The developers answer questions about Drake's new Dragonfly space motorcycle: its size, colour variants, stowage in the Caterpillar and other ships, LTI and package rules, and why it can't fly in atmosphere. They also cover the Herald and Buccaneer progress, Endeavor re-sales, server fixes, and controller support.
I'm not sure exactly how they're going to do it. I think they're still talking about that themselves. It's been a lot of server-side fixes this week, I believe.
Oh, yes, it was, wasn't it? I forgot about that. You know, I don't know if I can take credit for that. It may have been one of the writers and we made that connection. I don't know. But it was Lorelai's inn on the Gilmore Girls. It is an inn.
So exact numbers are still being sorted out. A decent number, but like we had said when the Endeavor sale went up, there will still end up being some hard limits as to how many we're going to allow you to store and scramble from inside the ship. So it's not going to be how many can you stack wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling, and actually deploy that many. It'll be something that won't make the servers melt. At least two, more than likely more, per module. The Dragonfly is really tiny when you guys see it. The art we showed yesterday during Around the Verse makes it actually look a little bigger and longer than it actually is. He's just a little guy.
Maybe, but we need a reason for you to have it first. It looks cool right now and it's a part of a squadron, but we don't have mining in yet, so we'll revisit it.
Someday. I think part of the lore for this one is that this is the first one. This is Drake coming up with a whole new idea. So hopefully years down the line, everybody will have their competing space motorcycles and we can do like a laid-back one and all the different styles you can imagine. But this is the first one.
It'll be on sale again eventually.
Eventually, not right now though. We usually bring back stuff later in the year around Gamescom, CitizenCon, November anniversary.
Chances are it'll be on sale again sometime before it's actually in game. No rush there.
There are plans, I'm not the person to ask.
Yeah, I mean, it's definitely the kind of thing that we're going to have to be having something there and sorting something out, but it's also still far enough away from really needing that to be in-game to really say what's fleshed out, what's actually going to be there activity-wise.
Sounds like a Tony Z question.
Yeah. I mean, we usually talk a lot about stuff like space cards and communication systems and whatever, but it's down the line. It'll be a good problem to have when there's so much space that it's boring.
It's not that small.
But I like the way you're thinking.
Special just to the Caterpillar, not particularly. I mean, the Caterpillars definitely have the ability to scramble Dragonflies, but it's not like an exclusive feature that's the only one that can.
So Drake markets them together because it's Drake's whole lineup. And because we went into this with the idea of this pirate motorcycle gang supporting this big hauler that picks up all their loot. So it's kind of our, one of our first...
Herald is wrapping up now, I think?
So actually, was it last week on the news from Around the Verse, the Buccaneer and the Herald actually got confused in the LA update. So it's the Herald that's going through its gray boxing paces right now. The Buccaneer still hasn't started its white box or gray box. But that's actually going along really well. We just had a small review on some of the white box changes. So it had an updated interior. You'll actually be able to walk around it cleanly and effectively without tripping over yourself or the seats inside. So it's shaping up really cool.
Nothing new for now. We'd love to do them, but make the game first.
Physical merch isn't easy. It's awesome, but it's not easy.
It's very, very hard, especially something as detailed. I don't think Chris Roberts would let us off with a cheap spaceship model. It would need to be very, very high quality control. It would have to be really crazy good. I'm sure we'll get there.
TL;DRYes, upgrades carry the insurance of the base pledge, and the package with two Dragonflies and a Caterpillar is all LTI because the system can't mix insurance types within a package.
Yes, that is how the system works.
Your upgrade will always reflect the insurance of whatever your base pledge that you're upgrading from has.
And before we go into more LTI everything, I will go ahead and say that one of the packages today is two Dragonflies and a Caterpillar. We don't have a way to have separate insurances in a package, so they're all LTI. The standalone Caterpillar is just six months, but I'll just get that out there into the universe first. There is one Caterpillar that has LTI. It's a limitation of the system, not an attempt to get around our own rules.
We wanted to provide a way to get a Caterpillar and two Dragonflies at a discount.
Yeah, and it came down to we can either have them all [LTI], don't do the package, or do some sort of Frankenstein system to the package, and everybody will be writing to CS saying, well, I want the version with a discount. Can you melt my six-month Caterpillar and switch it to a [unclear]?
So within the confines of the system, because we wanted to provide people with an option to get these things at a discount, it has to have LTI.
Yeah, our other option was to do it kind of like the gun for the Buccaneer, where we would actually sell it saying it has LTI and then take it away later. It seemed like it would be really messy from the CS standpoint.
Not specifically 2.4, but I do know the Steam Controller... We've got QA here in LA, and on Vincent's desk, he's often testing with the Steam controller, the Xbox Elite controller, and he's even working with the new X56 right now. So we are currently working on controller support for a variety of stuff.
TL;DRThere is no preset limit on players or ships on a planet; it depends on optimization and performance, and the numbers are expected to keep growing, with networking work hopefully helping.
Danoki, that's a thing that comes after planets, and ships can go down on planets. That's an optimization and performance issue. So it's not an arbitrary number that we set ahead of time.
Yeah, it's one thing where we're constantly reaching to have more and more and more with each patch. You probably remember a year and a half ago we had like four-player matches in AC and now we have, what is it, 16 or 24.
And with the networking work, hopefully that will be, well, it will be more, but hopefully it will be even more.
It's one of those things that I imagine that for the rest of history, we will be slowly pushing it forward, after the game launches and as long as we possibly can. In 2356, we'll all have supercomputers that can have a billion people in every instance.
I have no trouble imagining that Chris will be constantly pushing the number of people that we can squeeze into a place long after the game goes live.
Once Star Citizen becomes a historical drama, like Chris Roberts' head in a jar, we'll still be improving it.
No more ship commercials for the time being. They will return someday, but the folks who did those early commercials are now working hard on cinematics for Squadron, and we do not want to interrupt them. The Retaliator one is still coming, just not right now.
I think he means the loaner, and that's Merlin, I would imagine.
Probably Merlin for now. One thing we can say about the Dragonfly is that it's probably going to pop up in the game sooner than later, so you may not need a replacement for that long.
You need checks and balances.
Also, atmospheric reentry with just two.
I think a lot of it will make more sense once you guys see the Dragonfly. And also, hopefully, kind of like what Ben was saying, once we do have it in game and you can put it up against, just size it against a Merlin, and you'll see, oh, this is half the size. Yeah, that's a fireball waiting to happen.
Yes. In fact, the two-part interview with Jim Martin that's been in ATV was actually heavily edited. We went on for another good 15 minutes or so. So we'll be putting out the full-length interview probably next week on Tuesday. So you can hear even more Jim Martin stories. We talk about Freelancers, Strutgate, invisibility, and all the cool trials and tribulations. We go into Ben's planning of Endeavor modules and stuff. So there's a lot of good stuff in the longer interview. So if you want to hear more of Jim Martin talking, check out the extended interview that will go up on Tuesday.
Sorry, no.
Keep those Greycats, they're going to be useful someday.
Yeah, and the Greycat is sold through the Voyager Direct system and not through the pledge system itself.
It seems like it could almost be a thing now.
Almost.
TL;DRThey don't know yet whether the Dragonfly will fit in the revamped Cutlass; it isn't ruled out and is being looked into, but it can't be promised until it is actually built.
I don't think we know yet.
It's definitely something that we talked about as the Dragonfly started coming together, but it's one of those things where we need to get the Dragonfly built out, know exactly how big it is in compact mode, really sit down also with the Cutlass, plan out what we want those revisions to be...
And figure out not just if there's enough room to cram it in there, but if there's enough room to actually operate it.
Yeah, because that's the big thing. Playing 'will it fit' only goes so far, but 'will it function' is the far more important question. So it's something that we're actively looking into because we do want Drake's ships to feel like a family, but it's not something that we can absolutely promise right now that it will happen.
So it's not ruled out?
No. But it's one of those things we can't know until we actually build it.
So outside of the basic cargo module, a lot of variant gameplay modules aren't really fully confirmed and planned out for the Caterpillar just yet. I know Randy had made a bunch of different possible options, but right now none of those are a locked-in sure thing to happen.
TL;DRThere are two versions on sale, a yellow launch-exclusive and a black standard one, and sample colours shown are possibilities for customization once a paint system arrives, not a promise of multiple variants.
Sure. The yellow Dragonfly is the launch exclusive pre-order version. It's the one that's limited to the concept sale. It's the first run of them that Drake is making. They're doing them in the distinctive yellow and chrome scheme. The standard production model is the black and matte version, which we're also going to have available. And we're actually kind of interested to just compare the sales of the two. There's also a two-pack and there's a Caterpillar that comes with the two of them, on the SKU side. So yes, there's those two different colors. We also, for one of the pages of the material that's coming with it, we were like, oh, let's do paint samples for different possible options for the future, like a car brochure. And so we picked out like 16 different colors. We did a version here that was just our wild thinking. They went to the UK and they were like, okay, but let's do colors that you can actually have in the game. And so there's 16 actual colors it could be with the shader in the game.
So let's add a comment to that. That's not to say that there will be 16 color variants of the Dragonfly.
It's customization stuff we could do down the road.
Exactly. It's anticipating once the eventual paint system comes online.
But we have two different versions available for sale. The yellow will not be offered again. It will be the black next time. As we say in the sale post, we're going to have a certain number of yellows that are available in the universe that aren't still doing the sale, just so it's attainable. But it's supposed to be the rarer limited edition. 20th anniversary Mac or something, or one of those Halo cars. Remember when they did a Halo-branded car? Anyway, like that.
Mike, I'm going to tell you to hold on to that question and wait for our Subscriber Edition RTV that comes at the end of this month. We have members of the Austin server team, server network team. So that would be a good question for them.
Yes, but it overlooks something you should say, which is that yes, there's lots of progress on that, improving the servers, just in the last week with all the feedback from the live launch.
Because in 10 for the Developers, they talked a bit about how one of the things we've talked about is different yearly versions of ships.
Yeah, I saw a thread about that on the forums. That is something we still want to do. It's going to vary from ship to ship. Some of the ships, the ones that are in right now, need to be totally overhauled. But then going forward into the future, we can do a new Aurora each year, a new Hornet each year. So it's going to depend on the ship.
Yep. I think right now, of all the usual suspect ships, there's actually only two ships that we'll have to say hard no, it won't fit in its compact mode to scramble out. So I was actually really happy about that.
Which two?
It would be the Avenger and the Reliant. So it's going to be a little bit too long to fit for the Reliant for how its cargo pads are sort of set up. And then the Avenger, it's actually more like the height clearance and the ramp width. It's just a little too big to cleanly work for either of those.
We haven't fully sorted out how we want crating up a ship for transport to work out, but that is actually something that is being thrown around as well, where it's like, okay, with the whole series we were showing, it's like, yeah, there should be some way to crate up a ship and move it for transport. It would not be something you could immediately use. If that happens, you won't be climbing out of your Aurora in space, popping open a crate, and using your Dragonfly right away. It'd be, okay, you gotta set it up, but it is something that's being looked at with other just crate and transport stuff in general.
I swear, if the Aurora pocket carrier becomes a thing because of this...
No, don't worry. I'll just make sure they all blow up.
And actually, even though we're reading a half hour ago's chat now, I saw a few people talking about how the Dragonfly would work in terms of atmospheric. So it won't actually be an atmospheric flight craft. When you're on a planet surface or on a moon or something, you're going to be running along the ground. When you're pulled out of the gravitational effect of that planet and you're just in space, then you'll be flying on its own. But it won't be in the atmosphere. It's not like a Cessna actually able to fly. It's very much when it's on a planet's surface, it's on the ground.
Or hovering, kind of.
Yes, that's one of the things that we've got on our list. We have yet to ask him about that.
Chris is here for, I think, two weeks. We got him to sit down for 10 for the Chairman immediately. We don't want to take all his time. We know he will give us as much time as he can, but we also want him to work on the game. We've got a bunch of segments to shoot, and that is one of them.
That's up to you, and yes.
I'm personally hoping to see quite a few motorcycle clubs.
We have a long-standing commitment to a first-person universe.
But more than that, I would leave it to Chris.