10 for the Chairman: Episode 56 (2015.03.09)

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 um this is where I take 10 questions from subscribers and answer them to the best of my ability uh subscribers are the subset of our community that contribute uh money every month to uh help support our enhanced Community uh sort of content and Outreach um so you know all the eight to 10 posts we do on our website every week um the monthly magazine we do which is about 40 50 actually more 50 to 70 pages of really detailed behind the scenes information on how we build ships game mechanics all the rest stuff the video uh program we do so obviously this for the chairman

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   around the verse uh some of the newer stuff that we're starting to do like the wonderful wide world of Star Citizen and meet the devs and some inside cig pieces so we take all the money that's contributed by subscribers and use it to sort of um really double down on the amount of interaction and Community content so thank you all for um allowing us to do I would say the best job of that of most of any game I know that is in development so thank you for that um and generally always thank you for backers in general for allowing us to be able to make the game the level we're doing this T of the chairman fairly brief because I'm recording it before um leaving for Boston where we're going to have pack so you'll see this after pack so hopefully it'll go watch go well last packs uh you know was maybe not our finest moment um but everyone sort of

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   heads down trying to uh get um aspects of the FPS um module um in uh shape that we're happy with to uh show you guys uh the actual module will be released to you guys after later Beyond paxi sort of towards the end of the month um but uh anyway we're trying to polish up some stuff to show you some stuff that you haven't seen before um and so we're all pretty busy so this will be fairly quick um and hopefully you will have liked what you saw um by the time you watch this all right so let's get to the questions uh first question comes from Admiral Barker who asks if players continuously attack a certain race such as the Banu could that prompt a race war between us well so probably not um you know we certainly aren't going to have um sort of meta simulation programming

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   on a race basis we definitely will have um uh sort of um relationship reputation uh sort of indices for the various organizations and obviously you know the uee and the Banu and say the Jean who all have their own one so have individuals or groups are attacking Banu people and there would be hostility from Banu um you know the Banu factions against those hostilities and so you know next time maybe they came to space they could get attacked by the Banu rather than Banu be friendly to them uh so there will be some sort of more localized reaction I wouldn't say that would necessarily start a war against the uee because you know in the case of a lot of this the players were doing it they're not really doing on behalf of the uee but it may actually cause the Banu to go after them it may even cause

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   the uee to go after people that are doing that and of course if we watch it because we'll once the game the P universe is live we'll be sort of um you know game mastering it so to speak and seeing what's happening with the players out there so we'll probably React to what groups of players are doing and perhaps sort of change twak or make some sort of messy decisions for kind of what the AI doing so you know potentially you know we could sort of flare up some border troubles but that would be us seeing what the players are doing and then sort of creating some scenarios that are reactive to that besides the ones that are sort of autogenerated by the overall sort of meta AI simulation um so there you go hopefully that answers the question next question comes from Commander Keen who asks will we be able to use tractor beams against incoming missiles for defensive purposes well I would say that uh uh you would have probably the same opportunity of

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   using a tractor beam to um hold a missile as you would having a laser gun to shoot down a missile um so I guess if it's slow enough and big enough then potentially that could be something could happen because obviously that's all going to be handled by sort of the physics of it all but it's probably not something that I would rely on to um save your skin all right next question comes from uh Tilly who asks when ships are docked together will they have to stay put or could one or both of the ships fire their engines while docked so the our plan in terms of having ships dock together is that you have to kill cut your engines and sort of be a drift in space uh as opposed to Flying along while dock together that is the plan for when players meet with each other um you know we have some stuff in Squadron 42 like for instance uh Retaliator docking

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   onto some of the bigger carriers and that will sort of be kind of the equivalent of the Merill and docking on the constellation so I guess in the kind of situation where you dark and then you sort of leave your ship or your ship sort of like docked into a parent ship then yes you can fire your engines but there certainly won't be a case of two constellations being able to dock together and then they can both fire their engines and go along basically they'll have to come to a rest um like Duck and then you can go and do whatever you want to do and then if you want to fly off somewhere you have to separate and fly out all right next question comes from General Jack O'Neal who asks will n PCS duck and dive or Run for Cover when they see a player pull out a pistol rifle Etc prior to firing in various Landing zones or city zones yeah no we're definitely going to have uh you know what we would consider sort of

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   realistic AI behaviors which would include uh you know if you're in a sort of crowded law abiding area and you pull out a gun well the civilians will probably try to run away police will pull out their guns and tell you to drop your weapon um but that's that's kind of part of the plan for the NPCs and the AI and so hopefully we'll get them to um be um sort of feel real um and Alive all right next question comes from Mina Danzig who asked will the arena Commander simulator feature historical battles you can fly in that's a really good question haven't actually thought of that before but I think it could be quite fun to down the road have um some battles uh you know like the you know the battle for the tarian home world or whatever uh that uh we have as scenarios um that you could possibly have in Arena

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   we're actually planning you know part of our road map for arena Commander going forward you know besides adding the multi Cru ships is also adding sort of more uh single player and Co-op uh uh content so you know some um missions that are sort of templates of the kind of mission you would get in the pist Universe like maybe a escort Mission or something where you have to Ambush other ship so we're talking about sort of doing that in Arena Commander to have more of these scenarios because it's good for us to sort of test encounters and scenarios we're going to get in universe and then even some potential in Squad 42 so that's part of our plan um to roll out um you know these kind of things uh you know over the next um you know 6 months or so the initial plan isn't hisorical battles but I could definitely see us down the road once we've sort of gone past that because we're sort of using Arena Commander as a

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    test bed for a lot of the stuff that you would find or see in space in in the paic universe uh so once we've sort of gone through a lot of that stuff then later on I think you know historical battles could be kind of cool actually so good suggestion thank you thank you very much um all right next question comes from arthy Don who asks what are your plans for direct X12 well we're having uh we have we are in discussions with various people um uh you know some of which you probably know and guess and all the rest stuff about exactly you know how we're approaching uh direct STX 12 and how we're going to approach um uh you know opengl next which I guess is called uh fulan of something like that actually not at GDC this week because we've been so busy on the FPS um stuff and also the social module uh stuff

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    putting together some footage that we're going to show at southb Southwest so um I decided to pass on GDC uh this week where they're doing a lot of drx2 and um I think it's called Vulcan but I could be wrong and then the openg next uh stuff that everyone's announcing um but yeah no we're definitely looking and focusing on that obviously you know we pretty close with AMD and we're actually pretty close with Nvidia too um the sort of technical side and uh uh sort of generally sort of figuring out um where we're going to do we have you know a slight Wrinkle in that you know we're on cry engine so um you know that's not our engine so typically um you know we would expect sort of that kind of support to come from cry engine although we've you know recently um hired a bunch of core Engineers that actually have that

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    capability and ability um so we're sort of in a much more um we're in a stronger and more independent position position and owning like basically the engine and our technology and what we do with it we're not so dependent anymore um on every on third parties which you know longterm for the game is a really good move and we've got some great talent that we will be telling you about and sharing with you uh pretty soon um they're all just very busy getting up to speed but um expect to see an inside cig piece on our new uh Frankfurt studio um in the near future um and they would obviously be very closely involved in anything we did for directx12 or the next iteration what openg is going to be so not ready to say just yet but you can expect that Star Citizen is going to push all the boundaries which would uh also mean that we're going to push it on um uh you know the best API possible for

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    us to render as many textures materials shapes as possible so obviously the next generation of Graphics apis do a much better job of dealing with uh Monday gpus and also multicore processors uh in such a way that you don't have a bottl like you do in in the old tics um setup so um so we're pretty keen on it just like well you know we uh you know had announced our plans to support mantle although you know working with AMD now we uh working on massaging that since they're sort of changing how they're going forward with um you know what was mantle into other things all right there you go enough on that um all right next question comes from steroids who uh asks in addition to escape pods will there be drop pods that we can use to drop soldiers Planet Side without having to

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    go Planet sides ourselves well not right now so we don't have a plan for drop pods uh to sort of do um you know I guess you know whatever you want to call it uh Halo Reach type entry into uh um into the planet I think if we were going to go Planet Side and drop people down youd probably drive down you'd fly down and a drop ship is kind of what our uh answer to that will be at the moment so that is not on our development Horizon okay next question comes from blicks who says if my arm is damaged in fps and I get back to my ship how SL will that affect how I control my ship so I think that if you are damaged in in your arm uh and you go back into your ship then there would be some result of that damage on your arm so if you're wounded in your arm uh maybe you don't maybe you're a little slower using the stick

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    or you maybe you don't have the same quite range of motion until you get it fixed up I mean it would be nice to sort of have that you know that's what we want we want to sort of have like sort of real world persistent effects on your body that's kind of why we wanted like a sort of you know not necessarily a fully you know it's not hardcore perade death but it is a kind of perade death and the S whole day for space mechanic where you only have so many times that you can basically be killed or have a near-death experience before um you know you really are fully dead and then you know your your belongings and ship and equipment and reputation name sort of passes along to the NEX kit uh so we definitely want to have sort of uh damage that you would take in you know say FPS boarding a ship and you get back on your ship if you're badly damaged then you know it would it would affect you in flying your ship and trying to get back to a friendly planet where you could go to a med Bay or a

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    hospital and get patched up okay next question comes from Cal Alois who asks in the case of accounts with more than one game package will there be a benefit of using one of your characters as a crewman instead of other NPCs for instance will your character's wage upkeep cost be lower than the other NPC crewman so the way that we've been thinking about using uh characters is um less about lower wage cuz you know if they're NPCs they probably would um you know want to get paid a little bit um and we don't want to sort of give everyone sort of free um people to man all the stuff but kind of the idea is one if it's one of your um uh you know accounts for the game package you create a character for that so I could have if I have five different packages I could create five different characters and I

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    have a control over what the character looks like which you don't have with just NPCs you going to hire out in the Street and you can name them and do whatever want so if you want to put your you know Merry band of Warriors together the the crew from the serenity then uh you know you can do that once you have them together you can play any one of those characters in one of your game session and the other three or four characters you can have as NPCs that could be crew on your ship or you just you know they' be just back in their character slots or their own hangers or whatever um so it sort of allows you to sort of pick and choose who you want to play and also pick and choose what they look like and what they are and so sort of have them be sort of more persistent uh that you sort of can um take along with you uh and you could probably even designate one of them to be a successor if like one of the characters dies and this person inherits all his money or

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    equipment or whatever so that would be just that's the level of control you get with NPC or charact so it's not really NPC's per se it's just that you know you have multiple characters on your account you have multiple packages you've set them up however you want and then you have the option to you know basically play which one you want and other ones can operate as NPCs um that you could have crew or some of your friends could take them over and sort of control them uh for you if you wanted to all go on a co-op Mission so you have that flexibility with characters that are tied to a game package you wouldn't have that with just a general NPC you would hire out on the street so I hope that answers the question there and then the last question um I feel like I was quite Speedy on this one but we'll see uh uh core asks when playing as a bounty hunter will we have access to our

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    targets known associates if so will we have Auto access to that based on the contract that we accept it or we will have to buy it well okay so if you're playing a bounty hunter you know you'll probably taking a mission um you know either from the Bounty Hunter's Guild or someone's given you a mission to go capture one and they typically with the mission package they'll be like okay this is the person you're after um we don't know you know his last known assoc you know last known place was over here here's a couple of his known associates and so you would have names and locations which would sort of automatically be added into your uh person of interest list and then you would have to go and track them down to try and find your Bounty right so maybe you go you don't know where he is but you go and track down one of his associates and find him and you know get information from him beat him up whatever you need to do and he gives

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    away the bounty's location you go have the Bounty location and so in the initial sort of bounty package you will definitely get information that may just be about your Bounty but may also be about some known associates and locations and all the rest of stuff and then so as you go about your job of trying to track this person down maybe doing a bit of detective work or talking to people in bars you potentially will gain more information about them um and that will be added to sort of like okay now I can uh you know you may get a name of a new guy that you can go look for in your location and it's pretty cool uh we've got a very very cool um conversation system that uh is um you know one of the the foundational parts of Squadron 42 in terms of you living on a ship interacting with other people getting to know him uh having relationships uh so it's going to be great it's really fluid it's really

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    built for sort of the Fidelity of this world and first person involves a lot of things like eye contact and uh you know basically body language and I'm really quite excited by it uh you know just in our early prototypes of running it around we can see it we actually had a prototype of basically the conversation system as you've been a bounty hunter trying to track someone down going into a bar and it was really cool so you know it's going to be fantastic in the persistent universe and also obviously in Squad 42 and so one of the fun things is just going to be it's you know I I think staff citizens going to I mean it's you know just calling it space sims kind of doing a disservice because it really is a first person Universe because know you run around and you know it's an advent it's an adventure game as far as that stuff goes but then it's also a combat game because you can get into the action and combat in first person it could be a puzzle or physics game because maybe you have to figure

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    out how to break into a place or you get into a ship and you fly out on space and get in combat and then in combat maybe there's a Rec ship over there you got to get out and Eva across into it so there's like that level of being able to do all those different things and how you can blend between them um is what I think is going to really make Star Citizen special because nothing's done that to this level of fidelity uh that would feel so that fluid in in such a sort of big setting um so I think when it's all up and running especially with the way we're planning on having the universe simulated in the background so it sort of is a big living um universe that sort of reacts to actions you do or other players do um it's really going to feel uh alive and it'll sort of be up to you to kind of sort of choose your way in it and there's plenty of different sort of game styles and play styles that you could do that you could have a lot

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    of fun um you know there you know there is you know I mean I see it on our forums but there really is no real win in uh star ssen and no real like you know end game as you would normally think in a typical MMO where you have to get up to you know the level cap and then you can go now do some of that endgame content stuff like we don't have we don't really have that we just have a big huge sandbox that you can play in um and you may have different objectives of what you want to do uh in terms of you know what you consider successful right you know you know whether you're a great Trader or a great mercenary or a great bounty hunter or a great pirate or whatever and it's sort of uh you know and there'll be plenty of like non-combat oriented roles as well as combat oriented roles so I'm really excited about that that's all the sort of stuff that like all these pieces are sort of coming together over this year

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    probably not nearly as quick as I want them to be cuz I want to be playing this game as much as you guys but I really sort of I can see it cuz I see it in all the little bits that we've got in different areas of the the the the various Studios working on it and how they're all going to fit in once we have it all that with all the Polish and this working with this and this and that's really a lot of what's happening this year is sort of getting these diverse pieces and putting them so they function well together and U you know obviously the Polish side and the content side and that will continue obviously into next year but uh I'm pretty excited so there you go that's uh 10 for the chairman for this week um I think I'm going to be taking a a pass on it next week because uh I'm off to South by Southwest again so we'll probably have a 10 for the writers or designers or producers uh in place of it but uh hopefully you enjoyed my answers to the 10 questions you uh you uh gave

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    me um thank you very much subscribers to allowing us to do this and all the enhanced Community comat content we do thank you to the backers for enabling us to be making the game of my dreams and I think all your guys dreams uh and um and I hope you guys like packs East and uh any I'll see you in a couple of weeks bye hey guys thanks for watching um for the chairman uh if you guys would like to uh see more episodes go here if you guys would like to subscribe to our

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    YouTube channel and always keep up to date with all our video content go here and uh if you guys would like to watch episodes of around the verse go here please and I will see you in the verse