10 for the Chairman: Episode 10 (2014.03.03)

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

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   [Music] hello everyone uh this is another episode of 10 for the chairman for those of you that haven't watched it before this is where I take 10 questions from our subscribers and uh answer them as well as I can uh and our subscribers are the um the part of our community that are uh contributing extra money every month um to help us generate a lot of this uh Community uh content that we do so 10 for the chairman wingman's hanger obviously the jump Point magazine and a lot of the sort of community content that we do on the website is really funded by um the generous contribution of subscribers so thank you all um and I thought uh would be fun at the um top of

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   this episode would be um Al to invite David hadak here who is uh the lead writer and has been working with me on the universe in uh star s since the beginning because I thought maybe it' be fun to give you a bit more insight into sort of some of the thinking that we do in building the game so um and we'll key it off the very first question we have on the on the uh 10 uh for the chairman here which banjo asks my favorite thing about Star Citizen is the tiny details that show you have obviously put a lot of thought into the game's world what would surpris us the most to hear that you had planned in advanced um so I thought that was a a good question to segue into kind of a little aside that we do here in ter for the chairman uh but yes we put a vast amount of thought into um the world and how we built it I think in general I've talked uh in the past about you know how when me and Dave were brainstorming the the world of uh

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   Star Citizen we were trying to think about historical analoges for it and we settled on uh sort of Roman times the sort of Decline and fall of the Roman Empire uh uh but to give you another example this is one that I actually think is quite neat um we have a a book here we got go on Dave you want to talk about kind what we approaching yeah this is a huge book uh history of architecture very very big features a lot of nice line drawn images uh but yeah we we basically uh had a Chris had a had an idea a few weeks ago actually before the summit about putting more thought into the sort of the Planet Side architecture so uh when you go to a city if you go to a city in Europe for example you're seeing a a clash of a bunch of different

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   eras of architecture uh modern beside you know AR for 500 years ago and stuff like that so wanted to have that feeling so it didn't just feel like we kind of you know uh built these Planet Side locations in one Fell Swoop and they just sort of exist in one time so uh yeah and I would say that like for me kind of one of the big issues in a lot of Science Fiction games even movies uh r i is that it's all sort of created by the artist at the time so he sort of does it as one sort of unified idea of a city or of a building and uh the problem for me is basically that's not the way the real world works I mean even in a American city which you know a lot of the cities around here aren much older than 100 years or 200 years old um there's a vast amount of architecture difference even from you know 20 years

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   ago I mean what the style of buildings built in the 50s is very different than in the 60s than in the 70s uh then in the 80s and the '90s and you know now we're um sort of into the 21st century and you can even I mean just you know if I go and look at a house built in the '90s I'm like ah you know this doesn't look so uh as cool as I thought and that's only 10 or 20 years and so um if you look at cities that have been around for 500 a th000 years you can definitely feel that they're uh built up over time and there's lots of different parts of the city that sort of have very distinct architectural Styles and so you know I guess one of the things that was always bugging me when I was looking at some of my concept was like well you know it just sort of feels too unified like an architect came in and just designed the whole city and outside of uh say Paris where Napoleon thei third basically raised the middle of the city and had

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   one architect essentially template it out that doesn't really happen very often and so kind of the idea that we wanted to do was come up with a way that we can sort of um have our you know depending on like Earth would have a very different feel than say Terror which was newer but terror is still pretty developed compared to say an outpost and so we we so from that we sort of discussed about okay well we need different architecture Styles and times and so uh Behavior who's also working and doing on the planet side stuff um started to um throw ideas out with uh Dave uh here and and we sort of were kicking around so yeah we thought I mean do you want to I mean this is like this is pretty awesome document where we were basically each Century since yeah today through where the game starts we like you know it's also at the same time

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   like you know it's it becomes a tricky thing is you don't want to uh make it too customized because otherwise we'll never get done uh so we had basically what we did was we worked out uh Dave Richard from from uh Behavior sort of worked out a series of progressions of architectural Styles uh throughout the Millennium so we basically kind of worked out a fictional document where we went from through basically through each Century talking about you know what major events happened which and how could that drive the architectural movements and you know uh start some and end others and uh you know how did discovery of the Bandu affect the architecture did it did it not uh The Messer era how did that affect architecture stuff like that so we we started basically building putting together this very what turned into a somewhat sprawling document uh of

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   basically the history of human architecture for the next Thousand Years uh using references and photos and stuff like that to kind of help the artists plot these sort of different visual cues throughout the the landscape to kind of you know mess with the the the cities so they look a little bit more lived in uh and a little bit more unique I mean while let's let's what were the different we we have do we have our names from or are we yeah we have we have a handful colonial style just sort of uh right uh after the terraforming of Mars everyone became infatuated with sort of pre-fabricated colonial thing my personal favorite is crystallis Aesthetics which was some guy who was obsessed with cocoons so it was all these sort of weird cocoon the retr Primitive movement oh yeah retr primitive uh yeah uh people thinking we

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   were advancing too far so they were going for a more homegrown uh uh lifestyle and then the 24th century is Asar asaran ISM asarian ISM yeah that was a uh a movement that was dedicated to since we were terraforming planets uh we had an obligation to sort of build in accordance with the planet not necessarily just whatever we want to do so it's about more about planetary development and planning which is what terara ended up adopting hence why they're sort of built more in harmony with their environment rather than some of the other ones 25th Century I guess predominant style is colonial style sort of coming back to Colonial yeah and Banu hybridism which I guess would is be taking parts of the Banu yeah architecture and then the sub movement is exog gothic what goic uh it was sort

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    of exalting Humanity's achievements uh but in a new kind of futuristic type spin on it basically yeah pretty cool and then 20 26th Century has HSM and meta class ISM yeah uh heno ISM due to the Taran War and the expansions and the the sort of uh Fringe things it was it was a kind of defensive aesthetic to you know you people were afraid of being attacked so there was much more of kind of probably reinforced walls Slimmer Windows all that type of stuff uh metac classism is more of like kind of the actually the classic kind of Rome uh architecture columns and you know uh and then I think 27th century we got to monumentalism exaltation which I guess would be the

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    peak of The Messer area and so that would be I guess kind of like Rome at its height right you're building these huge coliseums monuments exactly and that yeah that uh sort of World War II German type you know fritzl Metropolis type stuff right uh cool and then 28 century is metab Baro and the sub movement is revolutionary art uh yeah sort of uh the The Messer of that time I think we're sort of playing with the idea that he wanted to make the people feel small if exaltation is sort of humanity as at its height this was more of a broke thing so he want to make them people feel insignificant so sort of huge vaulted ceilings you know all anything that would make you feel like in awe of

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    what you're a part of basically West revolutionary uh that was a sort of subculture that was beginning to rise up against the mess era so it's like graffiti anything that would kind of incite them antagonize them type thing then we get to go down 29th Century so predominant sales Ultra Deco and organic architecture and the sub movement is Jan Fusion yeah so Shan Fusion I have been corrected on the forums that I'm not pronouncing Jean correctly uh or Shan correctly I guess it was is for the Chinese pronunciation but they're not really Chinese they're actually from yeah different part of the Galaxy yeah uh but yeah yeah so you know after all these sort of hundreds of years of you know oppression basically was sort of an explosion of creativity so everyone was

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    trying to do these sort of unique shapes and you know glass and of course the Shion was sort of the Cold War so of course they're going to embrace you know their their design Aesthetics and stuff like that and then we get to now which is where the game set which is meta bow house um which I guess is the super bism and then what's bio uh it's sort of a uh very weird kind of sweeping shapes it's sort of almost kind of like organic architecture type things like these sort of very strange structures it's kind of tough to describe it was a very involved Wiki search to to go there trying to find so there you are so that is the kind of thought that goes into building this universe and World um so uh I think that answers the first question um and uh

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    there's probably prenty of other things that would surprise you we plan in advance but I would definitely think probably no one uh would think that would' be deep diving that far in terms of planning out the architecture all right so that was a rather long aside for question one uh so I'll be much quicker on these next ones so Arman Hammer asks I know you have said in the past that the Addis is not really meant to be a ship that has played solo however I'm still guessing that you'll be able to fly at solo if you want it is this true honestly haven't made my mind up because there are certain ships that I feel like you need to play with other players to to theand correctly um things like the consolation the freelance you don't have to you can hire either NPC crew and do yourself I haven't made the decision on the Corvette because it's definitely on the uh it's sort of on that that cusp anything bigger than a Corvette I think you're definitely going to have to have at least you know several other players to play it with

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    you um potentially the Corvette maybe you could have some NPCs uh but I'm sort of leaning towards sort of making that a more of a multi crude ship you invite some of your friends to fly with you but full decision isn't made on that one so um kind of still up in the air um all right next question comes from OB lock will the origin 890 jump RSI Orion GS Survivor and volaric miss kce and the Drake Herald become available as single ship pledge packages before release uh that's a good question and um again we haven't fully decided what we're going to do there but I'm I'm willing to say that uh quite a few of those probably will be available before the game comes out um definitely the 90 jump um and then uh the other ones the ones that all you guys actually voted for um probably

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    I mean they really just have to be in the pipeline so we're just getting going on sort of Designing on the concept stage and um and then obviously going to model but we're still um you know haven't hit the concept stage on a bunch of these ones because we've got a huge backlog of ships to do I think there's over 50 different ships that we have to do at the moment um all right next question comes from uh K who ask Will a Cony made primarily of ever be able to legitimately defend itself against a raiding party of Fighters does cig perhaps have some cutting game mechanics in mind that will help us ensure a reasonable balance of power um well I mean yeah I mean I would think if you're um hauling a bunch of cargo and a you've got uh um you know well defended or you know well armored um sort of uh cargo ships and perhaps you've hired a some mercenaries or some

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    friends of yours to fly escort with you you should be able to defend yourself against a raiding party of Fighters I mean if you're flying completely unarmed cargo Freighters and that's it and there's Fighters then yeah obviously you won't be able to but I mean we're designing most of the ships to have weaponry so like the freelancer is you know a pretty well-armed sort of cargo ship um uh you know maybe the the staff era isn't isn't uh as maneuverable as something like a freelancer will be but it's certainly going to have guns and turrets and you probably if you're taking a STA eror and taking a whole bunch of goods somewhere you'll probably hir a few people to fly escort for you um so that's kind of how you'd have to approach that which you know you can hire NPCs or you can have your friends help you or hire other players um so I'm hoping that will um ensure a reasonable balance of power and then of course if you're trading in sort of the um safe areas the regulated areas then uh there

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    are like significant penalties for for people trying to attack you and raid you and so um you're likely to be fairly safe say trading inside um the core uee worlds but as you get further out you'll be less safe um okay next question comes from shimen ruaka who we probably mispronounced um who writes is it possible to have modules which allow the transfer shield in cost of your own capacitor to another or even remotely repair someone's whole armor um all right so I'm guessing that shiman rak's first language isn't English uh but my guess at the question is can I take my shield uh uh or the energy or the capacitor uh the shield and transfer it to someone else uh to either I guess protect them or repair their Hama um and

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    I would if that was the question I would say that uh no it's not uh possible for you to sort of take your shield and and and transfer it somewhere else uh or to help repair other people you can definitely on your own Shield uh manage energy to it and power to it so you can have more power go to the front Shields or the back Shields and um if one of your segments is failing you can maybe pump more uh power to it because basically Bally the the Regeneration rate of a shield is based on the amount of power that's pumped to it um and so you can manage that and we have a whole interface in the HUD for that next question comes from smartes who asks will there be different types of jump points in the persistent Universe example oneway jump points collapsing jump points jump points that larger ships can't use jump points that require special equipment to use after they're discovered Etc um so I would say yes

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    there will be different um jump points uh Dave I mean let's see have we I mean I think we've discussed this but we haven't really um designed fully the mechanics on this right we've we've talked about potentially having some jump points that only uh some smaller ships could right path or maybe it's you have to like youve got to fly it with a small ship and then a bigger ship has to fly and it's a different route right and the uh the recently unlocked or the proposed stretch goal one was the human one that was the jump Point collapse but we don't know if that's going to be sort of a persistent thing or right well I mean there definitely be jump points that will go from one system to another system and you going be able to come back right um so you always have to find the entrance and the uh uh and so it's

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    not necessarily there could be oneway jump points and there could be two-way jump points right uh and there will definitely be collapsing jump points it's just more about the jump points that larger ships can't use we haven't 100% right we we've had that discussion because we were talking about it in the Squadron 42 story where would like there's going to be Parts in Squadron 42 where we're actually going to char a jump point and go into Uncharted Territory and we were debating about do you go through with the can a carrier follow you the carrier yeah can the carrier follow you and do you CH the jump point just in the fighter so I'm fully uh figure that out but there will definitely be different parts so they are got a tiny little bit of info on Squadron 42 too um okay so next question comes from um Scurry Panda who asks what kind of peripheral support can we expect to see in the first consideration of dog fight module specifically are there plans to integrate track IR into the

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    first version okay so um track IR probably will not be on the first release of the dog fight module uh but Oculus Rift may be but that's sort of dependent on um kitech because they're doing some work um to fix some of the lag issues we have when we have an implementation of it and we're using it but it's a bit too laggy to be useful uh if they fixed those uh implementations then there will be uh a certain level of OAS Rift uh but that would be a sort of later Focus cuz right now we really just want to get the dog fighting V1 out so everyone can use it uh but I want to get the rift running as soon as possible um and then obviously right after that we'll be track but probably not from dog fight V1 possibly for the rift though um okay next question comes from nikro who asks myself and a few of my mates are

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    planning on being bounty hunting as our main job in the pis Universe can you clarify if there will be an official bounty system and if so how will it work okay so yes there will definitely be an official bounty system um do you want to add anything I mean I couldn't throw out what you know my um understanding or thought of what we've been talking about uh yeah no I mean I I have a I've read some of the design documents that like Robin Nate have written up but um I'm not as you're on the spot yeah uh so well basically on the bounty on the the hunting uh there will be an official list of bounties I mean it'll be like whatever you like you know the FBI Most Wanted list or whatever you would have the United Nations most wanted list um and uh those will appear like so we're planning to

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    have sort of a mission board that will be uh per system and sort of it's where you would go to look for work and that mission board would have different subcategories so you know if you're a Trader and you're or you're just a truck basically a trucker and you're like okay I want to hold cargo you can go there and there'll be jobs for you to either you know just take cargo you're getting paid for a run from here to here there'll be jobs for you to fly someone else's ship and the same goes on Banny hunting like if you're a Banny Hunter you'll go there and it'll be like seeing the the the posted bounties which is kind of what happens in America for bounties is you know there's posted you know the FBI or the local local police will have bounties out to bring in um you know various uh um uh people on the Run um and so uh there will be a uh there will be sort of a a global bounty hunting system um that uh there will be

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    uh benefits for and and it won't be just going after people in space there'll be some tracking that you can also will do in down on the planet side um so it should be pretty cool but yeah it's uh there will be definitely an official bounty system um okay so next question comes um from Fay unas kada I'm sure I butched that too are you reworking the constellation like you did the Avenger um so the answer is is yes we are reworking the constellation like you did the Avenger um uh we are doing some design modifications to make uh loading and unloading cargo much easier to maximize the cargo space and also uh not have it conflict with the entrance uh and launching of the millin and we're

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    also considering moving the living quarters um to the front where nearby where the piloting section is so the back is just cargo and the engine room which I think a there were a fair number of threads about that quite a while ago so uh that's in the works uh as well as some variants so uh they'll take a bit of time but um it would be very cool um next question comes from uh Jay reneer who asks could you explain how Eva in Brackets extra vehicular activity uh will work in the game will we be able to repair damage to our ships or explore Rex Etc so yes you will be able to repair damage to your ship and you'll be able to explore re so we're going to have Eva um in the game pretty much most of the ships have sort of airlocks that will allow you to go to the outside some of the ships like uh the Hornet doesn't

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    really have that it would have to open the canop you'd have to bend the space and then you'd have to detach yourself from the seat but yeah we we have full sort of Zer U plan for movement uh so if you have a sort of an Eva suit it'll have um little thrusters on it for you to move around you'll also be able to grab hold of side of things so if you think of like the movie Gravity um so that's all stuff actually that is on um the team that's working on the sort of first person boarding is they've got that sort of um zerog combat Eva stuff on their plate uh and we're focusing on simulating that correctly and the idea would be that you would use that to go outside to potentially board other ships or potentially go out and sort of do some patch-up repairs you'll never be able to properly repair your ship you have to do that down on the planet but you know just to get you going uh those are all things that um you'll do and you

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    know I definitely think there could be a case where you would uh like sort of even Eva into space w which is essentially kind of a boarding Mission um so yeah and it should be really cool all right there we go so that is the end of uh this episode of 10 for the chairman probably a little longer than normal but hopefully you enjoyed the insight into uh the architecture uh sort of thought we've had behind how how the cities would develop and the places would and uh you the other questions you found U hopefully Illuminating and uh I will see you uh next week thank you very much