Design Brief: Engineer | Journey to 4.0

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

1. 00:00:00

   at citizencon 2952 we debuted a new recurring initiative called journey to 4.0 where we stepped a bit away from our traditional weekly behind the scenes format of inside Star Citizen to tell stories at various points of progression leading up to the next major milestone in our continuing development after 3 18. and one of those more different within that batch were called design brief investigations where we looked at the earliest phases of a feature that only existed at that time in the text and crude diagrams of a planning document and no before you ask don't ask to see the planning documents it's all just fidelities and bespokes all over the place anyway I'm kidding mostly so on this next journey to 4.0 we're diving into another design brief

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   that's been discussed debated kicked around pitched and re-pitched over the years internally imagined and Theory crafted for just as long by the community and has finally now been signed off by the multitude of game directors to become the next stage in the resource management system so without further Ado we present to you design brief engineer the next fundamental component of true multi-crew gameplay oh I'm sorry and one more thing uh fair warning before the comments come in since this next step in the resource management now called engineer gameplay system exists mostly in design stage at this moment we did let will Dave and Alex on the ISC capture team get creative in visualizing the stuff that's

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   being discussed and that's still being built out by the developers at the moment so what you're about to hear is still very much work in progress but what you're about to see at times is the content of crazy people and you should judge them because they're exactly like me I'm sorry [Music] foreign

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   you as the engineer are responsible for the resource management of your ship the priorities of the items and you are also responsible for countering any dangers that you might encounter throughout your flight a big part of your job as an engineer is dealing with dangers that affect the mechanical parts of your ship and are different to the ones you would face as a pilot there are three types of dangers that you will face as an engineer one being something that you already know which is overheating the second being wear and tear and the third one being malfunctions so overheating is not only items running too hot but it also is item running to coal and the way that

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   you can counter that is either actively or passively where passively is something that we already do with the cooler on your ship and actively being something like you standing in front of the item and using your fire extinguisher to bring down the temperature of the ice and if it's too cold you can use a flamethrower or blow torch so wear and tear is the danger you might have already heard us talk about in the past it's just something that the longer your item runs the less efficient it will be at some point so a general maintenance will be required to keep them up and running and then there is the new one which we call malfunctions which we'll talk about later in more

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   detail but the way that you react as the engineer there is unique to each malfunction all three dangers contribute to the health of the item and have an impact on each other so since the first two are quite easy to grasp let's dive a bit deeper into the malfunctions different items in different situations cause different errors and while I can't talk about all of them today here are some currently in development there's disconnect where you either don't have a relay right now in the in the place or you don't have the item right now at the the item Port then there is power drop where certain or the required amount of power doesn't reach the item then there

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   is misfire where wear and tear impacts the functionality of your item then there is cloggage where resources are prevented from reaching your item there's also a power surge where high energy reaches your item and will negatively affect the function of the item and then there is leakage which is similar to Kroger's where resources won't reach your item but the causes a little bit different then we have unresponsive where you as the engineer try to communicate certain changes on the item and they will not reach the item there is bugs where like we have the most experience with with crew being

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   creative so be surprised for what comes your way and then lastly we have destroyed where you just lost your item but can also be caused by hacking or being tuned incorrectly hey why do we introduce malfunctions the the reason is quite simple it's something that you know from your real life like after a while certain things start to malfunction so you better pay attention to those malfunctions and know how to react to those so your job as an engineer is preventing those malfunctioning for from actually happening or preventing the uh the dangers that they create on your ship and if you don't react in time you

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   might end up with cascading of arrows that will in the end lead to the like failure of your ship it allows us to to have the engineer being as important on bigger ships like the the pilot or the Gunner we want to make sure that there's plenty of things to do for you as an engineer your job as the engineers also understanding the items and that means you have to understand the different states an item can be in states are basically stages for the items inside your ship where each item has its individual stages or states it can be in where for example you can have items that have a boot up face then they have that is followed by an ignition

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    face where you have to ignite something so that it is going into the idle state where it is basically waiting to go into the active state where it starts to produce the resources that you actually need then from that active state it will probably or some items might go into the prime state where you have to fire something out example is here an EMP that can then go into and cool down state where you basically have to wait for the item to cool down again and then to be restarted or turned off this adds a new level of complexity to you as the engineer where you not only have to pay attention to the dangers that the malfunctions when they appear or where

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    they appear is also important on which item they appear and in which state the item currently is because depending on the state the item currently is where the malfunction happens it might end up you having to switch the item to a different state to be able to fix the the malfunction or counter the malfunction or even turn off the item completely because the current state requires you to restart the item completely and yes for some things it is as simple as turning them off and on again all of this we do to make the engineering gameplay more engaging we still want to allow players to to maintain their ships on their own but

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    especially for bigger ships we really want to introduce meaningful interactions so that you decide to to have several Engineers on your on your ship and for that we introduced the three types of heads that you can wear as a as an engineer the three basic engineering types are tuna mechanic and manager so the tuner is the person that is responsible for your strategic decisions the tuner is responsible for setting up the items in advance depending on what you want to achieve with your ship so if you want to go exploring you ask the tuner to bring the items into a state

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    that they are less prone to wear and tear that they sustain longer that they can or are more energy efficient or resource efficient the tuner defines item groups a base resource consumptions responsibilities or roles on your ship as well as setting new Min and Max performances for for all the ship items you have so overall the tuna is a very proactive role where we want to reward players who plan their crew activities in advance we did plan the tuner to be a more relevant in advance of your your adventures but I'm sure players will figure out ways to make use of the tuna

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    in various scenarios the next head you wear as an engineer is the mechanic the mechanic plays into your fantasy of what you imagine when you think about sci-fi and the role as an engineer it's like in Star Trek terms the person running around in the OR crawling through the Jeffrey's tubes to fix any item or in Star Wars terms Chewbacca handing you the hydro spanner to fix up the Millennium Falcon you are responsible for fixing fuses figuring out what the details of the malfunctions are you are analyzing the situation on site so you're going through all the rooms finding the item that you were just called out on that needs maintenance needs repair depending on the item or the situation you as the the mechanic

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    have to react individually to it which can be a mini game like character where you have to fix something that is unique to the map function that you are facing the manager uses the engineering screen to analyze your state of the ship and they dispatch mechanics or the tuner where need arises and can even assist with fixing certain malfunctions they manage the resource consumption via the presets the tuner prepared or manually controlling the Source distribution and they work together with the bridge crew to ensure a successful operation of your ship

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    I'm really happy that I'm actually sitting here and explaining you all the things that I just described to you because the entire process that we had to run through is was daunting to say the least because we are touching so many bases with so many teams so it's a lot of meetings a lot of discussions a lot of different opinions of what the engineer should be and now we have it written down we have it nailed down we know what we want we have defined goals what what the gameplay actually should be about and everyone agrees them so that allows us now to move forward fast and deliver the feature that we we all have been waiting for you me everyone Mike Jared it's it's it's something that we are

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    really looking forward to how it will play out how you as a player will interact with the entire system what you like how where you will bring your ships that you own and what you can make out of them how different they will actually feel to what they are right now in terms of stock whereas you have the perfectly tuned ship for your demands and this might come sooner than you think this is the good news about it because it all ties in with all the Resource Network work on resource management work that we have been doing so far we are really excited to to work on it right now so it is an active development and I don't want to do any promises when you will see it but we are doing our very

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    best that you will try to be able to try it out sooner than later no dates but it's really cool so what did we learn here this week we learned that the hopes and dreams of multi-group players everywhere are taking their next major step forward right now as Resource Management evolves into engineer gameplay that the designs spoken about here today is currently in active development and will continue throughout the remainder of this year and that we would normally have to wait months and months to share a story until we had the visuals for it but I work with some talented if kind of strange people who stepped up to make this week's episode possible now and don't worry you know we're going to be back to

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    show you how engineer gameplay is actually progressing later this year engineering is the thing that brought me into the project and I'm as excited as ever about what's being shared here and as for Alpha 318 I'm being told yes there's a message in my ear I'm being told that it's it's today has it happened yet it's going to happen but which one is it you can't tell me because there's nothing in my ear and we recorded this on Wednesday we like to have fun check the website in socials for details and thanks for watching the latest in our journey to 4.0 we'll be back with more inside Star Citizen next week so until then I'm Jared Huckabee and I don't have an outro for these j24 specials leave one in the comments that'll be good