Calling All Devs - Apartments, Decompression and Ship Reworks

So, as people know, the Freelancer variants are on the roadmap for one of the releases this year. So at the moment, it is simply an error in the ship matrix. But as we get through to actually building that out, it may only have two, it may have four, it may have more. But what is definite is those engines will be bigger and more powerful than the other Freelancer variants to account for the extra size and weight and capacity. So it's probably going to be four because it will be a similar theme to how the current Freelancer MAX model is, a variant of the old base Freelancer. But until we can actually get around to building it and the art guys get on it, I can't be 100%. From a design side, they just have to be more powerful.

So it makes sense. When it comes time to actually build it out, there may be some technical reason, there may be some gameplay reason to just make two larger engines as opposed to four smaller engines. But that hasn't been decided at this point is what you're saying.

Yeah. And from the old Freelancer models to the current one that everyone has, there were lots of other similar changes that got done. So you can expect similar levels of that to happen to those other three variants as they get made.

Right now, no. That's not something in the cards. It was intentionally designed where the front seat was specifically built to be the pilot seat, including the hardware needed for flight. So you don't just have a single stick and you're flying your ship functionally. It's the throttle and stick, or even other ships where it's a dual stick setup. So the rear seat was built to not have all of that set up to it. To try and accomplish that, we'd have to kick things back to art, do a rework on that. But also at the same time, that was just never its intended design. So one thing I've seen people bring up, because I've seen that sort of pop up in Spectrum as well, is they're saying, oh, it should have been an attack chopper. That was never really the aesthetic reference for the cockpit as much. A bigger thing was actually the dropship out of Aliens, where it's much closer to that, because we've already got the giant shoulder-mounted ordnance. It's just ours doesn't fold out like the Cheyenne did. But the cockpit is also very much in that similar kind of mindset, where you have a more panel-heavy pilot seat in the front lowered position, right up at the nose of the ship, but then you have a much more unobstructed support gunner seat behind that pilot. If you even go through and look up the Cheyenne itself, it's like, oh, you can actually see a lot of those same cues. Although they have a weird, cramped hallway to get the pilot and the co-pilot through to their seats. We're like, no, no, we can't do that for collision reasons and being a game. So the cockpit is how it is. It's definitely not an unheard request.

So apartments might be a little premature. We've got the concept of habs, which aren't really being used the way that they're fully intended to be at the end of the day. Right now, when you spawn into the game or you die, you spawn back at your hab. But these are intended to be things that you can rent for a period of time. I rent a hab for a month for a certain amount of credits and that is your room at that point. So it's kind of like the apartment concept. I think if I was to guess, I think they're kind of going for, is there going to be player housing or guild housing in the game? And we understand that that's something that people are interested in, but we're still a ways off from having dedicated apartment buildings or things like that in the game. Tons of space to obviously do it. We want to get the foundation of the game in there first.

This topic has come up a number of times over the years. I think we can say we have lots of ideas, but that's not the same as plans at this point. Right now you can see the development plan for the remainder of 2018 on the RSI public roadmap. Beyond that, it's a lot of ideas, a lot of wish list kind of stuff like that. But thanks for bringing up the hab thing though. You're of course referring to the habs that you spawn into on Port Olisar or Grim HEX.

Yeah, think of it like your stateroom. It's the bedroom that you wake up in. Those are what we call habs. It's part of our common elements set. So all locations will have habs. All locations will have medical units or certain core elements that every place needs, just as a function: landing pads, etc. So habs are on that list. So they're going to be a common thing that you're going to see around the universe. Even if it's just for the workers, like it's a little truck stop. You can't actually rent a room at a truck stop. It's just for the workers, but they're going to be there, so that workers can come and go and go to sleep and have their 24-hour schedule. So, yeah, they're going to be a common thing. And the idea is that there's going to be different kind of tiers of habs: these are a little nicer, they have a little more room for customization, or this is just baseline, like it's a bed and a closet and that's about it, right? A roll of toilet paper. Shared bathroom.

So in regards to the ones that are currently being reworked, actually going into the year, we realized, okay, we really need to get a go on these. We really need to prioritize these. We managed to get everyone to agree: let's get these out of the way, let's focus on them. So beyond the Cutlass variants, the 300 series, the Freelancer, the Constellation, and the Redeemer that we're going to be jumping on as well, there's only really the M50, the buggy and the Merlin as potential candidates of ships that we would like to not so much rework to the same extent that we have done something like the Aurora or the Cutlass, but more apply an update to. So a good example would probably be something like the Hornet, where that wasn't a complete remodel per se, but we remade an aspect of it and then we applied new materials and shaders onto the actual ship, and it made it look a bit more fancy and modern. So the Merlin, buggy and M50 are the ones that don't really look up to par with the rest of the ships and are potential areas that we may want to go back and look into.

So just to clarify, so everybody's on the same page, we're considering the M50, the Merlin, and the Greycat buggy for revisions at some point in the future. But we're not committed to it. It may be decided that they're fine the way they are.

No, I mean, these are just ones that we would like to have a look at, but it's not confirmed yet in terms of going on the schedule.

And so the only remakes that we do know that we definitely need to do are the Freelancer variants, the Cutlass variants, the remaining Constellation variants, which are the Phoenix, which everybody knows is already underway, and the Taurus, and the Redeemer. Now, that's not to say that those are all going to get done in 2018. Obviously, you can see our public roadmap, available on robertsspaceindustries.com/roadmap. You see the ones that are on there. The Redeemer is not on there. So don't come out of here expecting it to be out in 2018, guys. We're just acknowledging that it needs to be reworked.

To give some insight, we've prioritized all the ships that are on the roadmap right now. The Redeemer is simply the next in line. So yeah, definitely don't expect that this year.