Greetings Captains,
We’d like to introduce you to a new format of communication, our weekly Community Hot Topics!
We want to use this to address the most pressing matters, concerns and questions that the community, you the players have on a weekly basis. For that, we will spend the week collecting questions, get the devs to answer them and then we’ll get back to you on Wednesdays (maybe Thursday, depending on your time zone 
) and post the new Hot Topics thread here in the forum.
Please don’t hesitate to discuss the information we provide here or give us feedback on the process itself. We did plan to have Community Hot Topics #1 next Wednesday but we wanted to get started as soon as possible so we present today: Community Hot Topics #0 - A First Taste
What happened with the Credit Payout “Fix” you promised us here?
Well, that was a doozie, wasn’t it? To make the long story short, the changes that were made did not work as intended or expected. So what ended up happening was that we fixed the bug that was used by a lot of you to greatly reduce maintenance cost but we didn’t fix the Credit scaling bug or the win booster bug. This, of course, led to a justified outcry by you and we’re currently having everyone working on the hotfix that will solve these issues. We’re expecting the fix to be ready any time now.
So if the Credit scaling was busted for the whole time I was playing, are you gonna make up for this?
We’re currently looking into the option to award everyone that was affected with an estimated amount of Credits that they would have gotten, had the system worked as intended since the last account reset.
This is still up in the air and all we can say at the moment is that we’re looking into the possibility. We’ll update you as soon as we have more information.
The big maintenance confusion: how much is it? How much is it supposed to be? Why does it change?
Currently, maintenance is calculated based on the ships you have in your fleet. The higher the tier of the ships in your fleet, the higher the maintenance. This is currently not reflected in the UI at all and we have decided that this system is much more complicated than it needs to be or should be.
We’re looking into the option to normalize the maintenance cost and possibly make it a fixed number for each fleet. We’ve handed our designers some calculators and have them crunch the numbers right now. Once we know what the changes might look like, we will provide you with an update.
Why should I get a Hero Ship? What benefits does it provide?
We’re actually not surprised that this question has come up a few times because the benefits of the Hero Ships are currently not visibly promoted. Hero Ships are automatically granted Fully Researched status (the status you get when fully researching all modules in a ship's tech tree and get a cool gold star by your ship), which gives you 10% more Credits and XP. We are also working to unlock ship customization for all tiers of progression (not just Tier-V), so you will be able to take that awesome Morningstar forecastle and put it on any Medium Dreadnought. Additionally, they provide exclusive vanity coating/decal options to the rest of your fleet. We are working to make these benefits more visible, as we feel the Hero Ships are an incredible value for players looking to get an edge.
What’s the plan for selling cosmetics? They’re currently priced pretty highly.
We will soon offer the cosmetics in collections and bundles again that include multiple sub-classes, and at the same time they should see a price reduction. We will provide you with more info on this once the plans and prices are finalized.
What’s going on with matchmaking? Why am I facing Tier-IV ships in my Tier-I ship?
One of the biggest issues that ails our matchmaking right now is a bug that allows players with Veteran or Legendary fleets to enter Recruit matches. We’re working on a fix for that and hope to be able to provide it in an upcoming patch.
Besides that we’re generally looking into the way the matchmaking system works and how we can best improve and simplify it. The matchmaking system was designed to best work with a player base larger than it is usually reached in a closed beta. Now that we’re in the technical beta and soon in open beta, we expect the system to work better. Of course we’ll keep a close look at it, making sure it does actually work the way we want it to. If not, we’ll have to adjust the system.
What about the Tier-II - Tier-III/IV power gap?
This issue has been recognized by the design team and they’re currently investigating a solution. We don’t have any direct approaches yet but we’re discussing different options to address this. There are multiple avenues we can pursue and we want to make sure that we do it in a way that provides the most interesting experience possible for all tiers of play. Part of Dreadnought is that power fantasy of being a captain, and increasing your arsenal of powerful and awesome ships. At the same time, we don't want to create a design where Tier-II ships become completely uninteresting the moment you unlock Tier-III. Stay tuned for more information.
Mystery costs - why are Credit and XP requirements not being shown in the tech and ship trees?
Well, there is no good reason for it to not be shown. We’ll implement this as soon as we can.
Statistics numbers instead of bars for ships.
This is currently being worked on and once it’s done, we’ll release it.
This is the first issue of our Community Hot Topics (actually, it’s issue #0 but who’s counting) and we will bring these to you every Wednesday from now on. We hope that this does address some of the most burning questions you have for the devs and we’re looking forward to hear your feedback, both on the content and the format.
Good hunting!
