Transcripción por Liudeius en
RSIHi Chris, what would be the biggest ship that a player can buy (legally) and park in the hangar?
An Idris, or could I dream of owning a Javelin and have it safely "stored" in my hangar?I don't think you'd be able to buy anything bigger than an Idris that could go in your hangar, and maybe even the Idris may not be able to fit in your hangar. We're still trying to figure out what we'll do for the bigger ship, one of the things we've talked about is having them in an orbit and then you take a shuttle down to the surface.
So you'll certainly be able to hang out on the ships you've got, but maybe instead of being in the hangar, you're in orbit, and you look out of the windows and there's space and the planet you're around outside it. We haven't fully figured that stuff out, but that's what our thoughts are on that.
On the topic of procedural generation planet side, when and if this technology comes to fruition post release, what can we expect to see included with it besides exploration and atmospheric flight?
Will we see some new procedurally generated planets in addition to the ones already in the verse that are just barren?
Is it also possible that this procedural generation will extend into jump points as well and actually facilitate the creation of new planets and areas?Yeah, we're doing the R&D right now, so actually the first thing that we're doing with procedural generation is researching asteroid generation, asteroid field generation, the ability to mine asteroids using voxel technology, so finding the seams of minerals inside asteroids.
Then the planets to extend it to system generation so we can generate different styles of systems using the procedural tech.
Then move on to celestial bodies like planets in terms of the generation of them from the exterior.
And then the later stages will be procedural work for the environments you land in. We would have certain areas that we would design, and then just flesh out the background city or the background landscape beyond the area that you can explore.
And very, very, very long term, if we can figure out a way to make the planet actually interesting, we would be interested in trying to make a planet that you can actually go fly around over the surface. But that's actually the pipe dream at the moment, because even with procedural generation, you have to do a lot of other things like build cities and what's happening on the planet, and having all that simulated. We're already trying to do a whole universe and have an economy and all that work, so I wouldn't promise anything on that yet.
But we certainly are doing research into seeing, could we extend the areas down on the planet, can you fly down onto a planet and fly around it? And if we can do all that, that would be great.
I know that there are a couple of demos and games out there that are promising it, but it's one thing to show it as a general concept and it's empty, and another one to actually have it be interesting and feel like it's a proper living breathing, realistic planet.
So anyway, that's the update on the procedural generation side, I think it will really help us flesh out the galaxy and the systems and the locations that you can visit and a lot of the other stuff.
Are NPCs a finite figure in the galaxy? Could it be possible that entire races could be wiped out?
Or are the NPC stock refilled to maintain set numbers as they are killed?The population count is driven by the economy too, so as a place becomes more prosperous it will attract more people to move there, or because it's doing well, you would assume that the population there would be growing. Then other places the population would be contracting because that part of the galaxy's not doing so well or is getting involved in battles or wars.
So the numbers of NPCs in the galaxy will probably fluctuate a certain amount, but probably not enough that you'll be able to see a material difference in the overall galaxy. Probably in local systems, you'll appreciate whether this system's booming and there's a lot more people there, or it's not doing very well and there's less people there. And I'm not so sure that you could wipe out an entire race.
If we did that, that would be more of a controlled, game master event, but right now we have no plans for that. So I wouldn't say that the NPC stocks are a set number that we always refill to, we let it be organic, but like I said, it will probably fluctuate around a mean.
Could you please elaborate on the Person of Interest (PoI) system?
How will we be setting other people to be PoIs to ourselves?
Will it require authorization from the other person, or can anyone set anyone else to be a PoI to them, given that they know the name they're looking for?The idea of the person of interest system is you basically say "I'm interested in this person over there," and the other person doesn't really have any awareness that you've tagged that person as someone that you want the game to let follow.
Maybe we would have some devices that you could have to let you know that someone's watching you or snooping on you, which would be sort of like counter insurgency stuff, but the idea of the person of interest system is that way when they leave the planet, you get notified and you have the opportunity to follow them, fly with them in space, and deal with them. It's sort of like tagging someone as a temporary friend. Not that they're necessarily a friend, but it allows you to follow their movements or meet them out in space or track them, which is necessary if you're meant to track someone down for a bounty or whatever.
That's kind of how the person of interest system is designed to work, so we'll see how it works in reality, but I'm hoping it will work well, because it will put you together with either your friends or people you're interested in, or people that would be related to what your group is doing, your enemies and stuff.
It's clear that the universe will be filled with NPCs, but will some of those NPCs want to join player-made factions?
Can I look forward to my little cult having NPC followers, player pirate clans having NPC raiding parties, or player corporations having NPCs asking for jobs, or will player run orgs only be allowed player members/ships?I guess the answer to that is certainly if you're running a company, you can hire NPCs to do work for you as well as players. So definitely we'd let NPCs be working with player run corporations.
I'm not so sure about NPCs joining player made factions, other than say the corporation you're running, but you certainly can hire people. You can have people on your crew, and then you are part of the organization, and you've got a full crew of NPCs.
So in that manner, you could think that there would be NPCs who would be fighting on behalf of organizations, but it's not like NPCs will be coming up and asking to join an organization by themselves, if that makes sense.
Player pirate clans may have NPCs as part of them, but that would be because they were hired by a real player pirate to have some crew on his ship or something like that.
Hello Chris, we already know that the ship damage mechanics are pretty detailed, but what about our characters?
Will there be localized damage, different kinds of wounds, and lasting effects (bleeding, broken bones)?
What about field medicine and emergency treatment by S&R teams?Yes, we're gonna have localized damage on the characters. We actually have a whole body/limb damage system.
I think I mentioned in the Death of a Spaceman post about how when you get killed out in space, and you revive in the med bay, as you take more and more hits, then maybe you get a prosthetic arm or a robotic arm or something like that.
We'll definitely have fairly decent damage in the first person stuff, and we've got medpacks and even a med bay. If you have a ship that has its own medical center, you may be able to take a player who normally if you didn't take him, he would lose a life and do the death of a spaceman, but if you could take him back to the med bay and fix him up, it saves him.
Hopefully there will be a whole bunch of first person gameplay that would also involve you and you team boarding, and then you not only try to take the ship over, but if you take some hits and some gets hurt, you'll also want to be taking your wounded comrade back to a medical facility to fix him up within a certain period of time, because if not, he will die and lose a life. We're actually hoping to have some interesting, fun gameplay. Maybe some people fly around with a ship that has a med bay to fix people up if you're boarding, or all that kind of stuff. It could be really cool.
With regards to characters retiring or dying, will you be incorporating something to track the history of the characters?
Or some way of creating an ancestral tree?Absolutely, that's the whole idea I talked about in Death of a Spaceman which was to give a sense of history and identity to your family tree. I would see that you would, if you do some notable things, you would get an entry in the galactipedia, and the galactipedia could probably talk about what your tree or family has been doing.
And you certainly would have some level of that in your own journal, but I'm actually thinking what would probably happen is that you would have your own entry in the galactipedia and it would talk about your family tree and maybe when you become a certain level of fame, that becomes available for everyone to see, but until then, it's just your own personal log of what your family history has been up to.
So yes, the idea is to look back and say "my great, great grandfather did this, my grandfather did that, my father did this, and I've done this." That would really be kind of cool.
Will there be large scale dynamic events in the game such as full-scale ware between the UEE and the Vanduul or Xi'an?
It would be very cool to have such massive galaxy spanning events.We are definitely going to do large scale dynamic events in the game, some of them will involve military conflict, or something smaller... It could be perhaps a natural disaster on a planet or a system and people have to bring aid in.
We're planning to have a lot of these player driven events or events that the players can effect and participate in. That's definitely part of the plan.
I know you're working on a rating system that anyone can see how people have rated an individual.
Is there going to be a way that you can tag people with ratings that either only you can see, or you can see just your rating of the individual (rather than the average of everyone's)?
That way if I have a really good encounter, I can tag a player as a 5 star individual and then even if I forget details or even the person's name, I will still know I tagged them as a 5 star individual if I run into them again?Yeah, the idea is we're gonna rate in the way that a car service here in America called Uber does, Where you rate the person that worked for you, who you've hired, and the person you've hired rates you. I think we would probably break it out in such a way that you would see, if you encounter someone again, you would see their average rating and then also, if you had ever worked with them before, the rating that you gave them. So I guess the answer there would be yes on that.
Will there be jump routes that simple are not tranversable for the larger ships?
Something like an Idris+ size or a or Constellation+ size might not be able to make this jump based on current mapping data whereas an Aurora can make the jump without issue.Yeah, short answer for that is yes, we are actually thinking about that.
We're thinking that there would potentially be some jump points or jump routes that would be unstable or small enough that the bigger ships can't go through and smaller ships would have to go through. And we think that would make it interesting, like a mountain pass. Some mountain passes are big and you can fit a lot of people through, and some are small and you can only fit one through the craggy little pathway.
So yes, we are definitely doing that, we haven't fully figured out what are the pros and cons of what classifies jump points that way or what the situations are, but that's part of our thinking to make space traversal more interesting.
Maybe an info runner, a smaller ship, can get a more direct route because they can go through some smaller, unstable jump points that a really big ship can't get through. So it would make for interesting gameplay.
