Inside Star Citizen: Alpha 3.10 Approaches | Spring 2020

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

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   [Music] we have a lot of teams at cog they all work in slightly different ways so content teams work differently to feature teams but from playing the game and seeing how you guys play the game it was clear that it was not quite working for flight and combat so to rectify that we created the vehicle experience team we're kind of like a small kind of specialist team so we've all kind of got kind of core interests and that really allows us to kind of provide good feedback the really heavy ifcs bug right and we were like oh my god we fixed it we fixed

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   it it was like oh i heard it and i was like oh my god we fixed this thing right a lot of our other internal teams are just dedicated to developing features so they get the briefer feature they make the feature they move on to the next feature we created some kind of basic designs that allowed us the freedom just to tackle them in a way that it was more about trying to discover what was wrong and how we could improve it and how we could implement it right basically this time so you know that was kind of one of our goals was just to improve the kind of core experience you don't know upfront what's going to be fun right you have to experience these things and so we kind of embrace that kind of uncertainty now so i'd say that the experimental kind of sad so is how it's kind of plus the minuses this way of working with like rough design goals

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   meant that we get very short iteration loops and very very short steps towards the the actual combat experience that we want to have as downside it does actually add to the kind of timeline because we end up kind of putting time into things possibly we you know we work ship as a feature but you know overall we think that's a better kind of process so over the past few weeks we've kind of been putting the final tweaks on on the atmospheric flight and the source efficiency it hasn't been kind of a smooth journey but we've been working with the tech team to kind of improve some of the problems we've discovered along the way so we want the atmospheric flight and combat to feel completely different to

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   space flight in combat it shouldn't just be the same model but with some drag applied you want to feel more like the the world war ii flight experience you want that combat ranges in closer you want it more visceral and you want to have a more dynamic experience a big challenge with the atmospheric flight is the kind of wide range of planets we have so we've got a place like laurel where you come in and you've got like 60 000 feet of atmosphere to come down and if you're carrying like a now you jump into that atmosphere you're really gonna ask yourself do you really want to do this because it takes a lot of effort and a lot of planning to kind of land that ship correctly and then you've got to take off and leave the atmosphere so the shape of the ship and the wings affect pretty much everything on the

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   ship handling and this is like something that's really important to me personally because now i can i need to take care of my ship i cannot just like speed up and and hope that ifcs will correct all the errors that i'm doing with my piloting skills no ifcs cannot over correct everything the shape of the ship affects the lift and drag these debug planes we size them to either increase or reduce the lift and drag in any given axis and then that will increase or decrease the maneuverability of whatever axis you're traveling in it gives the ships a lot of characteristics so just to just to say they're still very controllable compared to like planes or so but they're acting more like planes and this is like like this it just feels real like you you you feel you feel the air you're going through um

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   so in terms of like atmospheric like the feeling just flying over the atmosphere now or flying over a planet is immensely great now so these aerodynamic changes what we're really kind of going for is the ability of ships to be different which means if you've got an m50 it's a racing ship it's a light ship you can pull some really extreme g in the corners but you can also pull some really cool maneuvers so when it comes to racing that's really good to define kind of the race and experience once we have racing on planets but also it's going to kind of take into consideration some of the larger ships and just adjust the differences in performance of these ships and how the players compare them in atmosphere you'll want to bring the right ship for the job

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   with regards to planets if you've got a supply mission on a planet with thick atmospheric density to avoid any knocks or any turbulence throwing your ship around and potentially causing you to crash you might want to bring a beefier heavier ship so you can have a more streamlined journey to your destination weather's going to play a big part in how players approach atmospheric flight as uh let's say you were on a microtech with very strong winds the wind is going to blow your ship in certain directions and you're going to want to counteract that but it also means that as you're flying these forces are going to change how you control your ship so you might do a sharp right turn and then the wind slightly overcooks it meaning you'll crash if you're not

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   careful if you crash or damage your ship or a rather managed to take out one of your thrusters it's really going to pull in one direction and as a player you've got to counteract that so you've got to try and counter balance and missing thruster if you lose like a main thruster and the ship's got two you're gonna have to pull the ship slightly in one direction to still move forwards so in terms of like feel of flight this is a massive step which really really excites me so we want combat in star citizen to be a varied experience we don't want there to be just a single way to win we don't want people to be min-maxing stats we don't want people to just rely on alpha strikes and that really promotes player choice over just ship selection and item selection

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   so with everything being a lot closer and more dynamic and hectic we needed to do some improvements to how targeting works we're moving towards a more look-based targeting system than an aim-based one you can use head tracking or you can use free look to look at different targets scan around the around your space and see which ones are most interesting to you and then when you've found one you can either lock it or you can pin it and locking it is uh effectively it has the gives all the combat information available to you that you would expect so you get shields you get targeting pips you get mfds you can only have one of these at a time but you will need additional targets that you might want to care about you know friendly targets or enemies that you might want to deal with later things like this that's what pins targets are for

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    pinning is something that we had in the early arena commander patches and which was lost over time because of the uh maintenance overhead of the old ui tag so with the new ui technology the building blocks we can bring pinning back though we will have them in a somewhat different format than we had before the main aspect of pinning is that you can persistently target something and share it with your crew so it's not finished right we also want to have something like pinning shared with other with other ships and all that but that of course will have to happen in later releases for now we have a solid first step which we can iterate easily on so if a pilot pins a target the turret is going to see what this target is and they can then talk about it and coordinate their attacks based on that one thing that we learned in the past is

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    that you cannot ship a new feature if you do not have appropriate ui support so for the turrets we created a very bare bone ui that turret ui will tell you exactly where turret is pointing it will tell you about the state of the turret it will tell you what kind of like modes on the turret you have enabled for example combined versus staggered fire turrets are now a threat they deal damage and so players are really going to have to reconsider how they might have approached combat scenarios the new turret system allows multi crew to be more viable in game play we added a thing called fixed assist and this is not just for the turrets it's also for the fixed weapons it takes an angular offset between your current aim and the aim direction of your target and then based on that ratio and if you are within certain thresholds it nudges your

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    bullets a bit towards the target as for the control method we're included a v joy star control scheme which is the same that we're using in ships so um you have you're gonna have like a v-joy cursor on your around your crosshair of the turrets and by slaving that veto around your turret will follow the motion we also added a velocity limiter so with your mouse wheel just like in any other situation the game you can adapt your your velocity and the turrets that would be the rotational velocity and um this hookup with all the axis bindings makes makes actually quite nice to control turrets with a with a hotels as well so you can just have like your left hand on your on your throttle which is then just controlling the turret speed where and

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    with the rest you just control the turret direction so in the past it was quite easy for a group of uh small fighters to be able to kind of overrun one of the larger ships despite its many turrets available whereas now you might find that you're a little more careful you're a little more considerate and maybe try and talk about your combat scenario before engaging a large ship yeah it's got one two more guys going one more you're nearly done nearly what's going to be you did it yay there we go yeah so the changes in 310 are the next step in the flight and combat experience they're not the first and they

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    definitely won't be the last we don't want there to be a single way of just winning combat no matter what we don't want dps races or min maxing stats we want you as a player to have as much influence over the outcome of combat as the ship you've selected we know some players embrace change a lot and some are very scared of it but we do encourage everyone to get in game and test it out for yourselves we're really excited for these changes for star citizen and we look forward to seeing what you do with them the way that ships fly and fight their way through space and atmosphere alike is at the heart of the star citizen and squadron 42 experiences and as john said these changes for alpha 3.10 are the next step in that continuing evolution for both if you'd like to learn more about what's happening you can check out the conlink that's currently available now

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    on the robertsspaceindustries.com website as well as keep an eye out for when wider ptu testing becomes available for all so that you can get in and try it yourself with that we'd like to bring this quarterly season of isc to a close but before we let you go for the next few weeks we wanted to try something new and run down some of the features fixtures and fixes coming your way in the upcoming alpha 3.10 in a new segment we're creatively referring to as the patch report let's get to it in no particular order we've got vehicle impounding where different infractions can have various fines and durations meaning lighter penalties for blocking pads and a longer duration forfeiture for crimes like pad ramming also players lingering over landing areas without permission should now see a countdown timer warning

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    them of imminent impounding should they not withdraw delivery mission improvements where alpha 3.10 begins the process of a complete overhaul to the way they work starting with local deliveries which now have multiple pickup and drop-off locations of course there's also a new drug delivery mission for those who enjoy visiting the darker corners of the verse vehicle paint schemes are coming to vendors throughout the stanton system allowing players to personalize the look and feel of your vehicles for auc earned in-game electron damage weapons like the axe cap sniper rifle and uberoff pistol bring an electric new way to take out

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    your enemies outside of their ships and vehicles body dragging will allow unconscious or deceased characters to be dragged around the environment by other players and i'm certain won't make for some amusing videos from the community restricted areas v2 where we've finally done away with the last remnants of the ugly red areas and implemented a new spline based landing system that will help guide pilots to their correct destination and away from places they shouldn't be going new thruster efficiency curves that lower the strength of thrusters in atmosphere depending on the thickness of the air which then in turn feeds into a complete overhaul of vehicle aerodynamics you just heard about high-speed combat changes designed to

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    bring your opponents in closer by slowing the slew rate of gimballed weapons and the lock-on time for missiles at top speeds encouraging a more engaging combat new targeting methodology that should help players better find and keep track of their targets turret improvements which bring a new control scheme to bear that pilot should already be familiar with in an effort to make riding passenger and multi-crew ships more fun and exciting ai improvements like cover usage shotgun assault tactics and a better sense of when to move and hold position all aim to make fps engagements with non-player characters more dynamic and interesting than ever before visual improvements to the m50 and balance changes to the cartoon wall

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    mean there's something new to look forward to for owners of these speedy and nimble spacecraft respectively grimhex is getting a new shop new hangars and a new viewing area to support the future release of scramble races not to be left out new babbage is getting hangers and perhaps a more impressive new shop of their own with the upcoming factory line in its new array of moby glass variants players can purchase then the various planets and moons all throughout the stanton system are seeing the return of outposts derelicts and caves that were lost after the conversion of planet tech v4 but now with improved lighting exterior dressing and protection from the weather elements outside i feel like i'm leaving something out i mean sure we didn't cover

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    everything that's in the upcoming alpha 3.10 but there's something else i'm sure you'll figure it out uh for another quarterly season of inside star citizen i'm your host jared huckabee thank you for watching thank you for playing and we'll see you all next month you