Reverse the Verse: December Subscriber Edition

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community Manager

Yes, this backdrop is actually available for download. It was in a monthly report for August. If you look up the August monthly report, this was created for our Gamescom presentation by the lovely and wonderful Fiendish Feather. So thank you again, Fiendish Feather, for putting up with me for two and a half weeks while we made it.

Ben Lesnick · Director of Community Engagement, Online Strategy and Spaceships

Make a note when this is over, let's add it to the poster vault for subscribers. They can get it there.

Randy Vasquez · Designer

So as of right now, all SCU that we're giving for ships that haven't been done yet are still in flux. And that's something that we've been working on, talking with, where every single ship has its uses, its purposes. But basically every ship will go through an interior design pass. Then we'll be working with the artists. We'll be working with the designers and making sure that everything actually fits that we need to be inside the hull. And then we'll worry about making sure that the cargo and everything is situated where it needs to be. Other than that, it's us just working together and trying to push what we want for the designs lately.

Matt Sherman · Designer

Yeah, I mean, it's just an ongoing thing with building out these ships. They're such huge and detailed things to even get off the ground that we can't really lock into a rigid number right now. We can give our best guess, our ideal scenario, but an exact hard metric really isn't something we can do until it's like, hey, now the ship's flying, now the ship's in game. We can really start exploring this stuff. Things like modules, other kit for the ships, that's something we also have to sort of wait until we have a baseline version of the ship flyable before we can really start evaluating, OK, what is going to be a good module choice for this ship? What is something cool that we can swap out, make a meaningful give and take for?

Randy Vasquez · Designer

To jump on that, with modules, it's different because in some ships, we knew exactly what modules we wanted. In other ships, we were like, we have no clue what module we're going to go with on this one. So then that's when we pore over the forums and look at your guys' ideas and be like, all right, what does the community want? What do they expect from this ship? And that's where we're playing that balance game between us having some crazy ideas and then the community having some really great ideas that fuel our own creativity.

Randy Vasquez · Designer

Go ahead. The one you cut.

Matt Sherman · Designer

OK, so it's not cut. Grabby hands. We had to evaluate how we were going to approach it. Because with one of Randy's recent designs for the Caterpillar, a really cool thing that he had as a baseline idea is we'll need a way to move salvagers at a good pace of speed from point A to point B. Now Randy's initial idea was a human catapult. And so some of the issues with some of these really cool ideas is we also have to build these out, we have to visualize these, we have to make proper animations for getting in and out of these devices. So the actual raw notion of a physicalized human catapult probably won't be happening on the Caterpillar, but some form of high-speed pilot mobility where you can send people from point A to point B with some speed and some urgency to get the job done, as a core gameplay aspect, that's definitely something that we're going to keep. Just how we'll present that to you is going to go through some iteration.

Randy Vasquez · Designer

So, yeah, there's an example of one module, they were like, oh, we can do this, and everybody was like, eh, I don't know about that, but it's awesome.

Matt Sherman · Designer

Well, the gameplay purpose it can serve, totally awesome. How we get to that purpose is always the fun roundabout aspect.

Randy Vasquez · Designer

So I think almost every designer here does something a little bit different. I've been focusing lately on just gameplay systems, mechanics, and ship interiors, and then the mechanics that are going to be going with that, and then working with artists. I think you've been working on components and everything?

Matt Sherman · Designer

Yeah, I've been doing a lot of focus on our component system, retrofitting that into our new four-size class system I've talked about a few times, and then also, similar to Randy, core ship designs, ship systems. The LA guys, we really handle a lot of ship-centric things, so if you guys have questions about, oh, how does this FPS gun measure up, we may not really be able to handle that as well, but if you're asking about, hey, what kind of mounts may be available in the future on a ship, what kind of functions could different ships have on a ship scale, that'd be the kind of stuff we can totally field.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community Manager

And absolutely under no circumstance should they be asking when a ship will be coming out.

Matt Sherman · Designer

Yeah, we don't do release stuff. Sorry, guys.

Randy Vasquez · Designer

So this is a two-part in that, yes, people will have roles. It'll be more of a designated role either by the crew itself and what the person's good at, what screens they're going to be using on the ship, and then also on the multi-crew side, what station they're going to be using and stuff. So some stations they're talking about where everything is set up to be specific roles, and then other ones are going to be more generic stations where they can actually pull in multiple screens. So it really depends on what the crew wants to do, and then where the multi-crew design ends. So right now, that is the best answer we can give on that part, unless you have something to add.

Matt Sherman · Designer

Well, something that we had also talked about when we were planning out some of these seat stations is overall, for a ship owner, we do want you to have some level of control to say, okay, I'm hiring you on board as crew, be it another player or an NPC, and I'm going to give you access to the engineering station, I'm going to give you access to shield management, and you'll flag your crew for the different permissions that you want. That way it'll be a bit trickier for someone to just run up to the pilot seat of your own ship, try and get in and use it, and it'll be more, well, you didn't flag him for permission, so he's going to just rip you out of the seat, get in his own pilot seat, and start flying.

Randy Vasquez · Designer

One thing with permissions actually we could probably mention is that because the permissions are set by the owner of the ship, looking at all the different functions, I created a spreadsheet that we all worked on, and basically every single ship, we wanted to have one person do all the entire functions. It was over 60-something, 70-something tasks that needed to be done. It is really ridiculous. And then with multi-crew ships, controlling the different aspects of the shields, controlling different aspects of radar, sensors, communications, everything, this could be a lot for just one person to handle. And then we started actually narrowing down what we want people to do per role and then break it down to classify everything else. So it was actually a really big task that took a bit, but it was just all exploring just what people want to do within a ship and then breaking it down from movies like Star Trek, Star Wars, and just watching all the sci-fi movies. What roles are these guys doing?

Randy Vasquez · Designer

Okay, so since it's salvage, I've got to be careful how I answer this so I don't give too much of salvage away before we release the post. But we're still working on the design, and ideally what we would want as the design team is that when debris like that breaks away, we should be able to get it, then break it down, as well as take the component off. So we're treating weapons, hardpoints, all those things as components. So then working with Sherman, we were looking at it like, all right, so if these components are not damaged or at least damaged a little bit, then we can still use them and we can work with them. And then a player would be able to grab them and repair it and make it better later.

Matt Sherman · Designer

So yes, that gameplay is definitely intended. It's definitely something that we want, because that's going to sort of be the cool thing where instead of just getting a loot bag when you kill a target, it's more going to be how did you kill them. Are you really precise? Did you manage to shear the wings off this one ship that has some really mean guns on it? Well, if you do that cleanly, you'll have a better chance of trying to collect that gun as opposed to just laying into them all across the whole ship and possibly blowing up every component.

Randy Vasquez · Designer

Now this does not mean, I want to just put it out there, it does not mean that you can just take that wing and put that wing onto something else. No, you're basically going to be scrapping stuff, whether you're taking stuff from the hull or you're going to be taking the component and scrapping the component entirely. It's not scotch-taping a wing onto wherever you want.

Matt Sherman · Designer

Well, some of that actually plays into what we were talking about a few minutes ago with some of the ship permissions. So it's definitely a long-term goal. We don't want people to just freely and without any restriction be able to just jack anything at any time. So once we do get some of those permission setups in place, hey, that guy's not on your approved crew. He just can't pilot your ship, so he's not going to steal it off the landing pad.

Randy Vasquez · Designer

We've even gone so far as locking the outside of your ship, just like how you'd do with a car, and be like, okay, it's locked or it's open, so that way people can go in and out of it and stuff. So again, permissions, and that's all coming on board hopefully sometime in the future.

Matt Sherman · Designer

Yeah, I mean, some of this stuff, it's a bit longer term. We have to get a few other systems in place. A lot of the really cool stuff, especially into the PU, is going to be layering systems on top of systems. So it's definitely something that we're hearing from you guys. We know it's not the most ideal situation right now, but enjoy it while you can. And really more just keep in mind, 2.0 is more, holy crap, we've got multi-crew and large world in, and you're going around this massive system now. So this is also really step one of that big picture. So now we're in that place where we can start layering all these other cool functionalities on, some of the protections, the extra systems.

Matt Sherman · Designer

So in terms of a countdown, yeah, we definitely want it to be something that, unlike the current implementation, where it's more just something for cycling in Arena Commander, where it would be, you're doing a deliberate action, so you'll hear an audible countdown alarm, you'll have that 30 seconds until the core goes exploding. And that's sort of a two-part thing of, one, make sure the guys on your ship have a fair chance to get off, but also that give and take where now the people who may be attacking you also should get a chance to possibly disable that self-destruct. And in terms of who can trigger it, it will most likely be restricted to either A, the owner of a ship, like the guy on the title, he's the one who owns it, or whoever they have designated as an approved captain of the ship. So it's going to be constricted in who can trigger it. It won't just be random crewman redshirt guy hits the button and everyone dies. It will be, okay, the captain has called for self-destruct.

Randy Vasquez · Designer

This goes into the permissions and rules aboard the ship. And setting that up, because we want the players to have the functionality inside the ship to say, hey, I mean, I know this is a bad analogy, but basically treating it almost like a little guild. This ship is basically a little guild, and setting those guild permissions, just MMO speak to talk about, this is how it's set up. This is how people will get the permissions, that people will actually take control, because you're going to have leaders and stuff within your corporation and your organization. So that way, all right, these guys will be able to set these things, but it would be per ship, based on the rules.

Ben Lesnick · Director of Community Engagement, Online Strategy and Spaceships

And are we going to have a very simple password to blow up the ship? Self-destruct Alpha 1.

Matt Sherman · Designer

I kind of would love to go 1A, 2B. I mean, those things are more just to trigger that countdown. I know I've also mentioned on the forums and even in the chat before a rough concept of basically a snap-destruct. And some people, I think, took that a bit too aggressively initially. But one thing I do want to also mention for that notion of a snap-destruct is that's something where every time I've talked about that, if that goes in, it would have two very distinct limitations: one, only the owner of a ship could ever trigger it, in that you can't make someone a captain and then they get to snap-destruct. You have to be the one who owns the ship and pushes the big red button. And then two, when you push the big red button, you will die. Baseline. You die with the ship if you want to immediately blow it up. So that will be one of the counterbalances in that give and take, because you don't want to die in the PU. It's not going to be the most fun thing.

Randy Vasquez · Designer

Couldn't we do something even like a handshake, where you have two designated people being like, hey, we're doing a snap-destruct, put your key in, put your key in, two locks?

Matt Sherman · Designer

We could. In theory, we could do that, but the owner of the ship would have to be one of those people. Either way, it's in development. It'll get iterated. We're not going to make something that's going to just infuriate more people than it'll entertain.

Ben Lesnick · Director of Community Engagement, Online Strategy and Spaceships

You have a repair team, but once you've sealed that breach, then people inside the ship can repair it.

Randy Vasquez · Designer

Yeah, that's what I'm assuming as well. So I can't get too much more into details on repair, but as of right now, the arms are going to be mostly handling just the external hull and everything like that, even external components. So if the components are actually facing towards the hull, then you'd be able to use the arms, lift the panel, and then take the component out, replace it or repair it, do everything there. But it can also be done through EVA, drones and all that. So then the interior stuff, because of the tight spaces in the interior, the arms are actually way larger than what has been shown so far. These things are massive.

Matt Sherman · Designer

Yeah, they'll safely be able to move and manipulate large and capital class components, which are room-sized. I mean, we haven't really shown the full scale on those. So it's going to be something where, for an Idris, you may need a couple of Crucibles to really get the job done, but they'll definitely have that functionality to make sure that you can bring a ship back up.

Randy Vasquez · Designer

We had talked about the Idris and the components and the size of components last month, I think, sometime. And we were talking about how the Crucible would be used for that, and having multiple Crucibles work together, like, these guys are taking this part of the hull, these guys are taking this part of the hull. But I'd imagine that's going to be after a huge battle.

Matt Sherman · Designer

Oh, yeah. If you see something getting refitted with capital-grade components, that thing has gone through some punishment, and that it's still functioning should really be a testament to how well that crew handled their fight.

Matt Sherman · Designer

That, I want to say, is still being determined because, I mean, like we even showed, I want to say it was for the one space station, I keep forgetting, Gold Horizon, where there was a gravity generator in that demo that could be disabled. So that's definitely something that we want to explore. How we can make that play nice with our local physics grid, which is really driving what's happening inside of a ship. That's going to be one of those questions that we just need a few more of these multi-crew ships up online and more of the core simulation built out to really answer.

Randy Vasquez · Designer

So this one, that was a bug that we saw on a stream where the Hornet's shields were actually the same exact shields as the Constellation. So it's kind of funny that this one Hornet was just going to town, destroying this one dude, but he just wasn't dying. And then we looked at those and it was like, 15,000, 15,000?

Matt Sherman · Designer

Yeah, it was like 15,000 health when it should have only been about five, so... Keep in mind, the Constellation, the Retaliator, it's our first time putting them in your guys' hands and flyable, so there's absolutely going to be some wild tuning spikes with both those ships over the next few patches as we get them settled in and we get more of the multi-crew stuff online. But it's absolutely something we will be keeping an eye on and addressing in patching.

Randy Vasquez · Designer

So make sure you guys stay vocal on the forums, let us know what's happening, so that way we can keep a pulse on what's going on with the different ships, because otherwise if I didn't see the stream today, we'd have been like, is this right? This does not seem right. So we do watch the streams, we do watch the forums, and we do watch everything to try to keep an eye on everything.

Ben Lesnick · Director of Community Engagement, Online Strategy and Spaceships

Yeah, we joke about it, but we do want to hear from everybody. Even stuff like the Cutlass thread is a benefit.

Matt Sherman · Designer

So the core intakes on ships, I want to say are still going to be sort of a tunable aspect, you'll have some adjustment on how fast they'll refill your boost fuel onto your ship. And that's the main intakes you're going to see on every ship. I know, was it the Starfarer that was mentioned? The base model, its intakes did the fuel refinement, and that's more of a special case thing for the Starfarer, so part of how it's harvesting and processing the gas into quantum and jump fuel. But for most other ships, yeah, your intake is going to be recharging your boost fuel. The kind of intake and how good of one you've installed is going to really gauge how quick that's going to replenish, and also how fast it can be burned up at times.

Randy Vasquez · Designer

Every ship's like a unique little snowflake in that it takes a different amount of time. I mean, we talked about variants before, we talked about the different things going on with each individual ship. So on average, it's taken me anywhere from three to five weeks to get the interior done, the Confluence page done, working with the artists, working with the leads, the directors, the engineers, talking about what the mechanics need to go with each ship, talking with Sherman, because I always do a pass once I get the interior solid, then I go through a couple of days just working with Sherman, looking at the components, the sizes of the components. Once we know all the components fit in the little nooks and crannies where they're going, make sure they're facing the right way so that way they can have an access panel to open up, get the component out, put it back in, make sure they fit through the hallways, everything like that. We actually do put a lot of thought into the interiors.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community Manager

And this is just the white boxing. This isn't building out the interior of the ship. If you've seen the Crucible video or the Caterpillar video or the Starfarer video, this is just laying out the interior, not building it in engine.

Randy Vasquez · Designer

So yeah, I mean, we actually do build it in engine, but it is all just basic blocks of geometry and stuff, as people have seen in the videos. So it takes a while to get through. But it's multiple iterations, multiple people are looking at it. There's multiple checks. At least two or three times I'm talking to you, talking to Calix, I'm talking to Kirk, I'm talking to everybody else. So basically I'm like, hey, I need feedback on this. And then moving stuff around, adding things a little here and there. Like, what was it? On the Crucible, I was working on it, and then towards the end, Calix asked a simple question of just, so where are the spotlights? And it was like, oh my god, I forgot spotlights. So little things like that always get added in here and there. So it's always a constant iteration.

Matt Sherman · Designer

I mean, it's definitely something also where it's never just us as designers doing this treatment on a ship. Like Randy even mentioned, we have to work in tandem with the artists on this because, like all of our departments, we have to play to our own strengths, where we can handle the design, we can handle the spec work, we can handle all of that. But we also have to know and trust our artists, like Owen, Gurmukh, those guys, to just be able to jive with that and then knock the ship out of the park and make something really incredible.

Calix Reneau · Designer

If there's nothing to hit.

Randy Vasquez · Designer

Yeah, I don't see why not. Ideally, that's what we're doing. So thank you, first of all. Yes, both sides will open up. It'll be the clamshell opening on both sides. And then if it's not hitting anything, then the bullets should go straight through. Because we're going to be also, maybe, possibly, if people are set up and you pull up next to a thing, I can see people shooting a gun outside this thing, as well as bullets should be able to be shot right back in.

Matt Sherman · Designer

Although I'm still wondering, there's almost always going to be something to hit inside a Caterpillar. Getting that kind of through and through probably won't be that common.

Calix Reneau · Designer

What if you fly through it? M50 straight through, or Merlin even?

Ben Lesnick · Director of Community Engagement, Online Strategy and Spaceships

Merlin would definitely do that. M50 could probably fit as well. Are you going to be impacted by gravity though once you enter it?

Calix Reneau · Designer

Yeah, but the thrusters are strong enough to deal with it. You'll see them actually, they'll have to rotate to adjust to that. You have the same issue when you fly directly over a landing pad, because there's gravity there too. Although it's not a separate physics grid. It's more complicated on the back end, but what actually happens will be the same.

Calix Reneau · Designer

Definitely still in progress. Yes.

Randy Vasquez · Designer

We have talked about this, because components will cook off, right? And if components start exploding, then they'll destroy components around them, and then those could also explode outwards, and then basically hull and so on. So there's so much stuff that could be damaged.

Calix Reneau · Designer

It is tied into the component system, so components will have cascading damage, so that if the power plant blows up, or overheats, that will start affecting the rest of the pipe system. We've seen the previews of that with the Constellation, seeing this thing blow up and this thing starts sparking until eventually the whole thing just goes and it's gone.

Ben Lesnick · Director of Community Engagement, Online Strategy and Spaceships

So maybe this whole self-destruct thing doesn't matter, because they can just board the ship and put a charge in the power plant.

Matt Sherman · Designer

If you're attacking, you're not self-destructing someone's ship.

Calix Reneau · Designer

That sort of catastrophic failure generally requires more than one component to fail at the same time.

Ben Lesnick · Director of Community Engagement, Online Strategy and Spaceships

Which ones in particular?

Calix Reneau · Designer

All the core ones, the power plants and shield generators and thrusters, I mean, engines, rather. So when those things all go off at the same time, you end up with crazy.

Matt Sherman · Designer

Also, if your coolers go down, because then you can just start overheating dramatically and your ship will just...

Calix Reneau · Designer

They're all interconnected, so if your coolers are down, just shutting off the coolers and then overclocking your ship with all your other components can be enough to cause a catastrophic failure. It's a personal goal of mine to make sure that you can completely destroy your ship from the HUD. If you can't push buttons that destroy your ship, then do you really have control? But conceptually, blowing up munitions or setting off mines and other explosive charges inside a ship should and could function the same way as doing this sort of component damage, where you take damage to the area and we propagate it out to whatever local components are there. They do their normal damage behaviors, which could potentially be affecting the rest of the ship. And when you reach levels that are sufficiently catastrophic to destroy the ship, it happens naturally. That's the theory of it, none of which we've actually done in engine. So until that happens, it's all design and ideas and things that we're still working through, but there will always be more consequences to these than there even appears to be. There does appear to be a lot.

Calix Reneau · Designer

Components are not really designed to be hand-manipulable. They're too large. They're too heavy. You will be able to move these things as cargo items, but you'll need to do that as cargo items, so actually pulling it out before it becomes cargo, before you would use it in the same way with the gravity jack and all these systems that we have in place for cargo... I think that at this point it's kind of unlikely that we'll allow you to just go in and make that sort of on-the-fly hot swap, actually take out a component. That's probably going to be more the kind of thing that you'll see: you'll have to go to a vendor, go to some garage or repair shop to be like, all right, I want that thing taken out, and then they will do that for you, because these things are too large for grabby hands. The sub-components of components are what grabby hands is for. So you'll be able to open it up and, yeah, you'll be able to pull out the capacitor of a shield generator and then put it in your pocket. But that only reduces the capacity of these components. It doesn't negate it completely.

Matt Sherman · Designer

Something also, even touching on that a bit, is a lot of it will also depend on what kind of ship you're interacting with, because, yeah, if it has the right size class components and the right interior access panels, it may be something that you could do a tool-assisted removal of to get it into that cargo state. But if it's on some of the smaller single-seat ships, not all of their core components will actually even be accessible from the inside, so to really get at those parts, you're going to be trashing that ship to get to those parts. So it won't be something where it's like you just board someone's ship, that ship's fully operational, and you just unplug their motherboard. It'll be a more deliberate and consequential action.

Ben Lesnick · Director of Community Engagement, Online Strategy and Spaceships

Sounds like you sold out on sabotage.

Calix Reneau · Designer

I mean, we want to support sabotage, but it also shouldn't be trivial.

Matt Sherman · Designer

It won't be progress-bar, push-button sabotage, it will be a thought-out process of sabotage.

Calix Reneau · Designer

Relative to what was in previous patches, yes. I mean, time to kill basically just keeps growing as things get larger and as we playtest more.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community Manager

Yeah, and the first patch that has multi-crew ships isn't even online yet.

Calix Reneau · Designer

Yeah, so the shields and the armor, those things are getting tweaked and retweaked and are in fact up for a total revision as we're doing our component refactors and bringing those in line with some of the designs that we've released and have been building up the code-side support for.

Randy Vasquez · Designer

One thing we've mentioned is that as we get more multi-crew ships on board and more design and stuff like that, then we'll be looking into doing more and more and more balance passes, because we're never going to be done balancing.

Matt Sherman · Designer

Oh, yeah. Because we're also just now introducing more of the medium-sized ships. We haven't really even gotten into the large and capital class stuff. So, like Calix said, the relative time to kill, yeah, that's going to probably increase for what you know, but then once we've also got something like the Idris-M in play, well, an Idris's time to kill against a Constellation could be a lot less if it lands a clean shot with that railgun. There's always going to be different levels of scale and balance, and it's ongoing and it will never, ever end.

Randy Vasquez · Designer

I can't wait to see the balance sheet on the fleet of ships that's going to take an Idris down.

Calix Reneau · Designer

Yeah, the kind of work that you're going to have to bring to take one down.

Matt Sherman · Designer

That's going to be interesting. But we know what components are in the Idris now. It does help.

Randy Vasquez · Designer

So we've talked about this when I was working on the Caterpillar, actually. So we have multiple variations, but we want to do some stuff over EVA. So basically, a module would open up, and ideally what we would want to have is a person would be able to just put it on a little pallet jack, the cargo jack things you had talked about before. So you'd be able to grab that and then EVA over with that and then put it into the hold and then just EVA back to your ship. So basically you can do it in gravity, you can do it in no gravity.

Calix Reneau · Designer

Yeah, you don't need to land to do these things. You can be EVA, you can be using tools. We also have things that will allow you to sort of bundle objects together, like the cargo jack and other devices, which will allow you to move them all together at once so that you don't have to make 30 trips for 30 separate boxes. You can just put them all in the same thing.

Randy Vasquez · Designer

One trip, guys. It's like groceries.

Matt Sherman · Designer

Undetermined.

Randy Vasquez · Designer

So yeah, as of right now, the Reclaimer is the only one. Now the Caterpillar and Crucible can do light salvage type stuff as well as some repair things. So those are the only ships that we've released.

Calix Reneau · Designer

So far the Caterpillar salvage stuff is all meant to use EVA tools, right? None of that is on board the ship. So you'll be able to do this with conceivably any ship as long as you get out of it, because you're doing it with your face. But so far the Reclaimer is the only one that's purpose-built for this.

Ben Lesnick · Director of Community Engagement, Online Strategy and Spaceships

But I will say that we are right now looking at concepts for... basically in the last year we've done the biggest salvage ship we can think of, the biggest mining ship. So we get the systems worked out, and we are now looking at early concepts for where we fill in the blanks. There'll be more on that in the future.

Calix Reneau · Designer

The generic use system that I'm working on with Zane. It sort of ties... you've seen a little bit of it in the MFD screen focus mode, of being able to really expand the way you can interface your interactions with the ship and really get into the nitty-gritty of all these little buttons on your ship, and being able to access it, and being able to have that as a global thing that you can access whether you're on foot, whether you're in the ship, whether you're on a station. That's really compelling to me because it unifies a lot of our actions into something that feels really consistent and intuitive.

Randy Vasquez · Designer

So to tag team on that, I'm actually most interested in the multi-crew stuff. I want to be able to have my crew, have my buddies and stuff like that, all on the same ship, and us doing different roles and stuff like that, yelling at each other to take out all these other people. That's what I can't wait for. I really want multi-crew.

Matt Sherman · Designer

I'd actually agree with Randy, just because I remember when I was still just a backer, the one thing that immediately drew me to the game was just the idea where it's like, wait, so I can actually do the whole Millennium Falcon setup where I've got Han and Chewie at the helm and guys in the turrets, and it all means something. It's not just AI or automation controlling it all. Just that high-level dream is always the most compelling thing for this game.

Calix Reneau · Designer

It depends on the state of the ship when you kill them. If it wasn't decoupled, basically it stopped receiving additional inputs, but because of the way coupled works, it basically expects that you're giving continuous input. So if you stop giving continuous input, it will stop doing that. So throttle will stay the same, because that's not a continuous input, it's a state. But if you were turning at the time, you'll stop turning. Unless you're in decoupled, or in whatever rotational thing we allow, then it will stay in whatever state that was.

Matt Sherman · Designer

No, it should not. As cool on a high-level concept as that could be, it would just pose a number of other technical challenges, to the point where the benefit or additional immersion in gameplay that could provide wouldn't really outweigh the cost. So we want you to be able to be changing out your components, to be fixing them, to be replacing them when needed, and not having a bunch of extra stopgaps on it. But in the same regard, you're not going to want to keep your ship flying around with a bunch of holes in it, because that means you are a weaker ship for it, where less damage will be needed to kill you, and dying is not good.

Randy Vasquez · Designer

We're making the assumption that most players will always want to, as soon as they take damage, head to a safe area to repair their ship, or at least repair it to what they can afford if they don't have that much money.

Matt Sherman · Designer

In theory, yes, it could. If it does enough global distortion to the ship, it absolutely could bring one down.

Calix Reneau · Designer

Absolutely. As will be player suits.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community Manager

So if you were on a ship that somebody instigated the self-destruct on, you could lob a couple of EMP grenades, if you could identify what the self-destruct...

Calix Reneau · Designer

If you can affect the components required for the self-destruct, then yes. It's entirely driven by the distortion damage, which is given by the EMP grenade or EMP effect. So just give it distortion damage, and you get the behavior.

Randy Vasquez · Designer

So no clue when we're going to see the in-depth write-up. It's still being worked on. Salvage in 30 seconds is basically going to be where a ship's damaged, or debris, then you basically are able to scrap it or repair it. If it's scrapped, you basically take that scrap on as cargo, and then you go on your merry way. That is the most basic way I can say salvage. It's just 13 seconds.

Calix Reneau · Designer

Go from object to material by process.

Matt Sherman · Designer

I always keep thinking, if you watch the movie Titan A.E., in the first five minutes of that, the main character, he's just a scrapper in space, cutting up junk off of a ship, so kind of stuff like that, where it's like, yeah, we're not going to use this anymore, let's repurpose these materials.

Calix Reneau · Designer

There's a can of worms. Towing ships is kind of an active design discussion of exactly to what extent do we allow it.

Ben Lesnick · Director of Community Engagement, Online Strategy and Spaceships

Active design discussion is developer speak for people who are arguing about it.

Matt Sherman · Designer

We are butting heads over what's the right way to do this.

Randy Vasquez · Designer

We all definitely agree that towing should be in the game. And this discussion actually came up when we were working on the Crucible. And we were all sat around talking about the tug, the tug version. And we're like, how is it going to be done? We can't really do tow lines, we can't really do this, we can't really do this. The dreaded words of tractor beams, and what that gameplay is, and whether we're going to have that, what we're going to do with it, what's going to go along with it. So there's so many different... it is a can of worms, just towing in general in normal space, and then even trying to go through a jump point, like, oh, well that's...

Matt Sherman · Designer

That's going to be deadly. The jump and quantum aspect of towing, I think, would be the dicier part, but something where, at least how I'd hope that we could get is, you could do that local space tow to something that could at least, for enough ships, enclose that ship completely. Kind of like if you get a Hornet or something smaller into the [unclear: 'scare part']. Yeah, because that can close off, so then, cool, this is closed off, now that's safe enough to jump and travel, so even if you don't have the parts on board to fix up that ship, you can move it around.

Randy Vasquez · Designer

But at that point, we're treating it like cargo. So with it treating it like cargo, then it works perfectly fine, but then with an actual thing outside, it's like, yeah, I see the grin.

Calix Reneau · Designer

Yeah, we've got all these things that we're sort of trying to balance here, and we definitely would like to support it. The exact constraints that we're going to be putting on it to support it are a point of contention still. So we're working through that and getting it to a point where we're all happy with it.

Matt Sherman · Designer

No. The pipe system is still going to be ongoing. A lot that we also need: we'll need first the component refactor that's going to be coming in in the next couple of months. Eventually we'll also need the weapon refactor as well to go with that, for physically based damage, to make sure that the power and heat consumption and such on weapons is tuned to the right level with the components. We need to get our avionics system online so that data management inside of your ship and what kind of system-wide functions you're giving to your ship are also tuned. So like any other part of balance, it's going to definitely be an ongoing thing for us.

Calix Reneau · Designer

It's definitely at a point where it's serviceable in the short term, but it needs to get upgraded a bit for some of the longer-term things we'll be doing with it.

Calix Reneau · Designer

So, I've worked with Zane on this a bit, and it's all still in the earlier phases of it, but essentially we want you to be able to manually start up, like, not have the startup animation at all if you don't want it, manually start up and do the exact order of... So if you're trying to do a super stealthy startup so that you can get away without showing up on anybody's radar, you'll have to do it differently than if you were just starting up regularly. Or if you need shields on before anything else because you're taking immediate fire, you would want to do this manually. But we'll still have an automatic startup that's sort of our baseline. And we're exploring ways to expand that. That's actually part of what goes into the sort of generic use thing I was talking about earlier. One way of making it so that you have full access to all the buttons on your cockpit, and being able to do at any time really fine-tuned manipulation of your ship using the auxiliary buttons and the screens and all those things. Once that's truly available across the board, then we can really explore implementation of manual startup and basically the spectrum in between manual and automatic startup.

Matt Sherman · Designer

Scouting. I can't go into all the details specifically on the Pisces, but I do actually want to just call out that, even from sitting in the chat and reading on the forums, to everyone who is concerned that, hey, because snubs don't have quantum and jump, my Carrack explorer snub craft may not feel worth it, that will not be the case. Absolutely planning something really cool for the Pisces, so that it's going to feel like the just badass explorer companion vessel that you're hoping would come with the Carrack. It still won't have quantum or jump, but it will have some really cool stuff to counterbalance that, and I'm hoping once we get that ship more into production and can talk about that, you guys will be happy with it.

Calix Reneau · Designer

I mean, it comes down to what's the point of a snub fighter to begin with. It's not to do long-distance travel. It's not to do long, high-endurance engagement. It's to do short recon and to do scramble support. So it will be useful for those things.

Randy Vasquez · Designer

A larger ship's scramble support should be massive, because they're going to have larger weapons, and so they're not going to have a lot of small little weapons. You have a couple of small ships going against a super large ship, they can just keep picking away at it and flit around. Death by a thousand cuts.

Calix Reneau · Designer

We're already seeing the balanced strength of being the smaller ship in some cases. So being able to be both the bigger and the smaller ship has a tactical advantage.

Matt Sherman · Designer

Also with that, one last thing is not all snubs are implicitly fighters. So there's the Argo utility vehicle that comes with the Idris, and that doesn't have guns. That is very much a utility craft. It's got a pod on board that it can do some different multifunction things with. But that's also going to apply where we'll have snubs, so like the Merlin and the Archimedes are more higher-speed, higher-maneuverability snub fighters. The 85X is going to be this luxury two-seater snub for taking off and landing from planets that the 890 Jump may not be able to land on. The Pisces will absolutely be an exploration-themed snub with suitable capabilities for that. It's just having a purpose to everything and making sure that it lives up to that purpose.