Star Citizen Live: All About Alpha 3.12

Yeah, so basically, we have reputation on all of the mission givers except for one. Right now, we've got some issues with Ruto that we're working out. But basically, with reputation, the idea is that you go there. Obviously, if you do missions, then you become in better favor. If you do poorly on those missions or back out of them, fail them, so on and so forth, you lose favor with the mission giver. For the most part, you could never really fail out of good favor with them. They would constantly give you missions. Now you can actually fail out. It will kind of return to zero or return to a point where you can actually get in favor with them to actually do missions again. And then from there, we do have it on some of the select organizations. And in this case, it's really mostly geared towards bounty hunting stuff. So the Bounty Hunters Guild, the Blackjack Bounty Department, and then the Northrock Bounty Department. Basically, you can gain rep by completing bounty missions offered by them. And then with higher reputation, higher difficulty, higher mission rewards, that kind of stuff will be unlocked. And of course, afterwards, the idea is that more perks and stuff like that will be unlocked for you.

And of course, this is the first iteration of reputation and it will be built on in subsequent patches.

Yeah, exactly.

So the answer is yes and no. So if you blow up the ship first, it will then obviously spawn all the different boxes in space. And then you can steal them. So if you take someone out and all their cargo then gets ejected into space, you can then go outside in EVA with your tractor beam, collect all of those boxes, put them back into your ship, and then sell those boxes on the black market. If you try and interact with them directly from the cargo grid, so say, for example, you just went and bought a load of commodities that appeared in your cargo, and then you went and tried to use the tractor beam, because the boxes there are not physicalized, they're not rigid entities, essentially, what it means is that the tractor beam doesn't really interact with them. So that's going to be undergoing a cargo refactor. So it will be coming in a future update that you'll be able to manipulate them directly from the cargo grid. So that's why I was saying yes and no. So yes, if you blow them up first, but no, if you just walk into somebody's and try to take them off. That essentially covers it.

The plan is, yes, that you can. We can't do it right now. So basically what we're doing is currently the vehicle tech team is working on kind of a rebalance of basically EM and IR and also the addition of ambient signatures. So when that comes online, which I think is soon, then we will go through and basically rebalance the EM and IR signatures across the ships, but then we'll also implement it into stations and gas clouds and the sun and planets, so on and so forth. So then the system will actually work properly and depending on where you're at in the gas cloud, either you will be shielded by just being naturally there based off of the background of the gas cloud, or you will have to go run low emissions or stealth in order to be hidden.

And to just touch on that, because that's something that's been under my purview, we're also going to be working on adding cross-section as a signature. So on the ships, it will be EM, IR, and CS. So the cross-section essentially is kind of like your visual representation of a signature. So when you're inside a gas cloud, that gas cloud will obscure some of your visuals. We actually got it working already in terms of we generate this almost like a physics proxy around the ship and it does take into account the orientation of the ship. So if you're looking at it nose on, it's got a sleeker profile than if you're looking at it from a broadside. So when you're thinking about partial obscurity or hiding behind an asteroid or anything like that, it will lower your cross-section signature. And from a point of view of EM and IR, currently in the game right now, EM and IR is kind of like a binary decision. So it's like if the ambient value of that signature is higher than your signature, you're basically hidden. And that's not necessarily what we want it to be. So what we want it to be is that these things are a bit more nuanced so that if you have a high ambient signature, such as in a gas cloud, it dampens the signature which you are emitting. And what that means is that you're never just permanently stealthed. There's always an opportunity like, oh, you're trying to reduce the signatures. And in the new HUD, which we're also implementing, we'll be showing your signature emissions on you. And that will be both on FPS and on the ship side of things. So you'll be able to tweak different systems to basically lower your emissions. And you'll see those emissions be affected in real time when you go into something like a gas cloud, so you'll see them be dampened. And this gives us really awesome capabilities for, let's say your org has got a giant fleet and you have a large capital class ship, you can have smaller fighter class ships within the shadow of the larger capital ship, which then gives us this really cool gameplay where, if you're a pirate and you're like, is that one object? And you're going over there and all of a sudden that one dot on your radar turns into lots of other dots. And then all of a sudden it's like, oh, maybe I've pulled the gun too early. So yeah, there's lots coming on radar and scanning. And I know I say that a lot, there's lots coming, but that stuff's actually working right now. I've seen it working, so it will be coming in future updates.

So it's a complex question to answer because the way the weapons work, well, the way the planets work, for example, depends on what certain things are loaded in. So if you've been to a section of the planet that is already loaded, and then you move away from there, you'll then obviously be able to have all the entities that are loaded in. The most reliable value that I'm talking about is probably about 1500 meters. So, yeah, 1500 meters is reliable. It works longer than that. Upwards of two kilometers, I've seen some really good shots, but it depends on where you've been. If you're looking back to somewhere where it's previously loaded, if it isn't loaded, so it's not like, oh, 100% how it works. We can obviously be improving that in the future, but right now, between 1.1 kilometers and 1.5 kilometers. But you can zero. I think the scope allows you to zero up to a maximum of two kilometers. So you can't zero beyond that. Two kilometers is the max zeroing. Then you have to judge the shot yourself.

So the multi-tool tractor beam, which is what we're releasing in 3.12, the short answer is no. The tractor beam has a force, and it's actually all based around force. So I know JJ in one of the ISCs called out that it has a weight limit of 250 kilos. Technically, that's true, but it's actually a force limit. So 250 kilos is different in Earth gravity than it is in space, than it is on the moon. So the tractor beam has a force limit of 2,500 newtons. Essentially, a ROC is way heavier than that, so you can't lift it. Can tractor beam technology in a larger capacity than the multi-tool tractor beam turn a ROC over? Absolutely yes, but for the multi-tool tractor beam that's releasing in 3.12, it's a no.

I think it's important to remember that the multi-tool tractor beam is our first little baby step into tractor beam stuff. There are ships that are supposed to have tractor beams.

I mean, fundamentally, the way we delivered tractor beam, and this was always right from the get-go, was that tractor beam is a technology that we have developed. The main use case right now is from the multi-tool, but if I gave that multi-tool, that's one number, I could go and change that number to be 300,000 newtons. I could change it to be 300 million newtons, and I could lift anything. So as long as that entity in the world is a rigid body. A rigid body, for somebody who's not familiar with what it is, is basically a physicalized entity. So a lot of the brushes in the world, which are decorative items where you can't really interact with them, they're not physicalized. So for example, if a grenade went off nearby them, they wouldn't react to the grenade. But when you see something react to a grenade, say a ragdoll of a dead body or other things that you see, whether it's a Whammer's bar or whatever, those are the things that you can interact with. So we will be going through. I think Star Citizen, the live environment, is a large place to play. We have been working closely with the environment team that they will be going through throughout the universe and updating all of these things that are non-physicalized to become physicalized so that you'll be able to have more interactivity with the world, both from a hands carrying point of view and from a using the multi-tool point of view. But yeah, the multi-tool is just the first foray. We'll be adding other dedicated tools that are extensions of the multi-tool functionality because the multi-tool is supposed to just be what it is. It says what it says in the name. It's basically a little pen knife that has a knife or a toothpick or a screwdriver or whatever. We will be offering dedicated tools, a dedicated mining tool or a dedicated tractor beam tool, and those are absolutely planned down the road in terms of the progression, so that you can specialize into that kind of field. So if you want to be a dedicated cargo hauler or a dedicated salvager, tractor beam's going to be up there and you maybe want a beefier version that allows you to lift larger things. But yeah, so right now the short answer is no, but the future is bright.

Right now, no. Basically, unfortunately, the guys have had bigger things to work on for 3.12 bugs, as well as doing the StarMap rework. So that's been their focus. And unfortunately, this is the...

The one thing that I can add though is that coming in the future, I should get a catchphrase, we actually have just converted those party nameplates into using Building Blocks and we're going to be integrating them into the radar and scanning functionality, so that you haven't got this weird party name and then the name underneath the ship, and it's all this UI combining together to create this hodgepodge of multiple systems that are doing different things. So we've unified all of that so that it will be coming in a future patch, and that will more than likely fix that bug.

Well, I mean, either we'll get to it before then or this will. It really just depends on the bugs that the team has on their plates. Just because this is a very specific one, it needs to go through two or three people. It's very, very specialized and it's been a pain to track down.

So essentially, the real world equivalents of chaff and flare are not necessarily how they're being used in Star Citizen, because Star Citizen has all these different signatures. So this is something that's been driven by Yogi as a fan favourite, and he was very passionate about changing them to be more representative of what they do in Star Citizen. So the flare has been renamed to decoy. So basically the decoy is creating a strong signal source for all seeker heads. So CS, IR, EM. And then the chaff is being renamed to the noise field. So the noise field is kind of creating this sensor dampening. And that's kind of what I was talking about before, because that actually was an extension of radar and scanning, which was with the core functionality of radar, and actually Yogi tied into that from what we were doing from the vehicle side. So that's kind of going in line with a signature being dispersed into the ambient that is dampening other signatures around it. So that's why it's being called a noise field. So it's kind of allowing people to hide inside almost a mini gas cloud. So it's about reducing confusion towards what people have an expectation of happens in real life versus the Star Citizen universe and how we're using it, because we use a lot of terms from a design point of view, and this goes across multiple different games, where you pull a term and you're like, okay, we're going to use this term to represent this thing that is based off reality. But a lot of the times, how you implement it or how you're using it in that particular use case in a game can slightly change the direct determination of what that actual term is being used for. And I think in this case, it was about clearing up the confusion. Now, obviously, in the short term, people are going to be going, well, hold on, I've already learned a lot of this, but we've got to remember that we're still in [alpha]. So this is about getting the right terminology and the right systems and the right underpinning in there so that when new players or old players alike are trying to explain it to new players, it has a consistency across what the real world is doing versus what's happening in game.

Not in this tier. So in 3.12, it's a no, but it is a planned feature and has always been a planned feature from the start. So that'll be something that we add in to the next tier. As you're probably aware, if you've played Half-Life or Garry's Mod, tractor beam allows you to do a lot of fun things in a game. It unlocks a lot of possibilities for cargo hauling. It unlocks a lot of possibilities for designers to create missions where you're able to manipulate physical objects in places that you can't necessarily get to yourself. So it gives us a lot of scope. It's a really good ingredient to add lots of different experiences, but it also provides a lot of, I would say, fun, a lot of chance for chicanery. So I think what we need to do is this version is getting out. The main use case for the tractor beam for 3.12 is for trying to improve that flow of when you've taken someone out, or you're being a pirate and you're trying to steal someone's cargo, that at the moment you're having to EVA out, collect every box up individually and then bring it back in. And to be honest, that's actually why those boxes spawn as 50 by 50 by 50 carryable boxes. Because if you look at a ship and you have one SCU sized cargo boxes in the back, which are the standard, the stock size for cargo commodities, then when you destroy that ship, it spawns all of these smaller boxes. And the reason that is is because those smaller boxes are actually carryable. Now, really what should happen is that your ship should break away, and the things that you were visually seeing in the back of your cargo, if they survived the explosion, should now visually be in space. But they're clearly too big for you to go over and handle them with your hands. So that's where the tractor beam is supposed to come in. And it also means that it's less fiddly because we can have larger boxes. Obviously, this is the first iteration where we're adding the tractor beam. So we still haven't done the preceding work. But the goal is to improve that flow of looting in space, shall we say. So not necessarily for 3.12, but it is something coming for the future. It's always for the future if it's not for 3.12. It's 3.12 or future. Those are the two buckets.

So it was to do with size comparison. So essentially when all the ships are made, they have to have a way to be able to balance between each of the categories. We've got a lot of ships. So the ship team take a lot of these parameters and come up with metrics for where things should sit. So when the fuel tank was designed around the Mercury Star Runner, it was given a certain value, but then throughout implementation and then as it developed, it became a bit stronger, and essentially it was getting stronger and stronger and stronger. And then it got to a point where it kind of outgrew its fuel tank from basically a power to size comparison. So this was all about bringing it back in line from a balanced perspective that was representative across the board. So if it would have just been a number change, it would have left this weird outlier. So it was about bringing it back into that realm so it fits well within its power comparison.

Well, and it's also making sure that when we're tuning things, those thrusters will take a certain amount of power. And if we turn that down or adjust that, then we're adjusting across multiple thrusters, across multiple ships. So this is a different way for us to tune.

I would prefer just to think about it as those missions need to be done. So first we need to do those. And then depending on the reputation system, if we want to have it be part of an organization or a corporation, cool, then obviously you could gain rep through there. Or if it's maybe Good Samaritan rep or so on and so forth, like go and clear out this village that has been infested with pirates or something like that, then maybe you gain a reputation around the universe or around that planet as somebody that did something good. For us, I view it as first and foremost, we just need to get those missions working the way that we want them to work. And then from there, any sort of additions or spices that we want to add on to those missions will just influence the reputation towards somebody or towards something else, kind of thing. So if you have a chance of going good or bad in that mission, then it will adjust accordingly.

I was going to say as well, in terms of how reputation will affect missions, reputation is really exciting for me personally, because if you think of the economy and the progression of the game in terms of ships and how you earn credits and you do these missions, and that gameplay loop of do mission or do cargo trade, get X credits and then use that to upgrade your ship, and then eventually do stronger missions, and you keep doing it up until you've got the ship that you really want, you're talking on levels of six, seven, eight figure values, right? When you're looking at FPS items, where you're looking at a smaller scale of monetary cost, it's like somebody going and buying a super yacht in real life and then going, but which watch shall I buy? The order of magnitude is not right. So reputation is something that will be critical in terms of allowing the progression of things like that to not just be locked to monetary progression, because monetary progression is something that is so tied into ships and how ships can be bought. And that kind of sets that level of scale. So when you're looking at the FPS side of things, or the item side of things or character level side of things, that scale is not applicable. So we need to come up with ways where it's like, hey, this super awesome weapon or this super awesome piece of armor or this super awesome item or XYZ, we can then go, hey, you need to have this amount of reputation to do this mission to unlock this particular item. So it allows us to offer this deep and rich progression on the character side that matches the deep and rich progression that we have on the ship side with the monetary aspect. And that's something that's incredibly exciting and important to me, because then it rounds that experience across the game. It doesn't just mean, well, as soon as I've made a significant amount of money on the ship side, then I could just buy everything on the FPS side, and it's like, well, I just have everything and I own everything. So that's definitely something that the reputation is a really incredible foundation to build on for all of this content.

The next thing is basically getting gifting and Subsumption. So then at that point in time, we can give that stuff away.

Absolutely not. So my teams work on push-pull. We're working on it right now. The way the tractor beam is going to work in terms of EVA traversal is, if you look at, say, traversal on ground, you have things like vault and mantle and jump and sprint. And if you look at an Assassin's Creed game, you've got wall climbing and rope traversal and ledge climbing. And that creates all of these different ingredients for players or for designers to then craft spaces that allow you to go, OK, let's have a jump, followed by this mechanic, then followed by this mechanic. So you can create these interesting layered systems across all these different mechanics to create traversal puzzles. And that's basically what they fundamentally are. But we don't necessarily have that in an EVA space. Now, tractor beam, obviously, the grapple hook, at the moment it's your Spider-Man in space. Now, obviously, fundamentally, that doesn't mean that you're just going to have this and you can just tractor beam forever. But vice versa, you've also got unlimited EVA fuel. So at the moment, you can just EVA everywhere you want to go. You can tractor beam everywhere you want to go. So for 3.12, I'd say really enjoy that, guys, because that's something that is not going to be a long-term endeavor, because what we want to do to create a more fun experience is that, OK, I've got limited fuel in my EVA pack, so I don't want to be stuck out in the black without fuel. And then it's like, OK, I've got a limited battery on my multi-tool, but maybe I'm using that multi-tool for salvage purposes. Maybe I'm using it for cutting. Maybe I'm using it for healing. Maybe I'm using it for the tractor beam. So all of a sudden, you've got a limited-use tool that has multiple uses in gameplay, but could potentially get you out of a bind, or if you need a long-range grapple hook in EVA. And then you've got zero-G push-pull. Now zero-G push-pull, the fundamentals of it, it's free. So it's just under your own effort. You're not consuming a resource. So the zero-G push-pull is kind of like wall climbing. That's the one where you want to be going, I get to a location, let's say it's a derelict. I can now zero-G push-pull. I'm pulling myself around. I'm pulling myself inside. I'm using these grab holds to get to my location. And you're like, cool, but I'm not expending any resource. And all of a sudden there, we have these three mechanics. We have zero-G push-pull, we have tractor beam, and we have EVA. And you've got to then balance it and go, OK, maybe I should use this, maybe I should use this, depending on what armor I'm wearing. How much EVA fuel capacity do I have? How much battery do I have? Do I have the correct suit that can recharge that battery? And all of that stuff is coming. I gave a talk at CitizenCon on how we're going to be converting armor to ships. That's still the case. That's still the plan. We're working on all of this going forward. So absolutely not. Categorically, no, is the answer to is it going to kill zero-G push-pull, because it's one facet. It's like us releasing jump and saying, is that going to kill sprinting? That's not the case. The intention is that we're trying to mix all of these things up to create meaningful gameplay spaces.

It could be viewed that way. But really, this was for the new players. Obviously, the veterans can turn it off. But for people that aren't super hardcore, obviously with cars, you're kind of trained, hey, this is where a door is at, and this is where the handle is. And for the most part, they're always in the same spots on cars, versus on our ships, they're in all different unique locations.

If I suffered having to find the Cutlass door latch, everybody should have to suffer to find the Cutlass door latch, Todd.

And a lot of people do. And just even Aaron or Brian playing the game for the first time, trying to get into a Carrack, I think they wasted 30 minutes trying to get into a Carrack. So this is our way of allowing new players that are not maybe as hardcore as our current fans to be able to access the game as well.

And to be honest, it's something that we really should be pushing for and celebrating, because if you look at space games in general across the games industry, the learning curve to get into those games is steep. I remember when I started EVE a long time ago, somebody sent me a 180-page Word document, trying to figure out how to just get into this. It's just the starter guide. And it feels like a full-time job. But the more people that we can bring into the Star Citizen community and have a better experience, for example the Free Fly events, when people come in and they're able to have more accessible gameplay experiences, that will only benefit the whole community, because if there's more people there, if there's more noobs in the sky, there's more people to shoot, right? So it's only a long-term benefit from an accessibility point of view.

Yes. So basically, gas mining, it being like a danger zone. Right now, we're missing distortion damage and electricity and other factors that would actually knock out your ship or even kill you as a player if you're floating around in there. We can do this right now, but we're not doing it for 3.12: basically create smaller clouds that we can find out in the middle of space and use them as real clouds, versus the stuff that we've created. It's massive. It truly is massive. And then, obviously, the other thing is that this is where jump points will be in the future as well. So not necessarily in the Lagrange points, but in gas clouds.

The one big thing to know about gas clouds in space is that they provide an atmosphere. So from a temperature point of view, if you look at all of our spacesuits, generally a lot of them are rated, say, plus or minus 100 degrees or something like that. When you're out in space, because it's a vacuum, it's basically insulating you, the actor status doesn't really kick in. But as soon as you then EVA into a gas cloud to either find out what's in it or take advantage of that, then all of a sudden you are in an atmosphere. And guess what? The atmosphere is really, really cold because it's in the middle of space. All that energy is dissipating. So that's definitely something to be aware of, that they're going to be, like Todd called out, when we've got distortion and electrical storms inside of these clouds. But just from a point of view of what's in there right now in terms of gas clouds, they will tie into the actor status on the temperature side of things. So be wary about just going in, because they'll be cold.

Yes. So the intention when we came up with the tractor beam was it's supposed to be this electromagnetic force that is kind of aiding gravity to lift this item. We do want the ability for people to combine together. I don't envisage a scene where we've got like 250 people pulling down a Bengal from space or something. I think we'll probably have some kind of limit, that it's like, okay, after a certain amount, it falls off, or some diminishing returns. But yes, the intention long term is that we have, and the way I described it was, the way the weight categories work: currently any of the boxes that you carry in the game, they have a physical weight, but they're not affected by the carryable system. So if you see a box under the hood, it might be a thousand kilos, but you can just pick it up, it doesn't really matter, and you can just walk around with it. But obviously, as we're moving towards a more physicalized world, we're actually setting all these weights to be correct. So some of the 50 by 50 boxes, they have gold in them. Now, if you do a 0.125 meter cubed box of gold, which is a one SCU box of gold, that's really heavy, like thousands of kilos. So you're never going to be able to just go, oh, I'm just going to lift it up with my hands. So what we're going to have is, we'll have the weight limits and we'll also have size limits. So we already have the size limits in terms of the 50 by 50 by 50 centimeter little boxes that you can pick up with your hands. And eventually that will tie into a weight limit of probably about 70, 75 kilos that you can actually carry. And obviously the weight will then slow you down, so you'll be struggling at that weight. Then all of a sudden you'll be like, okay, I can maybe manipulate one SCU boxes, and that'll be, okay, that's the tractor beam, maybe that can go up to 250 kilos. And then we'll have something, maybe a dedicated one, where it maybe is more numbers and larger sizes, which we've discussed. But let's say you get to the version where it's like, hey, I want to lift this box out, but it's too heavy for me. Oh, just me and my buddy, a couple of pals will come in, we'll shift it off, because it's full of metal. Because at the moment, how the records work is that it's a box of gold. It's a box of agricultural waste. It's not a box and then the waste. So they're not separated. So what we want to do is separate into the box and then the item in the box. So that means that the box will dictate the volume and size, but what you put in it will then really clearly matter in terms of how you can lift it. So if I look at a 1 SCU box, which is the standard commodity box, and it's full of, say, a gas, that might be light enough for you to lift it with your single tractor beam. But if that box is full of metal, it's not going to be light enough for you to lift it with a single tractor beam. So maybe now you need a buddy or a friend to come and help you later down the road. And then you can all lift it off and put it onto a grav-lev trolley with push-pull or something. And then you can push it around. So think of them almost like forklifts, to be able to get these things on to more maneuverable items. So long term, yes. 3.12, no.

Right now, every Lagrange point does have gas clouds. In the future, we might change that. But right now, they do. And then we have different ways of making each cloud feel unique. So like what we talked about before, as far as the temperature, the density, the distortion levels on it, again, the EM, the IR signatures of the ambient, what's actually in there as far as mineables go, so on and so forth. So we have a bunch of different ways of making each one feel unique and interesting. And then this is our way of really stress testing the system and seeing what works for us. And then from there, either in Stanton or in future systems, maybe we adjust the way that they work, and how dense they are, and do we move them only to L3s, or does it make sense to have them in L4s, or do we make them super, super wispy, or something like that? But right now, I'm really excited. I know that the team that worked on it have done a fantastic job on getting them in. And I think it will add a lot of unique experiences.

We've done a lot of capship gameplay. There's been a lot of tuning on the ship side, so shields, the railgun, the armor, et cetera. Then from there, there's been a lot of tuning on the AI behaviors, so updating the way it moves, how it prioritizes ships, how it prioritizes targets and threats coming at it, and then also the overall distance that it goes to, how it tries to keep its distance from the targets. So if it's going up against a ship that's stronger than it, then how does it maneuver around? Since its main threat is the railgun, it doesn't want to broadside you like some of our other capital ships. So that work has been going on in the background. And then from there, there's obviously the missile changes and the combat changes that have happened on that side and how it prioritizes those. And so if people are shooting missiles or torpedoes at it, then it'll be taking those out, and it'll be basically going through, and if a torpedo comes into its range, then it targets the torpedo first and then from there goes back to its previous targets, kind of thing. So there's been a lot of work that's been done there.

So for 3.12, we disabled it. So obviously, you saw there's a few, not bugs, there were a few actions we disabled for 3.12. Green Goblin was one.

Tell them what Green Goblin is.

So you can jump on a box and then tractor beam the box and fly off into the distance. You can also have other people jump on a box and then they fly off. So now basically what we do is we disabled it so that if anybody touches the box, it disables the tether, it breaks the tether. You can do dead bodies. So if you need to get somebody, eventually, when they're hurt, or if they're a dead-or-alive bounty and you need to show their body or whatever, you should be able to lift them up into your ship. But fundamentally, long term, we do want the ability to offer the tractor beam [on players]. So if somebody's injured or somebody's hurt, you can do it. Or if you're using it as a weaponized version of the tractor beam. But you will have ways to prevent it. It's never going to just be everyone trolling each other and tractor beaming all over the place. It will go through some design balancing to make sure it's right for Star Citizen and that it fits the mold. But yes, the actor actually is a rigid body, so it worked out of the gate. It was something we disabled. Like I said in my previous answer, there's a lot of ways tractor beam is going to be utilized, and I'm a thousand percent certain that the community will find a lot of interesting and amusing ways to use it. And we will find those and have to make a call on whether they fit the gameplay. But yes, the fundamental is for 3.12, nothing happens. And if somebody jumps on a box when you're tractor beaming it, it will disable it.

Well, if your fix is working. At one point, you could shoot the box, you could lift the person, and then you disabled it if it was touched on the feet, but then people were bunny hopping on top of the box.

Yeah, the bunny hopping was a good one. So we had basically a delay before the tether breaks. So people were jumping up before the delay was resetting. So then we added, now it's like a cumulative value. But then we just went with a more elegant solution. So essentially, as soon as it touches you, it disables it. But yeah, there's going to be lots of different uses for the tractor beam going forward. With the actors, we want to create a physics sandbox in Star Citizen. That's what it's always supposed to be, this universe simulation that has a physicalized nature in the game, that everything is built on the physical world. So the weight of your armor dictates how fast you can run and how far you can run. What you're carrying with you dictates it. All of those things should be tying into how heavy your ship is and how it moves in atmospheric flight. All of these things are tying towards the same vision that we're aiming towards. And the tractor beam is no different. It's underpinned by physics. So if you have a ship-size tractor beam on a MOLE or something that's going and collecting huge boxes and allows you to manipulate those, that ties into the Star Citizen universe that we're trying to create. So yeah, long and short of it though, actors is a no for 3.12 right now.

Yeah, there will definitely be a wipe at some point. We actually discuss whether a wipe happens at every patch. And I think in some cases, what we want to be able to do is we want players to be able to earn different things. Obviously, sometimes now they're finding ways to exploit it or cheat it. But basically, that's what this time is for: to break the systems and even be able to see, okay, if this person's doing this and we want them to be able to earn a ship, let's say after a month of gameplay or two months of gameplay or something like that, or even longer, let's say six months or something, this allows us to do it, since we're not wiping all the time. That sounds wrong, but basically it allows us to test things and allows us to work. It's something that we talk about constantly and it allows us to test certain things out. But if we were wiping every single patch, then there's a lot of these long mid-game systems and goals that we have for players that we wouldn't be able to test. So this allows us to go through and try that out.

There's also, from a short-term point of view, when you've got loads and loads of money, that short-term gain of, oh, I can buy everything and enjoy it, fundamentally it kind of devalues the game for that person who has all of that money. So if it's just something they've exploited to get or they've just found a loophole or something like that, it's like playing Dark Souls and turning on God Mode. It gets boring fairly quickly. Like Todd says, this is the moment in time where we're taking all this data so that we can rebalance it, so that when it goes to the unwipeable times, then we've got a solid progression that people can play through and feel really like, wow, that guy's got an Idris, he spent a long time to get that, and you have these really achievable goals, and it makes that progression all the more worthwhile. So it's definitely a critical thing for us to discuss and make sure that we get right.

No. I mean, again, it's like saying, I have a knife, will it replace me opening boxes with my hands? The tractor beam will be a limited resource. How you spend that resource is up to you. So if you're down in a cave and you're using that resource to mine, then you're going to want to carry stuff. So it depends on what scenario you're in. You might not have a multi-tool. You might not have had the tractor beam attachment. So the carryable system is something that we've put a lot of effort into investing in. It's not going away. It sits under my teams. Again, it's something that is critical to the gameplay. We have lots of different variations of loadouts that people have. So when we add more gadgets in the future, it might not be a sure thing that you're going to take a multi-tool and every single attachment. So it depends on what you're doing and how you're using it and how you spend that limited resource, when we add the fact that it is a battery. So 100%, it won't remove it. In certain circumstances, it will vastly improve things. So if I want to put a box or somebody in something and I have to climb a ladder, right now that's an impossibility. If I need to get something out of a cave and I have to vault something up, again, it's an impossibility. So it offers more player choices. I know you asked me the other day, Jared, player choices. Player choices underpin game design. So that is a fundamental essence and core of designing things, so that you have choice and the player can choose how they manipulate or solve particular problems that we present them with.