10 for the Chairman: Episode 34 (2014.08.18)

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

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   [Music] Hello everyone. Uh, welcome to another episode of 10 for the chairman. Uh, for those that you haven't um, seen 10 for the chairman before, this is where I take 10 questions from the subscribers. Um the subscribers are a portion of the overall Star Citizen community that contribute money every uh month to allow us to do an extended amount of community interaction and content. So this show where I answer the 10 questions around the verse which is sort of the sort of behind uh the news update of what's happening in the Star Citizen universe. jump point, which we do monthly, which is 50 to 70 pages of sort of pretty detailed behind the scenes uh like how we made a ship or how we did a certain

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   thing like um you know the dog fight reveal or also fiction about different systems uh and the story. So, it's uh it's pretty cool. We do um also um flare for subscribers and we're planning some other kind of cool stuff that's funded by the subscription money. So, thank you very much subscribers for uh allowing uh us to do this and have an extended amount of community interaction, which I think is one of the great things about Star Citizen. So, speaking of community interaction, I'm having a nice uh drink of water. Uh you probably can't necessarily see this, but this is an AIS Dynamics uh glass. Uh so, a few of our backers were were by a few weeks ago, and they brought um they came out to visit the office and brought us um these glasses with Gus and RSI and MISK. And anyway, I'm enjoying a nice uh cool cup of water in the sort of hot Santa Monica

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   um summer day. So, on to the 10 questions. Um okay, first question comes from Fatso Da. So, I don't know if that's fat soda or fatso da who asks, can you talk about how you will structure the single player elements of story in the game? Where are you drawing inspiration? What is your plan to balance individual achievements against accessibility for everyone? Hm. So, that's a pretty open-ended question because uh are we talking about single player elements of story in Squadron 42? Are we talking which is our sort of single player narrative uh that's very much like uh Wing Commander in terms of its uh straight ahead narrative and then we'll drop you out in the Persistent Universe. Are you talking about single player elements um that would exist potentially in the position universe

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   where you come across someone and they say, "Oh, you know, I've I've heard about this uh legendary uh artifact often so and so, but you'll have to fly over and talk to so and so and he'll tell you a bit more about it." Um, so, uh, in terms of, uh, the single player elements of Squadron 42, I mean, we're very much, you know, going with the sort of wing commander narrative, uh, sort of almost like a war film, war picture setup. Um, we've got a pretty uh, cool story. I don't really want to share too much of it because unlike Star Citizen in the Persistent Universe, um, you know, part of part of the fun is sort of taking the journey. Uh, but it definitely will involve uh a mission uh that goes deep into Vandal space and uh you know things get weirder and weirder.

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   So uh you know I you know if I was going to pitch it to you I would say it would be uh take the opening of Gladiator uh mix it with the Ninth Legion and uh Heart of Darkness Apocalypse Now. Um so uh all set in space um but I think it's going to be pretty cool. I think you guys are going to quite like it. Um, on the uh persistent universe um side, we are going to have sort of small sort of story mission pieces or characters that you can meet. And uh we're sort of setting it up in this the persistent universe where obviously there's going to be stuff that will be based with other players and organizations and general stuff you can do. And then some of the story stuff um will allow you to uh uh go and do uh missions that would feel sort of more specific to you. So,

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   there are parts of the game where if you're off and you're doing a specific kind of mission or you're going down a back alley to talk to someone uh in a sort of, you know, disreputable speak easy, once you enter that speak easy, you're sort of in your own private instance and the NPCs and everything there are all sort of there. So, you're not going to have 30 other people stream into your private um you know uh conversation with someone that's going to give you a uh uh you know, a a tit bit of information or a mission, you know. So, it's not going to feel like some theme park that there's all these people streaming around you, which is one of the things I sort of hate with the traditional MMO. So, uh we're sort of mixing up in the Persistent Universe areas where you'll interact with other players and talk to them where it makes sense and then other areas where it'll be much more about your personal uh situation. So, you know, going down a

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   dark alley, maybe you'll get some, you know, some criminals will try and mug you. Now, that won't necessarily be players, but it will be some NPCs cuz you're on a sort of shady um you know uh outworld that uh basically that's where you go to do black market um buying and selling and and therefore it's pretty dangerous. So, take your sidearm pistol. Um so, it's those are kind of the elements we want to do say down in the persistent universe and and the uh the planets to make them feel alive just like it feels alive in space. And I think uh you know and Tony Zurovac who's is sort of the project who's leading the persistent universe side has got some really great and fun stuff there. Um but we definitely want to make you feel like it's not generic templated missions in some places. So some stuff is obviously going to have to be templated but some stuff will be specifically built and scripted for us and we'll sort of have a nice combination and that combined with

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   what the players are also doing out there hopefully will create enough um challenge and variation for people for quite a while. Uh, next question comes from space lawyer who asks, "I have a question about ship cargo capacities. How strictly will they be enforced? My DER freelancer has a stated capacity of 148 freight units. Let's say that I accidentally or deliberately try to load 148.5 freight units of cargo. Will there be flashing red lights and warning sirens telling me that I can't hold that cargo or will I be allowed to load it anyway?" Well, actually, the way that our freight units work is they're actually volume units. And so, you know, originally we were talking about how many uh tons of cargo you could carry. Uh but we sort of quickly realized that at a certain level, um the tonnage is much less important than the volume in

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   terms of uh you know, kind of us building the ships and what they can fit inside. So, we sort of came up with a standardized sort of container system at different levels. And so, when it's 148 or it's 20 or 40 or whatever, that's actually talking about the units that can fit in the cargo hold. And so if the the the Dur Freelancer can fit 148, it won't be able to fit more than 148. That's the most you can fit. Now, of course, um how much each one of those units weigh will be an issue, right? So if you're trying to uh fly with solid gold instead of uh I don't know, 148 uh I don't know, I don't know, pieces of uh whatever would be like. Um uh you know, your ship will fly differently in space. uh and I don't know if we'd have sort of a maximum takeoff load uh criteria uh that

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    would prevent you saying oh no you can't you can't actually take that much mass but basically the freight units is all about the volume and whether they can sit so it's whether you can fit those pieces of volume in there um but you know in terms of the mass maximum takeoff all that stuff we haven't really figured that out yet so um so I don't know there probably won't you know but if there was that's where those sort of hey you can't take off with that that that level of mass I mean we could probably just have you take off with whatever the mass stuff is and then you're just a really slow ship which is probably what the solution is at the moment and we may get more sophisticated going uh down the way. Uh okay, next question comes from Joanda who asks in the last generation the main character observes that the particular interest rates and service fees of a bank are exceptionally high when compared to other banks. This suggests there will be more than one bank in the universe. Will this be the case in the PU? Will players have to shop around for favorable

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    interest rates on their loans and fortunes deposited at banks? Yeah, I mean I think we want to sort of create a a setup where there is variation between the different systems. So it sort of encourages people to go around and explore and take advantages of sort of economic disparity between one system and another system. Uh so one of the ways would be you know potentially um you know in one area of the galaxy it will be more expensive to borrow money than others area and those are also ways that we can sort of uh dynamically affect the the you know kind of where players want to go because you know if some area raises it to like if an area is overcrowded and overpop populated if the taxes are raised in that area then players will probably tend to go to other areas where it will be cheaper to operate. Um, so things like interest rates, loans, all those kind of things are all things that will probably fluctuate and be have a certain level of

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    fluctuation on areas and uh that will have some impact on the persistent universe. Next question comes from Saraw Bones who asks, "My question is whether or not it'll be possible to play this game as a pure FPS specialist. For instance, what if my character is a terrible pilot and hates flying? Will it be possible to exist planet side engaging only in FPS encounters or to be a passenger flying only as a boarding party member?" So, I think there definitely will be the opportunity to focus much more on FPS, whether or not you will be able to entirely avoid flying in space. I I I probably doubt that would be the case, but you certainly could join crews and operators aboarding our party specialists and not be flying, say, on a bigger multi cruise ship. There will definitely be some FPS encounters that will be down on planet side that will allow. So, I would say that if you prefer to do FPS, there will be that available for you um to do in

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    the game. And we're also going to be creating a sort of FPS uh you know, we have Arena Commander. There's going to be sort of the FPS extension to that to allow you to practice your FPS skills without having to risk, you know, getting killed in in uh in in in for real in space. Um so, uh watch and watch and stay tuned for that down the road. That's something we'll be talking about later on this year. Um all right, next question comes from I'll have a sip of water. That is Fade out and fade out asks, "A large problem in the traditional persistent online universe mechanics is the over proliferation of old items versus new items. This leads to power escalation and new items to provide relevant upgrade paths and progression without constant power escalation. Will we see

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    items deteriorate over time and eventually need replacement completely? Yes is the answer to that. Uh so we're building in from the beginning all ships and all items sort of have uh wear and tear and over time they will take wear and tear and you will have to maintain them and fix them up. Some items will just sort of degrade and then eventually you'll have to replace them. Ships you can sort of um keep that if long as you keep the maintenance up you'll probably be able to fly them for a long time. But that's not to say that a manufacturer may not release a newer better model. But um essentially we're building in sort of the idea of wear and tear um to all the items to add realism. I mean like we want you to go down uh to a landing area and you know if this is sort of an old beaten up mining colony, you sort of see it uh versus a brand new um one that just was erected a year ago. And and we've actually building into our

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    like ships and items and environments what we call layer blending on all the sort of materials and textures. And so there's literally I could show you in the engine. I can move a slider and you can sort of see something looking pristine to going really sort of beating up and nicked. And it's uh it's pretty cool. So that's a kind of a standard thing that we're building into um uh uh the game itself. And I think you know you should be able to see if someone's got a wellworn ship or it's a brand new ship. It's those will all be sort of the fun kind of little visual subtle cues that will make the a the game feel more alive and also give you a good idea of kind of who you're coming up against. Um, all right. Next question comes from Logical Chimp who asks, "Could you confirm that the full six degrees of freedom control/ IFCS mode will be implemented and outline how the various IFCS modes are likely to be implemented? IFCS upgrades, programmable IFCS

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    options, specific ISCs modules, limited certain ships, etc. We are definitely going to be doing a full six degrees of freedom control mode. Um so and uh this will be in the release that's coming out um you know very shortly you'll be able to do that what we call internally release 13. Um but uh you know the kind of the way that we the way that we're sort of thinking because uh you know there's two basic uh requests. One people want to be able to sort of have the the full control whether they want to go forward and backwards, left, right, up and down and also roll and have that sort of additive. So, you know, right now if you went into decouple mode, you can strafe left or right, but it always sort of goes back to the neutral position. Um, and so what we're going to change it

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    around to is that you can go into the decouple mode and basically that's putting you into the six degrees of freedom mode. And in that mode, you can either just change your rotation or um you can do additive motion. So, you can basically go left or right or forward or back, up and down, as well as doing the roll and everything else. Um, and but it's not taking you back to a neutral. So, if you thrust right five times, you keep going right until you thrust left five times to cancel it out, which is sort of the true six degrees of freedom. On top of that, we're also going to be adding them the option in the standard IOCS to be able to strafe left, right, up, and down as you're flying around. Um, so you'll basically have the best of both worlds. You'll have the full control of being able to spin, go left, right, up, and down your ship and either go neutral. So you can sort of um do that or when you're flying around on the IFCS doing a turn, you'll also have the ability as in a turn to give you some

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    side um thrust or whatever. So like if you're going head with people on a strafe, you can maybe burst out without having to leave the IC mode and then that will bring you back to your path before. So it'll allow some more maneuvering and more options than we than we had before. And for us that sort of felt like that was the best option uh to how to get the six degrees of freedom to work in our system because it's not particularly viable to have IFCS and six degrees of freedom working together because they basically fight against each other because IFCS trying to fly you a certain way. So it certainly can you can turn IFCS oh I want to go left or I want to go right for a bit but then it sort of IFCS is always one getting you back to a certain heading and velocity. So, so the way we look at it is we're going to add strafe ability to the normal flight mode. And then when you go into decoupled mode, that's really your six degrees of freedom mode. And so the, you know, moving around laterally, your vector vector changes

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    are all additive now, so they won't be going back to neutral. Uh, and then obviously you do your orientation changes. So, um, I think hopefully that will satisfy a lot of the people out there. Um, and then longer term in terms of how we're going to do it, I think it's too early to say, but the kind of concept was that like on the more basic ships, you got a basic IFCS system, maybe you don't even have all these functionality or features. It just flies in a sort of very simple manner, but then if you have a more complicated one, uh, then you can get more of these features enabled and uh, you know, maybe the reaction times are better and uh, you know, maybe there's more customization on the more expensive ones. um because it be kind of nice to have different sort of flight modules you can program into. So, you know, there's a sort of expensive customizable one that really allows you to tweak everything that you want to do. Um but that's still in sort of the process of

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    figuring out exactly how we're going to do that. Um not in terms of like how technically we do it because it's pretty easy because the features are all there. It's just a matter of what you turn on and off. It's more about like how best to do it in the items and provide the interface for the player. Uh, okay. Next question comes from Vandal Veronica, who asks, "Will UEE citizens ever be allowed the opportunity to interact peacefully with the Vandal, or will the UEE continue to force conflict between our two races? I would very much like a chance to engage in trade with the Vandal at some point and to be able to do more with them than simply fight." So, I guess Vandal, Veronica, is not part of Operation Pitchfork. Uh, but um, yeah, you know, we're going to try and make it. So, so generally the Vandal are going to be um hostile to you, but I think there will definitely be cases uh sort of in the more shady parts of the universe that you could uh trade with

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    some Vandal and maybe they want to have weapons and that's kind of illegal. The UEA doesn't want you selling weapons to the Vandal, but potentially, you know, someone wants to make a fast buck doing that and deal with the risks. So, those are the kind of things uh we'll do. I'm not sure right now we're going to have sort of nice peaceful pacifist van dolls because they're sort of our big bogeyman in the universe. Uh but there definitely I think will be the the chance for uh people that aren't so UEE friendly or aligned with the UEE or cared so much about the UEE to maybe do some trading for profit with the Vandal. Um all right, next question comes from I have my s water Hubert Farnsworth or Hubert J. Fworth who asked, "Can we fight anyone at any moment like in a bar or in a shop? Or is there a safe zone on a planet that we cannot attack anyone on a planet? Can we

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    be doing a sort of large scale battle for conquer an enemy outpost or a city?" Okay, so uh you should not be able to fight anyone at any moment on any location. There will definitely be areas planet side that will allow you uh to get into some level of combat, sometimes against NPCs, sometimes against other players. Uh we are going to have sort of a brawling melee mode. So potentially we may have areas where you're not allowed to um you know whip out your gun and if you do you're in trouble and you'll get put in jail or or killed by the local police. Uh but you may be able to you know involve yourself in fisty cuffs in a bar and and that may not be so bad. It would sort of all depend on the rules and and laws of the different environments and locations. Um but generally we kind of want to make certain areas and the planet safe. So that was kind of a I think um in the earlier part of the game, the very first

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    qu early part of the not the game, the early part of the questions, Fat Soda asks about like, well, how's the single player area going to be? And when you're down on the environment, there will definitely be areas that will be sort of designated just for you where there'll be NPCs and stuff, but you won't run into other players, and there'll be other areas that will be player areas. Um and um and so you'll definitely always have some safe areas and safe zones normally when you're down on the planet. Uh, you know, maybe in the case of like a really risky, dangerous pirate outlaw place, you know, I wouldn't call anything safe, but it would be safe from other players, but maybe there'll be a, you know, a, you know, a thief trying to jump out and hold you up at gunpoint to mug you or something. Um, and then on the planet side, having a large gold battle for conquering a outpost or a city, uh, not definitely not for V1. Uh, you know, longer term, it definitely

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    would be something there could be a discussion about. Um but um there certainly will be sort of battles for persistent items or elements in the actually out in the sort of space. So like a say an asteroid base or a space station or are definitely areas that players will be able to fight over um themselves in terms of uh you know trying to control their own and stuff. So that's it. And at some point we may shift some of that down to down on the planet um and see how we go from there. But again it's all going to be sort of dependent on the amount of players we have and so and so. So, um, next question comes from Nox Hart, who asks, "I have just read news that NASA tests microwave engine that produces fuel out of empty space and finds that it works. Will the devs be considering this or any other future engine type that could be discovered or earned as a major

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    achievement reward to reduce cost of travel?" Yeah, I think this is the EM drive stuff that's just been making the rounds recently that it was invented by a uh a UK uh scientist/engineer and then everyone said he was crazy and now they've just sort of confirmed it with some independent tests uh of a similar device uh with those NASA tests. Um so, you know, I would say that we sort of all kind of read and watch that stuff and think it's cool. And the more sort of things that sound like science fiction that turn out to be uh true, we probably will sort of borrow elements of it and weave it into our fiction um for our sort of stuff. Uh and you know potentially longer term we may you know decide oh yeah well we there's there's a new engine breakthrough and you can buy that from uh you know you know whichever the engine manufacturer is and u perhaps it has some some some fiction. Uh but

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    we'll definitely have some areas where you'll be able to upgrade your engines and um you know maybe plug in a different device. You know, we've been talking about like some alien technology that you'll be able to potentially find out there in the persistent universe, and if you can bind that or blend that to your items, it may be able to improve them. Um, so that's the answer on that question. So, the last question comes from GCGB Nash, who asks, "As there are coming more and more ships, what is right now your favorite ship? And what will your opinion the most interesting thing you'll be doing with the community? Could you give us some info with your own words?" Well, there are more and more ships. It's kind of hard to say, uh, like what my favorite is. One of the ones that I'm, you know, really looking forward to, which we're working on right now, is sort of getting the multi- crew ship stuff working. So, we're sort of doing some of the early

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    stuff on that. Um, so for that, you know, the Constellation's kind of been my favorite. Um, uh, but, you know, there's some pretty awesome stuff. I mean, I love the M50, which uh, we just sort of u, you know, brought into the hanger a week or so ago. Uh, and um, you know, there's some stuff coming down the pike that I think you're all going to like. Uh, the Origin 890 Jump is uh, you know, I'm not necessarily sure I want to be flying around in combat, but I certainly would like to be cruising in style. And there's a couple other ones that we haven't shown yet um, that are sort of more role and specialty based that I think are also going to be pretty awesome. Um, so they're all, you know, kind of fun. Uh, what will, in your opinion, the most interesting thing you will be doing with the community? I'm not sure if this is about ships or what I'll be doing with the community, but in general, the things that I think are

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    fun, uh, you know, interacting with the community. So, um, you know, the, uh, opportunity to go and, uh, hang out with everyone at Gamescom, uh, you know, at the big, uh, you know, 2000 full event and all the rest of stuff. Uh, that's all great. Uh, got we got PAX Australia coming up a little later on this year. Um, so those are all kind of the fun things and it's kind of fun to sort of share and reveal stuff as we work on them and get people excited by them. Um, so that's all it. So, uh, there we go. That's the end of, uh, this episode of 10 for the Chairman. Thank you all for listening. Thank you everyone out there that has backed Star Citizen. You're enabling us to make this, uh, game without really any compromise. Um, which is pretty amazing and pretty awesome. So, thank you all very much for that. And thank you for the subscribers for sort of contributing the extra amount of money to allow us to uh, do this extended uh, community uh, uh,

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    interaction. So, uh, I will see you next week. Bye.