would love to test, test server port 3032, you somehow cleaned up my ship contents of the Heph machine, character DHM, its empty, so no testing for me

Do you have any other character you can use for testing? We would love to get feedback from players that do this on characters that are in the intended target group of the zones If an experienced player don't find these zones too complicated, then we most likely have balanced them correctly If you however do find them extremely challenging, then we need to do some extensive QA work

You know you could get much more testing if the test server was literally a sandbox so that anybody can do anything at anytime without being limited by their main accounts specs.
I don't see any reasoning as to why this hasnt been done that can't be tweaked to prevent and it would make it easier on you guys because you wouldn't have to give people everything. It's not like people get much out of it besides testing new content for bugs and balancing, and it's the main reason I never used test, it's just too inconvenient.

edit: by this I mean like, a sandbox UI that let's you change your level, credits, skills, etc on.the fly, so that anybody can test any content.

The diversity of the loot in Vulcan is amazing, like the Vulcanite Hatchery

As soon as you start editing that kind of stuff, you create the possibility for server crashes. I remember very clearly when smw spawned a few bosses in Colo and it crashed the live server -- even admins can easily make mistakes like that. So then you have a situation where people are constantly crashing the test server, which means that most likely they need an admin to keep an eye on it at all times. Or else they need to devote scarce development resources to making a whole new admin interface for the players to use that's somehow rigged up to be less likely to cause crashes. So you're asking them to stop developing the actual game and concentrate on a sandbox environment in which you can play the game in a way it was never intended to be played.

Perhaps instead of players spawning in whatever items are needed and potentially de-wheeling the server hamster, take a cue from World of Tanks' test server and give players a large amount of credits so they can buy whatever setup is needed for testing. Like WoT, the amount could reset any time the server is reset. This would be particularly be useful for less-established characters that don't have billions or trillions in assets.

Right now our current proposal is a tech 5 super special item that does a slow heat MagCannon and a set of ship upgrades that upgrades popular tech 5 AI base ships to more advanced tech 7 versions Any feedback on that?

YES, pls

If it's a slow moving mag can it please do massive damage.

That was the idea, I will of course QA it before it goes live, which I haven't done yet

They are both really cool, I like the idea of the solar bodies in Arctia which look like ships stuck in ice! Vulcan was a lot cooler though in my opinion, especially the AI and the locked gates with the swirly flame ball thing. In my opinion, the AI in Arctia are all about the same size, I think the capital ship and support freighter (Rime and Glacier Shards) should be slightly bigger in size! I also liked the idea of those strong asteroids in the Arctia DGs. The drones are also extremely cool, so are most of the new items, would be nice if there was a permanent drone we could obtain from there (maybe I missed it if there was one).

Some oddities I've noticed in the new maps, here's a list:
- Arctia Outpost is invisible,
- The Vulcan AI's reticles (circle around them) is smaller than the AI itself, meaning that it's not really visible.
- A few unscoopable debris dropped from the AI in Bedrock Depths, Vulcan, screenie below. There is no message about scooping (I'm spamming the C button). Some disappear after a while of tractoring and untracoring. I somehow managed to scoop one (it was a Molten Vulcanite Core). I don't know, I don't think its because of my computer, just thought I'd share it.

You might not have enough space to scoop it, event doesn't tell me when there isn't enough room I just cant scoop it.

Typo in arctia base description ' There are ice castles... and there there is this. '

Test currently isn't properly displaying scoop error messages. So it's more than likely that you just didn't have the room to scoop the loot.

I have correct a lot of the issues people brought up already, thanks again to everyone who has tested this for me, I really appreciate it!

Calypso

Both bases seem to sell prospecting gear, and the asteroids in arctia get destroyed by mining whilst the other in the other gals die by fire

EDIT: oh and theres a bug in one of Lord Boreans shouts where he says his own name instead of the players "Lord Borean? You should not have come here."