Chris Roberts answers fan questions on NPC behavior (hailing, threatening, trading, repair help), energy management between weapons, shields and engines, artificial gravity, and the Next Great Starship contest. He also covers playable alien races, contract and rating systems, and ship melting and citizenship.
So that's actually a pretty good question. I haven't really thought of that in terms of if you're say parents or relative has citizenship, do you get citizen ship too in the case of your character dies and you move on? So I guess I would have to think about that. I would think that we would definitely give, if citizenship does not automatically transfer, which it may not do, we would definitely give you opportunities to regain citizenship so military service would be one of the or various other things you could do, but I don't have a fully formed answer for you on that one, but that's why this process is great. Bring up issues that we need to resolve and it's better to resolve them now than later.
TL;DRNo decision yet on melting ships from the Dogfighting module; his initial inclination is to allow it, but he doesn't promise it, and ships applied to a persistent universe character can't be melted.
So we haven't made a decision on that. Definitely once the game is live and the Persistent Universe is live and you take your ship and apply it to a Persistent Universe character, yes, you will not be able to melt it, you will not be able to trade it a back, as you're playing the game and using the ship. My sort of initial response right now is on the dogfighting module, we'll probably give you a pass and let you fly around and have some fun and potentially melt your ship. I'm not promising it just yet cause I wouldn't want people to abuse that, but I think it would be a sort of opportunity for people to try out things that they like, and decide what they really want to play with. But definitely, once the persistent universe happens, once you apply the package to a real in game character and the in game character enters the world, you won't just arbitrarily melt it and change it around.
TL;DRA contract system is definitely planned, possibly with escrow, paid arbitrators and Uber-style mutual ratings between employers and contractors, modeled on real-world systems.
So we'll definitely have a system to be able to handle this kind of thing. We may even have a system where you can put money in escrow until a job is performed. Maybe someone administers that for a fee. Also we're going to have a rating system. I think we've mentioned this before, but in America there is this service called Uber where you can hire cars to take you places, and both the person that hires the car and the driver of the car rate the other person. So when you are looking at a car nearby, you can see what that driver's rating is and the driver can also see what your rating is. So you obviously don't want to go with someone that only has a one star rating, you want to go with someone who has a four or a five star rating, and I think that in that case we would definitely have both parties in some contract. When you hire someone like an employer hires someone to run a mission, both the employer and the person running the mission can rate each other so you can sort of see, ok, this is a transport pilot and he's got a 4.5 star rating out of 5, he's pretty good, he's definitely worth paying a premium when this guy's got a 3 star rating over here. So we'll have a bit of that sort of self-regulating objective ratings, and also maybe some systems like escrow and a role that someone can take as an arbitrator for a fee, to arbitrate disputes, I think we'll have system that are fairly similar to what's in the real world to make that kind of stuff work well.
Yeah, the short answer is yes, absolutely. I mean my goal actually is for the NPCs in the game to sort of feel and appear much like real people so in some ways I almost sort of feel like until you get up close I kind of don't want the players to really even know that it's an NPC or a player and therefore the NPCs, we're already designing a bunch of behavior for them and part of that plan is to have human like responses like to preserve their own lives and that kind of stuff so I would definitely say that you will be able to say "Give us your cargo or pay the consequences" and some people will fight you and some people will just surrender their cargo and get out.
TL;DRNot all ships will have artificial gravity, mainly bigger ones; g-forces still apply during hard turns, and bigger ships likely can't maneuver as hard as smaller ones.
So not all ships will have artificial gravity, most of the bigger ones where you walk around probably will have artificial gravity. I'm sort of playing with the idea that maybe on some ones you would just have more magnetic boots because we are actually modeling for our first person combat artificial gravity and zero-g combat so we're going to have all those options and one of the things that potentially you could be something that would be fun would be to disrupt borders would be to disable your artificial gravity and all this sudden you're in zero-g. How it affects g-forces, well I mean really not so much. You know, pilots fly around here on earth and they're experiencing the gravity of earth, yet they still deal with g's as they pull tight turns, and the same would definitely be true in space if you have artificial gravity in your ship and you start to really pull a really hard right turn you will, since you're not statically bound to the object that's turning right, there will be an equal and opposite force on you and you'll be getting pushed, and so you'll probably still have some level, I mean you'll still have obviously g-forces even when there's artificial gravity, but generally the other thing to I think remember is the bigger ships that you would more likely have the artificial gravity. So for instance the Hornet doesn't really have artificial gravity cause you're strapped in, but the bigger ships, you probably won't be able to pull as hard of maneuvers as you would necessarily in say some of the smaller ships, which is again part of the trade-off/balance between big ships small ships. Big ships have more armor, more weapons, but then again they can't move quite as quickly and all the rest of the stuff, so I hope that answers your question.
So you'll definitely down the road be able to play as one of the other alien races that will be a sort of longer term expanding in the persistent universe just right now in terms of generating content and assets, we've already got a crazy amount of stuff to do. There's a whole bunch of people out there who think we've got too much to do already. So that won't be beginning, but that is definitely a long term plan because I would really want to see that and I think it would be fun to play as a Tevarin or a Xi'an or a Banu, and if we do that we probably would also create a companion single player experience like Squadron 42 but for the race. So I think yes, we will have that.
So definitely the Next Great Starship ship will be available to everyone out there and be available in the Persistent Universe so yes, the answer is yes. I think we're sort of debating, but we're probably going to let you guys sort of choose what kind of ship is going to be so that will be kind of fun for you.
So yes, the answer is absolutely yes on that. That's part of the core design so that you're able to do a huge amount of energy management. You know diverting energy from powerplant to your engine thrusters, to your shields, to your weapons, and even inside you shields, depending on the shield set up you have. You'll probably be able to divert power between the different segments of the shield as well and even between the different weapons. So yes is the answer there.
TL;DRShips won't be built from mixed parts at the start and maybe not ever, but players can add equipment to a hull, possibly including adapted alien items.
That's an interesting question. I mean so really the way the ships work is that you sort of buy a hull and then you can customize and add different items and equipment to it, but we're not really set up to buy a rear wing and then a fender from a different ship and put them all together so they make some hybrid ship. So I'm not sure if we'll be able to build ships from parts, not at the beginning we definitely won't be able to build ships from parts, who knows down the road. But you certainly will be able to buy different equipment and items and add them to your ship and some potentially could be an alien item that you could have to have adapted to work on your ship. So maybe sort of a small combination of this, but not to the extent that you can build a ship wholly out of just junk parts.
TL;DRChris Roberts says yes, players should be able to get refueled and helped by NPC ships, since he wants NPCs to behave like players and be hard to tell apart from them.
So yes, the answer is absolutely yes. Those are all things that we want to do. As I said a little earlier in this section that one of my goals is to make the NPC behavior be pretty human like and they behave and do the same jobs and same actions as players will do and also obscure the fact that it is an NPC from a real player, at least at a distance from people so it just feels like it's a living breathing world that's populated and you'll run into people and hey some may be AI controlled and some may be player controlled. If we do our job right, maybe you won't even realize that a player is playing his ship, you think it's an AI and vice versa, so they'll definitely be able to help you out, they'll refuel you, they'll do all those kind of things they're all sorts of things that we're planning for.