Developers answer fan questions on Star Citizen's launch universe: regional conflicts like the Xi'an war, exploration income across about 100 systems, shield and armor balance for attacks on a Bengal carrier, and the permadeath debate. Artists discuss art direction, alien species design and film influences.
Yeah, dude. Essentially, with 100 or so systems out there, we are literally going to have wars breaking out, conflicts breaking out. Things are going to happen fictionally all the time. Chris has always said that we're not going to be doing just one giant update like other MMOs are doing, but rather we're going to do regional conflicts, lots of micro-updates every month or so. So expect a lot of things like that to be happening.
You dirty, dirty little boy. Yes, of course we're going to put Sandy in there. Man, she's hot. We're going to throw her in. She's the resident marketing guru here at Cloud Imperium, and she should be in the game. If you guys want her, you got her.
Chris built his own machine. So he went to Newegg, put together the thing, has all the greatest graphics cards, everything in there. What we'll do is we'll post that up in a post-show deal where we'll talk about exactly the specs that we have. Rather than hear me blah, blah, blah at what they are, we'll put them up on the post-show update where you guys can see exactly what the specs are. He has a really bad to the bone rig, and I'm telling you, it's sweet. And he put it together himself, so Chris is a man of many talents.
TL;DRA fighter taking out a carrier's bridge might be possible, but it depends on shields, armor and balancing still to be done, guided by fun and player feedback.
Maybe. That's going to have to be done in balance. It's going to depend on the shield, it's going to depend on the armor that's in your craft. There's a lot of things that are still to be balanced, and fortunately for us, you guys get to help us with that. A lot of those things are going to be worked out. It could be that that happens, like Tora! Tora! Tora! or like Midway, and then knock out the carrier, the Kaga, the Akagi, the Soryu, the Hiryu. Or it could be that you don't do that much damage at all. That's going to depend on us. It's going to depend on you. It's going to depend on the balance of the game. And honestly, every decision we make has to depend on whether it's fun. So we're going to think about it. You guys are going to help us and we'll figure that out as we go.
Yes. There's going to be tons of stuff. We haven't figured out... we're going to have like a hundred systems from the get-go, but maybe only 25 are known, maybe 30 are known. And we're going to constantly, constantly be adding systems and things to discover, places to go, things like that. So an explorer is going to have plenty of chances to get out there and make a little money, discover those jump points. Maybe the systems have secret jump points. Maybe some systems are connected in a straight line, and maybe, like in A Wrinkle in Time, we fold them together and you actually connect systems on the backside. So there will be plenty of opportunities out there for explorers to make money.
TL;DROn permadeath, the speaker says the shown death mechanic is only a small snippet, more will be revealed, and players should be patient and not extrapolate; it will be fun.
Regarding permadeath, here's the situation. Sometimes when you're making a game, we create these ideas, we put them out there, and then we have to run them through the process and see how it all works. So with this death mechanic, you guys just caught a small snippet of what Chris is wanting to do, but you haven't caught near the full breadth of what we're going to do in regards to this. So more will come out on that. We'll get more updated as we go. I think most people that have been thinking these things are going to work that way are not accurate, because it's going to be fun. I promise you it's going to be fun. Don't worry. Trust us. Look for an update on how that's run and try not to take little snippets and extrapolate out how things are going to work. Be a little patient. Trust us. We've done this before. This is not our first rodeo.
Well, I think since the universe is so huge, if you look on this planet and you see the diverse influences on this one world, just imagine what an entire universe, how diverse that would be. So I could say yes to both of those and all of the above. And I think we're just looking to set a look in the different systems to be very unique and very varied. So it's just going to be something that we sort of discover, but it's going to be very diverse. It's not going to be locked into one sort of style.
There's always constraints. It always starts with the director, the person that's giving you the orders. And then it's just about the world that this character or creature is going to be living in. And a lot has to do with gameplay and whether these characters need to fly human ships or vice versa. So there's those basic constraints, but usually you always try to go into creating something with a very open mind and just a clean slate and clean palette.
Well, actually before I got into films, I started working for Chris Roberts. And so he always had a very filmic style anyway, to start with. So that was there right from the get-go working for Chris. And then having gone to California and worked at some of the big effects companies, every pixel is examined to the closest sort of scrutiny. And that's reviewed by many different layers of people. So I think that level of care given to the final image is what is going to help me in this position, making sure that this...
Because like you're saying, everybody reviews it along the way, and it gets to you now. Hopefully by the time it gets to you, the guys have done a really awesome job, and you're like, maybe a tweak here or there, but that really looks good, right?
Generally speaking, anything that Steven Spielberg does from a film standpoint. Ridley Scott, Guillermo del Toro with the Hellboy series. He's got a very unique look that he keeps in all his films. Game design... I don't know.
Well, I like Prometheus, but that's Ridley Scott. Prometheus was a beautiful movie. You felt like it was a real place. And that's hopefully what we're going to do here too. It's not going to be flashy for flashy's sake, or overly this or that. Hopefully it'll feel like you're immersed in a real place.