10 for the Chairman: Episode 51 (2015.01.26)

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

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   [Music] oh hello everyone welcome to another episode of 10 for the chairman so for those that you don't know 10 for the chairman this is where I take 10 questions from our subscribers and answer them to the best of my ability uh our subscribers are the subset of our backers that uh contribute some money every month to allow us to do enhanced Community content uh one of them is this show where I take the 10 questions and answer them the best of my ability and the other ones are things like around the verse it's our sort of weekly uh summation of things that are going around inside Star Citizen uh we have um other sort of video shows like behind the scenes inside cig shows where we periodically do a sort of Deep dive on a

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   studio or on a mechanic or some asset we're working on as well as jump point which is a magazine that's normally 50 to 70 pages every month and is very sort of in depth behind the scenes how built this ship or designed this system and uh we also do uh a certain level of flare to say thank you to the um subscribers um so that in their hangers and stuff so they can have some kind of kind of you know fun little things to say hey thank you for allowing us to sort of have this enhanced uh Community content which I think really makes uh star citizens sort of stand out from a lot of other game projects out there uh and we're really committed to it as part of our DNA so thank you guys for that um I uh answer 10 questions which I will uh I'm actually I thought before I started I'm kind of interesting for you

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   guys uh I don't know um we sort of mention it before we doing the live stream uh back in Christmas and uh uh maybe we'll just cut in a few shots here so you can just see quite how crowd it is in the uh in the office here but our LA office is absolutely packed uh to the brim everybody's shoved in every knck and cranny now um and um so we've actually been for a while actually looking for uh some new space because our current space is um you know we can't really expand even though we love the location we are we we can't expand and of course our community shooting stuff you guys have seen around the verse where like uh Ben and Sandy are shoved up against the corner and literally if you P the camera over there would be like everyone's desk right over there I mean there's like zero room and um and actually we've just had um a whole film crew in here that was shooting for the baa presentation um and uh again uh it's all it's all fairly uh

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   packed when you've got a film crew and people are trying to develop and I'm trying to do community stuff which I'm doing right now um and so um we found a new office which is uh pretty cool um so now we're sort of in the space planning but the cool thing about the new place we found is it used to be a um a photography studio and had four sort of big photography stages in it and so what we're going to do is we're going to keep one of the stages and uh turn it into sort of a map stage and a community stage so that's where around the verse will get shot and we'll be able to shoot um you know sort of our all our community content which is really cool and it we done in a way that it won't interfere with um people developing and all the rest stuff because it has its own sort of separate big stage we just never had the room for this before and uh and then um you know we're going to have open work plan um like uh we did so here is I guess picture for it um just to give you a quick idea but you know so

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   same like my current office here has sliding door so it's basically the same version of it here and then um open for all the sort of programmers designers artists and then this is also for like Alex um and uh you know various other roles like our new art director here in La Lance and stuff where they're also open up so they can occasionally close off if they need to have sort of a private meeting but most of the time the idea is to have all the workspace open so everyone's sort of looking at each other's work and interacting and working as a sort of cohesive team um and uh then down here is sort of where the community and the marketing and the finance and the legal stuff's all uh going and we're actually going to aggregate those so right now we have two offices here in La one that sort of the finance and legal is at and the rest is where sort of the community and development's at and this allows Community to be right next to where the

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   stage and stuff is and we'll also have QA down here which we don't currently have in LA but we do need some QA because we do a lot of development here and right now we have to have Austin test for us so the UK test for us and the prom with Austin is there two hours behind so if we're late on something the poor Austin guys have to stay around till 1:00 2 o'clock in the morning it's not very cool for them so we'll have some QA uh folks here that will do the stuff and uh then this is like I said the sort of more business and um business legal side and then this is the community the um kind of side over here and uh the marketing side um and that's our lobby and uh then here's sort of like a loungy area and the cool thing with the space we've got it already has like a kitchen built into it it was part of like the the studio we've got like an amazing deal on this place I don't know we've gotten lucky on our real estate we're actually paying

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   uh slightly less than we actually pay in Austin for uh for the Austin location even though we've actually got uh uh Austin's about um 14,000 something feet and this is about 16,000 ft which uh so it's pretty good um so uh we were lucky it's a cool old sort of uh uh original bow truss um style route which is kind of what we have here in in um in our current location so it's sort of this old Warehouse converted into creative space uh and so it's cool and uh that's where our sort of it data room would be and bathrooms and then this will be sort of U kind of like one entrance here and the other entrance here um so um pretty cool uh so but unfortunately that will uh not be uh ready for a while because obviously you've got a we we just sort

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   of finished the space planning for it but now we have to drw the full plans get the approvals and get it sort of built out to the specs that we need um and that all takes time so we'll probably be in there around about June of this year in the meantime we still got more people joining us so hopefully we'll manage to crme them in and everyone won't kill each other but um anyway it's exciting to have a new place where I feel like we can like have a dedicated Place To Shoot T the chairman around the verse and not have everyone step on shows or uh I don't have to tell everyone outside that's developing not to talk while I'm taking the shooting the show which you know is kind of a little disrupting sometimes so so pretty excited about that but um let's get to the questions for this week and by the way this is all thanks again to you guys because you guys are the ones that are enabling us to make the game in this

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   vision and partly you know we need bigger space cuz we got more people working and that's partly you know what you guys uh are are helping us do so thank you very very much for that um because having a uh a work environment that's conducive to uh to good functioning uh uh creativity is is uh really important and um so thanks um all right so next uh let's get started on the 10 questions the first one comes from reik who asks I've seen a lot of talk about food sleep showering Etc many ships have features for the immersion effect but are there plans to actually make these Commodities needs affect the player in other words will sleep sleeping Grant a bonus to blackout tolerance or food give a player a buff like they do in most MMOs so I think you know this is this is something that I've

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    uh talked about before uh which is um I really quite like the fact that we have functionality in sort of ships that makes them sort of seem real and I do sort of feel like you want to uh give a bonus to that functionality to a certain extent because uh um it makes it you know not just a completely cosmetic item it just sort of makes it else I'm going to do and the flip side of that is you don't want to make it like real life where you know you've got to go to the toilet and you've got to you know you got to eat three squares a day and do all this boring maintenance stuff um because then it sort of becomes like more more a chure so I was sort of in favor of sort of the light immersion factor which is um you know some of these things would you know help give you a bit of a you know like for instance you you don't shower for a week well then you know maybe someone would make a face as you walk up to them and

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    uh you know kind of look at you like maybe perhaps you smell or something uh uh and uh perhaps it would be minus one on your sort of whatever uh reputation cont like their willingness to engage in a conversation with you you know obviously one of the mechanics are going to have you sleep to sort of basically save but you know perhaps you need to you know as suggested here you could occasionally if you rest maybe in the Pu it will help uh you know your stamina or whatever or some food potentially could help your stamina and that kind of things uh so I don't think it would be the sort of thing like you you know you have to eat on the clock and do all this or else you're going to faint and and die but I do think that things like you drink too much alcohol your vision should get blurry um you know you don't you know like you don't uh eat anything ever then maybe you would get weak or whatever those kind of things but it was

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    sort of like a light uh sort of RPG immersion Factor um but all sort of done in sort of a nice simple automated way right like you could like use use the dinner table in your constellation and like you like you know have a meal pops out of the whatever the meal generator thing is and eat it and you know it kind of gives you a little bit of a bonus or something and and also is kind of cool so that's sort of where uh I'm sort of wanting to push it I think it would uh it would work well but it definitely wouldn't be something that you should feel like you have to do all the time it should be something that you would do occasionally kind of like I don't know refueling your ship and stuff like that it would again just be sort of management of resources okay next question comes from drum who asked would we be able to capture decrypt and interrogate the information drones which are transferring news and information through the various jump points and

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    possibly find a market for the information gathered if so would it be possible to do a catch and release thereby doing this under the radar with the knowledge of the true recipients well yes I definitely think that that will be a um a focus of sort of the uh info agent info Runner sort of business and profession that we're sort of planning for the persistant universe so part of it you know is about getting uh information data securely to destination or a recipient and then also part of it would be about intercepting that and decrypting it and cracking it like someone would pay you to intercept Communications between this system and that system and and so all of that would be sort of part of that that um sort of game uh design and sort of role that we would expect that you know one of the various many roles that you could do in the

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    universe um okay next question comes from IO T Tel menar who asked do you plan on any of the larger ships I.E the star era Carrick to be hanger ready in 2015 star Fara I would say yes uh and I don't know about car have to look at our ship uh schedule um but staf era is definitely yes because sta era um is in progress right now and it will be uh it uh is one of the ships that is featured in uh Squadron 42 that will be out later this uh year so it obviously has to be ready not just for for hanger But ultimately for um flight um so uh Carrick I I don't have the schedule in front of me so it would be hard to say whether it'll be ready for 2015 or not I mean our biggest challenge is uh the you know sheer amount of ships

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    and the level of detail we do when we build them out uh to get them into the hanger and then into flight is a significant investment so we're like you know right now we're you know you know any great 3D hard service modelers out there give us a shout because we're still hiring we're trying to ramp up in the UK to hire um more and more um people for the ship team uh we already have uh you know a significant ship um uh Team uh in progress I we just did um the other week a uh a ship Summit where we got everyone together from all the studios uh out here actually in LA and sort of went over our sort of ship plan you know and also not just the plan but how we're building it we've got some uh uh Nathan dley who's based in the UK has done some amazing work on the Retaliator and we've got a whole sort of special technique for how to build the bigger

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    ships and you know how to get these things to sort of essentially look like a a pre-rendered um asset but really be done in real time it's I think it's going to blow you guys away when you get around and and walk around that and be flying around it or checking out in in well the hanger and then when you're in space cuz we're going to have the Retaliator for um sort of the multi crew um should combat in fact the Retaliator is actually going to be the sort of prototype ship that we're using for a lot of different functionality we're doing for sort of the bigger ships um and so we're in the process of that right now um but so the um so anyway I think you guys will like it star era definitely I I'm not sure on the car CU I haven't looked at the schedule but like I said any um vehicle modelers out there give us a shout because we are definitely definitely hiring I mean we got quite a few people already I think

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    we got six six in the UK um here over in um La uh We've basically got four modelers and then another two out in Austin so essentially we've got uh 12 um um vehicle artists and it's still not enough um so give us a shout I mean you guys love spaceships so we're quite happy to build them because it's fun I mean I think everyone got into this game to to make spaceships um all right next question comes from Mr Everything who asked if I am flying with a squadron of friends and we encounter a jump point will we be able to enter at once or will we have to go through one at a time that is actually a good question and we haven't really uh figured out sort of the group jump point issue I mean I think you would basically be able to link up with your sort of the leader of the whatever you want to call it the

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    Squadron and uh then you know you would go through now maybe you have to go through one by one if it's like a really um you know uh small jump point and you know you got big ships or something uh but you know I would think to a certain extent depending on that you could nav link up so you're nav linked up to the lead ship and then everything else is automated uh but that's actually the stuff that we're in the process of working on and prototyp typing as we speak CU this is all part of the persistant Universe stuff that we're in the process of working on and look deving and all the rest so um but you know definitely our goal would be to allow you to fly from instance to instance with um your group of friends and so therefore um you would have uh a group of them as you went went together okay next question comes from Reni right will our missiles be able to lock onto

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    specific points of the larger Capital ships such as the engine or cockpit or we have to aim them manually when it comes to bigger um ship uh you will be able to do SUB uh system or sub component targeting and as such you would probably be able to lock um different missiles onto different locations or or you know perhaps you know Miss lock them onto a gun turret or something like that would be on a ship so yes you definitely will be able to do that on the larger ships um okay next question comes from zenos Shaft who asks how will backpacks and all kits work in Star Citizen will we end up putting a backpack on and then have to access uh to so much more more room to place items like a traditional mm/ RPG yes that is actually 100% the design so uh you know everything like we tend to do in Star Citizen is sort of

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    like based on like what uh like would physically fit so um you know various things have inventory so like a hanger has an inventory a spaceship has an inventory which was sort of associated with his cargo hold and uh you know your various clothing items can have inventory or accessories that you're wearing can have inventory so I could have a pair of pants uh in in our world and could have a very small inventory for the two pockets which would be denoted and they would only fit very very small items uh but I could get a backpack item and that could have a bigger inventory maybe it can take uh 10 uh items of size two or less just throwing it out there and then if you use that you're wearing that item then you could uh you could put stuff in it and sort of like when you have different items like your pockets your backpack that would all aggregate it into sort of

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    your personal inventory and then you could uh put stuff in them and then but if you don't have a backpack you could carry as much stuff around you can only carry what would fit in your hands or what would fit on like the outfit you were wearing in terms of pockets and stuff like that um so yes it would work it works very much like a traditional mlpg other than the fact that we're going with a fideli of actually seeing um you know the things on your body so to speak um so a lot of your inventory is visible you know obviously when something's in a pocket probably not but um it is definitely there is inventory management that you would do in those cases and of course if you wore a backpack Maybe you don't run quite as fast if you didn't have a backpack so there's always uh you know trains you know there's pros and cons and of course if you're wearing a backpack you probably can't sit down and a fighter seat and stuff like that but yes we will have that um okay next question comes from Space Monkey who asks in addition

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    to the skills that must be acquired by players such as ship piloting will there be any character based skills or perks such as being able to speak alien languages yeah I don't I'm not sure you know right now our whole goal is to sort of focus on sort of skill based stuff so about how you fly and then you can get equipment that that will enhance will help you um you know in terms of it's better equipment it responds better it lasts longer whatever but we're not really thinking that there's going to be traditional sort of RPG skills for player characters now for um NPC characters we are going to have various sort of ratings of like you know morale and aggression and uh you know uh you know accuracy for like a pilot and stuff uh because we have to sort of track the NPCs and you know how good they are or how bad they are or you know over time

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    maybe they get better um but for the players it's all based on like what you actually do as a player based on your skill so like as you get better at doing something that's really reflecting in your own personal increase in skill um so I don't know whether be character-based perks of skills such as speaking alien languages I mean you know at a certain level on the alien language thing I think you would just get sort of a future version of the Google translate or you know whatever you want to think kit is guys the Galaxy the babble fish um but uh but most of the skill-based stuff that we're planning to do for players will be sort of based on players own skills and we just give them the equipment to use them uh okay next question comes from tools who asks how do you envision player-to-player sales in the pris universe will other players simply browse my goods through their Mobi glass will there be a opportunity for a storefront that aspect of how players

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    would maybe trade uh is something that we've been discussing and how to do it I mean obviously the idea would be longer term for people might possibly to to OCC buy a storefront and go around the Galaxy and collect stuff and have you know Chris's store of Curiosities that people come in and buy so we definitely want to do that a bit of a storefront that's also one of the kind of ideas of like the B new Trader is you sort of can collect things in the trader and go around and you know land on the planet or go into Orit and set up shop to sort of sell to people and there's almost like a a greeting trading room that's in the banon Trader for exactly that and I think that's kind of a pretty cool design and then there probably will be some version of Craigslist that would probably be local system based so it wouldn't you know basically You' be able to in the local system say hey I've got these items for sale and people could like go up and look at it and contact you and then you could go to a range of

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    transfer which will probably mean that you would you would basically say okay we'll both be on Earth and I will meet you know uh and when you're on Earth I will transfer the goods to you kind of thing um so those are kind of the various ways that we think the player the players will be able to do sort of the selling and the and the persistent Universe between each other I mean typically depending on what they're selling you know some stuff would have to be regulated like like ship to ship sales and stuff like that just like it is in in the world today when you have to transfer title uh but uh those are kind of uh the various ways we're thinking of doing it in the persistent Universe uh okay next question comes from inspiration who asks will a capital ship be able to extend its Shields around a dock connected smaller ship to provide additional protection during this delicate process probably not so probably what would happen is the capital ship would have its own Shields that would be um based

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    for the capital ship and the smaller ship would have its own Shield that would be based around the smaller ship and that's kind of how it would be handled I don't think the capital ship would extend its Shields around the smaller ship because it wouldn't really the The Shield projectors you know wouldn't really have any knowledge of that and also in some ways the shield projectors potentially could get blocked by the smaller ship so um each ship has to sort of take care of its own Shield um abilities so to speak all right so last question comes from chaplain or chaplain chaplain but I don't really think it's Chaplain chaplain or chaplain I know next question comes from chaplain I'll say I'll say it in a French way will Pilots have the ability to lock bulkheads in their ships as a mean to make boarding attempts more difficult maybe depressurizing and repressurizing compartments as a means to fight back

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    using ship systems yes they will and yes that will be one thing that you can do to do fight back um and so you'll be able to do a lockdown maybe you would so on boarding it would have to have the tools to try and decrypt it and and open it up um you'll be able to pressurize and depressurize um I said in the last attempt for the chairman that we actually had a pretty cool prototype that had some of these elements already in it um and it's pretty cool and we've got a whole new system for the vehicles which we are calling ghost which is sort of basically a game object State uh machine uh but it sort of lives with the vehicles themselves and it allows the designers to create sort of custom Logic for the ships or elements of the ships for certain behaviors like okay locking doors and all that kind of stuff and you know okay the doors lock and all the lights go red and all that kind of stuff so we actually are building functionality to allow that to be in the

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    ships and long term that would be kind of fun for mods because they could do all sorts of crazy stuff um but yes you will have the ability to lock bulkheads you'll have the ability to fight back using ship systems um okay that is the end of uh this episode of t for the chairman thank you for um listening to it I hope some of my answers were uh informational I wanted to thank everyone out there that's a subscriber for allowing us to be able to do this extended Community interaction and content uh I want to thank all the backers out there for uh continuing to support us and back us uh I you know it's amazing that we're managing to build a game of this scope and scale and ambition on the PC in this particular genre and it's only down to you guys uh we are not going to let you down we are like this year is going to be a fantastic year we've got a lot of stuff uh that'll be coming down the pipeline

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    and I mean I just you know I mean basically I look at the amount of stuff we're doing and the amount of content we're doing and it sort of feels like we're you know not delivering one AAA game we're delivering like five six seven eight of them is crazy uh I think you know by the time we get towards uh you know in a couple years time you know it's it I think anyone that got all this for $40 will be like they had an absolute steal and even people that have spent hundreds of dollars will be go yeah you know I could have easily bought um you know four AAA tailes here and four I mean because you know you got Squadron 42 and not only we got Squadron 42 we got you know equal sort of sequels to Squadron 42 or uh you know episodes if you want to think of it in sort of the Star Wars terms uh you know we got the FPS stuff we got the arena Commander stuff we're going to have the multi crw soon uh then the pic Universe stuff and it's just it's a crazy amount of content

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    but it's all completely awesome and all completely great because it's all building this like holistic universe that you can spend time in so and we won't be able to do it without you so thank you very much and uh you know have a good rest of the week and I will talk to you later bye hey guys thanks for watching um temp for the chairman uh if you guys would like to uh see more episodes go here if you guys would like to subscribe to our YouTube channel and always keep up to date with all our video content go here and uh if you guys would like to watch episodes around the verse go here please and I will see you in the verse