Star Citizen: Reverse the Verse LIVE - Refueling, Repairing & Rearming

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

1. 00:00:11

   Greetings citizens and welcome to another episode of Reverse the Verse Live, the only weekly Star Citizen live stream where we take questions live from the Star Citizen community and pose them directly to our developers. Usually at times that require me to wake up at 5:00 in the morning. I'm your host, content manager Jared Huckaby. On the show this week, we have designers John Crew and Will Maiden from our Foundry 42 UK studio to discuss all things related to our recently revealed Aegis Vulcan concept ship, the multi-profession starter ship that will allow players to begin their careers in repairing, refueling, and re-arming. But before we get to that, let's go ahead and take a look at our week in review. Last Friday we had lead systems designer Dan Truffin and live game director Todd Papy with us to discuss gameplay systems and AI in the persistent universe. It

2. 00:00:59

   was a terrific show with a load of information about our intentions and early concepts for gameplay systems like mining, uh salvaging, and more. If you haven't checked it out, it's available now on YouTube. Monday saw the release of another episode of Calling All Devs. This time focused on persistence, uh scanning, multiple character slots, the Banu Merchantman, and how we communicate with our community. As always, you can submit your questions for consideration each and every week up on the thread up on Spectrum and and vote for the ones that you want to see addressed most. It's a process that benefits the the more people that are involved, so uh you know, let's get more people involved, shall we? Thumbs up. Tuesday was lore day with another entry in our Showdown series featuring a debate focused on the controversial

3. 00:01:47

   legacy of former Aegis Dynamics CEO Hanna Chan. Seriously? Aegis Dynamics again? I swear, it's like the It's like the last 20 lore posts have been about Aegis Dynamics. I mean, come on. Think about it. Hana Chan does She doesn't even look like she works for Aegis Dynamics. She's got angles and she's green. She looks more like an Anvil Aerospace CEO. When are we going to get another Crusader Industries CEO, huh? Thursday is ATV day, and this week saw a a project update on Squadron 42 and the in-depth look at what we affectionately refer to as the living Idris, where we explored the work going into making the

4. 00:02:35

   Idris a living, breathing world unto its own. It's a fantastic look at one of the many aspects of Star Citizen development that will set it apart from other single-player games on the market. And uh my efforts to convince someone to include a a lowly ensign that's constantly looking for his keys all day, every day continues, if unsuccessful up until now. But, I am undeterred. Also on Thursday, we launched our first concept ship of 2018, the Aegis Vulcan. Probably a ship I've got more personal attachment to than any other in our collection of 115 that we revealed so far. This ship will be will be available for an extended pledge period over the next 5 weeks, and when we return, we'll be sitting down with some of the designers involved in the development of the ship and its relevant game systems to answer your questions live. So, stay

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   tuned. We'll be right back. Ooh. That was a video and music provided by

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   Utho Riley. Utho Riley, a well well-known music composer, but he also did the video stuff with the cool I don't know what they're called where you take the still images and make them motion graphics. I don't know. I thought it was cool. So, I put it in there and I hope you liked it. All right, on this week's show we're talking Aegis Vulcan and all things repairing, refueling, and rearming. And joining us on the show this week, two designers from Foundry 42 UK, John Crew and Will Maiden. How you guys doing? Hello. Hey, how's it going? Not too bad, thanks. How are you? Good. Thanks for being on the show. John, of course, this isn't your first time on the new Reverse the Verse. Well, thank you for coming back. Will Maiden, welcome aboard. Thank you. Nice to be here. All right. So, the yesterday we revealed the the full pledge promotion for the for the Aegis Vulcan, our new repairing,

7. 00:07:36

   refueling, rearming ship. We started also started collecting questions on Spectrum from our backers. Where where and people voted up which questions they wanted us to address most. So, that's what we're doing on this show. We are taking your questions and we are answering them to the best of our ability and we are going to jump right into it with the first question that was in that thread. This was the most voted up question in the thread over the course of the week. It says, "Will the Vulcan be able to repair itself and in addition, will the drones be able to repair each other?" Yeah? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think the one of the great things about the the Vulcan is like you can repair a whole bunch of stuff, including itself. The the repair system um using the drones they the drones repair. So, if you've got a broken drone or a broken ship or a

8. 00:08:24

   broken uh yeah, vehicle. Um go up to it. Um shoot it with your kind of we've got a kind of repair uh attachment to them and then yeah, you can surface repair. Obviously, it depends on the extent of the damage, but Yeah, there's not going to be like some random line of code in there saying, "Don't allow healing your own ship." That's that's not what it's about. It's it can do anything within its capabilities. Right. Uh what what can we say now about how repairing works in general? Like like like uh so, the drones we we've seen there in the uh some of the concept images, you know, the drones go out, they they seem to circle the you whatever the target of their repairs are. Uh what happens once the drones get there? How does that process work? You've got kind of Well, there's a few different ways you can repair a ship.

9. 00:09:11

   Obviously, if it's taken if it's got a broken engine or something like that, you can go up to that engine and actually either replace it out or or or repair that particular piece of the ship. But also, there's hull repair um and and one of the system we've got in place or that's coming um this kind of synthesis of of metals and materials to create um these kind of compounds that hulls will be structured out of. So, you can through uh through mining or through other forms of collection or purchasing from from uh stores, you can collect these uh these metals. And then, when you send a drone over, um you can apply that as a as a mixture essentially of kind of kind of spot rep fixing uh like essentially spraying on

10. 00:10:00

    um this kind of fixer liquid metal that will kind of seal up the hull and and make it safe again to to fly. Gotcha. So, when we're talking about repairing, we're talking about uh hull repairing as opposed to uh the repairing of individual components inside the ship? Right. But it But it like if you were a repair crew, it's kind of what's what's the damage? What What can I What can I fix? So, there's you know, if you're if you're the same way that if you got a broke a wheel or something on the on the side of the the the motorway or the highway or whatever, um you pull over, I need I need to get this repaired. And some things you can repair on site, and sometimes you someone come over and say, "Oh, I have a spare tire. I got a a new battery." And they can bring replacement parts, or they can Oh, yeah, that'll just need a dinging out. And sometimes you can you

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    can fix a a broken part there on the side of the road. Or sometimes you just need patching up a tire. Like whatever the like the severity of the problem will dictate whether or not Gotcha. So, if you're the patch So, if you're the pilot of a of a Vulcan, you use the drones to repair the hull, and then you know, you you have a you you might need a a supply of a of replacement components, the the spare tires. And that's the kind of thing like if you get a um service beacon of hey, I'm I'm I'm in trouble here. I need replacement parts. Then that's something that kind of a oh, I've got one of those with me. I can come straight out. Or okay, give me, you know, 20 minutes. I'll go pick up some replacement parts, and I'll put that on your bill kind of thing. So, it's that kind of go fetch if you've not got it. Um as as as the ship can carry it, it's the right size to carry it, then they can come and bring that out to you and this is all part of the service.

12. 00:11:35

    Yeah, that's sort of why that cargo bay is there in the back. It's It's for storing cargo, but it can also be there for storing all the the spare parts that you might decide to specialize in coolers and just fill it full of coolers and people just if you're in a particularly hot environment and then your cooler is getting worn out because it's hot and they they're constantly hitting their overheat threshold and degrading quicker than expected, then you're there giving these good Well, not giving them away, but It's not good not not good business. Uh but you're there on site knowing that this trending behavior is going to repeat itself, so you can maximize that. Got you. All right. So, we are of course taking questions from the live chat, guys, if you're watching this live. If you're

13. 00:12:22

    watching it the replay on YouTube, sorry. Where are you? Yeah, where are you? Uh we are live on Twitch. We're taking questions from two places. Uh live in the Twitch chat and also live in our Spectrum chat. You can preface your question with the word question in capital letters surrounded by brackets. That's going to help our community managers pull them out from all the regular conversations going on. Uh from the the right The first question from the live chat was ri- right off the bat, can the Vulcan repair itself? Which we just covered. Uh the next question uh is regarding the rearming mechanic. Uh does this mean you have to buy all kinds of different ammunition types or is there some kind of generic ammo or like 3D printing filament that you use uh in the rearming process? So, at the moment, the weapons use uh bespoke ammo.

14. 00:13:12

    For the ballistic weapons, use bespoke ammo. There's nothing stopping multiple weapons currently using the same ammo type. I think there there are a few that do it already. Um but the ammo boxes on those weapons are very very small and there's not actually a a huge amount of variation in the ammo there at the moment. So, currently, yeah, you probably would need to buy a small pool of it. It's not something we really talked about 3D printing ammo. No. Certainly not on site, but it's it's something that could happen in the future. Specifically like um I think we've talked about in the past smart ammo for Yeah. weapons. So, ballistic weapons, they the ammunition is

15. 00:14:00

    smart. By default, it's dumb. It's not programmed to do anything, but the weapons themselves can preset their behavior to perhaps make it more incendiary, make it more armor piercing. Uh so, you might be able to in the future preload that. So, rather than the weapon doing that itself, it can be the Vulcan comes along with I've got 20,000 rounds worth of armor piercing ammo that or do you want 20,000 rounds of incendiary? I can do it here and now for you. Okay. So, it sounds like, you know, while the Vulcan can do repairing, rearming, and refueling, as a pilot of Vulcan, you're going to want to make some some smart choices about about what you bring with you in order to to do one of these three professions. Is that right?

16. 00:14:48

    Yeah. Yeah, it's not a it's not a flying factory. It's a it's a support ship that will come out and it'll bring with it the fuel and the the parts um and the kind of the replacement whole um compounds that you're going to need. Obviously, if you're smart about it and you kind of you know what's in demand, what kind of things are big right now, you might think, "Oh, the common weapons, let's have a couple of those on site at all times because someone's always going to want some extra missiles or something and these are the common missiles that this size is that we'll want." Um anything that's kind of specialist parts, then you may okay, give me a minute. I'll go and have to pick that up from a I've got I know a guy that can that can acquire these kind of things, so. You're kind of you're knowing where you can pick up certain bits and where you're going to get a discount and

17. 00:15:34

    things like that, like um, it's probably going to be this kind of unspoken second side of the career of kind of where's where's where are the good hardware stores around here? Where can I get engine parts for cheap kind of thing? Yeah, there's sort of multiple ways you can play you can be the guy that's got a bit of everything, can react to any situation. You're out in space waiting for the call. Or you could be the guy that's I keep my cargo bay empty of everything until I get a call. And I'm lurking near a truck stop or a station and I can get exactly what they want. It might take me a bit longer to get there, Mhm. but they get exactly what they want versus quick response and well, this this is the only power plant I've got, so do you want power or do you don't want power?

18. 00:16:20

    Mhm. And I think it's like it's it's cool that as we as we're talking about the repair and the rearming, um, for for ships, we're also looking at the the salvage side of things. I'm not to divert the conversation, but the when we get to a point where you'll find a derelict and you're stripping it for parts and like, oh, this is this is good and all of a sudden other players become second hand dealers and, you know, one careful owner had this shield generator, um, but they crash into a rock. So, this is still good. And you can sell between the players and sell that kind of picking up things at a discount from from local merchants rather than going to stores kind of things, like the player driven economy from that side is is something that could become huge then where it's like, oh, I know a guy that can get me some I got the extra ammo. I've

19. 00:17:08

    got these extra parts that or I've stripped the hull of another ship, so I've got all this extra metals that I can use to we just apply it to a new ship, and so Right. As a follow-up to the question about the ammo, uh does that extend to missiles and torpedoes? Can the Can the Vulcan uh rearm missiles and torpedoes? Yes, but there's obviously a limitation on the size. Like, it it's got to fit in there for you to carry it. It's You're not going to be uh strapping a Javelin torpedo like half in the back of it with the back ramp open 10 m of torpedoes sticking out the back. Just strap it to the roof. Not very safe. No. Um But yeah, stuff that will fit in that can be put in there. Okay. I I I I know that there were there are people that will try to strap size 10 torpedoes

20. 00:17:56

    to the top of the Vulcan, though. Those 12 There's people that will strap 12 Javelins. Oh. Oh, okay. I I want to do it even more now. All right. Uh going Moving on to refueling, uh is the Vulcan intended to collect fuel from gas giants like the Starfarer, or will it just provide refueling using fuel from its tanks? It's Certainly in the initial design for it, it's that's not a a thing you you It has the big external tank underneath. That's got That's sort of segregated into two tanks. So, it has a an external quantum fuel tank and external hydrogen fuel tank. So, you fill up from a provider of fuel rather than collecting it yourself. And then, it's up to you to give that to uh players like the Starfarer. You can set

21. 00:18:43

    your prices for it. So, if you want to sell at a discount to incentivize business, up to you, but chances are the person The reason you'll come to someone is someone's in need of something desperately. So, you've sort of got the advice there. So, Yeah, it's Sorry, it's not a It's It's not a factory to produce this stuff. It It's a kind of a a go-between of I can get you that stuff. I can I will help you out, and I'll get you on the on the move again, rather than I I can create infinite fuel or whatever. And which is which is why I know I some some folks were concerned that we rendered their Starfarers obsolete, you know, with the with the addition of this. Obviously not. You know, there's there's a reason we refer to this as the profession starter ship. You know, that this this is this is for your first forays into refueling uh and then and

22. 00:19:33

    then you're supposed to work your way up to a to a to a Starfarer cuz a Starfarer is a much bigger, you know, broader and probably more expensive to maintain and operate ship, I would imagine. If you look at the the size of the drone compared to just one of the fuel pods on the back of the Starfarer, it's huge difference in volume. And then the Starfarer has six of those. So, it's like turning up with They're not messing around, is it? Turning up with a little jerrycan of fuel to get you going versus turning up with a fuel truck. I'll I'll fuel you completely, mate. Now, to that end, while the Vulcan is not going to put Starfarers out of business, why would somebody want to own and operate a Vulcan as opposed to a Starfarer? It's sort of flexibility, really, and variety. Um

23. 00:20:22

    if you're a Starfarer owner and someone who's interested in running it, you clearly got a heavy passion for refueling and helping that out, but that's what you you do. There's you get a mission for something else and it's not really involving fueling, then well, That's the other thing like as well, you've got to hedge your bets then that that there's going to be a lot of people that need to refuel, whereas rearming is very common and someone's going to take damage. You know, I've I've played the game for more than 2 minutes. People shoot each other a lot, so they're going to need new ammo and they're going to need a patch job. So, that kind of thing of like I can I can top you up on fuel, I can I can top you up on ammo, I can patch that hole in the hull, that kind of thing. Like

24. 00:21:10

    people aren't going to not necessarily just want that one thing, the specialization that the the Starfarer provides. The the Vulcan has got everything covered. Yeah. Yeah. Every every time you play, you could be doing a a different ratio of uh these three things. Um you can always ignore all those if you want and just do it as a 12 SCU cargo ship, which is not the best in the world, but it allows you to do that. So, you've got I don't want to say free reign, uh but You do have that flexibility. the flexibility to cliche play it your way. Yeah, I think that's one that's one that's going to be one of the hallmarks of the Vulcan. The the gist that it's flexibility and the the variety of things that you can do. I know uh one of the most one of the common phrases

25. 00:21:57

    one that's been applied to me a lot of times in my life is jack-of-all-trades and master of none. You know, master of none doesn't mean you're not good at something. It doesn't even mean that you're not great. It means you're not the master at something. The Vulcan Would you Would you consider the Vulcan a a capable uh refueling, repairing, and rearming ship? Totally. Yeah. Four drones as well. So, you got you can get a lot done. You can do four separate ships at the same time, or you could do one ship four times in a go. So, rather than just being that little top up, it could be all Here you go. Four sequential refills. You've got enough to get out of atmosphere again for all those people that have uh gone down to a planet. Mhm. Yeah. Hugging afterburner and now cannot get back up again. Here's enough to get you out to a fuel station and maybe a bit more

26. 00:22:45

    back home as well. And a lot of times as well, like you call out a Starfarer and like the cost of that of a of a big ship making all that leap to come to you and he's like, "I just needed enough to get home. I just needed enough to get to a station and then I'll sort myself out from there." Like they don't necessarily want the works. They just want enough to get me out of this pickle. Yeah. Okay. All right. Uh question from the live chat as a follow-up to the the arming and stuff. Uh will there be a physicality to these various processes and activity? I think they're talking about like will you have to move stuff from the hold and attach it to the drone before you send the drone out or will the drone just pull stuff from the hold and then before it goes out? So, initially it's probably not going to be very tactile or hands-on like that. It will

27. 00:23:33

    go towards that as time goes on, but it will be uh the the initial loop will be controlling that drone. Like you go to the support station to control the drone. You pick what you're going to do with it. If you will rearm, repair. Uh the drone can only do one function at a time without redocking. So, you set it in repair mode. You manually fly it over to the thing you're going to repair. It's not a case of oh, there's a ship next to me. Drone go repair that and it tickles and you you've got to go fly yourself, do the repair yourself from that station. Uh same for refueling, rearming. Uh refueling, obviously there is going to be a point on the ship it has to lock on to to transfer and the fuel is on the ship itself. So, there's a physical connection.

28. 00:24:22

    Uh the rearming and sort of the replacing components is a bit TBD at the moment. There's obviously there's physical ammo boxes and physical components. It's working out how we want to transition the stores you have to that drone, to the ship. Mhm. A lot of ship items that are broken potentially are inside and so that whole like we don't necessarily want drones to then be flying through corridor kind of thing. So, Yeah, you don't want to The actual the the logistics of how do we get it from my cargo uh hold over to there is still All right. And you don't want to be walking down your retaliator hallway. Make a hole. This just drone just comes flying down it with a power plant inside. All right. Uh we talked a bit about the comparisons between the Vulcan and the Starfarer. Let's talk about the Vulcan compared to the uh Crucible.

29. 00:25:11

    Now, one of the big the Crucible is our previous repair ship. Uh the biggest difference obviously is the Crucible has a hangar bay. That that that can basically, you know, hold a ship up to a up to a Hornet at the at the Um What what else separates the Vulcan from the Crucible? Again, it's the the scale of it. It's um The Vulcan's great for those little small repairs. Um small to medium repairs. If you've got a uh I don't know, a Caterpillar and half the front's missing. Uh that's something the Vulcan's not going to be able to manufacture and replace it with, whereas the Crucible has got its remote arms. It's got the on-board facilities to do that. Um It's sort of the economy of scale. Um

30. 00:26:02

    You saw in the concept images that the Vulcan's hanging around a Javelin doing small repairs, but if that Javelin's taken huge damage, that's where the Crucible comes in. And again, the same pros and cons. Uh with the Starfarer, if you've got a Crucible I'm doing repair. It's it's That's what I've chosen to do. So, it's like the Crucible's like a flying space like it's like a flying something. mechanics warehouse, really. Right, okay. And the Crucible has actually got a little little bit bigger uh than it was cuz the Hornet's got bigger. And so Oh okay, okay. And uh So, yeah, the has that enclosed workspace where you can put an entire ship in. Mhm. Close the doors. Repair it all, replace everything. Right. Um

31. 00:26:49

    And if it's too big to go in there, then you're alongside doing the big big repairs. Got you. So, again, just like it is with the with the Starfarer, the Vulcan is meant to be your your starting point for these professions that allows you to explore multiple professions at once. It allows you to operate uh uh I don't want to say cheaper uh less expensively. It let let let you operate, you know, these professions less expensively with and with a lower threshold of commitment than operating a Crucible uh Crucible or a Starfarer would. But, when you decide, "Hey, okay, I really do like repair. I really do like, you know, refueling what not." Uh your upgrade paths are to Starfarer or to the Crucible. Yeah, you're going to need a big crew. You're going to need to pay them. Like when you get the money for the job. So,

32. 00:27:37

    like the costs, like you say, to operate a ship like that where it's every heavy hand is pulling together. Like you're expecting big payday. And so, you don't get called out for the smaller jobs. And um you know. Yeah, they're they're not exclusive options, either. You I can see them like an org having a mixture of there's a dedicated repair org out there. Uh you call for help. My my ship's damaged. They're probably going to send a Vulcan first because the cost involved of getting a Crucible out there. The Vulcan will be there or do what it can. Like patch up the perhaps the the whole breaches and holes. Mhm. Repair some of the basic components. But, if if after that, everything's safe, secure, the atmosphere is rebuilding, but it's it's beyond the Vulcan's capabilities, then you've got the Crucible that can come

33. 00:28:25

    out and finish the job. And then you've got, you know, in in uh hot zones, you know, battle battle battle conditions, like the the the Vulcan's going to have far greater uh maneuverability. Um what can we what can we talk about how the how the Vulcan will operate in hot zones? I know in the in the promotional page, uh we mention it's it's armor and it can it can it can take a it can take a hit. Uh I think it punches above its weight class. I'm not certain. It does not crack. punch above its punches exactly at its weight class. Tough nut to crack, I heard. Tough nut to crack. That's a let's talk let's talk a little bit about how we see the Vulcan operating in situ as it were like like in hot zones. Yeah, obviously it's way smaller than a Crucible or Starfarer. Uh it's faster, more maneuverable. Um

34. 00:29:14

    and for its size it is definitely uh more armored than uh say a Cutlass, which is sort of roughly in that size bracket. It's because it's it's going to be hanging around doing stuff. It does have the turrets on there to do defense. Um it needs to absorb those natural hits that are going to be in there. Whereas if you came in storming in a Crucible, as soon as you get anywhere near it, it's this huge bulk of a ship. Everything's just going to be drawn to that. Whereas Vulcan sneaks makes itself less of a target. Yeah, sneak sneaking's not the right word. It's uh It's a stealth ship. It's not a stealth ship. measure. It's not a stealth fighter. It's not a space It's going to be able to get

35. 00:30:01

    It's going to be able to get into and out of places uh far easier than the Starfarer or the Which is which could be super handy when it's an asteroid field or something like that. Like you you really don't want to be flying a a Crucible through. The same for going down to planet side. The the fuel cost of and the degrad- degradation on your components from doing multiple entries in big ships, yeah. It's going to take its toll if you've called out repair for your M50 that's crashed on Daymar or something like that, you probably don't want to pay the repair bill for a Crucible to come and do that. You want something more in your price range. And now uh one the things we we've been re- comparing the Vulcan to the the the tow truck here in in America

36. 00:30:49

    it's AAA. I don't What do you I don't know what what you guys call roadside service in in UK? The two companies are the the AA and the RAC. Okay. so we compared we compared it to the term tow truck. Can the Vulcan actually tow? I mean does it have tractor beams that can can it can it tow another ship? Is that is that a Is that a function of the Vulcan? I don't think it is. No, there's there's no um designed or uh space for a spare utility mount for a a tractor beam to to drag anything with it. I'm sure some enterprising people will will find a way to perhaps not tow but nudge things around. let's talk about the drones. Are these the same drones that are that that We've

37. 00:31:37

    saw the couple ships with drones. The Reclaimer supposed to have drones. I think even the Carrick has drones. Are these the same drones that that that are in the Reclaimer or the Carrick? Are they different drones? Are they specialized repair refuel rearm drones? Uh they're specialized that they're all done by the same company. Saga data systems. Yeah. the Bard. Not William Shakespeare. William what's that? Yeah. Uh I The So they do look similar but they do perform different functions. Like the Reclaimer ones are there for salvage cutting stuff up and which is not useful for a repair ship. No. Now Well, indirectly. Got to cut out the bad. You got to cut

38. 00:32:25

    off the the rotten flesh. Okay. One of the questions that was in the that was in the spectrum thread and voted up if the if the drones are different, can they be swapped? Can we take the salvage drones from the Reclaimer and put them in the Vulcan? Can we take the refueling, repairing, rearming drones and put them on the Reclaimer? If they're made from the same manufacturer. I would imagine you can, but the the usability of them takes a severe dent. Like naturally the the Vulcan has the sort of the ability to pipe fuel into it. So, the Reclaimer doesn't have that. So, you could probably take the salvage drone out the Reclaimer and put it in Vulcan. And it I mean it's all self-contained, so it's

39. 00:33:12

    it's fine. Mhm. Um they can carry stuff fine, but some of the more specialized functions Yeah. to struggle with. you've got a fuel line from the tank underneath to the drone, so you can fuel the drone up before sending it out. You could potentially have a a salvage drone that takes fuel from wrecked ships and brings it back and then tops back up your tank. you could potentially see a way where you would have a salvage drone useful as as one of the four. Interesting. So, but yeah, but but not like if you put if you put a like if it if you have cargo drones on some ships, or if you have other types of drones, like well, I have no need of a repair drone because I can't send fuel to it and I can't put metals into it kind of thing. Like you're limiting yourself.

40. 00:33:58

    Yeah. But if if yeah, the option could still be there potentially. Right. Uh simultaneous questions from the live chat and from the and from the thread here where folks were voting. Uh a lot a lot of a lot of people wanted to know how many ships can we repair? I mean obviously it's it's hard to sit there and say, "Oh, four four ships." And then you have to go back. But if we if if with a with a full with with with with a full cargo capacity of of materials and four working drones, Uh, how long how how many ships do we do we expect the Vulcan to be able to refuel or repair or rearm before you have to go back in and resupply yourself? Depends on the Yeah, depends on the On the damage. Twice as many as half the amount. That's a good one. I like that.

41. 00:34:46

    Yeah, I mean, like you've got a a tank with a capacity. Um, you could be running on empty and you like, I just need enough to get me by. So, you might only need 10% of that tank to get them someone out. Or they may need 50 or they may like we flew too close to the sun, quite literally. We're going to need two new coolers and we're going to need fuel to get us all the way back to Port Olisar and that might be 90% of the tank. So, um, piece of string kind of question. I don't see it being a single ship if that's the sort of loaded question unless that ship has required absolutely everything. Like, I need all your fuel. I need complete repair as much as you can. My ammo is all out. Uh, that's probably a an edge case thing, but Giant crew ship. case. Never had to come out and repair

42. 00:35:34

    me. Oh, really? I could you I could I'll probably take up everything. I'm not going to play that. Well, like, I mean, the downside like, I don't know if any of it is downside, someone buys all of your stock. I'll take everything. All of the metals, all of your spare parts, I'll take all the fuel. You're like, "Oh, I just I just loaded this up." And it's like, "But you're going to get paid." So, Yeah, it's the same amount of money. Well, it could be more. You could give them more. You could give them increasing your prices as you get. You're like, "Oh, you need everything?" "Oh, we'll have to change this." It's like a Girl Scout cookies. You sell them all in one go. Brilliant. Saves saves me a day pedaling. Yeah. Cookies. Ultimately, I think it's probably the kind of thing that gets figured out through game balance, you know? When the day comes and the Vulcan gets in gets introduced in the game, whatever

43. 00:36:21

    values it has on that day that it gets introduced will go through the same testing as everything else. So, so however many ships you can repair the day it gets introduced will not necessarily be the same number of ships you can repair a month later after that or a year after that. It's one of those things that's going to come across through game balancing. Yeah, absolutely. Like, I mean, to to speak to that point, we're never going to get to a situation where you empty the entire tank of fuel into a stranded ship and it's not even halfway home. And then you've got to go back and get more fuel and like we're going to make sure that a we will be able to get you home to the nearest space base um from from a ship, so. Like, at the bare minimum, we will you will be able to help someone and get home.

44. 00:37:09

    All right. The next question from the live chat um this is a shady individual. Can the Vulcan drones sabotage, i.e. pretend help, but actually a ship further? How would you us? Like, actually do damage? Just take the missiles back off. Um just come back, take it back off again. But, I mean, the guy is like, "Well, where's my missiles? You promised me missiles." Like, I started with no missiles and you ended up I guess he's like, "I've got 16 missiles. I need four more." And then all of a sudden I've got no missiles and this little cackling robot flying off with your "Get back here." Um I don't think they have I wouldn't have thought we would allow them to have the ability to remove items. Um and I think that goes back to the logistics question of how do we take from our side and give to you

45. 00:37:59

    but not like leave it as an open door. Like, I'm going to turn my back and trust that you're going to put everything in the right place and not take anything from yourself kind of thing. Yeah, I did. Or if that sort of stuff happens, then the whole reporting criminality system in game is a Yeah. Yeah. That guy that was a shady deal. I was thinking more of like the the whole repair drones that come and instead of repairing the hull, they just start stripping more hull away. Yeah, I mean that's the kind of the salvage. If you've swapped it for a salvage drone. You swapped it for a salvage? My god. I mean, essentially though, as soon as you start the way that salvage is again not to divert, but it's applying essentially damage to the to the hull as it scrapes the hull off. So, if you start if you're in a ship and you start taking damage, then that guy's going to get flagged as an enemy. Immediately all cannons fire kind of next, so

46. 00:38:46

    All right, I I I I can already see that the people that are going to try to Someone's going to do it. with all salvage drones like, "Hey, I'm here to help." There's always one person. They start salvaging people. But then people are going to lay in wait. Ah, they're going to lay in wait and play dead, aren't they? And then someone's going to The whole Q ships thing for No, it's not going to It's going to be mayhem. What have we done? Uh next question from the thread, uh is the Vulcan intended to come out this year? Is that a wet question? Sounds like a wet question to me. Yeah. I I we It's not on the 2018 schedule. I think we I think we can safely we can safely share that. At at present at this day at this time, the time that we're talking about this, it's not on the 2018 schedule. So.

47. 00:39:34

    It's up to fair to you guys on Yeah. I already know the answer to that. I don't make the calls. Yeah. Zarathus Zarathus yeah. Yes. Well, I'm I've become the ship info guy. All right. Uh to what extent can the Vulcan be operated by a solo player? As in does the ship need to be actively flown by a pilot while conducting repairs, refueling, rearming? It doesn't need to be actively flown. It really depends on the scenario you're doing it in. The edge of atmosphere where gravity is sort of taking effect, it's probably not the wisest wisest time to leave the pilot seat and start doing stuff, but no, you can you can fly it by yourself, you can park it up, turn around, jump in one of the support stations. Do you have your own stuff? Yeah, I hope you're not getting shot at. Yeah, so

48. 00:40:21

    those the two support stations control the remote turrets and the drones. So, obviously there's four drones, two turrets, only two places to control it from. You've got to make some decisions about what you're going to do at one time. Um if you read the shipyard posts, uh which I highly recommend, The cargo one's excellent. They are. So, yeah. The uh there's a whole page about remote turrets and how we plan to um allow players to essentially give AI control to them. So, if you're a solo player, you probably want to take your computer, take out the blades that come with it by default, stick some remote control ones in there. And so, then those turrets are just automated defense and you can focus on doing uh repair. Hm. Okay. Um I want to go back to to something you

49. 00:41:08

    said a little bit earlier, John. Uh in the ATV yesterday, I believe you mentioned that while the ship has four drones, you can only use two drones at a time because there are two stations. Yes. Uh so, two active control of them. Like, when you stop using them, uh I'm not fully sure on where our drone game play is, but I imagine at the very minimum they're just going to remain in place, but you might be able to do uh leave it on a sort of pre-programmed flying around situation, but uh because they can only do one function, so you you load up them how you want to do. So, you're refueling one now. That's doing refueling. Whilst that's doing that, jump on to the other one, start doing some rearming. All right. So, earlier in this show when you said when we're talking about like like like uh

50. 00:41:55

    how you use your drones, you mentioned you you could either use four drones to repair repair four ships or four drones to repair one ship faster. Did you mean two drones at a time or is there actually a way to utilize all four drones at the same time? You can have all four out at the same time, but only two if you got If you got two people on the two sport stations, then only two can be actively controlled at a time. That's like what I said, four for on one, that's like chain them up, so four in a row doing it. But you said you can you can have one fueling and while it's fueling is like, okay, that is actively fueling. Now let me repair with this one. Yeah, say I'm solo piloting my Vulcan. I go to the sport stations. I program two to be fueling one hydrogen, one quantum, one repair, one rearm.

51. 00:42:44

    I control the hydrogen one first, fly over, dock it on. Whilst that's doing that, I switch to the repair one. Fly it over, start doing the repair. Uh swap to the rearming one. That launches out, grabs a missile, sticks it on. The fuel one's probably done by now, so I'll fly that back and then fly the quantum one back out. So it's like hot seat, you're just jumping on it as as it needs attention and then Yeah. setting it up and then jumping to the next one. If you've got another player, then obviously you can do twice as much. Twice as much. Uh if you don't have a second player, then you can always hire NPCs to do that job for you, although how good they are is Oh, yeah. up to you how much you want to decide to pay them. Okay. That still sound That still sounds like only two drones are out and active at a time, though.

52. 00:43:32

    Uh Am I missing something? I think they can all be out, but only two can be under direct control. So you need to be leaving the other two doing a task. Okay, so so so it is possible to have all four drones out at a time doing something. You're just having active control of two specific ones. Yeah, you can make changes to two at a time. Got you. That's just for this ship. Other ships Oh, yeah, yeah. Other ships may vary. All right. So send a drone out repair, send a drone out repair, send a drone out repair, send a drone out repair. All four are repairing and you're sitting there just waiting for them to come. your money. That's what you do. Glad we got to take yourselves off. So glad we got that cleared up. Um as far as the drones uh in the operation, do both ships have to be stationary? This I I I keep It can only help.

53. 00:44:21

    Well, I mean considering it's drones, considering we're not you know, we're not doing the standard, you know, F-14, you know, refueling, you know, thing with with a with a with a hose. if if you if you were hey, I'm down to 50% fuel and I just want more fuel, can a Vulcan come in while you're both in flight? You since the drones can fly around, can you actually refuel while both ships are moving? Yes, so the drones will have they'll be flyable things, so they will have their own speed limits, so if I wouldn't expect people to be after burning whilst trying to have this little drone catch up to to fuel them. Uh so you you'll be able to do it in motion uh just at a considerate speed to each other. Um for the other actions is that there's nothing stopping you launching your drones and the Vulcan just staying where it is and the drones go off.

54. 00:45:10

    That ship could be flying around still, but it's going to get harder the more that person starts moving around. Interesting. Interesting. Okay. Cool. Let's see um uh another question in the live chat. Uh must uh must the target's shields be down in order for drones to do repairs? That might be a little That might be a little really. Yeah, that's what shields don't stop physical collisions with stuff. Like ramming into stuff. Okay. Uh I believe the law of the shields is they just reduce velocity of objects. Okay. It's like um Like hitting something into water, it all of a sudden it slows down. Yeah. So that's why energy weapons

55. 00:45:57

    sap shields is they they have no mass. Okay. So they they don't go through the shield cuz it's got no mass to to slow down. It just all gets absorbed in. Okay. Which in turn draws down the shields, whereas ballistics go through shields because they've got the mass to carry on. And they go much faster than you ramming stuff. So, a drone going slowly through it should be should be fine. Would it So, I guess a shield wouldn't stop an EVA? No, you you can EVA through those. Okay. So, same principle. Yeah. Okay. Uh can a Vulcan can restore a ship to 100% condition? That kind of goes back to what we're saying before. Depends how damaged the ship is. if it's Like we don't have a full concept of the Hornet. We don't really have this kind of concept of 100% health for a ship.

56. 00:46:45

    Like you have parts that are broken and um We talked about this loosely last time when I was on the verse verse about concept of health and how how it is at the moment of just a numerical value isn't the long-term goal. It's like the collection of the item abilities. its parts. Yeah. Um So, you going back to a 100% health, if how damaged is it? Is it just lightly singed from atmosphere entry? Yeah, sure. Is it just the cockpit of the Hornet but everything else is gone? Probably not. It's That's beyond its capabilities. Yeah, if you've lost a wing, it's not going to help. Um but if you've just burnt the hell out of the wing and you've got Right, wait on. I can fix that. So, it's

57. 00:47:33

    all in in degrees of of how severe the damage. Yeah, if I've got a small hole in the hole, fill it up with the gunge. Mhm. It's secure. Uh will uh will the Vulcan be effective on capital ships? Again, depends on the damage. It's What's the definition of effective? Yeah. Um It it will be able to do stuff on capital ships. it's it's it's a good time to kind of to clarify that whole like to to get into the mindset of it's not just a take three health packs and you're at full health again. It's a it's localized it's physicalized damage that's oh I've burnt off the whole underside of my ship so that means if I enter atmosphere or something I'm going to have a really bad time of it. Yeah. That kind of thing like it's it's specific damage that's been done to a

58. 00:48:22

    ship is is how it's kind of the longest and plan for for Star Citizen's damage model so thinking about in terms of like well I've broken my engines so I literally cannot move and no matter how much you repair the hull the engines are never going to get fixed I'll still never be able to move kind of thing. So it's a it's all the degrees of what broke on a capital ship and we've got the Crucible for right we need a new wing you need a new thing right okay we're going to need to call out the big boys. But if it's a case of we are venting oxygen like Yeah. the bridge has got a big hole in it Hull breach. Yeah exactly then we can ramp's ripped off. Yeah. In in one of our in one of the marketing images we show actually several Vulcans assisting a Javelin. Right I mean you've if you've taken torpedoes through the sides and it's

59. 00:49:10

    just everything's vented and there's hull breaches everywhere they will fix that right up and get you flying again get you back into the fight. Yeah. I do want to mention something about that that image the image with the Javelin. The torpedo tubes at the front of the Javelin with the lights at that angle look like a landing bay. We've seen a lot of questions a lot of does the Javelin now have a forward landing bay that they didn't know about? Those are just the torpedo the lights on the torpedo tubes that we're seeing that image right? Yeah there's I don't know if you can see it in the image but if you follow those lights all the way back sort of into the recess of the Javelin you've got the two huge torpedo launchers right at the back of there there's this really cool, uh, slit window along the whole height of that,

60. 00:49:56

    uh, recess with a little lift in there that goes between the decks. So, you can be at the front of the ship looking out this window while those two torpedo tubes are just lobbing I've not seen this I need to see this in here. It's in game? Yeah, it's I'll I'll load the game up and see it later. Yeah, yeah, it's it's pretty cool. I just wanted to, uh, we we because of the angle that of the image and the and the Vulcan flying towards it to do repairs, it to some it looked like there was a landing bay and the Vulcan was coming in for a landing and stuff like that. That's not a landing bay. That's a torpedo. You could try to load land in the torpedo base and I'm sure somebody will try. Someone's going to do it again. somebody's going to try it. Man, all I want to do in this game is stuff I'm not supposed to do. I'm going to Now I really want to strap a size 12 torpedo to the top of my Vulcan and try to land it inside the

61. 00:50:43

    inside the Javelin torpedo bay. It's like a upscaled Aurora with size 12 torpedo top hat. what happens if what happens if the drones themselves come under fire? What can they do to escape? Is that where the active control of drones come into play or It's sort of similar to if you as a a ship came under fire you sort of get out of there. They don't have weapons, they don't have countermeasures, so their best defense is to get back within range of the Vulcan and then you swap from controlling that drone to go dock back in there, get in back in your hatch. Uh, and once you've programmed it to do that swap over to the turret and start engaging whatever was shooting at your drone. Mhm. Mhm.

62. 00:51:34

    here's the next question from the thread. Are the drones able to operate in atmosphere to support ground vehicles with all with all three roles, repairing, refueling, and rearming? As we go Sure I'll say yeah, yeah, yes. Cool. I think that's the only thing like yeah, anywhere that needs Yeah, they're they're not particularly heavy things. So, that whilst they do have small thrusters on them, they they can still work in atmosphere. The address of that there there's a ton of versatility for the Vulcan right there because the Vulcan's got the you know, with its with its greater maneuverability and everything you know, flying through at it'll probably fly through atmosphere. Once the full atmospheric flight model is in and the you know, the the thruster that you know, the when the when the the V-tol engines come online and then nobody's not people aren't just using maneuvering

63. 00:52:21

    thrusters to hover in atmosphere like they're doing. When all that system comes online, the Vulcan's going to be much more effective in atmosphere than I imagine the uh Starfarer edition. Vehicle items are much smaller than the rest. So, you can fit a lot more in that cargo bay. And from all the stuff I've seen on the forums and Reddit of people going on little expeditions around planets in their rovers and greycats and That's a good shout. Yeah. cyclones at some point. there's going to be they all have components in just like the ships. So, they're going to suffer from the same item degradation and wear. They're going to wear out over time and if you're doing stupid things The amount of people thrashing those Yeah. vehicles around. There's and we you know, we're going to we'll be seeing

64. 00:53:09

    sandstorms and and atmospheric effects like that. That's the harsh realities of frontier life is going to require some thought and support and I think the the Vulcan getting down to planet and lending a hand Yeah. is something that a big weighty huge flying uh factory or fueling station is going to not be interested in especially when Knox is out of fuel. I can't get back to to base camp. That's kind of like Well, they're not going to call Call in the No. Speaks out of the All right. Through uh one more question from the thread where folks are submitting and voting on. It says, "Why, aside from ships being prioritized for Squadron 42, do new ships such as the Vulcan get prioritized over ships that are some cases 5 to 6 years old with no release so far?"

65. 00:53:56

    I wanted to The reason I wanted to ask ask that It's not specific for this. The Vulcan for Wow, I can't say that word. The Vulcan specifically is not getting prioritized over anything else at this time. But, uh this question goes more to why do we do some ships before others? And and that comes to what's available in the persistent universe and the game play systems. I mean, obviously there are there are there are two driving forces between how we prioritize our ships. One is, of course, the needs for Squadron 42. Uh the second one is game play systems in the persistent universe that come online. I know a lot of This This goes to, for instance, the Carrack. A lot of people, you know, "Where's the Carrack? Where's the Carrack? Where's the Carrack?" And the Carrack is a giant exploration, you know, ship designed, you know, for multi-system, you know, travel and exploration. And And those game play elements don't exist in the persistent

66. 00:54:45

    universe right now. So, it would be pretty silly to prioritize the Carrack at this moment given what's available in the persistent universe. Um but, of course, you know, we try to keep We try to keep those things in parity whenever we can. Anyway. Yeah, I mean, we're looking at salvage and repair kind of hand in hand right now. And so, we've got some salvage ships um coming through. And so, we need the game We need the systems to support that. I was like, "Well, we'll be a We need the the flip side of that." So, we need to to more and more now that the the requirements for refueling and repairing and rearming ships out in the field, the need has become Well, we need a ship for this. We need to but not the huge thing. We need to We need to get this game play in and then we can

67. 00:55:32

    balance it and make it work. There's also the the human resource aspect of it as well. And like if for some reason everyone on the ship outside and all the the whole ship team has time allocated for each ship in the schedule. If something happens that throws one of those departments out, either everyone just stops and waits for that department to catch up for it to be finished or they move on to something that can fit in that gap say a two-month period opens up for one of the vehicle art teams because something's happened on a another feature that's required another team to to go on that. you've now got that little two-month gap that maybe a a small newer ship that's been

68. 00:56:19

    uh concepted recently could just nicely fit in there to keep everyone continuously working and stuff. Yep. All right, guys. Well, that about that about wraps it up for today. Uh you made it. Congratulations. Cool. That went so fast. I I know. It Everybody's always like, you know, everybody's always worried about these things. I'm like, "I'll I'll take care of you. I'll take care of you." It just Oh. Just take care of you. Yes, you do. You you you guys make You guys make my job possible. So, thank you so much. Um guys, we're going to take a quick break and uh we'll be right back with our wrap-up. So, uh stay tuned. Well, that about wraps up this week's show. A special thanks to John Crew and Will Maiden for taking the time out of their busy schedules to be here on the show with us this week. Uh some housekeeping before we let you go. The Aegis Vulcan concept ship promotion is

69. 00:57:08

    open now and available for the next several weeks. Additionally, at the end of this show, actually, it's up already right now, we'll be posting our usual Q&A thread up on Spectrum where we collect your questions and post the answers we have for them in the coming weeks. So, if there's anything that we didn't cover here or follow-ups that you guys might have after watching the show, be sure to post them there in that thread and vote for which ones you want to see us address most. Additionally, this Monday brings with it an all new episode of Calling All Devs, this time featuring such discussion topics as weather in space, the darkness of Star Citizen, those damn Avenger and Sabre Raven EMPs, Aegis again? The Polaris and the immediate future of the evil Khartu-al test flight. So, watch that on Monday.

70. 00:57:56

    My personal self-worth is tied up in the views for our shows, so it would make me feel good if you'd watch them. For Reverse The Verse, I'm content manager for global video production Jared Huckaby. We'll see you next week, everybody. Thank you for watching. So, if you want to keep up with the latest and greatest in the Star Citizen and Squadron 42's development, please follow us on our social media channels. See you soon.