The developers cover the planned hangar module download via a patcher and server load concerns, and ship damage modeling with individually simulated systems such as life support. They also discuss Newtonian flight, insurance costs, EVA, multi-seat capital ship stations, and Oculus Rift support.
That's a good question. To be honest with you, we haven't determined whether that's the case or not. Generally, when we build all the ships, we try and make them all flyable. So even if they're not something that you would be able to buy, they actually are built and designed so you could fly them. But it's still early days. We've got a lot of stuff still to build, like the Xi'an ships and the Vanduul ships. So I don't know whether you'd necessarily be able to fly all of them, but the intention is to try and get there.
TL;DRIf pirates take your ship you normally return to the nearest friendly planet and file an insurance claim for a new ship, and police or military usually help law-abiding victims in well-policed areas but not in lawless fringe space.
I'm not 100% sure on what the purpose of the question is, but you're always flying your ship. So outside of the fact that perhaps you got in your Merlin, a little short recon fighter, in a Constellation and left it there and someone snuck on and took over your ship, you generally aren't going to be leaving your ship and pirates taking over. So normally if someone attacks your ship, whether it's NPCs or other players, and takes over the ship, then you'll essentially go back to the nearest friendly planet, and that's where an insurance claim would come in and you would get a new ship to fly again. In general, if there's an attack going on and it's in sort of a well-policed area and there are military presence or police force nearby, they will usually come to the aid of the people that are under attack, as long as they're law-abiding citizens. So it's kind of hard to say whether the UEE would show up, because I don't know where this fictional attack would happen. So in the lawless outer fringes of UEE space, no. And in the well-policed areas like near Earth or near Terra, then yes, if there's a sort of unlawful attack happening, most likely there will be law enforcement showing up.
TL;DRSpace has no resistive force and the physics are Newtonian, so a set speed is kept without thrusting, though ship flight computers limit speeds in situations like dogfights to keep the game fun.
So in space there is no resistive force. This debate endlessly goes on, but the underlying physics are fully correct Newtonian. We just control the top speeds of the various ships and a few other things, mainly to make the game fun. But also there's sort of a pseudo-science reason for it. If you're involved in dogfighting and you're making radical orientational changes, actually the forces on the human body... generally, even in today's world, fighter craft can take far more G's than the actual pilot can. So one of the fictions that we use for the fact that our space fighters can't fly at the speed of light and you can turn left instantly is that you couldn't actually do that without killing yourself if you were flying as a person. So it's not a lot of fun to have a bunch of robots flying around. And if we don't have inertial dampeners for the physical forces on you, then you probably would have to keep your speeds of your ship down when engaging in sort of space combat maneuvers, because otherwise, yes, you can go fast in a straight line, but then someone can always fire a laser after you and you'll never go faster than the speed of light. So you'll probably be a sitting duck in that situation. So generally, we don't have a sort of resistive force, but we do sort of have limiting, and the fiction is that the actual ship's computers or the flight control system limits the speeds depending on the situation you're in. Basically in dogfights it won't let you go too fast, because if you go too fast and try and turn quickly, it would physically do bad things to you. So I guess the short answer to that is no, you could set your speed and keep on going and you don't have to keep thrusting to keep a certain speed.
TL;DRThe hangar will be delivered through a small patcher downloaded from the site, which then downloads the full client and keeps patching it, with later modules like dogfighting added the same way.
So we have a whole sort of content delivery patching system. So it's very similar to all the sort of big online games you have seen or played or used. So you'll download the patcher from our site. I think it's about 20 megabytes. And then that patcher will live on your machine and download the full client and then also continually update and patch. So when we do bug fixes or when we do new revisions of the hangar or future stuff like the dogfighting module, it will be downloading that new data. So actually the idea is the very first code delivery of Star Citizen is actually happening with the hangar module. And then over the next couple of years, it's going to just keep growing and adding all the features. So when we move from the hangar to the dogfighting, then the dogfighting gets added to the hangar, and then the planetside gets added to all that. And eventually you'll get to Squadron 42 and the full game.
TL;DRCrashing servers are not wanted, but the hangar module is expected to be roughest at first, since releasing early to backers is meant to expose problems, and backers are asked for patience.
Well, we kind of are known for crashing servers. That's a good video. Well, obviously we don't want things to crash, so we try really hard. But I will say that at the early stages, one of the reasons why we're doing things like the module, and we're going to do the dogfighting at the end of this year, is so we can sort of get the kinks out, figure out what the bandwidth requirements, loads, what works, what doesn't work, what the issues are, in a more controlled environment than at the end of it, when we're going fully live and hopefully there'll be millions of people that want to play. We're doing it with the group of you guys, the backers out there. So we're trying hard, but part of the process is getting this out there and doing it, so I'm not going to pretend that the very first hangar module is going to be flawless, because I actually suspect it will probably be the roughest at the beginning. And then over time, we'll get better as we figure out stuff and get the kinks out and figure out where all the pressure points are and ways to avoid them. So that's been part of the process. You'd rather things don't crash, and you may want to wait a little bit, but I think it's fun helping us make this as fun and robust a process as possible. So we don't want it to happen, but I think at these early stages, it's probably going to happen. It is what it is. It's early development. And the other thing I want to emphasize to everyone out there, since we're getting very close to the hangar module, is that we are going to be sharing code in a much earlier state than I've ever shared in my life, even with a publisher. Normally on the games I've made, QA doesn't get any code until two plus years into the development process. We're relatively shortly into the development process here. So we're actually sharing code on a public basis and functionality on a public basis much sooner than I've ever done in my career, and I think probably much sooner than anyone's done in the industry. We're doing it because it's kind of an idea we have to do iterative development and involve everyone that's backed the game, because, well, you made it happen, and it's fun. And I think part of the fun of everything is participating in the journey and seeing how it's getting done and having your voice heard and everything else. So it's all in the spirit of that. But you have to remember that this is not a finely polished, honed, beautiful, bug-free piece of software that you would normally get towards the end. And by the way, a lot of games aren't even like that, even when they're at the end. So you're going to have to have a little bit of patience, especially in the short run. But long term, I think it's going to make a much better game, a much better polished game, a much more robust game when we get to the end. Because usually you don't get this kind of stress testing early. You don't get this kind of feedback early. So it'll make a much, much better game. But it requires a little bit of patience from you guys in the early days.
TL;DRNothing should cost money while you're not playing, so no bills pile up for a ship sitting in the hangar, and running costs only apply when you play, where you should at least break even.
Yeah, absolutely. So one of my big pet peeves, and one of the reasons why we don't have a subscription model for the actual game itself, is that I don't think anything should cost you any money if you're not playing the game. So basically, the only issue you have is when you're actually playing the game, you're going to have running costs of playing it. You've got to pay some landing fees, or you're buying some cargo or buying some more ammunition, get some more missiles or something. But that's when you're actually doing stuff. So yes, to actually go and do stuff, there are some costs involved. And then hopefully you'll be doing well enough that you'll be making money and a profit. I mean, that's kind of how the real world works. But if you just go off somewhere for a month, when your ship's sitting in the hangar, it's not like you're going to come back to a bill for your hangar for the unused time you haven't been flying around, which is actually a little different from real life, because you put stuff in storage in real life, they still bill you. But no, you should not have to constantly be feeding money if you're not playing the game. If you're playing it, then yes, there are some running costs, but hopefully your actions as a trader, as a pirate, as a merchant, as a bounty hunter, as an explorer, all the rest of the stuff, you should be at least breaking even, if not making money.
So yes, the answer is yes. The idea is we have all these ship systems on the ship. And so the ship systems are obvious things like engines, power plants, shields, weapons. We've talked about cooling, radars, avionics. So avionics would be things like your flight control system, targeting, weapon control systems, targeting software, but also life support is included, and we have all these individually modeled and they all communicate with each other. And so the life support goes to the cockpit module, and if that gets damaged, then yes, you're in trouble, and then you'll be essentially, if you have a space suit, you'll be on your space suit's air supply, and when that's up, you're dead. So if your life support gets taken out, then you probably would want to head out of the battle as quickly as possible, I would say.
TL;DRShips have physicalized internal systems at specific positions, and hits are traced to the parts they strike, so knowing where something like life support sits and using suitable ammunition could allow a quicker disable or kill.
Yeah, the actual idea that we have is that it's beyond just hitting a ship. In the old days you would just blast away at a ship, knock down the shields, knock the armor down and then it would blow up, or maybe a little more advanced would be you'd do an internal hit and you'd roll a dice to see which of the internal systems got damaged. Well, in this we actually have specific positions on all the ships of where these items are, and they've got their own physicalized geometry. And so we actually trace, whether it's a laser hit, a projectile hit, an explosive hit, where it hits and which internal parts, once you've got through the shields, once you've got through the armor, actually get hit. We actually do that correctly physically. So if you're someone that knows where on a ship, say, the life support would be, and you're using a certain kind of ammunition, so for instance, a hard projectile ammunition has a different penetrative effect than, say, laser bolts, then maybe an armor-piercing round to go through a shell where you know life support is could be a way of doing a quicker, easier disable or kill. But obviously that's much more difficult than just doing the general blast away and knock the shields and armor down. But we want that sort of nuance, and if you really understand the different ships and all the different pros and cons, maybe you get an advantage as a pilot in the battle, just like it would be in real life. So simple to get into, but there's a lot of complexity and detail if you go for it.
TL;DRThe Oculus Rift runs in the game and engine but has latency rough edges, so support may not be in the first hangar version, though it should be functional by dogfighting and maybe earlier.
We've got the Rift. We have it running inside the game and the engine. There are still some rough edges in terms of latency and a few other things that are to do more with the CryEngine side of things that we're working with Crytek on improving. So I'm not sure if the Oculus Rift support is going to make it in for the first version of the hangar, but it's definitely going to be functional by the time we get to the dogfighting, and maybe before that. So we're working, like I said, on little things like latency and stuff like that. But it's cool. We love it. So it's going to be great.
No, it's definitely not a retail version. There's the development kit version, which we have here, and I think you can get. But the really exciting Oculus Rift is going to be the 1080p version, not the one we've got, which is 720, because it just has higher resolution, which is important because when the screen gets that close to your eye, you actually can discern pixels. So 1080p is a better experience. Just wait for that.
TL;DRShips have seats with assignable functions like piloting, weapons, communications and turrets, so bigger ships will need multiple crew at different stations, in the direction of Artemis but probably not as detailed.
Wow, okay, well there you go. So no, the quick answer is that the idea on the bigger ships is that they definitely have different stations. So all our ships, even the small ones, have what are called seats inside our sort of spaceship vehicle system, and you sit down and the seat has functions that are attached to that seat. So this function could be piloting the ship, the function could be controlling the weapons, the function could be controlling communications, the function could be controlling target assignment. All of those things combined. So there are all these different functions that seats can be assigned. So in a single-seat fighter, what generally happens is that the piloting and the weapons control are assigned to one seat, obviously. But in the bigger ships, that will be spread apart. And obviously even weapons control will be spread apart between multiple seats. And then even when you get into a turret, that's actually also a seat, and that would be a turret that would just control that particular turret. So yes, we're going to actually have the aspect of multiple people in multiple seats on a bridge doing different things. And so the idea is on the bigger ships you have to have multiple people to operate them efficiently, because there are too many things going on for any one person to control all at once. So I don't know if it's necessarily going to be quite as detailed as the Artemis simulator, but it's in that direction, and certainly more so than any other space sim in our mold has ever done.
TL;DREvery ship comes with insurance, lifetime insurance only avoids re-upping the premium, bigger ships cost more to insure, and premiums should be coverable from in-game earnings, but no specific cost model is given.
So, look, with insurance, first of all, every ship that you buy comes with insurance. The only difference between standard hull insurance and lifetime insurance is really just re-upping the payment. So like right now, if you have a car, everybody has to pay every three months or six months or every year to keep their insurance valid, right? So the same is in our universe, and the only difference is when someone has lifetime insurance, their premium basically lasts forever. So they just don't have the additional costs of paying to re-up their insurance. But that generally, in the greater scheme of things, isn't meant to be a huge amount of money. Obviously, insurance on a bigger ship is more than insurance on a smaller ship, just like it would be in real life. But as a running cost, just like in real life, the insurance costs that you have on your spaceship in Oz or in [...] So you should be able to cover your insurance premiums and other things like landing fees and all the rest of the stuff, fuel costs, replenishing your hard ammunition, all that from your actual game action. So as long as you actually successfully manage to buy and sell some stuff or take over stuff or do a mission, you should be paying your running costs. So the sort of normal standard insurance really isn't that much different from lifetime insurance, other than lifetime insurance just meaning that you have a slightly reduced running cost down the road. But I'd like to stress that overall that's a pretty insignificant amount of your general costs, and a pretty insignificant amount of what you'll be doing in the game.
Yeah, that was cool. Yeah, no, so there is definitely going to be EVA in the game. You'll be able to get out and do things like repair, but also there'll be an element of combat in it. So it's part of the plan, and not particularly actually that difficult. There was actually already zero-G support inside CryEngine. We're going to do more additions to it to make it cooler. But yeah, there's definitely going to be some level of EVA stuff.
Right now I'm placing some decals in the hangar, making it look a little more grungy, a little bit lived in. I've been doing all kinds of things. I've been writing documentation. I've been jumping into some technology stuff.