10 For the Chairman Episode 21. May 19th, 2014

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

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   [Music] hello everyone welcome to another episode of 10 for the chairman uh for those of you that don't know uh this is where I take 10 questions that have been asked by our subscribers uh and I answer them to the best of uh my ability which hopefully is as good as anyone else on this project um the subscribers are the um subset of the overall backer community that kick in extra money every month uh to allow us to do additional uh sort of content for the community so this 10 for the chairman Wing wi's hanger some other shows that we're going to be doing um also the jump Point magazine uh that we do every month which originally was going to be four to six pages but is's now something more like five 50 to 70 Pages um and we've also

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   got some more um content that we're going to be working on uh ongoing to try and bring more stuff to everyone uh that has backed the game so you can see how we make the game how we're going about it what our thoughts are um and U feel part of the team so thank you to the subscribers for allowing us to do that and um speaking of uh backers um we have uh right here some nice New Hampshire maple syrup lots of it big sweet tooth and uh some maple bacon um coffee which I think well so everyone can be wired uh on sugar and caffeine which is brilliant that comes from screw ball um so he was says it was great to meet some of you at the P East dog fight reveal I know you've only been working some long hours to build up the

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   best damond space Sim ever so here's some fresh uh taped Northern comfort from uh live the live three or die state to make your mornings a little brighter thank you for all you do uh live Freo die state is New Hampshire and uh I guess little um uh data point is the original uh where origin first started was actually New Hampshire and the the corporate headquarters of origin where I made the wing commanders and everything was in New Hampshire so uh there was a few times I spent up in New Hampshire which was very pretty although in the winter uh not particularly warm um so it's a a very um very pretty state so thank you very much screw ball and he also includes also if any of you are up for some Citi Star Citizen karoki I've included some lyrics for your amusement it would be awesome to hear you folks sing this as an Easter egg at the end of

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   one of your videos see you in the verse screw ball and he has a a uh back me which is uh by screw ball based on Happy by Fel Williams um so anyway we'll see what we could do with this could be fun you never know it might seem crazy what I'm about to say sometime next year we can take a break like a trip to the moon we could go to space paid the fair for the captain's chair now we're on the way because you back me anyway let's get on to the questions um all right first question is from Krell who asks will we see the effects of different levels of gravity in the first person shooter part of the game I know that you're going to support Zerg environments how about high G or

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   low G environments such as a moon base will we walk with a heavier tread or a spring in our step basically there's full there's a a full gravity system already in the cry engine and we've sort of been enhancing it so you could set the gravity to earthlike gravity you know- 9.8 m/s or you could uh set it to minus one or whatever you want to do or zero which is what I is in space so you they definitely potentially could be the ability to have gravity in between like full earth like and uh Zer G um and we have things like magnetic boots that will allow you to sort of um lock down to floors when there's low low gravity or zero gravity um so I guess the only question I would say is walking with a heavier tread or a spring in your step

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   um uh would probably require different uh animation sets because really the actual gate is controlled by the animation um so U I don't know it depends on whether we're actually planning to have some uh like low G or heavy G environments and then potentially would probably change out the animation set but generally the physics of everything is actually supported it's just the footstep to footstep bit that is more animation driven uh okay next question comes from row um our ho who asked one of my favorite themes in space sci-fi is the danger that comes from isolation in deep space and the total Reliance on the ship Tech that you've used to get there Star Citizen is focused on dog fighting and that's super great but outside of that core mechanic will there be experience where the biggest danger isn't Pirates or bounty hunters but rather the environment itself perhaps during deep space exploration or mining yes so we we

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   we're absolutely actually focused on having things that are not uh with that combat's obviously a large part but we want experiences that are non sort of combat oriented so exploration experiences um flying into a dangerous neblo that could take down um your radar or make your electronics a bit glitchy uh in fact in Squadron 42 um the opening missions around this shuin mining base which we've already shown and uh there's a there's a there's a center to this sort of asteroid base it's sort of almost like think of it like the Bermuda Triangle where there's this this uh uh like all Communications and stuff sort of doesn't really work in there your nav stuff doesn't work you got to manually navigate um so we're actually looking at doing a fair amount of sort of environmental uh situation stuff that could be hazardous to your flight or

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   danger um you know same kind of stuff that happens if you were trying to navigate a jump Point there'll definitely be uh a whole bunch of stuff that is non- combat oriented there'll be that and we want you to be able to have to like maybe you know some of your equipment breaks down you're flying you have to go fix it up you know the sort of classic sort of sci-fi scenes you've seen when someone's you know you know Scotty's trying to make the engines work on the uh on the Enterprise um so yeah we are focused on that that will be part of some of the stuff that we do on some of the cap ship stuff that um Foundry 42 team is working on so they're bringing they're going to bring some of that but environmental uh effects andir you know on your ship is uh is definitely a core part of uh what we want to do to sort of make the universe sort of feel big and alive and Rich okay next question comes from anomaly 47 who asks part of what

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   excites me is the business manufactur distribution possibilities of the game particularly in and around design of new things like new ships will you ever build a ship design/ building module into the game where players if they have the means can design manufacture and try to sell a new ship or potentially use them for their own purposes Yeah we actually um want to figure out a way to get user generated content into the game uh in the persistent Universe we kind of have to curate it because you don't want everybody just designing and building their own crazy wild ships with unbalanced loadouts and all the rest of the stuff uh but that was actually one of the one of the core driving factors of the next great Starship which was you know the competition we're running and the level of uh quality in that is pretty astounding to be honest with you I mean it's it's I'm actually not enjoying the final stages because I like

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    so many of the ships and I think all the teams are so talented that it kind of sucks that there's only going to be one winner um so that may be a way we we try to find a way to get more of those ships into the game uh but uh I definitely think that should be um some way that we can have uh where people could potentially design ships uh or even items maybe to Specs that we publish and say we need this and this you know kind of like uh say the US government says oh we need a new aircraft well let's put it out to bid and they put a out to bid and then Boeing and lucky um you know well they used to compete I guess they're all the same now but design to do their designs and and get them into uh you know and the winning bid makes it and goes into manufactur and stuff so uh potentially um I think definitely that um in terms of actually Manufacturing in

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    the universe I like the idea that you have to go and um get the raw resources to uh make the stuff or make sure that you're you know sourcing you know the CPU components from another Factory um and so you know potentially we'll allow you to sort of acquire uh you know you've got a a ship Factory and maybe you can acquire a license to manufacture a certain kind of ship and then you could be the local provider of that ship or an NPC um cor you know um manufacturing center would be um so that're kind of split I guess the difference between people doing user generated stuff and then actually stuff that you you you sell in in game but they're both things that we're looking at and we long-term want to put in the game whether it'll be in the game from the very beginning that's another question because there's a lot of things for us to do uh but that's definitely a long thing I think uh the community um providing a lot of the content uh both

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    just in terms of like Adventure and action and also um you know things in general uh is is is super good for the the life of the game I mean that's one of the reasons why people still play freelancer today even though it came out you know over 10 years ago um is because of the the modding sides and that's why we're supporting modding so we are going to find a way to do that so um we're just going to have to uh juggle a bit and of course on your own if you're playing you know you're modding your own stuff for the play around your own little uh version of the universe then uh you can do whatever you want uh okay next question comes from Poltergeist who asked docking with other ships using the Corral was on my mind with most of the ships the standard docking Corral is in a funny place you can't see it from the cockpit will the docking sequence be automatic or will we be able to manually navigate our ships to dock with each

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    other um so I guess the question uh the answer would be um you will always your your sort of you know ship flight computer will always be able to sort of you get close enough you can auto dock um but like everything um will let you try and do it yourself if you want it probably may not be so uh so easy but um you know in general you you normally we let you you can land you can sort of aut land or you can land properly if you want uh and we'd say probably do the same for the docking although um based on the where all the docking colors are um you know get close enough and say okay auto dock would probably be the best way to do it um okay next question comes from slack R who asks will ships in the dog fight Module come with a manual if so will each ship type have a different manual how s control functions

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    across the different chip types H that's a really good question I actually wasn't thinking about a manual for the dog fight manual but now you've just given me um ideas of uh claw marks in the old Wing Commander so maybe we can sort of Mark up a little PDF from each one of the manfacturers done up as a hey this is your Hornet manual or this is your Aurora manual um so not promising that but um I may after this recording session go out and have a discussion of how easy it would be to do that uh but outside that uh the General control functions across the ships will be more or less the same so the interfacing like how you fly it with a joystick or a Gamepad or a mouse or a keyboard uh will all um be fairly consistent it's just that some of the some ships will have more functionality than other ships so you just won't have as much say on a

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    more basic ship than on a more advanced ship uh but in in general the control functions operate more or less the same especially on the fighters so like the flight the ifcs all that stuff is is is is similar the difference is the ship themselves will handle differently depending on the fruster power depending on their Mass depending on the placement of them uh all that kind of stuff depending on the energy drain uh which is affected by also the weapon usage all the rest okay next question comes from cesos who asks why was the decision made to not have a traditional friends list in Star Citizen and instead go with multiple organizations well so the way we kind of thought it is in you know basically a friends list is like a flat organization Chris's friends right could be one of my organizations and I could have a bunch of people in that and then

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    I could also be a member of some other organizations like uh you know bounty hunters incorporated or whatever um you know the merchants Guild whatever um uh sort of organization I want to get into um and so for us it just sort of felt like organizations really could be an organization could be a friends list it's just a very fat it's a very flat Organization no boss everyone's just in it as a group uh or you can have uh groups organizations that are more hierarchical which would be more like a typical organization or a guild uh so it sort of felt like doing it this way gets to you know do The Best of Both Worlds so to speak um okay next question comes from sniped you Noob 555 who asks I'd like to know what your current ideas are for the Planet Side module will we just have the ability to

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    land and explore the planet or will you have an in-depth interaction with the environment EG if it's a city environment will there be shop spas and such that we could use or will that be released in the later game stages Chris Roberts you demand all right thank you very much for that no so okay so the Planet Side module is essentially we be opening up a bunch of the interactions that would happen down on the planet to everyone on the community to uh play with so the idea is when you're in your hanger there's like a door in all the hangers to the outside world and you can go through that door and you would step out and you would be in a Planet Side environment and you know we may debut with just one or we may debut with with a couple and you can wander around it and in the environment there would be shops where you could buy stuff you go to a bar where you could talk to people and get you know ultimately in the game

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    that's where you would get uh you know you would look for sort of missions or you would meet other players in the bar uh so the idea of the Planet Side module is sort of to test out and uh work on the functionality of all that that would happen once you land from space uh so you will definitely have the ability to wander around and have some in-depth interaction um and do all that and then you know as as we go along we would sort of be adding more functionality and action to it and and then as the persistent universe is rolling out there'll be more areas to explore but the Planet Side stuff is one of our biggest tasks there's just a lot of I mean I think we've got something like 450 different landing locations right now that we're talking about and uh you know then you got to build all the environments and the content so we're really working pretty hard on how to do that in a way that matches up to our quality and Fidelity but uh won't take

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    400 years to to to build so uh we I think we've got a pretty good solution that sort of uses a combination of unique stuff um some more sort of modular stuff uh and we are you know longer term researching some kind of procedural stuff to help build out and Flash flesh out some environments based on criteria that the economy system feeds in um and uh you know the planet side modu is will all be sort of testing grounds for that and eventually it will just roll into the persistent Universe uh so basically so the hangers sort of think of the hanger as the Hub and so the hanger now will get you to the dog fight it will get you to the planet side and then ultimately it will get you into the persistant Universe okay next question comes from helax who asks will a player always know who they were killed by will you know who placed a bounty on you if a bounty

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    AO takes you out so well I don't know whether necessarily uh if someone's hired someone to kill you whether you would know who that person was I mean you in the case of a bounty generally bounties after you know bounty hunters are after you when there's a bounty that's put on your head uh and mostly that's in lawful reasons so I would assume that if you broken the law and there's a bounty on your head and you can see your list on on the most wanted list then you would kind of know that okay the uee or the the authorities did this to me uh if it was a private transaction I'm not so sure you probably will know um who killed you immediately like who what who was you know what character was flying what ship that took you out uh but I'm not sure that you would necessarily know who ultim cause the the contract to be put on you if it was a private

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    individual just like in real life okay next question comes from awax who asks could there be a possibility of a weekly or an even Daily News show about current events in the verse that includes interactions between players for instance pirate raids or organizations declaring war on each other uh and NPCs like operation Pitchfork the ue's Most Wanted or alien race interactions what about the possibility of a player around broadcast like between two space ferns with wingman or the dread pirate Roberts literal Pirate Radio well we're definitely actually planning on having a uh infiction news show uh that um you would see like in bars and stuff and we would let players also sort of watch it um say from the RSI website and uh that's actually part of the sort of

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    post-launch content plan uh in terms of we would actually have people that their job would be to watch the game and see what events were happening make sure that we capture sort of in-game footage of of some of the events and uh make news reports from around the world so like of two big organizations get into a big battle over an asteroid base that potentially could make um you know Frontline news and and that's part of the idea of trying to put in news that we're constructing for the universe you know oh there's a famine in this sector or whatever uh as well as player actions and blend it all into one into into our world so it feels like the players are just as much part of world as all our designed NPCs uh and they feel like their actions have consequence and I I personally that's what I want in a game I think

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    that would greatly increase sort of the immersion into this world and so we're planning on that and it will be really um great I think um when it happens um so uh I'm pretty excited by that and then the uh possibility of play around broadcasts I wasn't thinking about this but I think that's actually a really good idea and it's probably pretty easy uh for us to to sort of provide sort of um channels just like you can on internet radio so we probably could have like our channels just like you can in GTA you can listen to different channels as you wander around and then maybe we have some uh you know player channels that people could have their own streams on and then you could tell people and you could tune into them so that could be pretty cool so I like that idea uh so I will see what we can do about that not promising again that it's going to be in

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    right away but I think that's a potentially a very very cool idea okay last question comes from uh stir St re will asteroids and other minable resources be finite as they would be in real life or will they regenerate over a time so we were thinking of making uh the general areas like asteroids and stuff be uh pretty close to finite so you know there'll be a lot of minerals there but if you mine out a whole asteroid field then it gets mined out uh potentially we would play uh with some level of regeneration um I don't know it's kind of a balancing issue uh but in general we wanted to sort of have finite pool so if someone gets to an asteroid field and it's got a really rich seam of minerals that are very valuable um they

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    are a limited quantity and so people would mine them out and then maybe they would have to go off and find out some other uh field or yield for that so um that's kind of the the plan um regeneration question is really just about uh you know we're going to be adding new systems so so there will be new places for people to find and explore and obviously new minerals to harvest so that probably should handle it but if we run into a problem where like everything's mined out right away and you know we got nothing mind of course we' probably start regenerating some some some elements of it uh but I'm hoping we can balance it so one of our goals is to actually run this sort of full economy simulation or Universe simulation with no players with the sort of meta AI that we've talked about and with all these kind of sort of big macro elements like okay here's a destroid field and has this certain kind of

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    minerals here's a planet that has this sort of stuff that it produces and then just sort of see how that works runs progresses I will say that it won't be uh you know mining out an asteroid field will not be something that someone can do in an hour so it will take a long time and a lot of concerted e effort from other people uh okay so that's the end of the 10 questions for this week uh I'd like to thank uh all the uh backers out there for backing the game allowing us to make a game at this level I mean it's pretty unprecedented um you know I think we're at 43.7 or whatever million uh which I never would have dreamed of but it's allowing us to have a huge team uh and all the Lo we got one here where La where I'm talking to you in Austin in Manchester UK uh really talented folks working on the game in Montreal and in

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    uh Denver Colorado and up in San Francisco and monter Mexico and uh a lot basically uh all trying to build this hugely ambiti ious game for all you to play and for all of us to play in so thank you so much for backing uh and thank you to the subscribers for um kicking an extra money to allow me to do this and us to do a lot more of the community stuff so I will uh see you next week bye [Applause]