10 for the Chairman: Episode 09 (2014.02.24)

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

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   [Music] hello everyone uh this is uh turn for the chairman uh for those of you who haven't watched it before this is where I take 10 questions from our uh generous base of subscribers both centurions and imperators uh and it's their contributions that they make on a monthly basis help fund a lot of the community content we do which would include this show um wiman's hanger the the jump Point magazine that we do which also trick trickles down to the general Community after the subscribers get some time uh to read it themselves uh and actually a bunch of other stuff that we're planning to do uh in terms of community communication so thank you to uh subscribers for enabling all this and um I'm going to uh I'll answer 10

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   questions that are posed every week um that people want to know the Hard Answers to from the um the man on top which I guess is me uh so anyway and um I just thought kind of fun this is a a book called space wreck that David hobbins who's our incredibly one of our incredibly talented uh concept artists um so he's a guy that has done the Gladiator and he's also the uh person that's working on the Consolidated uh outlet and Consolidated Mustang which is our new sort of fighter uh or starter ship I guess um and uh anyway it's a really cool book it's actually fairly old book uh but it's uh it's got um some cool stuff where it's got like huge foldouts um of like space recks and stuff so I mean I think this was uh the book was done quite a ways away but uh anyway it's nice inspirational stuff um

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   we definitely want these moments in the game where you'll uh drop down uh you know we've talked about salvaging a wreck in space or potentially maybe we'll even have like a location on a planet where instead of it being actually a bustling uh city or town um it could be uh somewhere where you could drop down into some ruins and maybe discover some stuff so all those things were want to put in to really make the world feel alive uh not all of it will be right away but that's all stuff that we're thinking of because we sort of view this as a huge long-term project to flesh out and build this world bigger and bigger as time goes even after uh the initial release um to keep everyone super engaged uh and also just because we think it would be cool um and the system is sort of allows a lot because we have both first person and the vehicle side of it which in the past I've never really had that level of

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   Fidelity in all the games I've done before and so it just opens up a huge world of things we can do so anyway space r cool book um onto uh the 10 questions okay here we go uh first question um comes from space duck who asks the Drake Herald's position as an information and data encryption ship makes it very interesting however is this a niche PVE Mission ship or is it something more how will the information and data aspects affect PVP in the persistent Universe uh so I mean we're definitely making one of I mean essentially one of the items of cargo you can carry if you've got an information Runner is like encrypted information and that actually can be pretty valuable in our universe because uh in our universe there is no FTL sort of communication basically communication

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   happens at the speed that we a ship can sort of travel or or a radio wave can travel in system so um you sort of limited between the combination of the speed of light when you're in system and then um whatever distance you jump when a information drone goes from one jump point to another jump point so essentially the way communication would go across the Galaxy is I'm on Earth I go okay I want to have a message go to Tera and um I would beam the message to the closest relay station um by a jump Point outside of Earth and that relay station would receive the message be the light and then it would basically encrypt the data put it in a drone and put it through the jump point on the other side there would be another relay station that would then get it basically beam it to the next relay station next jump point and would kind of do that until it got to uh say Tera and um obviously you need to encrypt your data

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   as you're sending it or uh sending it through jump point so other people can't necessarily see it and so that's where the Drake Herold comes in because in some cases you may not want to even be beaming your information because you're afraid someone can actually like encrypt uh you know decrypt it and and and and get the information so it's like handling a you know delivering a really uh valuable handwritten note but in this case it's digital so you'll you know definitely like maybe even things like um Deeds to areas of of land or if someone gets a you know like they're the first person to discover an area you know you have to like get the digitally signed um document to the records Bureau on Earth or something and that would have to get there and that would be something that information Runner do and that's where I would see some of the PVP some of the organization stuff happens

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   because I definitely think we'll have some mechanics where um you know because this is the uee there's going to be some bureaucracy you're going to have to have some information and data and that information data you won't always want to have blasted over the air wve so sometimes you'll hire someone to take it and also um there'll be cases where you'll be in areas where there's no relay stations right there's only relay stations in the sort of welldeveloped part of space but in the less developed the frontier worlds there won't be and that definitely you'll need a spaceship to take the information and then something like the Drake Herald well that has all the sort of data in cryp banks that will make it much safer when you sending it you may don't want to send an information say on a hornet or something because you know it hasn't got the computer systems and the shielding to sort of save it from someone that's a data snooper so and I definitely think there'll be definitely some play

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   Mechanics for or organizations in terms of um owning having title train and all that stuff that will be based on um information packets that get sent um and so uh so so therefore I think the PVP as well as the PVE will will be something that you can do with um the uh the Drake heral um okay next question comes from lys clutch or lease clutch um in the fourth 10 for the chairman you talked about some matchmaking criteria and I was wondering what the skill level is since we won't be leveling up will it be based on your kill count like World War I World War II Aces or perhaps if you're a Trader based on the profit you have made the matchmaking is going to obviously have a lot of criteria um and you know part of it will be your ping part of it will be sort of you know what

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   you're really into PV PVP and then also part of it will be sort of how good of a fighter you are uh or how you know how good your ship is in terms of defense and everything else so we haven't 100% figured it out uh but I mean I definitely think that your sort of kill count would factor into it uh but also there would have to be you know like if someone's a Trader and they're really good and they've been pretty defensive and they're strong strong then they could match up against someone that was sort of a strong sort of or whatever it sort of depends uh but that's part of like we're going to do with the dog fighting we you know just on a base dog fighting level we're going to do um uh kind of some basic stat tracking and then we're sort of going to decide uh kind of what we think uh the best stats to track in terms of matchmaking people because partly the

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    matchmaking also will be based on all sort of organizations allegiances who your friends who your enemies are all that kind of stuff so it's still a little too early uh to tell but I would definitely think that the kill count would factor into it um okay so onto the next question which comes from uh Gagarin who ask can you elaborate on top speed mechanics and how they interact with combat instances so I'm still working out the top speed mechanics uh aspect of stuff because um we're going to be limiting uh speed while you're dog fighting um mainly for sort of fun as the fun side of it but also there's a sort of pseudo science uh aspect where as you sort of make R rapid uh directional changes um uh relative to someone else right so it's not it's uh it's not speed per se but it's your

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    relative velocity Vector um so if you're going this way um say at uh 1,000 kilometers per hour and then you suddenly want to go this way at 1,000 kilm per hour in a very short period of time um and of course is all relative to who you're dog fighting or relative to plan or whatever uh then that would be a vast amount of basically deceleration and then acceleration to make that change and over a short period of time it would be a huge amount of um forces on your body and um you know our human body can only withstand so much uh so the intelligent flight control system that's in most of the uh ships will sort of limit your the sort of velocities relative to whoever you're fighting with or whatever um based on safe areas so you're not going to be killing yourself when you want to suddenly go 180 degrees the other way um but there definitely

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    will be cases where you'd be going much faster I.E when you're going from one area to another area sort of whatever you want to call Warp speed which is sort of what we're calling our Point uh to um C so uh you know basically a fifth of speed of light um and in that case you basically would be just accelerating up to that speed and then decelerating over a period of time and kind of our fiction in our world is one of the reasons why you always drop out of warp whenever you become near other ships or you become near celestial bodies is because at that level of speed you actually can't really deviate your your like trajectory too much over a short period of time without cting a huge amount of force on your body um and so likely is you won't be able to avoid a collision so your your you know intelligent flight control warp system whatever is sort of scanning way ahead

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    and goes oh look I've got an object way off in the distance I better start to decelerate me and drop me out of this warp and that's sort of the sort of kind of infiction reasoning behind why you get pulled out of warp or autopilot however you want to talk it when you're going between uh distances so um so in in terms of uh the instancing I guess uh you drop in and out um based on whether there's a other ships there or also whether there's planets and then I'm also talking with the idea of you know you being able to sort of run away like you basically just keep accelerating so you sort of go faster than dog fighting uh your intelligent flight control system lets you do for dog fing but the downside as you keep accelerating is obviously um the will suddenly stop to you know will not let you really do much deviation of turning so if I'm trying to flee a battle and I go fast yes I'm going fast but if someone gets

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    on my tail he has pretty much a free shot and generally sort of things like laser bolts or missiles will have higher top speed obviously you know laser bolt definitely but missiles even could could have a higher level of acceleration and catch up with you faster so you're sort of opening yourself up to some shots as you flee away as you start to try and get fast enough away before you can make the jump to warp speed so to speak uh so anyway I hope that um helps out a little bit um but that's kind of how we're thinking we're still going to be playing with it um and uh so we'll be sort of updating you on on on how those mechanics will work in the game as we get to them uh and sort of see it in the persistent universe as well as just the dog fighting stuff because the dog fighting stuff is all going to be pretty limited but this is really sort of more questions involving the persistent Universe can you flee from the battle

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    how quickly can you flee all that kind of stuff okay next question comes from jamanda who asks tractor beams suggest that ships are able to scoop cargo from space into the cargo base I assume the reverse would also be possible to jettison cargo into space how does this work on ships that there are no bulkheads between crew compartments and the cargo holds really great question that's actually something we're digging into right now in the design um so uh we're actually trying to figure out exactly how we bring Cargo in from like if you're if you're a pirate and you've just gone in space some one or they've Jas in their cargo how do you bring it into your cargo bay um so one way would be to have tractor beam to help that the other way that we're talking about is some level of Eva where you would actually get into your space suit and take a little sort of space sled out and pick up the cargo and bring it back into your cargo hold um and obviously the

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    ships uh you know most of the ships that are really designed for pulling cargo should have a air loock door between the cargo hold and the sort of pilot or like living quarter area so that um you can space the cargo hold and you know you don't have to space the living quarters if you actually had a ship that didn't have that if you were opening up your cargo hold or spacing or whatever you would have to basically space the whole ship and you would have to be in a uh like a you know Eva or a space suit or whatever you want to call it um to survive that so obviously um something like uh you know an aurora isn't really designed for that but then its cargo part is external so you can inject it um but most of the ships are actually going through and designing and going okay well we prob need an a lock door here how do we actually physically get the cargo in if we're trying to bring it in in space or not in space because we recognize a lot of people will actually

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    be doing that in space besides just picking up stuff on the ground and and dropping off on the ground um so there will actually be much more of a like in Star Citizen there will be more of a game mechanic in RS collecting your cargo than there will be there has been in say privateer or freelancer or some other space Sim games where you basically just run over the cargo and then it's magically in your hold you actually have to tractor it in and you have to um you know go out there and get it and put it in your your hold um so uh I think that will actually be a really cool uh game mechanic and uh and add to the fun okay so um Castor asks you mentioned in the last 10 for the chairman that the Idris was undergoing some interior changes in order to fit the amount of ships that you wanted inside the hanger how many ships do you plan on allowing inside the address and which ones thank you very much in advance so uh we actually been refactoring the Addis um for the needs

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    of uh Squadron 42 which would basically be a military Corvette uh so we've done a whole bunch of work on the interior so it has an Armory it has a med Bay um briefing room so it's actually going to be pretty cool it's actually we've sort of expanded it um more than we were conceiving because of the N of Squadron 42 so I think the Corvette own is going to be very happy when they finally get their hands on one although it's taking a while because it's a big ship and it's the first one we're building the full insides out properly uh which we didn't even do on the Bengal carrier when I was first doing the Prototype we did the bridge on that and the and the um Landing deck and the exterior but we didn't do all the interior rooms and corridors so we're doing that on the Corvette um but the default um uh equipment or the um sort of ship uh uh load out or so on the Corvette is is going to be uh they

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    fly with basically two active Hornets um uh which run the patrols and then they have a third Hornet that's sort of in reserve in case one of the other Hornets gets damaged and that's kind of how the military one set up so I would say that generally you could assume that you could fit um three ships Hornet size or smaller aboard the uh Corvette um and probably fly two maybe if you wanted to get pushy fly three off but really the flight deck sort of built to sort of retrieve and launch two at a time um and the third one goes into a store storage area uh so I hope that helps answer on the uh on the address Corvette um next question comes from Andy the Cass who asks is it possible to do PvP with my friends for fun without losing my ship and Equipment all the time insurance company will kill me um smiley face like

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    a simulator well um yes it is I mean that is exactly what um the sort of simulator Arena mode is going to be um the dog fighting module that we are going to be um uh releasing a little later on this year is exactly that I mean that's essentially that is the precursor to the final Arena mode that will happen in the game that will allow um you and your friends to practice practice against bots um uh you know have competitions um in a much more sort of Arena um respawn model than the full persistant Universe which has real consequences for losing your ship uh but also real sort of upsides and benefits because you know if you want to make money in the universe and uh you know build an Empire or even buy a new ship or whatever you've got to be flying real missions where you're going earn real money because you won't necessarily be able to do that in the arena mode with the exception of like we're going to

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    have sort of a pro sports level of it but I'm sure there'll be a lot of competition and that really won't be where most people will be able to earn money you'll have to do it in the persistent universe but the simulator Arena mode is where you would um practice basically before you go out into the big scary wide uh world of uh you know nasty NPCs or nasty uh other players um okay next question comes from from actua 73 who asked will we be seeing an integrated bug report uh feedback system as we get into more and bigger testing um I definitely think we would we will be able to we use jira for our internal stuff and ultimately we may have some version of that that will be exposed to the public the only problem you have if you have 200,000 people playing you can completely overwhelm a system and overwhelm anyone who's managing that

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    data because you have to sort of go through and make sure that is this bug a jeup of another bug and sometimes too much information um is not helpful in that sort of case so we haven't 100% um uh figured that out um but we definitely I think longterm will build in definitely sort of some automated logging uh send information to us kind of setup uh but in the initial lease of the dog fight that won't be in there uh but I would see it later on down the lad so I'd stay uh tuned for more of an answer on that um next question comes from Sophie Lance who asks or Lance Sophie Lance who ask my question is how will Star Citizen address such a situation where you have but a stick of bubble gum and a prayer holding your ship together and Communications have being shot to Pieces will we be able to attempt a manual Landing or will we have to put our faith in our Escape pods um

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    so that's a that's actually a really uh uh interesting and good question I haven't really considered the case where your ship is shot up so much and your communication module is broken and then you get to a planet and you want to land but of course you don't have communications uh you can't land I would think that what we would do in that sort of case is that um essentially the um the the planet would recognize that you're really shut up and say you're just clear to land without you having to uh request I think um in terms of uh landing on another ship in space like a carrier or whatever a Corvette in that case you would probably have to do a manual Landing uh versus a automatic Landing um and then of course if none of that works of course you could always use your Escape pod but there there certainly will be some handling of the

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    landing uh so you can sort of nurse your ship back and and and try and get it back and then get it repaired all the rest of the stuff okay so next question comes from manic will the death of a Spaceman always be the final destination for our Pilots or will we be able to say retire them and perhaps have them populate the universe maybe as a grizzled old pilot lurking in the backseat of a bar for the weathered mechanic cobbling ships back together in the CD side of the Spaceport or the battle scar former pirate threatening Farm boys and all Jedi and containers uh uh yeah no that's a great uh that's a great idea and a great thought I mean we were actually just having a design debate earlier uh today because we were sort of drilling down on some more of the sort of uh you know death mechanics uh in the persistant Universe um and we were sort of mentioning the fact that it would be kind of cool that like uh towards the end of uh your character's

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    life you could essentially retire your character rather than just have him sort of die in the field so to speak uh haven't really figured out how what that would mean in terms of them getting retired uh whether they would actually exist as a persistent MPC or they would maybe just exist in your own worldview uh or not at all but you would just know that they've retired and you know I don't know you get an email once in a while they saying you know drinking panina coladas on on the beach um but I this is a this is a this is a great idea I don't know how easy it would be uh to to to work but I mean I guess you could always have a couple of MPC slots on a planet and they're open to be populated by X player character is now operating as NPCs uh which would be kind of cool because you would just basically take over the name and you would see them there and they' be just going about

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    their daily lives so good suggestion I'll think about that um you never know it could happen Okay so last question comes from dragon fire morus who asked several months ago Chris Roberts made a comment about looking into the possibility of making an official SC game pad or hotas is there any further word on if this is going to happen yeah I mean we we ran a poll um on on having the uh like do you want a hotas or official like Star Citizen controller you know was there a particular manufacturer you liked uh and so that poll was really part of that initiative so we are um sort of moving forward with long-term plans of that I mean it won't be anything that'll be happening before the dog fighting module but I think you could sort of see uh you know us making some announcements uh after the dog fighting module but um yeah long term we

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    definitely want to do that we've been talking to the various peripheral uh manufacturers and quite a lot of ke um to do stuff with us about making some sort of Star Citizen themed controllers um and also have a like you say a hotas that is specifically sort of configured to work really well with star citizens so you know you you have all the you know we map all the keys and uh all the buttons and the joysticks to everything that's happening in the cockpit it includes uh sort of being able to have an analog look around like say on a hat and stuff like that so we're definitely working on that and uh that will be pretty cool I mean we enjoy our um wey our Like official uh Star Citizen game pads and uh t-shirts and hoodies and we definitely want our own official joystick and M and all that kind of stuff um so there you are that's uh another episode of 10 for the chairman

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    thank you very much uh for um joining me and thank you very much to the subscribers out there for generously um uh subscribing and enabling us to do a lot of this extra content and thank you to the backers in general out there for supporting this game allowing us to make uh this huge game now at a level that we're competing with I mean as far as I can tell I think we're the biggest PC gaming development period uh you know maybe I guess Elder Scrolls Online uh is that's that's probably more expensive than us but there's not many other games that have got the funding which has all come from you guys and it's allowing us to make this huge ambitious game uh that won't just stop from when the actual game is sort of initially finished it will go on beyond that and we'll be adding more and more features and and all your support is helping us sort of

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    uh ramp some of that stuff up a bit sooner and go a bit wider earlier than we normally can which is great um but I'm having a great time making a uh uh a really big deep universe and there's a lot of things that we can sort of do that I've always wanted to do now and that's all because of your support so thank you very much and I will see you next week on another episode of t for the chairman