Matrix Games

The oracles say it is impossible for a machine to live.

“DRADIS contact, unidentified marks. They’re giving off some weird readings.”

But what is the machine actually missing? Breath? Knowledge? Experience is just a glorified probability matrix; this path was safe yesterday, and nothing appears to have changed, so it should be safe today. Complex, but not unsolvable. Just maths and learning.

“Revenant bearing to port, carom one two four. Approach is faster than expected.”

Consciousness, then? An informed sense of self, asking that one big question over and over.

“Plating’s taking a beating, sir! They’re giving us a hell of a storm.”

Except we know what the machine fundamentally is. Why assume it can’t know itself? The questioning of one’s self is an idle luxury at best. A slug can survive a long and prosperous life without once asking the stars and sky what its grand purpose is. It is not a necessary burden for living.

“Frak, these raiders are slippery! Switching gunnery to manual, the system can’t keep up with these ones.”

So if they are missing nothing, why must we declare the Cylons as unliving? And if one machine can be said to have lived, why not other machines, smaller, larger?

“Green leader, you see this? They’re back! The whole frakking squadron is back!”

At what point do we stop arguing the existence, and instead question the weight of the machine’s soul?

 

 

Attention on deck! It’s time for another dev diary, to let you all know about some of things we’ve been working on as we prepare for another big Battlestar Galactica Deadlock update next year.

One of the upgrades we’ve been working on is an improvement to the Blueprints screen.

Presently, you can only see information about ships that have been unlocked. That means you’ll don’t get stats on ships that are automatically unlocked, such as the Manticore or Viper MKI.

Soon, you will be able to view stats and information about Cylon ships you have encountered in the campaign, as well as Colonial ships already unlocked when the campaign starts, via a new Codex. With respect to Cylons, the more you’ve encountered a particular class of ship, the more information will be displayed.

 

There is also a handy ship viewer!

 

 

We’ve also got a number quality of life improvements in the works. Some players have asked for the ability to delete save files, so we’ve added that. To make targeting easier and faster, we’ve made the focus fire command on capital ships pick other capitals instead of fighter squadrons that are closer. We’ve updated the video recorder feature to make it a bit more reliable and performant. We are also looking into improvements to squadron AI to prevent them venturing into friendly flak fields.

We’ve got a lot more features and improvements to talk about, but we’ll save them for another diary.

Finally, we are putting out a call for beta testers. We’ll be starting a beta test of these and some other great features early in the new year. If you’d like to participate, just visit the signup form right here: click me!

Until next time, good hunting!