Todd Papy · Game Director, Star Citizen LiveSo the art's done. I mean, it's basically done, signed off. There's still a couple of code issues that we need to take care of. First things would be getting it so that it expands and getting the physics grid to actually expand with it. We don't have that right now. And then there would be other concerns that we have: this is a docking ship, like how is it going to land with a cargo underneath. The other major, major factor would be right now all of our SCU is done in one SCU or half a SCU, which is very small compared to the storage containers that ship is supposed to be carrying. So for us, getting the transport working the way that we want it to work, that is imperative to get the whole series working as well as any of our other freight movement.
Todd Papy · Game Director, Star Citizen LiveExactly. And right now it doesn't make much sense with it moving just between, let's say, Olisar and GrimHEX or GrimHEX and Delamar. There's not much risk. There's really no way to get that ship to work with those things. So getting the universe expanded, which is what we're working towards for 3.3 with Hurston on one side of the map and then we've got Crusader on the other side, that to me is like a proper transportation thought. Once we get that working the way that we need it to work and we get the docking aspects, or maybe we ship it with the lower arm not extending so that you can actually land it. It's those type of factors that we need to just sit down and really work out, but with all of our focus being on object container streaming and some of our other ships or some of our global systems that cross multiple ships, those are the priority right now.
Todd Papy · Game Director, Star Citizen LiveSo right now we have a test map that has Hurston where it's going to be, Crusader where it's going to be. And right now we have kind of concentric rings that are in between there and we have eight rest stops on the way. So this is something that we'll be testing out and we're using this as kind of our initial guess of how populated we need this location to be. And then from there, that's probably going to be our initial stab for 3.3. And I'm sure there will be some adjustment. And then as soon as we go out and as soon as we release it, then with fan feedback and all of that, I can guarantee you that there will be more adjustment in 3.4 and 3.5, 3.6 kind of thing. So right now we haven't worked in this scale yet. So we're kind of building our formula and figuring out how all of this is going to work and how often you have to refuel, so on and so forth.
Jared Huckaby · Host, CommunityNow you said the number eight, and before anybody takes it to Reddit or Spectrum and says there will definitely be eight: that is what we're working with right now in our internal testing. By the time 3.3 gets in your hands, it could be six, it could be 12. That's part of what we're figuring out. And then once it does get into your hands, what he just said, you're going to tell us whether it's too many, whether it's not enough, whether we need to adjust how much fuel is in the quantum tanks or whether it'll be a lot of tweaking.
Todd Papy · Game Director, Star Citizen LiveYeah, because I don't want the players refueling every two minutes. I don't think that's fun. I don't think anybody's going to think that's fun. Let alone what's happening in CryAstro right now. But from there, we'll do our adjustments, we'll do our internal adjustments, and then as soon as we send it out to Evocati, I'm sure there'll be more adjustments, and then once we start getting into PTU and start getting into live, then we'll keep on churning.
Jared Huckaby · Host, CommunitySuffice to say, we're pretty confident that you're not going to be able to go from Olisar to Hurston without stopping somewhere.
Todd Papy · Game Director, Star Citizen LiveI don't think so in any small ships or even kind of medium-sized ships. In a capital-sized ship, yeah, I think you can.
Jared Huckaby · Host, CommunityAll right, but speaking for 3.3 and what will be available in 3.3 though.
Todd Papy · Game Director, Star Citizen LiveYeah, probably not.
Jared Huckaby · Host, CommunityYeah, for what people can expect, you're going to have to stop and get gas somewhere. Truck stops.
Jared Huckaby · Host, CommunityNow, by the time this airs, 3.2.1 will have already been out, possibly even 3.2.2. We don't know. And that had a number of ESP fixes in it already, didn't it?
Todd Papy · Game Director, Star Citizen LiveIt did. And so David Colson and Andrew Nicholson and John Crew worked on the adjustments for the ESP, and now it is in designer control. So in 3.2.1, obviously, with the time frame that we have for 3.2.1, we put in some rough guesses and some rough balancing, and I think we did at least one iteration beyond that, and then obviously once 3.2.1 goes out the door and we're working on 3.3, we will continue to do more adjustments from there.
Jared Huckaby · Host, CommunityThese are teams of folks that work on each individual feature. And even with 500-plus employees around the world, not everybody wants to be on camera. So there's this view that sometimes the person you see on camera all the time is the only person working on a feature or even the most important person. But no, David Colson and Andy Nicholson and John Crew and all kinds of stuff. We got some cool things in the works.
Todd Papy · Game Director, Star Citizen LiveIt takes a team.
Jared Huckaby · Host, CommunityIt definitely takes a team. And what you've seen in 3.2.1 and what you'll see in 3.2.2, should there be a 3.2.2, and even beyond that, 3.3 and stuff, that's not the end of that story. You're going to see some fixes, some more fixes, some more improvements, some more refinements coming before the year is over. That's my big hint to you.
Todd Papy · Game Director, Star Citizen LiveRight now, the team is focused on just improving the actual ground mining aspect and gameplay associated with that, and then they are focused on getting asteroids in space so that we can actually do mining in space. And then from there, we'll look at what that team needs to move on to next. Either it will be another career, or are there other aspects of mining that we need to do, like refining or basically the filtration aspect of it. So it's something that we'll look at from sprints and see how that team's going. Right now, we don't know how much R&D it's going to take on the space mining. Right now it's looking pretty good, and we've got some interesting gameplay that I've seen at least on Reddit and Twitch. So seeing those types of things, but now in space.