Yeah, I mean we ran a poll on having the official Star Citizen controller. Like was there a particular manufacturer you liked, and so that poll was really part of that initiative. So we are moving forward with a long term plan for that. It won't be anything that will happen before the Dogfighting Module, but I think you could see us making some announcements after the Dogfighting Module.Long term we definitely want to do that.We've been talking to the various peripheral manufacturers, and quite a lot of them are keen to do stuff with us about making some sort of Star Citizen themed controllers, and also have say a HOTAS that is specifically configured to work really well with Star Citizen. So you know we map all the keys and all the buttons and the joystick to everything that's happening in the cockpit. That includes being able to have an analogue look around like say on a hat and stuff like that.So we're definitely working on that, and that will be pretty cool.I mean we'd enjoy our official Star Citizen game pads and t-shirts and hoodies, and we'd definitely want our own official joystick and mouse and all that kind of stuff.
That's a great idea and a great thought.We were actually just having a design debate earlier today, 'cause we were sort of drilling down on more of the death mechanics in the Persistent Universe, and we were mentioning the fact that it would be kind of cool if towards the end of your character's life, you could essentially retire your character rather than just have them die in the field.We haven't really figured out what that would mean in terms of them getting retired. Whether they would actually exist as a persistent NPC, or they would maybe just exist in your own world view, or not at all, but you would know that they're retired and, I dunno, you would get an email every once in a while saying "Drinking pina coladas on the beach."But this is a great idea, I don't know how easy it would be to work, but I guess you could always have a couple of NPC slots on a planet, and they're open to be populated by ex-player characters now operating as NPCs. That would be kind of cool because you would just basically take over the name and see them in there just going about their daily lives.So good suggestion, we'll think about that, you never know, it could happen.
So that's actually a really interesting and good question.I haven't really considered the case where your ship is shot up so much that your communication module is broken, and then you get to a planet and you want to land, but of course you don't have communications, you can't land. I would think what we would do in that sort of case is essentially the planet would recognize that you're really shot up and just say you're clear to land without you having to request.I think in terms of landing on another ship in space like a carrier or a Corvette, in that case you would probably have to do a manual landing, not an automatic landing, and then of course if none of that works, you can always use your escape pod. But there certainly will be some handling of the landing. So you can sort of nurse your ship back and try and get it back and repaired and all the rest of the stuff.
I definitely think we will be able to, we use Jira for our internal stuff, and ultimately we may have some version of that which will be exposed to the public.The only problem you have, if you have 200,000 people playing, you can completely overwhelm the system, and overwhelm anyone who's managing that data because you have to make sure that "Is this bug different from another bug." Sometimes too much information is not helpful in that sort of case.We haven't 100% figured that out, but I think long term we'll build some automatic logging to send information to us. Initially for the dogfight, that won't be in there, but we'll see it later on down the line.So I would stay tuned for more of an answer on that.
Yes it is, that is exactly what the simulator arena mode is gonna be. The dogfighting module that we're going to be releasing a little later on this year is exactly that.Essentially that is the precursor to the final arena mode that will happen in the game that will allow you and your friends to practice, practice against bots, and have competitions, in a much more arena, respawn model than the full Persistent Universe that has real consequences for losing your ship, but also upsides and benefits.If you want to make money in the universe, and build an empire or even buy a new ship, you've got to be flying real missions where you earn real money because you don't be able to do that in the arena mode with the exception of a "pro-sports" level of it. But I'm sure there will be a lot of competition and that won't be where most people are able to earn money, you'll have to do that in the persistent universe.The simulator/arena mode is where you would practice before you go out into the big, scary, wide world of nasty NPCs or nasty other players.
So we actually have been re-factoring the Idris for the needs of Squadron 42, which will basically be a military Corvette.So we've done a whole bunch of work on the interior so it has an armory, it has a med bay, briefing room. So it's going to be pretty cool, we've actually expanded it more than we were conceiving because of the needs of Squadron 42. I think the Corvette owners will be very happy when they finally get their hands on one.Although it's taking a while, it's a big ship. It's the first one we're building the full insides out properly, which we didn't even do on the Bengal carrier when I was first doing the prototype. We did the bridge on that then the landing deck and the exterior, but we didn't do all the interior rooms and corridors.So we're doing that on the Corvette, but the default equipment or ship load out on the Corvette is gonna be, they fly with two active Hornets, which run the patrols, then they have a third Hornet which is in reserve in case one of the others gets damaged.That's how the military one's set up, so I would say generally you could assume you can fit three ships, Hornet size or smaller, aboard the Corvette, and probably fly two, maybe if you want to get pushy, fly three off.But really the flight deck is built to retrieve and launch two at a time and the third one goes into a storage area.I hope that helps answer on the Idris Corvette.
Really great question, that's actually something we're digging into right now in the design. We're actually trying to figure out exactly how we bring cargo in from space.Like if you're a pirate and you're just gone and spaced someone and they've jettisoned their cargo, how do you bring it in to your cargo bay?So one way would be to have a tractor beam to help out, and the other way we're talking about is some level of EVA. You could actually get into your space suit and take a little space sled out to pick up the cargo and bring it back into your cargo hold.Obviously the ships, most of the ships that are designed for pulling cargo should have an airlock door between the cargo hold and the pilot or living quarter area so that you can space the cargo hold and you don't have to space the living quarters. If you actually had a ship that didn't have that, if you were opening up your cargo hold or spacing or whatever, you would have to basically space the whole ship. You would have to be in a EVA or space suit, whatever you want to call it, to survive that.Obviously something like an Aurora isn't really designed for that, but its cargo pod is external, so you can eject it. But most of the ships we're actually going through and designing and going:"Ok, well we probably need an airlock door here. How do we actually physically get the cargo in if we're trying to bring it in from space or not in space."Because we recognize that a lot of people will actually be doing that in space besides just picking up stuff on the ground and dropping it off on the ground.In Star Citizen there actually will be much more of a game mechanic around collecting your cargo than there has been in say Privateer or Freelancer or other space sim games where you basically just run over the cargo and it's magically in your hold. You actually have to tractor it in or you have to go out and get it and put it in your hold.I think that will actually be a really cool game mechanic, and add to the fun.
So I'm still working out the top speed mechanics aspect of stuff because we're going to be limiting speed while you're dogfighting.Mainly for the fun side of it, but also there's a sort of pseudoscience aspect where, as you make rapid directional changes relative to someone else, not speed per say, but your relative velocity vector.So say if you're going this way at 1000 km/h [points right], and you suddenly want to go this way at 1000 km/h [points left] in a very short period of time, of course all relative to who you're dogfighting or relative to a planet, then that would be a vast amount of deceleration and then acceleration to make that change.Over a short period of time, it would be a huge amount of forces on your body, and our human body can only withstand so much.So the Intelligent Flight Control System that's in most of the ships will limit your velocities relative to whoever you're fighting with based on safe areas so you're not going to be killing yourself when you suddenly want to go 180 degrees the other way.But there definitely will be cases where you're going much faster, ie when you're going from one area to another area. If you want to call it "warp speed," which is sort of what we're calling our 0.2c, basically 1/5 the speed of light.In that case you basically would be just accelerating up to that speed and then decelerating over a period of time. And our fiction in our world is one of the reasons you always drop out of "warp" whenever you come near other ships or near other celestial bodies is because at that level of speed you actually can't really deviate your trajectory too much over a short period of time without creating a huge amount of force on your body. So likely you won't be able to avoid a collision. So your Intelligent Flight Control, warp, whatever, is scanning way ahead and goes:"Ok look I've got an object way off in the distance, I've got to decelerate me and drop me out of this warp."And that's sort of the mechanical, in fiction, reason for why you get pulled out of warp or autopilot when you're going between distances.So in terms of the instancing, I guess you drop in and out based on whether there are other ships there and also whether there's planets, and then I'm also toying with the idea of you being able to run away.So you basically just keep accelerating. So you sort of go faster than your Intelligent Flight Control system lets you do for dogfighting, but the downside is if you keep accelerating, the ship will not let you do much deviation and turning.So if I'm trying to flee a battle, and I go fast, yes I'm going fast, but if someone gets on my tail he has pretty much a free shot. Generally things like laser bolts and missiles will have higher top speed, obviously laser bolts definitely, but missiles even could have a higher level of acceleration to catch up with you faster. So you're opening yourself up to some shots as you flee away, as you start to try and get fast enough away before you can make the jump to "warp speed" so to speak.So anyway, I hope that helps out a little bit, but that's how we're thinking, we're still gonna be playing with it.We'll be updating you on how those mechanics will work in the game as we get to them in the Persistent Universe as well as the dogfighting stuff. Because the dogfighting stuff is all going to be pretty limited, but this is more questions involving the Persistent Universe.Can you flee from the battle? How quickly can you flee? All that kind of stuff.
The matchmaking is going to obviously have a lot of criteria.Part of it will be your ping, part of it will be what you're really into, PvE, PvP, and then also part of it will be, sort of, how good a fighter you are, or how good your ship is in terms of defense and everything else.So we haven't 100% figured it out, but I definitely think that your kill count would factor into it. But also, there would have to be, like if someone is a trader and they're really good, and they're pretty defensive and strong, then they could match up against someone that was a strong pirate. It sort of depends.But that's part of what we're going to do in the dogfighting, just on a base dogfighting level.We're going to do some basic stat tracking and we're going to decide what we think the best stats to track in terms of matchmaking people are. 'Cause partly the matchmaking also will be based on organizations, allegiances, who your friends are, who your enemies are, that kind of stuff.So it's still a little too early to tell, but I would definitely think that the kill count would factor into it.
So we're definitely making one the items of cargo you can carry, if you've got an information runner, is encrypted information.That actually can be pretty valuable in our universe because, in our universe there is no FTL communication.Basically communication happens at the speed the ship can travel or a radio wave can travel in system. So you're sort of limited between the combination of the speed of light when you're in system, and then whatever distance you jump when an information drone goes from one jump point to another jump point.Essentially the way your communication would go across the galaxy is, say I'm on Earth, I want a message to go to Terra. I would beam the message to the closest relay station near a jump point outside of Earth, and that relay station would receive that message at the speed of light. Then it would basically encrypt the data, put it in a drone, and put it in a jump point. On the other side, there would be a relay station that would then get it, beam it to the next relay station at the next jump point, and it would do that until it got to Terra.Obviously you need to encrypt your data as you're sending it through the jump point so other people can't see it. That's where the Drake Herald comes in, because in some cases, you may not want to even be beaming your information because you're afraid someone might actually decrypt it and get the information.So it's like delivering a really valuable hand written note, but in this case it's digital. So maybe even things like deeds to areas of land, or if someone is the first person to discover an area, you have to get the digitally signed document to the records bureau on Earth, and that's something an information runner would do.That's where I would see some of the PvP and organization stuff happening because we'll definitely have some mechanics where--This is the UEE, we're going to have some bureaucracy, you're going to have to have some information and data.And that information and data you won't always want to have blasted over the air waves. So sometimes you'll hire someone to take it. Also there will be cases where there are no relay stations. There are only relay station in the well developed part of space. But in the less developed frontier worlds, there won't be. You'll definitely need a spaceship to take the information.As something like the Drake Herald, that has all the data encrypt banks that will make it much safer when you're sending it. You may not want to send that information say on a Hornet or something because it hasn't got the computer systems and the shielding to save it from someone that's a data snooper.I definitely think there will be some play mechanics for organizations so owning, having title, trade, and all that stuff that will be based on information packets that get sent.So therefore I think the PvP, as well as the PvE, will be something you can do with the Drake Herald.