Grey Box and YAGER are bringing a new space combat title to PC - Dreadnought. The game’s focus is on massive ships instead of the smaller ones you often see in flight and space dogfighting sims. I had a chance to get some hands-on time with the title at E3 2014 and take a look at the team deathmatch mode.
The ships available are the sort of loadout archetypes you’d find in many FPS titles - Heavily armored but slow capital ships, a sniper-style ship that looks like a giant railgun that can dish out extreme punishment balanced with fragility, and support ships that can heal your other units. Each ship has four special abilities on the core loadout that can be triggered in addition to the standard ship guns, these could be “blink” style movement boosts, missile salvos, or projectile disruptors.
Team play and positioning are crucial to success. If your team ignores opposing support, the damage you do to the heavier craft on the opposing team will be quickly negated.Support tend to try and hide themselves behind land formations or other craft, so your swifter ships should make an effort to take them out. Focus fire is important to victory, and if you can get your whole team firing on the same ship, that’s a good way to push toward a win. You can change out your ship for another “class” after each death, so your team can change up strategy mid-match. Matches were relatively quick at around 10 minutes.
It’s a more controlled sort of deathmatch that rewards team communication and coordination, where setting up an assault is more rewarding than just going in and jamming on the guns.From the two games I played, my interest is piqued and I can’t wait to see more.