Star Citizen Live: Todd Talk - Alpha 3.6

Todd Papy · Live Game Director, Star Citizen

No, it's basically the way that the lore for Stanton is thought about is from a federal and state level. And so if you think from a federal level, that would be UEE, and then from a state level, that would be Hurston or Crusader or ArcCorp for Area18 or microTech for microTech. So if it's a misdemeanor, then it really is dealing with the lower level like planet or local security and basically paying off your fine there, or even going in and, like what you're doing with Kareah, which was basically kind of hacking. So we did introduce some new tools for the hacking, which would be, it's a little bit, like the hacking will take a little bit longer. There's a chip now that you can go and find at different places within the universe. We're not going to kind of list those, but I'm sure if you go to GrimHEX or you go to other places there, you'd be able to see what we're talking about. And then from there, you can go into comm arrays and those types of things, access those. But if we're talking about the UEE aspect, I haven't been able to play every single part of the law system, so I don't know if I make a UEE crime, if I can just go to a Hurston location and pay it off. I'm assuming that you can.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

Gotcha, because we don't have a UEE-specific space or anything in the system. So it sounds like there'll be multiple places to try to affect your criminality record, not just Kareah.

Todd Papy · Live Game Director, Star Citizen

Yeah, and not just legally, but you can also affect it illegally, meaning if you want to lower it and you don't want to pay the fine, you can go and find ways to hack it.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

So you have the option, if you've broken the law, to address it legally and just go and say, hey, there's a bounty on my head, I'd really like you people to stop following me, and you can just pay it off, or you can attempt to find further illicit means to erase your illicit record.

Todd Papy · Live Game Director, Star Citizen

Yes, basically.

Todd Papy · Live Game Director, Star Citizen

So kind of the same way it did before, which is if you have kind of a prolonged initiative or initiation with somebody. So if you are on the attacker front, then basically if you're shooting first and you're dealing kind of the most damage threshold, then you are viewed as the attacker. And it really depends on when it comes in. So if you're doing the most damage up front, then basically you are viewed as the attacker. And then at that point, the person can retaliate in self-defense.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

I asked Luke Pressley for some information specifically about this question, and he sent me a text block of code. It works like this. And I must confess to not understanding most of it. But it was nice to at least see that there's a calculus involved here. And whether it's always going to be correct or whether it always gets it right, that's something we can continue to balance and tweak over time.

Todd Papy · Live Game Director, Star Citizen

The junkyard will be, but as far as being able to sell used ships or stolen ships, selling stolen ships, no. But obviously selling cargo or those types of stolen goods, that's the whole point of these. We can call them black markets, but it's basically just a dealer or somebody that will deal with illicit goods.

Todd Papy · Live Game Director, Star Citizen

Basically, we have GrimHEX. I think everybody knows about that one. And GrimHEX will give you a certain price for these things. But if you want to go search out other lesser-known areas, then at that point in time, you can find those.

Todd Papy · Live Game Director, Star Citizen

Yes, but basically, we are working towards removing those or adjusting them. I think our first thing will be GrimHEX, and we'll figure out how we want to adjust that, whether that just be taking it out completely. But I think part of the things that we need to work out before that happens is security. And so with law, we just have ways of saying, OK, you've broken the law, this is how much it's going to cost, versus with security, we have ways to basically really enforce that and say, OK, you broke the law. This is either going to cost you your life or we'll shoot down your ship or we'll disable you or so on and so forth. And in particular, within locations, being able to have that security so that you can basically protect people that are not breaking the law.

Todd Papy · Live Game Director, Star Citizen

Well, it can't prevent it. It can basically financially slap you on the hand.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

Deter it.

Todd Papy · Live Game Director, Star Citizen

Yeah, it can deter it that way, but basically, until we actually get the security system, then at that point in time, the rammer will get shot down.

Todd Papy · Live Game Director, Star Citizen

Yeah, I think so. But again, if you think of other games, there are points in time when it becomes overwhelming odds against you. And so whether the bounty gets high enough, so then players actually start hunting you as well, or if the UEE comes after you, then...

Todd Papy · Live Game Director, Star Citizen

When we go to Nyx or when we go to Pyro or even Vanduul systems or something like that, the idea is that with this law system, it allows us to basically set laws at a solar system level. And then from there, we have zones that can basically increase or decrease what is viewed as legal in that area. So, for example, certain drugs are legal in Colorado or in Amsterdam, and liquor is legal in certain parts of the world and illegal in other parts of the world. So it's kind of the same idea.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

Obviously, there's a pretty healthy player versus player community, and you don't want to necessarily stifle that with too much automation and protection, but at the same time, we do want to safeguard a reasonable play experience for the majority of the community.

Todd Papy · Live Game Director, Star Citizen

Yeah, for the average player, if somebody's griefing, then we want to protect that other person's experience as well.

Todd Papy · Live Game Director, Star Citizen

Depends on the crime that you commit. So it can basically be a felony or a misdemeanor. So if you bump somebody, that to me would be a misdemeanor. If you kill somebody, that's a felony.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

If you murder somebody as opposed to self-defense. You can still kill somebody and have it not be a felony.

Todd Papy · Live Game Director, Star Citizen

It's dealing with bounty hunters that will come after you. And then it will also deal with basically if security finds you, straight up killing you kind of thing or fighting you.

Todd Papy · Live Game Director, Star Citizen

That's actually a good question. I don't know the answer to that one. I know that we can sell stolen cargo, but if you're on the stolen ship and you take it there, I think that works. But basically it'd be at GrimHEX or some of the other locations that I hinted at that you'd be able to go and find.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

When I was pre-gaming and talking to Luke Pressley, it's the challenge in answering some of these things, because there's what our intention is, which will come in 3.7, 3.8, 3.9, in a subsequent batch, and then there's what will actually make it in through testing and capabilities in 3.6. It's hard to keep that straight sometimes.

Todd Papy · Live Game Director, Star Citizen

Yeah, and a lot of times when we put out this first iteration, we go through an internal QA test list for this. And so with that, in particular on these first iterations, a lot of times some stuff will get turned on, some stuff will get turned off based off of that. We call it a QATR. And I think right now everything is in, in particular for the law system, but that did come in very, very recently.

Todd Papy · Live Game Director, Star Citizen

I don't think that we've changed it just yet. I think that will happen as we continue to go. It might be that when you fly into different areas that it updates, but that would be all zone-based right now. Considering I haven't been able to play that aspect, or when I've been playing, I haven't been focusing on that. I've been focusing more on hover mode or mining or those types of things. So that will be the next thing that I do over this coming week.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

And of course, that'll be out for testing. I don't know when.

Todd Papy · Live Game Director, Star Citizen

Well, it's in Evocati right now. So there were some deadlocks that we were running into, and there was also a little bit of stuttering that we were running into. And before we turned it to wave one, we wanted to solve those issues.

Todd Papy · Live Game Director, Star Citizen

Right now, it's just a flag that we have internally. In the future, again, it will be that it's just a continued flag that they have. As far as the interaction with the shopkeepers, that to me is something that we have yet to work out, like how we want them to kind of question you and say, is this good? Or how did you come about this kind of thing? But right now, it'll be dealing with kiosks.

Todd Papy · Live Game Director, Star Citizen

Right now? You look over your shoulder. Right now, I think you die. Well, I guess you go to jail. But that's something that in the future we'll be working towards.

Todd Papy · Live Game Director, Star Citizen

I think all things being equal, and let's say somebody was above it and the person taking off vertically, I think it would be the person taking off vertically because they hit them.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

It's like right of way with traffic.

Todd Papy · Live Game Director, Star Citizen

Yeah, basically in traffic. So that's the way it should work right now. But I think some of the things would be, OK, are they sitting right above the hangar? Are they sitting right above the landing pad? Are they griefing? Those are all things that, kind of like with the ramming question, we'll have to take into account and work through.

Todd Papy · Live Game Director, Star Citizen

Yes. So I think I mentioned earlier this hacking chip that we have. So we put that gameplay into the comm arrays. So now when you get one of those hacking chips, it's not just going into the comm array and just turning it on or off. Now there's a little bit of time associated with that. And I believe there are missions that actually get spawned off of that. So then it basically becomes kind of an ecosystem like what we've talked about with other areas where you want people showing up. And in this case, people that are showing up are more than likely trying to stop you. So therefore, I'm sure that you'll want to attack them or defend yourself.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

I think it's a good opportunity just to remind folks that not everything is on the roadmap.

Todd Papy · Live Game Director, Star Citizen

No, and I can guarantee you that there's stuff that's scheduled for 3.7 that we're working on right now that, personally, I would like to keep hidden from the roadmap. We'll see if that happens.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

It gets lost sometimes. The roadmap is not a table of contents of everything that's being worked on. It's an indicator of things that we expect or intend to release each quarter, but there are many things that are exploratory. There are many things that are a little more R&D, and we don't know if they're going to work. We don't know if we even want them. We don't know how long it's going to take. So when we're in that kind of nebulous area, we keep them off the roadmap until we know more about them. And we try to be as responsible as we can with the information that we give the community, and with the timetable that we give the community. We don't always succeed, but it doesn't stop us from trying each and every month.

Todd Papy · Live Game Director, Star Citizen

Well, and even with, let's say internally we have an FPS team, we have FPS AI, we have ship AI, and we have what we consider social AI. Each quarter, that team is working on multiple things. However, on the roadmap, for the most part, we only show one for each kind of thing. But we work on multiple things. And so the way that we view it is, OK, we feel like this is the biggest one that should probably go on the roadmap. But there's a lot of other things that are being worked on and focused on by that team to actually solve. And that goes across all of our different feature teams or content teams.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

And sometimes, like you said at the very beginning, sometimes we just like the surprise.

Todd Papy · Live Game Director, Star Citizen

Yeah, there's good parts about being as open as we are, and then there's bad parts about being as open as we are, which is that a lot of times, at least from my standpoint, there's things that need trial and error and need iteration. A lot of times with other game development, that happens all behind closed doors. But the good thing is that we get to play it, we get to see how people react to it, we get to iterate off of it, versus basically holding everything back and then saying, OK, this is what we put together, and then people either like it or they don't. Getting that feedback a lot earlier helps shape it to what it needs to be, but at least I like to surprise the people a little bit. It's fun.

Todd Papy · Live Game Director, Star Citizen

Well, it will be having the same interiors, or basically just a little bit of variation from what we had in 3.5, 3.4 kind of thing. What we're working towards in the future is building out the space station so it has, let's say, a maintenance area or gravity room, power room, so on and so forth. So all these kind of utilitarian aspects that would go into a building or into a space station, and then habs for the employees that live and work there. And then there's basically the social areas that we have right now. When we go into 3.7, 3.8, we're trying to build those three sections. And so every station that we'd be putting out would have those there. Some of them would be able to be accessed, some of them wouldn't be able to be accessed, but they would still technically be there. And so that allows us to have parity across the board. So if we do something where it's a station that's living and breathing and working, just think of it like a building. If you go into an office building, a lot of times there's security there and you can go into, let's say, the lobby, but you can't go into the whole building. Versus if the building is a derelict, then you can go in through the whole building and check it out. That's basically the way we think about space stations. So if it's a derelict or like Covalex, then theoretically you can go through that whole thing, versus if it's a living, breathing station, I don't expect to be able to go through everything.

Todd Papy · Live Game Director, Star Citizen

3.6 is not the patch where we change Port Olisar. Basically, we have what we consider rest stops or truck stops. And then Port Olisar, to me, is a combination between a cargo depot and a rest stop. And the way that I've always viewed Port Olisar is very much like a port where you get these massive ships that come in, Hull Es, unload their cargo, and then from there, that's ferried down to Crusader. But right now, at least from my standpoint, I would like us to get a little bit of the cargo depot aspects working in order to kind of fully replace it. But CR might want us to do it sooner than later.

Todd Papy · Live Game Director, Star Citizen

Well, in all honesty, it's not something that CR, Tony, Erin or I have talked about any time recently. I can see the need for it, or the desire for it. Obviously, in other games, you're really just dealing with XY, versus with us, you're dealing with XYZ and then possible rotation and orbits. I think there's some headache there that would have to be talked through.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

Obviously we want the planets and the moons to rotate, not just around the sun, but the moons to rotate around the planets. That creates some interesting challenges. For my part, I also got to think there's some reticence behind having a bunch of coordinates listed out on a website, like all the answers to everything put up on a website. We see that in a lot of MMOs back in the old Thottbot or Wowhead days. And we've talked a lot about the ability, when you discover something, to bookmark something and be able to eventually sell that bookmark. A coordinate system kind of clashes with that.

Todd Papy · Live Game Director, Star Citizen

Well, even with the information, we're talking about a type, we're talking about XYZ, we're talking about amounts. So when we start working on data, and data as a packet, like with cargo we have SCUs and storage points associated with cargo, I see data in the same way, and Tony does as well. So when we start working on that, then I think we would start talking about, OK, well, how are we going to actually map this? And is it important for us to map it?

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

Some element of this is inevitable. If we're a game as successful as we want to be, there are going to be plenty of websites with secrets put out there. And it doesn't mean that we have to make it easier, though. I'm not saying it's a reason to stop us from doing it. I'm saying it's something that has to be considered in the conversation with whatever we ultimately decide to do.

Todd Papy · Live Game Director, Star Citizen

Well, and I think part of it's, right now, we're so focused on building basically the planetary bodies. And when we start talking about, OK, if you're mapping these planetary bodies or you're basically being an explorer, then that's when I think a lot of this stuff becomes a little bit more useful, in particular from a career standpoint, as well as once we get data and the concept of data actually into the game. Then I think that's where a lot of these start wrapping themselves together. Right now, we don't have that.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

We're not saying that it's not going to happen. We're saying that there's considerations. There's a lot of different disparate systems that have to work together, and we need to find a solution that encompasses them all.

Todd Papy · Live Game Director, Star Citizen

Considering we're still working on scanning, we're working on basically balancing the ship combat and we're working on power and all of these other really kind of core systems, I view those as more important than getting a coordinate system in. And I think CR and others do as well.

Todd Papy · Live Game Director, Star Citizen

Right now it's mining. That's basically what harvestable entities are. But the idea behind this tech is for us to be able to spawn anything. So if we want to spawn a rack of guns, we can spawn a rack of guns. This allows us to spawn plants so that you can go and do fruits. You can go have orchards. You can go find things on the planets or things in the cave like what we've shown off before. So this even allows us to do spawning of harvestables within object containers. So, for example, if we put out a ship, then basically this is our fundamental building block of how we redo our derelicts, because our derelicts right now are really just placed there. And then anything that's spawned within those derelicts that the player can really interact with only spawns when a mission comes in with that derelict. So this allows us to go through and kind of revamp the way that we've done derelicts so that it's working more towards what we consider a loot system.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

The tech's first implementation is mining. Mining is where you'll see this new harvestable entity tech first manifest. But once we have things like the personal inventory, we can expand it to all kinds of stuff.

Todd Papy · Live Game Director, Star Citizen

Right. You've seen it with the plants that we work on. So there's absolutely no reason why we can't have fruits on those plants. And then you can go and actually collect that fruit and you can go take it somewhere.

Todd Papy · Live Game Director, Star Citizen

So right now, the way that we spawn it, I don't think we have that control over it. So it basically spawns based off the biome. And so the overall biome has a certain probability to spawn it there. I don't think we have a way to basically say, OK, within this biome, there's certain points of interest that would have a higher rate. It doesn't mean that we can't do it. In fact, if you send me a note about it, I'll go talk to Dan about those things.

Todd Papy · Live Game Director, Star Citizen

As far as I know, this stuff went in last night. So I haven't had a chance to play it at all. And I've been waiting for a response from Sean first. But basically, as soon as I get that response from Sean or I can play it myself, then I know that we have about seven points that we were really trying to hit. Let me pull that up real quick on my phone. So the ones that we were trying to address: ship hailing, video calls, basically video streaming, rendering ship channels. So entering a ship, joining a ship channel; when selecting a ship channel, you can join it; you can deploy chats to other members; mobiGlas channel preferences; audio widget; invite channel to party; and global proximity channel. So those were the things that we were working on. However, I still have yet to be able to see if all of that stuff is in and working the way that we want it to work.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

We saw a couple of those on ISC yesterday working with Calix, so at least a couple of those are.

Todd Papy · Live Game Director, Star Citizen

Yeah, but as far as it going into a QATR, it being in 3.6, all of that stuff being integrated, that's the part that I want to make sure the team's happy with and we're happy with before it goes out.

Todd Papy · Live Game Director, Star Citizen

Yes. That to me is something that's being constantly iterated on. Basically, in the future, the ideas that we have, different influence, different ways of inputting and outputting things into and out of the solar system, whether that be, let's say, manufacturing plants. And a manufacturing plant is requiring, let's say, 50 tons of silver, and so therefore the price for silver goes up in that area. And so therefore bronze or other elements are lower, versus in another area bronze is extremely important, let's say to microTech and their mobiGlas that they build. So once we get that kind of system into the economy, then that's when I think getting the stuff to be a little bit more on the fly and to be able to see those peaks and valleys of what they require and being able to see that via app or something like that, I think that's when a lot of that will come across to the player, because right now we do do certain things and I think it's kind of hidden to people. And some of that work isn't being shown off exactly the way that we want it to be shown off.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

And 3.6 is a step towards that, but it's not our final step by any means.

Todd Papy · Live Game Director, Star Citizen

Correct.

Todd Papy · Live Game Director, Star Citizen

Yes, you should expect them to change in the future. Even in 3.6, you will see changes. In the past, it had been kind of random, but basically Jake and Rob and the economy team are breaking down the hulls, breaking down the items and moving towards the way that CR wants it, which is all kind of, we call it recipe-based. But it's also saying, OK, well, this ship is outfitted with these items, and these items add X amount of value to the ship, so therefore it should be priced at this level. And CR obviously wants it to be as real as possible. So you saw some of those changes on basically the 300 series, in particular with the customizer, when the customizer stuff rolled out. And then from there, we're basically doing a sweep through all of our other ships. And then the goal is to basically try to get as much of that in 3.6, and then obviously any point patches or 3.7.

Todd Papy · Live Game Director, Star Citizen

I think part of that will come through the whole manufacturer aspect of it. Not necessarily the same components, but there is that idea behind it. So, for example, an Origin ship versus a Drake ship, those to me are two very different manufacturers and known for two different things. So like you said, Porsche versus BMW, or more, let's say, a Porsche versus a Ford, those are two very different manufacturers. And so there is a certain luxury or style tax or whatever you want to call it.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

When you speak about wanting it as real as possible, I just always think that it's not only the sum of the parts that has to affect these things.

Todd Papy · Live Game Director, Star Citizen

And I think a lot of times, if you bought all the parts for a car, it's something like 25% to 30% more than what you bought the car for, because they can mass-produce them. But that's basically something that we're working through right now and we're trying to fix.

Todd Papy · Live Game Director, Star Citizen

So right now we have four different styles of weapon attachments. What we'll be making for 3.6 is one of them, and that's optics. And then from there it'll be barrel, underbarrel, and magazine. But optics is the first one, and so at that point in time, just switching out sights.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

Underbarrel is like a flashlight, I'm guessing?

Todd Papy · Live Game Director, Star Citizen

Flashlights, vertical grip, angled grip, different ways of affecting recoil.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

Maybe a laser pointer?

Todd Papy · Live Game Director, Star Citizen

Ideally.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

But for 3.6, we're aiming for the optics.

Todd Papy · Live Game Director, Star Citizen

It's just optics. So it's the first step. And we want to make sure that that's right first, and then we move on to the next ones.

Todd Papy · Live Game Director, Star Citizen

I don't know yet. It's still in QATR right now. And the guy who sits right behind me, it's not fun, I think for them, because it's the whole experience. It's not only them just doing it, but now we also have to have them in the shops, and you have to be able to buy them, and then the user experience of buying them and then putting them on. These are all things where a lot of times the feature team just makes sure that it goes on and off. Basically, making sure that they think about the whole loop; a lot of times they don't have to deal with it. From the weapons standpoint, they've always just said, OK, here's the weapon. For the most part, it just goes into a kiosk versus actually in stores. This one, we have to put them in stores and make sure that they work.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

They're probably just inside one of the weapons stores, but you've got to make room for them now.

Todd Papy · Live Game Director, Star Citizen

Exactly.

Todd Papy · Live Game Director, Star Citizen

Not for 3.6, but soon in the future, yes.

Todd Papy · Live Game Director, Star Citizen

Well, there's basically the hacking stuff that we've been working on. I know that the guys have gone through some work and I want to see the extent of it, but basically a lot of times what we were doing was sending players from one side of the universe to the other side of the universe and not kind of clustering them around each other. And so us talking about how we can cluster things a little bit better so that you're not spending 20-something minutes in QT, because that's not fun. So that's kind of some of the stuff that we've been working towards. And then from there, I think just general fixes and basically quality of life stuff. That's been a major one.

Todd Papy · Live Game Director, Star Citizen

So with FPS, basically, think of it as you're aiming down the sights, where you're looking down here. In the past, basically, this has all been unified. So if you try to move your head, your weapon's moving as well. So free look would just be that I can move my head, I can look around. So just like in ships, if I'm sitting there, I can look, and my body doesn't move with me. So that's basically what free look is.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

So it's being able to do that in FPS.

Todd Papy · Live Game Director, Star Citizen

Yeah, because very, very early on, I think we unified basically the aim and look targets together, and now we're un-unifying those to actually give free look.

Todd Papy · Live Game Director, Star Citizen

Basically, when it was first done, there were a lot of different assets for jump and fall, because when we think of that system, those two are combined together. So this is to actually kind of clean up those assets and make it more responsive. So when you actually jump, before, it used to be that you would have to jump and then finish that animation and then from there be able to carry on to whatever other thing you were doing. Now you will smoothly transition from jump into the other activity, whether that be a sprint or a crouch or whatever. So it really is just kind of cleaning that stuff up and making it more fluid.

Todd Papy · Live Game Director, Star Citizen

So, a while ago, we built a matrix. And so when we start talking about, let's say, establishing Behring or Klaus & Werner or any other brand or manufacturer, we start talking about, OK, do they have a pistol? Do they have an SMG? Do they have an assault rifle? Do they have a shotgun? Do they have all these different variations of weapons? And then at that point in time, we do concept art for those, so we see it as a family. And then from there, we start building these things out, and we have a matrix of, all right, this one has a pistol and this is how this pistol feels. So what is kind of a real-world equivalent to that pistol? Is it a Dirty Harry pistol or is it a Glock? Or is it a little .22? Or are we doing a Desert Eagle? It's us talking about those feels across the board. But we do that across everything. And then we say, OK, here's the matrix of it. Here's what kind of damage type it does. Is it kinetic, is it energy, is it corrosive, or is it distortion? Or is it a mixture between those things? And then at that point in time, you have this big matrix of weapons. So I think what people are seeing is these little snippets of us doing these releases, but we have a big matrix of, here are the weapons that we have in the game and how we want to balance them, tune them, make sure that each one of them feels unique. And that's what the FPS team right now is doing. We have this long list, and over time we're basically shifting these things as the tech comes online to be able to do the different damage types that we want to do. So that's basically what we're doing and how we think about it.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

I don't even have to look at the chat to know that at least four people have asked, can you release the matrix? I think what we'll do is maybe a segment on weapon design at some point and just have a conversation directly about it.

Todd Papy · Live Game Director, Star Citizen

I think speaking to Jonny and Rich, they would be able to talk you through it. It goes to our thought process on it and how we want each weapon, each manufacturer to feel, and where that weapon fits into the matrix. And it's the same thing with ships. We have a ship matrix as well.

Todd Papy · Live Game Director, Star Citizen

No. So the idea right now is that it's almost like purchasing it for three days, five days, seven days. Right now, that's the concept of it, and it's currently being worked on by that team. So the goal is that you rent for X amount of days, and in the first release, it might be three days or it might be seven days, or it might be that we give you a multitude of choices, whether that be one day up to 30 days or six months or whatever. It's something that we need to talk about as far as the amount of days, to really say, OK, we feel like this is the sweet spot. I think Tony and I were basically talking about one, three, seven, just in the short term, to let people try it out. And then even from there, be able to go through and say, if the ship blows up, then you claim it, you get it back. And so it would work just like a short-term purchase for right now. And then there's some edge cases that obviously we still need to work through, and the user experience of it. So saying, OK, well, your ship needs to be returned to this ASOP terminal or needs to be landed, and what happens with the cargo associated with it, or all these other kind of wonderful things that we have to deal with within this game. But those are all things that, as we're testing it, there will be those edge cases that come up that we haven't thought about and we haven't talked about, and we'll have to solve those.

Todd Papy · Live Game Director, Star Citizen

Well, there's behind-the-scenes work that's always being done, and it's what it is. We have a whole bunch of different feature teams. And so, for example, I'll take what we used to call EU3, which would be mining. Well, the way that mining was developed, I don't think we have much server-side OCS work that needs to be done, versus, let's say, the vehicle feature team. Well, there might be a fair amount of server-side OCS work that needs to be done. So they basically try to go through and switch these systems over as we go. Just because, again, with the vehicles, you're talking about IFCS, you're talking about power, you're talking about heat, you're talking about shields, so on and so forth. All these other items and features are culminations of a lot of little features coming together. And so each one of those has to be working with server-side OCS. That's the pain of it.

Todd Papy · Live Game Director, Star Citizen

Well, I think part of it is, with anything, there's a certain amount of aggression. With our roadmap, Chris uses it as the best case possible, whether that be somebody got sick and therefore a feature didn't come in on time. And that actually happened with one of our features in 3.6. One of our guys got sick and he was basically the main coder on it. And it's coming in for 3.6, but it's coming in late. And so therefore that cascades into other things. Even with 3.5.1, that did cascade a little bit into 3.6 and basically getting 3.6 out to the Evocati on time, which is unfortunate. This is the second release in a row that we haven't been releasing on time, and I don't like that, because basically we should be date-driven, not feature-driven on this. And sometimes a feature requires a little bit more work. There's too many bugs, when a director plays it, it's just not right, and it needs a little bit more time to percolate. And I think when you start on the feature, the view of it might be this, and then as you start working towards that actual release, the view of it is, OK, now it's laser-focused, this is what it is, and this is how it works. Here, all the edge cases are worked out, and then we go. But at least through all the game development that I've done in my life, it's always gone like this.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

And we do still see a lot of the date-driven stuff. That was the promise we made at the beginning of 2018 when we said we were switching over to the quarterly date-driven model: if a feature wasn't ready, we weren't going to hold up the patch for an extended period of time like we did with 3.0. So that's why things like the 890 Jump moved to a 3.6.x. That's why customization moved to 3.5.1. We try our best to find that balance between not cutting everything out so that we can make a date, but at the same time making sure that as much of what we want to be in that patch is still in that patch.

Todd Papy · Live Game Director, Star Citizen

For example, if we break down this quarter, the idea is, OK, we're going into planning week. The first week of July is planning week. And that's where all the directors and all the pillar producers and everybody come together and say, OK, I need something from your team, I need something from your team. And then at that point in time, it becomes a priority. I don't want to say nightmare, but it's basically, I'm juggling priorities, Sean's juggling priorities, Tony's juggling priorities for what we want. And then at that point in time, we go into actual developing of those features and you have X amount of time. So let's say maybe two to three sprints, or four sprints if we're lucky. And some features just can't be developed in four sprints. Some features can be developed in two sprints. Some of them take six or eight. And so then at that point in time, you start evaluating it and you start looking at it and saying, OK, is this what we want to put out as a company? And most of the time it has been a yes. And sometimes it is looking at it and saying, no, that needs more time to percolate.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

And then, of course, there's always the unexpected, the bugs. Everything works fine until the integrations come.

Todd Papy · Live Game Director, Star Citizen

No, and one of our guys lost a week just for integrating because there were some issues with Perforce or other things. There's a lot of these kind of outside factors. And the way I've always described game development is that it's an art. It's not a science. That's the truth.