Written by Scott Butterworth
To be fair, Dreadnought seems to offer much greater depth beyond what I experienced during my brief hands-on time. For example, the finished game promises to offer more nuanced control over your ship. At the moment, you can only choose to allocate more power to your guns, engines, or shields on the fly, but this tactical control may eventually extend to individual crew members, who can be selected and promoted as part of a pre-combat customization system. Different officers grant different benefits and even level up as you gain experience, which the developer hopes will encourage a sort of bond with the tiny little soldiers manning your ship.
The ships themselves will eventually offer greater depth as well. My demo featured one ship from each of the five classes, but that number will likely jump to nearly a dozen when the game launches. And thought the ships may be slow, they're definitely diverse. The eponymous Dreadnought absorbs absurd amounts of damage and can launch mini-nukes with a pretty reasonable cool down rate. The artillery cruiser is essentially a giant floating rail gun, making it a flying sniper of sorts. There's even a support class that can buffer allies. With proper teamwork, I imagine Dreadnought becomes a dramatically different experience.
In addition to a standard team deathmatch mode, Dreadnought will also offer an episodic single-player campaign, though Yager doesn't have any details at the moment. The team also declined to comment on its monetization strategy, saying only that it will be done in a “very, very different way” that no one's ever tried before. Expect to see Dreadnought on PC by early 2015.
