Star Citizen Live: Invictus Ship Talk Q&A

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

1. 00:00:12

   Hello everybody. Welcome to a special special pre-taped edition of Star Citizen Live. I'm your host Jared Huckabe. Um I'm going to assume that you've seen Star Citizen Live before and a rare rare first time thing. So I'm not going to explain what the show is. Should I explain what the show is? I can't change my format. I have to explain what the show is. It's where we take about 30 minutes out of our time to sit down with one of our C developers and make them answer questions from you, the Star Citizen community, in this case, our wonderful Chinese community. Uh you somebody I I didn't get the name, sent us a massive wonderful list of questions covering a huge variety of topics. Um, obviously we it's while while we're hard at work uh getting the next release of Star Citizen out, working towards the closing of Squadron 42, uh, whatnot, uh, we we can't pull a whole bunch of people necessary to get

2. 00:01:02

   to get that full breath of questions that you guys sent out. Uh, we were able to snag longtime friend and uh, human meat puppet uh, vehicle director John Crew on the show. John, say hi. Hello. Human meat puppet here. you want me puppet here uh to answer your questions related to uh vehicles and vehicle gameplay and stuff. So uh with that we're going to jump right in because I imagine there's a bunch of people sitting in a big convention hall and everything probably don't got the most comfortable chairs and like All right Jared just get to it. What if we told a story right now? Would that be No. Okay, we'll get right to it. So vehicle gameplay questions from the Chinese community with John Crew. Uh in questions in no particular order, uh right off the bat, will there be more types of ground vehicles? Yes. Um

3. 00:01:50

   there's obviously we have a range of ground vehicles at the moment, but they're pretty much a select few manufacturers and either wheeled uh tank tracks and a couple of hover ones, but they don't really cover the full full range. Like um I know you've had Alberto on Mhm. uh SEO in the past doing like the chopper, the the chopper and like the origin hover tank. Uh and not going to say which ones we want to do, but we do want to do more in the in the sort of gaps we have like let's say combat hover vehicles rather than transport ones. Yeah, I've always had the we I feel like we've been doing this for 10 years now. I feel like at some point you and I have had casual conversations about some kind of like mobile base that kind of hovers around like like like like a floating platform with doors and rooms and stuff

4. 00:02:40

   like that. Something more akin to a ships to to a proper ship size like a cutless size or a freelancer size but ground and hovering. So like like a I I always remember you know I grew up with G.I. Joe and stuff and those mobile base things like the Rolling Thunder. Rolling Thunder would be a great name by the way especially if it hovers which just really confused people. uh something like that. I think there's a lot of room for that kind of Yeah. Uh it's definitely something we we've talked about and looked at in the past. Um we have obviously ground vehicle garages and we have ship hangers and the the slight problem that has always somewhat interfered with that plan of a larger ground vehicle is our ground vehicle garages aren't big enough. our ship hangers are, but not necessarily every ship hanger you can hover or drive a

5. 00:03:28

   vehicle out of, especially not the ones with the especially the ones with the ceiling exit. So, it's coming up with a solution to that and then yeah, we could have maybe not um I always forget the film with the big roving cities. Oh, uh Mortal Engines. Mortal Engines. Um I'm not going to say that big, but probably not. Probably not. probably not that big, but we've both been here long enough. Never to say never ever. Plus, I think if we're being uh real candid and honest, I think we need more uh gameplay systems that utilize ground vehicle technologies. Um there there there there's there's a couple I was just uh had had a meeting with uh Rick Porter, you know, design director for the PU uh LA last week where I I wanted to pitch like, you know, if if we when weather

6. 00:04:15

   comes online and stuff, you know, being able to, you know, keep ships out, but having like giant Sturgeis style hog wild, you know, kind of events that require hundreds of of ground vehicles in place and stuff would be would be super cool. And that's again that's just casual conversation between me and the the design director. It's not a commitment to an idea, but it's just I I think there's there's a lot more we can do to incentivize the use of ground vehicles. We have a lot of ground vehicles at the moment, but there isn't a lot of use. And the use they have sometimes is not ideal. Yeah. So, we can when we can incentivize that use more, then I think it'll be a natural kind of progression. Yeah. Let's find out what other kind of ground vehicles we can add to this. All right. Uh, how do you design ship living quarters? What equipment and features are essential for

7. 00:05:03

   gold standard? So, in terms of gold standard, uh, living quarters really depends on the role of the ship. Obviously, some ships don't have living quarters. Uh, and that really is a soft gate for how far and long you can use that ship. If you don't have living quarters, eventually food, uh, drink, hygiene, uh, and I guess tiredness sort of become your limiting factors. So, if you want a ship to go a long distance, you need living quarters. And then they come in different scales. We have the barebones one with beds that currently let you log in and out. Um, beyond that, if you have food, you need somewhere to get rid of the food when it's being processed. So they all have toilets or showers. Uh and then for

8. 00:05:54

   the more grandiose and uh luxurious ships, you you go from here's a bunk bed with a food machine in the wall and you sit and eat your food or stand and eat your food to you have a room which has a seat, bed, toilet. Military ships follow real world military ships and that everyone doesn't have their own quarters. have bunk rooms with shared mess and galley all the way up to luxury ships like the 890 where everyone has essentially their own apartment with everything in it. So, it really depends on the role of the ship and the type of the ship. And it's got to have a bed. If it has food, it's got to have toilets. If it's a toilet, might as well have a shower there as well. And this is all in preparation for gameplay systems that will come online. Yeah. At the moment, they're very much roleplay

9. 00:06:42

   things. Uh, and we spend a lot of time internally arguing about toilets and showers. We're not going to put a when on this, but if if by the time your time here is done and my time here is done, if we don't have poop gameplay, I'm going to be Yeah, there'll be one other director who's who will be very upset about that as well if we don't have that. This is the face of somebody who wants poop gameplay. And and Chris, if you're there watching, I'm sorry. Um, on the other side of this, single seat fighters who obviously don't have living quarters or anything. Will single seat fighters and similar ships allow for incockpit eating and drinking? This is I love seeing this question right now because there's this, you know, this thing that happens where, you know, you're running, you're you get in your ship, you're you're having to take off

10. 00:07:29

    to clear an LC or whatever, and you you didn't get a chance to stop and top up your your vitals beforehand. There's nothing worse than, you know, you're flying in your Avenger or whatever and you die of thirst. Dying of thirst because you can't pop a Yeah. You a survea. Don't Don't drink and fly. Yeah. Well, so uh will single seed fighters and similar ships allow cockpit drinking and eating? Uh for me personally, yes, that is something I want. Ultimately, that is not my area of responsibility. It's it's more of a overall game direction thing. Um, but I I don't see why we wouldn't allow that in the future. Um, are there plans for more ship weapon types? Obviously, we we're seeing in the FPS weapons, the the vault weapons,

11. 00:08:16

    which we've talked about for a while, you know, are finally uh making their journey from squadron to to to the PU. Um, are there additional ship weapon types that are percolating in someone's head here? Uh there are a couple that if I get my dates right uh people will be seeing very soon uh in game. Um again things trickling from Squadron into Star Citizen. Um beyond that we haven't really looked into new weapon types. It's more uh expanding the range of the existing ones. So at a very simplistic level we have ballistic ones, we have energy ones uh and distortion ones. And then within that you have cannons, repeaters, uh gatlings, um and we have gaps in those lineups because you you also have the size

12. 00:09:04

    ranges within that. So it's filling filling those out, giving them different flavors first before we chuck in another archetype. For me, I mean, obviously I'm a Star Wars guy and whatever, but my affinity for Star Trek has always made me want beam weapons. We we talk about beam weapons. I feel like it comes up every year and maybe not for you you don't want to see a Gladius flying around with with a beam out of its nose and whatever, but for these larger ships like like like a hammerhead and above the ability to have like beams and what it would just be such a cool visual and that's one of the things I I every once in a while I just kind of hope I'm like is this the is this the year of beam weapons? I think this is the year of beam weapons. Oh, you think this is the year of beam weapons? I faked a reaction there. I was aware it's the year of beam weapons. Um, can ballistic weapons have quick

13. 00:09:54

    magazine swaps? Currently, their uh sustainability is limited to resupply or full weapon replacement. Is this intentional for balancing energy and ballistic weapons? Uh, yes. Uh, that is something we definitely want to do. Chris mentioned this to me again last week, week before. Um, going back to the previous topic about filling in the gaps, we're looking at filling in some of those gaps. And some of them are ballistic ones. And as part of the design for them, they do have um or will have physical magazines that you can reload. So if they're on the outside of say your Gladius, maybe Gladius, a bad example, let's go Avenger. Uh when they run out, you will need to go and restock. Well, if you brought spare magazines or ammo housings with you, you can go replace them. A

14. 00:10:43

    friend could go replace them with their supplies. Not every ship will be like that. It's not say practical on a hammerhead to have all 24 guns ballistic and someone's going to spend all their time outside the ship EVAing around in combat trying to plug magazines in. For some ships, they will have uh essentially an internal reloading mechanism, and that will take the format of there will be a designated area in the ship, which should hopefully be near the cargo supply. Uh, and it's similar to how base building will work in that you'll be taking your resources, in this case, boxes of ammo, feeding it into the machine, which then will put it into the ship's internal storage, and then the ship itself will resupply to the weapons

15. 00:11:33

    that need it. So rather than you having to manage 24 individual magazines, someone will just be feeding the crates of ammo in as needed. My understanding is that that's the only real reason to have children. Yes. Yeah. Okay. It doesn't change because it's private for the Chinese community. Um uh can the Moby Glass ship interface include remote control of doors, elevators, and cargo ramps? Oh, we've been talking about that for years. Uh desperately want this to be a thing. Uh pushing on it internally. Again, it's not directly in my wheelhouse. Uh so it's subject to other teams schedules and directions, but yes. Yeah, being able to unlock lock open doors from your mobile glass for your ship. Yeah, it's

16. 00:12:24

    all right. At the beginning of this year, this is a good time as any to reiterate this. You know, the beginning of this year, we had Ben W on and talked about the the big change in focus of this year. This year's focus uh for feature teams is on closing Squadron 42 out and uh improving stability and performance without introducing the stability and hits that come with new features. Um for we don't know how long it's going to last, but we're definitely still in that period right now where we're still refining, we're still fixing up the PU, stuff like this, u like that. So it's it's not a it's not it's not an anytime soon kind of thing. uh ju just to put a little expectations management on it. But a lot of these things, we've got this laundry list. There's things that we're all chomping with the I know that the team that's doing it has a lot of stuff and it's a lot of stuff that players have asked for like the 3D

17. 00:13:13

    landing camera on the radar, right? They're doing that before this. But it's always been, you know, it's it's the choice in years previous has always been go to the new feature, go to the new feature. And this year we've made the choice to go to stability, to go to to go to performance like this. And that benefit is very apparent already. And there's still more work to do and there's still more that we're going to continue to do. So while it can sometimes be hard to accept the wait for for this for this thing that everybody wants and whatnot, I I still think it's the right decision this year and I think a lot of folks would probably agree this focus on stability and performance this year is is paramount. And then the eye of development Sauron will turn back to to new features for the PU at some point. Um, can weapon and missile hardpoints carry other tools like fuel tanks or

18. 00:14:02

    electronic pods? Uh, that is something not those two specific things in particular, but uh, again, not to give too much away, but in the very near future, we're going to start experimenting with some alternative options for what missile wrecks can carry. Right. Yeah. You're of course talking about uh Invictus Launchpad. Yes. Yeah. So, you'll see a couple new uh couple new items that you can swap out both uh on the exterior of ships on power points and interior. Y some some compon some component upgrades and stuff. So, so look out for that. Yeah. It's it's getting very confusing filming this in advance before flying to be here with everyone in this room wherever I am. Oh, yes. Say something to future you. Uh, hello.

19. 00:14:49

    Please get a haircut before you go to China. Um, currently marine seats on ships feel underutilized. Will they have unique functions in the future? Uh, assuming this is drop ship drop seats. Drop seats. Uh, yes. Uh, they sort of do already, but it's a sort of underutilized or unnoticed feature in that we do impart G-forces onto loose actors within ships. So for drop ships, um if you are if you have 20 people crammed in the back of a Valkyrie and the pilot does a hard turn, you're all ragdolling and falling over, um it doesn't happen really as much as we want or the way we want it. Um it's very binary at the moment. Like big impulse

20. 00:15:36

    happens, everyone falls over. Whereas the way uh Chris has talked to me about it is your gravity generator on ships which is not yet a physicalized item but will be sort of lags in its compensation of gravity. So rather than it being a too much gravity everyone fall over. It's hard turn, gravity's failing, everything starts getting loose. And if it continues, then people start not necessarily falling over, but uh almost like EVA inside the ship because the gravity cannot keep up with the force and the directions. So then being sat in the seats, you're not having to deal with any of that. But the counter of that is we want to make drop ships be more utilized. At the moment, they're probably not tanky enough to

21. 00:16:24

    like they don't have enough health to survive the drop in versus other ships. So, it's we got to bump that up to get people using them. Drop ships are literally the living manifestation of putting all your eggs in one basket. They they need to survive the drop for people to bother using them. So, it's a sort of cyclical thing. Uh the Zeus's design is impressive, especially the interior. Uh will the Galaxy follow a similar style? Boy, I hope so. Uh yes, obviously we talked about at Citizen Con doing the RSI ships in sort of sequence. So we've done the Polaris doing the Perseus at the moment. Um and then the Galaxy will be after the difference in the galaxy is it's a a civilian ship. It's not the RSI military theme. So the Polaris and Perseus share a lot of

22. 00:17:13

    visual cues together and materials and lighting. Um, it does take bits from the Zeus, but not everything. Uh, and you will see more of the Zeus styling in the Galaxy and other RSI ships this year. Uh, will have that Zeus aesthetic rather than the Polaris and Perseus one. Yeah, I love that RS the RSI inter the Zeus interior. You know, personally, I'm not a big fan of the Dorito shape, but the interior just knocked me on my butt and what I love the Zeus interior, so it's good. Uh, you mentioned that you mentioned the Perseus. I read on Reddit that that's coming in Invictus this year. It's not. Don't believe everything. Um, will ships like the Caterpillar and Kraken have cargo lift functionality? Loading and unloading on the ground is

23. 00:18:01

    currently cumbersome. Uh, I the Caterpillar is an interesting The caterpillar is a interesting pain point. So, we recently changed the side doors uh to go down to the ground to sort of improve that. And it sort of improved some things, made other things worse. Um that's not how we want to do it. I think retrospectively if we were designed the Caterpillar today, it would not have doors like that. It No, knowing what we know today versus what we knew in 201. Um whether we'll like entirely redo that, I don't know yet. Um, but we do, if it stays in that design, we do still want to have the three-state doors. Uh, the current limitation with the existing door tech, and I saw someone moaning on Reddit about this today,

24. 00:18:49

    uh, doors in Star Citizen have two states, open or closed. The Caterpillar doors, side doors are doors. So, they are closed or they're open and it's just where that open state is. Um, so we chose to move it all the way down to the ground to improve things. We can't currently add a third interim state. So, open um and keep it there. Yeah, we do want to have that state, but that again, it's a feature. Anyone that's ever worked in games knows how horrendously complicated doors are. It's the big meme. Doors and elevators. Doors and elevators. Um, and we can't use elevators or transits because they're essentially using platforms, which we could get them to rotate and translate, but you wouldn't

25. 00:19:38

    be able to have all the synchronized animation for all the pistons on the side. That's why we have to use doors. That's why we're stuck with two states. Trying to think about how the those patch notes would go off. We've added eight elevators to your caterpillar. Yeah. No. The deadliest ship in the verse. Uh, and then the Kraken. Um, I honestly cannot remember right now how the the main entrance way to the cargo bay is. I think it does have a lift on the bottom. I think it just kind of tips on its side. It just all falls out, drops everything off. Um, but we are going to be looking again at the Kraken concept soon. Um, because hopefully towards the end of this year, it will be going into pre-production. You just gave somebody a heart attack there. Towards the end of this year, going into production. going in pre-production. Not coming out this

26. 00:20:26

    year. Read my lips. No new Kraken. Wow, that's a George HW Bush. Wow, I'm bold. Uh uh. Can the Reclaimer Oh, here's another fun. Can the Reclaimer's rear cargo platform be adjusted to avoid blocking 8 SCU plus of cargo? Uh, again, another ship, knowing what we know today, would not exist in its current form. Um, the reclaimer is an interesting one. Uh, I'm aware of that issue. It's something if I can find someone free to do it, but it's a it's a snowball effect with the reclaimer. Everything is the way it was built back in the day is not conducive to quick and easy changes. It's sort of you change that, you end up having to change a lot

27. 00:21:13

    of the rear um, rooms. And this is an interesting quirk we found when we did the whole sea. Uh so obviously the whole sea took forever to come out. We did a lot of the work 2017 18 and then we waited years for the the features to be ready when we came back to it. The way we build ships now is different to then. Oh yeah. And the the rooms we hadn't done we did and the two clashed visually significantly. So we sort of ended up having to downgrade the art the current art style and slightly upres the old art style to make it not look so jarring and the the reclaimer would suffer from the same thing. So in my opinion if there's something quick and easy we can do we'll do it but that whole interior needs a

28. 00:22:02

    complete not redo but reimagining. Newer citizens might not know. Folks who have followed the project for 13 years would definitely be able to tell folks about how process and procedure have changed and evolves over the years. You know what the the way we make anything in 2016 was not the way we were thinking about doing it in 2012. It's not the way that we learned to do it in 2020 and it's not the way that we've, you know, come to uh understand things in 2025. There's a reason we call it game development, not game construction. drink. He said the thing uh and whatnot. It's it's so many of these ships. I can't help but notice the Caterpillar, the the whole the whole scene and thing. These are old Drake Jim Martin ships who who who I love who who was at the very

29. 00:22:51

    beginning along with Ryan Church, you know, developing these things before we had things like metrics before we understood all of our game mechanics and how they would actually function versus how we imagined they would function and stuff like this. So yeah, the the uh I think we've started seeing, you know, obviously we've started seeing Mark's and stuff with like the Hornets and stuff like this. And I imagine some ships will will probably just get a Mark 2 and whatnot. Other ships like the Reclaimer, the Caterpillar need some more TLC, more need need some more, you know, time going back and fixing those things. Yeah. the the question that is starting to prop up more and more is what what necessitates or drives the reason for a MK2 versus a yeah just re update the existing one and really that comes down

30. 00:23:40

    to we can do a MK2 for something that functions and we just want to sort of deprecate the visual style of it. Um, the Hornets for example, there's nothing wrong with the Mark 1 Hornets. We just wanted to have the cooler MK2 Hornets visually out there. But for things like the Reclaimer, um, if we made a MK2 Reclaimer, we've still got to make the Mark 1 Reclaimer actually function how it's supposed to function with the salvage mechanic. At which point that's redoing a lot of it. Yeah. So there won't be like a MK2 reclaimer. the amount of work will just be an updated reclaimer. Um, uh, just a couple more questions, then we'll wrap up here. Uh, modules are often expensive optional additions. Will

31. 00:24:30

    modules for ships like the Galaxy be available for in-game currency upon release, so players aren't stuck with half functional ships? Um, the the modules, it's an interesting one. Um, part of it's an economy reason, part of it a marketing reason, and part of it is it's it's pledge law and stuff like this. It the the retaliator is really the the only one that we've released with modules, and it sort of had an awkward there was two ways to get a retaliator over time. There was the original pledge, which it was a bomber. It wasn't modular. Yeah. And then there's the modular version. When that was announced, you couldn't get the bomber one anymore. So, people were pledging for the base one with no modules and then you opted into the

32. 00:25:18

    modules after that. So, when we came to deliver it, we had to deliver both of them. So, there was a lot of people that had the bomber one as like a a loaner ship for their one without it and were surprised that they didn't have anything. And the current rules set is it's the same as any new ship that it will be available in game after x amount of time um from its actual release. So uh I know the amount of time right now. I just can't remember specifically. I don't want to say the wrong thing right now. But it it come it comes down to when you when there's again I'm not going to get into it. There's there there there's there's there there's gen there there's general marketing stuff and then there's actually some laws and and and crowdfunding and pledge that you have to deliver the thing to those

33. 00:26:07

    people who who paid money before you can give it to stuff like that and whatever. So I don't have to worry about that stuff which is why I don't have the information. I I don't know if it's the case right now but the the retaliator modules uh maybe they're not in the in-game shops. Maybe there might be a technical reason why they're not in there. I genuinely don't know, but we can look into it because some of those have been around for a long enough those should have passed the date requirements. Yeah. Um so yeah, can ship hole damage and breakage effects as seen in Squadron 42, that's Maelstrom, uh be implemented in the PU? Yes, that is the plan. Um Melrom is full speed ahead in squadron. Um my team and a lot of other teams are working on it currently. Uh I

34. 00:26:55

    think they are about at the time of recording about I'm going to say 70% of the way through converting that's more than I would the ships required for squadron okay to maelstrom so it it's been built in a way that facilitates we take the existing damage model that's in Star Citizen press a few buttons that's the maelstrom version it visually behaves the same but it's using all the physical behaviors under the under the hood of it. That's converted to Maelstrom. That's the 70% quote. After that, tech art and art can go in and chop it up more if they wish, make it better, more better, shinier, break into more parts, make it more believable. Um, and that's being done on a case- by case basis. So, we're doing

35. 00:27:44

    all the hero ships, all the ships you fly and fight the most are getting that first. So, the actual like fully maelstromed conversion is a lot lower percentage. But overall, we're we're quite a long way through it. Um, there's a lot of ships used in Squadron, but a lot of them are only used once. So, they're just going to get the PU damage model ported to Maelstrom done. I'm going to give you a little behind the scenes. Gosh, it was just a week or two ago when I messaged Sean about something or whatever, and Jesse looked at me, he's like, I'm in Maelstrom Hill. Can I get to it later? And I'm like, okay. Yeah. It's it's a whole new way of thinking about setup. Again, like you said just before, yeah, things we did uh years ago in case of Maelstrom, things we did weeks ago is not how we need to

36. 00:28:33

    do things going forwards, but it's definitely underway in progress. Yeah. And it and it all does genuinely work and it behaves physically correctly and you see the visual result like all those ships in uh the Citizen Con squadron uh gameplay video, those were all maelstrom and they break up differently to how things do in the PU now. Um how is weight calculated and what are its effects such as ship overloading? We were just talking about that in Yeah, it's it's all related. Um there's two answers to this. Both are the correct answer, but it depends what project you're working on. Uh so obviously in squadron it's maelstrom. Um and that does a lot of the the work for you. So depending on the material you apply to the ship or per parts of the

37. 00:29:24

    ship like you could have left wing be one material, right wing be another. Uh you set the thickness of it. It calculates the surface area of that part based on the physics mesh of it. uh does some clever maths for the thickness value provided and then that part is that weight. So you apply a titanium wing, it's lighter than a steel wing. Uh and it all just goes into the physics engine and just works TM. Uh Star Citizen is different because we don't have Maelstrom and that it's more designery numbered. Um, and the process we've done for years is you take a rough volume of the ship and 3ds Max calculates the volume of it and we put it into an Excel that I made

38. 00:30:13

    years ago. And that you take that volume, you take away the volume of the interior space, which is another mesh. That gives you a volume of the hole. You multiply that by a density value we decided which has some plus and minus very like plus 5% for AIS because it's a combat manufacturing versus Origin which is all high-tech and carbon fibery plasticky stuff. That gives you a mass for the entire ship and you put that on the entire ship and then the game engine goes about 50% of the volume of this ship is this part. So I'm going to put 50% of that mass here. And that's why occasionally you see things behave oddly because the physics has misinterpreted. Maybe the asset has a a slightly dodgy physics proxy and it's it thinks it's got 5% of the mass when it should have

39. 00:31:03

    50% of the mass and it flies off to space or the reverse. Uh so again, that's the reason for having Maelstrom is that those designer numbers go away to be created with ones that are actually fully derived from the assets themselves. Um, and it does impact flight. Uh, yeah, in both games. Um, in Star Citizen, if you strip weapons and components off your ship, you will fly slightly faster. The ships are quite heavy, so you don't removing a 100 kilo gun off your 60 ton spaceship isn't going to move the needle that much. Um, but it does. And cargo will impact it. It doesn't currently for any ship where the cargo grid is inside because we're intentionally ignoring that at the moment. But for ships like

40. 00:31:51

    the Hull Sea, Hle, the raft now, everyone's new favorite ship. Uh if it's on the outside of a ship, it does account for that. So you will feel like if you've loaded your raft up with gold, it's going to fly a lot slower and heavier than one that is empty. Yeah. Well, when when when when Mailshm fully comes online, all these calculations are are are more accurate and reliable and stuff like this. I've always thought it would be cool to, you know, you get we got these folks like like Atmo and like XGR and stuff that do the the races of like to do a like a cargo race like you you have to load up 200 tons of cargo, whatever, however you want to do it. you want to do it on the exterior like whatever, but there has to be there has to be that much cargo in the ship and whatever just to kind of affect the handling when I'm watch and and you have to get out your ship and swap out your

41. 00:32:40

    components as necessary, you know, to help with it. So, that's chop bits off your ship to reduce the weight. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like like maybe you you clip a bit of your ship intentionally so that breaks off like I don't need that to go and you you pick up a little more speed and stuff like that. It's, you know, I'm always I'm always more interested in like the cannonball run style. Anything you anything you can do to turn a race on its head and make it more uh uh crazy, I suppose. Um, one more two more two more questions. I want to ask one. Um, this actually isn't on the list. I'm gonna add I'm gonna add one add one now. Um, yesterday in in I think it was yesterday in the PTU, folks saw some some handling changes

42. 00:33:30

    to to to the to the uh to to capital ships. I think at that point it's only rolled out for the Polaris and whatnot. Whether it goes to the 890 jump, that's I don't I don't know the answer to that yet. But uh these handling changes the these handling changes uh cap the Polaris has been the Polaris has sort of been everywhere everywhere in everyone's enemy for a little bit. It's like we we see the posts where people like this would have been great if I didn't have to encounter a Polaris right there because it they're just too damn fast. They're too damn fast. They're too damn zippy. And not anymore. So So talk to me about this change that we're that we're making. Yeah. So out of the box, the Polaris was too fast and too agile. We were a bit concerned about making it too slow as like the the first proper military capital ship in the game, but

43. 00:34:18

    we saw we played it safe too far on the agility side now. And hopefully now what is live at the time people are watching this uh is a much slower. It's still the Plarus in law was a fast capital. It's supposed to be fast and agile, but that's relative to other capitals to other capitals. So, not to other not to a Gladius. Yeah. You're not going to be dogf fighting hornets in your Polaris. Um, so we did slow it down pretty much in all aspects in terms of uh speed, boost, uh, rotational rates and accelerations. um and done the same across the other capital ship. So technically the only other capital ship uh is the 890. Uh the

44. 00:35:08

    reclaimers is sort of weird. It wasn't a capital ship but it now has capital items. But just we've gone back and looked at them all and made sure they're all it's also affecting the NPC addresses. When people steal an Idris Yeah. Uh now they're going to notice that it it handles differently. The same whenever an NPC javelin turns up. Um they they are all slower. They're not designed to be good in atmosphere. So hopefully all the sites of Polaris's nose down over mining craters should start disappearing because bringing a capital ship into atmosphere needs to be a big event. Like this is a big commitment. You should be a sitting

45. 00:35:56

    duck. Some of them can't even get back out of atmosphere unless they have dedicated vetos. So, we just don't want to see these big ships everywhere. They should be big events when you come across them. Not Yeah. 10 a penny everywhere. the uh there there there's a line if I remember in the squadron script from the pilot of a I can't remember if it's the Javelin or the or the Idris where they're like you know a fighter p a fighter is supposed to be reactive and a capital ship you're supposed to plan you're supposed to plan every maneuver you know three steps in ahead and whatnot and that's been in the squadron script since like 2015 when it was recorded so it's I'm personally excited I'm personally excited to to to see these things behave more like these giant ain't Oh, almost used my Get the beep. Live beep.

46. 00:36:46

    Hey, if you're translating it, when you're translating this, make it not a bad word. Um, I'm excited to see them more lumbering and more imposing and more and more like that like like like a whale like like a whale in space as opposed to I think there's there's other levers we're going to start pulling as well on them in terms of like fuel and um insurance timers because they they are big events like if you're bringing one out sure you can use it as your daily driver. There will be downsides and consequences to that if you don't protect it. And of course, you know, this this is the this is not the first set of changes. This won't be the last set of changes. These are just the next set of changes. Uh the beautiful thing about Star Citizen and running a live environment in the middle of our development is that we get to try

47. 00:37:34

    a thing and then let it go for a month and try a thing and let it go for a month and like this. With this new uh release cadence this year, we've already done four patches this year. We're about to do our fifth one by the time folks watch this. um which is insane. We're not even halfway through the year yet. You know, there will be a lot more opportunities to try something, tweak it, try something, tweak it, try something. We have a lot of ships in the game. There's still a fair amount to come. Yeah. So, it's it's always a delicate balancing act between balancing for the game we have now and the game that and the game we have in the future. And sometimes we go a bit too close one way or the other. So, you'll see things like, oh, this this isn't that better than the others. Yeah. And then we have to do a realignment to spread out the range. Like we did a pass recently on the heavy fighters to sort

48. 00:38:24

    of this is all the F8 owners complaining about it. Uh but to make space for there to be a slow, heavy tanky one. Yeah. And a fast one relative for a heavy fighter and gaps in there to slot other options in. Yeah. And it's the same across all of them. And that range is going to grow and contract as more ships get added in the game. Yeah, I feel like I feel like Zooi Polaris was us being just as excited to get it out as you know as players were and let folks have fun with it in the you know, but I feel like this change is was always there. It was always on the way. It was always coming. So, it was just a case of when we did it and uh as new flight characteristics I I I know I know um um uh one starts with J. I keep want to say juke. It's not

49. 00:39:10

    juke. Um jerk. Jerk. Yes. you know, as as as as jerk comes online like this, that'll that'll change how jerk jerk and control surfaces will will change the landscape again for flight. So, so it just I want to I want to caution people against doom and gloom. When you when you see these changes come out one month, remember there's there's still work being done uh jerk and uh control services and the the the new almost monthly cadence of releases this entire year means that we get opportunities to try something and try something and try something and try something. Yeah. So, um, last question before I I go let you go here. Um, you've got a lot of good information. Uh, this this episode is obviously going to the, uh, uh, members of our Chinese community to those big events, uh, that that are that I've never been invited to. Tyler, I want to go. If you're standing

50. 00:40:02

    right next to me, come find me. That'll be Tyler Wick. Uh we're we're going to we're going to we're going to release this to the public uh sometime during Invictus and whatnot because you know it's everybody deserves to have the information. We're just we're giving the these these questions came from the Chinese community. We're going to give them their first shot at seeing them and stuff like that. It was a nice little thing we can do. Um I want to ask you about the ships that are coming this year. Uh while we've got a lot of good information here, I want something that folks aren't expecting. Can you tell me just name for me one ship that's coming this year that folks might not know about? Uh so go for the RSI Meteor. The RSI Meteor. What is What is it? Show it punches above its weight. Get another

51. 00:40:48

    drinking. RSI Meteor just drops a Macho Man elbow from the top rope down. Um all right, cool. The RSI Meteor. So, look forward to that at some point later this year. And I want to see the Reddit thread where people are wondering what what I want to see what they can evoke from the name and manufacturer alone and see who's right. Um, so yeah, thank you for watching everybody. Uh, this has been Star Citizen not so live uh with with John Crew. Um, and of course if you're watching it uh a little bit later on during Invictus, uh we hope you found the show informative and uh delightful as John Crew always is. Um, you want to go spend some time with your your puppet? You haven't you haven't you haven't visited your puppet? I haven't visited. Should I go get my puppet? You want to go get it right now? I'll go get it right now. It just you just you haven't you you've you've ignored him. You've had your child since since

52. 00:41:37

    November of last year and you've done nothing with him. You have don't visit. You certainly don't send alimony or anything. It's Oh, there you go. They brought you back. They brought you back. Oh, now you're We'll go back to Okay. This is just as uh awkward as it is. Well, John, you are many things. You are not a puppeteer. No. Find Got to find where my mouth is inside it. I know where his mouth. There we go. There you go. Say something John Crew would never say. Uh, I hate Drake ships. I don't think that that quite fits the mandate. All right, folks. Thanks for watching. Take care. Uh we'll see you next week for uh I

53. 00:42:26

    don't know when this airs, but but public. We'll we'll see you for another show. There's always another show. Bye, everybody. All right. Thanks.