The developers cover how hired NPCs would react under fire, the planned exploration loop of charting and selling maps, and the player-count targets per server instance (50-100). They also discuss private org mission boards, capital ship combat ranges, missile lock types, racing sponsorships, and alien translation via MobiGlas.
TL;DRRoberts says he hasn't played persistent-universe games that do what he wants, partly because he's been busy on Star Citizen, which aims for a universe that changes in response to players.
So I think that's an interesting question. I guess it depends on your definition of what a game with a persistent universe is. The simplest could be potentially Demon Souls, because people can write messages and they persist, but there's not really a lot of other stuff going on there. I would say, potentially you could classify an MMO like World of Warcraft, or Eve Online as particularly a persistent game. One of the goals that we have on Star Citizen is to have the actual universe persist, but also change and morph over time and also be reactive to the player actions - so the player actions are actually shaping the universe. I haven't particularly seen that... I know in Trian's "Rift" that was sort of the idea, and also in Guild Wars 2 that's the idea, but both those games have come out recently and unfortunately over the last 3 years I've pretty much had down working on Star Citizen, so I haven't really had the chance to get in and play any of those ones.So I guess my answer would be, I haven't really played any that have done what I would like a game to do in terms of persistence in a universe, and that's kinda why I'm making Star Citizen. I don't know if that's a good answer to that question, but... that is my answer!
TL;DRRoberts says a no-ship-package entry, working for hire and later paying a ship license fee, has been discussed as a long-term idea, but it won't be available in the short term.
Yep, Strad, that's a really good suggestion. It's actually something we've discussed that perhaps maybe instead of a trial period where someone gets to try out a ship, they can maybe enter the universe and then they can take a job for hire, or be hired by someone, and then if they want to migrate onto things like ship ownership then they would have to sort of pay their "ship license fee" - which would be your initial package to get into the game. So we sort of considered those structures for the longer-term stuff, and also like if you lose all your credits and you don't want to put more money in then of course you still should have ways that you can work for other people to earn enough money to get a ship back. And so we're going to have all of those mechanics in the game anyway, so I think long-term that's a potential way to maybe get some friends in, and get other people to play. Short term it's not gonna be there, but definitely I think our systems will allow it, so it is a pretty good idea.But I think first off we'd want to get the game working for everyone that backed it, making sure it's all good, and then we could see about how it would get expanded.
TL;DRHired NPCs will use the same AI as other NPCs, with traits like skill, experience and morale, so a cheap rookie might panic in a fight while a hardened veteran probably won't.
Good question. We definitely are going to be setting our NPCs up... I mean, basically the AI that runs the NPCs will be the same AI that runs NPCs not working for you that you may encounter or you may fight. And of course those NPCs all have... we're gonna have things like skill level, experience, sort of morale, whether the panic or not... and so, I think you'll definitely have, you know, you spend more money to hire a hardened veteran - he probably is not gonna freak out in the line of fire. Whereas if you have a rookie that was cheap, perhaps he'll run in middle of a fight. So we'll definitely have some level of AI personality affecting their actions, just like the non-working-for-you NPCs because it's essentially going to be the same set and code base. I think it's kind of cool that maybe you take people in, and as they get more experienced they become more loyal to you, or they become even better fighters. And then if you go and hire NPCs from the work boards or whatever, you'd pay a little more for a more hardened mercenary to be on your wing. Or if you try to cut corners perhaps you'll pay the price when you get attacked by pirates.So I think those are all things that we definitely will have in, and I think will be important to making the world feel real.
TL;DRA racing series with qualifiers, championships and prizes is definitely planned, while sponsorship deals are only an idea being kicked around and perhaps something they'll do.
Well, I definitely want players to be able to focus on things like racing or doing other stuff. So we're gonna definitely have a whole racing series that will happen and exist in fiction, where there will be qualifiers a championship, and the people who are the best racers will be sort of covered, and lauded, and win prizes just like they do in the real world. So we're gonna do that. The idea of sponsorship is pretty cool - we've actually been kicking around the idea of sponsorship for some of the ships, so maybe we can sort of weave that into the fiction, because again that's another thing that makes it seem more real.But at the very least you certainly will be able to compete and, you know, have fame against all the other players that are in the Star Citizen universe, and be covered on the news report as being "the Murray Cup champion of 2945" and all the rest of the stuff. And perhaps we'll do some fun stuff like sponsorship deals.
TL;DRYes; missile types will have differing lock characteristics like firing cone, range and ease of shaking, but only heat-seeking exists now because the other missile types haven't been delivered yet.
So, yes. What you see today in Arena Commander is only a partial implementation of the radar system with the signatures, and also how the different missiles work. So we're gonna have heat-seeking, image recognition, friend-or-foe, and what we call sort of "dumbfire" which are basically kinda rockets. Different systems, different radar systems, different targeting systems for missiles will all have characteristics in terms of, like how big their firing cone would be, or the lock-on range, and how easy they are to shake or not to shake. So you're only just seeing a small amount of what the missile stuff will do. The basic system is actually there; we just haven't had time to flesh and finish it out because we're trying to get some of the other stuff working first. But the radar signature system is there and missiles all fix into that. We just haven't really delivered all the different kinds of missiles, because right now it's all heat-seeking. That's why you can launch flares, and if you launch chaff that doesn't make a difference, but chaff obviously would be much more important for, say an image recognition missile than a heat-seeking missile.So, I guess, yes. Like in real life, we will be doing that.
TL;DRAliens would speak their own language, with subtitles in cinematic scenes, and the assumption is that both sides use translators built into the MobiGlas, so players wouldn't need to learn the languages.
So I think we'll definitely have the aliens potentially... uhh... we'll hear them speak in their language. In sort of the cinematic-y stuff like we were doing in Squadron 42 you'd probably have some subtitles like you would in a movie. But what we would assume is that both parties, if they're advanced anyway, would have some sort of language translator, which is all part of your MobiGlas. And so you would get a translation of what they were saying to you, and they would get a translation of what you were saying to them, is kind of the idea. Not so much that you'd have to learn the foreign language, because I think in the future you would have those issues, right? I mean, already right now on the web, Google is translating for you and doing all the rest of the stuff, and we're not very far away from live vocal translations. So I think it will be more along those lines.
TL;DRIt's too early to tell; capital ship combat range will be up to the commanders and ship types, and the capital ship setup is intended to allow both long-range and close-range fighting.
I think it's too early to tell. I think it would also be up to the two commanders of the various capital ships and how they want to fight their battle. Because you certainly would be able to engage at a long range without getting toe-to-toe, and then some ships are probably better at toe-to-toe. I mean if I'm running a carrier, I don't want to bring my carrier in toe-to-toe; I'd be sending out my bombers, and torpedo bombers, and fighter cover and keep everyone at bay, and then try and hunt out the foes. But if I've got a battleship, or a ship that has strong sort of ship-to-ship punch, but not necessarily space air combat cover, then I would probably try to get in close range. And we're going to allow all those options in our capital ship combat setup stuff, which is what the Foundry 42 team is moving towards. So I'm looking forward to that stuff. We've got some stuff that we'll show at Gamescom that involves, not necessarily a capital ship, but at least some more of the cooperative stuff, and then longer-term that'll get even bigger and cooler. So we'll see. That's I think one of the biggest potential promises, or you know, potential great parts of Star Citizen, is sort of this idea that we can have all the way from small ships up to much bigger ships that you can be on with your friends, and you can fight together as a unit or be a lone wolf. So I think the style of combat, much just like the style right now that's happening in Arena Commander - different pilots are fighting different ways. Some are getting up close and personal, some are booming and zooming... all those things will be sort of optional, or up to the players once they fight. And I guess we'll see but the best fighting styles are I would say would probably depend on the kind of ship that you're using though, in terms of how to best utilize it.
So yes, that is absolutely the case. You can, when you set up a mission, you'll be able to publish it as a public mission, or you'll be able to publish it to your organization, or a subset of your organization - that's kind of the way it should work. Or you could be able to publish it to a certain number of organizations, but not all the other ones, so it's sort of up to you when you post a mission who it will be available to or visible to. So I think you can run missions for your own crew, or you can have it with some friendly organizations, or for everyone - it's sort of up to you.
TL;DRThey'd like 50 to 100 players per server instance but are still a way off, with optimization and net code work needed; a star system can hold far more players across instances, though no giant single battles are promised.
From our standpoint, we're not quite sure how many we'll be able to get in the same server instance. We'd like to be able to get between 50 and 100 if we possibly could do that, but we're still a ways off right now. I mean right now we have much above 12 players in Arena Commander and we're starting to have some performance issue, but there's a lot of optimization that we need to do to address, to fix, and... we're also sort of working on some of the back-end net code with things called like "dead reckoning" and stuff that will greatly reduce the amount of data. So it will make all of this easier to have a large amount of players in the system. But it's probably not likely to be more than about 50 to 100 in any one area instance. Now in the actual star system itself, it's sort of built in a way that it can handle tens of thousands of players in that star system - it's just not tens of thousands of players would all be able to see each other at the same time. They would just be stacked in different instances, and then we put you in, like in your local area, sort of based on who your friends are, who your enemies are, what your game preferences are, and it's sort of dynamically putting you in and out of instances as you fly around. So to you it should mostly feel like you're in a big universe and you run across a lot of people, because you literally, if you're flying from one planet to another planet, you may move in and out of 4 or 5 different instances. And so potentially means that you could be... outside of the NPCs... you potentially could be seeing 200-300 players when you're doing that (if it was a really busy populated area).So I think our system hopefully would work quite well. Most certainly will not be any equivalent of the Eve several-thousand-players-all-in-one-big-space-battle, just because with the detail and fidelity that we have on our ships we just can't simulate that many... I mean none of the computers that we have - even our most fastest expensive one with the most ridiculous graphics chip could handle it and kinda what we're doing. Although, you never know what happens in the future. I'm not promising thousands, but we're definitely gonna utilize every single iota of power that we can go, and as much bandwidth we can take that's reasonable for everyone to make the game the best experience possible.
TL;DRExplorers can chart uncharted space and share or sell the maps, and find alien artifacts or ruins in scavenger-hunt-style content, including landing-area exploration that is partly pseudo-procedurally generated.
Well, we know that exploring is a big deal for people, so jump points obviously, asteroid fields, anomalies, derelicts - they're all sort of things that you would try and find. I mean, we're certainly going to let you... even a known star system has most of the space uncharted, so as an explorer you could fly around to try and find, you know - whether it's the asteroid field, or the anomaly, or the derelicts - and then chart it. And once you've charted areas you can either share it with your organization / friends, or you could sell it back to the game to create some charted maps for that area that people can pre-buy. We are going to definitely have things like alien artifacts or some ruins on planets, so you can go down and discover it. So we'll have, definitely kind of scavenger hunt style stuff, and something where you maybe have a very short... kind of like "okay, I find an artifact - I've gotta get two other pieces of this artifact, and that will give me a key that will open up this other thing, that will allow me to get this rare item that would be really valuable." So there's a fair amount of that sort of stuff. On exploration we're sort of thinking of having some areas where you can land on a planet and sort of explore around to look for stuff, go down in some ruins or whatever... but have something that feels like it has a lot more substance than, for instance the Mass Effect when you had the little rover going on the outside of the planet. Of course that would be sort of limited to areas that we'd let you land in, and some of that would be pseudo-procedurally generated - not everything will be fully hand crafted in those cases.But yeah, basically those are kind of the exploration stuff. So you, going and charting open space for the different areas of interest, going through jump points and then charting out that system and maybe landing on some planets that people haven't spent much time on, going down to somewhere with an archaeological dig, whether it's down on a planet or on an asteroid field. Those are all sort of things that we're thinking would be really fun for people that like to explore. So hopefully you will too!