Developers cover Bengal carrier salvage, stasis and respawn after bounty capture, factory expansion, crime proof via comm satellites, character names, Squadron 42 expansions, ship despawning, and test flights. Media relations staff discuss press, magazine reveals and the upcoming V1 rollout.
That's a lot of questions. So let's answer the primary one first, which is that it's not like you go around the corner and they're parked right behind the fence. Where do they keep the nuclear vessels? We're talking down the fringes somewhere. Maybe out in Vanduul space, a carrier that lost a battle. We'll call it a fixer-upper. If you want to refit it and get it back into working shape, and that's going to take some effort and some defending it, then yeah, you could fly it around. But it's not like you can bring it back and park it in the front yard and say, hey, look, we want to be your buddies. It's not going to happen.
TL;DRIrving declines the time dilation point and says that after capture or death you would be out of action for a period, still to be tuned for good feel, then return, since the aim is to keep players having fun.
The time dilation statement is kind of a different topic entirely, so I won't address that one. But essentially the idea is that we want you to keep having fun, so we're not just going to say we're not going to let you play the game for the next two hours. So what's going to happen, and we've talked about this a little before, is that when you get kidnapped or captured for your bounty, for some period of time, and we'll have to fiddle with that until we find the good feel to it, you will be in stasis, and then you'll pop back into respawn, and they'll still have a clone of you. I mean, not really a clone, but the idea is they'll have a cargo that is their bounty. A cargo of one. And so the idea, same with respawning, is that there's going to be a period where you're out of action, and then you come back.
No, I think is the answer to that. We're still discussing which ones we might use, and we may come up with an interesting way to decide that in the long term. But we don't know what the fourth one is just yet. And we're trying not to focus on building landing zones on Earth initially. We're going to try to build them all over the place, so we have a good test bed.
So there is a concept of expanding your factory, expanding your productivity, changing what you can make. And it's not necessarily just a straight throw money into R&D, but more the idea of you need better equipment, different experts, more people to make this thing. There may somewhere down the road be some sort of R&D idea, but really the idea is that to make a better thing, you need the right permissions from the manufacturer and also that you need to have the right facility.
TL;DRIrving says crimes are still crimes but need proof: in patrolled space relay satellites report an attack immediately, while in remote or jammed areas a victim's claim may not be believed, possibly leading to missions to recover proof.
So I think that we can see how this person is leaning from the way the question is, where it's like, it's not illegal if no one saw it. No, you're still breaking the law. But what we're doing with that is that you need proof is sort of the idea. If you kill somebody in space that is more patrolled, that is closer to the center of the UEE, then there's probably going to be little pigeon satellites there to convey the data back and forth. And so your ship immediately says, oh, gosh, this guy's attacking me. Probably doesn't say gosh. And starts broadcasting that out, and that information is immediately transmitted. If you're killed somewhere where that's not available or someone's jamming those or whatever the case, then what happens is, sure, you can come back and go, hey, so-and-so killed me. But they're probably not going to believe you, so there might be possible mission play there where you send a friend out or you go out to try to recover your transponder from your ship to prove who done you wrong.
In the long run, each character will have his own name, his own handle in the game. Right now, we're in an intermediate stage, so you're going to probably see your forum handle in dogfighting.
So by nature, an expansion to Squadron 42 would be in Squadron 42. But I think I understand where this question is going, in that there will be some small story arc type things that will appear in the Persistent Universe's content. But the Squadron 42 editions are Squadron 42 extensions.
So probably if there's a ship just floating out there in space with nobody in it, somebody's going to come along and borrow it. Recover stolen property and forget to return it. But in the long term, we can't just leave a bunch of empty ships floating out there. So we will have to eventually despawn things like that. No, it's not going to be as fast as, say, debris from a fight. But eventually things go away.
There's not any current long-term plans for that. I guess they just don't trust people on the car lots. Right, the ship lots. At the same time, subscribers right now can try out ships that they don't have in dogfighting.
Well, they had the teaser site that went up, I don't know, 30 days or so before the big announcement. And so we already started generating some excitement back then. And there was no effort on my end to sort of proactively push that out. We just sort of let it grow organically. And I think that's an indication of how excited and prepared the community was for this information, for all the news.
What is a media relations guy? People say PR a lot, but I think media relations is a better descriptor because I deal with the media. So all of the big outlets, and even the not so big, I'm dealing with them on a regular basis. There is a lot of interest in Star Citizen and Chris Roberts, and I'm dealing with outlets every day. I mean, I'm getting questions. Can I talk to Chris? Can I talk to Eric? Can I talk to other people on the team? Are you going to PAX? Are you going to E3? How can I set up interviews? What can we do? Can you get me on your mailing list? Keep me up to date on what's going on. So it's a daily sort of relationship building type of job really more than anything.
TL;DRSwofford says the project relies on media relations and community rather than traditional ads, so magazine cover stories, such as in Germany, reach audiences that other channels may not.
Well, we don't have traditional marketing. And I mean traditional by putting ads, banner ads, ads in magazines. We do depend on a lot of media relations and our community. Those are our two marketing sort of vehicles. And so what I'm always constantly doing is looking for ways to sort of spread that net and get our message out to a wider audience. So when we go to GameStar in Germany, which is one of our big markets, and we do a cover story, that's important because they reach an audience that maybe we can't reach through our other marketing means. And of course, Germany is almost sort of the most passionate fans anyway. They're wonderful. So when I get press inquiries, they're not just English speaking. There's a lot of the German, Italian, Spanish magazines also who are interested. So, yeah, I'm not dealing just with the U.S. I'm dealing with all over the world. And I'm like a one-man band on that.
TL;DRSwofford says he works with community manager Ben Lesnick, passing contacts back and forth and keeping messaging consistent so media outlets and the community spread the same message together.
We do. And of course, we have a community manager, Ben Lesnick, who everyone knows. And so Ben and I work sort of in conjunction on a lot of things. And so if someone reaches out, Ben may pass them on to me, depending on where they are and how I can help out. And then I make sure that Ben knows, because he's dealing with the community on more of a daily basis than I am. But what's very important is that Ben and I keep our messaging consistent. I need to know when Ben is sending something out, because then I can send it out to all my contacts in the media. And so we get the hit and all the community talking about it. And then we have the Kotakus and the GameSpots and those people and the ones in Australia and Germany also sort of matching the message at the same time. So that's important that we work in conjunction.
Well, we had a big awareness at PAX, and I thought that was successful. The next big thing is when we do ultimately roll out V1, which I think is coming just in a few weeks.
Exactly. And it was important that the press understood that this was a reveal. This is not really a chance for you to play it and review it. Well, that sort of review part of my job, media relations, is about to come up when V1 goes out the door. So that's the next big thing for me.
TL;DRSwofford believes the press likes the transparency, accepts the difference from big publishers hiding unfinished work, and is giving some slack, though they still expect quality delivery.
I think you're on the right track there. That's the feel I get. The community has helped on this messaging also, but I think the press like the transparency that we're delivering. And with transparency comes all those sort of warts and things that you have to roll out there. The press are used to, over the last 10, 20 years, dealing with big publishers who are very careful about how their product looks when it goes up for the first time. We're careful about that, but you're going to see everything. And so, from what I can tell, I think the press is looking at that, accepting it, and realizing that it's a different paradigm in the way we're doing things all the way around: the community, developing the product, and how we handle the press. And so, yeah, I think they're giving us some slack and letting us go. Now, we need to deliver quality, and we will. That's what their expectation is.