10 For the Chairman Episode 26. June 23rd, 2014

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

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   [Music] Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of 10 for the chairman. Uh this is where I take 10 questions from our subscribers and answer them to the best of my ability. For those of you that uh don't know about um 10 for the chairman and our subscribers, well, they're the portion of our community that contributes uh extra money every month to allow us to do additional community content, which this show would be part of. The Jump Point uh magazine is part of which provides a whole bunch of uh content that trickles down to all the users, plus our additional uh shows like now Round the Verse and uh some upcoming stuff we've got planned. Um, so thank you very much to subscribers out there for allowing us the additional funds to

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   do this kind of thing. Um, and uh I'd like to say by the way, thank you to uh Disco Lando. It's a this is a uh Chris Robertson RSI bobblehead. So uh very cool. Uh but his Disco Lando was by uh a week or so ago um and u did very first episode of Around the Verse and uh he dropped this off. So thank you very much. um has a nice pride of place on my desk. Uh okay, so to the first questions. Um the first one comes from Wolf Crest who asks, "With the next great starship over, will we get an announcement about when and for how much the final ship will cost? With regards to its implementation, does CIG take over from the end of the competition to add physics and damage states of the vessel, or is that left to the team?" Next great Starship

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   season two question mark. Yes, there's a bunch of work that has to be done to get the ship into shape to even put it into the hanger. So, the ships were brought into engine and they were nice, but uh they there's a whole bunch of like clean up in terms of the hierarchy. Uh needs to be certain amount of uh physics proxies both inside and outside the different it needs to be broken up in a certain way so parts can animate and open and all work inside our the the vehicle system we use. Um so, there's a bunch of work. Um we're actually um going to be working with uh the finalist to do pay him actually to do some of the finishing work and then we will take it in house and finish it off here. Um so when that's done um we're kind of hoping to uh bring it out with uh the uh Mustang which was the other ship that we sort of premiered on the next great

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   starship and uh um let you guys uh add it to your collection if you would like. Um, as far as prices go, we haven't said it, but you know, it probably should equate to uh something that would be equivalent to its weaponry. So, we're obviously not going to be selling a gunship with big turrets and everything for the price of an Aurora. Um, but we haven't um, you know, finalized it, but uh, it will be commensurate with the sort of, I guess, costs of the other ships. Um, um, but, uh, it's a cool ship. Um, and also at that time I think we're going to uh see if you guys are interested in uh having some of the other ships in the game because they were all pretty awesome actually. So the the top four at least were were pretty brilliant. Um, so I could be quite happy seeing them in the game. Um, so then next great Starship season 2. Uh, well I

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   think we definitely would uh I liked it. I thought it was great. I thought it was a really great approach. uh we may make a few format changes but uh I think it's a great way to sort of expose the talent out there and and get some uh some different eyes and content inside the game. So I I think uh we will try to make this a sort of annual event. All right, next question comes from uh U um who asks, it's been mentioned that planets will have a dayight cycle, but will planets have a seasonal cycle as well? eg perhaps on planets that have a winter season or the street markets close up during the season and certain goods stop being produced are only acquirable in reduced quantities. Well, I think that'd be a good question for uh Tony uh who is sort of heading up the persistent universe side of things uh inside the

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   project. Uh plants definitely will have a dayight cycle. Um we are looking at the possibility of actually giving uh planets an orbit cycle which would really sort of be a seasonal cycle. I don't know about the impact of uh the seasonal cycle so much on sort of markets are closing up early or late. Um it's a really cool idea, but I think that would not be a sort of V1.0 idea, but certainly will be sort of a kind of a detail and a nuance that we could add later, which would probably uh even increase the immersion. So, so good idea. I mean the system handles uh the dayight stuff and uh we're looking at like I said handling the sort of uh the orbital stuff. So you certainly will have the data to to derive that and then the question would just be like how does that interface

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   with the the economy? So so that could be on a cool thing to add in the future list. Um uh question next question comes from beer for the beer god. Um, so beer for the beer god um asks, "How do you envision two organizations going to war? How would they fight? What would they fight over? Can we make burning Mark Skelton's golden shirt of artistic power a stretch goal?" Uh, well, I definitely like making burning the shirt a stretch goal. Um, that's pretty cool. Uh, I say if we get to uh $50 million, we burn the uh the gold shirt. Um but in terms of the two organizations going to war and how would they fight uh you know I would think that um you know an organization would declare that it

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   would be hostile to the other organization and then uh essentially members of the organization if they you know came across each other uh would try and attack each other. Um usually wars tend to happen over pieces of real estate. Um, and so we are trying to add uh sort of persistent aspects to the game like you know we've mentioned sort of an asteroid base you can fight over or a space station you can fight over and I would think that probably some of the organizational conflict will be directly related to sort of uh persistent pieces of real estate in the universe where you know someone's trying to fight for control of a valuable uh mining operation or someone's trying to fight for control of you know a you know a jump point or something like that. Um, so that's kind of where I think the

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   conflict would be evolved around. Obviously, we have some stuff that we have to deal in terms of the instancing because we can't have 2,000 people all in the same area at the same time. Um, but uh we've I think we've got some pretty good answers for that. So, um, so that's kind of how I would see organizations going to war. Okay, next question comes from FJ John, who asks, "I'm loving the dog fight module this far and can't wait for more stuff. Is there a way or a plan to develop a way to be an observer in a multiplayer match? Specifically, will I be able to observe a dog fight prefer preferably a head-to-head dog fight and be able to trail one player? Yes, we we are actually act on our list of things to do is a spectator mode uh to allow um people to come into spectator mode. And we were thinking that it would be a really good way where maybe there's a couple of open clans where someone could just come in as a spectator. We may even

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    have sort of an auto spectator mode that we power up that could like stream to Twitch and stuff like that. Um because definitely it's kind of fun. I mean, we all around here right now are watching people play the game via Twitch and it's uh pretty informative and it's um you know, my it's uh um strangely engrossing. Um but uh sort of auto um spectator mode will do things like allow you to switch to follow different players and all that kind of stuff. Um so there you go. Although before anyone starts concerned forum threads, we will make sure that if that feature is enabled, it won't be in such a way that it could uh give away information in a competitive match that you wouldn't want to give away. All right. Um, next question comes from Arglam, A R G L M A UF, who asks, "As Star

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    Citizen is to be a great Sim, can you clarify what a Sim is by your definition? Would Freelancer, for example, fulfill your definition of a sim? Many are currently concerned by the arcadiness of Arena Commander. Maybe a word from you whether it must up to what you want it to be would help address these concerns. Well, I mean, it's kind of hard to say. I mean, for me, it's sort of, you know, when I think about Space Sim, I think sort of Wing Commander, Privateier, Freelancer all sort of qualify as space sims. They just have uh different approaches. And, you know, to be honest with you, I would say Wink Commander was pretty damn arcadey. In fact, it's a lot more arcadey than Arena Commander is because there was a lot more sort of shortcuts taken in terms of the simulation and it was set up in such a way that you could just blast a whole bunch of karathy because they were gimped so you would feel like the hero downing wave after wave of the

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    enemy. Um, and you know, I I know people go back and forth, but you know, I play all the games, including all the other ones that are out here right now that I can play in alpha. And uh I'm pretty happy where we are. I think we're the most accurate um on a simulation side by anyone by a long stretch of motion. I don't care uh what anyone else says. I'm pretty confident we are. Um and then it's really just a matter of um the control uh input uh and you know how that's translated into sort of uh the the computer that's controlling the the flight. And you know we we're trying to make the game inclusive for a large amount of people. So, the goal with the game is to make it pretty easy to pick up and play. Um, and then as you get into it, get deeper into it, there's a lot of dials and and knobs you can turn

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    to make uh, you know, the dog fighting more interesting or give you an edge over another PL player that isn't as experienced. So, I always liken it to being very much like Starcraft to Starcraft 2, where you can just go around and with a mouse and point and click and build units and fight people. But until you really sort of know um you know the sort of rock paper scissors of all the units and you know every keyboard shortcut, it's pretty hard for you to compete with someone that's more more experienced. And I and I definitely think that's going to be the case in uh Star Citizen. I've already noticed in a lot of the forum threads and I I talked about this last week in in the post uh that that we talk talking about the flight model and everything is that you know there's a lot of people at the beginning weren't used to or what we're trying to do because you know all past flight sims pretty much including a lot

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    of the present ones go with a very sort of simplified atmospheric model and then sort of add some kind of space trappings like the okay I can go up or down or left or right um but they don't really simulate it to the level that we do where we actually add every item has its own mass and gets added to the ship and changes the moment of inertia and and the thrusters gimbal to fire at the specified directions and actually apply thrust which changes the inertia angular or linear of that ship. Um, you know, so we're not doing any cheating just saying, "Oh, okay. All of a sudden we rotate by 15 degrees or 20 degrees." It's all comes out of the simulation. Uh, and that gives you a a much higher level of fidelity and also a difference in feel. Uh, with ships, even ships that would maybe weigh the same and have the same class of engines if there one is more compact than another. Um, then at that point it will actually feel

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    different. It will rotate at different speeds because it has a different sort of angle of momentum and a moment of inertia. So, um I definitely don't feel that, um we're arcadey. Uh I do think that in every sort of space game or space sim, you have to make some level of uh you know, you got to make a call about what what's fun and what isn't fun, right? So generally space combat in my mind would not be anything like the way it is in Arena Commander or any other space game you play because it would probably all be done by computers well beyond visual range and it would be about whose pro computer processes fast enough to you know create a firing solution. Uh but we don't like that. We like to get on the tail and sort of shoot people down and see the ships and and I definitely feel that uh Arena Commander uh does a good job of that. Um is there things that can

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    get uh improved? Absolutely. And that's what we're working on. we're going to make it um you know better with everyone's help and feedback out there. Um but uh you know I think as far as a sim goes we're probably more sim than pretty much everything out there. I mean, you know, besides just the the physics of it all and the flight model, like the ship itself, all the systems in it are individual systems that plug into that ship and they all interconnect through uh power pipes and you know, heat heat pipes and the CPU pipe and uh uh you know the you know or fuel pipe which you know takes the fuel from the fuel tank to the thrusters and all the rest and they all interconnect and if one fails it can you know it can affect the other one. Say if your power plant goes down or gets damaged and it reduces its power output then everything that draws power from it uh maybe not may may not operate or may operate at less

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    functionality. Uh so it's all very um systembased right so a lot of things should just fall out of it like a a part of your ship gets ripped out with several systems on it they're gone. So all of a sudden if other parts of uh the ship um required you know that system whether it was a power plant or a heat sink or something like that they wouldn't function. But we're not we don't have any code to say if wing is blown off then do this. It all just falls out of the system. And and so I would say we're probably pretty simish. Uh and then the the the aspect is is it your definition of what you think is a sim. And you know I think it's going to be so many people in this game. There's so many different takes on it almost impossible to please everybody. But I think in the long run if people stick with it because don't forget this isn't just about dog fighting which is Arena Commander. Even right now, the multiplayer dog fighting, I mean, there

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    aren't, you know, uh the team mode, uh I should be open to most people by now, but um you know, up until now, the team mode hasn't really been open to people. So, you just watch people go in and it's a furball. So, of course, two people are fighting and not looking at you. Of course, you can come in and start shooting at them and they're not going to be able to see you. And so it's not really a good indicative of uh indicator of what the the combat's really going to be like longterm in the in the universe because the arena commander combat's much more sort of ultimately set to be more fast-paced uh than I think the final uh combat will be in the universe when you're out there for real because that has a lot more to do with your radar and your signatures and a whole bunch of other stuff that you would manage and you would you know you would have a ways to go before you got into contact with uh with someone that you

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    were fighting. And so there's a there's a bunch more that happens. So Arena Command is really sort of the first pass to get out to, you know, the straight up there rough and tumble fighting, work on the, you know, the the control inputs and the flight models and a bunch of the little stuff that we need to balance. But uh um you know, the ultimate um game is going to have so much more and we've built um so much of systems into allow to do that. I think the potential is immense and I think people are going to have a lot of fun and you know beyond just dog fighting um you know just smuggling or trading or all the rest of stuff. So all right there you are. I don't know if that answered. Uh the question about being a Sim but anyway there you go. Uh next question comes from Dusk Breeze who asks in the latest Terra Gazette a smuggler dumped a live cargo container which had been damaged

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    and leaking leaking O2. Will damage to cargo containers be modeled in game and possible loss of cargo if it requires an atmosphere? Well, all the cargo containers uh will be items in the game and so you can damage any item. Um and then I would guess uh you know if you had uh an container and you know the damage it did would le you could probably sped up specific stuff to like have a particle effect where it looked like gas was expecting. Um so we do do the damage. which I don't know if you want. We we're not at the point now where if it had an atmosphere in the cargo container and there was a stway inside it and then you damaged it and the atmosphere linked out the person would die inside. We're not there yet. Although that wouldn't necessarily be that hard to do, but uh we definitely do have uh damage modeled on all items and so it's really just a matter of doing

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    the art and the effects once it gets damaged. Um so there you go. Uh Odysius asks, "The two maps that were released with Arena Commander are beautiful and full of detail. I'm wondering, are these maps representative of what the PU will look and feel like with all the rocks and debris? Or will there also be large spans of open space and that we need to cross to get from point A to point B? It seems like the best way to show how big the universe is would be to have a lot of nothing. Yes, in the Persistent Universe, um the the Arena Commander maps are a sort of smaller scale map. Um so there was one big technical move we haven't done yet in the engine which we're in the process of uh getting ready to do and be doing some early work on which is moving from uh single precision floating point to double precision floating point and single precision floating point um you know once you get beyond about 8 to 10 kilometers from the

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    origin uh you start to have some precision problems in in small distances like under a meter. um in double uh precision you don't because it's obviously a much larger range and and our goal is to have um a system map be one unified map so it's not split up. So you know the address space in the system is uh is the same from one side to the other side. Um and that will come with the uh the double precision. In that case, what's going to happen is you're going to have large areas of not really a lot and then you'll have clumps of detail like the asteroid field or the stuff that you see in Broken Moon or Dying Star. Um, so it'll be a combination of nothing and then sort of high levels of detail with some beautiful backgrounds. Um, there you go. And it'll be much bigger. I mean, we're talking about, you know, uh, we won't go

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    um fully accurate because that's getting really big and would be will be boring. But, you know, we're probably looking at our system sizes to be plus or minus a million kilometers versus plus or - 8 to 10 kilometers. Um, okay. Next, uh, question comes from EdTE who asks, "You have stated there will not be a monthly cost to play once the PU is live. Uh, Persistent Universe for all those that don't know what PU is, but will we still be able to subscribe as we do now? Will there be still be a separate store for subscribers and jumpoint magazine, etc., or will subscriptions be turned off and we lose those perks?" No. You know what? I I think uh we probably would maintain the subscription stuff mainly because that's really about community content and it doesn't really affect gameplay. Uh and it's a great way to sort of allow, you know, have us be able to sort of give a lot more um content back to

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    the community. Um, so, uh, so for now, I mean, unless we were doing so amazingly well on the Persistent Universe that we just didn't need the the the the extra money, I would think that we'd probably keep it up because I really like being able to do a lot of uh content for everyone. It's uh it's it's nice to be able to sort of film all these things and and, you know, have a whole team work on doing a 60page uh monthly magazine because I I think everyone out there geeks out in as much as we do here. So we'd love to share it and but unfortunately doing all that at the level we do it takes time and money and so that's kind of what subscription is for. Um so I think it will continue. Um all right next question. See asks recently there has been an interest in a program called voice attack. A program where you can voice command

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    functions target nearest enemy. Reroute power to starboard shields. Eject. By using the program we can easily make some of the more complicated controls easier simply by using a voice command. Do you have any plans to implement your own version of voice attack or do you think it is possible to work with the creators of Voice Attack? Uh good question. Seen the videos. They're awesome. Um, so, uh, yes, we're we're actually investigating that right now because, uh, we're reaching out to the voice attack people and, uh, we kind of think that would be something that'd be really cool to integrate into the game because it definitely makes, uh, the SIM aspect of the game e more accessible when you can sort of say decouple, G-safe off, and do a bunch of other things that normally you have to click through or search for your keyboard. And it certainly you can see it it in uh it affected the uh the combat ability of uh

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    you know the various people that were showing it off. Uh so um good job out there for the community uh for demoing that. But yeah, we thought that was super cool. So yeah, we we're investigating it. All right, last question comes from Poison Taco who asked, "Would sustain damage in fights prevent you from landing on a planet? For example, if you get into an engagement and lose panels, wings, or other parts of your ship, would that be harmful for re-entry and atmospheric flight? So, that's a question we've debated on the design side. Um, I think what we assume is that if you can get uh into the orbit of the planet and you can sort of communicate and request for permission to land that that we assume even if your ship's pretty badly shot up and damaged that they get you down there. and you know then you know we see the sequence and then you're down on the

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    landing pad and then of course you're going to have to get it fixed. Uh you know may not be able to take off until you've got all that stuff fixed. Um but we probably wouldn't make it so someone would show up in orbit and they'd just be stuck there and have to eject or something. Um, so and you know, who knows in later stages, you know, not V1, but like as we get further into development when we actually maybe have some free flight down on the planets, whether that would be effective and the damage would affect it. It probably would because it will affect it in space. Uh, okay. Well, that's it. That's the 10 questions for this week. Thank you all for listening. I want to thank all the subscribers out there for uh enabling this. All the backers for letting us make uh this hugely ambitious game. Um it's a lot of fun. Uh a lot of work but a lot of fun. And uh you know there's a lot of really

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    great stuff to come. Uh so uh stay tuned and I'll talk to you next week. Bye.