10 for the Chairman: Episode 74

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

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   [Music] [Applause] Hello everyone. Happy New Year. I hope you had a great holiday break. This is uh the first M for the chairman of 2016. I'm actually recording this in 2015 uh because right now I'm in the UK uh with the team for about two weeks. Um but I wanted to get an extra 10 for the chairman under the belt. uh before I left. So, I'm recording this just before Christmas and um then uh you guys get this on uh January 4th and then I'll be back uh in the US uh sort of mid January and then I'm going back and forth between the UK and uh the US uh because we've got a lot of work to be done and so I'm trying my best to be hands-on and

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   uh spending as much time with all our teams as possible. Um so anyway, so this is me from the this is uh I guess the past me in the future. So, I don't know whether you call me a time traveler or not, but um anyway, happy new year. Hope everyone had a a great holiday. Uh and um this is 10 for the chairman where I answer 10 questions that have been asked by our subscribers. Subscribers are the subset of our um community that have pay money every month to help support our ongoing community content. Uh so, it's this show, shows like Around the Verse, Bug Smashers, Ship Shape, uh sort of behind the scene pieces. We do Jump Point, which is a 40 to 70 page magazine uh with, you know, great behind the-scenes detail showing how ships are built, or characters are made, uh lore about the world, fiction about the world. Uh you know, it's a really great

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   read. Um and there's quite a few other benefits um uh for subscribers, which we do because we want to say thank you for, you know, allowing us to do a whole level of community content that, you know, most games don't get to do. And it's really partly because of your guys support that we can afford to buy the cameras and have, you know, folks that are dedicated to filming this and editing this and all the rest of stuff. So, thank you very much. And for that, I try to answer 10 questions to the best of my ability every week um that are posed by the subscribers. So, um let's get to it. So, the very first question comes from, uh Bellania, who asks, "On ship persistence, will capital ships like the Javelin remain in space after all crew members logged off? Will it need protection or an NPC crew to prevent the ship from damage or theft? So, that's a pretty good question

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   because, you know, normally obviously you would land on a planet and then your ship just gets put in the hanger and, you know, everyone else can't really access that hanger. Uh, so in terms of uh ship position persistence on the really big ones like the Javelin, uh we sort of determined that there's going to be safe like areas. is you can sort of put it in orbit or do dark where when it's in that safe area and you've logged off nothing can happen to it like it's not going to get like blown up or uh you know raided or boarded uh while you know everybody's sort of like off and sleeping uh you know if you left your javelin in an unsafe area then maybe potentially it's it's not it sort of depends how we're going to do it. So, we're going to sort of in some levels we're going to take a little bit of liberty. Like, for instance, we've said

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   that ships that have beds, you know, if you sleep in your bed, then that allows you to save the game. So, you know, one of the things we're going to do, so you can maybe sleep in your bed, an astro field, if there's no other players around, what we'll do is once you log off, we'll take your ship. Your ship will not be existing in instance. So, if other people are flying around there, your ship wouldn't be there. So, they couldn't do anything to it. And we'll also probably do something similar to that on the bigger ships as well. we don't really want you to like sort of come back to the game and go, "Oh, where did my ship go?" Because, you know, in real life, you'd still be sleeping on your ship. So, I hope that answers it. So, we're going to basically protect it for people when they've sort of finished and logged off and it's not in use. Uh, as long as it's in certain areas that are safe. Okay. Next question comes from Blicks, who asks, "Will we be able to buy Wreck/ UC items and configure our ships to use in the 2.0 mini PU sometime

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   in the future?" Absolutely. That's a very high priority for us. Uh it's one of uh you know the things that's going to be up early next year. Um so we really want to be have the ability to go to shops and and buy things. You can buy you know weapons for your ship components, personal items like clothes and stuff like that. That comes with persistence which uh is going to um you know full proper persistence is going to debut uh early next year. Along with that will the ability to buy stuff for um your you know ship and personal self and um you know really it's going to be focused I mean ultimately the 2.0 mini PU as it grows that's where it's going to go. I mean you know we want to move away from you being on Voyager Direct on the website and only buying in our

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   universe. So as soon as we have it robust in universe Voyager Direct on the website will probably go away and then you'll just have to go to the various stores or shops to buy stuff in in the game. Okay. Next question comes from Sneezy Dinosaur who asks, "In the universe, will there be a way for us to buy and sell used ships? Whether that whether that be through used ship dealerships or via trading with other players?" I would say that long-term there probably will be a way to buy and sell used ships. Uh shorter term, what's going to happen is you'll definitely be able to sell your used ship, which you'll sell at a discount, but there probably will only be new ships available to buy at the dealership. So like you would go to the dealership, they would say, "Oh, I'll trade in your used Aurora for this and you can, you know, get this new ship. So you just need to pay me the difference." So that will definitely be happening and happening pretty early. Uh but having like, you know, dedicated like used ship

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   sales places, uh probably won't be for a little bit. Um so that's sort of like a lower priority. I mean, like we've had the same discussions on clothes, like could you go and like sell your used clothes and then you have like the equivalent of thrift stores? while it's kind of a cool idea, you know, it's simpler on the game mechanic side to just sort of sell the item at a discount because now it's been used and then you just buy new items. So, that's kind of where we're at longer term where we probably will allow um the sort of uh buying and uh you know, maybe used cars, dealerships, uh but you know, you're getting the ship and it's got some wear and tear on it and run down so it'll probably need some money to fix or may not operate as optimally until you can fix it up. So, that's kind of it. uh trading with other players. We're definitely going to allow you to sell and trade with other players. Uh there's going to be some sort of rules and

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   limits to it uh to try and avoid um sort of abuse of it. And there'll probably have to be, you know, things like title transfer tax and stuff like that when you say sell a ship to another player or you have to pay the UEC money to transfer the title just like you do on say cars say here in the US. Okay. Okay, next question comes from Trickery who asks, "Will there be an option of stealth gameplay for the FPS part of the game and the tools, mechanics to support it?" Absolutely. Uh that is, you know, part of the core design. I mean, we're trying to make the FPS game play itself be more tactical and less just run and gun, especially since it's, you know, it's more lethal than you would you would normally expect with say a Call of Duty or something. And we actually have some gadgets that are good for stealth and distraction. So they're just not in 2.0. Yeah. We we're

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    going through and sort of reactivating and polishing them from Star Marine. And they will also debut with Star Marine, but you know, we have the hologram gadget where you can sort of put up a version of yourself and you can be off sneaking somewhere else. Uh we're going to have definite things that will help with sort of, you know, hiding your your radar and noise signature or heat signature and stuff like that. So we definitely want that. Um, you know, we have vents, uh, which aren't in 2.0, but, you know, they will be, uh, in in the future where, you know, vents you can sneak around and crawl around and and then sort of outflank people and do stuff like that. So, yes, it's definitely going to be I I definitely see um the combat in FPS being much sort of more sort of tactical. Um, and part of that would be, you know, allowing you to do stealthy stuff. Okay, next question comes from Priam who asks, "Will players be able to play as

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    privateeers, corsair, buccaneers on the gray but still legal side of the law and carrying letters of mark like Sir Francis Drake and Henry Morgan? I don't like being tied down to one or but I sure do like a nice slice of pie." So, you know, that's a good question. uh you know in the particular case of uh you know S Francis Drake and and Henry Morgan that was you know he had these various colonial powers all vying with each other and you know so the British would be like oh okay Francis Drake it's okay if you you sink Spanish ships you can't sync English ships you can sink Spanish ships so I'm not sure we have exactly the same situation here because the UEC is you know so I don't think the UEC is going to be like well it's okay if you sh sink ships from terror but don't sync ships from earth so I'm not so sure about the letters of of Mark, but you'll

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    definitely there'll definitely be cases where as a as a uh freelancer, you will be hired by various orgs, NPC orgs or you know like the UEE or whatever and you'll do sort of missions for uh these greater sort of powers or organizations. So, you know, it's a little bit like the letters of mark. And I definitely think there's going to be gameplay that will allow you to sort of be a privateier or a Corsair Buccaneer, you know, so maybe there's a gray area, you know, between Earth and, I don't know, like the Jean Empire or something where, you know, stuff can go on and turn a blind eye to it or maybe the Jean Empire turns a blind eye to it. Um, but there's definitely going to be cool gameplay for all the sort of uh play styles. So, there you go. I don't know if that

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    answers the question properly, but uh the tick asks, "How will be able to land on an unexplored or uninhabited planet when populated planets bring you in on autopilot?" All right, so well, we obviously showed the procedural tech at the end of last year. Um the plan isn't really to have uh you go in on autopilot anymore. So the plan is uh whether it's a populated or unpopulated planet, if you're landing in a landing zone, those ones would tend to be controlled because we, you know, like just in real life, it's like you can't just fly into New York's airspace. I mean, they just don't let you do that right now. So, um, what we would do is we would have like landing tunnels basically. So you would fly down from space to the surface of it and then there'll be sort of like a tunnel entrance uh you know a virtual

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    tunnel basically that would say okay this is the designated lane that you can approach in and then we need you to land on pad 18 and uh so you communicate with the you know control center for that landing area and they say yeah go ahead go and land and then you'll fly down. So as long as you fly inside the bounds of the tunnel and bring it down on the pad great. the moment you would deviate outside it, then the sort of like security flight control system takes over your ship and then auto lands it for you um to you know basically prevent you know players doing you know 911 stuff which is like flying into buildings or you know trying to just grief other players. So that will tend to be on the the uh populated environments and then in general on the other areas like just you know if you're landing down on a planet you know like a whatever a forest planet or something

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    you know if it's if it's all our sort of procedurally generated stuff with small areas of interest then you know that's kind of open to land where you want to land and that's actually one of the things we're the most excited by. We're going to we're going to you know not necessarily have like this huge you know 400 billion star systems. That's why we're sort of purposely keeping ourselves into a reasonable amount of star systems, although you know, hundreds is quite a lot. Uh, but we're, you know, we're going to have more going on on the planets. And so, one of the cool things with the procedural stuff, uh, you know, which we're already working on, which is far more than what we've showed is, you know, having a planet that has, you know, crisis level fidelity of, uh, you know, vegetation and details and we'll have some, you know, wildlife and stuff. So there'll be places to go down and there'll be an opportunity to to you know do things like uh you know collecting you know

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    mining minerals or uh you know hunting w you know alien animals for their skins that you could sell somewhere else or uh you know taking supplies to an uh you know a small expedition outpost. So, I think there's going to be lots of sort of immersion gameplay that we're going to have and we're going to put up points of interest or areas that will sort of be mostly procedural in created. So, the designer will sort of basically sort of work with the the world with the procedural tech to create something that he likes and then sort of set some rules for it and that will sort of determine a lot of kind of the things you could do on it. And I think there's just going to be a lot of opportunity. So, uh, it's pretty exciting and, uh, you know, that's we'll be updating you, uh, as this year goes on on that. But, um, yeah. Cool. All right. Next question

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    comes from Lego Nick 2000 who's asking, "I was wondering in if in the future you have plans to reward subscribers in more ways." Yes. So, we're actively trying to figure out um how we can reward subscribers more because obviously we really appreciate the fact that you guys are supporting us doing uh, you know, all the community content that we do. you know, I think uh we're going to, you know, play around with things like wreck, um, you know, maybe different loanerships, and we're also thinking that as a subscriber is going to maybe, uh, you know, have some way that you, um, you know, pass into the, you know, the actual game itself. So, you know, I think there's this discussion of the ICC stellar surveyor organization and, um, you know, we're still working on that. So, uh, you know, stay tuned. I'm sure um you know Ben will have updates on what we're going to do with the

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    subscribers. Um I think we have a patch that we're working on for this surveyor organization and um don't worry we we we got your backs. We we much appreciate what you're doing. Okay, next question comes from Shrike who asks, "As additional features, functionality, and game mechanics come online, the need for an updated game manual becomes more important, especially as we bring new backers on board. Will we be seeing more updates to the downloadable PDF manual? Yes, absolutely we are. We're actually working on the manual right now for um the sort of mini PU 2.0 experience. In addition to that, um you know, the current experience is not great for a new player at all. Um you know, we partly are dealing with the you know, the downside of having such a big team. So, you know, you've got a team in this location's working on this feature, a

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    team in this location working on this feature, a team working on this location working on this other feature. And a lot of times like, oh, I just need uh what am I going to do for, you know, activating autopilot? Oh, what am I going to do for going to cruise? And so, you know, at the time developers like, oh, just this key is not used. Let's use this key. Uh, but there hasn't been a kind of uh, you know, overall um, you know, 10,000 foot view of that. Uh, and that's something that we've been wanting, planning, meaning to do. Everyone's just been so busy with stuff. But, um, you know, with the release of 2.0, I feel it's very important to increase, uh, to improve the UX experience greatly. So, I, you know, as you get into the game, it should be, uh, you know, if you don't know much about it, it should help you learn how to fly your ship, you know. So, you know, and, and also, as you upgrade your ships, they could get more and more

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    complicated. So like the basic Aurora should not have all the features in terms of tweaking your IFCS or doing as much targeting or fidelity stuff that like a dedicated, you know, like combat uh fighter ship like a Hornet or a Saber Gladius would necessarily do. And so, you know, I think one of the big keys is to have that gradation of like, you know, complexity in avionics, complexity in weapon systems that, you know, come with the, you know, come with the components and the whole system we've got. And you start out, you first get into the game, you know, it's fun. You can fly around. It's pretty easy. It's easy to pick up. You know how to play an FPS game, so you know how to move around. And then you go, "Oh, you know what? I want to really know more about this." And you can sort of turn on like the advanced mode. Um, you know, just like on, you know, anything you do on your, you know, dialog box on, you know, most software you use, there's like the

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    the basic simple use and the advanced mode. So, we'll sort of have versions of that. And you'll also want to be upgrading. So like you know the base starter Aurora will probably have you know a a sort of simple avionics package but you know maybe the Legionnaire has you know a more complicated one with you know the advanced mode that allows you to do more tweaking like you can do right now. So we want to make that experience better. We want to unify the controls. You know you don't want to go from FPS to EVA to flying a ship and you know strafing left and right on the keyboard all different keys. It's that's not it should be consistent. Um, so we're making a a a big push to sort of improve the UX and and the whole So, you know, you should just feel like, okay, yeah, I go left and right, same keys no matter which mode I'm in. Uh, and uh, so we we're trying to do that as an overall pass, make the experience better, have

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    sort of an a sort of uh, you know, I don't know, you're kind of bitching Betty, you know, hey, do you want to, you know, do you want me to walk you through the flight controls, sir, when you first get into the ship as a as a new player? Um, so all those things I think will help out a lot in addition to the manual we're doing. Uh, it's pretty important for us. I think we've gotten to the point now where all these systems together and we need to unify the user experience. We've got to make it less complicated for the people first beginning to play and we still need to keep all the uh, you know, detail and complexity in for the experts, right? And that's actually kind of that's a great game learning uh, you know, curve. People say it all the time, but it's like, you know, simple to learn, difficult to master, right? So, it's get in, have fun, but then you want to push it. You want to be a better combat

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    pilot, you want to be a better racer. Well, you know, you know, pull off the you know, pull off the training wheels and start turning the knobs. And so, we're we're we're going to be focusing on that. That's a high priority for me in the early part of this year. Next questions comes from Banjo who asks, "Will the procedurally generated environments be the same for everyone or will the system generate entirely new terrain each time we visit a world?" Uh, no, they'll be the same for everyone. So, the the the key about procedurally generation, procedural generation is it's deterministic. So, you start with a seed or a number of seeds um which are just generally numbers. Then those numbers drive all the formulas that would create the terrain, the oceans, the forests, all the rest of the stuff. And the beauty of that system means that

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    uh as long as all the players share the same seed, which they will, they can dynamically generate that world that will be identical on their machine to someone else's machine or on the server. And and that's basically, you know, that's the rule set of how procedural generation works. uh and it's if you can think about it, it's almost a uh you know incredibly efficient compression algorithm. You know, say maybe five numbers can generate a you know this huge world with all this detail on it. Um but that's definitely how No Man's Sky works. It's definitely how Elite works. It's definitely how um you know Infinity Battlescape works and it is the way. So it you know the world when you visit the world it will always look the same. So the procedural generation is just how the world was created um from a small um subset of variables. Um but it will always after those variables are

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    established look the same uh you know other than uh changes that are enacted on it by a player. So like if someone like is mining somewhere and we're taking away part of the rocks then that would be a delta on the actual base procedural planet uh which the delta would have to be shared to uh the other players. So, uh, we're longer term planning to do that, but I think in the shorter term, we probably wouldn't have players being able to do too much modification of the procedural planets, um, just because you don't want to be carrying too much data around. Uh, okay. Next question comes from Lach Ostri, who asks, "Will a starfare's refueling mechanic come online when the ship is flyable or is this a feature that is planned for further down the line?" So, no, we're actually um that is one of the key things we would like to get

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    working when the star becomes viable is to allow you to refuel. We really want to sort of push again, you know, we talked about these different game mechanics. We've got like parts of it in but not all of it in. So, we do consume fuel when we fly around. We consume fuel for quantum drive. Uh and we have these cryastro stations which right now just sort of give you free stuff. And obviously once you can work earn UEC or alpha UEC in our sort of SE alpha, uh we're not going to have things be free. You know, we're going to have shops where you can buy weapons. We're going to, you know, you got to go restock your ammunition or your missiles. Uh or you want to pay for the repair and then we're going to have missions that you can earn some stuff so you can afford you can do that. So you can upgrade your ship, you can fix it, you can do all these other things. Um and refueling's, you know, another one of these things. So we don't really want to have a million cryastro stations around. It's

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    kind of a bit silly. This would be a few, but yeah, we want players to fly around with their starfires and they can refuel other people and we also want to be able to sort of collect the fuel that they would use. So, those mechanics uh are, you know, we are actively working on those to have them uh be part of, you know, just like when we had EMP uh debut with the Warlock, we want to be debuting the refueling with the Starfer. I mean, uh this month we're going to put the Starfer in the hanger. still uh you know still a little bit of ways off from flying it because it's such a big ship. There's um you know other things that come in with that. Um but we are working on having all that stuff up and running for that. All right. So there you go. Uh that is this 10 for the chairman and uh thank you all. Uh you know welcome to 2016. I think this is going to be a great year. Um I you know loads of cool

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    stuff uh is in process and happening and I sort of feel like we're you know I can see a very distant light at the end of the tunnel. Um and um anyway I'm looking forward to it and uh let's get the show on the road and I will probably speak to you in a couple of weeks time because uh I'm uh you know as I said in the UK right now. This is just uh past me talking to uh future you and um I will talk to you in a few weeks and have a great time. Bye. Hey guys, thanks for watching um Temp for the Chairman. Uh if you guys would like to uh see more episodes, go here. If you guys would like to

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    subscribe to our 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 Round the Verse, go here please. And I will see you in the verse. This video made possible by the ICC stellar surveyors and subscribers like you.