We got the pleasure of meeting up with Yager Development over at Gamescom this year, the team behind the up and coming space shooter Dreadnought, different to other space shooters the game puts players in control of their own huge capital flag ships instead of the more traditional fighter ship style vehicles. We’d seen a few different videos of gameplay so we were quite excited to get the chance to actually try it ourselves; heading into the private room in the business areas we got a brief presentation on the game and then got to play two different game modes.
The core gameplay focuses on relatively slow, steady and strategic battles, the ships that we got to command were colossal in size and so, as was fitting, had a more plodding pace that required a lot more planning and forethought when determining how to approach an encounter. Unlike other games where players can fly in and out of combat the reality with Dreadnought is that bad positioning or a bad tactical choice can pretty much mean the end of your ship with little chance of getting out when things go south. Depending on the map there were plenty of tactical places to position your ship, in the low orbit map there were valleys and mountain ranges that allowed you to keep low and navigate through them to suddenly appear and launch an ambush on your enemy and pepper them with a heavy bombardment from your broadside cannons.
The controls were simple enough to us for the most part, WASD movement with 1-4 as your primary attacks, space bar to descend your ship vertically and shift to ascend. There was also the middle mouse button that when held down brought up a reticule where you could redirect the ships energy to defenses, attack power or engine speed depending on your situation. The team do intend on having joypad integration at release, but when asking about a joystick they felt it didn’t work well with the style of combat that the game offered as it was more slow and strategic.
There were five different class of ships that covered the basics roles you would expect to see (support, dps, tank, etc.), each of which had three sub-classes for further specialization, but each ship was still a huge mammoth of a vehicle that made the fights feel more like epic battles from Battlestar Galactica or Star Trek. Within each ship you had four options for each of your four skills, some quick maths means there are 256 loadout variations available in the game, and that’s per ship, with over a dozen ships and more to be added. Loadout is only one part to making your ship unique, with lots of customization options we were shown a few of the variant looks for ships where you could add structural cosmetic changes such as a different bridge or engines, as well as the different look based on the skills your choose, combined with paint colours, camouflage, decals and more, which will be the primary base of the monetization aspect when the game is finally released.
Heading into our first game we were hooked up over Teamspeak with one of the other press guys in attendance and 3 devs on our team, albeit they weren’t in the room, for a five v five Team Deathmatch; currently the game doesn’t have an integrated voice chat and whether this is something they will implement they’re not sure; there’s a built it ping system and most competitive groups have their own private voice programs anyway these days. Team Deathmatch is but one of the two available game modes in which the first team to get 100 point wins. To give ourselves hopefully more of a fighting chance we went for one of the bigger heavier armored ships, with a broadside attack compliment, missiles and the ability to charge a warp jump to get us way out of combat or quickly into it, but with a long charge it had to be used conservatively. Our plan started out well enough, stick low to the ground hugging the cliffs and valleys of the first map; a lush mountainous region on some unknown planet, we managed to spot a lone ship and jump right next to it, supported with some of our other ships we dropped it pretty quickly. The problem being a big ship is that whilst you can take some extra hits, you’re also slow and can be an easy target for an organized group, which I was and so my experience and personal victory was short lived as my ship was sent down in flames.
The next battle was Elimination, simple enough it was similar to Team Deatchmath as it was still a battle to destroy the five enemy player flagships, however, this time round if you were killed then you would respawn as a smaller heavy fighter vessel to continue in the fight and supporting your flag ships to kill off the enemy. Dying again and you would end up in the same ship but slightly weaker, a third death would put you into the smallest fighters; they didn’t hit particularly hard on their own and they couldn’t take much damage, more importantly they suffered collision damage which the flag ships didn’t, so flying into a ship, asteroid or the huge floating space station we were fighting around meant instant death. For this battle we opted to try out a Scout class who as well as having some missiles also came with a cool Blink ability that would make us teleport a short distance in front of us, great when combined with our third skills which allowed us to quickly turn 180 degrees vertical; a maneuver that is impossible to do otherwise, and face the other way. The result of this combination meant us more than one heading at an enemy from the side, then as they started to turn to face us we would blink to their rear, 180 and start attacking from behind, then as they turn blink again, rinse and repeat.
Elimination came in three rounds and we didn’t do all that well in the first round, getting more experience trying the fighters than the flag ships, but the second time round we’d gotten to grips with our skills and our tactics and ended up being the only flagship left on our team and it coming down to a 1 on 1 with an enemy ship whilst everyone else flew around in their puny fighters. Putting my tactics into practice the battle seemed to take a long time, they were in a similar type ship but lacked my chosen skillset, so duking around, blinking through the spaceport structures, positioning myself and trying to get a good shot ultimately resulted in our victory and a cheer over Teamspeak from our team. It was pretty cool.
Right now the game is only just entering Alpha with Closed Beta expected early in 2016, though players who are interested can already put their name down to try and get access. We’d definitely recommend it, with the Elimination game mode it definitely added something new to the shooter genre, the methodical and tactical more steady game pace was a nice change, but when you were face to face with the enemy it was no less exciting. There’s plenty of customization and base ships to stay interested and we hope there will be plenty more maps and modes in the future.
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