but less direct and less destructive. Huge stuff! can't wait to try it out

Neb Neb Neb Neb Neb Neb-u-lous Fleet Command!

Thx for the video!

The size of ships in this game must be insane 😭. 8000 troops in one landing ship and each regiment is 4000 troops. That's like a whole UNSC Infinity in Halo lol.

Cargo ships, compared to warships, should be massive and be carrying in less voyages as possible the most they can, so yes, in a realistic (not gameplay thinking) that should be the case.

I am really looking forward to giving each group of marines and fleets very unique names and back stories. and oh man Commanding Officers... this is gonna be fun

I love watching these vidoes about a game that I believe in and invested in. it means a lot when an early access title remains connected with its supporters even if all i did was pay 30 bucks. that said please invest in a pop filter my misaphonia is killing me.

It looks very good

I cannot wait to play this gamemode!

Very nice!

Just a casual viewer but there is a thing i could see to add to the "status report" thing in intel. Since if you're doing an ambush or anything covert you wouldn't want your ships to be spotted, maybe you could add a checkmark on orders to have units enter some kind of "silent running", where there would be no chance of an intel leak at the expense of not being able to reissue orders until the period is over. IDK how good it would feel to use ingame but the feel of sending a fleet out and not really have a connection to them. (The optimal would of course be to not know if the fleet succeeded or was destroyed but that doesn't work from a gameplay perspective unless you let the other side fight against AI or something, which would be boring for your side)

I'm very curious to know how high of a priority forwards compatibility and moddability are for the Conquest gamemode. I know that further factions and ship hulls are a likelihood. I am sure you intend to support this new content in Conquest, but I would like to know how difficult or easy it will be for modders to create custom fleet & equipment palettes and run modded conquest games.

MISSILE CAM IS GONE

Lets gooooo. Im so excited.

What a beauty, take my money

Wow this is so cool

Finally an update!♥️

nice long awaited update

lol can't wait for people to have to cope with Abyssal maps again!