Calling All Devs - Parties, Scans & Cargo

If you find yourself running into this, you could start swapping out your thruster sets to a more powerful set. If you do that, you might need a better power plant because it's going to start requiring more power. It's going to start overheating more, so you need to start swapping out your coolers. You might need to start taking things off, like taking all your weapons off because they're taking up power and generating heat that you need to spend elsewhere. So it all just sort of trickles together.

I love the idea that not every Avenger, not every Caterpillar, not every Starlifter is going to be the same once we get into the customization of components and stuff, and that'll be a big factor. I just really keyed on that, like, you will learn your ship's capacity through experimentation.

Even if two people kitted out their ship the same way, if one is absolutely hammering, doing cargo runs day in, day out, it's going to be a lot more worn than someone that's just freshly done the exact same thing. So you're going to have to account for that as well.

It's definitely going to be more than what it is at the moment. The values that are there at the moment is actually something we noticed shortly after 3.1, I think, went out, in that in the conversion to Item 2.0, all the radar items had all their ranges set back to the default. So all the ships, even though they've got different radars on them, they all have the same radar. So we fixed that for 3.2. So bigger ships will be able to see further. They have different timings for how long it takes a signature, could be a ship, could be anything else, to be identified. And there's all that sort of values that are going to be coming online. How quick signatures can be identified, whether it's a case of just being, oh, it's a ship, or it's a ship, it's this faction, it's this type, it's got this person inside. The longer and the bigger that signature is, the quicker you'll start getting those details. So regular ships will take a while to do that. Ships with specialities, with better radars, better scanners, because they're two separate items, will get that data quicker. So it's always useful to have those around.

And of course, as these systems come online, the more robust scanning, the more robust radar and stuff like that, these values, like how close they are... The question actually included, will it be 50 kilometers? Will it be 100 kilometers? I didn't include that because obviously these specific ranges will be affected by testing and by you guys. Whatever we try the first time, we'll get our feedback and we'll either reduce it or we'll increase it and we'll continue to adjust it, because that's one of the great advantages of developing a game in the middle of a live environment, is you guys get to be a part of that process.

Going back to what I said about the [radars], it was all set to the default ranges. We were trying to get that in for one of the 3.1.x patches, but because there was such a focus on getting the performance back up to where it should be, all the lead engineers sort of fell off their chairs when we started suggesting that there's this one-line change that we can double the radar range, we can triple the radar range, now you can start picking up stuff so much further away. They're like, no. You're not putting this straight into the live environment without testing, and we've got other stuff we want to do. So that's been in our main branch for a while, so that should start seeing an improvement.

Sure. So the party system, what we're doing right now is we're laying the groundwork for party organization and party being able to just better communicate with other members, including members of your party. And the main system we're implementing is called the group system. So groups are really just groups of other people, whether they're in your primary party or whether they are temporary groups they set up for chatting. And once we get that system in place, which we're working on currently, we'll also be able to do things like chat between the members of your party, specify temporary party groups so that you could do things like quantum link together, so everyone in the party can use their quantum drive and end up in the same destination. We can do things like set up a group for when you do missions. So when you do missions, we have to adjust the mission system itself, but you can invite other people, whether they're in your private party or another grouping of members, to include into that particular mission and then divvy up the rewards as you see fit. We can do things like set up dynamic temporary groups. So when you're in a room, we can set up a group that specifies who's chatting, so within earshot, you can find out exactly which people are talking. And then one other aspect that we're incorporating into the group system is that you'll be able to physically interact with people that are in front of you. So if there's some person in front of you, because of the group system and how it'll let you listen in to a conversation that that person is either having directly with you or in your vicinity, that person is super friendly, hey, you'd be able to click on them and invite them into your party or as a contact list member. And then you can do things like whisper and have a personal conversation with them, or have a general conversation with them or other people you invite into that group. And anything that requires any type of communication within a certain group of people is what we will be incorporating into this group system.

Wow, so this sounds like a system that's fully fleshed out and already done and should be in the game tomorrow, right?

So like I was just mentioning, the underlying group system is what's being worked on. We're working with our members internally to make sure that we'll have the back-end system for that so that we can do things also with Spectrum chat. So one thing that we'll be able to incorporate is that you shouldn't have to be in the game live to be able to simply communicate with other members of your group. So say it's a primary party. The primary party is represented in Spectrum chat. If you're offline, you should be able to chat with anybody that's live, and vice versa. They should be able to talk to anybody that just isn't signed on but happens to be in Spectrum. So you can do things like organize future events. Because we'll have the status of everyone that's within those groups visible to either side, when you're in Spectrum, you should be able to see, hey, you know what? Jared is near Port Olisar and he's just about ready to get into a mission. That sounds awesome. I should be able to see that info and then click on your name and go, you know what? I actually want to log in. So a single click should be able to start up the game, and then you should automatically be able to join the same server as you, and then we'll have rules for where you spawn, like maybe you spawn near them or within one of the spawnable beds on your ship. So we'll figure that stuff out as we go along. But you should be able to really quickly group up and organize things, because I think one thing we're lacking right now is the ability to kind of figure out exactly where people are and what they're doing. So we're going to make that a richer experience and make it simpler so that everyone can coordinate and do stuff together, which is really the crux of systems like multiplayer, or just being a big part of a party in general.

This is my time to say that these are, of course, our first intentions and the things that we're building towards. Whatever the next iteration of this that makes it in the game may not be all these features, and this will be something that we continue to build on and continue to iterate. And you should check out Around the Verse in the coming months, as that will be the place where we'll really showcase the work on this feature and stuff like this.

Right. So once we get some of the basic group system in, I think the first place that players will see what we're implementing is going to be in mobiGlas. We'll have a much nicer version of our chat system, so that you'll have a primary chat in the lobby that will use a nice interface, so you don't have to memorize all these kind of strange keybinds. We'll improve the visor chat as well. And we'll have some better visibility about specifically who's around you, and some interactions with those people physically, so that you don't have to go hunting for their name and input these CVars in the console, which are really difficult to use right now.

Now, I will say before you get to it, they have already been attributed. When you go to your hangar on the RSI website, you can see them attributed, so you should have them. But what about implementing? That's your area.

Implementation-wise, we have just recently been going through all of our backlogs, and we've been talking about this a lot and kind of prioritizing everything, getting it in a good spot. So we have put them in the backlog, they are prioritized. We can't say when they're going to come out, but I can tell you that we're closer than we've ever been. So we're working on them, but I can't tell you exactly [when they'll be out].

If you missed it in that incredibly long and drawn-out answer, they're on the backlog. They are scheduled. They've got JIRAs for them. They're all set up. And when resources are available, they will get their time to shine.