Reverse the Verse: August 21st, 2015

This feels pretty long already, doesn't it?

As ridiculous as our lives seem on this show, we actually do have a lot of work to do pretty much all the time, so as much as I would love to livestream 24-7, this is one of the most fun things we do in the week.

We've got meetings with Turbulent after this. Our monthly studio tour is today. Today's a pretty busy day.

Usually Fridays are our busiest.

Fridays aren't like casual hang back days for us, unfortunately.

We're going to be chasing the FPS post after this. I've got a social meeting.

Jump Point comes out today.

Jump Point. I forgot about Jump Point.

The guys in Austin are working on getting it to the PTU. I've heard that it's close, but we don't have a specific date to share yet.

No, I think we're good for CitizenCon. It's a smaller event, logistics-wise. If that changes, we will certainly let you know. But I would just think if you're going to CitizenCon, sit back and enjoy the ride and the delightful British food that is sure to delight.

We cannot promise bangers or mash. English cuisine. Our apologies.

There's absolutely no point or reason in my beard. It's just I got tired of trimming it. At some point I'll wake up one morning and it'll just be gone. Could be tomorrow. Could be six months from now.

You will eventually. Possibly not next week, but soon. Also possibly next week. It's when we're talking about doing soon, in the near future.

I can talk about it, but I can't answer the question. As promised on Twitter, I contacted our designers saying, hey, what's the deal with this? What is the proper measurement? Which, of course, has just caused a spiraling reaction in which they're remeasuring everything to make sure. So the number will come, but it won't come today.

Variants. I think it's much more exterior differences than interior for the Vanguard. So the traditional variant system you've been used to for the Vanguard. We should stress again that one is not replacing the other. There will always be variant ships and there will always be interchangeable ship guts.

If you have an existing Vanguard, you'll be able to upgrade it to either of the other two. And I know the other question everyone keeps asking is LTI, question mark. I believe we did not announce the two Vanguard variants back in the original sale. I want to go and check first. But if we did not, then they will be offered with LTI. If we did, I know we've mentioned them since then, but not at a time when you could have picked up two LTI-based Vanguards. So we're going to go back and check the original messaging. My thought is it probably will be LTI.

Yes. The standard Vanguard is the Vanguard Warden, and then there's the Vanguard Sentinel and the Vanguard Harbinger.

And you saw the cockpit of the Vanguard Warden, which is the base model, in the sneak peek of yesterday's Around the Verse.

And you saw a little bit of the Sentinel on Sandi's Facebook last night.

TBD. You'll be hearing more, probably at CitizenCon. We get that probably every single week. Some of the top Turbulent folks are coming next week to talk about future stuff, so I'll have a better idea of timelines then.

I believe it's intentional in the FPS stuff right now, but I'm not sure what the long-term plan is. It's one of those things where I know it's in the game right now, but I don't know if it's something that Chris Roberts specifically said he wanted or didn't want, so I can't say for sure where it's going.

Well, very much the Crucible is the tow truck ship. We'll be seeing that at some point.

Yes. Can't say what it'll cover yet.

Probably Repair will be a big one that's coming up, and Science, associated with either of those two ships once they're done.

It'll be available. Well, let me first stress this one. It will initially be available to about 2,000 backers because we need to do a very specific stress test spread out around the world. So when it goes to PTU, it will be available for about 2,000 backers that have been pre-chosen, just because of how it allows us to test the system. And then shortly after that, it will be available to everyone. But no additional $5 pass for this one. So like with Arena Commander, with Star Marine, we build them into the fiction as games you're playing in the Star Citizen universe. This is actually the Star Citizen universe, so this is the very, very first beachhead of what you pledged for initially.

I believe that everyone will get it just by backing. It's essentially part of the hangar. It's like your hangar got big. That's another one we want to point out. You will not have shared hangars at first. If you try to go into someone else's hangar, it just takes you to yours right now. That will change in the future. It's on the timeline. But for this first one, the only shared area is ArcCorp. And that's very intentional for what they're trying to learn about the servers.

There are some emotes. I don't know that dance is one of them yet.

It is alive.

It's on our schedule.

For those of you who haven't seen it, there is a ship status page started by our own James Pugh in the official announcements section on our official forums.

And that will be officially updated soon.

We're rejiggering our ship pipeline at the moment, so they have to finish that work before we can do our updates.

But it's good news that we're rejiggering it. It means we're getting some more resources off Squadron 42 to deliver some of the pledge ships sooner. It's all good stuff.

So all of your ship status questions, we don't have answers for you at the moment.

I mean, maybe? Sorry, I don't have the context for that one.

No, the 2,000 players are not picked by citizen numbers.

No, they're not by citizen numbers.

They are pre-selected.

It has to do with locations and how far they are away from particular servers. It's all sorts of scientific QA stuff we don't understand.

Like Ben said, it's a very specific stress test to begin with.

I can't answer that. Probably not anytime soon. That's an optimization type thing that usually happens towards the end of development. It's just the game changes too much right now as we're building it.

That's something to keep in mind. I know people want us to go through the polish and stuff right now, but it's kind of pointless if we're not feature complete yet.

And it's always a struggle. You're like, why isn't the game out? Why isn't the game out? Why haven't you polished your stuff? And it's a constant battle we have to fight. Never going to please everybody.

Well, that's just a covert date question, isn't it? The answer is that any concept will be sold once it goes through the design process. It's not based on any particular event or anything like that. When we want to do a ship for an event, we do one that does not require additional design. So what I'm saying is that there will be a ship we've got at CitizenCon; it's not the Endeavor. It's possible the Endeavor might come online right then, but that's based on design.

None yet. It's just on the schedule for a future look.

For Cutlass questions, I was talking to Nick Elms about the Cutlass today. No information yet, but we're working on it.

I am unsure. It's a small population. Very small at this point. Right now it's more important to get people in than NPCs.

I should say it's all Austin and Behaviour. We've talked about this distributed development stuff in the past. We've said people are still working on this module while this one may be delayed or this one's whatever. You're actually going to be seeing it. They've been working in quiet dignity on this for quite a while and it's going to pay off.

Don't know.

Probably not first release, but down the line.

Again, the priority is getting people in first.

Because the real technical challenge is getting as many people playing the game as we can in one place. So that's what a lot of our public-facing stuff is focused around.

Nothing specific, but elevators are an important part of the social module.

Do you have any info on the lobby system, the friend system? I'll send something up the flagpole. We don't have an answer during this episode, but I'll see what I can find out.

No, the Vanguard will not be hangar ready next week. This is just a concept sale for the variants. It's no indication of the current hangar-ready status of the primary Vanguard.

We have someone who's doing a bunch of shield bug fixes.

I can also take a look at the data. The data for the shield should be right. If there's something else with the ship acting up, that'll be something we have to look into. I've seen many reports on that, but we'll take a look.

Possibly. I don't really want to pre-confirm anything that we don't have really all locked in. Like the Retaliator modules, we had a good idea of what those were going to be. Once anything else gets set for a specific ship, that will be when we can share it with you guys.

No news. I don't even know what it is.

Again, that's a calendar question and we're not going to answer it. When was FPS slated to be out? It was months ago. So yes, it was slated to be on the program for 2.0. I believe that's pretty much still the hope. It's a matter of redoing the animations right now. We're waiting for our report from Jason Hutchins right now to find out how that's going. But they're independent at this point. AC 2.0 has the tech it needs from the FPS development, and we'll let you know.

Yes. I have seen that one. That has been brought up quite a few times.

Yes, I had a lot of fun doing that. I hope you guys enjoyed listening to me. I would love to do it again sometime. Thank you to the guys at INN for hosting that.

When you say do it again, you mean watch the same movie and talk about it again?

Sure. We could do Wing Commander Academy, the show. We could do a playthrough of the games.

We do have some artists working on it right now, and we have a design review this afternoon just to make sure that everything's in line with what design wants out of the ship. So we are still actively making progress on that. Dan, who you saw earlier, and Paul Forgy are working on that ship right now. So the status is: being worked on and looking awesome.

We don't compel anybody to be on the shows. We invite, sometimes very often. Some folks just aren't interested in being on camera. They'd rather work. And we appreciate that tremendously. So we don't force anybody to be on the shows.

I think it's mostly going to be people from our UK office because it's really close. However, I am campaigning to be sent to help, because I've done a lot of events and I want to go. So cross your fingers for me.

Mostly Manchester people. And Xenia and Chris, for sure.

More than likely, no. It will not be an embedded function of gimbals. We are looking at some things where you can get an additional targeting computer that you can plug onto a hardpoint. But that's going to have its own cost for any aim assist functionality it may carry over. And even that is still subject to tuning in implementation. So if it's something that we do offer, it's going to have a tangible power and potency cost to be useful.

I don't know either of those references.

Controls are just an ongoing thing, and a big part of it, though, is we really want anyone to be able to find the right tuning and setup for their personal taste, without having any one de facto standard of 'this is the I-win button.'

I did. It was good. I even told them, good job. You can see it. It's on Reddit.

That would be a question for the UK, since I believe they're working on the ship right now. I'm sure there's a place on the forums somewhere to suggest that. I'll bring it up next time we talk to them.

It should be set to weapon group 3 and then treated like a missile. If that is not working, please do post a bug to the bug report forum so we can take a look at that and find out what went up with the weapon groups.

I don't know exactly what that means, but we do have people penciled in to be starting on it before the end of the year, so it should get made relatively soon.

There's not been any progress on the Drake Dragonfly yet, although I don't think we have a new batch of concepts identified, so I can't say for sure. It's on the short list, but I think, like I said in a previous ATV, we would want some extra design work on that in the earlier stages, just to make sure the functionality is something that works with everything else. I'd have to find out if we have the bandwidth for that, and if not, it wouldn't make sense to do the Drake Dragonfly yet, unfortunately. But again, I promise you, as soon as we do, that will be one of the first ships we do, because I'm excited about it.

Prowler, yeah. We'll be kicking off the Prowler, and probably a couple of others that folks don't know about yet, once the Endeavor and the Crucible are done. There's always more ships.

That is something we've talked about, and that is something that we're trying. The next several ships that we have and the next several ships that the UK has are all from the same several manufacturers. The idea being every artist has certain styles, or at least strengths, and we want to play to those. So that's a good question. That is something that we're doing right now, and we're going to see how it goes.

No, those were Gamescom exclusive. I have a handful of extras. I'm going to bring them to DragonCon in about two weeks. And if you see me at the con, I will be happy to give you one. But we only have a couple left.

So the Freelancer has been handed off to the UK. They're going to finish that ship up, in accordance with what I just said, sort of splitting up the manufacturers a little bit. We handed it off not too long ago. I do not recall off the top of my head if they are working on it right now or if it's coming up. But I know that it is one of the next several they're going to be working on, if they are not currently. I can try to find out and let you guys know next week.

Their actual damage per shot is, I think right now, some of the highest in the game. It's just their rate of fire and their lifespan made them a little bit more problematic to use. Damage per shot is the big thing to care about, not just a raw DPS of damage times rate of fire, because DPS doesn't consider accuracy.

Well, you saw the Constellation in the demo, so you know we're working on it.

We still have people working on it. We have not stopped progress since Gamescom. We've had the same two guys, Chris and Josh, out in Texas, continue working on it.

And they had a pretty good segment in Around the Verse three or four weeks ago, if you want to check it out, with lots of images of the new Constellation rework, if you haven't seen it.

No. Zero chance.

You don't want to see the Chris Roberts modeling photos for that one. And we don't want to take them.

Yeah, not as much as other ships. I wasn't the primary designer hooking those up, but I have flown them. I know how they handle.

I think, according to the schedule, which again has not been 100% signed off on, we're going to have some LA people start working on that sometime after New Year. So not anytime super soon, but not as far away as it could be.

I can't speak to it 100%, because that is the community team's realm. They're asking about if bugs are going to be included, and I don't think there are any plans for that right now. That seems like it would be a lot more work for everyone. Significantly more work to add that than just to give statuses.

It's a status of their development.

So the Scythe and the Glaive should have really crazy handling, but a big part of that is the trade-off that they only get fixed weapons. So that's why their handling is a bit sharper than some other ships.

Well, it still looks the same. Grass is still grass. But we will see more natural environments as we build some of our systems to explore.

How can you colonize a planet without plastering it in concrete first?

That's what terraforming does.

They are. We've actually had concept artists working for the past several months fleshing out and improving the Vanduul, and just making variants of them so not every single Vanduul is exactly identical. And he's been doing a good job. I don't know when we're planning to release that stuff. I just don't worry about when it's coming in, and these guys do that magic.

I think a couple of the updated Vanduul pieces showed up in the Comic-Con presentation, maybe. Go back and look carefully at that.

Noted. I will have to look into when I can get enough information to have it be worthwhile. I'll look into it.

There will be nightclubs for sure. Gambling... There's some legal questions on how you do gambling in a game. It's such a touchy thing.

It adds gameplay, but it also adds complications.

But certainly nightclubs. In fact, I think they've already built at least one of them. The guys in Austin, they're doing the Million Mile High Club for an upcoming event.

Last I heard was late September, but I don't know if that's accurate.

There's a lot of construction to do.

We don't hate the Avenger.

No, the Avengers are a great example of how we prioritize design before making money, because we're not going to do the variants until the guys responsible for that ship are happy with them.

And the Avenger is one of our most popular ships. I won't tell you exactly how many are out there, but I recently just did an audit of how many of each ship is actually out there in the world, owned by folks, and the Avenger is in our top ten.

No information on the modding tools. Still way too far away.

We'll be there Friday, Saturday, Sunday. We have the big Star Citizen Q&A panel on Saturday. They tell us not to release the specific schedule until they publish their booklet, but Saturday is the big day for us. And then on Sunday I've got a couple of general gaming panels with folks from other companies. And then both of the Daves are doing some writing panels. Should be fun. We'll probably get together with the Star Citizen AA guys on Saturday night, just hang out. We'll have some Constellation pins; if you see me there, ask me for a Constellation pin, I'll give you one. We've got some other bits and pieces of swag.

Yes, I have. It is a fantastic museum. One of my life goals has always been to visit every manned American spacecraft, and so a couple of years ago I went to the U.S. Air Force Museum in Dayton, and it's a huge museum. It's really cool.

Sandi is terrible. She's a slave driver. We can't stand her. I'm just glad she's not here. No, I've been working with Sandi ever since day negative 100 of the project, and I could not ask for a cooler person to work with, because they wouldn't give me one. No, we all love Sandi.

For a lot of the module questions that I see popping up, especially for the ships that aren't flight ready, we're not really going to be able to answer those questions at all until the base ship is flight ready. Once we get to that point, we can really start seeing what kind of modules, what kind of extended gameplay we want to put into that ship, into the variants, and really flesh it out there.

Every piece of art for the Merchantman has been shared. We even went digging for some unused concepts a month or two ago.

No, I don't think that's a thing right now, and I will pass along the suggestion.

That sort of falls into the 'we need to get it flight ready first.' We need to get the snub dock working as we need it to work first, and then we can look at possible replacements. Not a bad idea, but we've got enough on the plate ahead of it.

That will depend on the manufacturer. Each manufacturer will have their own style. Some will have some holographic stuff and some won't. So it will kind of be a per-manufacturer stylistic kind of thing.

Yes. Actually, I had this question earlier. Yes, we are working on a revamp for the holotable. No, it's not immediate, but it is in the plans. We know there are issues with the holotable.

The new CCU system is still forthcoming. We were just talking about it with Turbulent this week. It's just still testing on the back end.