Developers answer townhall questions on currency for wanted pirates, bar sets, alien-influenced locations, pirate smuggling mechanics and NPC hiring. They also cover quantum travel speed, no beyond-visual-range combat, AWACS-style roles like the Hornet Tracker, and SimPod modes.
TL;DRA wanted pirate could probably still use currency, which likely is detached from governments; the limit is where stolen goods can be sold, and a piracy design post is planned.
And yet a terrorist can still go to the local 7-Eleven with dollars and transact perfectly fine. If Bitcoin is still around, you will have an anonymous currency.
Anyway, the question asked for me, I thought it was a good question. I'm teasing Tony, we'll figure out the best answer for it. But my guess is that you will detach the currency and the transactional process of that away from any government because it has to be also something that you can trade between races.
What I would say is basically your transactions on things that have been stolen, it's limited by where you can sell as opposed to the currency in which you're going to conduct that transaction. You shouldn't be able to go to the TDD on ArcCorp and actually unload all of your stolen material. You should have to actually traipse two systems over, find a less reputable space station or planet where they're much less concerned with law and rules and regulations, and that's where you would actually unload that type of stuff.
So I think on our side, one of the things we've committed to do is having more in-depth design features and posts on our website. So one of the ones that I think we should do is a piracy one. We've got a few other ones like mining that will come up. So we will give you those guides. We won't drone on about that here.
It's a tier system set, so it can be reconfigured to different bar situations. But the thing about it is, obviously, you're going to encounter different qualities of bars as you go across the universe. Some are going to be super seedy.
So on ArcCorp, that's a little bit nicer bar than you may find on the outskirts, full of scum and villainy. But yeah, there's a lot of aspects of that bar that are going to be reused in various sets because it's all modular at the moment.
Some of the alien stuff that we've been talking about, there's definitely civilizations and planetside locations that have adopted some of the alien technology. So there'll definitely be human-alien hybrid locations in various things, or have flavors of it for sure. So that's something to look forward to in the future.
TL;DRPirates have no formal class but will use mechanics like jamming distress beacons, stealth boarding, smuggling cargo and fences, while traders can counter with fast ships, armor, NPC gunners or escorts.
Pirates are going to wind up being one of the more interesting, I wouldn't say character classes since we don't really have, as I mentioned at one of the panels earlier, the formal concept of a character class. You can be anything you want just depending upon what your skill set is, how you've outfitted your character and your ship. One of the most interesting aspects about pirates is basically they're constantly engaged in theft and smuggling. And so there are a lot of game mechanics that we're going to wind up having that are tilted towards allowing them to surreptitiously sneak cargo past the authorities. There are ways that they will be able to jam the distress beacons, I mentioned, that ships can send out. And so for a lot of pirates, they'll have to adopt different tactics depending upon where the cargo that they're actually assaulting is. Inside of a very secure zone, a UEE zone, they're probably going to wind up needing to jam the distress beacon of a ship before they actually assault it. They're going to potentially employ stealth tactics so that they could possibly board a ship before the captain actually knows what's happening. In some cases, they could actually wind up boarding a ship, ejecting the cargo, and by the time the captain actually figures out what's going on and sends out a message to the authorities, and there's a lag time before the UEE forces would actually arrive to provide assistance, or other mercenaries for that fact, the pirate ship would have already tractor beamed in a good chunk of the more valuable pieces of that cargo and basically high-tailed it out of there.
And so one of the conversations that Chris and I were having earlier was just how far we wanted to go with all of the different means by which pirates could basically be dissuaded by players from daring to attack their ship. And one of the ways is obviously it depends upon the cargo that you're planning to carry. If you're carrying information, if you're carrying an individual politician or something that's particularly small, then the best way to get through heavily infested areas of pirate-controlled space might be to just adopt the fastest ship possible so that you can just outrun them. On the other hand, if you're transporting large quantities of some type of ore, then you're going to want to utilize a ship that's got a good set of armor, very strong shields, probably some weaponry. You're probably going to want to hire some very capable NPCs to man your turrets to help fend them off. Because even if you're able to get a call out to the authorities to provide assistance, there's going to be a lag time. It's going to take a minute, two minutes, three minutes, and so you're going to need to basically be able to take a few punches before help can get there. On the other hand, depending upon the cargo you're carrying and how lucrative the mission is, you may want to go on over to the TDD and wind up basically hiring a number of escort ships to go with you through these pirate-infested areas such that you've essentially got your own little battle convoy. And in such cases, as the pirates come in and are basically trying to assault your ship, take it out, all of the guys that are protecting you would automatically swarm in to anyone that's actually targeted your ship and basically try to take them out.
Yeah, I mean, I think the other thing as far as the pirates goes, we talked about what you do if pirates are attacking you. But pirates themselves have a bunch of tools. On the outer edge of the galaxy, there's no law and order. You don't care so much. But the idea is that you still could essentially go and perform a heist. So for instance, if you got intel that there was this shipment of gold bullion going from planet A to planet B, that's probably a fairly high value target. So at that point, you and some friends, maybe you go pay for a variant of the Avenger that's a Warlock that has a whole EM jamming system. But you basically have a ship that can jam all the communications, and you in concert with two or three of your pirate buddies will be able to take out the ship. Now, that probably wouldn't make a lot of sense to go to all that effort to attack some new player that just started in an Aurora. It definitely would make it worth your time to go after someone that's literally got some valuable shipment. So you'll be able to do that. You'll be able to have fake ship ID codes, jam stuff, take stuff to basically a fence or a chop shop in the outer worlds.
Some ships will have special cargo holds that are less detectable by authorities. You'll be able to mask the signatures. Cargo is much easier to smuggle in and out as opposed to ships. If you're in a very secure area and you're flying through in a ship that you picked off of some guy, you're going to just draw constant attention from the authorities. If, on the other hand, you've pilfered some cargo, as long as you maintain a sufficient level of distance from any military ships in your area, then you can probably navigate through a given system without too much trouble. We talked earlier, too, about how much more difficult it is to actually unload those goods. Stealing cargo, stealing ships, et cetera, it's really just half the battle for a pirate. The other side, of course, is where are you going to sell it? And there are some systems like Nyx that we mentioned earlier that are much more willing to allow you to sell these pilfered goods, as opposed to a Terra Prime or ArcCorp, where you will not be able to go anywhere near them. You will not be able to sell anything at those types of places. What this means also is that for the goods that you'll wind up selling, you're not going to get nearly as good a price as you would if they were actually legitimate. There is a cost to stealing a Hornet, you're not going to get the full retail transaction price. And so these all just become other metrics by which pirates need to determine whether or not the missions that they're undertaking are worth it: the amount of damage they're going to take to their ship, the ammo they're going to expend, the cost to basically hire their own NPC crew members, or possibly a player to actually do a fantastic job of manning that distress signal disruptor so that the captain can't get a signal out to request help from authorities or from any mercenaries that are in the area that are willing to provide assistance.
Currently, no. We're not anticipating that NPCs could turn rogue and rebel. You mean basically decide they're going to mutiny and take over your ship? Yeah, that's like a V3.0 feature.
TL;DRThe focus is the game, but longer term they would probably consider in-fiction linear stories using their assets, and they are working on cinematic camera tools for players.
Well, first of all, we're making the game. But longer term, we probably would consider making some in-fiction linear stories using our assets in the world. So that's the longer term plan. We definitely think that the world is interesting enough. I don't know whether it would be the TV style or it would be a feature. But for us, we're creating a world that people want to spend time in. Primarily, it's going to be playing, interacting in it. But also, I think sometimes people would want to kick back. I don't know if you guys read some of Dave Haddock's fiction when he wrote the Kael Mason piece or the Kid Crimson. But for me, I really liked them. They were these really fun, kind of serial-style cliffhanger pieces. And so I could definitely see that kind of stuff set in our world that you would watch.
Well, we're definitely going to have the tools to allow you. So those are things that we're working on, kind of like cinematic camera tools. It's already cool right now. A lot of times we can see people post gameplay videos or trailers, and they've done at least as good of a job as we've done internally. And it's really awesome, especially considering we don't really have any tools for that. So those are things that we are actually focusing on. Because it's today's world. We release a version, we can five minutes later go to Twitch and see people playing it and see what's happening. So we're actually fairly focused on the ability to do that in the game.
TL;DRThere are no plans for beyond-visual-range combat since it isn't personal or visceral, though longer-range scanning, long-range missiles and countermeasures are expected, and no bombing planets from orbit.
I don't mean to be flippant, but let's face it, if we were doing a proper simulation of future space combat, you would probably never ever see your opponent, it would all be handled by computers, and they would tell you whether you won the fight or not, and it's not particularly fun.
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Audience memberPAX South attendee who asked the BVR combat question
But with countermeasures and things like that, you could defeat missiles, and like air combat today, once you've defeated the missiles, you would close to dogfighting range.
Well, we're definitely going to have, for instance, already the missiles have a longer range than guns do in Arena Commander. So we definitely will have longer range scanning when we move to the full 64-bit large world setup, which we're pretty close to being able to do. When we move to that, we're going to have further scanning. So there's different levels of your radar. Your radar at close range can keep constant contacts and update them all the time. But the further you go out, it's more about a pulse. And so in that case, you would be able to see contacts 10 kilometers, 20 kilometers, 30 kilometers out. And there may or may not be some long-range missile stuff that you can do some countermeasures for, but there's not ever going to be you bombing a planet from orbit or anything like that.
So less Squadron 42, but that will definitely be stuff that you'll see in the Persistent Universe and you'll see prototypes in Arena Commander. So we already have ships. At a certain level, you've got the Hornet Tracker that kind of does a bit of that. But we have some other ships that are in the pipeline that are bigger versions of that. So that is kind of a gameplay focus that we're thinking will definitely happen in the Persistent Universe. And there is some part of it that happens in Squadron 42, but it's a slightly different context. But generally, when we have the bigger ships, like an Idris corvette or whatever, there's going to be whole roles for people.
TL;DRNon-combat players should be able to buy top weapons with earned money or find rare ones on derelicts, though combat itself is unlikely to be a major source of salvaged gear.
Well, I guess it sort of depends. I think most things in life are available if you pay the money. So in general, if you earn enough money trading or something, you certainly would be able to go to the place where the guy makes that special weapon that beats all the other weapons, and he charges a premium for it. And you should be able to get it. In terms of salvaging items, maybe you come across this rare alien gun from a derelict. Again, that would be situational, but there's no reason why you have to win a combat to come across a derelict and salvage something. I actually don't think that combat is going to be the way that you're going to be salvaging a whole bunch of equipment, because generally when you're in combat, you're shooting the other person up. Maybe some of their weapons will be intact, but the odds are that you've shot their ship up pretty well.
TL;DRQuantum travel masks streaming of new areas so it can't be faster than that, and it should take less time than Elite's frameshift travel, roughly ten minutes across a system at full speed.
Well, basically, what we use quantum travel for, and even the jump point, is to disguise the fact that we've got to stream in the new area we're going to and dump out the old area we're coming from. So it will never be faster than what it takes to stream in the new data and dump out the old data. But in general, also in a gameplay manner, you need to have a certain, like, OK, it takes you so long to go from one side of the system to another side of the system. So it's not just a kind of time lapse or something. So it's kind of hard to say, but I would say that generally compared to Elite and the amount of time you spend in the frameshift drive stuff, it would be less than that. I can't tell you about EVE because I haven't been playing that recently, but we've given the time of taking, if you were at full speed, going from one side of the system to another one, 10 minutes or so.
TL;DRNo other SimPod games are currently planned beyond Arena Commander and the FPS, which will expand with more complex modes, including possibly a combined mode, as test beds for the Persistent Universe.
I would say there's going to be a whole lot of variations of Arena Commander. In other words, all the different mission types that we were talking about earlier, which is effectively going to make it a totally different type of game.
Right now, we're not really thinking or planning of anything. Basically, essentially what we're doing with Arena Commander is prototyping stuff in space. And what we're doing in the FPS is prototyping stuff on foot. And so that's kind of what the SimPod's really doing. So it's mostly covered by FPS and Arena Commander. So I would think right now that we wouldn't necessarily have anything else, although the Arena Commander modes and the FPS modes will always expand. I've mentioned that we're using Arena Commander as a test bed for missions you'd get in the Persistent Universe or missions that maybe we would run in Squadron 42, in terms of the more complicated missions. And so that's kind of what Arena Commander will be moving towards. You'll have more complexity than you have currently. It won't just be, okay, let's fight against some other players or let's fight against the Vanduul. And the same would probably be true of the FPS. So we'll definitely have a mode that combines everything. So whether you want to call it an Arena Commander or an FPS mode or a combined mode, you'll basically have a capture-the-Idris mode, where essentially you start out with your team. You've got to get rid of the space defenses, get rid of the anti-space guns or whatever, bring in your Redeemer, land your Marines, and take over the Idris, fighting against people defending it. So those are all the kind of things that will go into those modes, where we're prototyping the kind of gameplay that we expect to have in the full game itself in the Persistent Universe.