Post 1.0.0. AMA Answers!

Remember the AMA announcement we had weeks ago? The answers to them are now ready for viewing! Please check them out down below! More answers in the comments section as well, as we exceeded word count in this news posts.

Question: I hope to develop more diverse weapons, dual-wield ranged weapons, develop more mechas and accessories, and allow mecha parts to use more accessories.

Answer: We hope to also provide more parts to you. We cannot allow for more than 8 accessories per part though.

Question: When will we get a better color picker/tool? The current one is very primitive and unintuitive, while games like Armored Core and Gundam Breaker give us sliders for more accurate color choices than blindly spinning the wheel

Answer: This Color Selection Tool is a standard one across multiple image editing / drawing softwares. We like and are familiar with how it is. Why reinvent the wheel or copy any other games?

Question: Will Vermillion Digital be open to custom part commissions from people (using google forms by filling out a form and submitting concept art or any other method of choosing) in the future once all the kickstarter obligations are competed?

Answer: Short answer is no. The long answer is that there are too many hoops to jump through for us to consider doing so. How will the ownership of those parts ideas be credited? What if we wanted to create some parts and people accused us of copying ideas? Do people who submit ideas expect shared royalties? These are just some examples but there are a lot more to think about that we don’t think it’s feasible for us to even consider this option.

Question: when will you fix the awkward accessory x,y,z axis rotations? you know the bug where if you rotate x and z to a certain number, the moment you turn y axis it continues moving along x axis direction instead

Answer: If it’s a bug, it will be fixed eventually. If it’s reported and not yet fixed in the latest version, we are working on solving the bug. We try our best to fix all the bugs in the first two weeks after any big updates but we’ll take all the rest into another version’s pipeline as we need to continue working on the game. For this specific thing, we assume it’s Gimbal Lock. The game uses addition of Euler angles to determine the angle of things and with certain calculations, it might cause Gimbal Lock to happen. It is easily solved through resetting the angle settings.

Question: Just would like to know, if the players own the designs we come up with in Mass Builder? Or atleast what's your stance in how we use the mech designs?

Answer: I think we discussed this a few times in the past but you are free to do whatever with the designs you come up with. There’s manga-artists who designed mechs in our game and posed it to be used in their manga and we felt great seeing that. Originally, the game was a customization tool that we wanted to use with our designing, kitbashing, and painting of plastic models. If someone uses the game for that original purpose, then we have succeeded.

Question: With regards to M.A.S.S Builder, have you considered allowing us to change the any of the engine effects in appearance and sound? Eg, particles instead of flames, the colour of the flames and the sound of the blasts/ignition?

Answer: We’ve considered them, yes, but creating a system that allows that takes time and it’s extremely low on the priority list that we’ve decided to not work on it completely. This is one of the reasons you’ve seen changeable trail colors on melee weapons but not effects on ranged weapons. The amount of work that is required for the same system on ranged weapons, thrusters, sound effects, and anything else is astronomically higher.

Question: Will we get a Quantum Break equivalent for ranged builds?

Answer: No, as we’ve mentioned in the past, ranged builds can fully utilize launchers with their damage types and things like BEAM Energy Launcher serves the purpose of a super-strong short-duration burst for ranged builds already.

Question: Since it has been requested by a lot of players, is there a planned combat rework? Or at least, is it being considered.

Answer: Short answer is no. The long answer is too many conflicting ideas between every involved party. Even in this AMA alone there’s people suggesting Melee is the overpowered option against ranged and vice versa. We are open to suggestions but when suggestions conflict between players, who do we choose as a “better” idea without offending the other party? Suggestions by one person differ from another and another so who’s the best to choose? With all of that, the best choice for us is to take a bit from here and there then adapt to our own idea.

With that said, we feel that the current combat in M.A.S.S. Builder is fun to us. Can it be better? Sure, but at what cost. Do we ditch the development of everything else to rework combat? No. Newer frames and systems are at a much higher priority than reworking something that already is fun to us and works fine with the current game balance.

Question: What are each Developers favorite armor set?

For this question, we asked for the top 3 armor sets from each of our team members. The results are Assault, Hammerfall, and Panzer in no particular order.

Question: How long does Vermillion Digital plan on working on M.A.S.S. Builder?

Answer: Ambiguous answer is until we feel that the game is done. The business answer is until we run out of money and need to work on something else so we can come back to M.A.S.S. Builder. We will always say that M.A.S.S. Builder is a dream project that we wanted to work on for as long as possible and we wanted to hire more people to make M.A.S.S. Builder a perfect game but that’s not something realistic. We can’t say how long we can continue, let’s hope we’ll be able to do so for as long as possible. Anything else is a story for the future.

Question: How are you Guys doing after all this time? Are you happy with all the stuff and achievements we made together during these few years? Cuz I sure am, You have my respect as a Mecha fan:)

Answer: We’re doing fine, we wanted to say we’re doing great but alas, it’s just on the level of fine. We’re happy with the things we’ve achieved with M.A.S.S even if it could be much better. There were some frustrations with the project and how we handled things since the start of the project but at the very least, the team members from years ago are still here together even on separate projects! Thank you as well for sticking with us all these years.

Question: Will you be able to make accessories like fingernails and claws to actually move alongside frame fingers? And can you add more hair like parts and possible mouth plate parts? Thanks for all of your time and effort and keep up great work. Best wishes to you and your families.

Answer: First of all, thank you very much! We’ll be sure to carry your wishes to our loved ones, especially the cats who frequented our office. Now to answer your questions, we don’t think we will add any articulation points on the fingers or hands enough to warrant making accessories specifically for those parts. You can use weapons attachments to perform a similar function as of the current update. We know there’s demand for hands, fingers, and claws that could open and close but that’s another level of animated accessories so the answer to this should be no.

Now to the other request, we will consider making more accessories of those types if it matches what our future content releases are themed around.

Question: How has the multi-platform releases of "Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon" and "Gundam Breaker 4" impacted MASS Builder during its development cycle?

Answer: The person who used to work as our game designer took a week off to finish AC6 on all endings. He’s not on the MB team aside from a few tasks so it didn’t affect much at all. The others played it now and then. None of us have played GB4 at all as we’ve no time to fully spend on it, despite buying it already, like we wanted so we opted to not play it at all. It’ll be in the backlog of games to play so until we are truly free from work, it won’t ever be played by the team members. Guess we’re also too jaded from NGB to try GB4 during its release.

Question: What plans do you have going forth with Vermillion Digital other than MASS builder?

Answer: First, we do have plans for M.A.S.S. Builder updates for both the immediate and far away future. Ones such as the announced “What’s next” is the first and then we have many more things that we wanted to add to the game. For something other than MB though? There’s actually games that are being designed and documented by a former MB game designer in the works. We’ve assigned that to him a while ago and when the time is right, we’ll choose from one of them to start as the next project of VD. Please wait and see to support our future endeavors.

Question: Any thoughts on reverting the speed and combat rework? Starting slow and building up speed feels bad for melee where you have to do many dashes in a row to avoid boss attacks or get to new enemies after killing others. Same issue with the combo system, damage ramping up as you continue to combo doesn't work well when you either kill things to fast or have to dodge mid-combo from the bigger enemies.

Answer: No, these were much-requested changes that we made the decision to oblige yet it is now a controversial topic. Reworking it again will have the same request by the same requesters asking us to change it back to how it currently is and the loop goes on. There is no perfection to achieve as conflicting ideas clash on all sides.

To explain further, it is not only done through numbers changing on a singular aspect but we need to balance various things to adapt to any changes and we prioritize working on new features and the game as a whole much higher than reworking combat repetitively.

Question: Are there any plans to have beta testers? Just a handful of players that can help to verify if the game is working well before each big patch. I think the game would benefit greatly from that.

Answer: While we agree that having beta testers would be beneficial for the game, it is not easily done with how small our team is. Having beta testers means having beta branches that will need to be maintained, taking constant feedback, applying changes and balance patches at a regular pace, all of this is not doable by us. We do not have the human nor financial resources to do so. These are the reasons we gave years ago, and it is still a problem we have currently.

Question: will there ever be new frame outside of the rex and spider frame. maybe a quadruped frame

Answer: Currently there are no plans besides the Rex and Spider frame. We do not know if this will change in the future but we’re only focusing on two of them at the moment.

Question: Do you happen to be thinking of putting in a new frame with a transformation function? Is there an approximate release date for the localization translation update patch? It's a pity that I can't play in my own language in 1.0.0. Question: will we also be getting any transforming mecha at all??

Answer: Anything regarding transformation functions is denied. With transformation in mind, the whole core of the game changes from aesthetics doesn’t matter due to how fantasy about transformations work. We cannot imagine a mecha that transforms from a bipedal into an aircraft to move in the same dimension at the same speed. For localization update, we are currently in the process of editing and proofreading all English texts so it’ll take a long while for it to be translated into anything else, even the Japanese translations we added for the 1.0.0 release isn’t perfected. We understand you’d like to play in your local language but for now it’ll have to wait.

Question: Mass builders melee combat is kinda sucky right now. The main problem is the lack of insentive to run a single melee weapon instead of dual melees. As it stands there's no reason to run sword and shield or other similar combos which sucks as I feel shoehorned into using a specific build to handle anything above normal. Is this something that vermillion plans to address?

Answer: We encourage you to try and find a build that works with what your fantasy of your M.A.S.S. unit is. Anything above normal is a challenge and contents of aspiration and we do not expect players to breeze through it. In fact, the difficulties add an extremely miniscule amount of stats increment to enemies, but make them more active so players need to respond better to them with their created builds. As we’ve answered above and more below, this is a sample of a conflict of ideas regarding combat and melee. If we address it, how do we address it and how to make it perfect according to the opinions of all sides?

Question: Are there any plans to increase the piece counts per area? like from 8 to 10 pieces?Thank you for your hard work on the game!

Answer: We understand the desire to create something more with the addition of accessories but our benchmark laptop isn’t able to handle that much without suffering, so it’ll stay at 8.

Question: When do you plan to support a full Chinese translation for M.A.S.S. Builder?

Answer: When baseline English is fully proofread, we will start fully translating the game into other languages including Chinese.

Question: Will you consider changing from Epic Online Services to Steamworks for a more stable multiplayer experience if the EOS is proving too troublesome to fix and maintain? I understand the significant effort to push out multiplayer before and likewise for this but it may be necessary for a better experience.

Answer: No, EoS is the easiest to work with for Cross-platform / Cross-accounts and we do not want to separate players on the multiple platforms we’re looking to release M.A.S.S. Builder in the future. Steamworks do not allow that as far as we’ve researched years ago and it means we’re saying goodbye to anyone not on Steam.

On the same matter, we are using Server-Client structure for multiplayer by assigning the host as a server and the others as client. If the connection there isn’t stable then no matter which framework we are using, it will have problems. As an indie developer, we do not have the funds to have a full-on server thing like those AAA games.

Question: I would also ask for a better Multiplayer user interface with a lobby browser, letting people create lobbies with privacy settings:

Public

Friends Only

Password Protected

A specatator mode for these games would also be great for community event coverage.

Answer: We understand the request but have no thoughts on it at the moment as we aren't expanding our network framework to involve a public server everyone can see. We're still looking forward to using host-client connection.

Question: Are new melee stances still in the works, like Shield and Weapon where you use the shield as a weapon alongside the 1-handed weapon. Question: Will there be a dedicated melee + shield combat style?

Answer: No, while we wanted to have shields as a weapon in the past, it is not a feasible choice to make in the current state. Making shields as a weapon stance will require us to create… however many melee stances we have to accommodate it for each type. We rather use that time to create new stances for new weapons, or work on other features instead.

Question: What Id love to see, one day, in MASS Builder, is native Crowd Control support. Crowd Control is a program that allows a streamer's audience to influence the game in many ways. Like giving/taking items, spawning enemies, all sorts of stuff.

For MASS Builder, it could mean giving or taking away different ammo types. Depleting/recovering shields/health. Spawning various enemies and bosses. Healing/Damaging bosses. Unlocking/Locking random blueprints. Giving/Taking away resources and credits. Preventing a MASS from moving/flying.

Answer: That would be an ambitious feature for us to add into the game. In fact, we’ve tried that with our other game (Seed of Heroes) where viewers could affect the game being played by a streamer. In M.A.S.S. Builder though, there isn’t a playmode that can be dedicated to doing so yet and without a gameplay mode like that, the potential and fun that could be had between viewers and streamers cannot be fully experienced. To create a playmode like that would not be really feasible for M.A.S.S. Builder at this time.

Question: Can W.A.S.'s Close combat weapons have the same options as the Bullet Launcher?Since sometime we do want to set up multiple sub version of close combat weapons that is just a "charged" version of the main weapon

Answer: We assume you meant M.A.S.S.’s close combat weapons. You can use the 8 slots of weapons we have to cycle between multiple of the same looking weapons. One could look uncharged and another looks charged.

Question: Since now that Mass Builders has been finalized as 1.0.0, would there be a future mecha project that is or isn't a continuity of current Mass Builders (be it a parallel universe, a completely new story unrelated, or a direct sequel)?

Answer: There are actually two projects in our backlog regarding this. One is a continuation of the M.A.S.S. Builder project that builds on the customization system with a whole new gameplay and zero story involvement. Can’t reveal anything yet but think of it this way. Current MB is 50% customization, 50% gameplay. That thing? 80% customization, 20% gameplay. The other one is a whole new thing… which we can only say you have a moving fortress, co-op play where players control mechs for various purposes. Both of them are in the backlogs until MB is fully done.

Question: Would voice be implemented post 1.0.5 (as of 24/9/2025 there still isn't a VA for characters)?

Answer: Not until every English dialogue is fully edited. And after that, we will need to think if it’s feasible to do so with the number of lines we have in the game. We know what we promised and for now, we’ve compensated voice acting through the operator-voices system where we plan to expand a lot more in case voice acting the story cannot happen due to financial circumstances.

Question: How would you (directed to Vermilion Digital as a whole, not to anyone in particular) rate the game yourself overall out of 10 (story, gameplay, mechanics, character design)?

Answer: Customizations and customizations only: 11/10. Story, gameplay, everything else 6.5/10. To clarify, gameplay depends on players’ experience and we’d say our game is a bit above average in that factor. But customization? We aren’t ashamed to say we’re one of the best IF not the best.

Question: I am aware that this story was a hand-me-down before Xsi received the storyboard and worked on the rest. How much of the storyboard (percentage wise, ie. 60%), specifically the characterization and ending of the organization Cyclops, the pilot Ascendant, etc, was written or conceived? Was their handling always supposed to be this way since their conception/creation?

Answer: It’s really about 99%. During the pre-production phase of M.A.S.S. Builder’s development, the whole team came together and conceptually designed 27 missions with all of its storylines, the start and the end of each piece. During that time, Xsi was the game designer but eventually, the storywriter was too busy to write all the specifics of everything down so it was passed on to Xsi, who trimmed a lot out of everything to make the story more concise.

There used to be many more PMC factions planned, a higher human society that uses the Cyclops, the Ascendant story being tied to many more PMCs, etc. The game would not be able to fit everything into the missions planned.

So, everything in-between is by Xsi. The start and end of each storyline as well as all the NPCs’ name, personality, appearances, etc. was written long before his time. There’s…