Star Citizen Live: First-Person Features

Sure, I can take this one. So basically, this is what we're calling hull stripping, which is the first tier of implementation of salvage. So yeah, hand salvage. But what is hull stripping? Hull stripping is essentially you are using either the multi-tool or a dedicated tool, you get to a ship or a derelict or anything in that vein, and you're basically using the tool to strip away material that you're then taking on board and storing in a canister. For the very first implementation it will be a very generic material that is just munching everything off the ship that you're stripping away, and it's condensing it down and putting it in there, either for selling, to obviously make some money as a profession, or you can use it for repair as well, which is another part of the feature that we've not really talked about too much. And it's essentially the reverse of what salvage is. So if you think of salvage, I'm going up to a ship hull, I'm firing my weapon. And if you've ever seen those really satisfying videos of the laser rust strippers, that's kind of the look we're going for. You're basically burning away and taking on the metals of the ship hull, and you kind of see the skeleton underneath using the damage map system that we've got. And you're pulling that away into a generic material that you could then use for repairing as well. So what will that look like? When you strip away, like I say, we'll be using the damage map system. And what we're planning on doing is when you go to repair, you'll be basically patching the holes caused by damage and restoring the metals in the area. But obviously, because it's not a paint gun as well, it's not magic, you'll basically be restoring it back to almost like a burnished metal structure. So if you've seen somebody who's been through the wars a bit and got out of their cockpit and patched up their ship as a bit of an emergency, they'll be arriving back at port with big shiny metal filling holes in their ship, like they've had a bad day at the dentist almost. Actually, the basic functionality that we're doing for FPS, we're going to be using on the Drake Vulture as well, because that's obviously got the stripping guns to strip on a much larger scale compared to FPS. But obviously, as Jared said, this is just the very, very first layer of salvage. The next iteration of hand salvage will be to start stripping individual materials from ships. So very similar to what we've done with the recent medical UI, when you look at a ship, you'll be able to get some readouts of what the integrity of the hull is, which you can either take away or restore based on if you're salvaging or repairing. And then... lost my train of thought now. So when you go and start trying to grab individual materials from a ship, the UI will obviously tell you what you're looking at, what you'll be gathering, and that will be an additional complexity: if I repair my ship with this substance, I will get more of its integrity back if I'm repairing the wing with the correct thing, basically. So that's the next iteration of hand salvage. And then further down the line, obviously, we're going to build on that for the ship, which is the cutting off parts and taking those on and cutting away and using the muncher that we've got on the Reclaimer, for example; that will be coming down the line as well. So I just want to stress that this is the very first dive into salvage that we're going to have, rather than it being what it's going to end up being for everything. And obviously, we've got a couple of tools that we're going to have. We've got the multi-tool and a dedicated tool as well. For now, the dedicated tool is going to be limited to using this universal material, but it'll be able to strip faster, has a higher capacity and stuff. Whereas down the line, that will be using the separated material functionality that we've just talked about.

Well, for a start, a lot of the systems that we have in game at the moment are the very, very first implementation of them. So when you think about it, it was very convenient for us to put that on something like the multi-tool, which is a very good base for swapping in and out attachments, changing the functionality of it, and getting the very first level of each of these mechanics in there. So when I talk about salvage, for example, the multi-tool, the iteration that we're putting in now, which is the very simplest form of salvage, is always what the multi-tool is going to do. It's not going to do anything more than that, but everything extrapolated out from that will be more like, for example, being able to take weapons off ships, cutting bits off and putting them in your Reclaimer, selling ship parts and stuff like that. That will all come down the line. So if people are saying that everything feels a bit beamy at the moment, it's because it's a much simpler interaction than what it's going to be down the line, but there's going to be a lot more considerations to take into account. And if you think about even the medical gun versus the multi-tool: if you have the medical attachment for the multi-tool, it's easy to run up to someone and go, hey, I'm going to heal you. I'm interacting with you. I'm firing the beam at you. Cool. That's basically what we wanted it to be. It's a very simple way of keeping someone alive, which is what we wanted it to be in the universe. It's like an emergency tool that you're using to stabilize someone. But when you look at the medical gun, you don't just run up to them and fire the beam, or you can if you want to, because the functionality is on there, but an advanced user or a medical practitioner will be going over to the advanced side, moving all the sliders around, checking all the symptoms, all the issues that they've got, and making some informed decisions based off that. Now, in terms of the beams, obviously, if we wanted to make this a bit more visceral and up close, we're going to end up taking a lot of control away from the player. So if, for example, Jared, you were down on the floor and you were wiggling around on the floor and I was trying to get hold of you, we would both have to be locked into place for that entire process, which might make both of us vulnerable, for example. Taking control away from the player is obviously sometimes appropriate, but doing it all the time for a lot of these different mechanics makes things a lot more difficult. So obviously, it's a bit nicer to keep player control in, keep people at range, and just have almost beam or range devices that let us perform some of these systems.

Yeah, so this is something that we obviously came across as we've been playing the game, because we all play too, right? And we're doing a lot of testing with the new inventory system and looting objects off bodies and trying to take individual armor pieces off or individual grenades off. And obviously, with the way our physicalized inventory works with the attachments, it's quite difficult sometimes trying to get hold of the one that you want because the floating text appears. And that was always something that was not the permanent solution. So we have something called the personal interaction system and the personal interaction system wheel that we want to implement down the line, which is essentially when you're hovering over some of these items, they will highlight like they do now, but you're not going to automatically get all the interactions appear on them. What we're going to do is implement an essential default item action for every item in the game based off the state that it's currently in. So for example, if something's on the floor, you could go over to it, highlight it, click it, and it will pick it up. That's probably what most people want to do when something's on the floor. They want to get it in their hands and look at it. We'll be setting all of those individually, but that is also something that is flexible for players to be able to set their own default item actions for different types of items. So for example, if they wanted to, I don't know if this is possible, but say every time they see a grenade on the floor, they want to throw it when they just click on it. Then they will automatically pick it up and throw it immediately. Or if they want to change their default item action: if I see a mineable thing on the floor, I can go up to it. The default might be to pick it up, and then you can store it from there. Or people might just want to store it straight away. So it's like, OK, I can change that option. I know I always want to do this. It's always going to go in my bag. So the flexibility is there for what people want to do. And then basically the other option is you can right-click on that item. So once you've highlighted the item that you want to interact with, you right-click on it and we'll have a wheel of interactions like we do now, which should be a lot easier to use.

Yeah, I can start this off at least and just say that there's definitely upside and downside of each of the ballistic weapons that we want to touch on. So ballistic weapons, you've obviously got limited ammo. Generally, in a lot of cases, ballistic magazines are more limited in capacity compared to the batteries. Zach has been reviewing some of that as part of the weapon audit as well. Basically, in short, with ballistic weapons, you get a bit less ammo, but you can go out in the field and you can scavenge. We've obviously got a system coming in at some point, I think we've detailed before, which is mag stripping. So you'll be able to take ammunition from other magazines, put it in your magazine, and you'll be able to use that ammunition going forward. Eventually, when we get some of the suit systems, the powered suit systems, the idea is that you'd be able to potentially trickle charge your energy batteries. So they're a bit more versatile in that it might take a while to recharge, but over time, if you're on a long expedition or whatever, and you occasionally get into combat, then they should be trickle charging off your suit and taking power away from your suit to be able to keep up on that. So they're a bit better for a longer engagement situation. But then there are some additional downsides to energy weapons, because that sounds like a big bonus, right? I've got energy that keeps coming back to my batteries. Which comes into wear and overheat, which is something that Deck's actually been looking at.

Yeah, so if we touch on wear for a second: when a weapon shoots, it'll generate wear, and that's for all weapons, but energy weapons can overheat if you shoot too much. So, for example, plasma weapons might heat up really quickly, and then they'd cool down really quickly. Laser weapons might take a little longer to heat up and then cool down slower. We're always going to have the environment that the player is in impact the cooling down. If you're on a freezing planet, you would expect it to cool down quicker. Same with pressure; the atmospheric pressure would impact it a little bit. With some weapons, like the Atzkav, it takes a while to shoot the next shot, so it could cool down, not immediately, but in the duration between the two shots, so even though it would generate heat, it might never overheat. But the thing is, overheating, because it's generated by player actions, you will be able to control it. You're not forced to overheat. If it's getting hot, just stop shooting and it'll cool down before you do any wear to the weapon itself.

OK, so wear and dirt, they're actually two separate systems, but they work very closely together. So wear, as we mentioned, with weapons, you gain wear when you shoot, and when you gain wear, the weapon's durability goes down. Durability is separate from HP, though, so a weapon would have an HP value and a durability value. As the durability goes down, it could start to get misfires; that kind of thing would occur. The lower the durability, the more likely they are and the more severe they would be. With dirt, the dirtier your weapon is, the more wear it would gain. Same with armor. Armor would gain wear through just running, sprinting, aggressive movements, so to speak. But then if your armor is dirty, then it'll gain wear quicker. With regards to dirt, I'm just trying to think... Oh, there's also: when your item receives damage, a percentage of that damage will also be applied as wear. So you can't have a 100 durability weapon that has 10 HP. It doesn't really make sense. It'll kind of trickle down. But with dirt, the biome and the weather that you're in will impact the amount of dirt you gain over time. If you're in a space station, it's a clean environment. You wouldn't expect to generate too much dirt at all. If you dropped your weapon on the ground, that would be a little bit of dirt. If you're going prone, that movement, more dirt, that kind of thing. And of course, we'll have ways in which players can clean their weapon. They can clean themselves. They can restore whatever durability has been lost.

Yeah, at its core, it's a system that will add to the tapestry of the PU, where everything you find isn't always going to be pristine anymore. It'll be like, I open a loot box and I find this weapon. This weapon almost has its own history to it. You found it, it's worn, someone else might have used it, another player might have left it there. It's basically going to add to the visual diversity as well as the essence of the PU, where not everything is permanent. Not everything is pristine. Things have aged. Things can break. Obviously, if you look after your stuff, then that's really good. You can go and get it repaired, refurbished. That's the idea, at least. But if you don't look after it, it will eventually break.

Yeah, so misfires will definitely be a thing. If we use weapons as an example again, it's the easiest one. We're currently doing three categories of misfires: minor, major and critical. A minor one would be a dry fire, a major one would be it jammed and you need to clear it, and then the critical one would be the weapon breaks: it blows up in your hands, it falls apart. And that one you would expect to occur when the HP has become low as well, because when you do encounter a misfire, it does tick away the weapon's HP as well. Loss of accuracy, that could be a thing. It's still early in the design, so we've still got a million and one ideas. But of course, so long as you keep your weapon in good condition, you won't encounter misfires. They only begin to occur once your durability has dropped to a certain threshold. So if you're prepared and you keep yourself in good condition, then you won't have to worry about them.

Yeah, so we have talked about this actually, because obviously we do have the body drag for moving people around, but that's more what we envisioned as a short-range and quick action of, say, you're in a firefight, one of your buddies has gone down and you want to get them to cover. You can very quickly run out, grab them, pull them away while being able to fire off with your pistol a little bit. But the fireman carry is probably going to be something that's going to be better for long range. So if my ship's a kilometer away and I've gone out with you, Jared, and we're having a good time, and then you accidentally fall off a cliff or something, and I don't have the healing equipment with me and it's back on the ship, I'm not going to want to drag you across a rocky surface, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, all the way back to the ship. That might actually finish you off. I want a bit more of a robust carry for longer distances. And we've talked about this for stealth as well. Obviously stealth is a big part of the combat loop that we've got, especially against AI. Again, body drag is really good for just dragging a body around behind a dumpster or wherever and hiding it. But if we eventually want to do things like hiding a body in things, we're going to need some way to get them up on us and put them in. Or put them over a railing or something like that. So we've talked about this as an option and it's something that we definitely want to do in the future.

Yes. So hacking is a very exciting feature, in my opinion. So currently, how the hacking that's implemented in the PU works right now is you basically go and buy a chip, and then somewhere in the universe you find this chip slot of a hackable computer that you insert the chip into, and it's basically a timer that ticks down, and it's got a chance to jam so you need to restart it. What we wanted to do with hacking, moving on from the current implementation, is introduce some more engaging gameplay when it comes to hacking. So we've explored a bunch of different concepts, and we've had a long period of experimentation and playing around with different ideas internally in the design team. What we have right now for what hacking is going to be: we're going to add this hacking device, which is going to be something that you can equip in your hand. And then we're going to still keep those chips, which basically work like the ammo for the hacking device. So you have the hacking device in your hand, and there's going to be these things in the world that you can hack. Go up to them, interact with them, and they connect wirelessly. And you're going to see this 3D visualization of a network. And you're going to be able to move around this network and also manipulate the network to open up new paths and new routes. And while you're inside here, what is your objective? How do you complete the hack? Well, basically, you find these weak points that you insert a Trojan horse into, and then you connect those up together. Sounds pretty simple, but there's also going to be these antivirus systems present when you're hacking. So someone might have an antivirus that's going to try to stop you, basically, and make your life of hacking harder. And that leads us into difficulty scaling. So there's going to be varying ranges, from the easier hacks, which might be smaller and very quick to complete and very straightforward. On systems that have more antivirus, a higher antivirus level present, it's going to be quite a hard challenge for the players to finish the hacks. We also have a way to play this hacking game through a command prompt. So in addition to the normal control scheme, you're going to be able to type commands which control the hacking. And there's going to be various bonuses that you get from using the command prompt over the default control scheme. So hopefully that's going to scratch that hardcore hacking fantasy urge that a lot of players, I think, are expecting from this. So why would I hack stuff? What can I hack? Well, you're basically hacking in order to gain access to a system or part of a system that you previously didn't have access to. So what could that be? The most straightforward example is a door. There's a door. It's locked. You don't have security access. You hack it. Bam. It's open, and it opens up a new path or maybe a room that contains valuable loot or whatever the level designers come up with. Secondly, it could be computers or terminals which control other systems; gravity could be a cool thing that it controls, or whatever the level designers can come up with.

It's basically you make the system, and then it's whatever they apply it to.

Yeah, whatever the scenario that they're designing for. Loot containers as well could require you to hack them. Eventually, later down the line, you're going to be able to hack someone's ship. And that leads us on to the PvP aspect of hacking: if someone's hacking your ship, you're going to get a notification that someone's trying to gain access to your system. You can actually go in and take manual control over the antivirus system, and hopefully you'll do a better job than the antivirus AI would.

Did you even consider just firing a beam at it?

No, this one's wireless. We've got the device that's wireless. But what we've really wanted to try and lean into is selling the hacking fantasy, because when we first started off with this, that was the part that we really struggled with. We were coming up with ideas for almost a system to demonstrate hacking, but it didn't feel like you were hacking. So now we've almost created this asymmetrical game mode where you are hiding in this maze of a network. You're laying the path and you're trying to find your way around it. And you aren't aware of where everything is. You're trying to discover it and find all of these routes, and you're trying to create these networks. And obviously, at the same time, on the other side, the AI antivirus doesn't know where you are and it's constantly searching for you. So, like Joes said, at the bottom end it's a very quick little puzzle that you can get through. If I was trying to get on your ship, Jared, and you locked the door, you bought a cheap ship, for example, I can get in really easily with this little puzzle. You might get a warning that I'm on the ship. But then if you were, say, on an Idris and I was trying to hack into your systems and start interrupting your shields and stuff, that would be: we're in a big network here. I'm really having to sweat and work to figure out how to basically break in. And you're getting alerted that someone might be trying to get into your system, and then you're like, oh my God, I need to try and get in here and take manual control to get this guy out. So we really wanted to sell a hacking fantasy in a visual format that people will quite easily understand, but also we want to cater for people who want to use something like the command prompt for the true hacking feel. And there is definitely scope there to utilize both and take advantage of either side. So I fully imagine a power player of hacking would be almost making macros for the command prompt and hitting those and gaining the benefits from that while selecting things on the map at the same time using the visual interface. So we're all very, very excited to get it out there. And we've been playtesting it internally, and we're all really, really liking it.

It's basically a combination of a puzzle game and a stealth game. It's shaping up pretty cool. I'm excited about it.

Yeah, we've talked about doing a move all, basically. We know how many items people are managing in some of the inventories they've got in locations or the bigger ships. So it's just part of more ongoing improvements, right? Because this is the very first iteration of inventory that just went out. It was a pretty big undertaking for us. There are just more improvements to come down the line. We want to add a search feature in future. So obviously you've got your filters at the moment. This would basically be a search filter like you'd expect from any search filtering system. I know I've got a P6-LR in here somewhere, so I'm going to type P6-LR, it'll filter everything else out and it's there. So you can very quickly find what you want. You could even potentially type pistol and it'll search for any pistols. So it's just another quick way that you can filter through your inventory. Stuff like visual improvements, so improve the lighting on the character, highlighting when the camera's behind a wall or behind a counter or something like that. That's something else we want to do. Even things like showing on the tooltips themselves what's attached to it. So if I have a weapon with a suppressor and a scope and an underbarrel attachment on there, it'd be nice if that was listed on the tooltip so you can actually tell what's on there. But basically, there's a lot more to come for the inventory. That was the first iteration, and we just want to make it better and better and better.

Yes, so we have a couple of cool ones. We've got plasma and fire, incendiary even. Basically, they're more like a damage over time, so you could inflict some sort of damage, and then maybe there's an additional DoT. And eventually, we want to work that into more, we can play into some of our systems, like, hey, if you've got fire, it could interact with this. If you've got plasma, it could interact like this. So, for example, say you had an LMG which had incendiary rounds; you could provide suppressing fire on an area. If you shot at the ground in this scenario, the ground could then end up catching fire. So if you want to push someone out of cover, if you want to shoot plasma at the ground near them, that could end up causing these hazard zones, essentially. So you've got this really cool, fun way of forcing players out of their situation. We've got so many cool ideas that we're brewing up for these kinds of things that we're really excited to get these damage types in and make them meaningful. So the difference between having incendiary and ballistic and so on and so forth is actually relevant. We're also working on something called distortion, which ties into a lot more systems that come out later. So interacting with the player's armor and their power system and stuff like that; obviously that's a bit further away.

Yeah, it's worth noting that that works on the ships right now, because obviously we've got the electromagnetic weapons that they use. You can take the ships down without causing damage to them. Distortion is a very similar version of that, but it's kind of trickling that damage in over time.

So this is the thing we obviously care a lot about. When we say we want to add a weapon or a sidearm or something, we want it to be very impactful and meaningful. So I've been doing a bit of a weapon audit, which is analyzing what we have and how useful things are. So for example, the LH86, the Gemini pistol: we're saying, OK, this could probably be a machine pistol. This is an interesting, fun difference that this pistol can actually be. So it's a lot more meaningful and impactful compared to the Behring pistol and so on and so forth. When we make these changes, we're very considerate of how the weapon looks and how it feels. So that will come with a whole new recoil for it and some art changes, like extending the magazine. Another example of how we're making sidearms more interesting is the Arclight pistol, where we're going to potentially turn it into a three-round burst pistol, just to get that variety up, and people who like burst pistols, they've got something to play with. And going further than that, we'll talk about this weapon audit. We're looking at all our FPS weapons and how they can be improved. So, for example, sniper rifles: when you're aiming down the sights and you fire and you pull the bolt, it can jitter a bit and not look as great as we want it to be, so we're really looking at this kind of stuff to make them feel better. But as far as the weapon audit goes, it's pretty all-encompassing at the moment. We've been doing competitive analysis of different titles, slowing their stuff down frame by frame, looking at real life, to understand where that weapon juice comes from. We have this great roster of weapons, but we want them to feel like they're in a game that's launching in like five years. We want them to stand out and feel fantastic. So we're really looking at how we can make these things feel as juicy as possible, but completely looking at our tools and changing them up. If you were to see what the P4 looks like now in our current weapon branch, it would blow your mind. It looks like a thousand times better. It's insane. It's something we really care about, making them feel as good as possible, because it ties into looking at the weapons in general. We've been looking at some weapons, and their functionality is maybe a bit samey compared to other assault rifles. So, for example, the Gallant rifle, it's a Klaus & Werner weapon, which is our all-around weapon. So it's like, well, this could be a burst weapon, right? It's purely a burst weapon. But then we say it has a three-round burst and a five-round burst. Five-round burst, obviously, a bit heavier recoil, a bit longer downtime compared to the three-round burst. But it gives you that active choice as a player to do something interesting. Then we look at the Lumin V. That's a five-round burst SMG, I believe, currently. We want to make that far more interesting and give it a bit of uniqueness. So we say, yes, this is a burst SMG, but you can tap down the trigger because the actual downtime of the burst is a lot lower. So you can basically get it going full auto, but it is essentially a burst SMG. And then another good example, the S71, right? That's supposed to be a marksman rifle. And the recoil is a bit weird. It can move up and down a little bit. But we want to get it more in line with what it feels like to shoot a marksman rifle, where we have a consistent offset pattern that you can go shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot with. If you tap the trigger as much as possible, you should be punished for that. And then I'd say the last one I'm going to mention is probably the Arrowhead. It shakes when you aim, which isn't great, which isn't what we want. And we're looking at that and how we can make a Klaus & Werner sniper rifle more interesting, basically. So it's been really good. We've made a lot of really good progress making the weapons feel amazing. Big thing as well: leaning into manufacturer identity, right? If you've got a Behring rifle, you expect that to be sensible. You've got a Kastak Arms rifle, you kind of want that to be crazy. You'd almost refer to it as being a bit more what you'd expect from a Soviet weapon, right? Like in a thousand years' time. What would a crazy Kastak black market weapon behave like versus something like a Behring, which is a lot more military, a lot more sensible. There's lots of stuff going on right here. Did you want to say something, JJ?

Yeah, I was just going to say a lot of it's about weapon personality. You've covered the manufacturer stuff. And it's just, we don't want all of our weapons to feel the same. We want them all to feel different. And obviously, Joes, you were working with me on this a while ago now: one of the things that we did was put our weapons in a spreadsheet and just say, how do we want to make it feel different? How do we want to set it apart from other weapons? Obviously, down the line, we might make more weapons that feel the same, but right now, we want to give a breadth and selection of gameplay options for everyone to use, and we want to see how those are applied in the PU. We were looking at real-world analogies of weapons, weapons from other games, and just saying, where does this fit in? What's our first stage of where we want to aim this thing at? And then obviously, we do the Star Citizen pass and make sure that it's suitable for our game and that it feels right. So it's been a very long process, and it'll probably keep going for a long time. But the first stage is using the tools that we've got. Zach's been doing a lot of improvements to things like the recoil, which hopefully we should be seeing in the relatively near future.

So we're working on a few different things. One thing is that a ledge grab will be coming at some point. At the moment you can't jump over a gap and grab onto a ledge. That's just simply not possible. The system doesn't allow for it right now. I think the way it technically works is you need the top of the ledge to almost be aligned with the floor. It always needs to find a floor there. So that just won't work. And that's something we want to work on next. There are definitely some general improvements, like I think you mentioned in the question, which was if you walk up to something waist height, you should be able to climb it. This ties into a couple of things. There are some bugs associated with this, which we actually found when we were going through the CitizenCon flow. There were problems that were raised that we've noted down that we're going to work on as soon as we get a chance. And then another intention is that obviously everything at the moment is manually marked up for climbing. And with the world as big as we have, it can be easy to miss some of those things. We've got so many locations. We've got a lot of procedurally generated content and stuff on the planets too. Sometimes we will miss stuff. So the eventual intention is that we might be able to do some sort of auto markup. But when we're talking timeframes, that is probably further down the line than everything else. But that is where we want to get to eventually.

So I think you can do that in the PU right now. Now that we've added the new inventory system, I'm pretty sure if you have weapons on your back and you grab an attachment from your inventory and you start pulling it over, you'll see the attachment points on the weapon. I'm not 100% sure if you can do a swap or take them off from the weapon at the moment. So that is something I can look into and see if we can get that working. But otherwise, the other part of the question is that there's no good way to get a weapon out in the green zones right now, because we don't have a robust enough system to have law enforcement come and deal with you, basically. So that's something that obviously the PU team is looking at long term. We've had a lot of discussions around how we want to handle it, and it's just something that we're going to roll out down the line. And then you will be able to get a gun out and then get arrested.

So we know we 100% need them for professions like bounty hunting, and even people who, if they get into a situation where they are under attack and they want to have a more passive solution, have an option there. So that is one of the reasons why we made the taser or the stun gun, and we have concepted it. We know exactly what it's going to look like. We've gone through a bunch of that stuff. It's just a case of getting it through the content pipeline now. I don't believe there's too much engineering work involved either. This is a designer saying that, by the way. But we do have the Lightning Bolt weapons, for example, that we put out a little while ago. They are using the same sort of damage that the stun gun is going to use, but we've pulled the lever slightly to actually do lethal damage rather than stun damage. So we have the system in place to be able to do what we need to do there.

That's a short answer. I played all of Cyberpunk with a baseball bat. Legendary difficulty, beginning to end, baseball bat. I don't necessarily think we'll have a baseball bat, but we might have something similar, like swords, more improvised weapons like crowbars. You might find a junky-looking axe that someone's assembled and taped together kind of thing. And we definitely want to do things like that. Something that might be stored on your back, in one of your weapon slots on your back. It's got a much wider and longer range of attack. The melee system is already there, right? We've got the system with the knife, and we've tested it with a few other things. So it does potentially work. And obviously, it's a lot of animation work and tweaking work to get it actually feeling good. But you can do it with a two-handed weapon. You can do it with a one-handed weapon. So definitely something in the future that we want to look into and have talked about already.

So funnily enough, this is actually something we talked a little bit about today, so that's good timing. Essentially, anything with complex controls, say flying a ship, we want to prevent you from doing in heavy and even medium armor. Because if you actually wear those things and look at them, the glove thickness and everything and how bulky the chest piece is, it would make it very, very difficult to try and fly in something like that. So you'd totally be able to do it with light armor on, but the expectation is you should be able to remove that and store it before you get into a cockpit or you get into a seat on one of the larger ships. And there should be options on at least a very large majority of those ships to be able to store armor somewhere convenient, so that if you are in a situation where it's like, hey, I looted this heavy armor and I want to get back in my ship, I've got somewhere to put it. As long as you've not stored 50,000 MedPens in there, like I know some of you like to do. But that's basically the idea. And there are obviously benefits between light, medium and heavy. With light, you're obviously moving around a lot faster, but you're a lot more vulnerable in things like combat, whereas heavy is a lot more combat-focused, and there are downsides like not being able to fly a ship. So you're factoring in things like weight, stealth, speed, protection and so on, and even ability-related things like being able to fly.

Sure, so we're progressing. We're really filling out what kind of stats they should have. So there'd be four archetypes; that's what we have planned. There'd be combat, specialist, utilitarian and support. Combat is your soldier. It's good at combat. It would be poor at exploration, that kind of thing. Specialist, that's more of your bounty hunter, assassination role. It's going to be stealthy. It's still going to be doing good damage mitigation, but not as much as combat. Utilitarian, that's your exploration suit. It'll have good temperature ranges, good pressure, that kind of thing. Good inventory size as well, for you to start throwing stuff on your back or in pockets, whatever. And then support: it's really good at power generation, which is more for when armors have power, that kind of thing. But it would be like players could give you magazines that you could charge up, that kind of thing. I think it's got double the MedPen consumable slots of everyone else. So it's just a walking healer, just drugging people up. Don't even ask for it, just hit them, go on, that kind of thing. But it's going along. Still a way to go, but we're making progress.

Yeah, it's something we don't want to roll out just yet, purely because there are gameplay implications and upsides and downsides of each that we don't have yet. So as Deck mentioned, a big upside of support is the power generation stuff, which is quite a big undertaking to get working on the armor. And that's not to say we have to wait for that to go in. We just need enough upside and downside on each and get that going before we can actually roll this change out. So people are going to start seeing some differences between all the different armors.