Star Citizen Live: Ask the Devs - Resource Management

24 November 202301:09:131,801 linesWatch on YouTube ↗

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

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Hello everybody welcome to another special edition of Star Citizen not so live I'm your host jar Huckaby and if you've never seen star setz in live before it's usually where we take about an hour out the end of our week and we sit down with our developers and we discuss their work their lives their their habits their their love of chicken on this week's show we are pre-taped because I'm going to Bar citizen Milan uh this weekend and we have a special guest here in the studio available to do a show live so we thought we'd take advantage of that joining us on the show for the first half here are Este esteamed members of the euu feature team we got Torsten and Gamo toston guo welcome to the show thank you about to be here there's nothing wrong with love for chicken there's nothing wrong with love for chicken thank you all right so uh you're here today because you presented the resource management uh presentation at citizen con this year um and we had we collected
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some questions and we tried to do a follow-up show about two weeks ago and we unfortunately had some terrible Network and computer related problems we weren't able to finish your show so thank you for being here uh T can I ask what what brings you to Manchester in person it wasn't this I don't have that kind of budget no so uh actually it's two reasons so one is uh the the restructure that will happen next year so meeting the folks that come over from the Squadron stream and get them get to know them so because they were working closely with me on the Pu and uh the the second more important for for the community is actually the the release or the soon to be released structural Savage because we have our go noo at the end of the week and uh and because of the yeah because of the importance of
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the feature we decided to it makes sense to come over and help the team to get it ready well that's the virtue of Frankfurt just being a hop skip and a jump over the channel anyway yeah so all right so uh a few weeks ago we we put up a thread collecting questions we collected those questions from you the is community and let you vote up which ones you wanted to see answer most then gon uh Torsten went through the questions and pulled the questions that they felt they had the best answers for and we're just going to jump into it uh so uh the first question uh which actually sort of answered by our SRV episode that just aired Yesterday by the time people see this will soft death ships be repairable we know from ISC the answer is yes but can you give us any more information on this how does this work so the first thing is that self death is going to is bit of temporary
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solution we don't have the full damage penetration we show a place holder for it the citizen con I think everybody saw the Mone presentation with the sa breaking apart so that's going to be part of it uh what we now right now have for soft death eventually will be more of systemic thinking that some ships you know if they kill your power plant or they kill all your relays and or you have you know a very bad crash landing and you no longer have wings or you know your ship is no longer able to fly or to move under its own power uh there will be some degree of repairs you can do manually if you get spare parts or you know you got Engineers working on it uh but as you mentioned the SRB is also the solution when that SI cannot fly there's no way to repair it on a field you just throw it back to a base and do the regular repairs there and so my so like I said right now right now we have this soft death it's it's it's this the
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entire thing doesn't just destroy it just becomes kind of a kind of a potentially useless Hulk but with the SRV we'll now be able to grab it with tractor with a tractor beam and pull it back to a repair station and get it repaired instead of waiting for the insurance payout uh the the repair isn't in yet so you will be able to move it and uh but repairing I think doesn't like we didn't prepare it for that yet so there is no drop off points yet with the SRV but uh for the future that that will be uh the case that you have like the dedicated drop off points where you can then fix the ships that you cannot repair on site anymore uh especially the bigger ships with with uh like yeah cuz um there's the concept of size one and size two ship items you can replace right you can
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pull them out with a tractor beam and pull something or push something back in to that whereas with uh like the bigger items size three and size yeah upwards uh you cannot remove so if they are destroyed you lost them and then you need to bring the ship that is now Dead in the Water Into The Hanger and have it repair there gotcha so after 322 some version you'll be able to bring the soft death ships back to specific places to get them repaired so you can bypass the recovery thing and then of course as mstom and more elements of the physicalized damage system comes online soft death itself goes away and it just becomes your ship can now be disabled through a variety of methods and therefore resolved and fixed through a variety of methods okay uh next question with the implementation of the
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engineering role how hard will it be for a solo player to fly a multi cruise ship like the cutlet constellation or anything bigger so it will be harder but only it will be harder what if you have a ship that already has a certain age so if you have your brand new ship that you just pulled out of your hanger for the first time the weant te is non-existent on it so that means that there is no maintenance required so if you prepare the yeah the the energy management on the ship no matter the big the ship is you can fly it on your own but doesn't really make sense because then you are suddenly on the Move then you might get attacked so parts will get destroyed on your way that will result in yeah you from the pilot SE has have have to get up and then walk over to
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those uh destroyed pieces and repair them so yes you can do it but like it will be a real like pain to actually maintain your ship so um yeah this is pretty consistent with the messaging we've had since the beginning of this you know we introduced the idea of the engineer role at citizen con 2952 Then followed up on it in an ISC towards the beginning of this year and then you guys followed up on it with the resource management presentation at this year so we've done three pretty you know Hefty deep dives into this idea of engineering and the resource management uh system and through all three of them it's been pretty clear like this doesn't make it impossible to operate by yourself it's just going to make it easier and more effective if you bring friends if you bring talented and
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skilled friends who understand these roles but if you're if you're willing to put in the elbow grease yeah and and that was always very important to us that we make sure like that we don't block away the content for players that really would like to fly out their ship yeah and it it works they can travel from A to B and like if they avoid combat and if they make sure that they they uh like maintain it like when they have the time to actually maintain it and bring down the we and tear again yeah sure it will run smoothly like with fresh cars right so you can also have a fresh car that just doesn't break that easily right yeah and it also comes down to the difference between single Fighters or any ships with interiors and like you know if you're in a fighter you lose a component well that's it your wing is gone you cannot stop and you
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know attach it again or well you know any of your internal components get H you're are dead um when you're with a multi Cru shape I mean you can just take that damage and you you know accept that you no you no longer have seal generators the difference obviously if if you have a crew they can you know they can put out fires they can really mitigate uh that damage or you know find solutions for stuff that if you're solo well it's going to be more complicated but again the ship works it's not like we're going to you know purposefully make multi Cru ships bad or you know like worse is it's it's kind of the opposite if a Mot say with a crew ends up being more survival more effective because again it has you know all this redund if it's on fire you can pull it out if there's a missing component you can replace it which is something you don't get it's
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building an effective Baseline for a single player and then finding ways to improve the experience with by adding friends yeah I mean it's going to be the same if you know if we're talking about targets obviously you have friends in the turrets well you can suit better because you actually have access to those guns or if you get boarded or somebody stes away if you have more friends inside well again that's also a plus maybe with your friends my friends aren't so good yeah well they if you send a upo play is yeah it it tends to be we kill ourselves accidentally so you had something you wanted you were thinking about adding their tors what no okay good uh let's see uh next question is about repair are mini games planned to fix things or is it just nothing but magic beams over and over and over again so there were plans for having more
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bespoke repair but that will not be part of the initial release we will just go for the simp Simple Solution first and then we will observe how that actually is perceived by the community and if there is the the necessarity to actually make it more complex or more bespoke per item um then sure we will think about that but for now it is really a very simple repair mechanic for the items and then we will see because what we don't want to do is like you need to read a handbook to actually understand like okay what what item do I actually need what resistor do I need like what capacitor do that doesn't make sense that we have to make people study our game to actually be able to play it so it's it's still a game we we are a simulation driven game so we want to tailor to that but um yeah we we we we
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really want this feature also to be out so we don't want to like over complicate it and then block the the the release of it so it it's it's hard cuz there's there's it's there isn't one brush you can paint all star citizens with there there are there there are folks who want that 15 person multi crew capital ship experience there are people who want to be the alone in a starf far out in the out in the wilderness you know just helping people with with nobody else and then there's there's a hundred brushes in between so finding that sweet spot is always a bit difficult but I I I agree with the this idea that you know you you get it out in a in a in a simplistic and a in a functional form and then you see how it fits with everything else that you know
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makes up the entire physicalized damage system and then you you it's like okay if it does need more complexity then we add more complexity and it could be that all the other complexity we add for all the other systems is plenty and repair is just fine with you know a simple beam kind of thing so yeah and though that applies to actually repairing the item with the beam obviously you still have the damage control of the whole sip which involves you know you can have fires you can have bad atmosphere you can have you know actually lot of atmosphere or well toxic atmosphere due to a fire or you could also have um relays being knocked out and you need to figure out which items to you know uh turn off or turn on to compensate and keep you know keep fighting as well as you can until somebody can repair that uh so there is already a degree of complexity to the damage handling but yeah uh the main the main thing is going to be right now for repairing G the beam
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and we'll see but but actually you mentioned that we already have some items that need bepoke repair so we have we have the the fuses for for the Relay that needs to be exchanged so that is a type of repair we also have life support that is its own type of of complexity with uh the scrubbers that you need to exchange to actually like at some point they will deplete so this is also something that can be counted as as uh maintenance or repair in this regards then uh yeah like yo just said fire is it's own danger so that is definitely something that has a bespoke uh counter to it which is the extinguisher or even venting the rooms so there are some things that are already a bit more complex than like in comparison what we showed at the citizen con repairing the
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uh the power plant which is yeah you use the beam to repair it but yeah as said so we have already a lot of complexity and uh well I wouldn't say that our team is the best in handling multi crew gameplay but like we we we try to be good and it's really hard to manage like even with the amount of people that we had on the ship you you saw us fail in citizen cond demo we blew up that wasn't intention that we blew up we wanted to have a a nice success at the end of the demo but I was like yeah okay let's let's leave it in um but yeah so there's there's a lot of complexity already there yeah you make a very good point I want to be sure we shot now we unfortunately we had to certain aspects of your presentation and since we had to rush through because you were
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unfortunately somebody had to be scheduled after the start your presentation and that went that they ate up a lot of time on that stage you know and deservedly so um but but one of the one of the key Hallmarks is you were developing the presentation is not wanting to fake anything not wanting to script anything you were going to set up the scenario and just fly the ship and whatever was going to fail was going to fail however it was going to fail and you were going to deal with it however you were going to deal with it and I and I really appreciated that when you know watching you know watching it going oh you know they didn't succeed it's like well you know that sometimes that's what's going to happen and I think that's one of the Hallmarks of our of star citizens we we we we try to present as honest and as forthright a picture of things as we can whenever possible and that yeah it's like we tried we tried to save it we didn't do it that
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time y uh speaking of that demonstration uh this next question says earlier uh earlier in ISC we saw subcomponents for generators coolers and all that stuff uh and it even has its own damage model but in the say on demo it looks like this type of engineering doesn't exist have subcomponents been replaced by relays or they just weren't part of that demo so I mean I guess the re the the fuses for the release are part of the subc components we have and uh we also the Light support system also has a set of sub components the scrubbers for example and not only the scrubbers but and uh well we were also thinking you know maybe some components we're thinking about um the other day may may need to be sub components of maybe the CPU or of the avionic system or of the power plant
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uh so guess but only in the the way to say it would be like yes we have some components they still going to exist in some form but only it really makes sense if it's add some functionality because that's where just modeling Health with you don't need to drill down on every single thing just because we need to drill down on every single thing yeah that's yeah that's like the our cradle or it started to be our cradle which is like we really want to have meaningful gaml rather than than complex game play for the complexity sakes so this this is like something that is starting to be very very important for us and uh but but also to to answer concretely on that question so we have them on our our plan they are not currently planned for the initial release because uh there are several reasons but like especially content would just kill us if we would
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just say by the way we want to have sub components for every item and then yeah yeah you know we're often fond of saying bring it to the point of realism than bring it back to the point of fun exactly like this I just saw this wonderful uh wonderful 25th anniversary documentary for halflife done by a guy I really respect Dan OWI who you know he and his team made it for valve went and there's this wonderful moment where where Gabe is just like go like I don't play video games to be real it's like I got realism in the real world that's not fun it's like got to play video games be fun there's always this balance I think this there's this misnomer that everything has to be Uber realistic and I'm like no it has to be evocative of realistic it has to it has to have a sense of realism and stuff whenever possible but it's you
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always got to bring it back to fun and again not dragging things down with unnecessary chores I mean how many DLCs have we ever seen for a game that just seems like you know you a new A Whole New World of chores have been added it's like why was this added to this game I don't I didn't need more chores so and especially something that we always have to consider like every bit that we add adds to the time it actually takes to get to the game play that you actually want to to to consume yeah no I think actually one sub component that you may see it's since the resarch network doesn't apply only to ships it also applies to locations and one example is for puzzles well on you know for repairing a sub Network in a particular location as part of a mission you may get yeah you need to swap out these parts which may be B spoke or may also be the same kind of parts we use in sips so it really depends on the level of complexity we want to adopt particular
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area of gameplay so we're talking about relays uh we have relays for power are there any plans for additional relay type points for coolant fuel or data so all of those actually go through the same set of relays uh that means generally if you knock out a relay all the resources you want to get to the items stop flowing that way uh what we do have is uh kind of the opposite is relays that do not allow some resources through uh this makes sense if you think of a stare we have the external tanks on one side and you have the internal tanks and when you're giving fuel to some dude you don't want to be draining your internal fuel tanks and you know as far as the game is concerned they are the same thing they just fuel tanks why cannot I take fuel from them uh so we added relays that do not allow that kind of uh connection between both sides of the network uh but we still obviously can
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have um an alternate bypass that is turned off by default and if you want to do that and we would allow it uh but yes a general rule uh most ships or most situations you're going to have all the resources going through through the same route and if you you lose a connection well that's it um I really like this question actually so obviously you know the there's there's a generic setup for ships and and and different ships will have different numbers of relays and different you know complexities and stuff we've been using the Hammerhead as a wonderful example we showed the the Hercules at citizen con so like this will there be a difference between the problems and issues and the capabilities between manufacturers like there specifically asking he goes will Drake have more
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electrical faults on average than Like An Origin ship Drake owners suffer you know quite a bit in the in the Precision Universe mostly just because they like Drake but is is there anything manufacturers oh get off of it there any manufacturers specific things built in for this there actually two answers to that question so the first part is every ship will have a somehow bespoke layout of where where the relays will be located and how they will be connected there will be differences between military ships civilian ships with military ships having more relays than civilian ships to have allow for more redundancy um there will be also differences between like uh manufacturers because just like the way
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that their ships are looking because we have to fit the the the relays on them and that also dictates how the relay or the Resource Network actually set up and uh so there comes the first difference from and the second uh is yeah ship item manufacturers so it's less Drake itself so if you have like a very expensive power plant you put in your Drake ship it will not suddenly like work worse because it's sitting in a Drake house because it's sitting in a drake ship No it will still like uh the wear and tear rate will be different so if you invest more money in your in your ship items they are less likely to to uh be affected by we te malfunctions might be even triggered less often so item choice
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will matter in in that regards so even like coming back to the single player so if you invest a lot of money into your ship and buy the best items ever you even reduce the amount of uh like interactions you have to have with the item so it's more likely that you don't have to uh run around alone in your ship and try to fix it yeah also in addition to Brands I think we already have it in game you have the different classes of items inance you have the competition military industrial civilian that's also part of the balancing there competition item would probably have a very short lifespan because it's you know we expect you to you know to go after the race go back change it all together or repair it while an industrial or military part is expected to be in the field for a longer time so that will affect um yeah the the
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war rate and obviously therefore component system not all Drake ships will be created equally customize the ship the grades will get get a different meaning like the the types will get a new meaning to that yeah oh also um since again um this goes this goes back to the damage system which also because we you know without damage penetration stuff like that we don't actually get the the fires or the actual damaging of the components there there the siips also become a bit more relevant the armor what materials the manufacturers uh use normally we already have some differences planned on you know this brand usually uses this type of alloy which has some certain properties which is how you get lighter saes or heavier saps or less armored saps as a rule uh sometimes I feel bad about making fun of Drake owners but you
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know we're all just having fun folks it it's it's it's in the lore of the universe that the Universe generally looks down on Drake owners none of us think anything less of you think I'm I am a drake guy the only if you look at my ships I'm mostly a drake person I love the Drake aesthetic I'm a b big fan of Jim Martin who invented most of the Drake aesthetic going all the way back to the to the cut lless so you know just know that it's always in good fun because you've all suffered clearly enough with bad taste liking Drake I'm one of you uh next question will there be any kind of danger to the engineer in case of bad component manipulation component blowing up in your face well I mean the obvious one is if you something over hits it's part of
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the things that drives into the malfunctions or you know the dangers popping up um so yeah but heat management for example could Sly deal lead to you know a power search going through the ship and killing components or fire starting in front of you maybe setting you on fire if you're unfortunate um so yeah to to some degree you know you can make things worse you can always make things worse uh see but but we're obviously we're not going to insta kill you yes because you know you you punch at a component to fix it actually that's the good part of of the entire change that will come which is we are more item focused so it is less like like a like a dramatic death with the entire ship directly exposed no you will start losing items first and then you might be dead in the
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water for a long time until someone picks you up and that that is all the consequence you're so you adjust that in the water if the right components break at the right time if the wrong component breaks at the wrong time so if your Quantum D for example explodes because of a Mal function that might have uh a consequence that is very similar to what we have right now that the entire ship explodes yeah the power plant specifically um you know soft death really what it what it U sort of models is either the power plant you know died in a peaceful way so to speak or you lost your relays something like that which you know you just lost power um what we currently have for big explosions is more like the reactor took a critical hit it went you know on it's critical load nobody did anything about it it
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exploded I don't want to I don't want to focus too much on this but the the idea that I could pull a component out and work on it and potentially catch a fire and potentially cause a fire rather makes me think of the opportunities for sabotage it's something we thought about yeah yeah I mean uh since what you can also damage the components with FPS weapons and you know obviously you can just take out the fuses or even small components you can steal them all together there's a lot of things a lot of damage a person hiding inside your sh could do and I'm just thinking about this you know you know a lot of star citizens you know have come from a game like EV on line or something where you know it's you know you pretend to be somebody's friend you become a member of their crew you know in the course of a mission you know slowly pulling components out and and tuning them in
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correctly you to cause malfunction like that's there's a there's a whole gameplay opportunity there that's exciting oh I think I think with the L system you know we have a very good counter for that which is you know once you once you find a guy you can just throw him out of airlock uh let's see with ship life support will opening doors automatically cycle air locks to minimize wasted oxygen in atmosphere no yeah like if there's an airlock airlocks work like an airlock is supposed to work they will actually cycle in um you know probably ideally in a smart way you know if there's good air outside and good air inside no need to cycle but in most cases the airlock will behave as a real world airlock suit on the other side if you open the door of a let's say you open the cargo bay of an H2 while you're in space well there goes your yeah like
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not all sips are ideal for all scenarios um some of them are you know have these Eva suit lockers and they have these double air locks and you know uh particular path to get to space which are safe in others they're not really that good for that obviously you can always bend your ship so you don't lose the air but that also comes with its own challenges your engineer or whoever is on the console needs to manage it properly uh so that's also where part of the uh SE rolls would come in which are better build for certain scenarios versus others yeah yeah you you don't want to add too much automation to it because you want to leave the agency in the hands of the players and you know to be both good at managing it and to be bad that's that's a certain agency too like like some people like being bad at start citizen yeah on David yeah we we
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cannot make it too safe El you know you don't get hurt and it's not funny on YouTube um will we need to memorize ship layouts or will we have the ability to Target subsystems as well as as our point of impact directly or will that require more advanced scanners or dedicated Scout ships like the Terin Hornet tracker to allow sharing this information across the wing of ships so so yeah so basically it's is there a reward for the more that you personally understand the layouts of ships and and and where to shoot and where these components are for bullet penetration and stuff or is the scanner system just going to take it all for us well we're going to have subcomponent targeting uh it kind of exist in some form in a game but it's not really I think you'll be
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shorted even at CTI doen F yeah actually yeah for the turrets um obviously it will also be used for stuff like you know try to hit the power plant or try to hit any other internal component um at the same time yes if you know it if if you know where it shp's components are uh you know you already know where to shoot obviously the targeting helps you but you know any anything you bother to learn or any experience you have is going to be superior I think uh especially when it comes back you know you mentioned sabotage in that case you know your use of SC is a bit more limited and knowing exactly where you need to go how how to deal the most damage it's always a good skill to have we we talked a little bit about uh scanners and anti- scanners uh last week with u the FPS and flight teams and stuff and Chris has always maintained throughout the course
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of the this Project's development that you know there will be counters to all of these Technologies it's like as you develop you know scanning you also develop Jammers and stuff and you know it's like if I've got a level two scanner then my scanner can overcome a level one Jammer but if they've got a level three Jammer then my scanner is going to my level two scanner is going to have some trouble until I go and swap it out for a level four scanner and you know this constant kind of you know escalation that happens in the real world uh so so yeah if you find yourself you know jammed and what on you can't Target stuff if you do know this stuff if you do know you know I'm very familiar with the Connie Phoenix and I know that you know the big relay the big Central relay is right around here and the the damage system the full damage you know system is online with penet proper penetration you you can and you can draw fire on that you know you'll be
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rewarded for that kind of information yeah we even had that already in our demo right so we we have a faked uh yeah penetration penetration there and uh yeah because we knew where we need to shoot we could potentially Target the the the uh and sips sips have Wick points not necessarily made on purpose but simply of the way they're built you know the hole is not the same thickness in all places the Sip components you know are not distributed ly um so knowing you know if your weapon can make it make make it through the hole and the seals and you know that on that particular uh part of the ship it's easier to hit the components that's all I think that's always a win something good to it's to practice and learn it's going to be interesting to see how that how that affects pilots and the way they fly too knowing where your weak spots
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are and and learning to not expose them during combat and stuff it's got a lot the the resource management system has a lot of G to many aspects of gameplay it's and actually that is what we all looking forward to right so we really want this that yeah maneuvering and knowing your ship well gives you an advantage over over you don't care about your ship uh for single crew Vehicles how will the pilot be notified that components need to be addressed well it's your si will be on fire um no but it's currently you already have well with the new mfds you're going to have probably a better display you already know that you know you have this like little picture of your sa in the MFD and you know you say when you get hit you see the you know the red mark and the components slowly
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go red from Blue uh that's going to be part of it obviously just you get the messages um I think if you play in the game right now we already have the first set of misfires these are the old ones that you know seal failure or Thruster search stuff like that you're going to keep seeing that that's also part of the new of the new system they are triggered you know using the New Logic but they're still the same effects uh but yeah in in general it's going to be mostly that because as a pilot you have very limited on a single seat fighter you have uh very limited action you can take against that um obviously you know you have your triangle uh capacitor well wheel um you can you know put more power to the seals if your things are getting hit but at the end of the day if you're losing a cooler or something like that other than turning off items altogether there's really not a lot you can do which is you
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know the weak point of Fighters they don't really have that same power in the end uh we're almost and we got time for maybe three or four questions and then we'll let you go is the life support system in a room also tied to a fuse that can break so I might lose access to controlling a room's atmosphere and can and be forced to go deal with the fire personally instead of just venting it yes yes yeah so it's even a bit uh more than just that the life support itself is connected to Arena it's like each room has a the vent that is then connected to its own relay so it might even be that if a relay is destroyed or yeah not connecting to the vent anymore that you just lose connection to one of the rooms whereas like if you hit the life support
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the life support cannot provide the the rooms anymore so that would be a total failure but there's there's uh yeah the concept of the vs that are sitting in each room and they control the the composition of the room the temperature of the room so if that then the vent loses the connection you lose the control over that room and you have to go in there and or go to the relay fix the relay so that you have the control over the room again or you go directly into the room to fix what what broke there yeah or you know you could just open a door or I guess a window or open a door Tech be dangerous in space you can do that actually that is also a good counter so because what what the question was before like do we automatically cycle no and that helps there right so you can open the door to the the room that is currently not connected anymore and make then oxygen
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flow from one room to the other or even vent the other room so that the room that is currently on fire you don't have any control anymore is then venting the other room with itself so that you can deplete the fire there uh while we're still talking about life support where does the air come from is it stored in tanks or is the life support component take electricity and simply generate air yeah well that is an open discussion right now um so it might change so as of now as of now we have an tank that stores the uh atmosphere that you have uh in your rooms so if you have a room let's take an example with one room and you want to vend that room we don't vend
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the the atmosphere in that room outside we vent it into an auxiliary storage so that you don't lose it because we want we see the atmosphere as in finite uh resource and you should really care about your atmosphere in space because it's a precious resource right and so you vent it into the the storage so you have the the room now completely uh empty with with the atmosphere and if you decide to fill the room again it is taking the atmosphere from that storage back in um sure we also like thought about okay what happens when you accidentally vent it so we have have some some auxiliary atmosphere uh sticks that you can put in and then be by chemical reaction magically create atmosphere for that room or for the
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rooms of the ship but the idea is that you always have these storage that you have to manage so you fill it because like and and you have this this concrete finite amount of of atmosphere on your ship that you have to manage yeah and yeah we also separate it along that way in the sense that you know there are tanks for oxygen and irer gases but also for Waste gases that we don't want in the atmosphere all there different tanks um so yeah managing it it also limits uh how quickly you can get rid of good or bad air in both cases but also a nice way to to catch atmospheres actually like if you lost uh you did mismanagement and your auxiliary tanks are empty and you're like breathing through your suit and you're depleting the oxygen from your suit so what you can do is go into an atmosphere of a
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Planet open all the doors and then suddenly all the atmosphere rushes in you close the doors and go up again you just have to make sure that the atmosphere of the planet is actually breathable but that that is also a valid way to fill fill your ship back with atmosphere it's kind of like I'm imagining those cans of Perry a from space ball um all right uh I think uh two questions left uh how often will we encounter Mal functions and fires in normal gameplay this this question comes up after everything every time every time it's the same answer it's like fresh ships very unlikely for any malfunctions there might be some that are happening but but very minor ones so you don't you can even ignore them and live with them but like if you have a
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ship that has several hundred hours and like the wear and tear is really really low uh or really really high uh then uh yeah you you have to maintain it more often but we really want to make that it is not like annoying for players like we really but but this is something that we will balance once we have it out there and players give us feedback on it yeah it's really more about um for the long-term maintenance is more about some items being a bit less um I I say reliable if you keep using it it's kind of a way of telling you hey use something new and you know with Salvage and all the ways you have to get components is not really not that hard or you know you have to pay more attention to your compon components um but stuff like fires or anything really critical that is going to that is crippling uh you're not you know your
00:37:02
SHP is not going to randomly burst into flames that's more of a consequence of damage control you're you're in a fight you get you take a direct hit to a relevant component you get an electrical fire but you know you shouldn't expect that to be cruising around Stanton and Sly you know three rooms are on fire and you die but we also want to reward player choices there that is um if you decide to like run your your ship only with 20 % of the performance it could run in like have the power plant always run at 20% so basically underpower your ship that also has an impact on the the malfunction rate so the the less you like P push your ship the more likely it is that there will won't be any malfunctions but also the other way like if you are in a combat scenario and you like want more than 100% out of your
00:37:52
ship items sure that will dramatically increase the the chances for malfunctions there is is there an RNG factor in this though sure is there some is it conceivable that somebody's just going to have a really bad string of luck yeah but it's dependent on on the wear and tear and it's the health of the item so we have parameters that make it yeah gives us more control over when these are happening but sure that there there will be some rgy yeah for some for some of them it's the conditions are more like thresholds you know you are overheating by this amount you have the power throttle over this amount so you know we know you're pushing your ship at that point you know we start running a eyes from time to time where either nothing happens or you know one of the maybe my normal function happen so the med the moderate ones happen uh for for other cases you know we just want to say
00:38:42
you know based on the where and tear even you know at we want at that point has to be very very rare in the sense that you know yes we do it randomly but maybe the meantime is supposed to be days or something like that simply like it could happen but we know know we're more interested in the player choice aspect um overheating uh you know running your ship at overclock all the time stuff like that which we think is more like you know the cost for that choice you made than you J uh last question and normally we we we avoid when questions and stuff like that just because we've been talking about resource uh management engineering for about 13 months now since we first introduced it at sizen con last year um there's a lot coming to Star Citizen in 2024 at citizen con we we just we did
00:39:32
two days worth of look at all this stuff the a big chunk of the Squadron team is coming back to the Pu they're bringing all the work much of the work rather that they've developed uh along with them this was always the plan since we had rich tyer on a two years ago saying that they were switching this priority you know we used to go pu and then into Squadron and we were switching the priority to go Squadron and then into pu you know for our for most of our feature stuff we're now 2024 is now where we're going to see the the the big reaping of rewards of that technology and everybody's very hyped for it and and appropriately so uh Resource Network not being one of those things that was developed in
00:40:18
Squadron and and brought over oh actually actually for the citizen con since you know Squadron had a requirement of uh you know to have the resour Network okay so because you know we want to get rid of the old pipe system we actually move it from the P well not from the Pu but from our feature stream to Squad 42 we did all the development for the that was done for the citizen con the UI and you know the actually tiing it to fires fixing up the life support all of that was on in the squad on for the2 Stream So in a way it's actually so even this okay so in a way it's actually coming back too all right so okay then I'm then the question is even more appropriate what kind of time frame are we shooting for I'm not going to don't look into the camera be like it will be in this thing nobody would I wouldn't believe you if you said that but we have targets what what what what are we shooting for what what's the you kept saying not in the first
00:41:05
iteration what's this first iteration of resource management intended to look like and when are we shooting so we are targeting uh Q2 next year with the release of life support fire and uh the engineering game play so the the base Resource Network with all the base functionalities so that will have also the repair Beam with it uh the the item functionality that we showcased in the demo so basically everything that you saw in the demo that that is that is the plan for for Q2 awesome uh ton y thank you so much uh I'll let you get back to work I know you've got you've got that big go no go uh to get to I appreciate you taking a little time for us and being over here um uh uh we're going to we're going to
00:41:54
come back uh with a dear friend of M Jeff selli uh composer of many Motion Pictures and composer of Squadron 42 we're going to talk a little bit about him leted a whole bunch of our community meet him for the very first time since we haven't had them on in so many years uh and uh during that switch over um uh uh we had a you may have seen the post credits gag in last uh yesterday's uh ISC um we originally had something else in that slot uh uh Tom who is one of the partners that we make inside Star Citizen with is the world's largest Stevie Rayvon fan and every time we were shooting those SRV uh interviews he continuously was asking people do you know who s who Stevie rayon is and he was very disappointed in that so many of our developers unfortunately did not do you guys know who Stevie rayon is no
00:42:42
yeah see that that that's what he was running at and he was he was so he was so frustrated with this uh he he went and uh personally recorded his own little guitar riff and outro uh celebrating uh the Majesty of Stevie Ravon tremendous blues player that he was uh we booted it out of yesterday's episode in in order to Showcase my dumb thing uh but I promised him that we would showcase it here so uh we'll be right back and until then enjoy just a little brief Taste of Steve Ron by way of Tom our cinematographer the Argos SRV I'd say is my pride and [Music] joy greetings citizens I'm composer Jeff
00:43:48
selli I wrote the music for squadron 42 and I want to talk to you about something very close to my heart this is the soundtrack ALB and uh I just want to go over a few highlights first piece I wrote for squadron 42 is called coil commanders actually um my nickname in college that's where I got that and uh I hope you like saxophones uh we have another one Admiral Bishop's tax return you're not going to believe when you find this part in game what's uh what's actually going on in this uh in this story it's um there's a lot of uh money laundering subplots and lots of paperwork and stuff in the game and so I wanted to make sure there was like a paperwork theme cuz I know a lot of people care deeply about taxes tax returns and Admiral Bishop so you know we found a way of combining all of those
00:44:35
things got another one we've got um single player at night it's about uh Jared's love life hey hope you like saxophones I do I hope you like saxophones oh here's a good one Bagel carrier 40 seconds of food Transportation Bagel carrier you're going to want that I was was thinking really really hard about what I should name this piece and I decided on intense action those are the three words the three important words I hope you like saxophones the other thing uh oh pimp your spaceship that's right that's uh that's uh you guys were asking about space radio pimp your spaceship is the new hit Jillian Anderson is in this I I
00:45:23
wrote a song about that oh I'm supposed to talk about the f8 lightning I think is that right oh right sorry no no no no spoilers no spoilers okay I mean I already talked about the tax return though okay no no that's okay Colonel Blair's funeral oh what else can we do and I hope you like saxophones some of you have heard my piece vertical slice wait till you hear horizontal slice oh that was ter that was so bad so there it is the Squadron 42 soundtrack you can buy it in any form you want as long as it's CD I'm Jeff selli composer for Star Citizen Squadron 42 and I approve this CD love those fresh air canisters hi
00:46:17
everybody welcome back uh that was a brief skit from the old reverse the verse live days uh with our next guest composer Jeff selli uh Jeff selli is the composer for squadron 42 and we haven't had him on the show for several years since then we've garnered about two million new star citizens who maybe have never met them never seen them so we thought we take this opportunity uh withhold the line and and and citizen gone to bring him back on the show and introduce him to folks who maybe haven't heard of him and uh revisit for those who have been following his tremendous work so Jeff welcome to the show everybody right thank you thanks for bringing me back everybody Jes it has indeed been a minute but it's great to see you again Jared you know it's with pre-tape you think I you know I'd stop this and redo it and redo it but no we're just going to leave that in it
00:47:04
still Stars isn't live even though it's Prett I just called Jeff everybody um Jeff uh thank you for being here I want to talk a little bit I want to introduce you first uh to to to uh our star our Star Citizen Squadron 42 Community uh tell us who you are and what you do sure sure well I'm Jeff sinelli I write music um for video games for films for television uh you know for all sorts of different visual media um I mean I guess that's been me in a nutshell for many many years so uh yeah that's it I'm and I'm writing the score first quadron 42 um which is a a epic journey in and of itself let's put it that way so how'd you get into how'd you get into the industry usually in these kind of get
00:47:53
get to know me segments uh we usually cover I'm always amazed like you could most many people can do almost anything with their lives why in the world did they choose this so that's basically my question to you why in the world did you choose music composition no it turns out that I can't do many things in my life I can do only this with my life and I say it factiously but it's it is actually kind of true this is this is my one skill but what I I always wanted to do this so okay so I became a musician pretty late in life compared to most uh musicians that I know I was a one week shy of my 16th birthday when I got a guitar and that was what kind of started the journey but very very quickly realized it was going to be a career music anyway was going to be my career
00:48:42
and that I wanted to be able to write and change Styles and change you know genres all the time and that sort of naturally draws you into film music and media music games and you know you look at the expanse of the types of projects I get to do and it's very very different from being in a band plus you couple that with like I don't really like getting in a sweaty bus and traveling across the country with you know five other people so I was never going to be in a band it was it was it was not for me um but but I don't don't know that I chose it I think it really was sort of the only thing that I that I really want could see myself spending my life doing when once I once I got even reasonably good at playing a guitar it was like no this is
00:49:31
the path so I'm genuinely envious of that when I when I hear folks who have that kind of clarity of vision and purpose I I worked 37 places before I landed here and even here even here I'm on my like sixth title and my responsibilities through here have vacillated and changed dramatically in the nine years I've been here I've right I I I I never knew what I wanted to do because I wanted to do everything right I I I definitely had that Clarity of focus that's exactly the way to put it it was it was a drive and um but I guess on the downside is that I got my last uh promotion when I was like 21 I became composer and that I shall remain so uh so you've decided to become the composer where where where did you start did you start in television you
00:50:19
did you go straight to motion pictures uh oh right so yeah no okay I went I went off to Burke College of Music which is in Boston and I studied there they had an engineering production track and they had a film scoring track which is now called media scoring but at the time it was focused on film and television was actually kind of before games was um even really a an industry that you could consistently work in I mean I'm talking about the the early 90s they were this was like the beginning of game composer as a as a full-time you know calling um so but when I finished at at Berkeley I started interning actually even while I was at Berkeley I would come out in the Summers to LA and I would intern for Han Zimmer who is a film composer he was
00:51:07
writing The Lion King score when I first met him uh to put a date on it I think that's 1994 and I was his intern uh until I graduated Berkeley a couple years later and then I came out and worked for another composer who worked at hza Studio named John Powell that was the first job that I had I was I was his assistant John's and uh I did that for three years and and then I got my last promotion I went freelance and became composer you know so that would have been uh right around right around 99 or 2000 is when I went freelance as a composer and you know if you if you look at my credits you'll see I I worked as what's called an additional music composer on John's movies which means maybe I do a couple of the scenes here
00:51:55
and there but he was largely responsible for the score then I did that for Hans on a number of projects um and I suppose the notable kind of breakout project like that for me was the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie where um it was written rather quickly I think we had two or three weeks to write the whole score so it was Hans and a team of like eight or nine composers of which I I I guess I sort of moved to the Head of the Class so to speak on the project and um the that was that was the kind of the beginning of the the real uh you know the real Jeff selli as composer story I guess you mean you mean a giant humongous triaa big budget motion picture like Pirates of the Caribbean only gave you two to three weeks to compose the score yes there well there
00:52:42
was it was that's an unusual circumstance okay okay yes we don't need all the Hollywood tea don't don't don't don't ruin your career by spilling all the no no no no I think it's well it's sort of well established people know there was another composer on the project before that's what happened so I get a call from Hans who is now the second composer the movie was on the Final Mix stage already you know they were already doing the Final Mix and they didn't have to score and Hans called me on a Saturday and said do you need to get to the studio right I almost did a Hans impression and then I I thought better of it I used my own voice so you gotta get to the studio and watch this movie we're starting right away we're finishing in three weeks you know you can't go to the Justin Timberlake concert you're going to be working and so I went to the studio uh with the whole gang and we it really was literally like Ron's had this five
00:53:30
minute piece of music he'd written overnight and he gave it to all of us and then it was like we just need to start writing music just go and um I sort of loved the chaos of that it was really like being in the eye of a hurricane and um you know again I had I guess that sort of clarity and focus I was able to just put my head down and write music like crazy for the those three weeks and it's kind of nice to know when it stops you know I I know when I get to sleep again until then I will uh I will work on Pirates I didn't I didn't know we had heard that story we we we we we've chatted a few times I didn't realize you'd worked with John Powell John Powell was was was was the born identity movies and and face off and I think did he do
00:54:18
solo he did but okay but that would have been long after I was but yes he did but face off funny enough was what what got me hired it was his first John's first big Hollywood production production and um he needed an assistant right away it was a similar thing he had a pretty short schedule not quite as bad as pirates but um so he needed someone right away to just kind of be there and run you know largely tech support I was loading Samplers and getting there early in the morning to make sure everyone everything was working so we could sit down and work right away and hey somewhere yeah yeah that was that was but I loved it oh my that's the thing it's like someone let me in the studio door and I just never wanted to leave and you know that was it it was it was it it still doesn't really feel like
00:55:08
work you know I mean of course it is but yeah I I I get you I get you so so okay so obviously you've gotta you've go a uh uh you you've begun a healthy you know film career eventually something breaks in your brain and you say I want to do video games no well I but I always did though it's that's funny because I mean I'm I'm you know I'm a gamer with Atari Roots right like that's where it started for me so I'm I'm like I'm like the old generation of video Gamers but um I think like I think in a way the 90s is really kind of the perfect time to illustrate when video gaming music got super serious do you know what I mean like that was when you started to hear
00:55:56
fully orchestral scores it was like for a minute there games were promoting themselves as you know oh we have a full Hollywood sounding score and nowadays I don't see that type of promotion because I think the games industry is recognized very clearly we're doing our own thing now do you know what I mean like it's a it's a genre and it's actually very different in some ways from film and and te television which is also it's almost like a third career um I'm a little bit lucky I get to do all three of those things but some composers you know they excel in games or they excel in television or they excel in film but not the others so I don't know I I was always built in in the way that I wanted to to spread out and do something different and you know the the
00:56:46
conversation I have with my agent all the time is what I want to do next is something totally different from whatever I finished whatever that means so I'm not necessarily the composer that's going to do only superhero movies or only Sci-Fi video games or only horror movies you know I I love love love that I get to just go all over the place that that's that's probably why it doesn't feel like work I still feel like I'm playing around a lot no I hear you that that's great what are what are what are some of the uh what are some of the game scores people might recognize from you wow let's see so my I mean a squadron 42 Far and Away the biggest video game credit but I think it's probably the biggest video game credit for anyone that goes that goes that goes
00:57:35
without saying um I worked on an EverQuest champions of norath which was a kind of a spin-off it was not a um persistent Universe uh I worked on one of the Shrek games um and then I worked on a a series of Call of Duty games which was for the NDS so that was you know this this Call of Duty with the stylus and everything was really they were pretty wild but it was it was fun because they they had their own identity separate from the um I guess the mainline Call of Duty games but uh I think you know it's not lost on me that Squadron 42 is the is is the uh the peak of my video game career thus far well or probably ever well well fingers crossed what what we've heard so far uh has been
00:58:23
Stellar we're going to get to that in a second so let's talk about how you got how you got hooked up with Chris and Squadron 42 where did that come from I know was it from your your work on Outlander or just okay that's that's exactly right yeah so so so hopeful I I wonder how if everybody knows Chris made a very very cool movie called Outlander gosh 15 years ago now maybe or close to it which was a um kind of a take on the baywolf story but it's but set in Viking times with a I guess You' say a space man an alien man that crashes to Earth and brings the monster with him basically and then using Viking technology has to go fight this high-tech monster um it's quite cool it's a monster movie it's really
00:59:11
fun it's a multi genre sort of sci-fi fantasy thing which is like exactly in the world of what I want to do and I actually met Chris through I would have been brought onto that project let's see maybe met Howard McCain who directed it and then then I met with Chris and John Shimmel who produced and um so we made a movie together I mean it really started that way and I think really what happened then was Chris said I'm making Star Citizen and it's going to be split into really Two Worlds and we have the Pu which everyone been playing for years now and we have Squadron 42 which is narrative um different very much story-wise from the Pu in the Pu you know the players are writing their own story in in Squadron 42 the the player
00:59:59
is involved in a in another bigger story that already exists and that I think is what Drew Chris to ask me about it because it's very much designed to feel like you're moving through a very long epic story it's story driven and that is you know that's I guess the province of film composers he he recognized how I was able to tell his very complicated story in Outlander and then you know how that might expand out into the universe of Star Citizen which is quite a big story to tell so yeah and of course Pedro uh kamacho is our wonderful composer for Star Citizen you're the composer for w42 do you guys ever get to get to chat do you ever get to share
01:00:48
notes or meet a convention or anything anything like that yeah well we've never been in person together funny you mention it but we Zoom every now and again just to kind of sync up with each other not necessarily to get uh the music to sort of you know I don't know cross-pollinate from one to the other that's it's really not the goal it's always been kind of separate identities but um we're both big supporters of each other's work and you know I'm and I'm eternally jealous that Pedro's music is out in the world already and you all get to hear it that's why something like like hold the line with you were talking about is a little glimpse into the the enormous amount of work that I've already done on Squadron that will uh won't come to light until people are you know until we get it into the players's
01:01:35
hands right so Pedro Pedro gets a kind of a like a rolling delivery where every few months you all get to hear his new brilliant work so yeah so I just call him to tell him I'm jealous that's that's well well as as Squad 42 is you know is Now featuring complete and moving into polish R and stuff I'm sure we'll have more and more opportunities for you and me to get together and share our and share your music with with the folks before we let you go I want to talk about hold the line um folks got to hear roughly 20 25 minutes of of your squadron 42 score um I know f a lot of folks would ask was that stuff just created expressly for the video uh or or is it actually representative of the game of what you've done for the game and I want I want I want to ask that
01:02:23
question and then add in a supplemental question bag pipes and then let you go yes bag pipes maybe we'll I'm gonna answer your questions in in reverse order because bag pipes is is the is the order of the day no it so it's funny okay actually that sequence which you do see you know the opening it's it's a cinematic in-game that so that music was written very specifically for that sequence and everything obviously still work in progress but I I believe me we're keeping the bag pipes we experimented quite a lot with different instrumentation for that for the fleet reveal let me back it up actually initially that piece of music is written as a uee theme um it actually functions
01:03:13
sort of like um uh you know most of the world's Navy H navies have a a theme song right the the US Navy I think it's Eternal Father Strong to Save it's it's a hymn yeah and so we started there it was something Chris Roberts and I talked about what if we had a Hymn for the uee Navy like what would what would their theme be and in fact there's even um very uh wide variations of this piece of music already getting used in various parts of the game we only showed one little glimpse of it for Hold the Line um but that is a theme for the uee for the Navy as a whole uh and it works in all sorts of ways it can be very emotional it can be very somber it can be very triumphant it can be officious
01:04:03
it can be used as score it could be used there's a set of lyrics actually written for it so we're that's a piece of music that's gonna be heard many many times throughout the game but this the fleet reveal is one of the first times you hear it and I thought well what needs to happen here is it needs to be a piece of music that represents that the uee is not one country or one ethnicity or one you know one nation's purpose it's the purpose of Earth I mean that you know it's in the title UE so the piece of music had to could represent really any culture and all culture from anywhere on the earth because here we are united in defense of our planet so it meant we could go exploring instrumentation anything really um
01:04:50
anything that has the right you know Grandeur for the moment and so there was an Orchestral Version of that sequence that played nicely but maybe felt I don't know not uh not bepoke enough to the sequence and once we got to the bag pipes and there's also a tao drums from Japan and there's some drums from South America and you know so it actually is a combination of many cultures um to to represent this is our Fleet this is the this is the Gathering that we have put together to defend the planet you know I I realized that's a it's a lofty goal for a 10-second piece of music to but this is you know this is the type of uh uh ambition I was gonna say we're no strangers to ambition here yeah exactly no strangers to ambition yeah
01:05:40
know uh so that was bag pipes uh question is so this is you can confirm that this is music that that people would hear in the game it's the uee theme that one is indeed thematic um then the rest of the whole the line video is also Squadron music um but not necessarily being used thematically it's more like especially because the way it's cut we're going from location to location and event to event and we're not necessarily showing it in linear order so you're getting a sense of what the you know sum of the soundscape of the score will be but I think uh you know there there's quite a there's a lot more than than bag pipes that are just going to stand out I think to make the score feel special for all of the different especially places but all of
01:06:29
the different story arcs that we're we're telling with this uh with this I mean it's a huge story yeah good job well hope you all like saxophones too yeah well we we haven't done the saxophone version of the uee himm now that you mention it maybe I'll get i'll get on that I still have I still I still have our I still have our fake soundtrack man I still got it oh I love it Admiral Bishop's tax returns was on there there I can't remember if it's track three uh yeah it was track three good memory was it really good memory look at that all right Jeff that's it that's all we got time for man thank you so much for I could keep talking no we we got we got to save it we got we got a whole Squadron 42 promotional thing we got we get to start once you know once
01:07:17
once the game goes further along and we'll have plenty of time to talk there uh uh for now it just we just want we just want to I you know we we had uh what was it it was bre technically it was breakfast for lunch I think is technically what I had we we had our little you know you know hang out when we were there and I said you know what let's have you on the show and talk a little bit about some back pipes and introduce you to some people and so that's that's all we're doing for today so thank you so much thank you for waking up at 8:00 in the morning to do this over there and uh yeah well we'll see you later man take care awesome thanks Jared I'll see you soon so yeah that's it for this week's show special thanks to Geo and Torsten and Jeff zelli for being here on the show with us this week week we appreciate you taking the time out of your schedules to do that uh there won't be a show next week as I'm going to be off in um uh Ireland uh for another bar citizen event uh so if you're in Ireland in Dublin you can
01:08:06
check that out I'll I'll see you there uh next week uh ISC returns uh with a look at the Pyro playground and how that all came together and what was involved there and stuff it was a pretty big event in the in the development of Star Citizen and we thought for certain we could take a a look at that and how that came together uh while we uh all head into the amazing New Year that was spec out at citizen con uh there's a lot of stuff coming so uh we appreciate you indulging us taking another week to look back at something before we look at continue to look at all the amazing things going forward so for uh what show is this Star Citizen live uh I'm Jared Huckaby thanks for watching and uh no this doesn't get any better when it's pre-taped bye

Transcript from YouTube’s automatic captions — punctuation and Star Citizen jargon are approximate. The video itself is hosted by CIG on the official channel.