The developers discuss how well NPC crews can match human crews in turrets, and why other tasks like repairs are harder. They also cover ship damage and misfires replacing canned explosions, survival needs like thirst and hunger, knockdowns and staggers, and medical gameplay.
TL;DRTodd Papy says yes: NPC turret gunners already hit at very high accuracy and should match skilled humans there, though problem-solving like repairs will take more time, and the intent is NPC crews as effective as human ones.
Yes. Right now the NPCs on some of the AI hit at 95, 96%. And I don't even think that the most skilled human will be able to do that. So assuming that they are trained right and they are at that level, yeah, I see absolutely no problem in them being able to, at least from a turret standpoint, act that way. Now, when we're talking about going around and problem solving and saying, oh, hey, this thing needs to be repaired at that time, that's where it's going to get a little bit trickier and it's going to take some time and finesse.
Assuming that they know the layout, they have the nav points, they understand how they need to go, then it's actually interacting with that usable, switching it out or repairing it, and then running back to where they need to be.
And of course, we've touched on this topic a couple times in previous Calling All Devs. I'm certain this won't be the last time this topic comes up. But for those in the cheap seats, yes, our intention is that an NPC crew should be just as effective as a human crew. All things being equal. Of course, we all know in real life, in the Star Citizen universe, in any situation, things are rarely always equal.
Yeah, it'll depend on the ship. But I guess with anything in our game, we want to make sure that the player feels like, oh, I should have done this, not like, oh, this was super cheap.
We've talked about having the EVA thrusters be able to kind of stop you in long falls, even not like super jumps or anything like that, but like a boosted jump, but nothing like a Crackdown or a Just Cause grapple hook kind of thing. We haven't talked about that stuff yet.
TL;DRThe vehicle team is working on component misfires and wear, and getting ships to hold physical interior items requires making the exterior and interior object containers talk to each other, which comes a little later.
So right now, EU vehicle team is working on misfires, the wear and tear, and getting those things working the way that they need to work. So if you damage a power plant or you damage a cooler, then it has these type of misfires and it affects the way it works, which will affect other systems. So that is what they're working on right now. And then there's the second aspect, which is basically getting the ships to have the physical entities inside of them, and that is something that the US vehicle team or the EU vehicle team will do in just a little bit. Because then at that point we can actually switch out the items, we can transfer the damage from the external into the internal OC and then get that working.
It's the splitting of actually internal object containers. So the exterior object container does not talk with the internal object container right now. Once we get those two talking, then we can put those items on the inside and we can transfer the damage and make sure that everything is working properly.
TL;DRNo date is given: a developer is setting up character properties like hunger and thirst as hooks, after which food, drink, showers and toilets would come online separately and be made usable by another team.
Right now, Jens is actually implementing character properties like thirst, hunger, drunkenness, all these different properties that we want the characters to be able to have. Once he implements that, and once we actually get food working so that you can eat, you can drink, you can shower, each one of those I think would come on separately. But right now those are lower tier, but we really need the being able to trigger things on and off from a player state for S42.
Exactly. So he's setting up the hooks and then it'll be up to the Actor Feature Team to go through and make sure that you can actually use a shower, you can use a toilet accordingly.
TL;DRKnockdowns, knockbacks and staggers are being implemented now to raise time to kill and are planned to roll out a little later, and the MedPen is planned to become a temporary heal, introducing medical gameplay.
So right now we are working on knockdowns, knockbacks, kind of staggers. So these are just kind of stepped-up hit reactions. And this is something that we're implementing right now, but we're looking to kind of roll out a little bit in the future. But this is our way of increasing our time to kill. In particular, if you're out in the PU, you don't want to get instantly popped when you flew out 30 minutes and then all of a sudden you get popped and you respawn and have to go through that again. That's one of the first states, and then from there, there's the medical aspect of it. So being able to revive yourself: right now, the MedPen is a full heal. In the future, it'll be a temporary heal, and then you'll still start deteriorating from there, which then would introduce the medical gameplay regarding ships or somebody actually going and reviving you, hospitals, those types of things.
Yes. It is. Well, as far as medical gameplay... Okay, so for the knockdowns, yes, that is coming soon. As far as the heal and the temporary heal versus the permanent heal, I would like that in sooner than later. But as far as the medical ships and being able to go and revive somebody and all of that stuff, I think when we actually get those ships rolling out, that's when we'll introduce that type of gameplay.