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Chris Roberts. Chairman & CEO at Cloud Imperium Games and Roberts Space Industries
is answering 10 subscriber questions every week.
Chris Roberts, Chairman & CEO at Cloud Imperium Games and Roberts Space Industries
is answering 10 subscriber questions every week.
Kornelius, design and layout
link to other eBooks, 2014
Liudeius, transcript from videos, 2014
Cloud Imperium Games Corporaton &
Roberts Space Industries Corp.,
all images and artwork
Star Citzen is a trademark
of Cloud Imperium Games Corporaton
Introduction
Hello everyone, so the inaugural
Ten for the Chairman segment
that we're going to do in the
Los Angeles show. This is where
we take ten questons from
subscribers, who their generous
backing allows us to do all this
community communicaton,
work, videos, and this show
here as well as the stuf we do
in Austn like Wingman's Hangar
and behind the scenes stuf.
Table of contents Episode 5 .................................. 26
Episode 6 ...................................33
Episode 7 ...................................37
Episode 8 ...................................42
Questions List .........................47
Episode 1 ..................................... 3
Episode 2 ...................................10
Episode 3 ...................................15
Episode 4 .................................. 20
1
Ten: Im curious to know about the
hardware setup required to run SC
in full HD on max details?
So that's a really good queston, it's hard to
defnitvely say that now 'cause we're stl early
in the development process.
New hardware comes out every year, so
generally we've been aiming at the very high
end of hardware now is what we think the
mid-level will be by the tme the game is fully
fnished. So that would have been a GTX 680
or now a 780 on the Nvidia side, or on the
AMD side, a 7970 or now the R9290X on the
AMD side. And you should be able to easily run
in the highest details in the game in 1080p. If
you want to move to 4k, you'll need the very
high end cards that will be available, smoothly
at 4k that is, next years or maybe current day
high-level to mid-high level cards but two of
them in SLI.
The engine scales really well so it can, it will
take whatever you can give it in whatever
resoluton you give it, but you can also scale
it down and it stll looks prety good. So if you
don't have quite that highest end hardware,
it will stll be a prety good experience. I hope
that answers your queston.
2
Maberous: Now that CIG has
development infrastructure ready,
are you planning or toying with new
ideas for suture projects after SC
is released? Some vague schedules
or bigger expansions to SC/SQ42 or
even for non SC-related projects?
So the answer to that is we are 100% focused
on Star Citzen here.
The way that Star Citzen is being created
is that once it's released, that won't be the
end of Star Citzen. We're going to actually,
are planning to, be releasing content on a
very regular schedule. We're actually hoping
to almost be weekly if we possibly can. So
we'll be constantly updatng the Persistent
universe, adding new features, locatons, ships,
characters, over hopefully years and years and
years and years. I mean obviously that requires
people playing the game and stll being a viable
enterprise, but EVE Online's stll going ten
years later, so we would love to be in that same
positon.
Then we'll also do some additonal story
segments, very much like Squadron 42. So
Squadron 42 won't be the only single player
experience we do, we will be doing additonal
experiences like that which people will be able
to play inside the Star Citzen universe.
So the answer is yes we are going to do a lot
of stuf in Star Citzen, but not so much, we
don't really have any plans for non-Star Citzen
stuf. We sort of view Star Citzen as a, it's not
a short term commitment, it's a very long term
thing, and hopefully you guys will be playing
and enjoying it many years to come.
Episode 1
3
3
Buran:
Will radar shadow be present
in the game?
So yes, the answer is yes. Radar shadow will
defnitely be present in the game.
We have all diferent kinds of radar signatures
you can have whether it's a heat signature,
electromagnetc signature, a refectve
signature, and we're also thinking of diferent
ways that you as a player can shield yourself
from someone else detectng you.
So there will be an aspect of being able to
sort of play the stealth angle. Maybe you
can shield yourself behind an asteroid, or
maybe you can shut down a bunch of systems
so your signature is really small, or maybe
you could coat your ship in a kind of armor
that would give you a much lower refectve
signature.
So we'll defnitely have radar shadow be part of
that and we're hoping, thinking, it's actually going
to add a lot of fun to the gameplay and nuance
because there's just a lot of diferent optons for
people to take things in space and that's kind of
part of the things we're really excited about for
what we're doing with Star Citzen.
Episode 1
4
4
Whiplash: Is the plan to just make [dogfghting]
and arena-style shoot-em-up, or will there be some
more specifc scenarios to test?
Ok, so the answer on that is: on the very frst iteratons of dogfghtng there
will be mostly just arena style shoot-up, head-to-head or fying against some
AI. Maybe two teams, red and blue would be sort of the standard teams, but
we think we may switch that up to be even more fun than re vs blue.
Then maybe later on we'll do some scenarios, but the idea of the dogfghtng
test isn't really to deliver a fully fedged game like you would normally expect,
this is really for us to test the back end of infrastructure for multplayer, the
balance of the ships, seeing if
the fight model and everything
is fun, so it will be an iteratve
process.
The early parts of any of the
modules are obviously a lot
rougher than the fnal, polished
versions, but it's all in the efort
of making the game as good as
possible.
So I guess bear with us on that.
Episode 1
5
5
Herne: Im interested to learn
what Chris personal preference
is for his HOTAS with SC, does he
prefer pitch and roll on the stick or
pitch and yaw?
So that's a prety good queston, generally in
the past and Wing Commander it's prety much
a pitch and yaw set-up, but we're, I'm playing
around with the idea that we have g-forces on
pilots in our dogfghtng part, and obviously in
that case, just as a human being you can take
greater gravity in the vertcal than you can
eyes-out/eyes-in or in the lateral g's. So that's
why one pilot will roll and then pitch if he
wants to, I mean he could do his rudder and do
this, but he'll do that 'cause he can actually do
it quicker.
So that would probably efect whether it
would be pitch and yaw or pitch and roll. I
mean right now the default is pitch and yaw
with roll on the rudder pedals, but that may
actually change to be more accurate to a real
plane which would probably be pitch and roll
on the joystck and then yaw on the rudder
pedals.
6
Ice: Can you clarify the PvP slider, I see
a lot of threads where people believe
this efects the whole game, where
I believe it to only efect the random
encounters during auto-pilot?
Ok so the PvP slider is an input to the game's
matchmaking system to give it a hint of kind of
like who it should be matching you with.
So what happens is, when you fy around in
space, you have you know, you're in your view,
your universe view, and the server up there
is basically looking at where you are and it's
looking at everyone else and all their diferent
machines, and then basically seeing where
everyone else in the galaxy is and if it feels like
there's someone close to you or there's an AI
that's close to you, it basically would tell your
local client "Ok, this person's close to you,"
then that person would be streamed into your
instance or that AI would be streamed into
your instance.
So the PvP slider is essentally an extra
variable for the matchmaking criteria. So the
matchmaking criteria is on a whole bunch
of things. It's on things like ping, obviously
we don't want to be putng people together
where there's a huge latency. It's on whether
who's your friends, who's your enemy, who's
your people of interest. Also it would have
some level of skill ratng in there. So we'll
kind of track are you a new player or are
you super experienced. And based on that,
in most of the areas, because some areas
there won't be any, it will be whoever is
there verses PvP or not. But if you basically
said "Hey I would prefer to have more PvE
than PvP," it would give a preference to the
AI fying around rather than real player. So if
there's an AI pirate and there's a real player
pirate, it would drop the AI pirate into your
instance to fght if you were more towards
PvE than PvP.
You defntely would get other players
streamed into your space that wouldn't
be hostle, say maybe a friend of yours or
something. So you could defnitely get a
co-op kind of feeling, and that's going to be
an on-going process, but the whole idea of
it is: you should be able to fy around in the
game and if you wanted that more Privateer/
Freelancer experience that's kind of what will
happen to you.
Episode 1
6
It will just be you'll mostly see AI and then
if there's other players it will be probably
friendly players, or if you're in like certain
areas of space where there's no holds barred,
it defnitely could be an unfriendly player. But
you'll sort of know that ok, well those are the
dangerous areas. So if youre a new player and
you don't really want to be dealing with tough
other players, then you probably should avoid
those.
I would like to say one other thing, you
defnitely can have NPCs that are tougher than
any player could ever be. It's a computer that
runs it, it knows exactly where you are and it
can calculate the correct fring soluton much
beter than a player could ever do, so I think it
is a bit of a misnomer to think that NPCs aren't
necessarily as tough as real players. In some
cases, NPCs could be tougher than real players.
But essentally the slider just sort of allows you
to efect the kind of people that will stream
into your space as you're traveling across the
galaxy, and hopefully that will mean if you
want to play a more Privateer style game,
and be just by yourself, you can have that
experience. If you want to play with your
friends and co-op against AI, that can happen.
But also if you want to mix it up with other
players, that will happen too.
And you know, we'll have some other stuf.
I mean I know there's always the queston
where people are always worried that's an
exploit if you can change it dynamically,
and we're not going to let you change it
dynamically as you're fying around.
So it's kind of a setng you have as you fy
around, and as I said, there are some areas
that are kind of no-holds-barred, and those
areas will also have some really cool stuf in,
so I'm hoping at some point you'll get brave
enough and you get good enough and you'll
go to some of these areas to get this one
partcular kind of weapon that you can't get
elsewhere or salvage an alien wreck, but you
have to take some risks to get there. So it's
a sort of risk-reward basis. So I hope that
answered the queston on the PvP slider.
7
Robrto Elena: Are you willing
to redesign the cockpits (size of
displays, fonts, feld of view, etc.)
once the fnal specs of the Oculus Rift
consumer version are known if you
think that is needed to be playable or
enjoyable with the Oculus Rift?
I would say that, if the Oculus Rif works
correctly, we shouldn't have to do that, and we
would not be redesigning ships or cockpits for
one peripheral that we're going to work with.
Even if it's a peripheral that everyone is excited
about and we're excited about, I have a Rif
sitng right on my desk right now. I will say that
we're prety in-sync with the Oculus folks. We
have the HD prototypes in Austn and here in
LA, and obviously the new stuf coming out, we
get to see it in a very early stage, and I would
say that our current set up is gonna work really
well with it. You know we're focused on making
that sort of VR aspect of the game work, have
the stereoscopic all work really well. So I don't
think we'll need to redesign our assets.
We probably wouldn't, but we're prety
confdent it's gonna work well with the way
everything is shaping up as it is.
Episode 1
7
8
Ron Miel: In the dog fghting module, how will
ammunition and missiles be handled if there
Is no store or economy to reload?
Ok, so the idea with the Dogfghtng Module is that you'll start in the
hangar and in the hangar you'll be able to load up the holotable and then
you'll basically use that to decide what your loadout is on your ships,
what ammuniton you've got, etc. and then you get into the cockpit of
your ship and you fre it up, and then the outside of the cockpit sort of
turns into the holodeck and now you're in space and then you fght there.
But when you're fying in the Dogfght Module actually out in space,
you can't reload your missiles or anything like that, but between batles
you'll be back in your hangar and you can adjust your loadout.
That's kind of the fcton, the fcton is you climb into your cockpit and
it goes into simulaton mode. But that allows us to leverage the stuf
we already have in the hangar because the whole point of this is to
build our games system so we don't want to do custom stuf just for a
module, we want to do it the way we'll do in the fnal game.
9
Naktabar: But what module do you plan next
(after dogfghting)? Care to share what youre planning?
I'm guessing Naktabar's frst language isn't English, but that's
cool 'cause we have lots of great supporters from around the world.
So the module we're planning to do right afer dogfghtng is the Planet-
Side Module and that one is the module that's more focused on down
on the planet-side environment, it's going into say a space bar or into
the shops to buy and sell items and goods or, you know, sometmes we
refer to it as the social module because we're going to allow, that's one
of the modules we're focusing on to let other players be in the shared
space and test our MMO backend and maybe interact with other
players on a sort of avatar social basis.
So that will be the next module that we do afer the Dogfghtng
Module.
Episode 1
8
10
Bes: Is the plan to release SQ42 and
the PU at the same time, or will
one come out before the other?
Good queston, I mean from our standpoint I
think we want to give you Squadron 42, or at
least part of it, before the Persistent Universe
is "fnished" so to speak.
We're kind of toying around with how we could
do this with Squadron 42 in a way that falls into
the methodology that we're using, the sort of
development methodology. 'Cause I think giving
you the whole Squadron 42 as just an alpha
may not work as well because it's a story so it
needs to be fairly polished as far as that goes, so
one of our thoughts is to take Squadron 42 and
sort of release it episodically before the game
is fully fnished where you play the frst "X"
number of missions, that are nice and well done
and polished, and then the next "X" number of
missions a month later and so on untl you're
done with Squadron 42 which would lead you
on to the beta of the Persistent Universe.
So that's currently our thinking, it's stll in
process right now, but we'll see. But when the
game is "fnished" properly, obviously Squadron
42 and the Persistent Universe, Star Citzen,
Would all be sort of in as part of the package.
Original Post Youtube Link
Episode 1
9
1
Villaovi: When Dogfghting Module
is released, do you need to own the
ship if you want to fy it or are you
able to test all the ships which has
already made in the game
So the concept with the Dogfghtng Module
is you should be able to fy the ships that
you have in your hangar out there in the
Dogfghtng Module.
Generally the answer would be "No, you need
to own them," although I will have the caveat:
In the very early stage of the Dogfghtng
Module, we are not going to have every one
of the ships to the stage that they can actually
dogfght.
Yes you can climb in them, you can see them
in the hangar, but there's a lot of extra detail
that goes into the ships. All the diferent items,
the thrusters, the damage states, the damage
models, have to be done for the ship. And that
just takes a lot of work and efort.
So it will probably be the case where we
may only have one ship or two ships at the
beginning, and then it will increase. So the
Hornet is the one we're focusing on right now,
and obviously things like HUD change for
diferent ships and all of that stuf, so it may
be the case at the very beginning we just give
everyone, everyone can basically fy the same
ship.
We just put a temporary "test Hornet" in the
hangar and they get into that and they do the
Dogfghtng Module. But longer term, the ships
you can take to play in arena mode against
other people will be the ones you own in the
hangar.
2
Premium Kabanu: Will we be able
to transfer sub-screens from out
cockpit (say, Radar) to a second/
third monitors in our computer?
So we're defnitely really interested in second
screen support. So we're looking at being able
to do that on a tablet where you could put one
of the VDU's from your cockpit to that. We're
also, I think it would be interestng to explore
it on a multple monitor situaton. Although
when I've talked about this, to be sure, this
won't be functonal in the dogfghtng, and it's
a longer term goal for the game.
The idea would be we'd have some of that
when the game is fully done. So maybe it
would roll out as part of the dogfghtng as it
improves over tme, but not at the beginning.
But yeah, we would like to do that support, we
think it would be great.
3
Midget:
Can NPCs fy on their own
while you are still online?
So I'm not 100% sure what specifcally the
queston is.
NPCs defnitely can fy on their own.
I think the queston probably relates to if you
have some NPCs fying, working for you, what
they do.
If you're online, they're fying on your wing or
manning your ship, then yes, they're defnitely
doing your stuf and doing their functonality.
If you have logged-of, no the NPCs that are
working for you aren't of there running a
business for you. I think you need to be online
to have the NPCs you've hired to be actually
doing their stuf.
Episode 2
10
4
Obsydian: There were a couple
of threads with overwhelming
support to go with the MMO-ready
backend (and singleplayer vs AI) and
Id like to know if Chris has made a
fnal decision yet as to which way
hes going to go for the DFM?
Yeah, I mean this is a good illustraton of some
of the things that are going to crop up in the
development stage. When we get to a certain
point, we can make a choice, of
"Do we do it right, the way it's going to be in
the fnal game?" or "Do we hack something in
right now just so we can give it to people?"
My preference generally in that case is "Don't
hack it, do it right." 'Cause if you hack it, you
put it in, you do work that you're gonna have
to throw away.
We're really part of--the whole idea of the
Dogfghtng Module is to get it out there so
we can test the back-end and see how many
people we can have in one area, see how
fun it is fying the ships around, see whether
the weapons are balanced correctly. It's not
really that useful if you're throwing it out
there with the back-end which won't be your
fnal back-end.
So I think I'm leaning towards doing it the
proper way, although that potentally has
impact on when everyone gets their hands on
it. Which, I know there will be a fair number of
people upset because they just want to play it
early, which is cool, but I think, let's do it right
because the goal is to build a great game. I'm
more focused on the fnal goal than the details
leading up to that.
Things change as you go, so hopefully that
answers your queston there.
5
Princjeps Trajan: What is the
diferent between TR1, TR2, TR3,
etc. and is there much diferent
between their levels?
TR1, TR2, TR3, and so on is what we're calling
the "Thruster Ratng."
The thruster ratng is really a power-band.
Not all TR1's are the same. Ones by a beter
manufacturer, ones that are overclocked, ones
that are slightly higher grade couldprobably put
out more thrust than say a cheap, low-end TR1.
But you are prety much guaranteed that a TR2
will be at a higher "band" than the TR1. So if
you step up to a TR2, even the low end of that
will put out more than the highest end TR1.
Also when you go from TR1 to TR2 to TR3,
don't assume that it's a linear progression.
Especially on some of the later
thruster ratngs, those can be
geometric. So when you're
moving up to the capital ship
sizes, a TR6 could be double what
a TR5 is for instance.
So you should think of TR1, TR2,
TR3 more like a car engine where
you have a V8, a V6, a V4, or a
V12. Obviously the ones with more cylinders
probably put out more power. They can easily
put out more power than a 4-cylinder, but
a 4-cylinder can stll be fairly powerful and
obviously there is a lot of variety in the power
4-cylinder engines can put out.
That's kind of the idea with thruster ratngs. A
TR1 represents a band of thrusters or a certain
level, TR2 is a step up, and TR3 is beyond that.
Episode 2
11
6
Dread Pilot Pete: How close will the
fight and combat model that we
get in December be to the intended
fnished product? Will the envelope
of what we can do be basically set
in stone or more of a rough frst
version that will be getting tons of
refnement and tweaks to the fight
model as we go?
Ok, so this kind of goes back to the queston
I answered from Obsydian, but the whole
point of the Dogfghtng Module is to get it out
there, to test a whole bunch of things.
Our back-end system, whether the fight
control model is fun, whether the weapons
are balanced correctly, whether it's too
overwhelming for our system design and we
need it smaller. So as part of that, yes, nothing
is going to be fully set in stone. It's going to be
our best frst guess at what we think is fun and
we want to refne it from there. If something
is really broken we are obviously going to fx it,
hopefully stuf won't be too broken.
But I would like everyone out there to realize
that the frst Dogfghtng Module that they get
is not it. It's not going to have all the features,
it's not going to have all the functonality. It's
going to have a limited amount of features and
functonality, then it's going to grow over the
next year while we're working on the game. So
by the tme the game's fnished, the dogfghtng
will have been fnished and honed. We're just
sharing the process really early with all you out
there in the community to make a beter game.
So in that case, as I was answering to Obsydian,
that also means the schedule for it may not
be an exact science because there's not much
point in testng something if we feel like "Ok,
we're not ready to test the multplayer now,"
because we want to put it on the proper
system instead of a hacked-in system. So we'll
give it to you all later to test that bit.
7
Beer4TheBeerGod: What would you
say to backers who are concerned that
theres no point in getting ships like
the Caterpillar to Retaliator because
the Constellation looks like it will be
the best ship to have?
I would say that that's silly because I don't think
there is a best ship in the game. They're all going
to have diferent pros and cons. We're deliberately
designing things so there is no "best" ship.
So something like the Caterpillar for instance, if
you're more into trying to board a bigger ship to
take them over, a Caterpillar is defnitely beter for
that than a Constellaton. But also, all the diferent
ships are going to have diferent pros and cons.
So for instance, bigger ships are cool because you
can have multple people on them, you can have
turrets, walk around, but bigger ships, just like
in real life, won't be able to turn as fast or be as
maneuverable as a smaller ships will be.
There isn't really a best for anything.
There may be a best for this partcular role, but I
think that's the beauty of Star Citzen. There are
lots of diferent roles, lots of diferent things you
can do. We're very focused on having diferent
roles and functons for the ships, so there will be
diferent kinds of play styles all based on what
you want to do. So that's what I'm most looking
forward to in the game:
To have this whole variety of ships and somebody
may just want to be fying single seater ships and
focusing on dogfghtng, people may want to be
multplayer, co-op, bigger ships doing exploraton,
or trading runs, or whatever. I think there is going
to be a vast amount of play and it will be a lot of
fun for everyone.
Episode 2
12
8
TheTrueLost: How entering dogfght
will be handled? Will you start your
ship in your hangar in an arena or
spawn magically in space?
Ok, so I kind of answered this on a previous
subscriber queston in last week's show.
Essentally you start in your hangar, the
entrance point to the game is your hangar at
the moment, and you'll be able to adjust your
load-out on the holotable. Then you climb
into the cockpit of your ship and then you
fre it up. As you fre it up you basically are
entering the dogfght mode so the hangar,
holodeck style, disappears, and then you're in
space, but it's really sort of a holodeck version
of space.
That's how you fy there, when you fnish it,
you come back into your hangar.
So hopefully that answered that queston well.
9
Dutch: How detailed will damage
modelling be? Will the angle of
impact be taken into account when
calculating armor penetration, with
sloped armor having a chance to
defect shots?
So damage modeling will be very detailed.
That's actually one of the issues with getng
everything ready for the dogfght. There's a
huge amount of assets that have to be built,
like the ships you'e seen, all the diferent pieces
have to have multple damaged parts, various
levels of damage, a whole bunch of really cool
graphical stuf that we're going to do for that,
and we're modeling it prety detailed too.
So there will defnitely be the angle of
incidence of a projectle hitng armor and
ship will count in terms of the damage, the
penetraton ability, all that. My goal is to have
the actual base level of the game actually
physically detailed to a level I haven't done in
one ofmy past games and then just have the
high-end ship control stuf make it easier to fy
around in and use, but underneath it all, it's all
physically correctly modeled. So we're actually
modeling internal system damage.
So if you have a targetng computer, avionics,
system, life support, inside your ship, we
actually have a place physically for it and it
has its own geometry and render geometry.
If a projectle goes through the shield then
penetrates through the armor, we actually
trace that projectle and if it hits that system
in the physical space, then the system takes
damage and potentally gets damaged.
So we're actually modeling all of this in an
extremely detailed way. If you know where the
weak parts, the critcal parts of another ship
are, you should have a bit of an advantage.
Episode 2
13
10
PKirkner: What sorts of
challenges has optimizing
netcode for combat in true 3D
space with 6DoF presented? Are the issues
presented by packed loss and high latency
roughly comparable to a frst-person
shoorter, or are you expecting this game to
be more latency dependent?
Packet loss, high latency.
I mean high latency obviously efects any stuf,
and packet loss, we defnitely will be going
back and forth with a lot of data because the
ships are prety heavy data-wise, they have
lots of moving parts. So that potentally could
be an issue, but that's sort of the stuf we
want to be working on and testng out.
That's the whole part of the Dogfghtng
Module and also why we want to have the
fnal MMO back-end, at least a rudimentary
version of it, working for the dogfghtng.
There are advantages to the space sim part
of Star Citzen or Squadron 42 in terms of
multplayer net-code compared to an on-foot
frst person shooter.
Now of course we do have an on-foot frst
person secton, so that will have the same
problems that you have in Call of Duty or
something. But basically when you fy a ship,
you can't--the problem with a frst person
shooter is I can be here and then I can step
here then step here.
So basically the movements of your avatar can
be fairly random and not very easy to predict.
Whereas in a ship you can't do that, you've got
to turn. So essentally in the spaceship scenario
you can actually do a much beter job of
predictng where the player's ship is going to be.
Ok, hopefully that answers that queston.
Original Post Youtube Link
Episode 2
14
1
Issac Clarke:
Will the Dogfghting Module also
serve as a good benchmarking tool
for our current PC hardware? Id
like it if it were a reasonable way to
determine whether some upgrades
will be necessary before the game
goes live.
Yes, I think it will be a great benchmarking tool.
So you have to remember that the game
today is gonna be a lot less optmized than
the fnal game will be because right now
we focus on some of the core functonality
and features and not so much on the
optmizaton.
Although we are doing some R&D into
something that we think will give us a big
performance gain, merge instancing, a bunch
of our meshes, and then also we're gonna be
supportng Mantle which will really help with
the draw call count and efciency that you get
from Direct X.
So I would basically say if you can run the
hangar really well with some big ships and
all the rest of the stuf and the Dogfghtng
Module really well, then you probably will be
able to run the fnal game prety well.
Now I defnitely would like Star Citzen to be
one of those games that gets bench-marked
in all those PC GPU tests, so that is one of our
goals.
I think some people are already doing it, so
there you go.
2
Baron Brewzer: In the Dogfghting
Module, will we be able to have our
friends join us on our bigger ships?
It would be great to test out crew
cohesion.
So yes, I totally agree, I defnitely would, we're
defnitely going to let you. When we have big
ships in the dogfghtng alpha, your friends will
join and that will do the whole part of the co-
operatve stuf.
In the very beginning, the very frst release
of the Dogfghtng Module we won't have
the bigger ships. Mainly because most of
them haven't been built yet, I mean the
Constellaton is the biggest one right now.
So the ships themselves in the dogfghtng,
there's a lot more assets that have to be built
besides what you've seen in the hangar. So
there's a vast amount of damage modeling
and states, there's equipment that goes on the
ships, shield meshes, so there's a huge amount
of assets that are built. So what's going to be
constraining us in the Dogfghtng Module is
how fast we can get the assets done.
So the plan is in the beginning that you start
in single seated dogfghtng stuf, the Hornet,
maybe a couple of the other ones like the 300i
and the Aurora, and then as the assets come
on line, as we fnish of all the damage pieces,
all the rest of the stuf, then we'd fold them in.
So I wouldn't expect the bigger ships to be
in the Dogfghtng Module, it won't be in the
frst release and may not be in the second,
but probably some tme around mid-next-year
we'd hopefully be having batles where you'd
have a bunch of people on a Constellaton or
an Idris against a bunch of people fying other
kinds of ships.
Yeah, defnitely. That's a big draw, that's the
thing for me that I'm most excited about doing.
Playing this game where I can run around and
man a turret inside a gun when someone else is
doing a strafng pass in their fghter.
So I'm working on that. That will be in as soon
as humanly possible, let me put it that way.
Episode 3
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3
Enerzeal: When eventually (if you have not already planned
to do) you guys implement your own server code and
backbone as it were. Will we be seeing a chat channel
early on between the Dogfghting Module and the hangar?
You know, one of the reasons why I made the decision to push back
on the Dogfghtng Module is I wanted to really have the Dogfghtng
Module be fully integrated with the back-end that would also
ultmately fully integrate with the hangar and allow for things like chat
and all the rest of the stuf. I just feel like that's a much beter test of
the ultmate game situaton we need all this code in, and we've actually
been working prety hard on that and we've actually made some really
great progress. We're ahead of where we thought we would be, which
is really good news.
I kind of want it plugged in because it's the glue, the persistence, that
goes between the Dogfghtng Module and the Hangar Module, and the
future things like planet-side and the Boarding Modules, and that also
moves in with chat and like we talked about with the organizatons,
how those are getng set up. The chat channels we even have on the
website, player chat crosses into the game. So we'll defnitely have the
chat channel between dogfghtng and the hangar.
That's why I made the delay.
The idea is you'll start in the hangar and then you'll equip your ship,
and you can even chat with friends and organizatons in the hangar, say
"Hey all, let's get into a batle."
Then you can equip your ship, jump into your ship, fre up the hangar,
and go to the matchmaking screen, which is basically a HUD element
that you'd be seeing in your ship going in to simulaton mode,
and you'd have chat available to your friends list and all the rest would
go in there.
That was one of the major reasons why I just felt like it was beter to do
it right, take the tme and have the proper system in there rather than
put a mid-way soluton in, which would be using the existng CryEngine
back-end tech which we would then have to throw away.
Ok, so I hope that answers that queston.
Episode 3
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4
Torvic: In the Dogfghting Module how big will the space be where we will dogfght and will there be empty space or will there
be some nice backgrounds like planets, asteroids, nebula, etc.?
Ok, so the dogfght map, the base one that we've built, is 20 cubic kilometers. So it's a fairly decent space to dogfght around in. If you go
beyond the boundaries it will be sort of like Batlefeld.
It will be full of some cool stuf. So we're going to put an asteroid belt in, a nebula, some background planets, some nice background art. It will be
a fun level to dogfght in.
Episode 3
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5
Cryptkeeper: Is the Dogfghting
Module going to include more
settings to tweak so even some
of us who are saving money to
upgrade our systems can play at a
playable 30ish FPS?
So I'm not so sure the inital release of the
dogfghtng will have a lot more performance
tweaks and setngs than the hangar stuf has.
We'll probably have a simple level of LOD's in
for the Hornet and a couple of the other ships
that will launch with the Dogfghtng, and you
can always reduce your resoluton.
But obviously as I said a litle earlier on in the
questons, the optmizaton stages tends to
happen towards the back end of the project. At
the very beginning of dogfghtng it's probably
not going to be very optmized and as tme
goes on it will get beter.
You can probably drop the resoluton down or
the quality level down. CryEngine actually runs
prety well if you don't run it in Ultra setngs
on some ridiculous resoluton. So hopefully
that will work for you.
6
Shadow Knight: Will there be a
fight tutorial (very basic) with the
dogfghting module?
That's a good queston. A lot of people around
here really hate the tutorials. I know I was just
playing around with the Elite Dangerous alpha
and it had a tutorial and I was kind of feeling,
"No, I just want to be shootng other ships that
shoot back at me."
So I don't know. If we do a tutorial I guess that
maybe we would do a tutorial with an AI ship
or something that you could fght against. But
we haven't specifcally designed that yet, so
that's stll to be determined.
7
Quigon-Scotch: Will we see greater
access to weapons in preparation
for the Dogfghting Module? Will
we have access to diferent missiles,
more guns and powerplants and
engines? Will I fnally get the cargo
box for my Aurora?
So defnitely. As the Dogfghtng Module
rolls out and along the way we are going to
be increasing the amount of weapons and
munitons, etc. available to you. And items, like
shields, thrusters, all the rest of the stuf.
Because that's the whole point, it's to test out
all these items, to do balance and all the rest of
the stuf. We'll probably give you some sort of
test money so people can buy something, try it
for a day or two, then afer they test it we take
it back.
So yes, the answer there is there will be a
greater access and we'll be bringing them
online as the assets are getng built
Then on the "Will I fnally get the cargo box for
my Aurora," I think if your Aurora is meant to
have a cargo box it should already have it in the
hangar. If not, then maybe that's a bug, so I'll
have to check on that. I guess it would depend
on what kind of Aurora you have and what the
base stats say you've got. But it should actually
be already on it in the hangar.
Episode 3
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8
Christoper Mallec:
In the Dogfghting Module, how
will you balance ships by class/size?
Will there be limits on the number
of Hornets? Freelancers? Etc? I cant
see a round of dogfghting with 8
Constellations against 8 Hornets
being fair :)
Well let's see, I think I would be interested to
see eight Constellatons against eight Hornets
'cause I'm not so sure it will be quite as one-
sided as you think. They both have diferent
pros and cons, so depending on how you're
fghtng and what you're doing, it may be a
closer fght than you think.
But we're going to have various categories in
the matchmaking. We've been playing with
various matchmaking set-ups.
One of them is you assign points to ships, so
an Aurora would be something like one point,
but a Constellaton could be fve points. Don't
quote me on these points because this is just
for illustraton purposes. Then each team gets
to have 30 points or something like that. So
you can make the trade of between lots of
litle ships or a fewer smaller-bigger ships.
Then we'll probably also have matchmaking
that just Hornet v Hornet or Aurora v Aurora.
So we'll have various optons that you'll be
able to choose from the matchmaking system
in the Dogfghtng Module.
9
Feylan: I was wondering whether
the Dogfghting Module will be
released with a fnalized fight
model. Are the physics and fight
system more or less complete, or
will they be tuned as part of the
alpha process? If it is going to be
tuned, what sort of feedback would
be useful to the team?
So the fight model's not going to be fnalized.
First of all we're going to have a few diferent
kinds of fight models.
The whole point of the dogfghtng alpha is
to get it out there so everyone plays it and
gives us good feedback. Is it fun, does it feel
good, does it feel cool or realistc, or whatever
the feedback would be. So that's a big part
of it, and the stuf where we'd say "that's a
good point" we would defnitely work on. So
we kind of want to get it out there so we get
a good idea of what people feel. So we will
defnitely tune it.
The feedback will probably be along the lines
of some of the feedback you would expect on
a subjectve basis.
It's not really a bug issue, it's more I like this,
I don't like this, I think this ship's too tough, I
think this weapon's too weak, etc. That would
probably be in some kind of forum set-up
that we would have that we haven't built and
designed yet.
10
Voyager_NL: Since dogfghting is
a testing module, what will you
have built into the DF Module to
retrieve data? Will you only have
logging to fle which, in case of
problems, we have to send to you?
Can it be turned on/of? Or do you
also have an automated system
to gather statistics or other info
that is directly sent to you (with
or without us knowing)? Or have
you thought up and other way of
monitoring the test?
You mean kind of like the NSA. You know, one of
the big reasons why I decided I wanted to push
back the dogfghtng is because I really wanted a
proper test of the back-end of the system. That
means we're running the servers, it's not a peer-
to-peer sort of multplayer typical kind of set-up
that a lot of the frst person shooter stuf could
have. So the servers are our servers basically. So
we get to see what's happening in every batle
and we get to track metrics of this ship beats
that ship while this weapon is stronger or too
weak and all the rest of the stuf.
So we'll have access to prety much all the batle
data because essentally the servers are run by us.
Everyone else is just running a client connected
to it and simulatng local stuf that doesn't efect
the master gameplay. But if you're playing against
other people we have to be server authoritatve.
I think that's how we would retrieve the data,
and it's far less innocuous than some other
people have been retrieving data recently.
Original Post Youtube Link
Episode 3
19
1
Vigilance: I was wondering when you call for an emergency landing on the carrier, will emergency nets come up to catch the ship
to prevent it from causing more damage inside the carrier? If the ship crashes on the fight deck will there be a bulldozer that
will push it of the deck and have an emergency crew to put out the fre?
I think someone has been watching the Wing Commander movie, which is kind of cool.
I don't know about emergency nets, I mean we actually haven't even thought about this it. It will probably be more something that we would
have working in Squadron 42 because there would defnitely be cases where this sort of thing would be happening there, but I defnitely think
we'll probably have some level of emergency landings and rescue crew and all the rest of it.
So I don't know whether there will necessarily be nets, but we will defnitely have that whole sense of bringing in your damaged ship. Hopefully
you can bring it down and people will come and beat out the fames and any burning parts of your ship.
Episode 4
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2
Alphastrike: Will there be
server wipes during alpha/
beta? Im very much looking
forward to helping fush
out bugs during alpha/beta
but wondering if any of our
work will carry over into the
PU if there will be a clean
wipe before release?
That's a good queston. We don't really
have a specifc stance on this at the
moment.
My guess is probably we would reset
everybody when the game goes
properly live. It's sort of hard to say
because I think when we go into like
beta for the actual game that the
backers will have, but not for the full
public yet, we probably wouldn't wipe
that late stage stuf. But certainly
some of the early stuf like dogfghtng
module, planet-side module all that.
You'll defnitely be able to earn
some money from winning some
fghts and doing stuf, and that will
be money that will allow you to buy
some weapons, but it will be for that
dogfghtng test area. It won't be
money that will carry through to the
persistent universe.
So I guess the answer is there's going
to be a combinaton of this, so there
will be wipes of some of the stuf but
not all of the stuf. As you get close to
the fnal release, maybe some of the
stuf you've done will carry over.
3
anethema: What order are we looking at seeing the ship models in-game? Cutlass was in
the latest Jump Point, so will that be next? Avenger looked almost done in the video, so
that next? Retaliator is a huge favorite on the site so maybe focus there?
That's quite a lot of questons and suggestons there.
So yeah, the Cutlass is actually going to be the next ship that everyone is actually going to see in their
hangar. The ship that we've actually been working on the longest outside of that is actually the Idris
Corvete. But it's a really huge ship and we've been going through a litle bit of a rearrange/redesign on
the interior side to be able to ft the number of ships we want to ft on the hangar deck.
I'm not quite sure what then next one is. We're doing the variants on the Freelancer and we're also going
to be doing some stuf on the Caterpillar and stuf like that. So I guess it will be a horse race between
those, we'll see what happens.
Episode 4
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4
Tsunami Juarai: Can you tell us what exactly
exploration entails and what plotting a jump point
will be like?
What exactly exploraton entails; that's a lot. That's like how long
is a piece of rope.
So there's a lot to exploraton. It's not just going to be looking for
an undiscovered jump point, plotng the jump point, and going to
the new system on the other side.
There's going to be a lot of mapping that will happen so even
in systems that are known not all of the space is mapped. So
basically there will be certain areas on the trade lanes and the
general areas that you pass that will have nav-points on them and
be mapped to a certain extent, but the vast amount of it won't
be mapped. So maybe you fnd an asteroid feld that isn't on the
map, maybe that asteroid feld has some really good minerals, or
maybe there's a wreck.
So we're going to try and add things to discover even in known
space. So we're really trying to up the amount of things that you
can do if you're an explorer where it's not just about jump points
or fnding a new system even though that's prety cool. But
obviously we can't do everything all at once at the beginning so
that's all stuf in the content we'll build to.
Then the other thing I'll say is that we're doing a lot of work in
R&D on procedural content generaton. I know a lot of people
think "Oh all of Star Citzen is completely scripted," or designed
and crafed, and yes it has a huge amount of stuf like Terra and
Earth where prety much everything will be hand crafed. But
to build the universe on this scale we need to balance some
procedural stuf as well as crafed stuf, which is the way I think is
actually the best way to build a big expansive universe.
It's the same way that we're approaching the gameplay. You can't
script every mission so we're actually building it in such a way that
the universe itself dynamically runs itself and the player interactons
generate a lot of the missions and the intrigue and the acton.
So I didn't answer what will plotng a jump be like.
Episode 4
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Episode 4
23
Well it should be a lot of fun and very scary
and very risky. A jump point is sort of a rip
in the space-tme contnuum that takes you
almost instantly between two points many
light years from each other.
So the concept with it is to have, I don't know
whether it's the space-tme fabric as a big
breaker if you want to think of it in surfng
terms, you want to surf in and hit exactly the
right lines or else you're going to go of track
and potentally get ripped apart or spat out in
some random part of the universe.
Obviously this will require a combinaton of
some skill and some specifc equipment, but
once you've gone through and you've recorded
your jump, you can then turn around and sell
that to the government or share it with your
friends, and then obviously you can name the
jump point or the system afer yourself. It
should be prety cool. It should be like trying to
ride the various big waves of the north shore
of Hawaii, but with cool space efects.
5
Kagey: I was wondering about
the $5 million stretch goal tablet
companion application. What
tablet platform are you looking to
support? iOS, Android, other?
So we haven't really though it out. I think by
default we would want to support both iOS
and Android.
Depending on the applicaton we may use
something like Unity or something for the
tablet side or something else. I'm not quite
sure about that, but probably the likelihood is
support for iOS and Android.
6
Akodo: In the early Wing
Commander games when we lost a
wingman there was a short funeral
sequence. Will there be something
similar when it happens during
SQ42.
Yes, absolutely there will be.
That was one of the best parts of the original
Wing Commander and we sort of took it with
Wing 2 had it in Wing 3, I think we had it in
Wing 4. So we'll defnitely have the funeral
sequence. We couldn't have a Squadron 42
without it.
7
Revan67: Will organizations upon
discovering new systems be able to
colonize planets, build stations,
put up defenses?
That's a great queston, that's actually
something that we, long term, want to do. I'm
not so sure whether you'll be able to do the
fullest of that on the inital release.
Longer term is to do it fully, but shorter term
we'll have some mechanics in there that
will allow planets themselves or outposts
themselves to evolve during the game based
on player acton and what's happening in
the universe. Which I think will be really cool
and will fold into my goal of a living breathing
universe.
We're already looking at organizatons,
groups of players, being able to buy and build
up some industry on various planets. So a
certain aspect of that will be there, but to
have completely new planets that you'll fully
colonize and do all the rest of the stuf, that
is defnitely a goal, we are defnitely working
towards that.
That is in the feature set we want to promise,
but it probably won't be on the inital release
just 'cause it's got a lot of stuf to do with it.
But again, that's along the lines of some of the
procedural R&D that we're doing.
Episode 4
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8
Alph@Justice: Will there be short
range voice communication to hail
other unknown vessels or call for help?
Yes, absolutely yes. So you should be able to
hail nearby vessels even if they're not on your
friends list, and you should be able to put out a
global distress call "Help me I'm under atack" or
that kind of thing. So I guess the answer is yes.
9
BigDamnHeroes: How is the one
server setup going to work with
servers being hosted in various
parts of the globe? If Im in a guild
with someone from say, Australia,
how wouldwe get grouped together
if Im playing on a US server and
theyre playing on the Australian
hosted one?
The thing to remember in our server set up
is that we have one central server that is
basically the general tasking server, but the
actual servers that would handle the local
instance informaton when you're fying
in space dogfghtng against someone or
fguring out when you're on a planet what
the other people are doing right next to
you, they're actually going to be mostly
distributed around the world. So that's where
the local instance servers spin up, and what
happens is the master server is really the
match making server.
It's sort of going "Ok you and you, I'm putng
you together in the same instance server," and
it has a whole set of criteria when it does that
matchmaking. So a large part of it is the friends
list so it will try to match you with your friends,
and also it will do things like, we'll try and have,
if you want to do PvP put maybe some of your
enemies in there and people of similar skill
levels. This is by the way just to stress in the
case that you're in an area that there are more
people than can ft in any one instance.
If there's enough people just for one instance,
everyone will be in the same instance. With
a few exceptons. Like if someone is in a safe
area and they don't want PvP, and someone
just wants PvP, then maybe there would be
two instances, one for the PvP, one without
the PvP. But generally what happens is, there's
a whole sort of matchmaking criteria and it's
based on ping, friends list, associates, persons
of interest, enemies, skill level, and it uses that
criteria to match you up dynamically as you
move around. As you fy around space, you go
from area to area, it's matching you up and
putng you in diferent instances and it's doing
exactly the same down on the planet.
So what would happen if someone is in
America and Australia is, depending on what
you tell the game, it probably would not opt
to put you together if the ping was high, but
you certainly could say "Hey you know what,
I want to hang out with my friends no mater
what, even if my pin is bad," and in that case
the friend relatonship would trump the ping in
terms of the matchmaking criteria.
So generally we would default to trying to keep
you fying with people at low pings, but if you
specifcally say "I want to be with this person"
we'll make an excepton for you. So I hope that
answers you queston BigDamnHeroes.
10
Funky Schnitzel: Id like to know
about landing on planets in the
really large ships. We already
know that ships will land on
planets Freelancer style, but
what about some of the truly
huge player-fyable ships such as
destroyers or battlecruisers?
Will these remain in orbit (crewed
by our friends/AI crew) while we
take a shuttle to the surface?
Or will owners of these ships have
to be content only docking at
space stations?
Ok, well that's a good queston. We're
defnitely not going to let you fy the really big
ships down onto the planets.
So probably the Destroyer and up will not be
able to go down. Although, we don't know,
maybe on the Destroyer, but probably not.
Kind of what you'll have to do is you'll either
have to dock with a local space port and take a
shutle down to the planet.
We'll probably have those on some of the
bigger, busy planets, so I could see it on
Earth and Terra, or just take a shuttle down,
your ship's in orbit and you just take a
shuttle down. So I hope that answers that
question.
Original Post Youtube Link
Episode 4
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1
Funk Trooper: Hey Chris, if our frst Character plays through Squadron 42 and then later dies in the Persistent Universe,
does the benefactor automatically have citizenship, or would there be the option for that character to enlist and you could
replay Squadron 42 if youd like to?
So thats actually a prety good queston. I havent really thought of that in terms of if youre say parents or relatve has citzenship, do you get
citzen ship too in the case of your character dies and you move on?
So I guess I would have to think about that. I would think that we would defnitely give, if citzenship does not automatcally transfer, which it may
not do, we would defnitely give you opportunites to regain citzenship so military service would be one of the or various other things you could
do, but I dont have a fully formed answer for you on that one, but thats why this process is great. Bring up issues that we need to resolve and its
beter to resolve them now than later.
Episode 5
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2
Tsubaki: Dear Chris, theres a rumor foating around general chat
that once you fy a ship in the Dogfghting module that you own
you can no longer melt that ship. Is that true? Or does that only
apply once the package or ship is applied to a character in the
persistent universe?
So we havent made a decision on that.
Defnitely once the game is live and the Persistent Universe is live and you
take your ship and apply it to a Persistent Universe character, yes, you will not
be able to melt it, you will not be able to trade it a back, as youre playing the
game and using the ship.
My sort of inital response right now is on the dogfghtng module, well
probably give you a pass and let you fy around and have some fun and
potentally melt your ship.
Im not promising it just yet cause I wouldnt want people to abuse that, but
I think it would be a sort of opportunity for people to try out things that they
like, and decide what they really want to play with. But defnitely, once the
persistent universe happens, once you apply the package to a real in game
character and the in game character enters the world, you wont just
arbitrarily melt it and change it around.
Episode 5
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3
TotkenKopf.: How will contracts work between
organizations and individuals? Will there be a system in
place within the game, or organization module, that will
allow organizations or individuals to negotiate contracts,
insure cargo or assets involved, and fnalize payout?
So well defnitely have a system to be able to handle this kind of thing.
We may even have a system where you can put money in escrow untl a
job is performed. Maybe someone administers that for a fee.
Also were going to have a ratng system. I think weve mentoned this
before, but in America there is this service called Uber where you can
hire cars to take you places, and both the person that hires the car and
the driver of the car rate the other person.
So when you are looking at a car nearby, you can see what that drivers
ratng is and the driver can also see what your ratng is. So you obviously
dont want to go with someone that only has a one star ratng, you want
to go with someone who has a four or a fve star ratng, and I think that
in that case we would defnitely have both partes in some contract.
When you hire someone like an employer hires someone to run a
mission, both the employer and the person running the mission can
rate each other so you can sort of see, ok, this is a transport pilot and
hes got a 4.5 star ratng out of 5, hes prety good, hes defnitely worth
paying a premium when this guys got a 3 star ratng over here.
So well have a bit of that sort of self-regulatng objectve ratngs, and
also maybe some systems like escrow and a role that someone can take
as an arbitrator for a fee, to arbitrate disputes, I think well have system
that are fairly similar to whats in the real world to make that kind of
stuf work well.
4
Valerian: Will you be able to hail NPC ships and threaten
them to drop their cargo on the of chance it will save their
ship? If so, will there be a randomly generated personality
for NPCs? Some that fght, fee to the nearest authority, or
cowards that will drop their cargo and run?
Yeah, the short answer is yes, absolutely.
I mean my goal actually is for the NPCs in the game to sort of feel and
appear much like real people so in some ways I almost sort of feel like untl
you get up close I kind of dont want the players to really even know that
its an NPC or a player and therefore the NPCs, were already designing
a bunch of behavior for them and part of that plan is to have human like
responses like to preserve their own lives and that kind of stuf so I would
defnitely say that you will be able to say Give us your cargo or pay the
consequences and some people will fght you and some people will just
surrender their cargo and get out.
Episode 5
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5
Holo-san Voidrax: Will all ships have artifcial gravity?
If so, how does that afect the g-force system you spoke
about for dogfghting?
So not all ships will have artfcial gravity, most of the bigger ones
where you walk around probably will have artfcial gravity.
Im sort of playing with the idea that maybe on some ones you would
just have more magnetc boots because we are actually modeling for
our frst person combat artfcial gravity and 0g combat so were going to
have all those optons and one of the things that potentally you could be
something that would be fun would be to disrupt borders would be to
disable your artfcial gravity and all this sudden youre in zero g.
How it afects g-forces, well I mean really not so much. You know, pilots fy
around here on earth and theyre experiencing the gravity of earth, yet they
stll deal with gs as they pull tght turns, and the same would defnitely
be true in space if you have artfcial gravity in your ship and you start to
really pull a really hard right turn you will, since youre not statcally bound
to the object thats turning right, there will be an equal and opposite force
on you and youll be getng pushed, and so youll probably stll have some
level, I mean youll stll have obviously g forces even when theres artfcial
gravity, but generally the other thing to I think remember is the bigger
ships that you would more likely have the artfcial gravity.
So for instance the Hornet doesnt really have artfcial gravity cause
youre strapped in, but the bigger ships, you probably wont be able to
pull as hard of maneuvers as you would necessarily in say some of the
smaller ships, which is again part of the trade-of/balance between big
ships small ships.
Big ships have more armor, more weapons, but then again they cant
move quite as quickly and all the rest of the stuf, so I hope that
answers your queston.
Episode 5
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6
Xig: Will we ever be able to play as the other alien races?
If so, will we have an expansion pack of sorts similar to
squadron 42 but with an alien story line?
So youll defnitely down the road be able to play as one of the other
alien races that will be a sort of longer term expanding in the persistent
universe just right now in terms of generatng content and assets,
weve already got a crazy amount of stuf to do.
Theres a whole bunch of people out there who think weve got too
much to do already. So that wont be beginning, but that is defnitely
a long term plan because I would really want to see that and I think it
would be fun to play as a Tevarin or a Xian or a Banu, and if we do that
we probably would also create a companion single player experience
like Squadron 42 but for the race.
So I think yes, we will have that.
Episode 5
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7
Phoenix9151: Will the Next Great Starship be available as
a pledge ship I cant wait to see what some of these teams
come up with and maybe even buy it if I like it. If the ship
fts, fy it.
So defnitely the Next Great Starship ship will be available to everyone
out there and be available in the Persistent Universe so yes, the answer
is yes. I think were sort of debatng, but were probably going to let you
guys sort of choose what kind of ship is going to be so that will be kind
of fun for you.
8
Commander Pika Pi: May we disable our weapons systems
in order to meet the energy requirements of a high
capacity shield? In turn, if shields do go down, can we
forward power back to the weapons systems on the fy?
So yes, the answer is absolutely yes on that.
Thats part of the core design so that youre able to do a huge amount
of energy management. You know divertng energy from powerplant to
your engine thrusters, to your shields, to your weapons, and even inside
you shields, depending on the shield set up you have.
Youll probably be able to divert power between the diferent segments
of the shield as well and even between the diferent weapons.
So yes is the answer there.
Episode 5
31
9
Jasticus: Will we be able to buy
parts of ships as well so that we
can build our own ships from
them? Specifcally the non-human
ships that we cant buy from the
storefronts and have had no luck
capturing in the wild?
Thats an interestng queston. I mean so really
the way the ships work is that you sort of buy
a hull and then you can customize and add
diferent items and equipment to it, but were
not really set up to buy a rear wing and then a
fender from a diferent ship and put them all
together so they make some hybrid ship.
So Im not sure if well be able to build ships from
parts, not at the beginning we defnitely wont
be able to build ships from parts, who knows
down the road. But you certainly will be able to
buy diferent equipment and items and add them
to your ship and some potentally could be an
alien item that you could have to have adapted
to work on your ship. So maybe sort of a small
combinaton of this, but not to the extent that
you can build a ship wholly out of just junk parts.
10
ArbitrarySketch: What kind of
interactions can players have
with non-hostile NPC ships? Can
we request repair, refuel, and
resupply assistance from a passing
carrier, trade goods with merchant
ships, things of that nature?
So yes, the answer is absolutely yes.
Those are all things that we want to do. As I said
a litle earlier in this secton that one of my goals
is to make the NPC behavior be prety human
like and they behave and do the same jobs and
same actons as players will do and also obscure
the fact that it is an NPC from a real player, at
least at a distance from people so it just feels like
its a living breathing world thats populated and
youll run into people and hey some may be AI
controlled and some may be player controlled.
If we do our job right, maybe you wont
even realize that a player is playing his ship,
you think its an AI and vice versa, so theyll
defnitely be able to help you out, theyll refuel
you, theyll do all those kind of things theyre
all sorts of things that were planning for.
Original Post Youtube Link
Episode 5
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1
Omricon: With the new Youtube
copyright issue with companies
redacting videos or claiming them
as their own, will you allow videos
of Star Citizens?
So the simple answer is yes. Were actually
quite excited when everyone is sharing videos
of Star Citzen. Its really cool to watch everyone
show of their hangar and how the diferent
ships look and the fun and shenanigans they
get up to. So were sort of in favor of you guys
sharing gameplay, hangar videos, whatever it
would be as far as that. So well be trying our
best to not tell Youtube to block the content.
2
Professor:
Will the insurance premium go up
the more you lose your ship?
So thats a prety good queston. We havent
fully balanced that sort of stuf yet. Weve
has discussions about obviously if someone
is constantly losing their ship or ding dumb
things like ramming into other people then
there should be a penalty because that would
happen in the real world and you dont want to
encourage bad behavior, you just dont want
to punished someone for being unlucky and
happening to get atacked. Because whether
its NPCs or players, youve stll lost your ship.
So we stll have to balance that, but I would
say that the general idea is if there is sort of a
snif of something like insurance fraud or bad
behavior, then maybe the insurance premium
would go up to dissuade you from doing things
like using your ship as a ramming weapon in
dogfghtng. But not fully decided. That will be
balance thing that well tune as we go along.
3
Mae Linn: How will we be able to
disengage from combat?
Will it always require us to have a
faster ship than our adversaries
or will there be other ways to
evade them?
Again thats a good queston, and thats a
balance thing so we havent 100% fgured out
would it always just be about out running, or
would there be other ways? Were certainly
going to allow you to control your radar
image in terms of how hot or quite you
are basically, so there potentally could be,
depending on the situaton and environment,
there defnitely could be places where you
could essentally hide behind an asteroid
feld and turn all your systems of and then
you would have almost no radar profle and
then you would go of peoples scopes and
then they could potentally pass along so
that would be one way to get out of it. And
then of course if you had a faster ship then
potentally you could get away too, and were
kind of thinking of some dynamics that would
fall into the whole ratonale behind whether
we cap velocity at the low speeds, but we
stll allow you to reach much higher speeds
when youre travelling between nav-points
in space because in those cases youre just
acceleratng in a straight line. So we havent
fully fgured all that out, but were going to
try to come up with some good ways, but also
have it a way so you cant always run away
from combat, because that wouldnt be that
much fun for a bunch of other people. So
again, a balance thing.
Episode 6
33
4
Bigbadabum: How will in game ship buying and selling work in Star Citizen? In the
good old wing commander privateer game, I had to search the verse for diferent
traders and compare the available ofers. I could imagine, in Star Citizen, it would
be the same, but with more details like negotiation prices/options, organize
transports, etc.
So defnitely in Star Citzen I kind of want the buying and selling to be immersive so you walk
into a showroom and theres actually an NPC sales guy there and hes telling you why you should
really be stepping up to this partcular model 300i spaceship and sort of make it feel like youd
be buying something in the real world. And on top of that I have some idea for negotatng price
to make it fun and also I kind of want to make the gameplay be very focused around forcing you
as a player to venture around the universe. So for instance you shouldnt be able to go to every
planet and buy exactly the same ships on every planet, so I want you to be able to go from one
corner of the galaxy because this is the place that makes the best dogfghter and the other side
of the galaxy is the place that makes the best informaton runner, so you sort of go around and
adventures around to buy diferent equipment and diferent ships, so you make the trek to go
to this one corner in the universe where the guy is the best gunsmith every and he can increase
the range of your long range ballistc weapon by 20% and so the idea would be you would
sort of fy around the galaxy and cover a lot of light years trying to make sure that you got the
best weapon or the ship you want and all the rest of the stuf so I think it will be more so than
privateer, more so than freelancer, and I think it will work quite well.
5
Malcom Kodiak Knight: Have you
given any thoughts to how in-depth
the banking/account system in the
PU will be and how it will be tied in
with the org-system?
So were stll on the early stages of the whole
banking account system but one of the points
the of the organizaton is to allow an organizaton
group of people to be able to manage join
fnances so youll be able to charge the members
of your guild or organizaton membership fees,
youll be able to have a pooled account that
you could buy things or buy real-estate or do
stuf that would be able to be shared by the
organizaton. So I would think that we would
probably try to push the banking account system
to be fairly sophistcated to be not too diferent
from what you get in the real world. I dont
know if were going to have the stock market
to the extent you would have the stock market
in the real world, but we would probably have
something that would be fairly similar as well.
Episode 6
34
6
daDuke Fische: Will there be a way to improve efciencies
with equipment, jobs, tasks, and general actions within
the game? In essence, will there be a leveling-up system
where we can improve our ability to mine resources,
haggle prices, fast travel, detect other ships, etc through
man hours (experience) to unlock new equipment, areas,
and quests/missions?
So thats kind of a two part answer because this is not a traditonal
MMO, there is no leveling its not like you start at level one and youll
work your way up to level 20. So a lot of it is to do with your skill set,
but then again equipment and things that youve got help you in doing
these jobs and tasks, so I think doing things like being a beter miner will
involve going mining, doing it, learning the skills so to speak yourself,
actually doing it, not learning it as in Ive gone from level 1 miner to
level 5 miner, and having the right equipment, so youll have to buy
the equipment, upgrade your equipment, you know maybe go to some
specialty place that does 10% beter or 20% beter equipment, so its a
combinaton of your actual player skills, you as a person , and then also
the equipment youre using will be our version of leveling-up, there will
be some stuf where perhaps, you wouldnt be able to operate certain
items or equipment without the right license, you would have to maybe
do something like a driving test. So in todays world you cant just drive
an 18 wheeler truck, you have to have a license to do that. So we may
have something like that. But in general, the leveling tasks will be a more
real world based. IE based on your skill and the equipment youre using,
not based on an arbitrary roleplaying level. So I hope that makes sense.
7
Supraluminal:
What happens if I fail during the frst transit of a jump
point? Seems like a quick way to an empty casket.
Well if you were chartng a jump point for the very frst tme having to
fy yourself then yes, if you mess up during the chartng it potentally
could kill you or you could be spat out in some random system and not
know how to get home, but generally if its already been charted and
your nav-computer has the jump trajectory and coordinates already
programmed in, then you will automatcally make it and youll be fne.
So really the risk in jump points is for the uncharted jump points where
you dont have a nav path already set. So I hope that makes sense.
8
Krel: Are asteroids and other space objects built in a modular
fashion like the shops? It seems like you could design a few
diferent building blocks for constructing asteroids, and then
randomly assemble them in lots of diferent ways.
So that is a good queston. We defnitely have quite a few diferent
asteroids, but were actually doing R&D right now into a bunch of
procedural generaton of asteroids and asteroid felds, so I know there
has been a lot of talk about procedural stuf and crafed stuf which
Star Citzen is more of a crafed experience, but we certainly are using
elements of procedural generaton to help us fesh out a lot of the
world. So my goal is to make sure that everything feels designed and
crafed, but you use elements of procedural generaton to give you
the variaton that you need. So asteroids are a great example of that
where we have certain rules for asteroids, but we may procedurally
be generatng the asteroid feld or the asteroids themselves. So were
actually doing some prety cool and interestng work on that and down
the road w will probably be sharing that with you guys.
Episode 6
35
9
Christopher Mallec: What ever happened to the starmap?
I remember a while back an in game 3D starmap in the
works. From the old videos it looked pretty much done.
Any word on when we will see that for the community?
Good queston. The star map, that was sort of an early prototype
that we had mocked up inside the engine. Its not something that Im
ready to share yet. First of all weve got a bunch more stuf to do with
it in terms of feshing out all our systems and making sure that were
happy with them, but also just in terms of the interface and how it
works so were actually doing a lot of work right now on what we call
our holo-renderer which is the system thats going to be rendering 3d
holographic objects as well as data and text on it and thats going to
form prety much all of our systems so that would be the Mobiglas that
you have as you run around and youve seen in the fcton. Sort of your
frst person HUD if youve got a combat suit on. Your ship HUD, which
is when youre fying the ship, and we kind of want it all to sort of have
this, whether its an Iron Man feel or a Minority Report feel, or like
youve seen in Prometheus with the holo-stuf. But the idea is theres
a lot of foatng objects that you can manipulate and move around
and obviously the holotable, the equipment device in the hangar was
very preliminary sort of work and a prototype of using some of this
stuf. But were doing stuf thats well beyond that. Theres going to be
much cooler which we havent shown you guys yet and that will also
be something that would drive the starmap and the 3d maps and when
youre inside your ship and stuf like that. So it will be a while before we
show it to you, but when you see it I think youll be prety happy, its
prety cool.
Episode 6
36
Original Post Youtube Link
1
Dagger25: Command & Control and Radar/Scanning/Detection have both been
mentioned as parts of the game. Will a spacecraft like the F7C-R Hornet Tracker be
able to relay its gathered info to a C&C ship?
And the answer is yes.
The tracker's actually meant to be able to... Essentally it has a much bigger and more powerful
radar array, and should be able to pump informaton to another ship and can receive it.
So someone in a tracker, the idea would be they're sort of Command and Control for an air
group, and there will defnitely be big capital ships that have even bigger command and control.
You could have a Hornet tracker relay its informaton to a bigger ship as eyes and ears further
out, or possibly in an asteroid feld where the visibility isn't very good.
We're actually having a lot of fun on the capital ship building design. I think you guys are gonna
be prety blown away when we go into that in detail. Which we will do in the near future. It's
some thing that the Foundry 42 guys are spearheading for us since there's so much capital ship
stuf in Squadron 42.
2
Perry the Cynic:
What happens when I fy to a Banu
world? Will it have space ports I can
land at, space stations to dock at,
etc? Will they be alien, or do they
have the same stores as Human
worlds?
So the answer is yes, we defnitely will have
spaceports.
We'll have, not the entre Banu area will
be mapped out, although down the road it
probably will be. But we'll defnitely have
Banu worlds you can visit, you can land
at, and they'll probably have some space
statons.
And yes, they will be diferent in architecture.
We're sort of designing that on the Xi'an right
now, we're startng to do it on the Banu. You
can see the Banu trader is a sort of diferent
look and feel than the Human ships. We'll be
showing you some Xi'an stuf prety soon that
will be very diferent look and feel than the
Human ships too.
We've also got some Xi'an architecture and
planet stuf that we've been working on which
is very diferent from Human and we quite
like it.
We're trying to make each one of the races
have a very distnct feel and personality so you
sort of feel:
"Ok, here I'm in Human space, I'm in Banu
space, I'm in Xi'an space."
So that's a long-winded version of yes.
Episode 7
37
3
DragoFire: Are the Class-4 turrets
come as manned and/or only
remote controlled?
Ok, so on the turrets, a Class-4 turret is a
bigger remotely controlled turret, it is not a
manned turret. A Class-5 turret and above are
manned turrets, so on a Constellaton is two
Class-5 turrets, on the back of a Freelancer
there's a Class-5 turret.
A Class-4 turret is essentally a weapon mount
that has either a bigger gun or hardpoints for
two smaller guns. So a good example is the
Hornet, the ball turret it a Class-4, and also the
canard turret is a Class-4.
A Class-2 mount is essentally a very small
turret that can only ft one smaller gun on.
So an example of a Class-2 mount is the wing
gatlings on the Hornet for instance.
A Class-1 is a fxed mount for a gun. So I hope
that explains it to a certain extent.
We have actually a bigger setng that goes all
the way up to Class-10 for including capital ship
mounts. Those things include spinal weapons as
well as much bigger turrets that are ship-to-ship.
4
Grisu: Will I be able to make some
credits with a cruise line? Or will the
public transportation system make
such services obsolete?
Yeah, I mean we're actually looking for ways
that people can run their own businesses in the
game.
So obviously taking cargo around, someone
says "Hey take this piece of cargo," or even
"Take this ship from here to here for me
because I want it over on this planet," is
something to do.
I think that actually we'd like to find a way
that people could even transport people
around in a way that makes sense. There
will be big cruise liners and stuff, and there's
obviously a public transportation system
that we've already promised and will be in
there.
But it would be nice to have a version where
someone could have a ship and take some
people from one planet to another planet.
Partly it would be fun to have someone
running a cruise liner, I don't know. Maybe
it's a bit over--It would be like Murder on the
Orient Express maybe people could get up to
stuf on the cruise liner, it would be kind of
fun.
But we're gonna try and have roles for people
to do all sorts of jobs in it and one of them
would be transportng people.
5
Azeemaza: How can a player
who only has 2 or 3 hours a week
available to play even hope to get
a level of enjoyment out of Star
Citizen when the competition will
be playing 10 to 20 hours a week.
So that's one of those questons that thinks of Star
Citzen as being one play path, one way to win.
The way I'm designing the game, the way I'm
thinking about the game, is it isn't like that.
There are just diferent things you can do. So it
really depends on what you want to do. What
is your defniton of win.
If you think about the real world, lots of people
have diferent defnitons of what makes them
a winner. Is it they made lots of money, is it
they've helped lots of people, that they're an
amazing athlete, a great teacher. There are
all these diferent defnitons and they can all
be achieved at diferent level. Some people
achieve things they're happy with or greatness
Episode 7
38
by themselves, some people do it in a group,
and I think that's the model of Star Citzen.
We're allowing things that you can do, if you
just want to play by yourself and not deal with
other people, there will be a game experience
that will be very much like the old Priavteer/
Freelancer experience that will feel like that
and you won't feel like you're pressured into
being in a big group.
If you just want to play with a small group of
your friends and go of and do stuf together,
you'll be able to do that too. Or it you want
to play in a really big group or organizaton
and take over a part of space or build up a big
trading empire you'll be able to do that.
So I think the goal for us is to have lots of
diferent things to do and of course on some of
these bigger things, there will always be roles
for people.
Like a mining operaton. Well there's someone
that wants to own and build a mining
operaton, but then there might be people just
like "Hey I just want to be a miner and earn a
buck, I'm there and I work for this corporaton
and do the mining."
So I think that's a beter way to think of it. It's
not so much about 2-3 hours or 10-20 and
you're competng against everyone else. It's
sort of what you want to do in the game and I
think you should be able to have fun with 2-3
hours, even if someone else is playing 10-20
hours. It's just you'll be doing diferent things,
you won't be able to do as much stuf, but hey,
that's the nature of things. But I defnitely don't
think you'll be not having fun only playing 2-3
hours, you'll just be doing potentally diferent
stuf or less of it.
6
Dreamrider: You still have the
complete OoB for the Battle of
Austerlitz in glorious 15 mm hand
painted miniatures. How many
men per fgure? How many fgures
per regiment? And did you paint
them all yourself?
Not really a Star Citzen queston, but...
Obviously I can't put the entre order of batle,
but yes these are some of the miniatures. The
rule set that I was having them built to was
Empire 3. It has been so long since I actually
played these 'cause I essentally started putng
this together afer my ill-goten gains on my
frst Wing Commander which was 24 years ago,
and whenever you're making games, you don't
get to do as much game playing as you want to
do.
But yeah, I had a whole, in my old Austn house
I had a whole room built up for batle with a
whole bunch of geo-hex and all the rest of the
stuf. Of course I was also making games so I
didn't have as much tme to paint everything.
So most of this was actually painted in the UK
and then shipped over to the US. Although
some of it was painted by me.
Here is the small Hussar regiment. They're
a light cavalry French regiment. That was all
done by me which I think I enjoyed a long tme
ago, but it's also prety painstaking.
But yeah, so it sort of sits there and one day
I will hopefully play the batle again. But I
haven't managed to do it for at least 20 years.
Although I keep all my miniatures around
which is more than this selecton you can see
here.
7
Freelancer117: Will Squadron
42 and Star Citizen have SMAA
(Enhanced Subpixel Morphological
Antialiasing) in the CryEngine?
So I believe that we prety much support all
the Ant-Aliasing setup. So SMAA, FXAA, MAA,
and there's quite a few other ones.
I'm sure we will be supportng any new stuf as
far as that goes.
We've got a prety big graphics team right now.
We have four dedicated graphics engineers
and we're looking to hire another two to three.
My goal is actually to have more graphics
engineers for Star Citzen than even CryTek
has in all of CryTek. I may not achieve that, but
we're gonna give it a good try. So yeah, I guess
the answer is yes.
Episode 7
39
8
Viperalpha:
I own an Idris and several Super
Hornets. I want to base the Hornets
full time in my Idris. All ships are
on the same account, will there be
a way to part and leave fghters in
the fghter bay of the Idris?
So the answer is yes.
I mean the Idris is designed to have a
complement of small ships on it. I think in
Squadron 42 we sort of decided that it has
an actve complement of two ships. So in the
military it's two Hornets, then it has a back-up
spare Hornet in case one gets destroyed. And
that's sort of the standard core complement
on a military patrol set up. So if you have say,
two Hornets, you defnitely will be able to
have them in your Idris.
Think of it like big ships have their inventories,
and smaller ships have inventories, rooms
have inventories. So you essentally move your
Hornet from the inventory in your hangar to
the inventory in your Idris which is basically
the hangar there.
Yes, you'll be able to do that.
So you'll be well armed, and you should have
able to hire either NPCs to fy it or more
preferably with something like an Idris, which
is really not designed to be a solo vehicle, you
and your friends can have fun.
As I mentoned a litle earlier in the show,
talking about the Hornet tracker and
command and control ships, we're really doing
some stuf on the bigger ships, the capital
ships, that I"m super excited by that's really
going to push it. It's going to be like almost a
whole game in itself running these big ships. I
think you guys are really gonna like that.
Episode 7
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9
SlackR:
When are the Christmas decorations coming down? ;)
Yeah, I know, we've been prety tardy on getng those
Christmas decoratons down because it's February now.
I believe we're planning to do a hangar update in the next week or so. It's
a housecleaning update and on of the things in the update will be bringing
the Christmas decoratons down. So very soon would be the answer there.
10
Exotic.Tofu: I see that the plan will be to have things
added and updated over time, does this include graphics
updates as well?
Yes. I mean unequivocal yes, obviously.
So the long term plan is Star Citzen is never going to stop being
developed, it's never gonna stop having content added to it, it's never
going to stop having functonality added to it.
So the way I look at it is even just now everyone having the hangar last year
we're gonna have the dogfght in the near future here, and even the early
versions of adding the functonality and content our projected path is:
We're gonna do the dogfghts, the base dogfghts where you'll be able
to fy around in single seater fghter style stuf.
Then we'll have another update that will bring in the mult-crew ships,
the bigger ships.
Then we'll have some kind of update that will probably involve some
frst person combat stuf.
Then some update that will involve bringing all that together.
Then an update involving planet-side.
So it's just building the game over tme, and we won't change that
philosophy even afer the game is "fnished." Even when you can go
around the full Persistent Universe with the inital set of planets because
we'll be adding new content and new functonality and we'll also be
contnually R&Ding new stuf. So ultmately long term I would love to be
able to have a way to go seamlessly down onto the planets, maybe have
some more procedural generaton, have a way to sort of build out stuf.
That's all stuf that we're doing R&D on now, not for the inital release,
but just to get it in a process, evaluate what the issues are, and we're
allowed to do that because you guys have been so generous in backing
us. So we have funds to do some long term research and development
stuf, and the goal is we aren't gonna stagnate.
Just like if you look at the Hornet now, if you look at the Hornet when
I did my original presentaton on the tech demo. The Hornet has much
more detail 'cause we're always constantly refning and updatng stuf.
That will not stop once we're live.
The goal is to make this the most lived in, immersive, detailed, universe
possible. And obviously we're not gonna get it all for the frst tme the
persistent universe is actve for everyone. So that will just take tme
aferwards and some of the features that we've goten on the stretch
goals and some of the content won't drop right at the very beginning
because it's taking a long tme to do all this stuf, but it will always go in.
So hopefully you'll feel things are always moving forward and there's
new stuf coming in. Especially as we're scaling the team, which we're
stll doing, that will all snowball. So this year you'll defnitely see a lot
more stuf than you saw last year and I think afer that it will be more.
So hopefully that answered your queston.
Original Post Youtube Link
Episode 7
41
1
Me: What is your opinion on being able to make real world
money from playing online games? Would you consider
such a system for Star Citizen?
That' a good queston, I actually was thinking about this a lot at the
beginning. I thought it would be really cool that you could be playing this
game and making some real world money from toiling away virtually.
But right now we don't have any plans for that. There are some legal
issues to be dealt with. Then also I had some concerns about whether
that would potentally bring something to the game that may make it
less fun and be problematc.
So right now we don't have any plans, we may assess it in the future, but I
would really like to see how the Persistent Universe plays, how everything
works, how people interact with each other, before making the decision
about that because I think that potentally could be fairly unbalancing. I
know that there were issues on Diablo with the real money aucton house.
So, interested intellectually, but not necessarily convinced I want to put
it in the game just yet.
So that will be a "put a pin in it" one.
2
Radar: The Hornet is a pure bred dogfghter and a nice
design, but it also has the feeling of bein the F-18 of the
UEE. Will we see diferent designs of pure bred dogfghters
in SC or will it remain more along the lines of Hornet vs.
Vanduul fghter?
No, I think we're defnitely going to see some other dogfghter designs.
We're defnitely going to have another UEE fghter craf. We're stll in
the process of fnding that out.
We obviously have a couple of military spec bombers that we've talked
about, one is the Gladiator, one is the Retaliator, and right now we only
have one dogfghter. Obviously it's kind of a mult-role fghter, which is
really what an F-18 is, but I think you would probably have a more space
superiority fghter, and maybe even a lighter design than the Hornet.
So yes, there will be more, and stay tuned. That will be something we'll
be feshing out for Squadron 42.
Episode 8
42
3
MK: If Ive purchased more than
one package, each including a
hangar (Business and Deluxe), and
also purchase an Asteroid hangar,
will that translate into at least
two hangars when the Persistent
Universe comes out?
Hmm, that's kind of a good queston.
We were sort of thinking that you would have
one home base hangar and then if you wanted
to have "forward bases" or whatever, you
would rent hangar space on a planet.
So I don't know, because currently the design
would say no to that, although there could
be an argument to say "well I'm got multple
packages so each one should have a hangar
and therefore I should be able to place them
in diferent places," but really the concept of
the hangar was, we were just giving you a free
place to have all your stuf, it wasn't that you
would be buying multple houses around the
universe.
So I would say, I don't know whether the two
hangars... I mean it's a difcult queston to
ask on the asteroid hangar because that's a
very distnct thing, and it's more in a diferent
locaton than say a business or a deluxe
hangar.
So I guess my queston would be, not my
queston, my answer would be:
We haven't made the decision on that yet, but
that is a good point.
So I take that of and be thinking about how to
make that equitable without having someone
buying 20 packages and snapping up a bunch
of real-estate that they can put all around the
universe. Because that would sort of defeat
part of the purpose of getng people to play
because actually being able to get a hangar
and all the rest of the stuf should take some
work to achieve and I don't want everyone to
suddenly be 100% fully set up.
So it's a good queston, I will think about that,
but I don't have a good answer for you right
now. But you brought it up, so that's already
a victory.
Episode 8
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4
Brendan101: Will the Dogfghting Module be released in
sections depending on the ships that can be used and if so,
will I have to wait until my ship (the Aurora LN) is playable?
Ok, so the dogfghtng module itself is going to be staged in various
releases.
The frst dogfghtng release is going to focus on the single-seater
ships. So the mult-crew ships won't be in the very frst release of the
dogfghtng. That will be a later release, mainly because there's a whole
extra level of network complexity with multple people running around
the ship, and we've got to simulate the physics separately.
That's all stuf that's in development, we're working on it right now,
but it won't be ready for prime tme by the release. So our focus or
dogfghtng 1 is the single-seater ships which would be primarily our
test case is the Hornet, but also the Aurora, the 300i, the Cutlass, and
the Aurora--sorry, no, the Avenger, would all be the ships that we
would be focusing to have out, ready for dogfght v1.
Not all of them are going to make it 'cause there's a huge amount of
assets that have to be built. Yes, you have them in the hangars right
now, but you don't have all the damage states and all those bits. We
are working on those, so we have quite a lot of people working on all
the parts, but our approach is, on the dogfghtng module, that when
v1 is ready to go, we're not going to hold it up because we don't have
every single one of those ships. But as soon as they're ready, they'll be
patched in.
So the likelyhood is the Aurora is probably going to be there for
dogfghtng v1, as will the Hornet and hopefully the 300i, because
those are the three most common single-seater dogfghtng ones. Then
the other ones will be more about "will they make it in tme," and if
not, they will come in a few weeks later.
So hopefully that answers the queston. I think if you've got an Aurora,
you're probably in luck so to speak.
5
SiorAlpin_Wolf: With the organizations being a huge hit
with the community, I was wondering if organizations
will have the ability to be more than just a shell that
encompasses a group of players under the same banner, will
they have the ability to perhaps build a base from which
they can produce items such as ammunition, which could
meant that a refnery would be needed to extract relevant
materials from resources collected from salvage or mining?
So yes, that is actually the goal of organizatons is, they're not just
meant to be a friends list.
Organizatons ultmately will be able to tax or tthe their members and have
common assets. So everyone can put money in and the organizaton can
buy some ships or the organizaton can buy some real estate. Ultmately an
organizaton could potentally be controlling an economic node.
An economic node is when we talk about a factory producing weapons
or a mining operaton mining materials.
So one of the goals of the organizaton system is to allow groups of
people to work together and maybe achieve objectves that a single
person won't be able to do by themselves. Which would be controlling
a big mining operaton or something like that.
Episode 8
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6
Kommissar: When player
organizations enter into direct
confict, how will NPC organizations
such as the UEE respond? Will there
be a need for a declaration of war
such that the UEE recognizes the
confict and does not interfere?
That is a good queston again.
I don't really think the organizatons
necessarily have to declare war against each
other because they're essentally private
corporatons, groups of people, or guilds, and
there's always conficts between them.
Now of course depending on what happens or
where the batles happen, the UEE may step
in. So two organizatons can not go toe-to-toe
out in the orbital space of Earth. The UEE is
going to say "confict is not allowed in this safe
area," whereas you could probably be fghtng
in the outer edge of the galaxy and that would
be fne because there isn't any sort of UEE
rule.
So I kind of see that organizatons fghtng
each other will mostly be fghtng over areas
of resources that are on the fringe of the UEE
controlled space. And then there will be some
clandestne actvity happening inside UEE
space, but there won't be all out war right in
the middle of UEE space because that would
be problematc.
Just like if you had IBM and Apple had a bunch
of mercenaries and started shootng each
other in the streets for dominance of the
tech industry. Probably the United States of
America would frown upon such acton.
So it will be along those lines, I mean maybe
we'll fnd a way to allow the organizatons
to bring confict on a more limited stage into
UEE controlled areas, but for me I feel like I
would like to see competton via industry and
business, and then back-door stealthy kind of
stuf where people are going afer each other.
Then all out warfare is on the edges of the
galaxy.
7
Kazansky: Is CIG taking steps in Star
Citizen to make the game more
Oculus Rift compatible than just
making the headset work in game?
Well yeah, I mean we're going to make the
Oculus Rif work for the Oculus Rif in the
game, we're not just having the Oculus Rif be
you look around and that's it.
So the fnal implementaton of the Oculus rif
willFirst of all the head of your avatar will
be disconnected from the animatons that
you have typically. Like if you were normally
running around when we get into a ship, the
head positon is controlled by the animaton
of the character climbing up to it, whereas
when Oculus Rif is running, the head positon
is going to be controlled and tracked by the
actual head positon tracked of the Oculus Rif.
Then we're going to use the Oculus Rif for,
basically looking around and wherever you're
looking will inform the things you can select
and do.
So playing it with the Oculus Rif will be fairly
intuitve. So we're defnitely, it's not just going
to be tacked on. There are some specifc
changes in the code to work best with Oculus
Rif or other head sets similar to Oculus Rif.
Episode 8
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8
Viddy: about inertia, if a carrier
crashed into a large object, will any
ships it carries be thrown about
the deck? Especially ships that have
been de-anchored and are on the
fight deck about to launch.
Yes, we are going to simulate... So basically
if a ship that has crew aboard or unatached
items aboard gets a big impact or explosion
outside, you know, someone crashes into
it, what we will do is actually generate an
impulse for the unfastened or unatached
objects inside.
So the ultmate goal is you get a big hit one
a bigger ship, a mult-crew ship, and the ship
lurches like you see in Star Wars or Star Trek,
you know, everybody lurches on the deck. So
that's a big goal, so it should be prety cool
when we get it working.
That's actually one of the goals of the bigger
ships and the capital ships and the mult-crew
ships.
9
Hakase: Question: What if someone
failed to board my ship? Can I keep
theirs as they are all dead trying
to take mine? Or will that still be
considered as stolen?
I think that's a great queston, and my instnct
is that, if someone tries to board your ship and
capture yours, and you kill them in the process,
then yes, you are fully ok with having their ship
and it will not be considered as stolen.
Original Post Youtube Link
Whether you got CCDs that prove you were
actng in self-defense or whatever, but I
defnitely think that should be a penalty if
you're trying to raid someone. You potentally
could lose your ship if you die.
So the answer is yes there.
10
Beer4TheBeerGod: The Retaliator
pictures included a concept of
the bomb bay loaded with a
retractable beam gun.
Later on I heard that beam weapons wouldnt
be included in the game because youre not a
fan of them. Will there be beam weapons in
Star Citzen, and if not, why dont you like them?
No, I don't dislike beam weapons. I mean
I like the Star Wars sort of laser bolt stuf
because I grew up seeing a lot of that in sci-
f, so obviously we have that in Star Citzen,
but we're probably going to have some bigger
beam weapons. Not necessarily on a fghter
craf, but on a big capital ship stuf. We're
talking about having that maybe on a spinal
mount or maybe a really big ship-to-ship turret.
So we will defnitely have some beam
weapons, but they'll be more for slow moving,
whether it's cutng into a hull or something
like that, but it won't be fghter based. That
will be more the traditonal Star Wars side.
Episode 8
46
QUESTIONS
Episode 1
1 Ten: Im curious to know about the hardware setup
required to run SC in full HD on max details? .......................................... 3
2 Maberous: Now that CIG has development
infrastructure ready, are you planning or toying with new
ideas for suture projects after SC is released? Some vague
schedules or bigger expansions to SC/SQ42 or even for
non SC-related projects? ........................................................................................... 3
3 Buran: Will radar shadow be present in the game? ....................... 4
4 Whiplash: Is the plan to just make [dogfghting] and
arena-style shoot-em-up, or will there be some more
specifc scenarios to test? ......................................................................................... 5
5 Herne: Im interested to learn what Chris personal
preference is for his HOTAS with SC, does he prefer pitch
and roll on the stick or pitch and yaw? ......................................................... 6
6 Ice: Can you clarify the PvP slider, I see a lot of threads
where people believe this efects the whole game, where
I believe it to only efect the random encounters during
auto-pilot? ........................................................................................................................... 6
7 Robrto Elena: Are you willing to redesign the cockpits
(size of displays, fonts, feld of view, etc.) once the fnal
specs of the Oculus Rift consumer version are known if
you think that is needed to be playable or enjoyable with
the Oculus Rift? ................................................................................................................ 7
8 Ron Miel: In the dog fghting module, how will
ammunition and missiles be handled if there Is no store
or economy to reload? ................................................................................................ 8
9 Naktabar: But what module do you plan next (after
dogfghting)? Care to share what youre planning? ........................... 8
10 Bes: Is the plan to release SQ42 and the PU at the
same time, or will one come out before the other? ........................... 9
Episode 2
1 Villaovi: When Dogfghting Module is released, do you
need to own the ship if you want to fy it or are you able
to test all the ships which has already made in the game ..........10
2 Premium Kabanu: Will we be able to transfer sub-
screens from out cockpit (say, Radar) to a second/third
monitors in our computer? ...................................................................................10
3 Midget: Can NPCs fy on their own while you are still online? ........10
4 Obsydian: There were a couple of threads with
overwhelming support to go with the MMO-ready
backend (and singleplayer vs AI) and Id like to know if
Chris has made a fnal decision yet as to which way hes
going to go for the DFM? ........................................................................................ 11
5 Princjeps Trajan: What is the diferent between TR1, TR2,
TR3, etc. and is there much diferent between their levels? ............ 11
6 Dread Pilot Pete: How close will the fight and combat model
that we get in December be to the intended fnished product?
Will the envelope of what we can do be basically set in stone
or more of a rough frst version that will be getting tons of
refnement and tweaks to the fight model as we go? ............................12
7 Beer4TheBeerGod: What would you say to backers who
are concerned that theres no point in getting ships like
the Caterpillar to Retaliator because the Constellation
looks like it will be the best ship to have? ...........................................12
8 TheTrueLost: How entering dogfght will be handled?
Will you start your ship in your hangar in an arena or
spawn magically in space? ....................................................................................13
9 Dutch: How detailed will damage modelling be?
Will the angle of impact be taken into account when
calculating armor penetration, with sloped armor having
a chance to defect shots? .....................................................................................13
10 PKirkner: What sorts of challenges has optimizing
netcode for combat in true 3D space with 6DoF presented?
Are the issues presented by packed loss and high latency
roughly comparable to a frst-person shoorter, or are you
expecting this game to be more latency dependent? ........................14
Episode 3
1 Issac Clarke: Will the Dogfghting Module also serve as a
good benchmarking tool for our current PC hardware? Id
like it if it were a reasonable way to determine whether
some upgrades will be necessary before the game goes live. .....15
2 Baron Brewzer: In the Dogfghting Module, will we be
able to have our friends join us on our bigger ships? It
would be great to test out crew cohesion. ..............................................15
3 Enerzeal: When eventually (if you have not already planned
to do) you guys implement your own server code and
backbone as it were. Will we be seeing a chat channel early
on between the Dogfghting Module and the hangar? ........................16
4 Torvic: In the Dogfghting Module how big will the
space be where we will dogfght and will there be empty
space or will there be some nice backgrounds like planets,
asteroids, nebula, etc.? ............................................................................................17
5 Cryptkeeper: Is the Dogfghting Module going to
include more settings to tweak so even some of us who
are saving money to upgrade our systems can play at a
playable 30ish FPS? ....................................................................................................18
6 Shadow Knight: Will there be a fight tutorial (very
basic) with the dogfghting module? ..........................................................18
7 Quigon-Scotch: Will we see greater access to weapons
in preparation for the Dogfghting Module? Will we have
access to diferent missiles, more guns and powerplants
and engines? Will I fnally get the cargo box for my Aurora? ...18
8 Christoper Mallec: In the Dogfghting Module, how will
you balance ships by class/size? Will there be limits on the
number of Hornets? Freelancers? Etc? I cant see a round
of dogfghting with 8 Constellations against 8 Hornets
being fair :) ........................................................................................................................19
9 Feylan: I was wondering whether the Dogfghting Module
will be released with a fnalized fight model. Are the physics
and fight system more or less complete, or will they be
tuned as part of the alpha process? If it is going to be tuned,
what sort of feedback would be useful to the team? ...........................19
10 Voyager_NL: Since dogfghting is a testing module,
what will you have built into the DF Module to retrieve
data? Will you only have logging to fle which, in case of
problems, we have to send to you? Can it be turned on/
of? Or do you also have an automated system to gather
statistics or other info that is directly sent to you (with or
without us knowing)? Or have you thought up and other
way of monitoring the test? ................................................................................19
Episode 4
1 Vigilance: I was wondering when you call for an
emergency landing on the carrier, will emergency nets
come up to catch the ship to prevent it from causing more
damage inside the carrier? If the ship crashes on the fight
deck will there be a bulldozer that will push it of the deck
and have an emergency crew to put out the fre? ............................ 20
2 Alphastrike: Will there be server wipes during alpha/
beta? Im very much looking forward to helping fush out
bugs during alpha/beta but wondering if any of our work
will carry over into the PU if there will be a clean wipe
before release? ...............................................................................................................21
3 anethema: What order are we looking at seeing the
ship models in-game? Cutlass was in the latest Jump
Point, so will that be next? Avenger looked almost done
in the video, so that next? Retaliator is a huge favorite on
the site so maybe focus there? ..........................................................................21
4 Tsunami Juarai: Can you tell us what exactly exploration
entails and what plotting a jump point will be like? ...................... 22
5 Kagey: I was wondering about the $5 million stretch
goal tablet companion application. What tablet
platform are you looking to support? iOS, Android, other? ....... 23
6 Akodo: In the early Wing Commander games when we
lost a wingman there was a short funeral sequence. Will
there be something similar when it happens during SQ42. ..... 23
7 Revan67: Will organizations upon discovering new
systems be able to colonize planets, build stations, put up
defenses? ............................................................................................................................24
8 Alph@Justice: Will there be short range voice
communication to hail other unknown vessels or call for help? ..... 25
9 BigDamnHeroes: How is the one server setup going
to work with servers being hosted in various parts of the
globe? If Im in a guild with someone from say, Australia,
how wouldwe get grouped together if Im playing on a US
server and theyre playing on the Australian hosted one?......... 25
10 Funky Schnitzel: Id like to know about landing on
planets in the really large ships. We already know that
ships will land on planets Freelancer style, but what
about some of the truly huge player-fyable ships such as
destroyers or battlecruisers? Will these remain in orbit
(crewed by our friends/AI crew) while we take a shuttle
to the surface? Or will owners of these ships have to be
content only docking at space stations? ................................................... 25
Episode 5
1 Funk Trooper: Hey Chris, if our frst Character plays
through Squadron 42 and then later dies in the Persistent
Universe, does the benefactor automatically have
citizenship, or would there be the option for that character
to enlist and you could replay Squadron 42 if youd like to? .......... 26
2 Tsubaki: Dear Chris, theres a rumor foating around
general chat that once you fy a ship in the Dogfghting
module that you own you can no longer melt that ship.
Is that true? Or does that only apply once the package or
ship is applied to a character in the persistent universe? ............27
3 TotkenKopf.: How will contracts work between
organizations and individuals? Will there be a system in
place within the game, or organization module, that will
allow organizations or individuals to negotiate contracts,
insure cargo or assets involved, and fnalize payout? .................... 28
4 Valerian: Will you be able to hail NPC ships and threaten
them to drop their cargo on the of chance it will save
their ship? If so, will there be a randomly generated
personality for NPCs? Some that fght, fee to the nearest
authority, or cowards that will drop their cargo and run? ......... 28
5 Holo-san Voidrax: Will all ships have artifcial gravity?
If so, how does that afect the g-force system you spoke
about for dogfghting? ............................................................................................ 29
6 Xig: Will we ever be able to play as the other alien
races? If so, will we have an expansion pack of sorts
similar to squadron 42 but with an alien story line? ....................... 30
7 Phoenix9151: Will the Next Great Starship be available
as a pledge ship I cant wait to see what some of these
teams come up with and maybe even buy it if I like it. If
the ship fts, fy it. ......................................................................................................31
8 Commander Pika Pi: May we disable our weapons
systems in order to meet the energy requirements of a
high capacity shield? In turn, if shields do go down, can
we forward power back to the weapons systems on the fy? ..31
9 Jasticus: Will we be able to buy parts of ships as well so
that we can build our own ships from them? Specifcally
the non-human ships that we cant buy from the
storefronts and have had no luck capturing in the wild? ............32
10 ArbitrarySketch: What kind of interactions can players
have with non-hostile NPC ships? Can we request repair,
refuel, and resupply assistance from a passing carrier,
trade goods with merchant ships, things of that nature? ...........32
Episode 6
1 Omricon: With the new Youtube copyright issue with
companies redacting videos or claiming them as their
own, will you allow videos of Star Citizens? ...........................................33
2 Professor: Will the insurance premium go up the more
you lose your ship? ......................................................................................................33
3 Mae Linn: How will we be able to disengage from
combat? Will it always require us to have a faster ship than
our adversaries or will there be other ways to evade them? .........33
4 Bigbadabum: How will in game ship buying and selling
work in Star Citizen? In the good old wing commander
privateer game, I had to search the verse for diferent
traders and compare the available ofers. I could
imagine, in Star Citizen, it would be the same, but with
more details like negotiation prices/options, organize
transports, etc. .............................................................................................................. 34
5 Malcom Kodiak Knight: Have you given any thoughts
to how in-depth the banking/account system in the PU
will be and how it will be tied in with the org-system? .............. 34
6 daDuke Fische: Will there be a way to improve
efciencies with equipment, jobs, tasks, and general
actions within the game? In essence, will there be a
leveling-up system where we can improve our ability to
mine resources, haggle prices, fast travel, detect other
ships, etc through man hours (experience) to unlock new
equipment, areas, and quests/missions? ..................................................35
7 Supraluminal: What happens if I fail during the frst
transit of a jump point? Seems like a quick way to an
empty casket. ..................................................................................................................35
8 Krel: Are asteroids and other space objects built in a
modular fashion like the shops? It seems like you could
design a few diferent building blocks for constructing
asteroids, and then randomly assemble them in lots of
diferent ways. ...............................................................................................................35
9 Christopher Mallec: What ever happened to the
starmap? I remember a while back an in game 3D
starmap in the works. From the old videos it looked
pretty much done. Any word on when we will see that for
the community? ........................................................................................................... 36
Episode 7
1 Dagger25: Command & Control and Radar/Scanning/
Detection have both been mentioned as parts of the
game. Will a spacecraft like the F7C-R Hornet Tracker be
able to relay its gathered info to a C&C ship? ........................................37
2 Perry the Cynic: What happens when I fy to a Banu
world? Will it have space ports I can land at, space
stations to dock at, etc? Will they be alien, or do they have
the same stores as Human worlds? ...............................................................37
3 DragoFire: Are the Class-4 turrets come as manned and/
or only remote controlled? .................................................................................. 38
4 Grisu: Will I be able to make some credits with a cruise
line? Or will the public transportation system make such
services obsolete? ....................................................................................................... 38
5 Azeemaza: How can a player who only has 2 or 3 hours
a week available to play even hope to get a level of
enjoyment out of Star Citizen when the competition will
be playing 10 to 20 hours a week. ................................................................. 38
6 Dreamrider: You still have the complete OoB for the
Battle of Austerlitz in glorious 15 mm hand painted
miniatures. How many men per fgure? How many
fgures per regiment? And did you paint them all
yourself? ..............................................................................................................................39
7 Freelancer117: Will Squadron 42 and Star Citizen have
SMAA (Enhanced Subpixel Morphological Antialiasing) in
the CryEngine? ................................................................................................................39
8 Viperalpha: I own an Idris and several Super Hornets.
I want to base the Hornets full time in my Idris. All ships
are on the same account, will there be a way to part and
leave fghters in the fghter bay of the Idris? ........................................ 40
9 SlackR: When are the Christmas decorations coming
down? ;)................................................................................................................................41
10 Exotic.Tofu: I see that the plan will be to have things
added and updated over time, does this include graphics
updates as well? ............................................................................................................41
Episode 8
1 Me: What is your opinion on being able to make real
world money from playing online games? Would you
consider such a system for Star Citizen?.....................................................42
2 Radar: The Hornet is a pure bred dogfghter and a
nice design, but it also has the feeling of bein the F-18
of the UEE. Will we see diferent designs of pure bred
dogfghters in SC or will it remain more along the lines of
Hornet vs. Vanduul fghter? .................................................................................42
3 MK: If Ive purchased more than one package, each
including a hangar (Business and Deluxe), and also
purchase an Asteroid hangar, will that translate into at
least two hangars when the Persistent Universe comes out? ......43
4 Brendan101: Will the Dogfghting Module be released
in sections depending on the ships that can be used and
if so, will I have to wait until my ship (the Aurora LN) is
playable? ............................................................................................................................ 44
5 SiorAlpin_Wolf: With the organizations being a huge
hit with the community, I was wondering if organizations
will have the ability to be more than just a shell that
encompasses a group of players under the same banner,
will they have the ability to perhaps build a base from which
they can produce items such as ammunition, which could
meant that a refnery would be needed to extract relevant
materials from resources collected from salvage or mining? ......... 44
6 Kommissar: When player organizations enter into direct
confict, how will NPC organizations such as the UEE
respond? Will there be a need for a declaration of war
such that the UEE recognizes the confict and does not
interfere? .............................................................................................................................45
7 Kazansky: Is CIG taking steps in Star Citizen to make the
game more Oculus Rift compatible than just making the
headset work in game? ...........................................................................................45
8 Viddy: about inertia, if a carrier crashed into a large
object, will any ships it carries be thrown about the deck?
Especially ships that have been de-anchored and are on
the fight deck about to launch. ...................................................................... 46
9 Hakase: Question: What if someone failed to board my
ship? Can I keep theirs as they are all dead trying to take
mine? Or will that still be considered as stolen? ................................ 46
10 Beer4TheBeerGod: The Retaliator pictures included a
concept of the bomb bay loaded with a retractable beam
gun. ...................................................................................................................................... 46