10 for the Chairman: Episode 36 (2014.09.08)

Great question. Not something that we've done a massive amount of thought on, but it raises a really interesting issue. I mean, we've been thinking primarily for the Drake Herald and the info-runner business about how you would protect data and transmit it, and then also people would wanna block and, you know, try and intercept stuff. So there's a certain amount of sort of electro-computer-hacking-warfare that we were thinking that we would probably do, and we'll probably have some of that on the big ships. I know one of the designs that we've been talking about for the capital ship stuff is you would even have one station where the other person is trying to disrupt the other ships systems and potentially jam them or even try and get a virus aboard them.So there definitely will be some level of that. I don't know so much about hacking personal details and all the rest of the stuff. That would still be a sort of to-be-determined design feature. But we are certainly doing quite a few things that will make the kind of "hacking warfare" an aspect that can happen in the game, 'cause it'll definitely be part of some of the big-ship combat, and some of the Squadron 42 stuff, and it'll definitely be part of the info-runner stuff. And so, you know, who knows? Maybe we'll do a little bit of that on the player side, although you wouldn't want to get to the point where someone can get complete identity theft and screwed over in the game, because it's not fun in real life, so we don't really want to do it anyone in the game to a level where it's sort of devastating! Although maybe a small amount of stuff could be interesting, but that's still a to-be-determined aspect. But thanks for the question, Nogitsune!

Well you'll definitely be able to take jobs in the Persistent Universe. The initial thinking was you would take jobs for people in your ship - they ask you, "oh, we need you to take this many tons of goods from this planet to that planet" - and also you could get hired to be a pilot of a ship. So, I'm not sure whether we're necessarily thinking about letting you sort of be, "okay, I take a job as a gunner on a ship," but it's kind of a natural extension of being a pilot of a ship, so that potentially could probably happen. I mean, NPC AI and intelligence has been set up in a way that you would... you know, you could a player on a ship and the pilot of the ship is an NPC. So that's not ruled out - it would really sort of determine [be determined by] how our mission and job hiring board would happen, and then also how we would control the meta-AI of the NPCs. So, you know, if a ship itself has its own persistence and it goes from planet to planet, back and forth, and it would have a crew, then maybe you could crew it. So that would be also kind of a question that I would be fleshing out with Tony [Zurovec] because we are right now in the middle of doing a lot of the more fun aspects of the high-end AI design for the Persistent Universe.

Well, I definitely think there will be different kinds of transport - ground transport options. So obviously there's the buggy that we've seen in the hangar, there's the rover that we unveiled when we showed of the Aquila version of the Constellation, and I definitely think there will be some smaller ones, and some bigger ones, and some luxury models. And yeah, kinda the idea is on a longer-term basis, we want to build some areas that you can land and you can explore that aren't the same as like landing in a, you know, necessarily landing in a busy city spaceport and then you walk around. So you know, perhaps you land in a sort of open area of countryside and there's maybe some ruins off in the distance, and you get in your buggy and you can drive around and do some exploration.So that's sort of the longer-term plan, and that's where some of the procedural work that we're doing some R&D on would help come into play. So I don't know how much of that will be in the very first "complete" version of the Persistent Universe, but it would be something that's in the development pipeline and we would try to get up and running as soon as possible, 'cause having various areas, or some PvE exploration and combat down on planets or in derelicts out in space, or in abandoned asteroid bases, is something that's kind of a high priority for us, 'cause I think it will just add a lot of texture to the world itself. So it's not just about flying around in space combat - there's other action that's happening. And I think you guys will also be pretty happy with the way Squadron 42 is gonna turn out 'cause it's pretty epic, and you know, more than just Wing Commander style flying missions!

Okay, well, so certain things - the 350r definitely will be able to have a jump drive... the Mustang also, like the Aurora, would be able to have sort of an upgraded jump drive. The M50 is pretty small, so it's likely not necessarily to have a jump drive. But we're gonna also have-... you know, that's kinda the idea of why you'd have bigger ships. So if you think about racing in today's world of people who go around racing, they have big 18-wheelers that they put their race cars in the back, and drive around the country. Or even in the case of high-end stuff like Formula 1 they put them on planes and fly them around. So we'll definitely have transporter ships that you'll be able to take your smaller, something like an M50, in. For instance if you have an 890 JUMP and you're cruising around in style in the universe, you could have an M50 sitting in the cargo bay and race it in various races... you know... just like the super rich do in today's world!So, we'll definitely have ships that can transport them around, or if you didn't have a ship that you want to do that you could probably hire someone to transport your ship to the next race location.

Yes, so uh, I think you're talking about the character where we've talked about, if you have multiple game packages you can sort of change one of the packages into a "customize-able NPC" for you to have on your crew, as opposed to a generic one you would hire. And yes, you would definitely have them as a character hanging out in your ship, or you "pad" as it were - like a hangar or something. So if you basically put together your crew - think of it like Serenity or something - you would see the hanging out, goofing off, doing their various idle states, and you go off and fly, and they're doing the same on the ship. So yes, they would be NPC characters going about... you know, maybe they would have some generic conversational lines. I mean that, to a certain extent will be fairly challenging, because there will be a lot of different potential NPCs and characters, but we'll try out best to make sure they're all-... they have some sense of personality and are kind of fun.

Well, quite a few! I mean, obviously real life is a really great example and, you know, past history, are good examples because you can see sort of how something works. And also people that are playing the game can also really relate to it because it's something they have seen everyday in real life. So, the idea of, say, insurance on a spaceship you can relate to because you have insurance on your car, and for the same kind of reasons that we would have in space. So definitely having some level of real life inform the gameplay, but of course, you want to make the game FUN - so that's a big guiding principle. So it's sort of focusing on much more of the fun aspects, and less of sort of the boring, mundane aspects, because I think most people - even glamorous people - a lot of their day-to-day stuff is fairly mundane, and of course you're not play a game to do mundane things! (Maybe if you're playing something like The Sims, but even The Sims is a very abstracted kind of more fun version of real life!)So I would say that real life is part of it. Part of it is making it fun - sort of the bit where you feel empowered, and you feel special, and can do cool stuff that you can't normally do in real life. But then also to a certain extent making it be easy at the beginning - sort of draw you in. Like, one of my big principles is I really like immersion, and immersion I think is really facilitated by really rendering the environment, the world, the characters, like in very high fidelity. And even though you could say, "well, the game mechanics aren't particularly different," when you render something put a little extra care and attention to detail in it, it makes that world seem more alive. I mean a really good example is the Uncharted series that Naughty Dog has done, and if you look at the base gameplay mechanics it's not that different than what Tomb Raider did a long time ago, but the difference is they added all these little details and moments. You know, like Drake's going up a staircase and he reaches and touches the banister. It sort of all makes it feel a bit more real and alive, and the same with The Last of Us has a lot of these touches too. And so the same gameplay mechanics that maybe in another game don't feel quite feel as connected, do in something like an "Uncharted" because the attention to detail sort of pulls you in and so all of a sudden you start putting yourself in that world instead of always thinking of playing a game. So having a high amount of immersion is a big principle for me to really just pull you into the game. Because, you know, even if we look at what we're doing in Star Citizen, a lot of the core game mechanics aren't that much different than what we've done in the past on things like Wing Commander, or Privateer, or Freelancer. And there is a lot more sophistication, there's a lot more stuff, but some of the core ideas, like the whole idea of travelling between planets and earning money so you can upgrade your ship or buy a new ship, has been around for a long time, but it's a very satisfying sort of play path. And so we're just sort of doing that with a high fidelity, and we've got a lot more tweaks and of course there's the multiplayer and the co-operative aspects, and there's a lot of things that are gonna make it really rich. BUT, you know it's still the same basic core game mechanics which, if you look at a lot games, the core mechanics tend to have been very similar for a long time, and a lot of it's about implementation, and the nuance, and sort of accessibility for people.So I would say for me, my game design principles are about immersion, they're about accessibility, they're about adding depth to a game beyond the accessibility, right - so there's a very famous saying which is sort of like, "easy to learn, difficult to master," and I think that's a very good paradigm for games. I mean it's much easier said than done, but in general it's something that you want to have in your game, so someone can just pick it up and have fun, but they don't feel like they've mastered it and they're bored with it right way - it takes a long time. So, I would say something like a "Starcraft" or something like that had a very good sort of "easy to learn, difficult to master," thing where you could play it, and you could just play it with the mouse, but if you really wanted to get good at it, it just took a lot more time and attention, and you had to be a whole different level of player. And so that's kind of one of the things that we want to do in Star Citizen, and then in general just create this really big world where I'm really going for a sandbox to allow people to do what they wanna do, and sort of live out their fantasy life in space. I mean, it's a fantasy that I've had, and I think most of you guys out there have had.So those are all aspects that go into the design. So, I wouldn't-... I'm not saying there's any sort of silver bullet. A lot of it also is all sort of instinct and intuition of, like what seems to make sense to me, versus anything else. And I just happen, I think to a certain level, to have a sense of gameplay and style that a lot of other people sort of agree with. But there you go! There's my principles... if that helps at all?!

Yeah, I mean to a certain-... it's pretty logical. It's sort of the way things work in real life. You know, if I've got a Colt 45 and I'm shooting at an M1 Abrams, I'm probably not gonna do much damage - and the same sort of thing will be true in Star Citizen. So, depending on... we haven't really implemented armor in Arena Commander yet, but that's one of the things that's sort of stubbed in and will be there... but armor will obviously affect... I mean, we have hull damage but we don't have sort of levels of armor beyond it. So, that will have some impact, and obviously we have the nuance of ballistic weapons versus energy weapons, and obviously in our world they have different setups, so like ballistic weapons aren't really stopped particularly well by shields - so they tend to go through shields - but armor is really built to sort of deflect or stop ballistic weapons. Whereas energy weapons are deflected and absorbed by shields, but armor isn't so good against them. And also there would be the size, and the scope, and the power of the weapon. So if you have like I said, a hand gun, and you're trying to shoot a hornet with it, you'll probably be a lot less successful than firing a Bulldog repeater.Umm, so, I would say "yes" to that answer!

I'm pretty sure we're gonna use gravity. I mean, we haven't explicitly sort of designed "oh this planet's got half gravity, this planet's got full gravity," but I'm pretty sure we will because it's a pretty big gameplay element that we're building for the first person shooter aspect, and it's certainly very prominent in use in space - so on space stations, asteroid bases, boarding other ships. I mean there's gonna be gameplay where you can turn off gravity, turn on gravity, and that will affect you differently. And so we would be kind of silly not to use all the code and support that we're building for that down on some planets. So you could potentially be on a big, heavy gravity planet, and some ones would be, you know, like the moon - much lighter gravity. So I would assume that we would probably do something like that in a couple of places. I mean most places will probably be more like Earth-like gravity, just for, you know, familiarity. But occasionally we would definitely have places like, you know maybe there's a moon outpost or something, and that would have lower gravity, and then that would just rely on all the FPS zero-gravity, or low-gravity mechanics that we're building right now in the FPS.