10 for the Chairman: Episode 37 (2014.09.15)

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

1. 00:00:09

   Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of 10 for the chairman. For those of you haven't watched this before it's where I take 10 questions from subscribers. Subscribers are the subset of our community that contribute extra money every month to allow us to do enhanced community content. So this show around the verse we do a big magazine once a month called Jump Point where there's a lot more in depth behind the scenes stuff and a whole bunch of other stuff that we do is sort of financed by the subscribers. So thank you very much for allowing us to sort of share the process of making stuff is and with the community at large. So this episode slightly special. I've got a guest Ben Lesnick our community manager here. Hey everybody. And we've got a few things we thought would be fun

2. 00:00:56

   to show. I guess let me just start off there's a couple of gifts came in from various folks. So I had a nice like a handcrafted t-shirt here which I'll open up. Which is kind of cool. Look at that stitched. With a hornet on the front. That is pretty cool, huh? He knows your style. There you go. Like that. Maybe slightly big for me. At least I hope at least my vanity says it's slightly big for me. But this is from Screwy Panda. So he says here's a little something that I originally planned to give you at the clone event. Alas waiting in line for the signatures was too long so I decided to mail this over instead. Yeah, I don't blame him. It was about 4 hours of

3. 00:01:43

   of that. I know cuz I was on the other side signing everything. Um and Screwy Panda sent us from Slovenia. So that's pretty awesome. So thank you very much Screwy Panda. And then we have one other kind of cool gift which is a little piece of I believe asteroid or meteorite. Here we go. We see. It's kind of cool. And uh Uh this is from Nate Ditto who's a backer and an avid meteorite hunter. So, I thought you guys would love to have a piece of space for yourselves since your game's a space game. That's correct. It would be good. Uh so, here two pieces, a full piece and a cut piece, both of which I found myself. Uh they are Franconia meteorite class H5. Here's a URL for it. Um which I guess we can put up a URL later

4. 00:02:33

   on in the show and you guys can click on it. Uh and my game handle is uh Dizmo Snow. Uh Dizmo Snow, there you go. I hope you enjoy and find these space rocks. Thank you, um Dizmo or Nate. Uh very cool. Where did I put the other half? Oh, there it is. That's the other half. So, one cut in half. Cool. All right. There we go. Thank you. Awesome. So, very much appreciate all those. I'm going to put this away and then uh Ben's here to tell us a little bit about um some uh uh stuff fun stuff that we received um a couple of weeks ago. Um they were shutting down the last vestiges of of the remnants of Origin and anywhere in the uh EA empire um which was the closure of the uh Mythic Studios, right? Yep. Um producer at Mythic uh Jeff Skalski uh happened to have all this uh

5. 00:03:22

   Wing Commander memorabilia and uh he contacted us and said, you know, "Does Chris Roberts want this?" Cuz absolutely Wing Commander should be with Chris Roberts. Uh so, we have some cool uh toys we're going to show off. And I'm glad he thinks that. Wish more people at EA thought that. Uh we won't go there. So, um we've got a couple of Chris's awards for uh Wing 2. These used to be in the lobby at Origin for years and years. This one's from Fnac, a a French media outlet. It's Wing Commander 2. This one, which is very heavy, is from uh ECTS, which was a trade show back way back Is it still a trade show? I don't know, maybe. Uh it may have evolved into something like E3 or something like that, but I could be

6. 00:04:08

   wrong. So, another one for Wing Commander 2, best graphics. This is nice. We do like the graphics. I I'm still a fan. Then we have here an actual Kilrathi paw. This was uh from Wing Commander 3 for the uh the Kilrathi Muppet animatronic costumes. They were very lifelike. Um and actually I believe the reason that this was still lying around Origin after years and years was because they used it for the box art of Kilrathi Saga. They they posed this. They drew it drew the uh Kilrathi paw grabbing the planet from this model. Um and then lastly, we have a whole stack of documents. Yeah, let me get the I'll get that claw out of the way. There we go.

7. 00:04:56

   Claw can go over here. Um so, these days when we do Jump Point, we uh you know, David Ladyman gets all the content we mark it up in 24 hours. Back at Origin in the early '90s, it was still uh cutting things up and pasting them together to get the uh final form of the documentation. So, here are early versions of the uh Wing Commander 1 blueprints. I guess that's the proof. Yeah, these are the the proofs of the blueprints. And the interesting thing for Star Citizen fans is that the uh the different stats for the ships listed here are also entirely wrong for We're We're just carrying on the fine tradition. Um so, we've got a bunch of blueprints. Um

8. 00:05:42

   this one would actually been done by uh our own David Ladyman. This is the uh mock-up of the Wing Commander 3 official guide. Here's the proof for the Strike Commander box one of Chris's projects. And uh just all sorts of stuff like this. We can have a Wing Commander archive here at CIG now. Here's an unused box art for righteous fire. Various advertisements. Pretty cool stuff. Oh, this is Strike Commander the original. This was the poster they gave out in CG years. CGW year before years before it actually came out. Oh, yeah. This is the one we we put This is the one that we did uh It's going to come out one year's time.

9. 00:06:30

   Took us two. Which today's world is not very much time at all, but back then seemed like forever. I remember it seeming like forever when I was 13 years old. So um all right. Well, thanks Ben. That was that's a little trip down memory lane and I think we'll probably uh do some more. We haven't done an RSI museum piece for a while. You absolutely have to do that. still owe a freelancer piece, don't we? Uh yeah, we've got a freelancer piece. Uh we just have to edit it. Okay. All right. There you are, Brian. You need to do some editing. All right. So, let's get to the 10 questions. First question comes from Deadly Omen who asks, "Are there any plans for a more personalized ship AI? I think it would be great especially for solo players to have a sidekick AI that could fire off some jokes, tell you about the current system you're in, tell you when players of interest are in that area, give advice, etc." So, uh

10. 00:07:19

    yeah. Yeah. I I think we're definitely planning to sort of uh personalize a little level of the bitching Betty. Um so, you can have different voices um later on down the game and uh you know, potentially uh we could do some more ship AI personality although we're not really going with the sort of AI uh setup in in uh in Star Citizen. I think we had a whole fiction thread about it. That you know, David Haycock wrote was a Tony O'Dell piece. If you remember the cruise ship that went off that had the AI that potentially went crazy. So, I I I think our our world's more like you know, the voice you get on navigation and less like an actual personality. But,

11. 00:08:11

    you never know. But, I think that's kind of going to be our take on it. Drum asks, what would happen to your constellation if the whole crew got into the rover and somehow died planet side in a newly discovered and unreported sector? Well, I think I think you'd probably dead and then you would respawn back on the most recent friendly planet that you were on with the fiction that the rescue crews went out there and found your almost you know, dead or you know, almost lifeless bodies and managed to get you back. So, I don't think there'll be a case where you can sort of die in a remote corner and no one knows where you are and you won't be able to respond if that was what the question was about. Next question comes from Syndra who asks, are there any ideas of having incredibly powerful in brackets hostile space stations in the game?

12. 00:08:59

    Think of the Death Star as an example. You would have to form a large group, maybe even form alliances with your enemies to be able to face the large threat almost like a raid. Well, we're definitely going to have space stations that you can attack that you can defend that you can try and take over and you know, some of the bigger ones would have some pretty significant defenses. And some of these would be AI you know, NPC driven and some of them will be player driven. I don't think we'll have anything on the level of the Death Star where you can fly around and just blow planets up. But, there certainly would be ones where you would go in with the group. So, you would have to have some friends that would maybe take out the air cover and then take out the you know the the anti I guess we don't say anti-air guns but you know anti-space guns anti-spaceship guns would be a good way of saying it. Basically take out all the

13. 00:09:48

    defensive perimeter and then you would go in with a boarding ship and then try and take over and control the space station. So there's definitely be a lot of potential for you know a raid if you want to call it where you and a bunch of friends work or people in your organization work cooperatively to um take over a space station or an asteroid base. Um okay next question comes from Holo Sandvoidrax who asked the Murray Cup racing map New Horizon Speedway seems to be a few thousand feet above a planet surface. Are there any planetary gravity or atmospheric effects e.g. wind resistance added to the flight physics for that map? If not would various such conditions be considered in future courses? We actually there is actually a very small amount of gravity that's applied on the Murray Cup racing map the New Horizon. I'm not sure if we've put

14. 00:10:37

    wind resistance in there there the engine actually supports it. It is actually just a setting that you do and we removed it for everything obviously in space but I'm not sure if someone put it back in for that particular map but there definitely would be some other areas where I think on some races it'll be all out in space some races will be closer to a planetary surface and they would have more atmospheric effects or more sort of gravitational pull and stuff and that could also cause you know or create some interesting twists in the racing. So it's still early days on that and there'll be more stuff to be done there but you know a lot of the engine already sort of supports that kind of stuff. Next question comes from Grimsard who asks does this mean black boxes left over from PvP can be used to blackmail said PvPers? By capturing the black box of a pirate's victim can I use the black box against the pirate?

15. 00:11:26

    Pay me X dollars or I turn the data into the UEE. From the way that we're looking at doing sort of the PvP combat is that if you're in a system and you get attacked by someone else doing PvP and it's a system where it's regulated where there's going to be PvP as long as as soon as attack happens the sort of ships computer of the person getting attacked sends a distress beacon out and that distress beacon even a regulated system they're probably like relays and then the relays they'll get broadcasted around so it sort of is you know a report of the attack and there will be some very expensive and hard to to use and get equipment that will allow you know someone that's trying to do a heist or a pirate to maybe potentially block a broadcast but it won't be particularly easy to do and

16. 00:12:13

    it will be something that we'd want if someone's trying to do a heist you know like the equivalent of like knocking out an armored truck or something then they would have to like maybe try and blanket out the local relays and so they won't get the UE after them but I'm not so sure we're going to have sort of a black box so to speak because it's more like a distress beacon that gets sent out and then either it gets picked up by the relays or it gets somehow intercepted or blocked. Um I guess you can't really do the black mail I you know black box is kind of an interesting idea but um right now that's not kind of in the development plans. Next question comes from Lee Warren who asks for example let's say some genius on a boarding party decides to throw a grenade into the bridge of a Connie. This might wipe out the captain and crew but I'd hope that it would also damage the ship's controls and maybe even the

17. 00:13:01

    entire front of the ship. Such a dynamic might discourage players from mindlessly using explosives on smaller multi-crew ships and make boarding a bit more interesting. Yeah I know that's definitely our plan so our plan is that like internal damage if you're having a firefight you know you can destroy things you can potentially blow out like windows and so you would probably want to be smart about the kind of weaponry you use cuz you don't want to sort of depressurize say the cockpit of a Connie or something. So, that is part of the that is part of the plan and we are definitely going to be working towards that. Um next question comes from Purgatorial Flame who asks, as a fellow explorer type, will we be able to capture and document fauna and flora for the Galacticpedia? If so, could we take this to the next level and potentially

18. 00:13:48

    sell various species on the black market or to UEE research groups? That's actually a pretty good suggestion for something that like explorers could do. I mean, we were definitely thinking that you will go down besides sort of mapping out jump points and where the asteroid fields are on the un sort of unexplored areas of star systems, that we would have some level of landing on some, you know, non sort of populated planets and you could maybe do some, you know, looking if there was a ancient ruin there or you could do some sort of scouting or, you know, like check it out for minerals or something and very flora or fauna could be kind of a, you know, an additional part of that. So, that's pretty interesting suggestion, so we'll add that to the list of things that we potentially would do for the explorer cuz I kind of think

19. 00:14:35

    that's kind of interesting. We definitely want to have you visiting different planets and different areas of the galaxy and having mementos to sort of instead of having some achievement in a generic sort of award system like you do on console games, we wanted to like go to your hangar and see like these mementos from these different places that you've you've gone and gone and visited. Plus you got to get new fish somewhere. You got to get new fish somewhere, yeah. Maybe you got to go fishing for it. Um so, anyway, that's good suggestion. Uh next question comes from 22 Actual who asked, "Devs of the space have mentioned that it's possible to have your pod rescued by another player. As a Cutlass owner, will I be able to take missions to rescue players and NPCs that have ejected? Further, will rescue missions be generated for player and NPC search and rescue teams?" Yeah, no, so we're definitely planning on having search and rescue be one of the sort of

20. 00:15:24

    things that you can do in the universe we sort of anticipate that some players would actually like to do that or perform a support role so the priority would be missions generated for it so you know you you would definitely you know be uh searching and rescuing NPCs as well as potentially real players. Um so there you go. Uh next question comes from Lloyd M uh or Lloyd M is l l y d m How are spaceports being handled? When we land at one will we see other players ships or we'll be in our own instance until we leave the landing pad? If we are able to see other players ships what would stop someone walking into one of them flying off? Will we be able to lock them with an access code? Um so generally when you land on a

21. 00:16:12

    planet um you sort of land in your like landing instance uh and so that sort of that landing instance sort of unique to you but um if it's a bigger planet and you're on a bigger spaceport um there would be sort of landing areas off in the distance which you can't reach yourself directly and what we're planning to do in those landing areas is to sort of you know if it's a big spaceport maybe there could be six or seven slots in it and a smaller one one or two slots but we would have ships come and go from those landing spots off in the background and that would be sort of determined by who is coming and going from the planet or what NPCs were coming and going from the planet and who you saw would be sort of dictated by uh you know who your friends are who your enemies are what your persons of in designated persons of interest are um so it could give you some indication of the comings and goings of other

22. 00:17:00

    players or NPCs to a limited amount where it feels like you know you're on a living um location but your own spaceport instance is really only accessible by you so even if you see the stuff off in the distance you can't sort of jump over there and try and uh steal their their ship. Um all right, last question comes from uh, Qanint Tuk. So, Q A N N I Q T U Q. Uh, I think I said it right. I could be wrong. Qanint Tuk. How will the airspace around the planet be handled? Will we need a space traffic control organization to land with a specific circuit? How will it be enforced? Prohibits the land on a planet if we didn't comply or space pilot license revoked? Can a spaceport be closed due to a lot of traffic? So,

23. 00:17:47

    yeah, generally on pretty much most of the places where you can land, you need to uh, communicate and say permission to land and they'll give you a, you know, uh, a landing slot and then you'll head in and then the your ship's auto computer will sort of fly you down into the planet into the atmosphere. You'll still be able to look around, walk around your ship and but it'll bring you into your landing spot on the on the pad and then once you get there, you get out. Um, so you will not be able to sort of just bully or barge your way into a planet um, uh, uninvited basically. Um, you know, whether a spaceport can be clo- closed to a lot of traffic, I don't know. Uh, the bigger planets probably not because we can instance obviously, so a lot of people will be coming and going. and uh, you know, I think there'll be a

24. 00:18:34

    certain amount of enforcing if you try to get too close to a planet where they all sort of burn up in the atmosphere or the local police will come and shoot you to say you got too close. All right, that's the last of the uh, 10 questions. Hope you guys uh, found them informative. Um, also uh, hope you enjoyed a small little trip down sort of the origin uh, memory lane with some of the old Wing Commander and Strike Commander stuff. And as always, uh, you know, thank you uh, to everyone out there that uh, has backed the game. We won't be able to make the game uh, that we're making without all your support. Thank you to subscribers for uh, contributing extra money to allow us to do this uh, greater amount of community content. Thank you to Ben Lesnick for showing up on time for the chairman and thank you for doing a great job of making sure all the the backers are

25. 00:19:22

    informed all the time, 7 days a week, 24 hours a day. I hope everyone out there is enjoying version 0.9 of Arena Commander. We you know, just pushed it out the door on Friday and you know, it's got a lot of differences, a lot of changes. I think there'll be some getting used to some stuff. Of course, it's still a work in progress. We've got a lot of stuff that we want to fine tune, but we think it's making good progress in the right direction. I hope you guys agree. But as always, it's very early in the process and there's lots more cool stuff to come. 1.0 is going to have a huge amount of more variety and mission types plus full lobbies, a lot more stuff on the controls to make them work better on all different control

26. 00:20:09

    devices. When we made a pretty big change in the targeting which works well for some aspects of certain control devices and not so well for other aspects. But we think long term it's the right way to go. But we're you know, our goal is to sort of try and make sure that you know, someone that's flying with a mouse, someone that's flying with a joystick, someone that's flying with a gamepad, someone that's flying with a HOTAS setup has a has a really good experience and can all kind of compete with each other. So there's still stuff to be done there. You know, we've just put the fixed weapon aiming back in and so that works better for joysticks than it does for mice. The gimbaled weapons that you have like the turrets once you have they actually work a little better on the mouse than it does on the joystick or the gamepads, but we've got stuff in the works for 13.1 and and beyond that we'll sort of

27. 00:20:59

    kind of address some of those issues. So be patient, but really try to hammer on everything Uh, would be great. You you I'd love to see the leader boards getting populated and you know, seeing who's the best at squadron or racing or all the rest of the stuff. And thank you all for your support. And I'll talk to you next week. Bye. Hey guys, thanks for watching 10 for the chairman. If you guys would like to 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 if you guys would like to watch episodes of Around the Verse, go here, please. And I will see you in the verse.