The developers answer questions on offline play and private servers, unique loot and exploration in the PU, and bounties versus the PvP slider. They also cover landing on moons, jump point size classes, hiding in radar shadows, zero-G FPS recoil, weapon types and electronic warfare.
Yes we're definitely having Electronic warfare in the game, we have specific role/designs for it on bigger ships where there will be an electronic warfare officer. Then there will also be ships in the game which are focussed on that, we've got some up and coming variants that'll focus on that as well as some current ones. The hornet tracker for example will have the ability to do some of this, but the idea would be that you could jam radars, hide signatures, mess with other's computer systems etc. We think it'll add another level of fun to combat/the PU.
TL;DRChris Roberts says first-person weapons will include ballistic, several energy types and rail guns, generally scaled-down versions of ship weapons, with hull-breach risk from penetrating projectiles.
Yes, you'll see all of those, in the FPS demo there were both ballistic weapons and laser rifles. We had laser pistols and ballistic pistols (though the latter I don't believe were in the demo). If I remember correctly the outlaws had the laser rifles while the marines tended to have the ballistic weapons (Behring MP4SC I think it is). The plan is to have ballistic, multiple types of energy weapons, all sorts of other things like rail guns (which are really ballistic but with alternate method of acceleration). Basically whatever weapons you see on the ships themselves you're likely to see a scaled down version of them for first person use. There will also be more or less risk of decompression if you're, say, fighting in a space station or ship and a projectile penetrates a wall and you're not careful. That might also be a reason you'd want to use say a crossbow, which is nice and quiet and probably won't breach the hull. I think we have a good idea and selection of weapon types to choose from with their ups and downs.
Recoil, really if you think about it, you're propelling a very small mass (none in energy weapons), and comparing the energy from the equal and opposite velocity from the blast, the change in your (much larger mass) velocity is so small it might be insignificant. We'll have some level of modelling going into it so that it IS possible, but it might not be large enough to notice. Maybe if someone fired a bigger thing, like a bazooka or something (not saying we have bazookas but still) they might notice. As far as the hand hold thing, we definitely have a push pull system worked out where there will be hand holds/things to grab to be able to push away from things etc, so there are definitely places you can hold onto to stabilise yourself while firing say a pistol with the other hand.
Yeah, I think we're talking about the classic Millenium Falcon moment in the Empire Strikes Back. I don't know if you could magnetize onto a bigger ship's hull, I imagine we'll have a mechanic where radars have a minimum distance, so if you're very close maybe you've gone off the radar, that could be interesting for gameplay. There isn't really code that does this, it wouldn't be that difficult to do, but I don't know if it's all that worthwhile. But yes, you could definitely get in really close to a ship and kind of hide in it's radar shadow, and EVA out and around it if you wanted to.
TL;DRChris Roberts says jump points will come in different size classes, so some routes will suit only smaller ships, giving small ships real advantages in line with his "different horses for different courses" goal.
Yes, that's absolutely the case. We're talking about having different classifications of Jump Points, the rips (like in interstellar) will have different classes. I've always viewed these as having different sizes, so there will definitely be ones that only a smaller ship can navigate, and some that capital ships can navigate. Also these might not necessarily always connect to the same system, so there could quite easily be routes that are quicker from A-B that are only suitable for smaller ships. Think of it like a mountain pass, some only allow foot traffic, others might take a car etc etc. There will definitely be uses of this in gameplay, situations where there are advantages to having a smaller ship. Maybe there's someone with a big supertanker that needs to take a more round-about route, but your smaller ship can take the faster route, just like it happens in the real world. There will be ups and downs to various ships. I see threads about how people are worried orgs are going to dominate with something as big as the Javelin. While they're good for team play and definitely have their advantages, they might not be as useful for some other roles, and might be at a huge disadvantage. That's definitely a goal of star citizen as a whole, is to have "different horses for different courses", where each ship caters to different roles and all have their advantages over each other. Jump Points are just another example of how we'll ensure that.
TL;DRChris Roberts says a bounty earned through PVP cannot be escaped by lowering the PVP slider, though bounties earned against NPCs get an NPC-focused response, and it will be balanced against griefing.
Absolutely. There is no way you're going to engage in attacking other players in PVP, rack up a bounty and get away with it. You've asked for it, other players will come after you! If you're getting a bounty because you're attacking NPC stuff, the slider will have an effect, but really once you have a bounty NPC police and mercenaries will also target you, not just players. That said, even with the bar set really low, if you've got a big enough bounty for NPCs, depending on where you are (you might not be in safe space) other players might be opened up to get you as well. It's sort of more to do with what YOU'RE doing. If you're engaging in acts that would put a bounty on your head in a PVP setting you're sort of "locking in" to a PVP response, you can't just hide by changing it later. If you're doing it to NPCs you can keep to more of an NPC response to it. We've got it worked out and it'll be balanced to avoid griefing, so yeah, you won't be able to do that.
The answer to that is yes, as far as we're concerned a moon is just another landing location/planet, so there are cases where there will be a moon or even large asteroid you could land one. I think we already have in our setup a mining station on a moon you can go visit.
No-one can really BAN you from an airspace, but certainly if you're there you can get attacked, law enforcement agencies etc, you can be denied landing clearance to land on the planet etc. There will be ways to be wanted and be able to sneak back into areas, maybe keep your profile low and perhaps pay for a fake identity/ship identifier. If you had that hangar on Terra you'd just probably set up your shop elsewhere. You could probably hire someone to fly your ships from that hangar to wherever you go next. I'd hope you'd be smart enough to move your assets around BEFORE you become greatly wanted in one place, because, you know, that'd be the same in real life right? But yes, you'd still have access to it, but to avoid sneaking around you'd do well to locate your pirate base elsewhere.
TL;DRChris Roberts says there will definitely be unique ships, weapons and gear not sold before release, and he wants to encourage exploration through rare items and location-specific shops.
Yes there will definitely be a bunch of that stuff. So we are going to have ships, weapons and gear that we will not sell pre-release, so collectors of ships/items etc are safe and will still have lots to do in the PU. I view a lot of these items as rare/unique items like in a traditional fantasy MMO. I'm very keen on creating a need for players to explore, for instance you won't be able to get all the weapons in all the shops in all the locations, so there might be a gun shop on a planet that has a particular guy that can make ballistic weapons that are 20% better than the rest of them, say, so players will have to go here to get those weapons specifically etc. I want to encourage players to travel around to look and find things, like going onto a derelict wreck in an asteroid field, where there might be some alien tech, or some salvageable weapons, all that kind of stuff.
TL;DRChris Roberts says Squadron 42 will be playable offline without co-op, and smaller private servers for friends are still planned, though with less scale and slower content updates than the main universe.
Yes, as far as offline goes as long as you've downloaded the game through our downloader and thus have a legitimate copy you can play Squadron 42 and single player stuff without an internet connection, like on your laptop while travelling or something. Obviously you won't be able to do the co-op or multiplayer segments there, but we've said that. As far as hosting your own offline servers that's definitely still going to happen, just not to the same level of fidelity as our own servers, given that we have hundreds and hundreds or even thousands of servers spinning up dynamically to handle things like the economy simulation, different player instances, matchmaking stuff, PU databases etc etc as well. The offline or Private servers will be more like the freelancer servers are now, where you have a server that can handle a fixed number of players, and all you and your friends can run around together. No one will be able to run a moddable server with say a million players it's just impossible, you'd need a server base at the same scale as we'll have. But you'll certainly have these smaller servers available for you and your friends if you don't want to play in our PU. These smaller servers won't be updated as quickly as our PU, like we'll drop content and other game-master events in ours first as it's the priority and it would be an extra level of work bring it down to work on smaller level servers. So we're still going to deliver on all of our promises with that caveat which I've said from the beginning, the PU is just going to be able to support more players and be far more dynamic in a way that the moddable private servers won't be. I kind of understand why the Elite: Dangerous guys made that choice, because their game does revolve around some of that dynamic stuff that they provide, just like our PU will, but we're still allowing single player in the form of SQ42 and you'll still be able to run your own scaled down private servers.