Wingman's Hangar ep068 . May 7, 2014

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

1. 00:00:07

   Hey everybody, welcome to Wingman's Hangar. This is episode 68. What is Wingman's Hangar? Well, it's an inside look at Chris Roberts' new epic space adventure game Star Citizen. We take you inside a look at what's going on with the team and the development of this incredible thing. Let's get right to it, shall we? Coming up today, we have forum feedback with your questions and a couple of videos. We have new subscriber benefits. We're going to tell people what they're going to get as a subscriber. Some really cool stuff. Sandy and the crew out there working hard on that. And we have economy designer David Ladyman and a first look at kind of how he decided to pen and paper, how we decided to pen and paper this thing and first pass at it. It's kind of cool stuff. I think you'll like it. So, what what's going on this week? Well, Next Great Starship episode 11 happened last week.

2. 00:00:55

   Ooh, getting really close. Take a look at that. We're We're eliminating people as we go and on June 7th, we're going to have that last final episode, so stay tuned, get in there, check that out. It's really really fun. Also, we had 10 for the Chairman released by Chris on Monday. Always good to see what he's up to and get those questions answered directly from the man. Now, those are from subscribers. So again, get your questions answered by the man, Chris Roberts, become a subscriber. Uh and this week, Sandy and the team share the latest benefits of being a Star Citizen subscriber. Take a look at this. Hi everybody, I'm Sandi Gardiner, VP of marketing at Cloud Imperium Games. And this is Alexis Riddle. She is customer service representative and also subscriber coordinator. And we are here because we have very exciting news for subscribers. We are launching subscriber flair, which is now going to be monthly

3. 00:01:45

   instead of bi-monthly. And what else? And we are going to be opening our exclusive subscriber store. It is going live. And the first piece of flair is going to be a calendar for your hangar. And it's very cool. It is very cool. We went through quite a few iterations from Segway to weird paper shredder to space pants. Space pants, yeah. The Vault is our subscriber exclusive gallery where we upload uh work-in-progress images, uh things we didn't wind up using. It's just a place to see really cool stuff. It'll kind of give you a peek behind the scenes. So, if you want to submit a question to Ten for the Chairman, there's a sticky thread in the subscriber forum. You can just go to it and enter your question, and hopefully it'll be chosen. Subscribers get VIP admission to all of our events. And one I'm organizing next is Gamescom,

4. 00:02:34

   which is going to be awesome in Cologne. I'm looking for a venue for 1,500 to 2,000 people. So, subscribers come in an hour early for that. So, another subscriber perk is website beta access where you get to test out um parts of the site before we release them. Uh we recently did this with uh organization testing. So, it's pretty cool perk. So, another perk is a test pilot badge, which is a badge that you get for 1 day each month to fly a spaceship that you don't already have. So, Imperators get some extra perks like the creative pirate perk, uh which we'll be releasing next year. You will get to create a story and submit it into the game. Here's the the first printed one that uh that we did for the Imperators. Everyone else, including Centurion subscribers, uh have access to the soft bound version. It's the same size. It's got

5. 00:03:21

   the same content. Both of them are 300 some odd pages long covering 650 pages of Jump Point. Another cool perk for Imperators is a Vandal test pilot, where Imperators will get to test a Vandal once it's in game. Imperators will get two of each piece of hanger flair starting with the calendar. Your subscription goes towards helping the game. It goes towards video production. It goes towards creating a higher level of engagement for all you guys who subscribe, and also some merchandising swag that we are getting up online. You will finally have a store. And without you guys, we wouldn't be able to do all of this video production and all the other cool things that we do. Very, very cool. And and many thanks to subscribers. We are certainly very thankful to you and all you've done for uh for Star Citizen. And now it's time

6. 00:04:10

   for the the the the forum feedback. Hey Rob. Hey Eric. How are you today? I'm fantastic. Are you fantastic? I heard you're going to do your Dudley Do-Right voice today. I'm just glad you remembered to bring me this week. Really important. tough. I was like, well, I don't know. Do I bring him this week or do I leave him at home? You know, leave him back at the office. joke going. Yeah. So I'm sorry. I really apologize. For those of you who don't know, last week we uh I I was in such a hurry to get down here I then I forgot Rob, so uh he had to come down on his own. This This was my response to you forgetting me. Yeah. That Where'd you get that? This is from Roger Bucks. One of our lovely citizens has sent me my very own this is coffee mug. That's nice. Can we say that on TV? No, no, we're we're on YouTube, but we can um we can certainly redact it. Excellent. Shall we get right to it? Let's get right to it.

7. 00:04:56

   All right. All right. From Captain Pancake, will we be able to toggle between first-person and third-person view in combat? And if so, how would you make it even for those who don't want to use third-person view at all? Mhm. This is a This is a hot button topic. You know, you get a lot of this in the forum. The ever-raging debate over first-person and third-person. And the real crucial thing, I mean, having played a lot of the dog fighting now, it is very difficult without the radar. Yeah. And if you're in third-person, you get no radar. You get no HUD. You can see a little more, not as significant significantly easy for me to say uh as you might think, but yeah, you lose the benefit of of all your equipment and that's really crucial. Yeah, you know, and there's there's there's a UAVs flying around these days that that give you third-person views of battlefield, so why 900 years in the

8. 00:05:44

   future wouldn't we have the ability to kind of have a trailing camera or something? Plus, we want you to see how pretty the ships are. They're gorgeous. they're beautiful. They are. They are. From Sebastian Noir, "I was wondering if hangers can come under attack or not. I see some asteroid hangers, and one would think you could blow them up. And if so, will they have automated systems to repel invaders? Can they be boarded?" Quick answer on that is no. But I think the the meaning behind it is your ships are safe. I mean, when they're in your your personal hanger, your starting hanger, then your ships are safe. I think is the the reasoning behind that question. There'll be plenty of other places to board and to fight and to to uh Oh, yeah. But once you I mean, think about that for a moment. What if you're offline and you somebody can just attack your hanger and you come back and all your stuff's gone? Just that one little ornament hook lying

9. 00:06:31

   there on the floor and everything else is gone. be annoying. It would be like, you know, I I'm part of this game and all of a sudden my stuff's gone. I'm not enjoying that. So, that's a no. From Roger V, I'm not sure if it's Roger 5, like Roman numerals, Drawn the knowledge there, or Roger V. "Just wondering how we identify ships in the verse. Will we be shown the names of characters in the ships, or will we just see a ship ID and our computer will tell us who owns that ship?" So, you'll you'll definitely see a ship ID. Now, we've already talked about those possibly being spoofed, so you know, that might not be accurate information. Whether or not you see who's inside it right away, it will depend on scanners, most likely. Okay. So. That's cool, cuz I know there's a lot of people that, you know, want to do some things to other people's ships, and you know who you are.

10. 00:07:20

    So, let's get right Oh, our first video in a while from Commander Cosmo. Take it away. Greetings, Wingman. Commander Cosmo here. Doctor Orbit and I have been monitoring your primitive transmissions for some time now, and we We a question. Will we be encountering alien technology so vastly beyond comprehension that we will have no clue even what it is, let alone how it works? And if so, can we sell it on the black market? You might not see us, but we will see you. In the verse. Well, that was cool. That was pretty clever. Yeah, it's you know, it's a much longer video. We we trimmed it down so that it fits in the show, but it was still

11. 00:08:07

    pretty interesting question. So, what do you think? Yeah. So, um the alien technology thing I mean if you think about it, is how interesting is it to find something you can't do anything with? But but um we're still discussing exactly what we might let players find out there and that will evolve over time, too. So, you know stay tuned. Yeah, that's that's it's kind of cool thing though, so so anything cool obviously we'd we'd be interested in doing at some point. From Blaster, it's been said that the Banu do some trading with the Vanduul. Does that mean we will be able to buy Vanduul ships and equipment from the Banu? Ooh. Quite a thing, isn't it? So, we had wondered about that. We'd had a lot of people wonder about that. What happens if my my Scythe that I bought gets damaged? Where do I get parts for it?

12. 00:08:54

    That's a fair point. Go to the Banu. They might just have some. They might have some parts. Not sure they'll have ships cuz I doubt that the Vanduul go around selling their ships, but never can tell. There might be one popping up here and there. Who knows? Right, right. So, most of but but but they definitely but to get parts for the Scythe, that's a very very good point. So, from Trailblazer, it is already said that players can run factories in Star Citizen. But will we be able to have our own dealerships for collected goods? We'll definitely have ways for players to sell their stuff. I mean, there may be several ways, but we've we've talked about stores as part of that. Yes. Okay, cool. Well, there you go. From Lord Porksword I don't know about that. When version one of the dog fight module

13. 00:09:42

    is released, will it run off a primary server, say in the US, or will additional regional servers go live as well, so us allz ice can enjoy some low ping? Low ping. Um so, yeah. from Lord pork sword. It's a great name. Um so, we're going to be spinning up the dog fighting module in the cloud. So, it will be distributed globally. Everyone can play. Right. So, exactly. So, in case you didn't know, a lot of other MMOs will do like they'll have set servers and data centers around the world, and however close you are will affect your ping. Where ours is actually going to spin up shards or spin up servers, clusters in different areas around the world based on where people are. So, at least that's how it's going to work. From Renescent Renescent Angel, how much

14. 00:10:33

    content will a player who only wants to engage in PvE be able to experience compared to others who are more willing to combat other players? Will players be forced to fight each other in more lawless systems regardless of their preferences? That is a good question, and we've had, you know, similar questions before, but it's it's pretty hot topic. The slider is a constant topic of discussion on the forums. is, and fair enough. So, yeah. Um the the slider is a preference. It is not an absolute. So, you can't No matter how far you take that slider, you can never prevent PvP content. Unless you're running your own server. Well, if you're running your own server, then you can do whatever you want to some extent. Um so, there will always be plenty of content for both types of players. It doesn't it's not going to favor one over the other.

15. 00:11:19

    Um we treat everything equally, or try to when we're building the game. But, when you do get to lawless areas, there's certainly danger of you running into players. Um in in more shall we call policed Even if someone were able to occasionally jump you and will steer it away if you don't like PvP, um they'd be constantly hunted and you know, free targets for PvPers everywhere at that point. Right. That's a good point. Cool. From Oh, this one's going to This is Nutcha Misicommen. Well. I don't know if that's right or not and if it isn't, I sincerely apologize. There's confusion regarding FPS modules cover mechanic. How is it going to work and will we have prone stances? Thanks for making our dream come true.

16. 00:12:08

    Well, that's pretty cool. That's nice to get that question. Yeah, yeah. That's That's right. Um so, I went straight to the people we won't name and Redacted bugs. Yes, those bugs. It's like the worst kept secret in in uh And so, our cover mechanic is it's it's sort of a combination of of many things. There is a snap cover, you know, a go to this place to jump into cover. There will probably have some auto version of that as well where you can just sort of assume that you're going to duck into cover. We try to cover all all levels of skill. But, when you're in cover, you can move around. It's not, you know, you're not stuck in a position. Right. So, you can move in cover and and look around and cover and all the things you'd want to do to get full situational awareness. What about prone?

17. 00:12:54

    Prone? Yes. We're going to have prone. Prone is a thing. It's a thing. Even in zero-G. That's right, right. From Hellstorm, I was curious if you could elaborate on the level of economic gameplay available. While the space combat portion looks awesome, yes it does, I have my concerns that there isn't a lot of depth to the economic side of the Woo, well, Rob, what do you think of that? If only you could see. I know, right? Um And we'll have more on that later today. We'll we'll be talking a little bit more about the the economy um with uh David Ladyman coming up here, so. The really simple, elegant answer that Chris gave to this question was, we give every part of the game equal attention. There is just because dog fighting is coming to you first, doesn't mean it's the only focus. So, the economy will get plenty

18. 00:13:44

    of love, and it will be very in-depth. I mean, we're running one of the most complex simulations I've ever seen in a game, so. There will be content. Cool. Ooh. Our old friend Kinshadow's back. William, was recently reviewing the specifications behind the Caterpillar, and had a couple of questions. Given the modular nature of the Several of my colleagues have pointed to the tabs in the front being indicative of a possibly stacking architecture. Can you confirm that the length of the Caterpillar can potentially be modified by these modules, and that you could potentially add things like weapons hardpoints, or special ramming attachments? Thanks. Kinshadow, out. That's That's just awesome. That is really good. Now, welcome back,

19. 00:14:31

    Kinshadow. I know I love it. Look at his Caterpillar. Yeah, I know. So, what's So, what about variants and stuff, and Um, I don't envision that you're going to have, like, a 18-km long Caterpillar in the game, but he was trying. Um, but we have talked about the the the There are definitely distinct pieces that go in those modules already. We've already talked about that, so there will probably be varying arrangements of those available. I'm not sure if we're going to just let you stack them infinitely, though. Right, you can't have, like, shh. That That was pretty cool. Well done. I really enjoyed that video, so. And now, it's time for a William Wallace with this week's most valuable post. Don't you Don't you MEAN WILLIAM LEWIS? FREEDOM! HI, EVERYBODY. I'M LEAD moderator Will,

20. 00:15:21

    and I'm here to bring you this week's MVP. This week's MVP is Talon 86, who's created a thread talking about one-liners in the verse. A couple of my favorite are leave nothing behind except for carnage and Van Duel husks, and nothing in this life is certain except for perma-death and space taxes. So, thank you very much Talon 86, you're this week's MVP. Thanks, Will. Boarders going to board. Hey guys, what's up? David and Rob, you ready? Yes, sir. ready for all this? So, as you may know, this is David Ladyman. He is working with us on Well, many things, actually. uh this is kind of subscriber We could talk a little bit about subscribers. So, what do you do for subscribers, David? Do I do for subscribers? I uh

21. 00:16:08

    put together Jump Point 2 every month. Mhm. And that's about it. It's 46 pages. That's about it? Yeah, the 46 pages of Jump Point. Right and right. So, that's what it That's what it was funny because that that actually we initially said it would be I think it was 46 pages. And what happened? It got bigger. Not Did you just forget the dash and thought it meant 46 pages? 46, yeah. Sure. Okay. But it's I'll tell you what. I haven't heard that one before. Yeah, I know, right? But I'll bet But I'll bet Well, they they don't get better. You've known me long enough to know that. You find the You find the best you can reach to and Hey, boarders going to board, baby. Yes. So, the thing about it is, right though, is So, you do Jump Point every month, and it's one of the best things subscribers get, and I see you brought some books along, which are pretty cool.

22. 00:16:55

    We've kind of showed those before. They're They're really, really neat, and those are the hard backs and the soft backs, and those are some of the things they're getting, and they seem to be appreciated. People really like that. That's one of the biggest benefits to being a subscriber. It's I like it. Yeah, well, I'll bet you do. lot of fun to put it together. It's It's a lot of fun. It's a lot of hard work, too. Yeah, yeah, yeah, right. it's a lot of fun just to be I have a front row seat. And and I can walk into the rooms like, I get that front row seat because I'm doing jump point. Right, that's pretty cool. And it's and it's really it is. I I get to go up and talk to anybody who's involved in this game and say, "Okay, you get to tell me about this." And I get to see the ships as they're being made. It's it's neat. Well, that's very, very cool. So, you're

23. 00:17:43

    old school with us. You go back to Origin with actually all three of us on the set. And also you, Michael, I believe, right? That's right, Origin Systems. That's right. So, we all came from Origin. And you're you've we've kind of sucked you more and more into Star Citizen. We go, "You're not just working on jump point any longer or the brochures, which you also put together." Yep. Um you're also doing some of this economy research. And we've got a little bit of this here. We we got, you know, we'll look at Michael run some B-roll or run some roll behind us while we talk occasionally. And so, you guys did an you're doing the economy. What are you What are you doing with that? Well, I'm not doing what we announced at the front of the show, which was design the economy. Oh, well. some of it. There's a lot of pieces within here. I I am able to to discuss it with folks as other folks are designing the economy.

24. 00:18:31

    Uh but what I specifically am responsible for is to find a way to make it into a board game so that as the economy is being built we can simulate it on a board game before we spent hours and hours programming it all. And we got little ships and pretty counters. And uh you're looking at two of the star systems uh there. And Got to have the dice. Every game starts with dice. So, now you guys did a run you did a run through. How How Now, you did what? Like 20 systems randomly generated? And how did that go? How did it go? How did it play? Uh it was 20 systems that we picked, actually. Right, right, right. Okay, fair enough. Sorry. Uh, it it was a first it it was a first run-through. Any any first play test is going to be

25. 00:19:20

    real skimpy, and it was that. Now, Chris is really big on pen and paper. I know, you know, from years of conversations and everything we've ever done together is we've papered things out first. What What do you Why is it important to pen and paper these things first to make a board game, essentially, before we To save time. To to see as as long as we can actually simulate the computer game with the board game. If If we don't, then we've lost we're spinning our wheels. But, as long as we can simulate the computer game with the board game, then we can get a much better idea of how the computer game will run, and we will know guess we need to emphasize this more in the computer game. No, we need to stop doing that, and we find the fun things, we emphasize the fun. It's

26. 00:20:09

    it's what you do in any way of making a computer game. You find the fun things, and you make them important and more fun. Yeah, and and yeah, and then you minimize the things that are just that are just like noise, so to speak. So, now, did it go the way you thought? I mean, cuz every time you go into one of these things, you think it's going to play a certain way, and sometimes it doesn't. Did this one go how you thought it would or It pretty much went the way I was expecting. We had the the design department here in Austin is uh they're first victims. Yeah, first victims of play testing. They're very happy to spend 2 hours playing a board game rather than sitting at their desk working on things. Um, and it went pretty much as expected. It was we're as a first test, it's still working out the okay,

27. 00:20:58

    does this work to simulate the computer game? But, in fact, as soon as we get out from here, we're going to go and do another one. Round two, and I have refined some of the rules especially through discussion with with other folks who are playing. And we're we'll get closer to the game, and we'll get it's incremental. It's we won't have a breakthrough I wouldn't expect. But from week to week, we'll get a better and better idea of how the board game works to simulate the computer game, and from that how the computer game can be made So, like once you get to with these 20 systems, once you get to where you're like, "Okay, this is really fun. I think we found the emphasis on what we need to push or or pull or put into the economy that makes it fun." Then you do you then

28. 00:21:45

    scale and continue so that you find out whether if it works in 20, does it work in 100, does it work in 40? You know, cuz there's challenges. Some things As I go, what's the next step after You can go ahead. At that point, I would hope that we'll be at the point of moving it all into engine. And so, then it'll be much easier to spin up to 100 systems because it'll be faster to generate the data. And we are doing the economy simulator as well as far as the electronic version of said things. We just can spin up features a lot faster in this methodology than they can on In fact, yeah, I was going to say, rather than taking this 20 systems and going to 100, probably the where we will spin up is to go into more detail on the economic systems. Uh, this last week, this week, we're not going to try to include insurance in it at all.

29. 00:22:34

    There's there's other parts of the There's lots of other parts of the economy that won't go in for several more weeks. and so, as we get more confident, as we get a better handle on how it's playing, as we get that feedback we need to know on how the computer game works, we'll start adding the other things that are in the economy that just aren't there right now. So, your degree is mathematics, correct? Mathematics and linguistics. So, that's a pretty that's a pretty unique degree to have. Um different sides of the brain, generally speaking. Generally, yeah. Yeah, but not with you. So, that's good. That That helps us in this. So, I want to thank you for stopping by. I appreciate the update. This is, you know, what what goes on. We have Dave and Rob here. It's going to be really fun. I'll sit in on the economy simulator later today. Make it fun. Yeah, let's That's it Well, that's it. Look, it's a game. Let's make it fun, right?

30. 00:23:20

    Aha! I knew there was something. So, coming up this week at CIG, we have episode 12 of The Next Great Starship. It is fantastic. Yeah, it looks like a final asset to me. I really like it. I don't really have any criticism at all. I think they're doing a really great job. The modeling is fantastic. Wow, it's very exciting coming to the conclusion of The Next Great Starship. I can't wait to see who wins. Uh some extremely talented teams out there. So, tune in this Friday for the next episode of The Next Great Starship. It's really going to be fun. I want to thank subscribers and pledgers. Without you,

31. 00:24:07

    there is no us. We're not able to make this game. Um can't tell you how how cool and honored we are to be part of Chris Roberts' vision. It's incredible. Love every minute of it. Uh also, I still can't get over this. You guys are incredibly generous. Take a look at Wow, wow, wow. We got something here says, "Dear Wingman in the Austin office, first I want to thank everyone for letting me be part of the sataball process. My pitch design didn't win, but it was still fantastic to be part of the process." He's a smuggler, apparently, and he also brews beer. I wonder what's in here. What sort of contraband would be available for those of us playing the game who want to sit on the dark side of the economy? Well, definitely beer. So, let's see what we got. Wow, look at this. Woo! It's Smi- How do you say that name, Rob? Holy crap.

32. 00:24:53

    I don't think it's holy crap. All right. How do you say How do you say name? Smeezy's? Smeechee? Smeechee's Unfiltered Arachnophobia. Thank you very much Smeechee. ALL RIGHT. WOOHOO! HOW DO YOU SEE IG AUSTIN? YOU GUYS ARE DROWNING in good liquor down there. I hope you'll enjoy this brand new CD from my band Thirsty Dirty Spokes. Sorry, not Thirsty Spokes. Well, you code or with a cold one later after work after work. Excuse me. From veteran backer and subscriber Gabe Degnatale aka Juggernaut. Say that real fast. And here's the Dirty Spokes CDs. COOL.

33. 00:25:39

    MUSIC. AWESOME. YOUR GENEROSITY IS AMAZING. Thank you guys very very much from the bottom of our heart. We the teams across the globe at all the different studios appreciate your generosity. So, thank you. Also, if you want to find out what goes on and when we post videos up, join our YouTube channel. You'll get an email. You'll find out exactly what goes on when it happens. You'll be first, which we all know on the internet is important to be. Submit your questions on the RSI forum. We'll put something up every thread every week and we'll say what you know what do you want to ask them for and feedback and that's how we pick the questions for this show. It's usually chosen by Ben or one of the other community managers in in the Santa Monica office. And if you want to join join Wingman's Hangover. It's about 30 minutes after the show. Now, it used to be about 15, but I've got a meeting now. So, it's usually about noon Central Time

34. 00:26:26

    and we'll do a little quick update, a little informal talk back and forth, maybe some Skype channels in the chat roll on our website. So, that's Wingman's Hangover about noon noonish right around there and then we'll usually type in when we're going to get there for the meeting. So, and remember if you want your stuff featured on Wingman's Hangover, send it in. We just might use it. And after Mike bumps through that thing on the corner over there, which you probably heard on the mic. Hey guys, where are we going to see him? I think I think e-sports driving,

35. 00:27:24

    especially games like like my game, to be, you know, more competitive and competitive in different types of ways is very exciting right now. One thing I'd like to add to that is that I love StarCraft II as well. Um, but what I'm really excited about is games being designed for e-sports Okay, I think you can hear me now, right? Yeah.

36. 00:28:12

    All right. with something like Star Citizen, you have to put a lot more thought into how do we contextualize all of this and make it something that's a consumable, enjoyable viewership experience. Um, but yeah, I think that that's driving a lot of game making right now.