Star Citizen Live: Regeneration Elaboration

24 September 202101:00:471,750 linesWatch on YouTube ↗

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

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Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Star Citizen Live. What are we calling it? Regeneration elaboration. Because I'm a sucker for the rhyming titles this this quarter. Joining us on the show this week, let's let's let's bring them up. Why aren't why aren't where are they on my screen here? There we go. We've got two members of our esteemed narrative team who probably need no introduction, but we're going to do it anyway cuz every show somebody's first show. From the before times and Wizard of Oz, we've got Will Weissbaum. Tell everybody who you are and what you do. I am lead writer Will Weissbaum. I do a little bit of everything here relating to narrative and lore from Squadron 42 to the persistent universe. We're a very large immersive game and everything needs just a tiny sprinkle of
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lore to make it magical. Just a tiny sprinkle of lore. I think I don't think it's any secret for folks who've been following the project for for since the beginning. Lore is a is an essential underpinning of almost everything that happens in our game. Either it is the basis for things that grow from it or it is the new foundation that is added to things we want to do. As soon as we want to do this, it's like, okay, well, we have to figure out a way to make it work within the the lore and story of our verse. As we just did with the lore of regeneration. Which is what we're talking about today. Before we get to that, one more introduction. Dave, who are you? What do you do for Star Citizen and where are you? I'm Dave Haddock. I'm narrative director here and I am in the UK actually in our Wilmslow office.
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Do we know that you're there? I I sneak I sleep in the vents and then come out in the daytime. It's where I left you. I'm glad to see you're still there. Now that you're in a different place than I left you. Yeah. All right. So, what we are talking about today is regeneration. If for folks who may or may not know, every Tuesday since the beginning of Star Citizen the project, the the narrative team has has posted a comlink on our robertsspaceindustries.com website detailing some aspect of Star Citizen's lore. And they've done it pretty much without fail. Whereas ISC will skip a week or or SEO will miss a show or whatever, the the narrative team has been pretty much
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every single week since 2012. It's very It's our most impressive streak here at CIG as far as I'm concerned. And this week's show was about regeneration or the Lore Maker's Guide to Regeneration based on the new changes that are coming to Alpha 3.15 created by the addition of healing tier tier zero. So, we as we usually do, we put up a thread. We collected some questions from the community, but before we get into that because not everybody reads or not everybody may be aware of that thing. We can just wait here while they just like 5 minutes of silence while they read it. Without going back and and and and just rereading the entire post for everybody, why don't we give a folks just a primer of uh
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what what happened this week as far as the change in lore? Well, yeah, I mean again, this was sort of there was discussion that happened. Was it on this very show a few months ago talking about Yeah, with Chris and Richard. Oh, that was calling all dibs. Yeah. Oh. It's the pre-recorded version of this show. That's shorter. Anyway, talking about the sort of the the what would ultimately be sort of the responding technique mechanic and sort of revisiting the original sort of Death of a Spaceman post from from from way back and so basically this this lore post was a sort as Jared sort of explained earlier like
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the the lore-ified explanation of what this tech is and what's happening and just so we could kind of start to get an idea of like how we could justify it, what our ruleset were and and stuff like that and make sure that it sort of lined up with kind of the mechanics that the design has been sort of looking at implementing. So. So, yeah. So, high level regeneration is the technology by which someone can be bio-printed with all their memories and sense of self intact, which is why it's a little bit of different than cloning, which is just recreating someone's genetic material without all the same person being inside that hull. And then also we have the idea of imprint, which is the way that your sense of self is being stored in this
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technology in the Imprint sphere. That's that's really high level for some of the stuff that we're going to be discussing later today. Dave, if you can, can you bring your mic volume up a little bit more? I can't I can't I can't adjust you individually on this end without adjusting Will as well. All right. So, so as folks have watched ISC in the last couple weeks and everything, uh a major change to life and death is coming ahead of our work towards Death of a Spaceman. Um players will die and then players who are allowed to die like they're they're not healed, they're not picked back up, they're not saved out in wherever or or if they're take, you know, such traumatic damage,
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there's no chance to save them, they will wake up in a hospital bed as this new and and and Do we have a term? We're not calling it cloning. I know that. I know you had the big list of terms at the beginning of everything. Do we have a term for the new version of you? Did did did No, I think we Cuz it's not a clone that wakes up. It's a It's still you. It's still you. It's still you. Yeah. It's still you. It's like a transporter where where people argue whether a transporter actually duplicates you and destroys the old one and whatever. I mean, maybe that's like a derogatory term we need to come up with for people who are kind of against this technology, but they don't trust but we we haven't established that yet. That's maybe that's a good suggestion. The community can make feel free to suggest
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terms for someone that's been regenerated. Yeah, so If not, it'll be a subject of our one of our lore terms. I also watched The Prestige on the plane back, so it's all very topical. It's all very topical right now. I just realized that. Yeah, Star Citizen is very much just like The Prestige. Just like The Prestige. So, the short version. So so so the player character wakes up in their hospital bed with the most recent scan of themselves, but because of this this thing that we're referring to as as an echo. What was the longer term? Longer form name of the echo? Traumatic response echo. Traumatic response echo. Sometimes the damage or or or or the the the form of your demise will will will carry back along with you through through through this mental
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trauma. So, if if if you suffered a tremendous trauma to your legs or something, your your your new you could wake up with damaged legs to the point where it might need replacements and stuff. Sort of the the idea behind that was cuz again, you know, with as with the sort of Death of a Spaceman thing, like the idea was that you you would still It wasn't This wasn't the sort of key to immortality that it was your body would still be degrading. So, we tried to come up with a way to kind of justify that because again, you know, on the surface they're bio-printing a new version of you, it would seem like, well, if I got my arm cut off, like they would just print print me with a new arm or or regenerate me with a new arm. But so sort of the idea with this was this this this notion that
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the brain is sort of tricked into believing that like, well, I got my arm cut off. So, even though it's technically when when I regenerate, you know, I have a functioning arm, to my brain it suffered such extensive damage that it thinks that it's it's dead and useless. So, it sort of that that aspect of it kind of carried over. So, that way we were kind of letting the body still kind of degrade, you know, through these these Yeah, that the imprint is capturing so much more than just a DNA sample would indicate. A DNA sample doesn't have your cool scar that you got when you were 12 years old. That's not in your DNA. That's just on your face. But imprints carry that information with them and carry on. I mean, if you want to go have plastic
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surgery to have that removed in a Clyde machine or something like that, that's still an option, but like the imprint itself remembers your current version of you. And as we as we get into the questions that come from the community here, I want to remind folks that this, like anything else in Star Citizen, is a work in progress. Just like this regeneration and these Imprint Imprint Imprint spheres Imprint spheres spheres spheres spheres I'm still recovering from my travel. Just like all these things weren't public, didn't exist just a week ago as far as as its development will continue as the game continues to evolve and we continue to want to do new things or different things, you know, that the teams will turn back to you as they did
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for this and be like, we need a way to explain this or make this reasonable or functional or whatever. So, so the answers that we're going to give today are the truth as we know them today. But like with all with all aspects of Star Citizen, including the lore, uh leave us some wiggle room to to grow and to expand as we continue into the future. Well, I'll go there. Uh just real quick. I mean, yeah, that's I mean one of the great things, too, is I mean sifting through the the Ask a Dev stuff. There's been some great questions, and obviously that Jared has pulled into here, but uh you know, some some great insights of like and raising questions and circumstances and stuff like that that we hadn't considered and stuff, so it helps us kind of flush it out even more and help reinforce the logic. Yeah, I didn't pull the great questions.
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I just pulled the okay ones. Okay, cool. But yeah, all that kind of stuff. We're really testing out how easy is it to move imprints around, how easy is it to get scanned, how often do you need to get scanned? These are all kind of really tied into core gameplay and stuff that we want to test further. Like what we're going to see in 3.15 uh in that patch is just the tier zero of this stuff where you know, the um imprint viability score stuff isn't really in place yet, so you can kind of make you don't even have to really do the scans as much. Like all that kind of stuff is in the very early days, and as it gets tested, we're going to hone in on okay, this is the limitations of this technology or the technology supports this. Yeah, a lot of the a lot of the questions were about that
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imprint viability score. A lot of questions were about how insurance will work and and those systems are still being developed and fleshed out more by the designers, by the actual game designers and stuff. So, as that stuff continues, then lore will be brought in to flesh it out and make it work, so. Yeah, and as we see how it, you know, impacts gameplay and stuff like that, you know, they'll always be tweaking. Well, that's the whole purpose of having a live environment while we're in the middle of our game development. It lets us We don't have to commit to one thing or the other. We can throw it out there, and we can test it, and we can see how the players respond to it, and then adjust from there. Yeah. So, let's jump into the questions. We've also got some Games of Pyro questions. We've had a couple shows this year with you guys where we created the Games of Pyro with Jeremiah where we continue to flesh out some of the visual looks. So, we'll throw some of those in here toward the end. But sticking with
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regeneration, which is the topic of this show here, uh the most voted up question had to do with um what happens to the images stored on a sphere of a medical ship uh if the ship itself is destroyed? So, even when it's not destroyed, even if a sh- player ship goes offline, right? Like in the in the terms of persistence and stuff. If someone parks it and makes their ship unavailable, um it we don't want regeneration to be some loophole in being able to steal someone's ship like when they're not around. Like you don't So, so when when ships become unavailable, you will respawn at your primary residence, like wherever your home is kind of is the idea. Um with with the idea that imprints, because we
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have this idea that they can be transferred, okay, that there exists a backup of you at your home. Now, with the idea that imprints don't become active until you die, like whatever is being transferred in a quantum entanglement thing kind of shows up at the proper location. So, you'll be at that hospital instead of the ship if you unfortunately pass away. Okay, Jared. All right. And again, it it it is I think that one specifically is one of the points that will be fleshed out more as we see the gameplay and we'll make it implement implement implications, there we go. The gameplay implications. uh is the part about memory and experiences purely for flavor, or is this to be realized within the game? I
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mean, our characters don't have stats like an RPG, and our reception would affect be affected, or at least I don't see why it would. Yeah, I mean, I think at from my understanding of it at this point that it's it's it's just more for kind of flavor that it's the cuz it's that sort of weird thing of like if the you as a player have to kind of go, well, my character doesn't remember I don't know it it feels a little like right right now it's just going to be like the it's just kind of a a bit of flavor text to add to it that it kind of crosses over, but But it's it's leaving that openness for design to kind of explore some ideas that they had about you know, why you need to imprint frequently or how that's going to affect stuff in that kind of gameplay cycle.
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And so, we wanted to make sure that they had room to develop more impetus to go back to a hospital and get scanned rather than just continuing on forever. And I imagine it'll have some impact on the RPers and stuff who who are RPing their character and want to know how far back they have to reset their their charac- their their RP characters' knowledge and experience and stuff like that. It'll be an interesting aspect to to take a look at when you see more of that come online. And and kind of just to address the main one I'm doing a ability from another question I saw some people asking about, you know, if there is this echo that's updating the imprint, you know, why is there ever a gap? Isn't it just staying synced um all the time? And so, the kind of idea was that the imprint is a excellent copy of you, but the echoes
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that come through aren't complete, which is why you would want to make a new imprint and get scanned again. You're getting like flashes of memory, flashes of trauma, but it isn't the same as a 100% copy of you all the time being updated, at least the idea right now. Just like a real echo in the real world, it doesn't have the same fidelity as the original source. Exactly. and there's a there's a certain level of distortion to it. So, you might have like rough memories of the time before you re- regenerated, but it wouldn't be perfect recall. That's the idea. And and for those who are RPing, you know, it it it there's also some variation to it and stuff. You know, you know, maybe you had minimal echoes, and your your your new character remembers everything and maybe you know, it's up
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it's up to you and that kind of stuff. Uh one of the big reveals in that in that in that post was the reveal that this technology is based on uh scavenged or salvaged scavenged salvaged alien tech uh acquired from or through the Vanduul. Um Well, the this question is basically is it Vanduul created or as we've heard in other from other sources about the Vanduul, is it something that they themselves acquired from some other source? That That is a good question. You're not going to give me anything on that one, are you? I I was about I was about halfway I was about halfway through the question. I was like, Dave's not going to give me
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anything on that one, so. Yeah, I figured. I should just going to have to learn more about the Vanduul in the universe. All right, so we'll move on. The Ibrahim Sphere. I'm sorry, what? I said we want to save that fun. Yeah. The Ibrahim Sphere. Uh can it exist outside of a med bed or medical facility? Uh i.e. specifically, uh can a sphere be stolen? That's that is an interesting question. I mean, again, like I I have a I have a feeling and I you know, I do feel bad kind of the always deferring on on this stuff. I I feel like that's going to be dictated by gameplay as far as in design of like cuz it as it seems like it could obviously be rife for griefing uh
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it it puts players in a weird position if like if they could be stolen and then and that thus unex- inaccessible, and it makes someone died die. I don't know what that would mean. Like so, I I don't know, right? I mean, part of the idea the original idea of it and was just that the it was something that would probably not be accessible to people as an item to carry around. Um but again, that's going to be sort of dependent on the gameplay and the ultimate design and stuff like that and what's fun and what's not. And just like it's been inspiring uh players to kind of imagine cool scenarios, we're hoping it'll also inspire our mission designers to imagine stuff and be able to work with them on,
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you know, what what is fun, like Dave said, so. Yeah, and it it might be one maybe it's one of those things where, you know, the the theft of Ibrahim Spheres maybe happens to NPCs where it's it's a mission thing of like someone hey, somebody jacked my Ibrahim Sphere, can you go get it back? Right. Uh but you know, something that doesn't happen to players just because again, you know, you still you don't want to be denied that opportunity to respawn cuz that would be a bit of a drag. Yeah, we always have a backup for that, so I guess like it could be a weird thing, but like yeah. Definitely has some loopholes. I definitely think there's some there's some story potential, there's some mission potential there, uh stuff like that. But yeah, there were there was an unsurprising number of questions in the thread about about players' ability to prevent other players from responding
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and and incurring a permanent perma-death. And yeah, all the all the what if stuff. Like, you know, you're an assassin, and you don't want to just send a message and force someone to respond, you want to get rid of this human forever. And it's been something we've been having fun talking about ourselves with this kind of new mechanic. It's like, okay, is it that you're sent to kill the same person, you know, five times until they're dead for real, and like you have to keep doing it and like waiting at the hospital and stuff like that. Is it something if you know, if we work with design on this where you are manipulating an Ibrahim sphere directly or you're manipulating an imprint directly somehow. Of course, we might limit how much that affects it with our backup technology and all this kind of stuff. So, definitely room to explore down the line as far as gameplay. I think there's some interesting the
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things I'm looking forward to actually from the lore perspective. You actually mentioned the the taxation problem with allowing multiple multiple copies, but I'm looking I'm looking forward to the conspiracy theories that like the UE are manipulating the spheres to to make us populace more docile every time they Oh, I'm sure Parker's will have a And stuff like that. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Uh, let's see. Let's What else we got here? Another question regarding Ibrahim spheres. Uh, does this mean that different beds across the PU will distribute to different imprint viability score reduction rates? Uh, well, that this goes back to the design question we set we set. So, so So, basically they want to know if you have your thing set in one location, but you're forced to regenerate at a lower quality place cuz
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it's closer, does that affect your IVS? I think we're going to just going to punt that one to the design team as they develop further develop it probably. Yeah, right right now we have that there's a sense of economy to the imprints and IVS and how fast you degrade and whether you repair that or help it or all these kind of ideas floating and we're we're looking forward to design kind of figuring out more of the specifics of that. So, and how it ties into insurance and how much you're paying and all this kind of stuff. Yeah. Uh, what non-human races have access to regeneration technology and how did they get it and when? Um, I mean, I think it was actually it's really interesting while we've been sort of talking about
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this the the post that we did on Tuesday. weirdly enough like we actually didn't really talk much about sort of implications for the the other primary kind of alien races. Uh, at at this point I kind of feel like it it might be easier for them to sort of share in the technology. I mean, before this the we jumped on Will and I were actually spitballing kind of how the different how the Banu would feel about it and how the Xi'an would feel about it and stuff like that. Um, but as opposed to the sort of like you know, the the Xi'an have their version of this. I have a feeling we probably would just sort of make it universal across across the various species, but um, Yeah, right now it was humans who kind of developed this
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first. It was our tech and kind of our big break through on the other species. Um, so it wasn't like they were off developing and having fallen upon it. It was kind of our unique consolidation of salvaging this Vanduul attack and having Clyde P bio-printing technology come online recently where everything kind of came together and we had this huge breakthrough of being able to bring people back. Um, so we'll actually be developing kind of I think seeing in real time how the other species dealing with this new technology as well. I mean, humanity is still adjusting to this kind of new way of life. So, Okay. I wonder what race was that were the carrion eaters? Is the Banu or the Xi'an? Xi'an. I always forget. Xi'an. I find myself wondering if there if if there's not
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some like aftermarket use of just making car you know, dead bodies to to feed the like to like feed their you know, to to address their homeless situation or I mean, you know, I think they probably have artificially printed dead meat. I I I mean, we talked about it like humans have bio-printed meat. So, So, it's not a a big Yeah, but it's not as good as the real thing though. It's it's not. It's it's it's like beyond meat. It's just not it's not meat. It's close. I had one. It was pretty good. Well, that's how you'll be paying people to ship space cows out to your ranch on whatever moon you're staying at. Uh, Space Marine 55 says lame, I'm out. Later, Space Marine. He wanted us to know.
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Uh, let's see. Uh, Uh, that's actually similar question. How has the Banu and Xi'an reacted to the development of regeneration technology? Um, let's move to the Haven't we written ourselves into a bit of a corner here? Uh, with no faster than light communications uh, to enable things like data running and to allow gameplay around travel being faster than transmission, but the Ibrahim sphere technology seems to allow for real-time streaming of individuals memory, physical state, etc. across distance. Uh, how do you explain such a thing? Uh, it was that was sort of the the the kind of quantum entanglement reference that we could sort of worked into the thing. Is that it's it's something in and of itself. It's not like, you know, our engine technology or
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anything like that. It's it's a an aspect of this that is still kind of unknown and people are still they don't quite understand how it works, but it's this is just what it the effect of it. And because it's not 100% it's like we were talking about that perfect recall. It makes it kind of unreliable as a fast communication. Like if you tell someone an important message and then shoot them in the head, there's a chance they might not remember exactly what you told them on the other side of it. So, Right. Uh, say I just got a message uh, from Tyler for folks who have been here. Uh, the CitizenCon web page is now live and it's got aspect it's got the video and the schedule and details for contest and everything. So, check that out. I'm watching these guys. Go do something else. Thanks, Tyler.
00:25:41
No, no, no. Just put in another tip. Put in another tip. I know you're all bored with these jerks. Let's Let's go look at something fun. it it was just that one Space Marine guy. He was the only one that was bored and he felt like the need to tell everybody. So, It's Friday night, you know. Um, what's the rationale behind prisons reviving a dead person just to keep them in jail? Is it just the state's sadistic joy of torturing somebody in pleasure? Yes. I got this one, guys. It's when you It's when you you get a crime stat like you your imprints get kind of impounded would be a way of looking at it if you have any on record in legal systems. It's
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just like they would give you medical treatment if you got shot on the way to capture and then bring you to jail afterwards. This is And I would I would also maybe also throw in there that like as opposed to I guess it cuz you could kind of argue with like I think they did this in in Altered Carbon, but that that idea of like oh well, you know, if you go and if you're in prison, they just keep your stat in isolation for however many years, but it feels like in that regard it might pass by in the blink of an eye. Like you just wake up and it's 150 years later or whatever, but with this, you know, you're you're expected to be awake and conscious, you know, of so you can serve your sentence. Otherwise, it's not really Yeah. you know, you can't nap and you wake up. It's the literal version of that Deep Space Nine episode where O'Brien went to prison and they forced him to live
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like 60 years of prison time in his head because you you want people to experience the punishment. You don't want them to just be on ice or or or frozen or whatever. So, they did it the other way. They accelerated it in his head, but so he still had all the experiences in like 5 minutes of real time. Black Mirror Christmas special did that. Right. Right. I I actually have to check. I I I don't know how it works right now if you're making an imprint at Grim Hex and then get killed by the authorities whether you respond in prison or in Grim Hex. I'd have to double check on that. Not sure exactly if the gameplay flow. Fair enough. Something for you to codify. Let me know. I need to go play the game after this and see for myself. always the Deep Space Nine deep cuts, ShadowNova. Uh, let's see what else we got. Um,
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how have Oh, wait. I don't know. I I lost my place here. Um, what are some examples of ways to wipe a person? Maybe we should explain what the what the wipe means. From the from that page. Wipe is the kind of term when an imprint is no longer viable for regeneration. You've been wiped from the sphere. It's removed and that person is dead forever at that point. Other than in our hearts and our memories. So, wipe is that moment when you would be you'd be forced to create a new player and and your possessions and everything would would uh, transfer transfer to that player stuff as in the original Death of a Spaceman. Okay. So, what are some of the ways that a person can be wiped? Uh, well, I mean, again, I think, you
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know, as of as of right now, I would say the the effect of being wiped is more of you know, the the the imprint degrades over time that it's not necessarily something that somebody is doing to you I got you. or can can accelerate. Uh, you know, that it's it's just the fact of like, you know, your your imprint's decaying if that makes sense. Uh, as opposed to again like whether there's we're going to introduce a a notion of an assassination mission where it's like hey, we want you to go in and and, you know, artificially wipe somebody. Corrupt their data, yeah. Yeah, or something like that. That remains to be seen, but I I just sort of initially interpreted it as like it's it's not something that can be necessarily
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physically done to someone. It's just a thing that can that happens over time. Cuz you know, that's like the end goal of that sort of degradation of Yeah. I I like the idea though and even without the Ibrahim sphere manipulation, the idea that there would be very high tier assassination missions that are almost like the Nemesis system where like Right. you have to kill this guy until he's gone forever. And like that takes a lot of doing and that would you know, be a dedication of time but really fun of just always showing up and chasing them. Oh, yeah. Oh, the the the the the the the the the the the the the opportunities for storytelling with this are are are immense. Like I mean, you you you you you you you have you have traditional political assassination where you would you know, just go and sniper a you know, the president of whatever or you could do the you know, the the
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the long game and corrupt their sphere. You know, and then you know, corrupt their sphere and and and you do this years beforehand and nobody knows, you know, a long form recursive thing that goes in there and it it's a there's a lots of opportunities for storytelling there. Yeah, and also good ways to reference Jet Li's The One. Wow. Any chance Man, was was that was that the one with DMX? No. No, that was That was the one with Jet that was the one with Jason Statham. Yeah, Jet Li's The One. It's been a while. There's a bunch of young people who don't know what we're talking about. I highly recommend people watch Fist of Legend then. They should go out and watch that movie. It's a great movie. Um has the Ibrahim
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sphere technology spread to criminals likes of Pyro and renegades, Levski, or extra empire populations like Oberon? yes, I believe so. That part of the reason why we also did made this sort of a retcon as opposed to sort of a real time discovery was so we could kind of permeate out a bit. So. And and to address the timeline a little bit, there there's been some confusion about Imperator Addison. And and so in the article we said in 2949 the first successful regeneration happened and then when Addison came into office she spent dedicated a large portion of the budget into proliferating the technology
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throughout the empire. Um and I guess there was some confusion because Addison didn't come into office until 2951. The the idea was that after the first regeneration in 2949 development continued and people were very excited about it and it was starting to spread but it was still limited in scope to who could get access to this technology, who was being able to be able to be regenerated. And so what Addison's part of it was making it standard. Like open source. Yeah, she forced the companies to make it so that everyone could be producing it. There was a mass initiative to make sure that this was every hospital had it rather than just the biggest hospital in Terra or something like that. So so that was what happened after she came into office and that's why it's so common right now.
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Addison loves her tech. Have a tech evangelist of of sorts. It's an interesting question from the thread here. How is the discovery invention of regeneration technology affected the UEE military? There's I I imagine there's got to be it's got to change some some tactics of sorts if you know a good portion of your your fighting forces semi-expendable. Okay, but it can be brought back. Uh yeah, I mean the you know, I mean the ramifications of this are I mean covered everywhere. Uh and yeah, I would imagine that the the the military severely adjusted their sort of operating procedure uh knowing that people you know, their
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their soldiers can can be brought back. Uh It and it's kind of an interesting problem of trying to teach your the star men that they're not immortal. Like as soon as you know that like you can get shot in the head and come back, that kind of changes your sense of danger a little bit, right? reckless? Yeah, and so how do you tell people wait like don't don't be reckless cuz we don't want people flying stupid blowing up ships and then just expecting to come back and all that kind And there's well there's a turnaround time involved and there's a cost involved and stuff like that. And and also again, there's the physical effects, you know, like they're still constant that's kind of the the fun thing about this is that there's still consequence. Like yes, you're you're back but you know, there might be you might your arm might be useless so you need to get a cybernetic arm. Like you know, it's not it's sort of not nothing. Plus the paperwork has got to be a
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[ __ ] Have we have we settled on a on a date in the in the timeline when like when this became widely available or available to the military or anything like that? Uh not not a firm date. Uh as with all this kind of stuff as we take the first pass we we tend to we put up a couple pins in but we don't pin everything down until we really need to because if we make it too rigid then when someone comes in and is like we think for gameplay we need to do this then we have a lot more work fitting in and but if we just have these broader strokes of well, we know in 2949 the tech was there and by 2951 it was widely available. We can massage everything in between as needed. Yeah. I
00:35:21
had to ask for Astro pub cuz I know he was going to be wondering. if a character dies and regenerates, are they able to remember how they died? Uh that goes back to the echoes. So So so so so so yeah, in general in general for for the for the RP ears, would would you think they'd they they they they'd remember the bomb dropping on their head or the the the vandal glave through their face? I think it would vary just like people with car accidents today. A traumatic experience, what you can recall on the other side of it varies vastly between different people. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um has the proliferation of regeneration technology had any unintended or perverse consequences or that you're ready to share with us at
00:36:11
this moment anyway? Uh I mean we haven't delved too heavily into that. Uh it's mostly just been about kind of getting this initial sketch out and sort of seeing how it how it stuck. Um I'm sure you know how how we get. Um we'll we'll corrupt it in some way. Uh but um but yeah, at this point I you know, it was more of outlining the system, the rough structure for it. And again, kind of like what we do with most things is like this is the sort of the broad sketch of it and we'll be detailing it out and we'll kind of probably dig in more, you know, especially once there are more decisions being made on the design side that we can really lock in on stuff. Then we can kind of play around with it the the expectations of it and turn it on its head and and kind of try to have
00:37:00
more fun with it. Uh so. I I was thinking about like someone who got stuck in a loop where they have a problem that medical science can't fix that's terminal. And so like they just keep coming back a few moments before they die. It's like after waiting for their wife. That's bleak. Yeah. I don't know if that would happen or if they would just like keep coming gets so much they just die from the degeneration. Instead of what was killing them to begin with. just have a couple cycles of coming back and dying right away. It it'd give you enough time to catch up on your binge binge watching shows I guess before you die. I just had the worst idea for the worst quest. All right. Seems like skin degeneration on Wallace Kim is due to drug abuse. It's rude. Wallace doesn't judge your
00:37:48
complexion. Uh will drugs create echoes? Uh I mean currently I I would I would say yes, that's sort of what we've been anticipating. It's that again, it's like a it's a physical thing like anything else. You know, that's sort of the chemical addiction, you know, I mean with Widow the staining of the the nerves uh or the veins uh I would assume that that stuff would transfer over because again, it's a it's a part of the physiology like like a scar. So I would probably say yes. Or it could be that Wallace Kim has never been regenerated, not once and that's just the long term, you know, build up on his original body. Who knows? Or he's just super cautious. Does the creation of an imprint also
00:38:39
work with animals? Have you Have you thought about animals yet? So so so someone's going to get a space cow and get really attached to a space cow and want to save their space cow. I don't know. I Assume yes. We're going to have pets, right? And baby we have to talk with design. My gut says yes but Part of Part of me feels like it'd be really expensive, you know, but Just get a new cat. It's fine. All the pet owners out there and then you have Yeah, it's a horrible thing to say but yeah. cats and dogs but Space cows confirmed. They were confirmed like two and a half years ago. I mean, it's definitely an interesting
00:39:25
conundrum of our our current day, right? That you have pet owners who have more and more advanced pet care options given to them where previously you would have euthanized a pet but now you can pay $100,000 to try to do a risky surgery that might save them and like do you do that cuz you love your pet which is a really terrible situation. I'm probably bumming everyone out. I'll stop talking about this. I I'm sorry for your pet health issues out there. This is Bob Barker saying, "Please spay and neuter your pets." Nobody will know who Bob Barker is anymore. All right, we got about a little less than 20 minutes of the show. Let's let's switch gang Let's switch gangs here. Let's switch gears here to a little bit of the gangs of Pyro stuff. Now, we've we had you on the show earlier this year and we started flushing out some of the gangs that players will
00:40:14
eventually encounter in the Pyro system. Folks have already kind of seen a look at one of them with the Overlords stuff, which we introduced through the subscriber program in what was a year or two years ago now. I don't know. It was back when I was running it. I'm not involved in it anymore. And then we had Jeremiah on recently who was developing the visual look for the Fire Rats, which was another look at the gangs. So, we have some questions regarding the gangs gangs of Pyro here. Regarding the gangs of Pyro, is it still part of the plan in lore and game for each of these gangs to have their own base or hideout? Yeah, that's the hope. I mean again, like we we have the ones who are sort of the idea was that they were battling
00:41:02
over Ruin Station. But yeah, the hope is that ultimately you know, we'll we'll be able to have they'll have their territory, they'll have their kind of colors, you know, insignias, tags, stuff like that that you could be able to to use to identify them and and places that they're occupying. So, yeah, hopefully that's that's that's the dream. They can still be fighting over Ruin Station and have someplace else they call home. Yes. I mean well, cuz again, like if they're not in charge at Ruin Station, you know, they would probably be hiding out somewhere else. And and there are larger gangs that kind of We have system-wide ones. We have more planetary localized ones. So Yeah, there's a lot. And and I think way down the line somewhere with the dynamic stuff
00:41:49
that Tony's working on, we'll hopefully be able to have a situation where there's a small base that changes control and players can be part of that and sometimes it's hostile towards them, sometimes it's friendly. So, that would be kind of like an end goal somewhere along the way. do the doctors, nurses, and otherwise medical experts either working at Grim Hex Hospital or whatever medical facilities we find in Pyro, do they tend to work for the gangs themselves or do you think they're they're working for some like Doctors Without Borders, you know, you you kind of kind of thing? Uh The Doctors Without Borders thing is interesting actually. I hadn't thought about that. For the most of the ones that we've been sort of talking about thus far at least for for Grim Hex, you was the idea that they were probably
00:42:36
like you know, disgraced doctors, people, you know, who had gotten addicted to drugs or had to get been drummed out for something. And you know, this was the the only way that they could make make ends meet. Uh Or you know, they just happen to be handy with a saw. So, but I mean as far as a it could be really interesting that it but well it could be really interesting to have like a Doctors Without Borders type character who's volunteering their time to go out here and provide, you know, adequate medical care for people who don't who are living in a very dangerous People can't learn to get better if they if if they die. You know, people can't improve themselves. People can't find Yeah, it's a humanitarian thing. I really want a player or to use their Apollo's to do this in Pyro. That would
00:43:24
be great. I like that. Yeah, but as far as like, you know, does that does that imply that the doctors at Grim Hex work for the Nine Tails? I would probably say no. I would I would imagine that they would be sort of an independent uh group. Yeah, especially Grim Hex, there's a lot of independent operators that are running the shops and stuff who are under the protection of the Nine Tails who maybe would treat a Nine Tail member better than they would treat someone else cuz they're in charge, but yeah, they're not a gang member. We showed we showed a bunch of the new aprons and and costume liveries for the for for for for the for the for the vendors yesterday in ISC and I I I I asked I flat out put it to Ian. I'm like, "Let me see a surgeon in Grim Hex with a bloody Whammers apron." You know, you you he's moonlighting. He's you
00:44:11
know, it's Whammers by day Grim Hex surgeon by night. He doesn't change his clothes. Yeah, there's I I I won't spoil anything, but there's there's going to be some fun additions going into sort of to to give the Grim Hex you know, clinic bit of a unique unique flavor. Okay. Um a little more about Pyro in general than specifically the gangs, but I suppose it applies. What kind of laws can we expect, if any, in places like Pyro? Do the gangs institute their own laws? Do they Do the gangs enforce laws in their areas, I guess? Is there code? I mean, the hope is that that yeah, they would that the or the expectation would be that the gangs kind of maintain their own security in their facilities.
00:45:00
what those rules are might be different than an actual law enforcement security type thing. For example, like, you know, if if you go into Lorville and you start punching people in the street, the cops are going to sweep in and arrest you and probably arrest them and then probably arrest your family and then your cousins and your friends. But in Grim Hex, you know, a Nine Tails security person might not care. But they will care if you pull out a gun and start shooting at Nine Tails people. You know Yeah, it might rely more on the hostility system than the law system. Yeah. Are you their enemy or not? I don't I don't know. During the first gangs of Pyro show we did here,
00:45:48
we described in passing a shortcut between Stanton and Terra that would not correspond with what we currently see in the Arc Star map. Did this map change or did one of you mess up? That was just a mess up, I think. It's probably me. But because we messed up, we can change it to make it that we were always right. That's the power of no. We will not be retconning this. It was a slight slip up. We will reorganize the galaxy as we know it to cover Just to prove a point. an offhand comment that we made on SCL. It's the power of retcon. And the And and the power to control the star map. How much do the gangs of Pyro war over
00:46:37
Ruin Station? Is it a constant struggle or does XenoThreat easily hold the station and fend off attacks from other groups? I think at this point it's TBD. Um the again, sort of this is something that we want to work out with you know, the the dynamics event system that Tony's works on stuff like that and and and the design team, but you know, one of the things that we had talked about or we kind of have kicked around is just this idea that um you know, do do we make a transfer of power in Ruin Station, you know, a dynamic event? Kind of like what we were suggesting earlier with you know, maybe players can help, stuff like Or it's just something that just happens. You know, I I leave Ruin
00:47:25
Station and it's under XenoThreat control and then I come back and it's you know, it's now under um uh the you know, Head Hunters control. So now, you know, and again, it has multiple permutations of how it can you know, how it can affect the players, you know, to the extent of if I have good rep with XenoThreat for example, but I have bad rep with the Head Hunters you know do I now if the Head Hunters take control, do I now have to watch my back while I'm in there? Do they react more coldly to me because I have rep I don't have good rep with them? You know, stuff like that. So, there's a lot of again, there's a lot of questions that need to be answered before we can really take an official stance on it, but the the the hope was that it would be again, reflective of Pyro itself that it
00:48:13
would you would see the station kind of shifting hands relatively often just to to seem fun and dynamic and shifting and again, it's a kind of a system at war with itself. Uh we know of a couple gangs already. There's the Dark Side Rovers, the Fire Rats, the Overlords. XenoThreat, you just mentioned the What was the one? Hi Head Hunters. Head Hunters. Head Hunters. I don't think I had known about the Head Hunters before. Um Uh this question is simply, "How many gangs and other factions can we expect to encounter around Pyro? Don't estimate. Give us the exact number." Now, we know at least five. it says
00:49:00
it says, "Don't estimate. Give us Give them the exact number." This person's very very demanding. I think that's a mod Yeah. I have to count them. There's a lot. And I mean, there there's a decent amount. Uh it's Again, there's a there's also the sort Let's just preface this by saying that there's the ultimately, what we were sort of outlining for the entire system is to how we can stagger these things to come Right. It's sort of There's what you come up with and then there's what gets released patch after patch after patch and stuff like that. So, the number of gangs that you develop and that exists in lore may not be the same. cheap for us to come up with gangs. It's not It's not cheap to, you know,
00:49:49
realize them as we've learned, but uh just to say like the initial pitch was one You were going to freeze-frame and try to see if you can page in your eyeball using like the enhanced I I had 11 gangs originally, and or factions, I guess would be a way to way to but We had, you know, we when we were doing the brainstorm, we wanted to make sure that like there was different areas of crime are covered so that players can have different groups to work with depending on what they wanted to do. And then we also wanted there to be natural competition like so that there only wasn't one group doing this so that you could choose one side or the other, help
00:50:38
one team. So, all this kind of stuff. But, yeah, as far as when they're going to get implemented or how fast or if at all comes down to us testing it in game play and saying actually it's fine. And we've sort of organized it as as far as like, you know, again cuz creating that rivalry is really fun. Uh you know, cuz again it becomes that sort of it puts the the gives the players a choice of who they want to which horse they want to back, which is really interesting. I think it's important to remember uh we ran into this when we put the Overlord armor and stuff out for the subscribers that just because you're in a gang and just cuz you're in Pyro does not mean that you're evil or or overly antagonistic or or whatnot. You know, I grew up watching like, you know, Ponyboy in The Outsiders. It's It's just because you're in a gang. So, you know, sometimes that that's a thing that you do for survival
00:51:26
in a bad time in a bad place. It's not because you're out there trying to hurt the world. Yeah, I mean one of it's, you know, again with I guess exclusive number two, you know, I mean one of the the the gangs or organizations in them is actually, uh you know, sort of globally nicknamed the Survivors. And it's just That is just is is actually it's intended to be you know, clusters of neutral groups that are just out living in Pyro trying to live off the grid, you know, type thing. So, they're not antagonistic. They're not violent. Like if you attack them, they'll attack you back, but like they're just out there kind of heads down just trying to live their life, uh and uh so, yeah. Yeah, there's there's a a nice variety of them. All right. So, now we've got Oh, go on. No, go ahead. Yeah, it seeing like getting Pyro online
00:52:14
and when we're going to be able to introduce kind of some of the hostility system elements into it with the rivalries so that who you're affiliated with doing a job for this person makes it dangerous to go to these areas or interact with these people will be real interesting. With the more kind of legal organizations, it doesn't make sense for like Covalex to start shooting at you because you're doing missions with Ling family hauling. Like that's not how businesses work. Um so, it hasn't been that necessary dialed in that much yet. But, once we get like major kind of outlaw gameplay, I think that's going to be a more unique aspect about it about how those choices have much more dire consequences. And we know from the lore that with the Overlords that they're more vigilante style. They think they're doing the right thing. You know, kind of whether they are or
00:53:01
not, you know, remains to be seen. But, I so so so methodology is questionable. So, so far we've got what? The Darkside Rovers, the Fire Rats, the Overlords, Xenothreat, the the Survivors, which you just mentioned. Now, the the the Highball, I can't remember the one that starts with H. Headhunters. Yeah, so Headhunters. So, now you you you've you've you've you've revealed six of the purported 11. So, just just for those who are keeping track. spellings of Headhunters. Sometimes with a Z, sometimes H E D, um Headhunter. Singular. He works alone. He works alone. Yeah, that guy's just one. That's just one guy. He's not really a gang. He's just a dude. He offers you jobs.
00:53:49
Uh who controlled uh Ruin Station before Xenothreat? Do you know? Uh I would probably guess it was the Headhunters. I'll give you a little little the the water cooler pitch for the Headhunters was that they were sort of like a a real old-school kind of venerable gang. They've been around Pyro for a long time. Uh you know, they they almost have a thieves' code type type thing. Like if you had to kind of deal with a gang in in Pyro, if you made a deal with the Headhunters, they would stick to it. Uh but that being said, you know, they still rob and people and kill people and and stuff like that, but they were they were a bit more of a kind of a classic, you know, biker gangish type,
00:54:40
you know, rough-and-tumble group. Yeah. The Coca-Cola to Xenothreat's Pepsi. I would go Pepsi Clear. I don't know. It was Pepsi Wasn't it Pepsi Crystal? Crystal Pepsi? I don't know. I I had one once and I it caused such damage then. I regenerated. So so is there a gang that's like The Outsiders? Is Is there a Ponyboy in in in in Pyro? You don't have to tell me who it is. It just I'm just I'm that that's just a question for me. Cuz now I'm thinking about The Outsiders and I'm going to go watch it this weekend again. I think right now you're most likely to run kind of a a survivor group that operates like that about like trying to make ends meet, looking out for each other.
00:55:29
kind of that small family style gang versus a criminal enterprise, which is kind of some of the bigger names that we're splashing around. Uh Toast is messaging me saying that's the that's it for our Pepsi sponsorship. Oh man, I'm going to feel real bad if that was actually on the table. Um all right, that's it, guys. Uh thank you so much for taking the time out of your schedules to to be here. I know it's really late over there in the UK, Dave, so thank you so much for staying late. Folks, uh remember that CitizenCon is on its way October October 9th. Yeah, they can fan or chat to go see the web page. No, they could they have tabs. You can do multiple tabs. Uh should I make a face to show what's going to be in
00:56:16
CitizenCon? Sure, you want to make a CitizenCon? All right, that's Will's face to show what's going to be What's your What's your What's your What's your spoiler face for what's going to be in I honestly I I It was one of those things that wasn't in the script. I just did it on the fly and then everybody went, "What the What the hell does that even mean?" Like I don't know. Uh but check out the citizencon.com, uh the new website that just went up today or robertsspaceindustries.com/citizencon2951. I think is the alternate URL. Uh we got the breakdown of the panels and and some of the rules for some of the contests that are going on and a little teaser video that went out with that. Uh and then remember our last episode of ISC this quarter is next week. Uh we'll be talking about bombing, uh which is
00:57:04
coming to 3.15 along with the Hercules A2, uh that drops the bombs, uh as well as our patch report that covers everything that's coming in Alpha 3.15. So, yeah. Uh for Will, there you go, Will, and then Dave, I'm Jared. Um this is the trophy, the Ship Showdown trophy I got for myself when I expected to win betting on the Cutlass. And you people voted on the 600i instead. And I'm like, "What?" I'm It's the end It's the end of my show, so I'm going to take a moment. Let me just Let me just Let me Let me do this. ride this out. No, I'm going to I'm going to go I'm going to go with the the full I'm like, "You voted for the 600i over the Cutlass." I know it's all hip.
00:57:54
Everybody's arguing about the the Argo or whatever. It's like you guys you guys messed me up like in the first round by voting for the the sit the 600i and just blew my entire uh office pool. I got myself a trophy ahead of time. That's how confident I was. Sorry, Jared. Just taking a few moments to chastise the community. No, you're just forcing forcing them to sit and think about what they've done. So, It's just you and me, community, right now. I have taken Dave and Will off the screen. You can hear their voices, but no, it's just you and me. I want you to sit and think about what you did voting for the 600i over the Cutlass. I mean, I hope that there are some Spectrum posts apologizing this weekend. I mean, does does the Cutlass have a
00:58:42
spa, Jared? Is my only thing I'm going to ask. I I will say real quick though, definitely hit us up on the Ask a Dev Lore thing if with questions about regeneration. We've got some great ones. All right. I've been looking at stuff. Take Take Yeah, you'll do another one of your questions comments. I take it with follow-up questions and stuff even beyond what we talked about today, right? Isn't that what you do? Maybe. Sometimes. I mean, we we would if the Cutlass had won. Think about what you did, community. Well, I also noticed, you know, while we're doing this, I also noticed that you moved the apostrophe in Lore Maker's Guide. Like I had it I had it between the R and the S, and you guys moved it after the S. So. Well, it was all of us together. Yeah, I I I
00:59:28
I know. I know. It's just I wasn't even consulted. Sorry. We'll sit and think about what we've done. We're so off the reservation right now. We're so off the reservation. All right. That's it. Let me hold on. I got a message. Let me see if I got a message from somebody. I'm supposed to say something. Go watch the official legend. Enjoy. Nope. I I thought I had a message. I'm playing D&D tonight. You guys want to watch my D&D stream? It's on my own Twitch. twitch.tv/discolando. Playing D&D. So, if you want to join us, it's at 6:00 p.m. Pacific tonight. Since we're off the reservation anyway. At the same time, Dave and I will be live streaming our commentary on Jet Li's The One. If you want to watch along with us. Oh, never mind. I'm watching that instead. All right. I I have no idea where the YouTube is going to end, but it's going to end long
01:00:15
before this. Take care, everybody. Bye, y'all. Bye, y'all. Oh, that's the wrong thing. That is the right one. Okay.

Transcript from YouTube’s automatic captions — punctuation and Star Citizen jargon are approximate. The video itself is hosted by CIG on the official channel.