10 for the Chairman: Episode 53 (2015.02.16)

In that particular case, that the whole point of the "Person of Interest" system. When you're tracking someone like that, you'll find that you can mark them as a person of interest in your mobiglas/ship systems, which will mean you drop into their instance every time. There are different categories here, there are POI's, Friends, Enemies (those last two are dependant on personal friends/enemies and organisational information). These are all considerations of the matchmaking system so you're far more likely to be put in an instance with them than any others. This carries down onto planets as well. There was kind of a writeup on this quite a while ago in the campaign which is still kinda the goal for us, we think it'll work pretty well. We're still working out numbers in an instance etc, so how many slots do we reserve for friends/enemies/POI's etc, but that'll all be worked out as we test down the line.

It depends, but the very biggest ones that you can fight and take over, will still be instanced. You can't have a single bengal over 4 instances being fought to be taken over all at once for example. We'll have similar rules for instances where the bigger ships exists as we'll have with space stations and asteroid bases. Space stations exist in just one instance, and that instance can't be copied. The difference is if you're in orbit around Earth for example, there might be thousands of people around there, so there might be 100 people per instance and 1000 players, there might be 10 different instances supporting them, which could potentially be at different places around Earth. If you're one of those players you'll never really be able to see ALL the players around Earth at once, and the people you DO see will be those that are friends, POI's or enemies. In the case of a space station or bengals etc, only one of those instances would have that large ship/station in it to be able to be taken over. There might only ever be 100 people that would be on-board or approaching, or fighting the ship at any time, and the matchmaking system would play a part in who gets put in that particular instance.

Generally the NPC AI, if you're not SEEING them do stuff, their AI will be resolved on a higher level. The PU servers might simulate 20 million NPC agents, but you might not be able to see that at any one time. So think about it like a civilisation game, so we've got all these AI agents that are off working out trading numbers, combat stuff in unseen areas etc. A factory might need a mission for 100T of goods to come from somewhere, that generates a mission, AI might take that mission, then there might be pirates in the aerospace that get close enough to endanger the cargo, the universe would have some kind of simple combat resolution to work out what happened. If you're not around to see it, then that's what'd happen, a higher server based calculation. If you're around that area when it happens, the universe might say there's a 60% chance that you'll see a ship of this type taking these goods from here to here, and there is a 40% chance that it'll be attacked by a pirate of this type and this armament. So when you're going past that area, we're calling it an encounter-cue, the universe simulator says ok this is what's going on in this area of space right now, lets roll a dice, YEP you're going to see one of those pirates or transports, so you might drop out at that point. Lets say you fight the pirate off and save the trader, that would then go back up to the universe server through the chain, saying that pirate was killed there, it'll drop off the 20 million NPCs list, so now if another ship flies through that area, the universe knows there isn't a pirate there, so now there might only be a 60% chance you see a transport ship rather than the pirate/transport encounter someone else had earlier. So essentially what happens is, the big picture simulation of people going about their daily lives all happens on the universe simulation server, then what you see is a snapshot from your part of space on the game simulation server, then your actions and outcomes from instances on that game simulation server are fed back up to the universe sim servers to update everything. It's not really 100% answering about the Jump Point question, but it's an explanation as to how things work overall. So basically when things are spawning into your game simulation, they'll work on proper in-game AI, but if you're not seeing it, it'll be done on the higher-level server side, less granularly. The design we're using is really nice because of the fuzzy-logic approach, everything you see is high fidelity, and everything you do is pushed up to the universal side, so there is a lot of possibility of a living, breathing universe. There are a lot of cool things we've got in the works that we can't really share at the moment, but things like characters or personalities that persist etc. It's all very next level, definitely more than we've seen in anything else we know of.

This kind of fits into what I was saying about NPC levels and persistence, no you will not have to attack them in space, there will be opportunities to capture them on planetside, spacestations and space itself. It'll depend on what encounter scenarios we set up for them and where you find them at any time. To be clear with everyone, we're looking at setting up the universe with about 90% AI and 10% players, which we think will allow players to have an impact in areas, but not to completely destabilise it. So you'll mostly see/encounter NPCs. There will be certain areas that'll attract more players and PvP etc, but as you're flying around you'll see cargo traders, cruise liners, pirate etc as NPCs. We're trying to make it so that it's not just about space, it's also the results of these people going about their daily lives, or missions or trading etc. In the event of going after a big bounty NPC for example, there may be a case where you go after him in space, then he goes down to a planet where you have to land and chase him on foot, down to a certain area and maybe have a gunfight down a shady alley. All of these things will be part of the mission system we're building, where different encounter scenarios can be strung together depending on the outcome of the previous one. It'll allow for a very dynamic experience, it won't feel like it's been scripted, as each one of these mission modules are fairly basic, but these mount onto one another and so feel very different once all built. So yes, on space or on the ground.

Multiple game packages are absolutely going to be able to be played as different game characters. You can define those characters and their roles etc. If you're not playing your character, and it's appropriate for that character to be crew for you, say I'm a pilot and I've got my Han Solo character and my Chewie character, both defined and they both live on Terra, then when I got into the Millennium Falcon as Han, Chewbacca could very well be my co-pilot. Now I could log on next time and play as Chewbacca and Han would be my NPC, but in the case where you have NPCs play roles on your ship, there will be costs involved. Maybe we'll have some kind of change where they might not need as much for the player owned ones, but we haven't worked that out yet. The advantage of the player owned NPCs is that you might have the whole crew of your ship customised to however you want them to be, looks, character traits etc etc, and you can play any one of those that you want. Generally NPCs you will pay a wage, with potential exceptions for players that you own, but you've got to appreciate that Chewie still wants a share of the spoils!