10 for the Chairman: Episode 33 (2014.08.11)

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

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   [Music] hello everyone and welcome to another episode of 10 the chairman I've finally made my way through um quite a lot of uh citizens cards that we're signing for gamescon which is um well it's going to be this week well actually it's going to be this week in the future because I'm shooting this just before I head over to Germany but uh this will airing on Monday and I'm shooting on the Friday um but uh we're pretty excited we're working really hard um here on gamescon so um hopefully you guys are going to like the show we put on for you on Friday I'm actually wearing the T-shirt I got from uh the tht uh uh The Hanger crew um which was celebration of last

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   year's games conon so uh hopefully uh This Year everyone will have just as much fun maybe more fun we've got a new venue 2,000 people last one only had about a th000 people and uh we got um a bunch of stuff to show which uh hopefully you guys will like and uh we're looking forward to spending some time and um having uh well just talking about Star Citizen uh so before I get into uh the show which is 10 for the chairman which is where I take 10 questions from the subscribers of our community the subscribers of the uh subset of our community that uh contribute extra money every month to allow us to do a higher level of community feedback and content so this show around the verse uh we have the jump Point magazine that we do every month it's uh 50 to 70 Pages usually full of detail behind the scenes uh

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   stuff on how we make the ships uh you know some fiction a whole bunch of other stuff and um then we also sort of do additional stuff for subscribers some cool flare that goes into the hangers and uh some up and coming stuff that we'll be working on so um thank you all uh to enabling us to do a higher level of community interaction which is uh I think something that makes star really special so thank you to subscribers and um I don't know if Eric Eric usand dorsy is a subscriber but um he certainly was very nice to send us uh couple of little uh metal kit uh uh ships to make one is the wri brothers and one's the F22 Raptor um which is cool uh I actually saw these the other day in a in a little sort of puzzle toy shop and I was actually looking maybe I should get that to play to work with in my or build in my copia spare time and know they have a

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   lot and a book uh eject the complete history of US aircraft Escape systems which uh you know considering we now have uh Arena commander and you can eject I think that's probably a propo um but uh you know Eric wrote WR to this it's a long letter so I can't really read all this but um he's uh lives out in here in the US in Maryland and um he's a big fan of a GS Dynamics because uh he works in law enforcement so he drives a uh Ford Crown Victoria and so he likes uh or well he drives a Ford Crown Victoria off juty as well as I guess in juty because that's pretty much usually the law en forcement car and that's one of the reasons why he likes the Avengers that's pretty cool so uh thank you Eric much appreciated and uh let's get on to the 10 questions for 10 for the chairman uh first one uh comes from disco Lando um

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   who always makes all those wonderful videos and ask have you played any other games with a persistent Universe if so which ones and for how long did you play them which ones do you like which ones do you not which ones if any have influenced your decisions when it comes to the design of the persistent universe so I think that's a interesting question I guess it depends on what your your definition of a game with a persistent universe is um the simplest could be potentially Demon Souls because people can write messages and they persist uh but there's not really a lot of other stuff that going on there um you know I would say potentially you could uh classify an MMO uh like a World of Warcraft or an Eve online as particularly a persistent game um I'm just trying to think I mean one of the

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   goals that we have on Star Citizen is to have the actual Universe persist but also change and morph over time and also be reactive to the player actions the player actions are actually shaping the uh universe and I haven't particularly seen that I know in uh and trions Rift that was sort of the idea and also in Guild Wars uh too that's the idea but both those games have come out um you know recently and unfortunately I the last uh 3 years I've pretty much had my head uh down uh working on uh Star Citizen uh so I haven't really had the chance to get in and sort of play any of those ones so uh I guess my answer would be I haven't really played any that have done what I would like uh a game to do in terms of persistence and a universe and that's kind of why I'm making Star

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   Citizen so I don't know if that's a good answer to that question but that is my answer um next question comes from strad who asks in the long range plans for development do you think there will ever be an opportunity for players to join the game without ship package and take part in the ground activity travel V shuttle liner take jobs on ship owners operators cruise I I think just letting those folks into the universe will win them over into the game as well perhaps even a guest account option y strad that's a really uh good suggestion it's actually something we've discussed um that perhaps you know maybe uh you know instead of a trial period where someone gets to um try out a ship they can like enter the universe and they could take a job for hire or be hired by someone and then if they want to make grade onto like ship ownership then they would have to sort of pay their ship license fee which would be sort of your initial

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   package to get into the game so we sort of considered uh kind of those structures uh for the longer term stuff and also uh you know like if you um lose all your credits and you don't want to uh uh you know put more money in then of course you still should have ways that you can work for other people to earn enough money to get a ship back and so we're going to have all those mechanics in the game anyway so I think longterm U that's a potential way to uh uh maybe get some friends in or get other people to play but U short term it's not uh going to be there but definitely I think our systems will sort of allow it so is a pretty good idea um but I think first off we'd want to get the game working for everyone that sort of backed it making sure it's all good and then we sort of would see about how how it would get expanded um all right next question comes from canara who asks I was curious if a user hired an NPC in the Pu for

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   specific task and our ship was under attack what the response of the NPC would be will they continue to do their job or anything else that their employer asked at the time based on their individual skill set or level or become unpredictable perhaps wanting to give up how human might they be good question um we definitely are going to be setting our MPCs up I mean basically the AI that runs the NPCs will be the same AI that will run um NPCs not working for you that you may encounter you may fire uh fight and of course those NPCs will have the you know we're going to have things like skin level experience um you know sort of morale whether they Panic or not and so uh I think you'll definitely have uh you know you spend more money to hire like a you know a Harden veteran he probably is not going

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    to freak out in the line of fire whereas if you have a a rookie that was cheap uh perhaps he'll run in the middle of a fight U so we'll definitely have some level of AI sort of Personality affecting their actions uh just like the non uh working for your MPCs um because it's essentially going to be the same set and co-base and I think it's kind of cool that you know maybe you take people in as they get more experienced they become more loyal to you uh or they become even better Fighters um and then if you know you go and higher MPCs from sort of like the work boards or whatever then uh you know you you pay a little more for you know a more hardened mercenary to be on your wing uh or if you you know try to cut Corners perhaps you'll pay the L price when you get attacked by parrot so I think those are all things that we definitely will have in and uh uh kind of I think we being

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    put on to making the will feel real um okay the next question comes from AR fade who asks will players who focus on racing be able to achieve some sort of sponsorship with other infiction companies and be able to fly those names similar to what NASCAR races do today well I definitely want players to be able to focus on things like racing or doing other stuff so we're going to definitely have a whole racing series that will happen and exist in fiction where there will be um you know qualifiers and a championship and the people the races in universe will be sort of covered and and lorded and and and win prizes just like they do in the real world so we're going to do that uh you know the idea of sponsorship is kind of cool we've actually been kicking around the idea of sort of sponsorship for some of the ships uh so maybe we can sort of weave that into the fiction um because again that's another thing that

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    sort of makes it seem more real but at the very least you certainly will be able to um uh compete and you know have Fame against all the other players that are in the star SE in universal and be covered on a news report as being the you know the Murray Cup champion of 2945 and all the rest of stuff and perhaps we'll do some fun stuff like sponsorship deals next question comes from bigles 19840 who asks with regards to missile locks has any thought being put into giving different types of missiles different lock on characteristics like in real life such as IR missiles having a fixed fireing con that locks on immediately with varying degrees of solid a weak locking think the A9 growl so yes um I mean what you see today in Arena Commander is only a partial implementation of the radar the system with the signatures and also how the

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    different missiles work um so you know we're going to have sort of heat seeking uh image recognition friend ofo and what we call sort of dumbfire which are basically kind of rockets uh and they will all have and different systems different radar systems different targeting system different missiles will all have different characteristics instead like in terms of like how big um they firing cone would be or you know the lock on Range all the rest of the stuff and how easy they shake or not to shake so you're only just seeing a small amount of uh what the missile stuff will do the base system is actually there we just haven't had time to sort of Flesh and finish out cuz we're trying to get some of the other stuff working first uh but the sign radar signature systems there and the missiles all um fixed into that we just haven't really delivered all the different kinds of missiles because you know right now it's all um

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    heat seeking that's why you can launch flares and if you launch chaff that doesn't make a difference but chaff obviously would be much more important for say an image recogition missal than a heat seeking missal so I guess yes like in real life um we will be doing that uh next question comes from shepher 22 uh who asks will we have to wear universal language translator to understand the alien languages let's say we hit that stretch goal or will we have to decipher their stuff like Sumerian Tablets Egyptian hieroglyphs or how will this work in the Pu so I think we'll definitely have the aliens uh potentially uh well we'll hear them speaking their language in sort of the cinematically stuff like if you were doing in Squadron 42 you probably have some subtitles like you would in a movie uh but what we would assume is that both parties if

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    they're Advanced anyway would have sort of a language translator which is all part of your Mobi glass and so you would get a translation of what uh they were saying to you and you could say and they'll get a translation of what you were saying to them um is kind of the idea and not so much that you have to learn the foreign language cuz I think in the future uh that probably you know you wouldn't have those issues right I mean already right now if you you know on the web Google's translating for you and doing all the rest of the stuff and we're not very far away from sort of live uh vocal translations so I think um it will be more along those lines all right Robert Lewis asks at what ranges will Capital ships do combat will they be slugfests of a few hundred meters or will they be far enough apart to use missiles to standoff weapons while smaller capitals operators mid-range screening forces I think

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    it's too early to tell I think it would also be up to kind of the two um well the two commanders of the various Capital ships on how you know how they want to fight their battle because you certainly would be able to sort of engage at a engage at a long range uh without getting toe-to-toe and then some ships would probably better at toe totoe I mean if I'm flying I'm running a carrier I don't want to bring my carrier in toe to- toe I'd like I'd be sending out my bombers and uh torpedo bombers and and uh fight a cover and keep everyone at Bay and then try and hunt out the foes but if I've got sort of a battleship or I've got a ship that has like a you know a strong sort of ship-to ship punch but not necessarily sort of space uh sort of Air Combat cover then I would probably try to get in in a close range and we're going to sort of allow uh all those options in our sort of

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    capital ship combat um set of stuff which is uh you know what The Foundry 42 team is uh is moving towards so I'm looking forward to that stuff um we we've got some stuff that we'll show at uh gamescon that involves uh non necessarily capital ship but at least some more of the Cooperative stuff and uh and then longer term that'll get even bigger and cooler so we'll see that's I think one of the biggest um potential uh promises or the you know potential great parts of Star Citizen is sort of this idea that we can have go all the way from small ships up to much bigger ships that you can be on with your friends and you can uh you know fight together as a unit or be a lone wolf and do all the rest stuff so uh I think the style of combat much just like the style right now that's

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    happening Arena Commander different Pilots are fing different ways some are some are sort of like getting up close and personal some are booming zooming all those things uh will be sort of optional uh or up to the play as while they fight and then we guess I we'll see what the best uh best fighting styles are I would say it would probably dependent on the kind of ship that you're using though in terms of how to best utilize it um okay next question comes from Ajax who asks I was curious as to the level of breakdown of the mission boards in the Pu will organizations have the ability to have a private Mission board to set up missions for members to do so yes that is absolutely the case uh you will so you can when you set up a mission you'll be able to public you'll be able to publish it as a public Mission or be able to publish it to your organization or a subset of your organization is kind of the way it should work uh or you could

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    be able to publish it to a certain number of organizations but not all the other ones so it's sort of up to you when you post a mission who it will be uh available to or or visible to so I think um you know you can run missions just for your own crew or you could have it with some friendly organizations or for everyone it's sort of up to you okay next question comes from L duderino who asks I was just wondering what number you're aiming at in regards to people ships occupying the same system or small area in the system obviously Space Battles are going to be a big thing especially when trying to control a certain area object from our standpoint we're not quite sure how many we'll be able to get in the same sort of server instance um you know we'd like to be able to get between 50 and 100 if we possibly could do that uh but we're still a ways off right now I mean you know right now we're you know we have uh

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    you know much above 12 players in Arena commander and we're starting to have some sort of performance issues but there's a lot of optimization that we need to do to address to fix and uh we're also sort of working on some uh some of the backend net code with uh things called like dead in and stuff that will sort of greatly reduce the amount of data so it will make all this uh easier to have a larger amount of players in the system um but it's probably not likely to be more than about 50 to 100 uh in any one uh area instance now in the actual star system itself it's sort of built in a way that it could handle tens of thousands of players in that star system it's just not tens of thousands of players would all be able to see each other all the same time they'll just be stacked in different instances and then we put you in um like in your local area um that's sort of based on who your friends are

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    who your enemies are sort of what your game preferences are and it's sort of dynamically putting you in and out of instances as you fly around so um to you it should mostly feel like uh you're in a big universe and you run across a lot of people because you literally if you're flying from one planet to another planet you may move in and out of four or five different instances and so that potentially means that you could be you know outside of the NPCs you could potentially could be seeing two 300 players while you're doing that um if it was a really sort of busy populated area um so I think our system hopefully would work quite well there certainly will not be any uh equivalent of the eve several thousand players all in one big space battle just cuz with the detail and Fidelity that we have with our ships we just can't simulate that many I mean none of the computers

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    we have even the most fastest expensive one with the most ridiculous Graphics chip um couldn't handle it kind of what we're doing although you never know what happens in the future I'm not promising thousands but we're definitely going to utilize every single uh ioda of power that we can go and as much bandwidth we can take that's reasonable for everyone to make the game the best experience possible okay last question for this week's episode comes from U uh or youu who asks concerning exploration gameplay what gameplay elements SL mechanics can players expect from an Explorer's lifestyle besides scanning for jump points asteroid Fields anomalies and deric what other activities can Explorer do well we we sort of you know we know that exploring is a big deal for people so um you know

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    jump points obviously uh asteroid Fields anomalies deric they are all sort of things you would try and um find I mean we're certainly going to let you even a known star system has most of the space Uncharted so as an Explorer you could fly around to try and find uh you know whether it's the asteroid field the anomaly or the derix and then chart it and and once you've charted areas you can either share it with your organization SL friends or you could sell it uh back to the game to create sort of charted maps for that area that people could pre- um we are going to definitely have um you know things like alien artifacts or some ruins on planets you can go down and discover so we'll sort of have uh definitely kind of um scavenger hunt style stuff uh and uh you

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    know something where you maybe you know have a very short kind of like okay I find uh an artifact and I've got to get two other pieces of this artifact and that will give me a key that will open up this other thing that will get allow me to get this uh rare item that would be really valuable so there's a kind of a fair amount of that sort of stuff uh on exploration we're sort of thinking of you know having some areas where you can land on a planet and sort of explore around uh to look for stuff go down and and and and some ruins or whatever but have something that feels like it has a little more substance than for instance the mass effect you had the riv going on the outside of the of the planet of course that would be sort of limited to areas that would let you land in and some of that would be um kind you know pseudo procedurally generated not everything will be fully handcrafted in those cases uh but yes basically those are kind of the exploration stuff so you

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    going in sort of um charting open space for um like the different areas of interest um going through um jump points and then sort of charting out that system and maybe landing on some planets that haven't people haven't really spent much time or going down to somewh an archical dig whether it's down on a planet or on an asteroid field those are all sort of things that we're thinking would be really fun for people that like to explore uh so hopefully you will too all right that is the end of this episode of 10 for the chairman I want to thank everyone for tuning in I want to thank everyone for supporting us in making Star Citizen I mean it's a wildly ambitious game and we w't be able to make it without all your support so thank you very much thank you for the subscribers uh the kick in the extra amount of money to allow us to do this uh and it's been fun and uh I will see you at gamescon all right bye guys