Star Citizen: Reverse the Verse LIVE - Rest Stop Futures

Yeah, so we were meeting with them last week and basically the idea was that right now, as Will said, we have the R&R, Rest and Relax stops, which are sort of our middle of the road franchise type deal. And talking with Ian and Eddie and the design team and stuff, they were basically like, we're looking for a couple more variations as far as companies, brands type thing, just to add some variety and some flavor to some of the different ones that they're coming up with. So basically we have to brainstorm, and we were talking with them about what kind of parameters they had for us and stuff like that, which is usually part of the thing: in one of these discussions they'll say, hey, we need a thing, and then we go, all right, cool. We can try and work up some ideas, but are there any things that you can rule out immediately that would help guide us to make sure that the stuff that we're generating fulfills your guys' needs as well as what makes sense for the universe and stuff like that. So basically, as we said, the R&Rs currently are the middle of the road type company. So could we come up with sort of a higher end luxury version company or station type, and more of a lower end one?

And that's usually the kind of approach we take, the high, middle, low. It gives us a good breadth, at least for a first pass of stuff. Rather than coming up with like 50 different variants, we say, what's the high and fancy version of something? What's the low end, messed up version? What's the middle of the road? And that gets us a good breadth to start with. And then there's always room later on down the line to start filling in more of that flavor, to add more companies. But at least to start, it's a great place to go.

Yeah, we're trying to do a rebranding internally to make sure that people stop using truck stop because obviously it's not really what it is.

Space trucks, space truckers, but it's not quite the term that's honed in on. In general, it's more of these rest stops, especially for how people are using it and the breadth of people who go visit these locations in the universe. It isn't just for these long-haul space truckers per se. Everyone needs to stop at these things out there. It's how you fuel. It's how, if you're in a single-seater, you go to the bathroom. Stretch your legs walking around.

I mean, a lot of the references that we were using initially when talking about them was actually Iowa 80, which is a very big, I think it might be one of the largest, if not the largest, truck stops, I think it's actually on Interstate 80. And on the New Jersey Turnpike, on 95 on the East Coast, those standardized rest stops that you come across where they have the KFC or McDonald's and stuff like that. Just to give you two varieties that we drew from. So those were the more standardized because they always look the same. They just have different amenities.

There's one company out there selling designs for truck stops around the country.

And they're populating them with whatever restaurants and stuff like that. So yeah, those were sort of the original properties, kickoff type thing. But yeah, hence why it was very common to just have them internally be known as truck stops.

Yeah, there are military stations. They run the security operations for the system or something. There'll be a naval base.

Yeah, we've talked about them mostly in connection with Fair Chance Act systems. So you'll see if you go on the star map, like Station Chimera, I think, is one, and stuff like that. But yeah, I would assume that there would just be naval...

I think Sol had some naval bases called out already.

Yeah, they were probably, I don't know if they would be sort of more automated, whether they would have automated fuel dumps that their ships would go on.

But this would tie into the reputation system stuff that we've been talking about now, where eventually you would do enough missions to earn a reputation as a Navy contractor to be able to dock and refuel at these places. I wouldn't expect just because you own an Idris that they would be like, yeah, park up.

Or maybe not an entire rest stop, maybe they work to do the hangar portion of these rest stops or something like that.

I think my concern about that would just be that we're getting into a lot of cross branding, like the Westfield's equivalent with Revel & York. I mean, again, this is kind of what I think you're saying, Will. The concern is just that once you have too many different brands in there, the overarching umbrella station gets lost in the mix, because you don't care about that as much, because it doesn't have its own personality. The personality is being dictated by the stores that are in it. But having Revel & York do the stations is an interesting call.

At the very least, I think they have to be a contender for a high-end one. In hindsight, it seems kind of obvious. We already had our player hangars broken into three tiers, with Self-Land as the lower end and AeroView as the middle.

I think part of it would just be making sure, and this would be part of the conversation with art, because Revel & York do have an established aesthetic, making sure that whatever they're building for this would factor into it.

Well, we've seen their established aesthetic for one kind of player hangar.

It's true, but it's just that thing of, because they do that almost plastic white with the brown wood and stuff like that, which is a very distinct look. So it's sort of a question of whether that could be maintained as a through line. Because, yeah, again, it's an interesting thing, and going back to what we were talking about in the very beginning of this, that idea of tying it into stuff that the community already knows about and has an attachment to and an emotional reaction to. Because if we drop, hey, it's a Revel & York station, people who are playing immediately get, oh, cool, it's going to be a much nicer, higher end thing. A lot of our work is done.

I mean, yeah, this was one of the conversations we had with art when we started doing these kinds of stations: who's building the station? Outside of R&R owning the station, what company manufactures it, what construction company would be hired to come out and haul this out? And it was starting to get a weird level of branding that people didn't need to know, who constructed the station. It's just R&R, and that's where we cut off the thing.