10 for the Chairman: Episode 02 (2013.12.13)

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

1. 00:00:00

   [Music] Hi everyone. Uh welcome to uh the uh second uh episode of 10 for the chairman. So uh uh just to recap uh we take 10 questions every week from subscribers who are the uh the incredible generous part of our community that put up money every month that we use for jump point uh for doing our community content increased video stuff which uh you're going to see more and more. This is u part of what we're starting to do in LA now. So thank you all out there the subscribers that are helping us do this. As such we're going to answer 10 questions from subscribers every week. So first question up is from Villa Ovie. When dog fighting module is

2. 00:00:48

   released, do you need to own the ship if you want to fly it? Are you able to test all the ships which have already been made in the game? So the concept with the dog fighting module is you should be able to fly the ships that you have in your hanger um out there in the dog fighting module. Um so generally the answer would be no, you need to own them. Although I will have the caveat that in the very early stage of the dog fighting module, we are not going to have every one of the ships um to the stage that they can actually dog fight. So yes, you can climb in them. You can see them in the hanger, but there's a lot a lot of extra detail that goes into the ships. There's all the different like items, the thrusters, the damage states, the damage models uh that have to be done for the ships, and that just takes a lot of work and effort. So we we are probably going to be a case where we will maybe only have um you know one ship or two ships at the beginning and

3. 00:01:36

   then it will increase. So uh the Hornets the one we're focusing on right now and obviously like things like HUD change for um different ships and all the rest. Uh so there may be a case where at the very beginning we just give everyone everyone basically can fly the same ship and we give we just put a temporary sort of test hornet in the hanger and they get into that and they uh and they do the the dog fighting module. But longer term, it should really like the ships you can take to play in arena mode against other people would be the ones you should own in the hangout. Uh, okay. Next question. Premium Cabanu asks, "Will we be able to transfer subscreens from our cockpit, say Radar, to second, third monitors in our computers?" Um, so we're definitely uh really interested in sort of second screen support. So we're looking at like being able to do that on say a tablet that you have where you could put like one of the VDUs from your um cockpit to that. Um and uh we're also

4. 00:02:27

   uh you know I think it'll be interesting to explore it on uh you know a multiple monitor situation. Uh although you know when I've talked about this just to be sure this won't be functional in the dog fighting and it's a longer term goal for the game. So the idea would be we'd have some of that when the game's fully done. Uh so maybe it would roll out as part of the dog fight part of the dog fighting as it as it improves over time. Uh but not at the beginning. But um but yeah we're we're we would like to do that spot. We think it would be great. So, uh, next question. asks, "Can NPCs fly on their own while you are still online?" Uh, so I'm not 100% sure what, um, the specific of the question is. I mean, NPCs definitely can fly on their own. Uh, I think the question probably relates to, uh, if you own if you have some NPCs flying working for

5. 00:03:15

   you, um, what do they do? If you're online, uh, if they're they're flying, you know, on your wing or in or manning your ship, then yes, they're definitely doing their their stuff and they're doing their functionality. If you have logged off, no, the NPCs that are working for you aren't off their, you know, running your business for you. I think you need to be online to have the NPCs you've hired uh, be actually doing their stuff. Uh, okay, onto the next one. Obsidian uh asks, "There were a couple of threads with overwhelming support to go with the MMO ready back end and single player versus AI, and I'd like to know if Chris has made a final decision yet as to which way he's going to go for the dog fighting module." Yeah, I mean, that's you know, this is a good illustration of uh some of the things that are sort of going to crop up in the development stage where uh when we get to a certain point, we can sort

6. 00:04:03

   of make a we can make a choice of okay, do we do it right? Do we do it the way that it's going to be in the final game? whether we hack something in right now just so we can give it to people. Uh and my preference generally in that case is don't hack it. Um do it right because if you hack it, you put it in, you do work that you're going to have to throw away. Uh and you really part of the the whole idea of the dog fighting module is to get it out there so we can test the back end and see how many people we can have in one area. Uh you know, see how fun it is flying the ships around, see um you know, whether the weapons are balanced correctly. and it's not really that useful if you're throwing out there um with a you know the back end that won't be your final back end. So, I think I'm probably leaning towards doing it the proper way, although that you know potentially has impact on when everyone gets their hands on it. Um, which I know there will be a fair number of people

7. 00:04:51

   um, you know, upset because they just want to play early, which is cool, but I think uh, you know, let's do it right because the goal is to build a great game and uh, you know, I'm more focused on the final goal than sort of the details um, go leading up to that and uh, things change as you go. So, hopefully that answers the questions there. Next uh question is from uh Prince Chips Trean. Uh hopefully I pronounced that correctly. Uh what is the difference between TR1, TR2, TR3 etc. And is there much difference between uh those levels? So TR1, TR2, TR3 and so on is that's what we're calling the thruster rating. And the thruster rating is really a power band. Not all TR1s are the same. ones by a better manufacturer. Ones that are overclocked, ones uh that are slightly higher grade could probably put out more thrust than say a cheapy lowend TR1, but

8. 00:05:40

   you are pretty much guaranteed that a TR2 will um be at a higher band than a TR1. So if you step up to a TR2, even the low end of that will put out more than the highest end of a TR1. Um and also when you go from TR1 to TR2, TR3, don't don't assume that it's a linear progression. So, especially on some of the later thruster ratings, um those um uh you know can be geometric where you know you're moving up to the capital ship sizes um you know a TR6 could be double what a TR5 is for instance. So you should think of TR1, TR2, TR3. Think of them more like say a car engine where you have a V8, a V6, a uh uh a V4, a V12. And you obviously the ones with more cylinders probably put out more power and they can easily put out more power than say a a four-cylinder, but a four-cylinder can still be fairly

9. 00:06:28

   powerful and um obviously there's a lot of variety in like the power that four-cylinder engines can put out. And that's kind of the idea with the thruster ratings is that a you know TR1 represents a band of thrusters of a certain level and TR2 is like the step up and TR3 is beyond that. Uh okay onto the next question. Dread Pilot P asks, "How close will the flight and combat model that we get in December be to the intended finished product? Will the envelope of what we do be basically set in stone or more of a rough first version that we'll be getting tons of refinement tweaks to the flight model as we go?" Okay, so uh this kind of goes back to the the question I answered from Obsidian, but uh you know the whole point of the dog fighting module is to get it out there to test a whole bunch of things. You know, our backend system, uh whether the flight control models fun, whether um you know, the weapons

10. 00:07:15

    are balanced correctly or whether it's too overwhelming our system design or we need it smaller. And so, you know, as part of that, yes, you know, nothing is really going to be fully set in stone. I mean, it's going to be our best first guess of what we think is fun and we want to refine it from there. If something's really broken, obviously we're going to fix it. Hopefully stuff won't be too broken. I mean, I would like everyone out there to realize that the dog fighting module that they get, the first one is not that's not it. That's not going to have all the features. It's not going to have all the functionality. It's going to have a limited amount of features and functionality and then it's going to grow over the next year while we're working on the game. And so, by the time the game is finished, the dog fighting will be finished and honed and everything. That's the process. So we're just sharing you really sharing the process really early with um with all you out there in the community to make a better game. And so you know in that case as I was you know answering to Obsidian that also means that you know

11. 00:08:03

    we're not you know the schedule for it may not be exa an exact science because you know there's not much point in testing something if we feel like okay well we're not ready to test the multiplayer now so uh because we want to put it on the proper system instead of the uh instead of a sort of hackedin system. So we'll we'll give it to you a little later to test that bit. Uh, okay. On to the next one. Uh, beer for the beer god. Um, I guess likes a lot of beer. What would you say to backers who are concerned that there's no point getting ships like the Caterpillar or Retaliator because the constellation looks like it will be the best ship to have? Um, I would say that that's silly because I don't think there is a best ship in the game. They've all going to have different pros and cons. Now, we're deliberately designing things so there is no best ship. uh you know so something like the caterpillar for

12. 00:08:52

    instance if you are more into sort of trying to board a bigger ship take them over a caterpillar is better definitely better for that than than a constellation but also you know all the different ships are going to have sort of different pros and cons. So for instance you know bigger ships are cool because you know you can have multiple people on them you can have turrets walk around but you know bigger ships just like in real life won't be able to turn as fast or you know be as maneuverable as say a smaller ship will be. There isn't really a best for anything. there may be a best for this particular role. Uh but um it's sort of I think in that's the beauty of Star Citizen. There are lots of different roles, lots of different things you can do. And we're very focused on having different roles and functions for the ships. So there'll be different kinds of play styles all based on what you want to do. And so that's what I'm most looking forward to in the game is to have this whole variety of ships. And you know, some people may just want to be flying single

13. 00:09:39

    seed ships and focusing on dog fighting. People may want to be multiplayer co-op bigger ships doing exploration or uh you know, trading runs or whatever. So, uh, I think I think there's going to be a vast amount of, uh, play and it'll be a lot of fun for everyone. Okay, next question. The true lost asks, "How entering dogfight will be handled? Will you start your ship in your hanger in an arena or sport magically in space?" Um, okay. So, I kind of answered this on a uh previous subscriber question in last week's show. Uh, but essentially, uh, you start in your hanger, just that's our entrance point to the game is the hanger at the moment. and uh you'll be able to uh adjust your load out on the hollow table and then you climb into the cockpit of your ship and then you fire it up and then as you fire it up you basically are entering the dog fight mode and so the

14. 00:10:28

    hanger sort of you know I know hollow deck style disappears and then you're in a uh in space but it's really sort of a hollow deck version of space and uh that's how you as you fly there when you finish it you come back into your hanger. Um so hopefully that answers that question well. Uh, next question is from Dutch. He asked, "How detailed will damage modeling be? Will angle of impact be taken into account when calculating armor penetration with sloped armor having a chance to deflect shots?" So, uh, damage modeling will be very detailed. I mean, we're having we're doing that's actually one of the issues with like getting everything ready for the dog fight is that there's a huge amount of assets that have to be built besides just the ships. You've seen all the different pieces have to have multiple damaged uh parts at various levels of damage. Um, uh, yeah, there's a whole bunch of really cool graphical

15. 00:11:15

    stuff that we're going to do for that. And we're we're modeling it pretty detailed, too. So, there will definitely be the angle of incidence of of of a projectile hitting uh armor and ship will count in terms of the damage, it penetration ability, all that. Um, so, uh, no, my goal is to have, uh, the actual base level of the game actually physically detailed and pretty, you know, like to a level that I haven't done in one of my past games and then just sort of, uh, have sort of the high-end ship control stuff um, make it easier to fly around and and use. Uh, but underneath it all, it's all physically correctly modeled. So, we're actually modeling uh, like internal system damage. So if you have your avi, you have a targeting computer, avionic system or life support inside your ship, we actually have a place physically for it and it has its own geometry and render geometry. And if a projectile

16. 00:12:03

    goes through the shield, penetrates through the shield and then penetrates through the armor, we actually trace that projectile and it will if it hits that system like it would hit it in the physical space, then that system takes damage and potentially gets damaged. So we're actually modeling all this in a extremely u detailed way. So if you sort of know where the the weak parts the critical parts of another ship are, you should have a bit of an advantage. Okay, last question we have uh today is from uh P Kirkner and uh his question is what sorts of challenges is optimizing net code for combat in true 3D space with six degrees of freedom presented? Are the issues presented by packet loss and high latency roughly comparable to a firstperson shooter or are you expecting this game to be more latency dependent? packet loss, high latency. I mean, obviously, high latency effects on any stuff and you know, packet loss, we definitely will be going back and forth

17. 00:12:51

    with a lot of data because the ships are pretty heavy data wise, have lots of moving parts. Uh, so that potentially could be an issue, but that's all the sort of stuff that we want to be working on and testing out and that's the whole part of like the dog fighting module. Um, and also really why we would want to have the final um sort of backend MMO, at least a a rudimentary version of it working for the dog fighting. There are advantages to um the space sim part of um Star Citizen or Squadron 42 um in terms of sort of um multiplayer and net coding compared to a on foot firstperson shooter. Now of course we are we do have an on foot firsterson section. So that will have the same problems that you have in a uh Call of Duty or something. Um, but basically uh when you fly a ship um you can't you literally like the problem

18. 00:13:40

    with a first-person shooter is like I can be here and then I can step here and I can step here. So basically the movements of the of the of the you know your avatar can be fairly random and not very easy to predict. Whereas in a ship you can't do that. you've got to like turn in the you so so essentially in sort of the the spaceship scenario you can actually do a much better job of predicting uh kind of where the uh the player ship's going to be. Um okay, hopefully I answered that question. So that brings us the end of uh the second episode of 10 for the chairman. Hopefully uh you enjoyed uh or found my answers informative and I will see you next week.