Star Citizen: Calling All Devs - Hammerhead Missions & AC Game Modes

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

1. 00:00:10

   hey everybody welcome to another edition of calling all devs our weekly Q&A series right take questions live from you the star citizen I said live this is not live its pre-taped the star citizen backer and then posed them directly to developers you don't Skype it's live when I do it not when you watch it joining us on the show this week we are going to foundry 42 UK and our own vehicle pipeline director John crew who we gave a week off to last week we're gonna make them pay with two questions this week John how you doing man hello I just had to start about that's not what I signed up for well you know that's that that's that's my trick I don't actually sign anybody up for anything I just I just spring on people so that's why my calendar is just completely blank it's like nobody knows what I'm doing throughout the day because I just know you can't prepare for it alright I got two questions for

2. 00:00:59

   you both right we're both right in the realm of vehicle pipeline system designer you know you're complex of experiences here first off item system 2.0 item system 2.0 has been worked on for some time after 3.2 s power systems what else is there to do to complete the full implementation of item system 2.0 so it's a big sort of loose question that coz item 2.0 isn't one thing it's many things and it's it's a way of working so essentially I think any new features that we add just extend that so probably a better question or answer would be what's left over item 1.0 to be converted to item 2.0 right or what

3. 00:01:49

   announced things for item 200 is still in the pipeline so in terms of what's left from 1.0 thrusters there's a big thing left being worked on at the moment and then we have things like countermeasures and missiles three two actually had some of the next big changes like all the weapons were changed over to Asian 2.0 so that was a big sort of colossal amount of work to get that over and yes we started doing the power stuff so that was the start of their the power work also included heat work which is less obvious than the power side but it is there and that in turn starts working on the degradation and the wear which is in

4. 00:02:38

   game of working already and the next steps are the the negative effects of degradation so items misfiring and causing calamity when you stress them out too much so that's what we're working on at the moment so when that's done you're you're gonna have a much more complete feature set for ship items and that that would probably be a good state to say the item to going out for ship for ship items is done though like I said everything uses it so it's always I'm going yep and you made a good point it's its items the item 2.0 is like I said it's a collection of features it's it's the there may there may be there may be something down the

5. 00:03:26

   line there like okay we need to add this because of this gameplay whatever that gets rolled into that but what for what's left of 1.0 it's just it was just it's just thrusters what else thrusters missiles missiles measures and there's a few like one-off fuse things kicking around but the vast bulk of things have been converted over now or three to awesome all right your next question is kind of an extension of that I suppose quantum travel backers have noticed that different ships kuan travel at different speeds now of course we all expect them their sub light they're they're they're their regular in flights need to be different but but backers notice that quantum travel is different oh why is that and what determines is the speed speed the the speed between which ships

6. 00:04:13

   like why do some ships go faster than others so the the speeds and accelerations are all controlled by the size of the quantum drive item that's on the ship so a size one drive in a ship behaves differently to a size two item and we did that to sort of make the ships work together if everything moves at the same same time then it's sort of everything comes out in one instantaneous blob of stuff whereas you don't get that nice as everything comes in in in waves because we have the Lincoln and group system now it's all putting you together in a group but it sort of you don't get as much impact when everyone's at the same time you look around at the same time you're all there versus like the traditional sci-fi you have that extended duration

7. 00:05:03

   of ships popping in you know you you you you want that arrival at the desk of the second Death Star from Return of the Jedi there yeah and at the moment the bigger the drive the faster you go and the more acceleration you have but it takes longer to spool up and it takes longer to cool down after using it or so these big ships if you're in a group of mixed sizes those small ships gonna ping off first then the medium sized ships then the big ships finally got their engines going and off they go and depending on the the length of the travel it could be that same order they come out or on a really long one the big ships are probably going to start

8. 00:05:49

   overtaking the smaller ones we're seeing lots of cool in-game group videos of ships traveling together and that's with them all the same size but if you throw mixed sizes in there you're gonna see the big ships piccola Osteria yeah and then when you get to the other end they're all gonna be there waiting and all the all the fighters and escorts are gonna come out that's cool so besides sizes do the the grades so within those size categories the grades then plus or minus those those varies they never cross over but an a-grade military quantum drive is going to be a higher top speed and acceleration than a degrade civilian one for example but then the costs in the maintenance way

9. 00:06:39

   that and I'm sorry just to clarify for anybody who wears a size as a type and there's a great to our components there's the size one there's the type civilian and then there's the grade D you're in John's example yeah and you can read all agreed more about that in the shipyard series of articles which we published last year Ilan Roberts Basin is calm so three different stats for each shipping on it that will ultimately affect how it performs size type and grade so check that out alright John that's it I'll let you get back to work until next week until next week TV well no we've got we've got we've got we've got Todd here in the office so I'm gonna try to do something a different part to you so you know send him some questions

10. 00:07:27

    although oh no you will oh no ya you will be needed for our TV next week once you yeah yeah yeah all right I'll put that on a calendar alright bye bye alright thanks so much John now we are moving just a couple deaths down maybe a floor down I don't know they're constantly rearranging in that office to look Pressley leave light live designer for star citizen the persistent universe that I found you're 42 UK look hey you doing man well I have two questions for you we had two for John we had two for you were it's a show of two firs here some interesting ones III think one oh well one of those we talked about last week yeah okay I just you know because I can answer last week because it's a difficult question and I

11. 00:08:18

    had to go away I could not think of the answer off the top of my head I had to go away and do some thinking do some asking around but yeah you want to hit me with it again I'll try and do better this time alright you're that question was can we get a no respawn arena commander game mode without power-ups kind of like a hardcore mode if you will the disparity between PU combat and has been a long-running trope and it seems to me most players would favor more synchronism so in our discussions I'm just gonna real sum up our because we talked for almost a good 30 minutes last week but before before I decided that we needed to tap out and and come at this from another angle and do some more research but basically they're looking for APU simulator in we think they're looking for APU simulator inside

12. 00:09:06

    arena commander basically something where you can jump in there's no power-ups there's no ammo replenishments there's no there's no health packs and it's just you and the other ships and you can just go at it in an arena commander the same way that you would in the persistent universe now on the surface that seems like an easy thing but as we were discussing it and as we were diving into it it wasn't so tell us about this okay I mean these guys might be happy to effort the power-ups have been taken out of arena commander opossum like the swarm they would spit obviously you have to keep being able to repair and they so it's a war of attrition right this one notes but yeah but pickups have gone from an arena commander now anyway yeah so first I had to go away and and like I thought

13. 00:09:57

    it was a really easy game-mode to do like technically easy to do I went away and asked around and yeah the game code side of it is fairly simple you know you would just when you die you get booted out back to the man at the front from end and then like the UI side of it it's fairly straight foot you know are the resources for you I and so squeeze right now but anything any n is like nightmare to get so like but but they seem to be quite reasonable if we were to say just replace battle royale you know and make it a real battle royale kind of thing then we wouldn't have to do much on the back end because you know the game mode egg egg game mode exists in that place

14. 00:10:45

    you know and so it shouldn't be too difficult yeah and I get the complexity he then came like okay we might be able to do this quite quickly and easily but should we like it does the game mode make sense at the point in the game like you know development we're at when you know the numbers of people playing but AC right now like are quite low and can fall off quite considerably towards me eight you know you know we have the release and the kind of taper taper off now if you imagine that you know you you're looking for a fair amount of players to go into these game modes to fight against each

15. 00:11:33

    other and then the moment you're dead you'd want to get into another game quite quickly and that also be full of players and that's that's quite difficult to do like right now like with the numbers but might be playing it like if we just take the numbers that playing and butter al right now that would mean you'd be waiting for quite some time for maybe those people who were just playing that game though at that game you were in to come out of it also the maps aren't very big and there without pickups that everyone goes in like take pub G for instance the the reason that last can last for 20 minutes even people who died quickly yet might get five minutes out of it is because there's a big map they all drop in and they collect like part of it is is coming

16. 00:12:22

    from like a very balanced like a play that has nothing apart from his fists like and who can collect the best like this element of look but also scale and to where you land and in our game you come in fully loaded with things but aren't balanced like you know like some of those ships are obviously better dog fighters when others and so yet this this game mode it the more I thought about it it's very hard to balance and it's very when we may not have a players to make this a naturally fun experience like you like you'd imagine it you know it it took it took a lot of like me struggling with this kind of this idea to come to the conclusion that basically

17. 00:13:10

    we are not ready for this yeah even if it would be something we could possibly technically do quite easily the games just not ready for it it's it's interesting because arena commander isn't the game we often get that we often get that confusion that arena that people think of rena commander and star marine are standalone products they are not the product that we are building they're not the product we're shipping star citizen is and that's the persisting universe and that's borne out in our numbers that's where the overwhelming majority of our players are playing the game that we're actually working our butts off to to to design arena commander in star marine were test modes they were modes designed to get us to the persistent universe and in recent and in recent months in recent years since the president universe has come along with such a good strides work on arena commander and start marinas you know falling behind and we see that

18. 00:13:58

    they're numbers we've been that like arena command has been ruined by our own success in the pu yeah yeah so so now now Aaron mentioned earlier this year that we're looking into the considering the possibility of hiring a development team specifically for arena commander arm we're not ready to announce anything in that regard or anything yet but you know if that happens and that happens then you can expect a development of these two site features to to pick up again and that maybe we evaluate something like this again at that time but but right now but right now yeah if you were if you were to jump into a mode where with one kill and one kill only and you get in there you'd be sitting and you'd be sitting in either spectator mode forever the site would be or you'd be sitting in a queue that's even longer

19. 00:14:45

    than it already is right now so it's just not the not the gameplay experience we want to put out there right now but definitely an interesting idea when we talked about it for 30 minutes yeah I took this guy's side I'm like no this is there's also advantages here I mean yes being bounced but you could really expose those imbalances of an I was championing you you dude I didn't put your name here I was but last week when we were going around it whatever but ultimately yeah it's just it's a neat idea I think it's definitely something I'm considering it totally is and I was very excited like by the prospect until I started like looking into it you know deeper it's still a great idea the games just not ready for it yeah and then I got one more question for you this time who should bended that one that was it going alright the hammer head with a hammer head really sneering pegged for

20. 00:15:34

    three point three how do you plan to adapt the mission board so that missions particularly combat oriented ones can scale and difficulty with sight with ships sizes and capability are we going to allow some meaningful gameplay for these larger ships okay so balance like balance scaling difficulty scale in like in invert like yeah I accept this mission and I turned up in a hammerhead and suddenly we've decided to spawn you bigger enemies what you no more enemies whatever that's not something we will be doing what instead we'll be doing is just offering more difficult missions like that people with lesser ships or you know fewer people in their ship smaller groups would just not be able to

21. 00:16:22

    to compete in and complete so I that's that's the way we'll we won't be balancing mission missions we will be providing the kind of full array of difficulties so that if we build a mission for a hammerhead like a fully loaded hammerhead but a group of five people in Hornets who are exceptional pilots want to try that you know they can succeed like and get double the rewards like double the risk but double the reward should they complete their and I mean we did used to have back in you know with 2.0 days like we used to balance missions and that was really frustrating actually for players because it just meant that they always felt that

22. 00:17:10

    it's the exact same amount of challenge they either if they rolled up with all their friends like they it wasn't a cakewalk it was it was the same over and over again and if if you were outgunned in in the way we balanced it you would always be outgunned like because like no matter who you took so yeah we've gone away from it and we'll save over one place we will balance difficulty is the interdictions yes because they are not your choice and like you know you choose to take a very difficult mission and you die then you know so be it you took that mission interdiction if you were an Aurora and we spawn in a hammerhead you know I bet we've done something wrong there hear me out though that would be

23. 00:18:00

    really funny to watch on Twitch though it would be hilarious that would be really funny to watch on Twitch yeah but we're not one but the reddit reddit post after that maybe a one in two thousand chance spawning ahem yeah because it would be really funny to watch out to it wasn't such a big deal well if if that ever does happen in the game it was a bug and not because I managed to convince Luke for five minutes after this call ended it'll be your fault either way yeah no that's that's good that's good it's good to hear I remember those days I remember those days where you know it balance based on the number

24. 00:18:46

    of people you took into an area so so not not only could you never gain any kind of advantage based on people but if you showed up in a multi cruise ship instead of you should have four people in a Conny instead of four people in Hornets you were pretty much at a severe disadvantage banished then so those were the flow graph days those were the days before submission where we had to do things in very very you no simply the other problem was you get out of your ship and be half way you know evey a.m. and then someone else will turn up and the things would spawn in and blow up your ship and yeah you know yeah absolutely max the perils of having a live environment the middle of game development yeah all right look we did great thank you so much I'll let you get back to work thank you okay bye well that about wraps up this week's show especially thanks to John crew and

25. 00:19:34

    Luke Presley for agreeing to be here on the show with us this week remember you can submit your questions for consideration each and every week up in the thread up on spectrum and of course don't forget to vote that's the two-prong plan when you submit your questions you vote on your questions I take the questions to the developers I get them asked for calling all Deb's I'm Content Manager for global video production Jared Huckaby we'll see you next week everybody thanks for watching for the latest and greatest in star citizen 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.uvu.edu/library