My first 2h experience

[DailyFrankPeter]

I've watched the tutorials, managed to figure out the parts that were out of date in the vids by flying around somewhere quiet. Then, I remapped my thrusters slightly, because I cannot operate WASD with my little fingers, and there is no other way to reach R & F keys. For the life of me I could not remap cockpit look to something other than Ctrl + mouseXY (it would not detect MMB + mouseXY).

Then I spawned in, looking to do some interceptor/bomber flying. Didn't go terribly, despite the fact that I had no idea what's going on around me and if my shots were doing anything - but definitely enjoyed the views!

Second sitting - managed to lock on to some red squares, but despite firing all my rockets, only go them to 80% while basically getting 2-shot time after time. Also realised there weren't any interceptors or bombers in that fight WHATSOEVER (not even bots) - everyone was flying a destroyer or cruiser! WTH?

[Random_Passerby]

To make MMB + MouseXY, in Options → Keybinds, where there are six filter checkboxes, uncheck "Exclude mouse events from key detection", and try holding MMB THEN moving mouse axis.

Missiles are only reliable if they are launched accurately, and if target does not evade them or use its countermeasures. You have them too, a limited amount, fired with Alt or MMB on QWERTY control scheme iirc. One is enough, but make sure to get away from them a bit, as they only confuse missiles for a short time, and then they reacquire you back.

On WTH — these cases can happen, and are normal. All small ships in the fight were destroyed, only big ones remained. Your option was to switch to ship that can harm them, like a bomber if you prefer small ships.

[DailyFrankPeter]

Thanks!

Maybe someone could compile posts/replies like this and make a tutorial out of them.

I forgot to mention that I enjoy not just the visual style but the newtonian movement in this game - it gives me Elite: Frontier vibes.

But the learning curve is steeeeeep.

[Random_Passerby]

Glad to know you like the game :D

And the compilation is kind of underway, but it takes a real while already, because to just compile answers like thiese it won't read well.

There is a wiki in the meantime, check it out:
https://infinity-battlescape.fandom.com/wiki/Infinity:_Battlescape_Wiki

[INovaeFlavien]

The learning curve is indeed steep. It is valuable feedback for us as devs especially from new players, so keep it coming !

For the keybindings, the issue is that if we allowed mouse movements to be detected by default, new players would accidentely move the mouse while trying to bind some keys, leading to lots of frustrations. So you have to explicitely enable it..

Tutorials are mostly obsolete, but the good news is that we're only weeks (months?) away from replacing them with in-game tutorials.

Your second in-game experience does sound tough. It sounds like you played at the end of a battle, when most small ships were dead and only capital ships remained. You'd then become the focus of their defense as they'd have no other targets. An experienced player would likely respawn in another ship class by that time, or stay away or dodge incoming fire. As a new player, you haven't learnt all of that yet so that probably made it a frustrating experience. Unfortunately that's kind of part of the game design that can't easily be adressed: we can't do matchmaking or nerf the AI versus new players only, and the game being semi-persistent means that there are indeed occasions like that when you join a match at the wrong time, and you're kind of left alone in a bad spot..

[Random_Passerby]

Nice opportunity for two things:

1. By learning curve, and by it having a gradient, what do you and everyone else mean, exactly? Are meanings "a set of earned knowledge elements over performance improvement progression" and "the amount of knosledge elements required to learn before achieving next step on performance progression" respectively on point, or do they miss?

2. The second in-game experience is an example of current design's core issues, and they won't even go with matchmaking or AI tuning or similar changes, all those would do is spend effort building a paper fence. The most direct solution is "continue to spawn more of each ship class for each side", and it interferes with current design right away, as the latter requires reinforcements running out. A working workaround is continuous battles + static reinforcement asset gain + reinforcement travel between all battles. You win when you destroy an enemy station, you lose when your station get destroyed, whoever destroys them all wins the entire match, like good old times. But can we trust players find other players fighting and acting outside of visual range? Fear is that there is no such trust. I doubt this fear is valid though. The ability to find other players through map is a balance point even.

[Random_Passerby]

Extra on the experiencce — it is not as good as what can be in other design, but there still is a way to turn it into a brilliant practice time :D

Go ahead, and fight regardless. Open Tactical View and look around for leftover small ships — so few, you can fight them one-by one, but learn about their rank prefixes showing their fighting speed, and learn travel around capitals.

Then there is also sub-targetting option — set keybinds for it somewhere handy, and you can go attack turrets on those capital ships. Learn that some have large hitboxes, some have small, and lead/lag pips are using center of mass as a reference point, and that actively dodging side to side and keeping proper distance really protects your small ship. Practice sniping those turrets faster, they are a bit more predictable and slower. You can bring out a bomber and land torpedoes on stray capitals, practice with momentum control so your torpedoes land.

You can also spend time in this practice, but then also bring a capital ship once you can afford one, to have some capital practice.

Finally, there are inverse cases, where all that remains are small ships, or when you are on the winning team and need to help these "await teams" finish the mission.