10 for the Chairman: Episode 48 (2014.12.15)

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

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   [Music] hello everyone welcome uh to another episode of 10 for the chairman uh took a break last week cuz uh I've been in England for the last couple of weeks so I pre-recorded one and then uh was England but you got the 10 for the producers which uh looks like you guys enjoyed so we'll probably be uh rotating some stuff like 10 for the writers 10 for the producers it's kind of fun and uh then I don't have to answer 10 questions every single week which occasionally is nice um but uh anyway this is 10 for the chairman uh so those of you haven't seen this before this is where I take 10 questions from the community uh more specifically the subscribers that um put questions up every week and uh our customer service and Community folks pick them and then I

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   try and answer them to the best of my ability uh for those you don't know the subscribers are the subset of our community that contribute money every month to allow us to do additional uh feedback and Community communication so this show around the verse we do the jumpo magazine which is 50 to 70 pages every month um we also do some kind of fun things uh for subscribers in the hangers and uh that's a thank you for everyone uh that's allowing us to do this enhanced amount of uh Community uh interaction and communication so thank you all for that um so uh let's see little update I was gone for two weeks I was over in the UK uh we had a summit in Manchester for characters uh animation and some prep for what we'll be doing

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   for our performance capture uh next year for squadron 42 so um that was the first uh the first week uh so we had a great time we had a lot of people not just from the UK office but we brought people from Austin um here in Los Angeles uh and also we brought people from IL phonic because they're doing a lot of the the character side of stuff and uh we all had a pretty good power about how we're going to deal with characters for the persistent Universe characters for the first person shooter aspect and obviously characters for squadron 42 um and then uh the following week uh I was uh well I made a little side trip to Germany but you'll find out about that uh probably sometime next year or we can sort of make some fairly exciting announcements uh but um the following week after the little side trip uh went to uh London where we were doing a test

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   shoot for some of our performance capture that we're going to be doing for Squadron 42 and also picked up some motion capture stuff uh for um the game in general so uh you know we're going to do some very high-end performance capture to really try and get the uh emotion of the actors and uh we're partnering with a company called Imaginarium uh in the UK which is Andy circus's company um so he's quite famous for doing Gollum and uh more recently Planet of the Apes and actually was just did Star Wars U so that's his voice in in the in the teaser and um you know they sort of sort of specialize in the performance of motion capture which is a you know a whole other level of Art and uh so we're sort of partnering with them we're actually going to be doing some R&D with them um you know they're big fans and uh uh so it's actually quite um fun to work with them this is in

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   addition to what we do internally because we can do sort of basic motions and all the rest internally but there's a whole level of sort of precision in the motion capture um that you know they obviously have a fair amount of expertise in and uh it's great to work with them and and also in the UK uh we have a very nice situation because the UK government has inst recently instituted a uh tax uh subsidy for doing game development in the UK so it's uh helping our UK office it's one of the reasons why we're growing the UK office um and it's allowing us to uh use your dollars more efficiently because um uh you know in some ways the UK is actually one of our most economical Studios um partly because of uh the support the British government's going so thank you very much for the British government for helping make Star Citizen better um so anyway had a had a great time I think we'll have a sort of behind the scenes

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   piece that we show um down the road here about that and expected to hear more updates about it but it was uh it was a it was a fun time we were sort of prototyping some stuff that we'll be doing uh next year um so it's uh it's actually pretty cool and we'll show you some stuff but we can actually have cry engine live and be driving real actors inside the cry engine scene where we built with props which is uh pretty awesome um so anyway a lot of fun uh so I came back uh um well end of last week uh and uh now I'm back here in the office and we're just trying to close out 1.0 for you guys um so everyone's busily working really hard on that uh so uh still uh still some Polish and still some bugs to get out of the way but uh we're we're getting there so uh hopefully all guys will like it there'll certainly be a few more ships to fly and

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   uh the uh some more weapons and some more missiles and more of the ship system and heat and power management will be exposed so I think you guys will like it and lobbies um should be working right now we we're a bit touch and go on getting all the lobbies to work properly but that should be working for you guys so um anyway uh back here in sunny Los Angeles although it was quite raining when I was gone but now it's become sunny again uh so I should probably get to the questions so the first question comes from random task uh who asked one of my favorite parts of Star Trek was watching the crew come up with interesting ways to use their non-combat equipment to trick distract disarm or otherwise overcome more heavily armed numerous opponents that said will science oriented vessels like the Carrick be able to use their non-combat equipment in novel ways against aggressors beyond their standard applications well that's a pretty good

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   um question I mean I think they were definitely building in sort of the the idea and the ability for you to sort of do electronic countermeasures I mean we have some certain ships in development we're developing actually some specific systems for the bigger ships the capital ships to allow that be to be like one of the things that you can do as crew um so I'm not so sure necessarily why it's specifically where it would be specifically those features would be necessary on the car although we are intending to make the bigger ships have a certain amount of equipment and modularity that you can uh plug in and and use on the different ships so I I think we've announced that we we're sort of wanting to do more modularity um two of the um ships that will be sort of prototyping that will be the Avenger and the cutless uh which the UK studio is sort of heading up putting that modularity stuff together and um they're

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   actually doing some pretty cool stuff that we'll uh be pretty excited to show you uh but it's all based on the idea of uh different like items or systems that you can plug into ships because we've set up all the ships to be um very systematic that way so even the Hornet or the Aurora all those flying around and Arena Commander right now you don't really appreciate it but really most of the functionality comes from the items that are plugged in so you know every ship has a radar item every ship has a CPU which generates the CPU cycles that run say so Target computer so we have a targeting computer um you know we have lights so those the lights that come on weapons obviously missiles um Shield generator power plant thrusters cooling systems uh so all of those are equipment that plugs in and they all sort of

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    connect to each other via what we call the pipe system which allows the Heat or the CPU Cycles or the power um to um go between them all or fuel and because we also have fuel tanks that you can have and so a Thruster needs power and fuel and uh a targeting computer needs CPU cycles and power and lights need power and thrusters I always said that fuel and and and and power so all those things sort of work together in in coner and the same would go for sort of like a ECM station so that would be a separate item that would plug in it would hook into it probably need power it would probably need CPU Cycles but it would provide functionality in terms of um you know uh doing electronic warfare or counter measures and all the rest of the stuff so uh so you'll probably guessing be able to sort of equip some of the the bigger ships with plug andplay stuff um

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    so You' probably be able to do something like that on the carck uh although um you know I you know I can't definitely say 100% right now that we have that but the general systems are there and we're planning on the modularity so that's probably likely uh to be happening and we're looking forward to sort of having a lot of different gameplay that revolves around sort of stealth and uh you know in in actually Arena Commander 1.0 when you guys get your hands on it uh we run signatures now and so you know you'll have your heat signature or your cross-section signature electromagnetic signature and and those you know you can obscure by hiding behind an asteroid or turning down your power and that will make it much harder for a radar to detect you or a missile to lock on to you and so there'll be sort of extension of those sort of systems and with electronic warfare maybe you can sort of disrupt someone's systems and do all the rest stuff so I think it will allow a lot more sort of gameplay options

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    besides just straight up combat which I think will be pretty cool next question comes from Julian Deli who asks what happens to your ship if you fail to navigate a jump Point are you pulled out at an unknown system location between two end points or somewhere else good question uh so I think we were sort of deciding that like several things could happen one that you could sort of get spit out at some random location or second one would be that maybe you uh perish in the jump point so it sort of would depend um I think it would depend on the kind of jump point it would also depend on the turbulance in the jump Point uh and sort of whether there are places that make sense that would spit you out along the way um and if you did get spit out you would potentially be quite um beaten up and damaged um so that's our current plan and thought uh next question comes from Marco um fows

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    who asks will players be able to own and operate factories that produce alien Tech and how does a factory get founded so I'm not sure we're not 100% sure about alien Tech you'll definitely be able to own and operate factories um they'll be sort of limited in nature so we sort of have a lot of the economic nodes which essentially what you would consider a Factory would be AI controlled and then uh say about 10% of them have the potential to be uh player owned and those would what we be expecting players sort of later on in in the game to um you know own and maybe try and make a business out of as opposed to doing other things like running around doing combat and potentially that could be something that an organization could focus on um so they'll be available and then over time during the game in the pic universes things expand like a a planet itself sort to you know you start to uh put a colony and you the colony starts to grow

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    then as the the the landing environment sort of grows then there will be more uh opportunity or slots available uh for say maybe an economic node so as as sort of um locations grow then uh there has potential for um not just more AI stuff but also potentially more player stuff and and when we're going through in the game we'll probably take some planets that have been explored and start adding things to them uh and just make the universe living which is one of the goals we have for it um all right next question comes from Rex who ask Will a comm's officer be able to scan for and listen to other players NPC ship to ship or Eva Communications over various frequencies will it be possible to encrypt and hack communication signals yeah so we're planning on uh sort of comm's offices obviously being able to sort of hail and also be able to sort of

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    maybe Break um protocol and perhaps Eve drop on what say an opposing group or a team is going back and forth um so there would be kind of I don't know what you want to call it a mini game but there would definitely be things that the communication officer would do other than just sort of opening up a comms Channel um and so that would mean that there were probably different levels of sort of uh encryption uh in terms of the signals and that would depends on your Comm array and uh say the computer you have and all the rest of the stuff so um again that's another example of sort of some of the more interesting gameplay elements you would get on sort of the bigger ships uh which we're sort of focusing on so when you and your friends are flying a bigger ship there's things to do besides just pilot or besides just run a turret um okay next question comes from stormfire 962 can you please tell what kind of tools will be available to

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    organizations to help track expensive ship usage supplies missions and so on well you know we're we're definitely going to allow organizations to uh be able to uh pay its members for Missions um be able to um essentially uh you know tax or tithe its members for um being part of the organization so they can run that will allow an organization to have its own um sort of bank account and financial stuff and therefore um probably there will be the ability for the organization um when that gets implemented to be able to also sort of have common assets that the organization um ears and would be able to sort of assign out or use um for different players doing stuff so uh that's all still sort of early days some stuff

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    that's obviously going to be done on the website and some stuff will be done on game so the in-game organization stuff is uh you know not yet um Done Yet our very first organization use of in-game stuff is the lobby system which is coming in in 1.0 uh which will continue have expansion and then when we get to the Planet Side uh module um which will be next year sort of towards the beginning of it they will allow you to invite other people to your hanger and you know do all that kind of stuff it will be sort of the next stage up but we're slowly sort of building in uh uh these kind of tools so you should as an organization be able to manage uh organizations money pay people um you know require people to pay their fees um and then have some kind of property ownership that you can assign out uh okay next question comes from pendulum effect how do you foresee snub Fighters being deployed on Capital ships will it

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    be launch tube similar to Battlestar Galactica or do you have something else in mind pretty much I mean I think um we don't necessarily have uh launch tubes on uh a lot of our ships although there are sort of quick launch areas say on a Bengal carrier and I believe on the panther um but generally most of the ships will fly off a flight deck and um you know essentially hover up and fly out that way um on the quick launch ones we potentially could put them on Rails and they could fly out which is kind of similar to uh um B Galactica although it's not really so much about snub Fighters I mean that would be just about the fighters like a hornet or a Gladius or something like that uh okay next question comes from canara who asks how much interaction can we expect from the AI and the P universe will AI on my ship or Planet site come up to me and start a conversation or

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    tell me something important or will players need to approach every AI in order to ask a question or interact with well uh our goal with the AI and this is kind of uh what you'll see in Squadron 42 is to actually make the AI active in a lot of cases so they won't be passive you won't have to go up to them and then they'll give you a quest for remission so we will have ai that will come up to you and engage you and say hey I need you to do this for me or perhaps tell you something um that's definitely a core part of what we're doing in Squadron 42 it's part of what we're designing for sort of the meta AI uh also be true for the AI in the position Universe because the AI in Squadron 42 and the AI and the pic Universe are really going to be sharing pretty much most of the same systems and the same idea so you know the idea is to sort of if you have ship crew mates running around then you know they'll have a

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    little bit of personality and of course they'll be at their stations and stuff but you know maybe they go about doing some daily stuff they go and I know make themselves a cup of coffee or chill out in a bunk and occasionally come up and maybe you know they'll have a line or two they'll say like I know crack a bad joke or something um and uh you know if there's sort of script based or Mission based um AI um you know maybe they'll seek you out when you're down on the planet and say hey I've got a mission for you and stuff like that so the idea with the AI is to make them sort of feel a bit more real and alive not just be sort of a a passive like you know conversation uh stat static tree which I you know in a lot of um games you kind of see where you go up to someone standing in a location you know they rooted to a SP and then you ask them the questions and they say oh I have a mission for you uh so we're trying to make our AI um more Dynamic than that um so it should be pretty cool and like I

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    said Squadron 42 will be sort of the first Proving Ground for that because we're we're trying to build a living environment when you're aboard um the various ships you're on so it's an Idis Corvette or a panther escort carrier or a Bengal later on all those ships um they you know the crew goes about their daily life and you know they'll come up to you and talk to you or you can talk to them and um you it should be you know a level above anything that's um I've done in my games before so uh hopefully it'll be cool um all right so next question comes from uh SOS uh who asks in the Pu if I choose one of the Planet Side hangers can I leave the hanger and visit shops and pubs on the planet if so what if I choose the asteroid hanger will I have to fly with one of my ships to a planet or will there be some sort of shuttle service

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    now well so the idea of the hanger that you have is you can leave your hanger to go to um shops and pubs or whatever else would be on the planet um and so therefore it would also mean that if there's an asteroid uh hanger that you have and depending on kind of how we set that up I mean maybe it's a sort of a big asteroid where there's a fair number of hangers and there's a bustling parrot community and therefore there would be some shops or or you know Black Market um shops or pubs or whatever in it um but it would all be connected The Hanger so there won't necessarily a sh service now you would you know then if you wanted to go somewhere else or you know if there weren't the shops if you wanted you would have to get your ship and fly to a location that would have the you know shops or pubs you'd want to go visit um and uh you know depending on the location not all of them but you know we we said that we announced a goal of stretch goal so there will be some

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    level of um you know public transportation so to speak between planets although you know you'd probably book um you know passage on a Star cruise or whatever although I can't necessarily promise a lot of that will be going between like a pirate outfit and a and you know regular sort of uee um Planet because obviously that uh wouldn't make so much sense but um that's kind of how uh it should work um okay next question comes from John John's who asks how much additional support will drop ship pilots be able to provide to their ground teams for example a pilot has just deployed a squad of Marines into a onto a space station will the pilot be able to assist the strike force with an additional pair of Eyes by monitoring their motion senses Vital Signs helmet camps Etc well that's uh that's pretty good I mean obviously you know when you bring um you know other players in with the

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    ship you know you can provide some amount of support by just you know I I don't the ship could you know shoot people that would be attacking when you're dropping off your people um it would actually be kind of cool to be uh you know have a situation where you sort of monitor your team almost like uh aliens um so that's actually something that um we probably should consider doing because it probably won be that hard to do um but I can't necessarily promise it um yet but I think that would be kind of a cool role I mean we were sort of sort of thinking that like when you land um say a drop ship or whatever either the pilot would take off again and go back out or potentially could get out of the ship and join the rest of the you know rest of the team in uh you know the attack or the assault um but again like I said it would be kind of cool to have a a monitoring motion sense I think so um anyway we'll take that under

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    advisement uh okay last question comes from uh draer who asked once Squadron 42 is complete and out the door and the persist univers up and running are there any plans to work on other single player campaigns maybe something non-military or maybe play as a member of an alien species so yes definitely so we're planning longterm to continue to do single uh sort of player story content uh for people um because you know I think that's a that's a something that a lot of people like and want and allows you to sort of have fun with narrative in a way that you can't necessarily do in sort of an open sandbox uh so we are planning on doing stuff past Squadron 42 some of it will be military some of it will be uh sort of maybe a more civilian style uh story um so we haven't fully decided exactly um what the story lines

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    with that that will be but um we're definitely planning to sort of uh after we've got Squadron 42 hour and the P Universe we're planning to sort of doing ongoing content creation both for the pisan universe and for single player content so hopefully enough of you like what you're playing and uh you know enough new people are joining us that will allow us to sort of do that at the sort of quality level that we're doing it now cuz I think that'd be really cool um all right that's it that's my 10 questions for this week uh I hope uh they were somewhat Illuminating for you um like to thank you all for um supporting the project and uh backing us to be able to uh make a project of this scope and size I mean we're at 66 uh million dollars in support from everyone which is completely mind-blowing uh and pretty awesome and it's allowing us to

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    sort of um double down and and really sort of invest invest in quality and uh you know a team that I think is going to deliver something really special uh like I said we have some uh things that I'll later on down the road be able to talk about but um uh you know we're really sort of strengthening the quality of uh uh and the capability of the team um um um du entirely to your support uh to allow us to make sure that we're ensuring the future of star cism for a long time to come so thank you all for that and I will see you next week goodbye hey guys thanks for watching um temp for the chairman uh if you guys would like to uh see more episodes go here if you

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    guys would like to subscribe to our YouTube channel and always keep up to date with all our video content go here and uh if you guys would like to watch episodes of around the verse go here please and I will see you in the verse