Star Citizen Live: All About Alpha 3.8

10 January 202000:59:451,716 linesWatch on YouTube ↗

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

00:00:03
Hi everybody. Welcome to the very first episode of Star Citizen Live for 2020. I'm your host Jared Huckaby. Now, before we get started with SCL today, I did want to take a few moments to take a quick chat about some news that went out earlier this week. You can just type here. Uh about the potential return of another Q&A show that we used to do called Calling All Devs. I'm in a Spectrum post. It was cool. It was a big deal. In my excitement, I left out a few salient details. While we're always examining the existing programs, we still want to bring back another form besides SCL for you to be directly in touch with our developers, uh ask them questions, and get answers and stuff. Uh that show may not come back in exactly the same format or even the same name as Calling All Devs. It may It may It may
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not. We're still evaluating. Uh we're basically we're taking the time right now to figure out precisely what we want to do. What we love about that format is that it gives our players a place to speak directly to a broad array of developers and not just the ones that we can get here on a Friday. Uh but we always want to improve on what's come before and not just keep repeating the same notes. So, so the timing of this program, the specific length, even the name of the program, they're all up for grabs. Basically, we're all developing that right now. So, stay tuned for more information. You're going to hear more about what we're doing as soon as we have it figured out. The questions you guys put together, awesome. We're feeling really good about it. Uh and from the sheer amount of uh replies that you guys gave us, it looks like you guys are feeling really good about it, too. So, stay tuned. It's coming. It just may not may or may not
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be called Calling All Devs. It may or may not be this long, this long, this long. It may not be have picture in picture. We're going to work all that stuff out. But, hang tight. It's coming. We're excited. That done. Hi. How's it going? Look who surprised me the other day. Now, when we when we posted the thread for this show, we originally scheduled it 8:00 because Todd is usually from our Frankfurt studio, and we you know, we do the early shows here to account for the time differences there. And we were all set, and everybody was there. We had the room booked out, and Alf was on it, and like and then he walks into the office yesterday and goes, "Hi, pumpkin." And I'm like, "You're here?" Yes. So, yeah. We So, we moved the time so we didn't have to quite wake up but super early in the morning. Uh so, we are here now. Todd, for anybody who's
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very confused, like this is your first program, this is the first show you've ever watched, and you're like, "What the heck is going on?" Uh why don't you tell everybody who you are and what you do for Star Citizen. My name is Todd Papy. I'm the Star Citizen live game director. So, what that means is I work with the team on the releases and and help focus, you know, what's going out in the release, make sure that there's a certain quality control associated with it. Um and then also working with the team of developers as far as uh other things regarding pillars. Um so, in my pillar, I've got AI, I've got UI, and I've got um what we consider EUPU, which is mining and that kind of gameplay. And then just making sure that we all
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communicate because we're very big company across multiple continents and um I don't think anybody communication errors. Yeah, I don't think anybody's telling tales out of school that that five studios distributed across the world, communication is probably one of our biggest Yeah. ongoing challenges. As it would for any any company that's got this distributed kind of thing. So, you know, things like the handovers are incredibly important. That that this the the morning syncs, like it seems like the first couple hours the last couple hours for you, first couple hours for us are always in meetings to make sure that everybody's on the same page and so. Correct. It's definitely a It's one of those big tasks that doesn't show up on the road map cuz it's ongoing or whatever. It's just communication. We don't just talk to you, we talk to each other. All right, so as usual finally we're getting into it. Welcome
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to 2020. Getting I was at Disney World for a week which show could have just been me telling Disney World stories. I tried, they said no. Uh as usual we asked for questions earlier in this week and you guys delivered. You submitted a whole bunch of questions and voted up which ones you wanted to see answered most. Uh so we're going to get right into those as we start. Uh additionally, you can submit your questions right now, fresh, hot off the press uh by by dropping your questions in either Twitch chat where we're broadcasting right now or in Spectrum which is our bespoke communication platform. Uh just do our community management team a favor. Uh preface your question with the word question in capital letters surrounded by brackets. Uh that helps pull it out from all the other conversations and say hi to Tyler while you're there. He's feeling under the weather. Hi Tyler. Thanks thanks for being here, man.
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Okay. Right off the bat uh we had a number of questions uh related to the uh the release of uh server side object container stream or socks. So we're just going to group those here at the beginning, get through those, get those out of the way. Um they they kind of touch on each other so we'll I'll skip if we one answer goes into the other one. Okay. But right off the bat, it seems initially that server side OCS or socks had a good impact on AI. But over time the AI has reverted to mannequin mode as this backer refers to it. Is this a socks issue or is it indicative of something else? Uh it's a server side issue. So obviously with socks being introduced um that was fundamental technology that touched everything. Everything. So every team had to work to do for socks and every team will have work to
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do for server meshing. Um and so right now with the release of SOCS, our server frame rates isn't at the level that we want it to be at. Um and when it does run at that level, then the AI works the way that you would see in kind of a normal single-player game. Um however, when it's running at six frames a second or somewhere around there, then we start getting into some packet loss and and other issues that make the AI look wonky. Um and since this was our first release, um and obviously kind of even in a a more time-compressed release, meaning um with the holidays and holiday break, uh I think that
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basically introducing this technology and seeing that it hasn't completely fallen over and and we broke the back on a lot of the issues. I think over the the next releases, you'll see the improvement that that we're all hoping for and we're all looking forward right now. Yeah, it can't be understated. We've touched on this multiple times between uh Star Citizen Live, Inside Star Citizen, Pillar Talks, stuff like that, that server side object container server side object container streaming required a refactor of every single asset in the game. It's it's it's like nothing carries over from from 3.7 in exactly the same way Yeah, from a from a code standpoint. This this tech initiative had been going on for quite a while. And so, now obviously once we get it live, we
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start seeing a lot of the issues that frankly we don't see in you know, um we don't see uh internally because we can't hammer the server all all the time with 50 50 QA people. and then even then, when the server stays up for let's say a long time, then we're starting to see either memory leaks or or other issues that might be causing the server to slow down. But that's one of the great things about having our live test environment or off it test environment is that is that we can get the numbers with our backers that we can't get with our QA team. So they really hammered us. Plus we had a huge influx of new players in quarter four. So you know, it's the servers were pretty hammered pretty good and then they were hammered pretty well.
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That's how my sixth grade teacher hammered pretty well in quarter four. So so yeah, so it's it it's it's really cool. The issue council is doing great. We're seeing tons of reports. People have been working on it even even before the end of even before we left for holidays. Yes. And and and and we saw it and basically our guys are already talking about what they can do. So it it is something that's being worked on being looked at right now. Um now whether those changes come in 3.8.1 or or down the line, obviously if not 3.8.1 then it'll be 3.9. Um next question is more general here. How satisfied overall are you with the roll out of socks right now? I half and half.
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I'm I'm satisfied I'm more than satisfied that the team was able to do what they needed to do to get the release out the door and make sure that we we broke the back of it. I think that Steve Humphreys and and the the main you know, tech guys did a fantastic job of of you know, of doing what they needed to do to get it working. Now obviously there's some of the game play ramifications that we're seeing right now that's I wish were in a better state and we will continue to work towards you know, improving that. So I I wish that came out at the same time as as the socks release and and that everything was magical and and it worked the way that it was it was supposed to work. Um Um right now again, we're just
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investigating and trying to see what we can do to to get the server frame rate up and and running the way it needs to be running. Um and the way that we had it even before socks, you know, there were there were times where we had the server frame rate running, you know, at least 12 to 15. Um so then at that point time, we definitely get better performance from the AI as well as, you know, ship ship to ship combat. Where we're at right now is not necessarily a surprise. We knew there would be bugs. We knew there would be all kinds of When you when you change the code underlying every single aspect of Star Citizen, there were going to be bugs. And it's you know, we we we may have hoped for something, you know, you you hope for the best, you prepare for the worst. So we've had people on deck working on this. Uh 3381, as you mentioned, is already in progress. I don't have no idea when it's coming. I'm
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not the when person anymore. So I don't know. I looked at Spectrum and all this stuff to find out when. Uh but folks are working on that. And yeah, it's uh it's still an it's still an exciting time. I got to watch a lot of gameplay over the over the holidays. Um and it it was it was not just from the additions of new content like MicroTech and stuff like that. It just seemed like uh the overall experience was better. Yes, there were struggles and many of the questions Yeah, are about the struggles. We'll get to Yeah, there there there are plenty of struggles, but I mean, I'm extremely proud of what the team has been Yeah, that's what I was trying to get at, the overall experience was I think even if you look at, you know, how much um how much it's changed from 3.0 until now. Like, you know, the game and um basically our workflow, the way that we
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adjust things, the gameplay associated with it. Um there still thorns in our side that we know of and that we continue to to work towards to fix. Um but I think that's, you know, we've we've definitely gotten over that that large hump. The other server side related question has to do with desync and teleporting and stuff. It's like the AI's, it's we're on it. Yeah, I mean, it really comes down to a frame rate and and um, we we do prediction and sometimes that prediction, you know, is wrong and so then once we get that packet back then we teleport them to the right spot. But obviously with it running so slow then that's that we are going to have those issues and until we can we can actually break the back of that then
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um, unfortunately, we will be continuing to to deal with that. All right, moving on from the server side OCS stuff. Um, players are finding that auto gimbal is the clear and obvious choice of most encounters. Well, their opinion. Uh, although I might kind of agree with it. Will we see some attention to making fixed weapons a competitive option? So, just too long didn't read, yes. Um, the with the auto gimbal and um, even then we've created a team called vehicle experience team team, um, which will be focusing on uh, some of these issues that we're having and uh, in particular looking at the combat distances and you know, just the combat experience in in general. Um, looking at how the
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missiles aren't working the way that they they need to be working. Uh, looking at turrets, how they're not working the way that they need to be working and then just overall balancing of the features and and um, you know, how uh, the coolers and uh, the quantum drives and all these other gameplay items fit on the ship and how they all play together. So, that is their main focus of going through and and looking at combat and and making sure that we're right now I would consider us very much a pixel hunter and so I would prefer it to be a much more intimate, you know, as far as play style. So we're we're playing around with that and trying to see um you know, the combat distances and what we can bring them into and and what feels right and you know, I I think Chris has his idea of what it is. Um
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John Crew has his idea. I have my idea and so we're just trying to trying to mesh those together and see what what comes out. Okay. Now you you you you low-key mentioned the creation of an of a new team, the vehicle experience team. Mhm. Um just because like I already see in chat people have latched on to that stuff. That's not like a group of brand new people that are coming in No, no, no. And and no, and in fact team of existing In fact um it the team includes basically some of our system designers that we had in the UK already and Rob Johnson who's one of our more senior lead programmers who basically was just a a bug machine. Um just being able to squash all of them. So and because he knows all the systems that's
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are being touched there, that's why he's part of that vehicle experience team and then we also pulled another programmer off of EU vehicle feature team and put them on there. Uh from the live chat do ship upgrades actually do anything? Coolers for example are cooling per second. Does this affect actual performance? So yes, it does. Um there if if it doesn't then that means that they copied and pasted numbers wrong. Um but the idea is that coolers and and basically any items have pros and cons associated with them. So you know, one of them might cool at a faster rate but might pull more power. Now, one of the things that's we don't
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have right now and isn't isn't being shown off to the player is basically a ways to compare one item to another. And that's something that we've talked about. It's something that we know we need to do. Um and we have an idea of how we want to to play that out and build that UI experience and or the UX experience for that. Uh it's just something that's we haven't been able to start on just yet. But but there are differences. Okay. We have a question about exactly that thing about comparing the stats later on. So uh which refer to this question? Yeah. Um the new actually I Can we get a little clarification about platform persistence? It's been said that money and ships purchased in game
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would be retained once platform but once platform persistence was enabled. While CIG reserved the right to perform wipes when needed. Does this mean the ships earned in game can still be potentially wiped from our accounts? It means that. I mean it it basically if if that ship was earned via Well, I mean we need to be able to take a look at how players earn money, you know, and um we know that there's an exploit there right now that people are are earning crazy amounts of alpha UEC. Um and so anything that's was earned during that time, yeah, we're going to have to wipe. There's the ship duplication bug and stuff like that. E- exactly. So um we will have to wipe. That's the whole point of until we go final, like you know, we need to work out the kinks of of everything and there
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there are definitely a lot of issues and there there are things that we have to be able to to reset. That is what the purpose of an alpha is for. I mean I I I think the I think the big takeaway with the addition of platform persistence is that instead of we have to wipe Correct. time, now we can selectively wipe only when we deem necessary. Yeah, and again, I think a lot of the what players can earn in one quarter, or let's say we let's say we we did a a release perfectly right on time at the end of March. And between them then and June, you know, let's say we have a ship that you know, from our estimate
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our you know, idea, we want it to take six months for the average player. Not not, you know, somebody that's that's sinking tons and tons of time into it. But the average player to earn in six months. Okay. Well, if we don't have this persistence, then they're we're never going to see if that number's correct. And so, once we get that persistence in, then we can start seeing, okay, are these numbers that we're setting for these long-term goals, or are these reputation amounts and so and so forth that we're building for mission givers and and trying to unlock are those working the way that we need them to work or you know, so so we're able to test right now a lot of our short-term goals, but
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we can't test our mid-term or long-term goals. And that's that's really what this is supposed to be doing is is starting to test those mid-term and long-term goals. Uh next question. Uh are you happy with the 30th K feature? Now the the question is is simply what are 30K errors? Why do they happen? Why do they happen so frequently? And then I've lost more cargo through no fault of my own. Yes, 30K errors. So for this one, we went directly to the platform platform team to get an answer for you. It's this is exactly the kind of thing that we that hoping to be able to do for, you know, a show like Calling All Devs. Uh, that I'm going to just going to read what the platform team wrote so they couldn't come here. Uh, 30k errors signify that the game client lost
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connection with the game server. On PTU environments, this can frequently signify a server crash, but on more stable builds, it may be representative of connectivity issues between the computer the client is running on and the game environment. Uh, in further discussion, we've talked about this yesterday and stuff. 30k is somewhat of a It can be It's one of those things It's a catch-all. on top. It's a catch-all of of a huge variety of of of things underneath. It's not just server crashes or or or a loss of connectivity. It's anything Almost anything that can't be specifically nailed down gets the gets the 30k. And that's why you see it probably more often than others, and that's why things like the issue council are so incredibly important for this. You guys, you know, you got keep reporting them, keep giving us the specific details of your instance of the
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30k. That helps our guys find out, "Okay, there's this cause, we can snap that." And then there's this cause, and we can smash that. And then there's this, and we'll smash that. Uh, but yeah, it's It is our Oowapo. Yeah, and it's has been in previous releases and I think it'll just continue to be. Uh, you got But But I mean, obviously with the introduction of socks, you know, we're going to see this. And then when we introduce server meshing, I'm sure we're going to see this as well. anybody knows where the Oowapo reference came from, I'm sorry. Uh, will we see quality of life patches for 3.8 or strictly the new ship content patches? I for 3.1, um, you'll definitely see some quality of life uh, fixes. Um, basically, we have um, we don't want to mess up our our feature
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development time too much. So, we have what we consider life must fixes or things that are associated with the gameplay experience that um I've already gone through and triaged. And then we'll be focusing on those. Um and then obviously anything that doesn't make it there then will go into 3.9. But the way that um and you you guys kind of saw it last year where we weren't so strict on our feature lock date and what that did is that kind of cascaded into um releases not going out on time. Now Aaron and I are very strict on our feature lock date and uh so and that that basically comes in the middle of February this this year. So, so then that means that
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basically from now until mid-February this is features that will be um worked on and some of them had already been started in 3.8 and and even 3.7. Um and this is when everything comes together and that feature is locked and it's ready to go out and it's ready to go to the evocati and and since it takes us a certain amount of time uh to basically go from evocati to wave one to wave two to to live. we can't short change that time. And uh we've seen that's what happened in the past or we tried to short change it and and it it didn't work. This is where things like the the the quarterly release initiative that we started in the beginning of 2018. 20 2018 2019 and the staggered
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development initiative, you know, hit you it's some people are working on things every everybody should be working on things on like a six-month cadence with the staggered development when when when applicable. When applicable. Yeah. But again, but uh it it's it's in order to hit that quarterly release with consistency, we have to have those cut off days. We have to have those feature lock days Yeah and say, you know, we we wanted this feature for 3.9 or 4.0 or 3.6 or whatever, but it just didn't make that thing. So, instead of holding the date, it moves to another Yeah, and I'm I mean, we're trying to do that for everything. Whether that be features, content, you know, so content is levels that are coming out or or ships or so on and so forth. Like, we want to make sure that everything that we know
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is going into that release is hitting that date. obviously, with our schedules right now, we need to kind of adjust things, but we're trying to go through and make sure that everything hits that date. So, then that gives everybody the proper time to react to um bugs and issues that come up, you know, when when testing. How hard is it? And you know what I'm saying? Throw my own personal question there. How hard is it? You've got that they got that I'm just as you said middle of February, so I'm just going to say February 15th is the actual date or anything. But, February 15th rolls around and somebody is so close to getting their thing done. They're like, "Oh, if you just give me to February 17th, I could have it." How hard is that not to Well, I I I I I I At that point in time, we we do have special cases, you know, and and we do at that point we do review it.
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So, we look at it and we're like, "Okay, this one's super super close." And as long as it's super super close, then we're like, "Okay, you will have to do manual integration into the branch when once it's created." but we review it again at that point in time. You you know, we had it um we had it with no fly zones or what we consider what we consider restricted areas and where we reviewed it and uh the feature was was pretty much there. It was just that we hadn't tested it and hadn't gotten it into all of the correct content. So, therefore, once we start looking at it in Louisville and area 18, because each one of our major landing zones are their own special butterfly. So, once we
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start looking in context with those, then it just wasn't it wasn't ready, you know, so we need to make sure that okay, hey, you know, features done, now content has actually had its part and done its its work and now we're looking at it in context with everything. And so, that's what we're pushing for. you're talking about the rework of the restricted area. Yes, sir. And stuff, yeah, okay. As I mean, restricted areas have been in game for quite some time, but you you know, we we we've been working on a a reworking of how they Well, it's it's it's it was that we had this end goal in mind, which is what we have now, but there were kind of patches working towards that end goal and so, now we have what's what we want and what we what we feel we need. And uh you'll hear more about the
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restricted area rework on ISC this quarter. So. Uh let's see. Question from the live chat, are you testing, monitoring the economy right now? Because it feels very grindy and makes it hard to get into get more ships and budget and bug test them. Well, it's yes, we we have um telemetry on on basically the economy and and we we look at it constantly. Now, one of the things that I I think if you referred to Tony's talk at CitizenCon, there's the quantum um and I'm I'm lobbying for a different name for that one. but uh there's the quantum talk and and where that uh mimics mimics the economy and and um so, if something uh
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over in this area isn't being used that much, then the prices will go down versus if something's being used more over here then the prices go up. Now, what we have to do is we do that by hand every quarter. And um I understand that some things will feel somewhat grindy. Now, there's certain things that we do want to feel grindy. So, like a lot of the in-game ships, you know, anything of a capital class, I consider that very, very grindy. You know, like it's I can't go out and buy a mansion, you know, and I don't think you know, the average person would be able to. But if if we pull together as a as a unit, you know, then maybe we can. There are also interesting challenges in trying to balance for an economy that doesn't have all of the game features
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that we're intending for. It's like there you know, it's trying to balance an economy when you don't have all the ways a player will have to make money. Correct. And and again, like if you think something's grindy on this, like you know, with our mission rewards or like these are all going to be in flux. You know, we've got basically just so many people looking at this and working on it. And um once we start getting some of these other things coming in in into place, like the quantum, like this this will actually help those guys um adjust things on the fly and and be able to say, "Okay, he you know, he here's here it is, but here the rails that it can go, you know, between." Kind of thing. Have you pitched him on another name besides quantum?
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He and I see very, very different in names. Um I like short names. Uh and um if he told you the quantum's full name, then it's Uh yes, I heard quantum's. I can't remember it right now because I was sick that day, but Uh it was it was delightful watching his on stage during his performance and watching him reveal quantum. And you you know, it's the community, you guys, uh were justifiably so very excited in the in the chat and we're very appreciative little behind the scenes story here the AV company you know the people who don't follow Star Citizen don't know Star Citizen don't you know that you know just working in the industry they were like
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what the hell like like like you put together convention to show this and people are enjoying like that they they they could they didn't get it it was just like yeah we're kind of a special case guys it was just it was it was really it was very funny it was just very humorous to me we I kept telling them it's like you're going to see some stuff and you're going to be like I can't believe you guys are like talking about this or making this a thing it's like but for our community and for our followers and it's big news so it was it was really fun to just see that dichotomy there next question I find that the Halo asteroid belt contains mostly small asteroids that lack significant resources worthy of the mole's time and effort most of the more valuable or is still locked down in small rocks on moons will we see an increase in the yield of asteroids to make the mole more useful
00:29:56
yes so again we're we're going through and evaluating basically the placements and we actually adjusted we have what we consider future team and then the content team okay as soon as the future's done then it needs to be handed over to a content team so and then once that content team is is working on it then the adjustments of the where stuff is placed and how much it's worth so and so forth like that will always kind of grind through that economy team and and that content team working together with mining we just did that switch so in 39 we'll basically start seeing adjustments and that team is also putting stuff on microtech and its moons you know, um basically in I think sprint two, sprint three of of this
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coming quarter. Um So, with um the Aaron Halo in the ends um even just the clusters and everything like we know that we need to go through and a lot of those asteroids are super old and and won't necessarily look good with our money tech and all of that. So, that's one of the things that Ian and I thinking about and and worrying about, you know, what you know, what does an asteroid field feel like, you know, in our game? There's There's what it's like in real life where you might see one every now and then and then there's obviously like the movie version of it where it's super super dense and and you want to fly through everything. So, we need to figure out what is our Star Citizen
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asteroid field feel like. I you mentioned something that I I I think makes a good point here. There's There's feature teams and content teams. Uh it can very much uh it can very much be seen from an outside perspective like, you know, the the people who make the ships make the gameplay for the ships and and they don't it it as far as the ship art versus the the you know, the the the feature teams make the tools, make the systems, make the the underlying existence of of of like mining whatever and then it's up to the content teams to build the ways in which we use them. Well, it's it's for example, like harvestables, okay? Um when we start building a location, we have an idea, we have a breakdown. Okay, this is what this Here's everything that this
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location will need. It'll need missions associated, it'll need harvestables associated with it. Here the different POIs that we consider points of interest. Here are the mission givers or key, you know, NPCs that we need. Here are the stores so on and so forth. So, we have that breakdown and then when we start talking about, okay, is this using a unique harvestable or unique minable, what is needed there and then we need to make sure that we're building it associated with that. When we're talking about the feature team, they're building, okay, here's how you harvest, here's how you mine, you know, and okay, and the full game loop associated with that. So, finding it and then they're working with other feature teams like radar and scanning is here
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in LA. So, Dan was working with Kirk and and Mark Abent and the team here for ping and trying to find it and then he was working with environment artists for actually building it and then effects team for actually putting in different effects and and putting out different mining heads and so and so forth. So, it's think of feature teams as kind of like the heart and soul of the feature and they are the one responsible for delivering that feature and but they have a lot of dependencies and a lot of requirements that they pull from different support teams, whether those be content teams or or other support teams or other feature teams. Got you. The way I was I guess the way I was thinking about it, I used to be a swimming pool contractor, one of my 30 some odd jobs I used to do and I used to
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go to vendors and purchase engineering. So, I didn't have to know engine I didn't have to know how the engineering worked, you know, the shape of rebar and how to put that stuff. I would buy the engineering and then use that to build a a pool, you know, they would give me the basic fundamentals, okay, I know I'm going to need this to be load bearing here, I know I'm going to need this to be you know, this to be able to withstand this from from a housing standpoint, you were the general contractor. the feature team is the general contractor and then they sublet to um, electrical team or to uh, let's say a framing team or drywall team or so and so so and so forth. And then it's but the general contractor is responsible for the end product. Um, next question from the live chat says, how much research should we do on
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a potential bug before filling out an issue report? How much research should they do? On a before filling out a a bug on the on the issue council. I I mean if if they run into something then I think it really depends on the bug. Yeah, I I I think I think all information in in in some way or another is is valuable because it brings it to it brings it to attention. It's one of the reasons we have the duplication on the issue council. That's more people verify it so that that the the I mean you may add this much to it and then somebody else is adding this part to it and then somebody else is adding this part to it and through the duplication feature they can build an entire we we can build an entire picture of of what the the bug is. I obviously if they can if they can produce any repro steps and and ways to find um, for our internal QA to to repro it at any point time, fantastic. You
00:35:38
know, but if they're just playing and then they run into this this issue then okay, you know, I I would say let's enter a bug if they can um, because we want to be aware of everything. Uh, then it's if they run into it again or somehow magically find a a way of reproing it then fantastic. I mean I I I think ultimately it comes down to do what you feel is comfortable. I mean this isn't your job. You presumably you all have careers and jobs and lives and what but as you can help we appreciate it. Yes, we we do. I'm actually getting quite a few questions about bugs. Um, will we get any anti-stuck system if we get stuck in a cave for example instead of having to re-log? it's something we've talked about. Slash stuck.
00:36:24
Yeah, it's something that we've talked about. But there hasn't been any movement on that right now. okay, there's a question about the ship duplication bug. We touched on that a little bit earlier. you know, we still reserve the right the right to do wipes. Yeah, that's it. So. Well, and with the ship duplication duplication bug, I don't know if I don't know if it's server side. You know, so if if it's our back end guys, then we should be able to do a hot fix at any point in time. Or if it actually needs to be fixed with a patch. So, it might be one of those things where it just magically disappears and we we message people that we we found it or it'll be in a patch.
00:37:15
What can you tell us about the ability to spawn parasite craft and vehicles with and inside our ships? it's something that CR wants done this year. So. This is where I'm going to go ahead and do that thing where I say that doesn't mean it's coming this year. Schedules, dependencies, all that stuff. But it is our intention. Yeah, it is very much our intention just because again, obviously we have a lot of parasite crafts and with our introduction of a lot of these larger ships, you know, we want to be able to to spawn you know, and even then, you know, let's say you have a freelancer and you want to be able to spawn your Nox in there. You know, I I would we want to be able to do that and and uh
00:38:03
reduce a lot of the headache that happens right now. Uh do you think any of that will involve docking of the Merlin to the Constellation? Well, there's the ship to ship docking aspects that we'd have to obviously look at the UX experience of that. But there's that. There's obviously um uh the Pisces in the Carrick, you know, and and some other things that's, you know, even the Caterpillar and and its control module. Yeah. I was just thinking about that one specifically cuz the pipe, you know, the Pisces inside the Carrick, the Ursa inside the constellation, the Nox inside the whatever, but the the the Merlin and the Archimedes are unique cases because It's it's right there. Yep. All right. Uh let's see what else we got. Why is there no place to spawn vehicles on MicroTech? Even without New
00:38:52
Babbage, there are no pads anywhere? Uh because when New Babbage and everything came in, there's a certain amount of time that it takes to actually drop assets onto planets. So, with Planet Tech V4, we had to actually go in and re-drop everything across all planets um and moons. And that took our our team a fairly significant amount of time, or took one of our a few of our guys a fairly significant amount of time to go through and re-drop everything. Now, with MicroTech coming on pretty late, and um we just didn't have enough time to to actually go in and drop that stuff. Um
00:39:39
now, for 3.9, uh with the moons and and obviously New Babbage coming into play, all of that stuff should be dropped. Okay, the next question was about expanding the current descriptions to ship items, to list more details so that you can compare them. I mean, uh what what we have right now from a tech standpoint, like it it's it works, you know, it gives you a description, but I don't think it'll say, "Okay, well, this thing is is is X amount of better than this thing on cooling." And you know, there's there's no number stats that that people can break down. There's no, you know, even if it's just as simple as a a bar for a consumer to understand, "Okay, hey, this thing is this much better than this." You know, and that's
00:40:26
why it warrants this price kind of thing. Like, there's there's none of that breakdown right now. It's it's something the economy team, the the people that would do stores, as well as the UI team, we've been in constant communication and we've been talking about how we want to do this. It's just finding that finding that time because the UI team right now is is going through and hitting a lot of the major aspects, meaning the the visor rework, whether that be in the actual ships and how the ships function and, you know, how that looks. And then right now we're looking at the FPS. Um there's a couple of questions. Will there be a bug fix patch before 3.8.1? 3.8.1 is
00:41:13
the first bug fix patch. So, there There won't there there won't be a patch before There might be a hotfix or something like that, but as far as like anything else, it will it will come out in 3. 3.8.1. Uh trading. It's currently very painful. There's a bunch more to the question, but I kind of just want to leave it It is Now the rest of the question goes on about the bugs that can cause you to lose cargo, quantum travel that will smash you into a planet's surface, stuff like that. Yeah. So, He asked that fail uh trading, Todd. trading So, this So, there's there's all the outside factors. If we just looked at basically any of the disconnection errors or we look at any of the other things that might
00:42:02
theoretically go into a mission or just the experience of flying from one area to another area. There's some painful things that happen there. Um we we know about uh certain ones of them and then other ones we might not know about. Um, or they might not manifest themselves very often. Um, so like Jared said before, please let us know in issue council and and then it's something that um myself and and the um play relation guys and we talk about it at I think it's every week or every other week. You know, we go through a lot of the issue council stuff. Um, then from there uh there's the actual aspect of trading and understanding hey, Grim Hex is buying
00:42:50
this for a certain amount versus Lorville is buying this for a certain amount. Right now, I think a lot of people go to external um external apps or external websites, you know, to find out okay, hey, this is this is what the price is here versus here kind of thing. Um, we want to fix that. It's something that we've talked about, you know, using the star map for and also obviously that also plugs into quantum. Um, and so the with mobi glass there's we need to switch that over to building blocks and then it will be going through and fixing every single app and making sure okay, with the star map, you know, you click on a planet, you get the actual information, you click on Lorville, you actually get the information of Lorville. Maybe you want to find out what trading is there. Then
00:43:39
you click on that and then it gives you an you know, the appropriate list of you know, so that you can as a player you can choose this is what I want to do. This is how okay, I want to go here, sell this and then I want to go here and sell that, you know. So, you can actually make an informed decision on where you want to travel. So, hopefully that explains what's Yeah, it it's it's there's there's certainly uh it's trading is certainly suffering from the a multitude of bugs. Well, it's it's I think it's Yeah, it's the same thing with missions though. I mean, like missions are a culmination of of all these other systems. And so, if one of them falls down, you know, like for example, you drop something and falls through the floor. Okay, well, now your mission's completely screwed.
00:44:28
I think I what I was wanting to get at though is that it's not just the bugs though. It it's it's we want changes to the trading system through the building blocks and the multi-tool glass. Correct. And then, you know, then there's the the spicy elements of of you know, volatile car cargo or cargo that's, you know, needs refrigeration or those are Let's talk about cargo, Todd. But that to me is the the interesting That's where you start getting a lot of interesting gameplay where you need to do the Kessel Run in 13 parsecs versus 20 parsecs. I'm just going to let the Star Wars reference lie. Let's talk about cargo. Let's talk about How how how how happy are you with cargo? Cuz that's a big part of trading. A big
00:45:15
part of trading is the cargo system. I'm not I'm not happy with cargo. I mean, what we've This isn't one of the questions. I just know he wasn't happy with it. So, I want I want I want you to know what I know He's he's he's poking me. Um, basically, we have a cargo grid. Um, and then we have what we want to do for cargo. And we have what we consider kind of first implementation. So, we have the one SCU version of cargo. Um, we have a 0.5 version just so that the players can actually carry it just because we couldn't use anything that we we didn't have the cargo jack yet or or the multi-tool working, you know, to actually move the the one SCU boxes around. So, then there's I-cash. And um, basically, I myself and John have a
00:46:05
whole bunch of work that we want to do on cargo to improve it, to make it fun and interesting and and make it relevant for a lot of these bigger ships. However, um we need iCache to come online first because if we do any of this work before iCache, there will be a certain amount of rework that will need to be done after iCache. So we're waiting for the iCache boot to drop, which is basically allowing us to have that persistence associated with it. And then at that point time, we hit this because cargo to me cargo and trading to me is is uh is a major major staple of the game. You know, we've got resource acquisition, you know, you've kind of seen what we've done with mining. Obviously, there's other resource acquisitions that we can do, um whether that be salvage, farming, and so
00:46:52
and so forth. So and then cargo is another one, whether that be freight, people, or data. You know, so like there's there's work there and and we we know that there's work there and we've been chomping at the bit to do that work, but basically our our tech directors are saying don't do it until iCache comes in. It can for those who follow the project for a while or for every of those who may have followed it from the beginning like like some of us here. Uh it can always seem like there's there's the next thing because you're following along in development. As you know, we can't do this until object container streaming comes in. Can't do this until uh server side Can't do this until server meshing comes in. Can't do this until platform persistence comes in. Can't do this until it it it's development is always about dependencies.
00:47:38
Right, but but but there's certain So so for example, like with cargo, um for us to do like extremely volatile cargo or um you know, like a box that you pick up and you move around and and it if you don't get rid of it in a certain period of time, it explodes. In order for us to do that like it it's going to take us let's say two, three sprints, you know, to to do that work. Okay? iCache right now, I think internally is scheduled around, you know, in another quarter or two, internally. So, for us to do that work, um and then basically redo that work is is not
00:48:26
it's not a it's not a good use of time. And for anybody that's that's not familiar with the term iCache, recommend you check out the keynote during CitizenCon or even I think there was some of it in Pillar Talk, the last Pillar Talk. in a layman's terms, it's the ability to the ability for me to drop my ship there or my lander pony there, log out, and have it still be there for somebody else to come and find it later on. In its simplest form. Okay, what else do we got? Have you considered a mission for criminal players from other criminals to take out bounty hunters who have collected X amount of player bounties, reverse bounties, or assassinations, or Or hitman. Hit a hitman, yeah. Something to take out the hunters. Um no, but I'm I'm more than willing to to take a
00:49:15
look into that now. because one of the things that's at least the mission content team and I are going to be focusing on is is the bounty hunter missions as well as um uh the delivery missions and making sure that those get up to what we consider a gold standard, so um I'll speak with Luke about that and see what we can do. Uh we're we're we're towards the end of the broadcast, so some of the questions are getting more, "Hey, can we have this?" or something like that. So, we'll just pose a few of those. I like that one. Um will we be What what are your What can you tell us about uh UEC transfers between players? Just wanting Just wanting to be able to hand this person a thousand UEC or 2,000 UEC. Yeah, it's it's something we want. Um, and I think part of it is again with the flash, the way that the MobiGlass is currently built, like the
00:50:03
idea would be that this happens via MobiGlass. Um, it's something that we figured was was going to be part of the contract manager um, itself. We know the work needs to happen. I think there's some back-end um, aspects that need to happen first, but then it's it's something that Tony and I are well aware of and we want, you know, this to this to happen happen because, you know, this person isn't grouped up with you for for some reason. So, when you do the mission sharing, it's not working, you know, then we want them to at least be able to pay for If somebody If somebody comes along and does you a mitzvah, you know, you want you want to be able to tip the person, thank you for your help. that, so. It's a pretty fundamental
00:50:52
common thing. It is a fundamental thing. large-scale online game Yeah, the the the issue is right now the the MobiGlass and building blocks is like I I I think it's it's us focusing on visor first and MobiGlass and getting that reworked. Uh, what are your thoughts on being able to loot people and then either keep or resell the loot? That's what we want. we want the players to be able to loot loot each other or loot NPCs and and then at that point in time be able to sell their their goods and let's talk about turrets. For some, lack of education is their Aleppo. For others, turrets. What what what we there were some
00:51:40
improvements made in 3.8 to turrets to the to the to the sighting and stuff like that. Uh, but a lot of folks are still struggling with it, especially against small, faster targets. Um seems like we've struggled with turrets for a while. Yes, we have. So, um I I didn't ask a question. I'm just wanting to see what you'd say. Well, no, we have. Um this to me is is something that's again, that's why we created the vehicle experience team, you know, to because the issue that we have a lot of times is our our feature teams gets, "Okay, hey, we use we work on this. Now they move on to the next feature, then they move on to the next feature." And sometimes the content teams don't have enough time to go through and and set up something because maybe
00:52:27
they're not always necessarily in in lockstep. Um however, like this is the experience team and so, we know like the the the combat distances, the missiles, um and basically actually anything that has deal with project projectiles that have explosions on the end of it, whether that be um uh distortion weapons or even missiles right now, we know are not working. You know, you get that that desync between the server and client. Um turrets. So, it's something that's One of the reasons we formed the the new vehicle experience To to basically be able to focus on it and work on it and iterate on it multiple times.
00:53:14
So, there'll probably be at least one more ISC segment on turrets before we're all said and done. I I want it to I want it to be put to bed. All of us want it to be put to bed. I want it to be put to bed. You know how many seg- between ATV and ISC, how many segments I've done on turrets? 15? If it's that much, then that's way too many. It's like it's like Lucy and Charlie Brown with the football. It's it's This is it. This is Kirk's going to eat I have Kirk, if you're watching me. Now that we have weather on planets, we can all experience flying in low or zero visibility, but we have we don't only a fraction of the tools that a real aircraft uses today to fly in such conditions. Will we get any additional instrumentation to help us fly in low visibility?
00:54:04
it's not something that I don't think we've necessarily talked about it just yet. I think that's something that with John out here next week, um we can obviously start having that that discussion with Chris. Um kind of what what is needed and what is wanted. Um I want to see how it serves the gameplay um and then from there um what it actually takes and and with some of the low visibility stuff, I actually want uh the players to to think about do they you know, should they be taking a ship into there? maybe a ground vehicle is better or maybe maybe just not going in there is is is how many how many people are going to be
00:54:51
flying into the the red storm of Jupiter? Like I'm sure people will do that, but I would. But I'm stupid. But you maybe you fly a drone in first. Fair enough. Um or maybe that's even something that a drone can really report back additional information and stuff like that. Currently in Star Citizen, changing a ship's loadout requires the ship to be stored and can be and and uh Uh this one's worded weird. And uh and also it's sometimes you have to store it in order to buy and sell cargo. Uh workarounds like calling one ship to force another into storage aren't always possible if we don't have a ship in the area and isn't ideal. Uh is there What can you tell us about this? So with the ASOP terminal, what we
00:55:38
planned to do was just a store button, you know, so a way to store ship and get it off the landing pad or or even, you know, out of the hanger. Um So then at that point time, the systems just work. Uh because a lot of times it might be that's maybe the zone around the um the landing pad or around the hanger isn't working exactly the way it should. So we wanted to at least have this store option. Um on the ASOP terminal. So then that actually fixes a lot of the issues that we have. Uh we are just about out of time, so I want to do some lightning questions here. It's just It's fine. Just short answers these ones. Do you try to squeeze a couple more in here? Uh with Let's see. Um how are the new
00:56:26
quantum drive stats working for you? They're not. Maybe. It's I think back to the thing you can't compare. Yeah, I I think it's it's it really goes back to the comparing. Okay. Um But there are differences. Why can't we sell ore at orbital stations? Uh that will be fixed soon. Uh currently when we leave And and sorry, that will also uh be played into um cargo. Uh currently when we leave a hab, we cannot re-enter it. Why? because right now our habs are not persistent to the players. what is the thinking behind lowering aUEC rewards on NPC bounties? it's just something in flux and and sometimes we were seeing that the players were earning too much there, so
00:57:13
we lower it and we try to increase something else. Balance. Why do none of the habs and orbital stations have windows? Uh because the way that we procedurally build them. So there's uh it We have what we consider a an anchor point, which is our view room, and then from there everything else is generated based off of there. Just because our internal and external um uh option containers are for this um modular system or it's built a a different way. So, we have what we consider these anchor anchor points that unify the internal and external. And um obviously when you start talking about hubs and if we're talking about let's say 100 hubs in there, having those 100 anchor points just isn't going to work the way that we want it to work. Hawaiian shirts in game I want them.
00:58:03
Come on. Or full body plush? Tyler Jeremiah will make it happen. No. I work in the studio with Jeremiah. It's not going to happen. I'll go and turn his computer off. So much for letting me know. All right, Todd, thank you so much. My pleasure. for being here in person. It was a delightful surprise to me. My pleasure. I like it. I like it here. And in particular when it's very, very cold in Germany right now. It is It is I I I know a lot of people have a lot of opinions on Southern California, but nobody can shake a stick at its weather. I do love being here. All right, that's it for the first SCL Star Citizen Live, not to be be confused with ISC Inside Star Citizen. Those are confused all the time on on on social media and the spectrum. Like half the time
00:58:50
it makes it very very hard to read feedback cuz they're talking about Star Citizen Live, first episode of 2020. We'll be back next week with another episode of Star Citizen Live while we continue to work and iterate on our our new Q&A show that will come later this year, hopefully. Todd, thank you so much. We're just going to be done. We're going to walk over there and hang out. Take care, everybody. Thanks for watching. For the latest and greatest in Star Citizen and Squadron 42, you can subscribe to our channel or you can check out some of the other shows and you can also head to our website at www.robertsspaceindustries.com. Thank you very much for watching.

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