Michael Dillon

So the service beacon system is a player-generated mission system, essentially. So we've got the framework of it, and there's only a couple of beacon types right now, but it allows players to create content for each other, which allows them to form alliances or friendship bonds. It brings people together in what is an incredibly large universe. Yeah, it allows them to set their own reward price, dictate the conditions of the contract, although there's very few options right now. We look to expand that. The players are going to be able to filter the beacons that they're notified about. These are all things that are intended for the system at the end of the day. So it's going to be something where you shouldn't really be able to tell the difference between player-generated content versus the content that we create. We really want it to just feel like it's another contract out there. It's another thing that you can go and do. Eventually we'd like to have NPCs be able to respond to these as well. So if your beacon's up and it's for a reasonable price and nobody's responding, we'd like for an NPC to come and help you out.

Yeah, just to kind of drive home that original point there. For me, I think the service beacons are actually really important, and they actually make the game more like what I want Star Citizen to be. It brings an amount of interaction with the players that you don't get in other games. You see these other games, and yeah, they have lots of people in the game, but a lot of times you're basically playing a single-player experience alongside each other with a lot of people online. And you just look at this and you think to yourself, there's so much that can be done with this that you just leave on the table. You don't get it utilized at all. And I think the service beacons are a really good solution to getting the players to play together and to make content for each other and make unique situations that can't be scripted, couldn't be dreamt up by some mission system or whatever. So I think it's actually going to be a pretty fundamental part of what makes Star Citizen a special game.

I agree with pretty much everything both of them said. I think this really pulls a way for players to interact with other players and build that, not necessarily economy, but that social envelope that goes on there with all of that. So you learn, oh, these players are really good. You start building those bonds in the game, or enemies in the game if certain things happen. But it starts building out from being just, okay, I'm flying my ship through space, to I'm in this environment with other living people and you get this more dynamic interaction.

That's a collaborative effort that I don't know how you protect against. There is a rating system that is part of this. So if this is a consistent thing that keeps happening, eventually these people will get weeded out. And if you only want a four-star rated or a five-star rated person to escort you, then clearly they have a reputation for getting you to the other side safely or performing the service that you're asking for to a high level of completion. So I think that the rating system will be a big part of filtering that out. It's hard to imagine a rule set that we could program to prevent something like that, although we're definitely going to try and do our best to catch as many of these edge cases as possible. But that's a really complex situation.

I think what I would give as a counterargument is, yes, I think that the rating system does help weed that out and smooth out those experiences, but I think it's actually important that we don't remove them, because I think it's actually a very interesting part of it, that you're not guaranteed. You're dealing with actual people, and in space, when you're dealing with actual people, there's always that little bit of danger. How much do you know this person? Can you trust them? If you just get picked up by a random person, yeah, there's a little bit of a social contract there, but that's not a guarantee. And I think that's actually an interesting part of the experience. You have those guarantees whenever you engage with the mission content. Now, yeah, you might get ambushed, but it'll be part of the mission. With this, yes, you know that the person has a particular rating, so more than likely you're going to get an experience that you expect. But you will have times when you'll be surprised. And I think that's actually a good thing.

It also allows you to build up the idea of this economy aspect to it, because if you're known for being reliable for escorting people, you can charge a little extra for that, because, hey, you know I'm going to be good for this, versus, oh, I'm kind of broke and I need help, well, I'll take someone that might be a risk. So you kind of build this. The longer you do it as a provider, you start going, okay, I'm proving I can do this. I'm building a reputation, and that reputation can have monetary impact.

We haven't really talked about that. It's technically possible. It's not outside the realm of reason. We're dealing primarily with UEC, or Alpha currency, right now, just because that's what's in the player's wallet and that's how we do the transactions. But once we get the trade system in, where players can open up trade windows and stuff, there's no reason why we couldn't expand, like, hey, take me here and I'll give you a thousand of my units or whatever.

It makes sense to keep it to Alpha UEC right now because we're attempting to fine-tune how much UEC is really worth in the galaxy. We want the testing to be there. But it makes sense to me at least that at some point you're going to want to be able to offer, here are components, here's my personally tuned component, and whoever does this for me, I'm going to pay you in goods.

The biggest thing we have there becomes our interfacing. How do we provide that to the app becomes a big part of it.

Well, I think the tangible experience is interesting. In the game, we're trying to reduce as much hand-wavy magic as possible. Where is this gold and how do you give it to them? Normally, whenever you have a commodity, it's in your cargo grid. It's a physical thing. Now, I want you to take me somewhere and I give you gold. How do you get it?

Yeah, like you have to store stuff in a bank and you only do bank-to-bank transfers, that kind of thing.

Yeah, maybe something like that. Or maybe you have to have the other ship and it gets transferred, and they both get taken to ATC. I don't know.

CR's always been really big on the tangible nature of it, and he wants to see cargo being moved from one thing to another. So once we get the tractor beam in, which mining is kind of the first implementation of, the cargo mover is not going to be far off, so you'll be able to get your paw tool and move some boxes, or hand-carry them to somebody else's ship, assuming that it's a good that can be moved that way. And then items are probably not too far behind that, with just being able to physically move them. But I can almost guarantee that CR is probably going to be interested in that item being physically there for the trade to happen.

I've always kind of liked the idea of having the comm arrays be something that can help carry the signal or boost its range. Or if you go out into dead space, out on the outer rim or something, you're outside the comm arrays, so your comms in the ship need to physically reach the distance that they cover. Otherwise, if you're within the comm network, then you can pretty much send it as far as the comm arrays can broadcast. But we haven't fully figured out exactly how the transfer of information or that signal is going to be transmitted through the system yet. But that's kind of how I see it working at the end of the day, and going from system to system. Do you really want to send a service beacon message to someone three systems away? Is that a beneficial thing? So it depends on what it is, and we just have to play around with it and really find that cool middle ground.

Because what instantly came to mind is the old 2.0 gameplay of going around and disabling the comm arrays, and whether an assaulting force might go around and disable the comm arrays that are surrounding a particular moon before going down and raiding somebody's homestead. That's what I would do.

Yeah, and I thought about this just as far as the economy info, and how do I understand what the prices are on a different planet. Well, I would like that information to be transmitted through the comm arrays, so that if somebody goes and takes that down, then all of a sudden the Herald has a really important role, which is bridging the gaps between these communication breaks in the network. So trying to make sure that we've got a purpose for all these things is really on my mind quite a bit. I think that's really interesting as a player too, for an information runner: yeah, there's a Herald out there and he's allowing service beacons to go through, or the economy info, or just missions or distress calls or whatever. I think that would be really neat for the players.

For me, I think it goes back to what I was saying earlier, which is this is the kind of thing that drives the players together. And whether that's collaboration or opposition, it's making the environment much more interesting and dynamic. If we're making service beacon distribution tied in some way to some physical element in the game, then that means that that's something that can be attacked. And that means that now we have this interesting kind of interplay between the player base. So I love that idea. I really hope that at some point we do get around to doing that kind of stuff. I think it'll be really cool gameplay.

It also builds on that: if that data can be stopped, then that data can gain value. Because if it's not guaranteed that that's getting everywhere, but I can guarantee that, now I've got a service I can make money doing.

And I think the misnomer there is that a pirate is like a faction in the game, like when you create your character, am I creating a law-abiding citizen or am I creating a pirate citizen? There's nothing that would outright prevent any citizen from participating in the service beacon system.

Once we implement the tattoo filtering, maybe. But no, it's not like that. I mean, perhaps some of the details that are in the filtering options will naturally filter out some of those people that you would call a pirate. But certainly it's not going to be like, oh, pirate, no.

It won't ever be explicitly shut off from you, but you may not see certain beacons or whatever because your reputation is so low, because you blow up everyone you fly upon.

I think some of that gets handled by the reputation filter and stuff like that. But again, this is a system where you have to develop how things are supposed to work before you start developing how it can be abused and whatnot. But I think pirates have to have some ability to see. Even if you put a filter that doesn't allow somebody below four stars, I think you still have to be able to see that something's out there. Even though, oh, I've got a one-star rating and they won't let me accept it, I can see from the thing that there's somebody out there. I know there's blood in the water. It's going to be an interesting balance, the challenge.

Well, we don't want the system to be... Right now, we put up nav markers so you can get to the other person. We talked about the fact that people are going to accept a mission, get the nav marker, and then come out, and then drop the mission, and then they're right there. So this is all just part of the gameplay. And what you expose yourself to is like, if I ask for help, I could get this. Is it worth it? And then, so I'm going to offer enough money to attract somebody who's really good at it, or who's in the reputation range that is mostly reliable, or that just goes, you want anybody to answer? Here you go. You're going to get what you pay for. So again, it's just a choice, and it's part of the dynamic universe. We just don't want it to be like a tracking system, though. That's certainly not what it's intended for. But we do want the idea that, yeah, sometimes people set traps, and players are going to do it. And when NPCs can be involved with the universe, that's already like a mission, an ECM mission where you can get ambushed by a pirate somewhere. You get pulled out of quantum travel, or you're just flying around, and guess what? There's pirates. So that's definitely something that's part of the game. And again, it doesn't matter if it's a player or an NPC, it's a fact of the universe.