Dave Haddock mentioned some stuff about writing in-universe fiction involving player actions, such as interviewing a player who discovers a new jump point and then putting out a Spectrum post about it.
Do you know how some large-scale player actions that affect the universe are going to be handled from a lore and gameplay standpoint?
Like Operation Pitchfork?
Well I'm not so sure... Operation Pitchfork is a pretty big operation, which may be beyond the ability of the game to support in the manner that everyone envisions, but our goal is to really have player actions become part of the universe's lore and fiction.
We've actually talked about once the game's live, we'd have part of the live team as almost a news team, but not a news team for today's world, it's a news team for our virtual world.
So they're paying attention to what the players are doing and when there's meaningful battles, or exploration, or intrigue, or events happening, they actually create in-fiction reporting content for it. Which could go as far as interviewing some of the players involved, then having it done up as news where, if you go into a bar, there's a program playing on the monitors and it's the 60 minutes of our universe, and it's talking about this event that happened on this side of the galaxy which was a player driven event.
If the player driven events are big enough or meaningful enough, our goal would be to run with them and also weave them into what we're doing with the universe. The way to think of it is the same way if you've ever played D&D a long time ago or any sort of tabletop roleplaying game, where the game master has his idea of the story he's taking them on, but he's always constantly taking what the players are doing and folding that in to what he's weaving you as a story. I mean that's the sign of a good game master. We're gonna try and do that with Star Citizen.
How will commanding work in battles?
Will we have some kind of strategic view of the area and can designate targets, objectives, and waypoints for individual players or designated wings?
Kind of an RTS view for commanders?
Commanding in space battles is gonna be interesting.
Obviously the capital ships are gonna be a large part of that, and there's multiple stations on the capital ships. On a future date we're gonna have a really in-depth, behind the scenes, sort of like a Death of a Spaceman piece about what we'll do on the big capital ships to show you the level of sophistication that we're trying on that and just how all these different stations inside the ship can work together.
'Cause just having a big ship is not gonna mean that you're gonna win a battle. You'll actually have to have a team of players that are operating the big ship well, in concert to be effective. I think that's true in real life, and it's gonna be pretty cool.
One of the things we're talking about is a commanding base, usually there'll be a "battle command". I don't know who will be designated the commander, but there will be sort of a big holo-sphere, and you're gonna see a very small version in the dogfighting even, in the radars which are holo-spheres. But the big ones will be much bigger areas and essentially you're looking at this sphere and you're clicking, you can see these digital, holographic, versions of the various ships and their positions. You can click and give them a command or drag an arrow over and say attack over here.
So you will essentially have an RTS view that you're communicating with. Then that from there will be sending messages to the person in his fighter, or in his bomber, or corvette, or whatever and say "You're required to attack this ship."
So it should be pretty cool. We're looking forward to it. That's sort of the Dogfight v3 level that I hinted at in another episode of 10 for the Chairman.
Has there been any more development on the racing aspect of Star Citizen?
Will we have betting and spectator systems?
We haven't done a huge amount of development on the racing part of Star Citizen, we're pretty heads down on just the space flight/dogfighting side. I will say that we do plan to make it a feature that there will be in-game betting and there will be a spectator ability.
We're gonna have a whole circuit that people can race on, just like we're gonna have an in-fiction e-sports version of the dogfight simulator, which is what we're gonna essentially be rolling out with the dogfighting module. The sim mode where it allows you to virtually take your ship out and fight other people to hone your skills as a pilot without actually risking your ship.
So those two things are things that we're planning to make almost into e-sports, but in-fiction e-sports. I think they'll be quite cool.
Will we get hangars for our orgs and will members be able to leave their ships there?
Maybe while flying an org owned ship?
Yes, we do have plans to have organization hangars which are much bigger.
They'll be shared and communal, we're gonna allow organizations to also be able to buy ships. I think I've said before organizations will be able to tithe a tax, demand fees, from their members, and they should be able to lend them out to various members to use. I would guess you would probably let players leave their ship there, especially if they're taking off in and organization owned ship.
So yes, the answer would be yes there.
How much time will it take for information to travel from one end of the playable space to the other since the communications do not travel at FTL speeds?
It's not 100% defined yet because that's sort of a balance, playable thing.
The way that the communications are gonna work is that it travels our in-fiction communication's speed. Which means that when you're in-system and someone beams a message, it gets beamed at the speed of light, and it gets beamed to a relay station, or a message station. This is in the structured universe where the UEE runs it and there's a lot of infrastructure. So one of these stations is right by a jump point so it gets all the information and then it will launch out a message drone or a messenger ship. It goes through the jump point to the other side, where there's probably another relay station, it's collected, then the data gets beamed across to another relay station and so-on and so-forth if it has to go multiple systems.
Essentially the speed of communication is based around the speed of light and how long that message would take to travel in system, and then it's instantaneous in between system jumps, except for the regularity or the schedule of the message drones or the messenger ships that go through the jump points. So in a very populated core system, that's happening all the time, but in a backwater system, it won't be very frequent at all.
In fact in some systems, there won't be any of that infrastructure. That's where inforunners and other people come in to account. Because they'll be taking missions to take information that's critical and as fast as they can. Especially if there's other people who want to stop that information getting there.
So in terms of game time, it's kind of hard to quantify, but I think we would probably limit it within the limits that I gave there. How long it would take you to actually transfer to a jump point and what the regularity is.
But obviously we recognize that people will be able to chat and talk to each other instantly, because if we don't provide it in the game, they're gonna be doing it outside the game anyway. So we're gonna provide it, but in terms of any goods or missions being accepted, missions being offered, all the in game stuff that we do control will all operate at the speed of communication in our universe.
There has been some talk about gravity generators being part of the ship mechanic. I was wondering if you could go into a little more depth as to how this will work if that system is taken offline.
For example, will we still be able to move about the ship without gravity? If so, how will this be done?
Or will the crew of your ship that's not belted in be stuck floating in place?
Ok, that's a good question. This is actually something we've been working on.
The first person shooter team has actually gotten 0g movement to a nice stage. We're gonna add more stuff, but you will essentially, if the gravity system gets turned off in your ship...
By the way, this is something you could use to mess with borders. Borders come in and you turn gravity off, then you're in 0g. So unless you've got magnetic boots, which we're also gonna let you have, you'll float around. When you're in 0g, we're also gonna let you push off walls and other elements, and certain suits will have thruster sets that will let you maneuver in 0g.
So it's gonna be a whole level of extra gameplay that's gonna be super cool, that's pretty different than a lot of the first person shooter gameplay that you're aware of. If you've seen Gravity with the pushing off, we're gonna have all that plus the thrusters maneuvering, which I guess you also saw a little bit in Gravity when they're outside, and you can use the gravity/no-gravity as a sort of a defense mechanism.
And if you're storming a ship, it may be a good idea to have magnetic boots that you can turn off and on. When you want to be walking around, you use the magnetic boots, when you want to get into 0g, you just turn off your electromagnet and then you're floating if you push yourself off.
If you have to space your cargo hold in the PU to avoid being boarded, will you be able to leave some kind of booby trap, like an explosive device or tracker hidden in the cargo?
Or maybe even an ink bomb like they use at the bank (That would be pretty funny). Something to make the pirates think twice?
That's a good question. I think there will be no reason why you wouldn't be able to have something on your cargo that could be an explosive device. Part of your cargo could be a bomb that you could remotely detonate. Or you could even have a tracker hidden in the cargo.
I think I mentioned on a previous 10 for the Chairman that we were working on the cargo system. One of the concepts was higher tier cargo containers could have sort of low-jack identification on it, whereas most of the basic ones don't. If you have one of those, if you gain one of those illicitly, it's much harder for you to sell one of those.
So I think we're definitely thinking of things to do that, and then of course there would be the counters for the pirates, because it's always fun to have this back and forth as far as that goes.
What will happen to everything we've achieved, earned, bought, etc at the end of the Persistent Universe alpha and beta?
That's a pretty good question, we haven't really thought that through properly yet. I would say that probably it won't carry through to the full game. There may be some case where we feel like we're in beta and that's good enough and that will carry through, but probably the early alpha stuff, like I think our first Persistent Universe test will be in one closed system, or two closed systems.
I think we'll probably do one system first and then we'll open up a couple extra systems with jump points and build up that way. For the early stages, yeah, I think it would not make sense to carry across all the stuff that you've earned from the unbalanced closed system into the main one, but at some point in beta it will be close enough to what it is, and then it will carry across.
But I haven't fully decided on that yet.
You mentioned in the beginning that there will also be mission disks for SQ42 (at least one).
Will a character be able to go "back" to do these mission disks of SQ42 after finishing the "original" campaign and moving on to the PU?
Yes, absolutely.
In fact, the additional Squadron 42 story packs or whatever will be written and designed to be such that they're expected to be after you've finished Squadron 42 and you've mustered out into the great galaxy as a whole.
So you definitely will be able to go back to them after finishing the original campaign and beginning the Persistent Universe.
With the voice chat, will we be able to just do a short range broadcast to everyone nearby?
If so, would I be able to charge into battle blasting out Ride of the Valkyries?
That's kind of cool. Yeah, definitely an apocalypse now moment there.
I think the way the voice chat is gonna work is that you can hail people, and then people can decide whether they want to listen to you. I don't know whether it would be they listen to you by default and then they can mute you, or they have to accept listening to you in the first place, but you definitely will be able to broadcast in close range a message or potentially play music. And if people have their comm-channels open, they will hear it.
We just need to be sensitive to how we set that up in such a way that people can't use it to abuse other people because you don't want people being obnoxious. Which people are quite known to do in online games.
But we definitely would like to get a voice-over IP running in the game, and then we just figure out the right system for you being able to broadcast people and people being able to accept whether they want to listen to you or not.
