Calling All Devs - Racing, NPC Traders and the RSI Roadmap

All right, so the estimation for that is somewhere around 3.5, 3.6 of actually having AI traders in the game, because we're focused right now on actually getting more diversity into combat, because right now everyone behaves kind of the same and we want to have gunships behave differently to fighters to other things. And we're also working on some groundwork for the AI to actually travel diverse. So that means QT linking, having landing and takeoff in hangars and all these shenanigans. And if this groundwork is done, hopefully it will be not much additional work to get the AI actually picking up cargo and dropping it on the way. So you players have something to raid and loot, hopefully.

Now, players who follow the RSI roadmap up on robertsspaceindustries.com will notice that we recently expanded out and showed 3.5, quarter 1 2019. So as we go through each quarter, we will continue to expand. So keep an eye out on that. You'll see something like that. But most of these AI features probably fall under the overall AI roadmap, though. So you may not see a specific call-out on that as we're building out smaller parts here and there.

Okay, well, in terms of the long-term goals for those, we still plan for them to work alongside the mobiGlas app. So what you're essentially going to be doing as a player will be approaching a locker, and within your mobiGlas ahead of time, you will have set up a number of loadouts. So you may have, say, a combat loadout where you've got your armor, your weapons, grenades, all the rest of it, and you may just have a civilian clothing loadout instead. So what you basically do is interact with the weapon rack or locker. You can interact with each individual item if you want to, and just add it to what you've already got, or you will be able to just pick a loadout and then equip it. So it really is one of those things that's kind of planned for much later down the line, but it is certainly planned. So we do have a plan in place, and hopefully it's one of those things, with all the priorities that we have, that we will get around to at some point.

Well, I have no doubt. Chris is a big fan of those diegetic interfaces. He wants you, as often as you can, to go to something that's tangible in the universe and have it function.

So, I mean, there's obviously the asteroid field around Yela. I'm assuming they mean planets. I made that assumption. Not sure. We have, for 3.0, tried to make the traditional kind of start, interesting track, finish line races on all three moons. And then the moons changed, just changed beneath us. The technology keeps moving on. I mean, anyone who's seen the difference in Daymar and Yela from 3.0 to 3.1 will see the huge difference and improvements that have been made. It does mean that it would throw out completely any track that you'd made there. You want to go through a canyon, that canyon won't be there maybe next time we regenerate that planet. So we kind of had to put that by the wayside for now, and for the foreseeable, because these planets, we assume, are just going to keep improving.

Yes, it is one of the trials and tribulations of running a live environment in the middle of game development. Daymar and Yela and Cellin are not locked. They're not final yet. So while they're making these changes, you don't want to do work that just has to be redone and redone and redone every patch.

Exactly. And that doesn't mean we're not working on races. We are working on a scramble race right now that takes place in space and on planets. What's cool about that one is that you pick an interesting location at the time, and you don't pick a track or anything, just an interesting location to start, and around it. And everyone gathers in one place, and it's a death race; obviously we gather in an armistice zone. And the moment the race starts, they head off to a randomly generated location. And the first guy to collect that checkpoint, that's one to him, up to a certain limit, at which point he wins. What you do when you get to that checkpoint, we are currently working on balancing. So we don't want the super fast ones to win all the time. So if they flew there, collected it, and then get to fly after the next one immediately, it gives no time for the slower, more heavily armored ships to catch up. So we're working on ways of, maybe you have to hold it for a certain time, or we don't announce the next checkpoint until afterwards. What is for sure is that you will definitely have to backtrack. We will put the next checkpoint on the opposite side of where you started. So you have to kind of go through all those people who were coming towards you, or overtake all those slower, more armored things. So, yeah, it's going to be interesting.

So in a basic sense, just kind of like a figure eight, like a flat figure eight, where you have to go back while the fast people are going to their next checkpoint, the slow people will still cross them and have a chance to blow them out of the...

Not like that. Once the checkpoint's gone, that's gone. So the people who are heading there don't have to keep heading there. They are closer then to the one that's going to spawn behind them, kind of thing. I don't mean literally behind, but it kind of works in a circle kind of thing. It moves its way around. But you're always crossing paths. And it gives the slower ships a better chance and keeps them fighting each other as well, as it is a death race. We've got this working on the planets; it's just players only. We've got this working in space, where AI can actually join; our AI are capable of racing in space. So we have these things around the asteroid field at Yela. So, yeah, when it comes to Arena Commander, I think we've announced that we're going to be maybe starting a team that is Arena Commander, racing, Star Marine kind of focused. Until we have that manpower, I don't see us expanding or working on those racetracks for now.

Yeah, this is a common question that comes up quite a bit. When are you going to iterate on Arena Commander? When are you going to iterate on Star Marine? There will be small changes here and there, like new props that are made for the prop teams. But as Erin Roberts stated on ATV, I don't know how many weeks ago now, 10 weeks ago now, we are looking to hire up for Arena Commander and for Star Marine specifically. And once that process has happened, if that process gets to happen, once it happens, we'll have a lot more information about what our plans are, because those teams will get to be the ones who make the plans.

Yeah, of course. I mean, I foresee in the short term that you will be able to put down a kind of temporary marker, like a waypoint: gather here, everyone, kind of thing. But then what we'll do from there on, I assume, is to be able to, like this drug lab, right? It's not something that's advertised on any map, right? But once I've found it, place a pin in it, write your description, title, description, and then later be able to sell that information for money or share it, kind of thing, build up an entire map of the place. There are plenty of secrets all around already. Your favorite Benny Henge, maybe. But you can imagine that all these secrets, if I went around putting pins in them, I could sell that whole map to someone and they could go and find the Javelin without having to search for it.