Developers answer community questions on Alpha 3.13: ROC-DS mining, ship names and serials, SDF shields, hull degradation, reputation, the physical cargo refactor, and Spawn Closets. They also cover caves, trading supply, ship spawn limits and the delayed ship-to-station docking.
So I can take that one. Essentially, it's not desired to be that small. It's a current limitation we're looking to fix later on. Currently, we have to account for 32-character-long names, and essentially we can't dynamically scale the font size based off the length yet. So we do want to make them larger, but if we just made them larger right now, they become less sharp, and obviously it'd be compounded by the issue I just mentioned. Long term, we want to make them larger, but in the short term, this was just an interim solution to get it out.
TL;DRThe ROC-DS is meant to be a more efficient, better group experience than two small miners, with more capacity, reach and beam power, and balance may change with feedback.
I'll jump in again. The premise when we release a vehicle that has multiple seats or multiple operator seats is that it should always be a better experience playing with your friends than it is on your own. Now, that's not to mean that playing on your own shouldn't be fun. You should be able to do what you want. But in terms of the ROC-DS, the plan was that it should be a more efficient way of mining and a more efficient way of doing the activity that you want, rather than having two smaller mining vehicles where you can go and do what you want. Having one singular larger vehicle, A, it's got a more powerful beam. It has a longer reach that can reach into areas that you can't get. And I know that that's not necessarily something that's going to be beneficial straight out of the box, but in the future when we add more accessible caves and things, that will become a factor. It's got four times the capacity of the base ROC. And again, I know that a lot of people currently use the mining vehicle, say, in the back of a ship. They'll fly to that location, mine, and then basically use the inventory system to take all the mineables out, create a box in their cargo grid, and keep going. So obviously they've kind of circumvented the limitation of the capacity of the vehicle, but the creation of that box was always supposed to be a temporary placeholder thing. So eventually when we do proper physical inventory, which I've talked numerous times about... Yeah, the creation of that box was always supposed to be a placeholder situation. You were supposed to be dealing with them on a manual basis. So eventually you'll have to remove those and basically be able to put them into your ship, but you won't just have this magic bag appearing in front of you. So when you talk about the ROC-DS having four times the capacity, you're actually driving into caves that are accessible, it's got a longer reach, it's got a stronger beam, then all of a sudden it becomes a reason, like, okay, I get it. And when you're driving in the caves, you want somebody to be focusing on driving and not tipping over, because it's going to be rough terrain, and one person just focusing on the beam itself. So essentially that is the high-level intentions. Obviously balance is subject to change depending on the feedback and what we get in there, but I think the first initial outset is looking pretty promising. I will say that obviously this information is being passed on through me, via John, to the community, but that is the intention. And I know that from a high-level point of view, it's definitely something that I've been involved in in terms of the intentions of multi-operator vehicles, for example for the tank. I'm always a big believer in the premise that you should be able to do the singular function by yourself, but then adding more people in makes it a better experience. So if you just want to go into the smaller vehicle and do it by yourself, you can do that. But if you go into the larger vehicle, in terms of the ROC-DS, it should be, A, more efficient. You're coordinating with your buddies, and you feel like you've got purpose playing together. So that is the current reasoning and intentions. But like you said, John will no doubt go into the absolute nitty-gritty of all the different decisions around that, but at least it gives everybody a high-level idea.
There are plans, but first we need to fix the pipeline. Basically, there are technical issues that the team run into, and it makes it a very painstaking process for them. So once we fix that technical issue, then we'll actually introduce new mineables. And those are direct words from Ian.
No, not with that one. Once we actually finish the cargo adjustments, then we'll start seeing the hauling missions. And once that comes in, then we can do the different size SCU boxes, so on and so forth. So then it makes the bulk hauling make sense in these bigger ships that can do it.
TL;DRThe cargo refactor's main goal is making cargo physical so it can be moved and pirated; it is being worked on, with box-size and stacking challenges to solve.
In terms of the... I can give you some information, because obviously it's under the purview of inventories. Essentially, the biggest factor about the refactor on the cargo side of things is making it physical. That's the biggest thing. So right now, for example, if you want to go and use the tractor beam to move cargo from point A to point B, or you want to pirate someone's cargo, you can't do that, because even though the objects have collision and you don't walk through them or anything like that, they're not physically represented in the world in terms of being able to interact with them and pick them up and move them. So the first factor is that we want to make it physical so that you can do that. And that's part of the road to physical inventory, shall we say. And once we get there, that obviously has many different tendrils that span off into, okay, well, now you've bought something from the shop. The shop has to deliver in a physical nature. Okay, well, how do those cargo boxes... how do you arrange them? Do we have some form of magnetic snapping system so that you can then put on the boxes? And it's never as simple as it sounds. Before my time, we created the box of one SCU size, which is actually 1.25 meters cubed. Unfortunately, 1.25 meters cubed doesn't divide well by one. So we have boxes in the world that are 50 by 50 by 50 centimeters. So clearly we have challenges to overcome when we're talking about stacking multiple boxes in your cargo in a physical nature. So there's lots of different knock-on effects. It's not just refactoring and doing the physicalization. But it is coming. It's being worked on. It's all going to be put there eventually. But that at least gives you a tidbit into the cargo refactor.
It is a bug, unfortunately, yes. You can't roll Khajiit, you can't do sneaking, you can't pickpocket, unfortunately. So yes, it is currently a bug and hopefully will be resolved. But that's not to say that when we do local inventory, coming soon, you won't be able to steal other people's things. You just have to disable them first.
Well, some ships in the PTU are doing it more than we want. And even at 100%, it's still more than we feel makes it visible to fly through. So we're fixing them as we go, and then some of them will be disabled for live if we can't fix it in time. Obviously, if you guys are seeing this playing PTU, please use the Issue Council to call out any of these things. It just helps us out in finding something that we might have overlooked. Obviously, in the future, you will need to go to a repair shop to fix this. I don't think Rich or I have talked about, okay, hey, I can go out there and magically clean this or squeegee it down just yet.
TL;DRIn 3.13 the trolleys and mounted guns probably won't change core gameplay, since they're released for feedback first, with later uses planned for cargo delivery, missions and fortified-location combat.
I think in 3.13 itself, it probably won't change the core experience. Those are features that have come from my teams, and generally, in an ideal world, we'd release features with all the other teams that have coordinated on them and we'd get them live in a situation where they're fully integrated into all of the gameplay loops in the game. Star Citizen though is a vast game and has lots of different systems. So in this implementation, it's going to be very similar to when we released body dragging. The trolleys are there, the mounted guns are there in the locations where you can go and use them. And it means that we can get feedback from people for the feel. And it's already highlighted several issues on the Evocati and on PTU. The trolleys, for example, have been put in a location that's not really fully suitable for those kinds of gameplay mechanics right now. For example, the stairs and elevators don't really talk well or nicely with the trolleys. But what we can get an idea of is, do the trolleys feel nice? Do they work? Obviously, we've got an issue right now where they keep disconnecting a bit, which we're looking into right now to improve. And then the mounted guns, for example: how do they feel? How do they play? So we're absolutely trying to push them live to get them into people's hands so people can play with them and we can get really good feedback on it. And then basically this will segue into what Todd's about to say in terms of the next iteration.
Yeah, so basically the way that our teams work, a lot of times Rich is developing these new features and then the content teams that I work with are about exploiting those features and using them in different ways. Because you can see obviously they're still working on it, meaning they're still fixing bugs, they're still working through some of these issues, where we're at in the quarter. So I can't say, OK, this is exactly how we're going to use these things until I actually get the feature and we can play around with it in missions or even just in sandbox experiences. With these things that Rich's teams are developing, most of the time we want them used in sandbox experiences. So you're coming around and you get to a location and you're like, oh, I want to use this or I want to use that. But with missions, we need time to actually implement them into missions and be able to build missions around these features. So that's kind of how we work. We work in a staggered development. Rich and his team develop these things and put them out, and then my teams take some time and basically implement them into sandbox experiences as well as missions.
And to be honest, a perfect example of that was the tractor beam. We developed the tractor beam, which went live in the main patch, and then when Xenothreat came along, you could see it being used as part of the core feature of that mission. Now, if Xenothreat didn't exist, we'd have had the tractor beam in the PU and you'd have been able to use it, and obviously it would have had a core use case of going in space. But that was a really good use case of that mechanic that really highlighted it. So when it works really well, that's the goal. And obviously, because we're in a live production, you get this kind of staggered development. And just on what the goal of mounted guns and trolley push-pull is in terms of how they're supposed to change the gameplay experience: in terms of trolleys themselves, we want that to be tying into moving cargo boxes and being able to have your cargo delivered to your hangar rather than just automatically spawning in your ship, and then you'll have to manipulate it up onto your ship. Similar to if you drove to, I'm going to say Home Depot, although Home Depot doesn't exist in the UK, B&Q, but you'd go to one of these warehouse stores and they would say, you've got to put it on the pallets there, and then you would say, okay, cool, I'm now going to load it into my vehicle. That's the kind of premise that we want for trolleys. But we also want trolleys to be used in missions where it's a simple Last of Us puzzle: okay, I need to be able to get up there, so I can now move this trolley. It's got a box on it. I can mantle up the box. Now I can get to a higher location. So allowing it to unlock gateways. And on the mounted gun side, this is something we've been really pushing on for mixed arms combat. Because you probably noticed that the mounted gun is a ship weapon. It takes down ships. It absolutely erases people, but it takes down ships. The hope is that you can have a fortified location and fight back from that fortified location, or AI can use it in the future to fight you back and you've got to either go in on the ground and disable them so you can bring the ships in, or for later when we do player-owned locations and things like that. It's all about offering different opportunities for attack and defense with mounted guns.
Yeah, I mean, we've got quite a lot of bugs around the doors, because what should happen is that the door shouldn't close. It's like if I go into an elevator now at work, if I'm stood in the elevator, the elevator tries to shut and then it detects me there, or it tries to crush me for a little bit and then pops open, and that's what should happen. But clearly game physics creates some fun things. But yeah, that just needs to be fixed on the game code side. And when we build them in, it gives us this additional quarter to fix those issues.
Partially. Obviously the 30Ks and any sort of crashes need to be fixed, and that's on our side. So we need to fix those. However, if you die from combat or messing up mining, just putting too much juice into it, crashing when landing or anything like that, you will lose the items. It's basically like you upgrading a ship or anything like that. You will lose the weapons, unless we start getting into insurance, but that to me is a little bit at a later date. But yeah, the idea is that if it's something that you did, versus a server crash or a client crash and stuff like that, then yeah, that's on you.
So yes, all ships will have them. The new visuals are predicated on replacing the entire old hull hit detection method. So under the hood, the gameplay is the same as before, but with better visuals and feedback. But yeah, the idea is that we're sweeping through every single one of them.
TL;DRServer frame rate is slightly better than in 3.12, but they aren't yet fully happy, and performance work from multiple teams continues with no single silver bullet.
Right now, basically, we had something that was checked in, or something that was removed, on Thursday. So this morning when we came in, we did see better frame rate on the server. Now, it's like one or two frames per second better, but it is better than what we have in 3.12 right now. So yeah, we're working towards it, obviously, but it's still not at the point that I think we're completely happy with. But again, we're constantly doing optimizations. We're constantly going through and reviewing the RAD captures on it and making sure that if there's a feature or if there's content that's causing something to spike, we can actually fix it.
And it's important to remember that the frame rate and optimization thing is something that's being tackled by multiple teams from multiple angles. Graphics are working on stuff with the Gen12 renderer. The network team is constantly working on stuff. You've got the stuff for iCache and meshing that's all designed to help. So there's no one silver bullet for performance.
No, unfortunately not. Basically what happens is we're able to optimize a lot, and then every single quarter, obviously, we throw new stuff in: new features, new content, so on and so forth. So every time that happens, we have to go through and sweep through those, make sure that those are optimized as well as they possibly can be, and then continue to optimize other things that maybe before might have been a little too risky or something like that. But obviously with time we were able to solve some of those issues and move forward with it with new code or even new ways of handling stuff on the content side.
In every game that I've ever worked on, and Todd's probably the same, there never is a silver bullet. It just doesn't exist. Performance is a death by a thousand cuts. Essentially you have to look at those and look at where they are and identify them and work on them. But I know there's plenty of people on my team who are just purely dedicated to performance. There's definitely a big initiative this year to try and improve it. So we just have to evaluate and keep at it.
TL;DRShip serial numbers are based on the persistent unique identifier (GUID) of the ship's entity, which stays until the ship is reclaimed and then changes.
So currently we have a label called a GUID that is a persistent value of the data tag that is associated with that ship. Essentially it's called the ship entity GUID, and that is what it's based on. So it's persistent until you reclaim your ship, and then we entitle you a new ship and that has a different GUID. If you imagine we've got thousands of different entities, tens of thousands of different entities, well, actually hundreds of thousands of different entities in Star Citizen across all of the game, they all need to be uniquely identified. So we have this unique identifier that's assigned to all of these items. It's not just ships. Everything has it. But yeah, for the ships, this was just something that we could base it on. It made sense. Kind of like a number plate. They have to be unique. And that's it, pretty much.
So there's no real clear definitive answer on this, because it depends. If you're switching sides to a reputation that is at the direct opposite, if I'm going from the order to the other side, then when I'm ranking up reputation in one, that might be decreasing it in another. So obviously then switching sides is much harder. But if I'm going to a neutral faction where it didn't really decrease it as much, it might be less. So it really is a variable experience, and I think it's been designed that way. Some factions will hate each other more than others. Some will like each other more than others. So that's the clearest answer I can give, because obviously it's not just as simple as everybody hates each other or vice versa.
Well, it's in progress. It basically allows us to have better control over AI spawning. It allows us to do the randomization on it so that we can randomly choose which ones are spawned, and then they don't look cloned. For us, in particular from a design perspective, it allows us to set up and do things a lot quicker, a lot easier. For 3.13, it's not going in. For a later 3.13 patch, we're basically going to be reviewing it, but for 3.13.0, it's not going in. But basically, we'll be trying to exploit it in very small sequences and test it and see how it rolls out. So we'll be testing it possibly in 3.13.1 or in 3.14.
TL;DRFlying or driving deep through caves is something they're looking towards, but linking two cave openings is technically harder, and they plan another pass on caves in Q4.
Right now, the way that we think about caves is... We haven't prototyped a huge hole or anything like that for you to fly in. We tried one out a little bit, but we haven't really gotten into it to say, OK, yeah, this feels right. Now, as far as linking up two holes, that to me is where, from a tech standpoint, I think that's a little bit more difficult. And then it's also just creating that content so it lines up perfectly. For us to be able to drive into them or even fly into them and have more of a flight or driving experience in the caves or those entrances, yes, that is something that we're looking towards. And it could be that, yes, that's just the end of the cave and it doesn't branch out into the FPS area or anything like that. We want to be able to have all those options, even looking forward into the future. The idea would be that it could be that you're going in from an underground facility and then that translates into a cave aspect, kind of like what we have with the prisons and the escape aspect. But all of that wasn't necessarily built the same way that we procedurally do our caves. And so that's the part that we're going to be looking at: how these adjust and how we're going to be moving forward with the caves. Basically, we'll be doing another pass on them, I think, in Q4.
We have some, but it's not to the full extent that we want just yet. Again, these came in this quarter. We always give the teams a little bit more time. We placed some mineables in there, but then we'll evaluate it and look at the telemetry of players actually using it and players breaking it there in those caves, and then we'll be using it more in the future.
Now, I'm assuming that they're talking about the turning in, like the sell-all-instantly aspect. In the future, yes. We need to basically adjust the way that we do selling. Right now, it's not very friendly. But then, obviously, in the future, we will be looking at bigger quantum sensitive cargo in general. Versus just a 0.5 by 0.5 meter box, we'll be looking at the big, maybe 32 SCU boxes, or even one or two that you have to use the cargo beam or the tractor beam to move around, and to then be able to sell it on the ship kind of thing.
Well, yes, I got your sarcasm there. It's a bug. It is going away. So the idea is that obviously with that, what we'll be doing is making sure that you can turn it on or off in the options menu. So give them the choice.
Yeah, we have seen that issue. I think that we've resolved some of them. There were some issues with uneven terrain and the way that the vehicles were basically damaging themselves as they drove over it. But basically, I don't know if we've gotten everything, but if you're playing it and you've seen it happen, obviously, please use the Issue Council and we'll look at it and we'll try to get it resolved ASAP.
I think it depends on what they consider a significant amount. In particular, certain shops are not supposed to be carrying a hell of a lot of inventory. And then also the way that we refill that inventory changes and adjusts, and where it's currently at, in particular with these changes going in now, we will be updating. I can guarantee you, we will be updating it. And then it will just be stuff that happens. I don't know if it can be hotfixed. And if it can be, then we'll update it right away and it won't require us to do a new patch.
TL;DRThe plan is to show ship names wherever the ship appears, including the scan AR marker and, once refactored, the ASOP terminal and mobiGlas, but it is a phased release because mobiGlas is large.
Yes. So currently, the ASOP terminal and mobiGlas are built out of Flash. So we try not to do any amendments to those systems, because they're going to be refactored or redone in Building Blocks. So the plan is for them to be refactored and to have them be displayed there. And also, under my remit in redoing radar and scanning, they will be displayed as part of the scan. So when you scan a ship, all of the party information, the ship name, ship information that you get will be integrated into that one AR marker around the ship entity, and then you'll have all the other information on the scanning. The plan is to display it wherever it is. Anytime you see the ship, you should see the ship name, but it's just a phased release, because the mobiGlas is such a big entity. It needs to be refactored, and that is something that is, again, in the pipes.
It's something we've talked about. One of the things that we'll be looking at in the future is basically different cave archetypes. I think it depends on, obviously, the size of the asteroid, and can it hold something that would actually warrant a big enough cave or even creature to be in there. But I would love there to be... to be able to go out and explore those big caves and come into different creatures as well as different minerals and different challenges that obviously you could evade through those things versus crawling through them.
Yes, again, that's the same deal with the Flash. The ASOP terminal UI is currently built in Flash. Eventually, it will be transferred over to Building Blocks. When we do that work, the ship name should be displayed on the ASOP terminal.
So Bayer brings up any ones that he knows about daily. We do daily live sync meetings with player relations and the community, and from there, they bring up anything that they're aware of. So obviously we try to fix as many as we possibly can. Some of them still might not be fixed. But I'm more than happy for people to call them out and basically bring it up again and say, hey, let's fix this, or call it out on the Issue Council. And then basically Bayer always brings it to our attention.
So currently, reputation loss for missions occurs on mission failure, or if you abandon that mission. The current mission system doesn't differentiate between failure or abandonment due to logout or disconnect, or you actually doing that. So right now, it's kind of a one-size-fits-all. Obviously, things change going forward, but right now, there's no differentiation between that.
It's only available for docking, and it's automatically controlled when in docking mode and the Constellation is targeted. So it's very specific right now.
I mean, we used to have stuff like you'd fire a missile and you'd be able to outpace the missile. These things are just bugs. Like Todd says, if you experience something like that, send it along to the Issue Council. It helps us a lot. And then we can look at it and get it evaluated.
TL;DREveryone is meant to emit a signature carrying their information, readable only within range and harder in areas like gas clouds, with party and org members always receiving it; hiding identity is a long-term plan, not coming soon.
Well, the premise long term, especially around radar and scanning, is that everybody should have a certain signature that they emit. That signature will obviously contain information because by UEE law, you have to send it out. So when you scan something, you will obviously be able to find that information, but you have to be within a certain range to get that signature reading. And the ambient of the area that they're in, so if they're in the Coil or they're in a gas cloud or something like that, then it's going to be harder to get that information. But then obviously, if they're in your party or they're in your guild or org or that kind of thing, then that information will be transmitted to you. I know that we've talked a lot of times about bounty hunting and spoofing signals and things like that. So there's definitely long-term plans around hiding your identity, but it's not coming anytime soon.
I mean, right now, it's all heavily tied to performance. The more ships that we spawn, the worse the server gets, so on and so forth. So basically, right now, we believe everyone gets three per player currently, but the third is the first one to get cleaned up. And then once we hit that limit, then it hits the second, and so on and so forth. So it is a known issue. Ideally, with server performance and other factors that are coming in, this will be helped. Then everybody can have three ships or three vehicles spawned.
So actually, I missed a go/no-go. That was happening basically in this slot, so 30 minutes ago. So I don't know. I haven't checked my email, but I'm assuming it was a go.
Yeah, basically. I'm assuming so. I think they were close last time. I'm not there, so I can't answer it. But knowing that team and knowing how Dave works and everything like that, I'm sure it's tightened up a lot.
TL;DRReputation is planned to bring perks like discounts, faster access, and unlocks of ships, weapons and armor tied to missions, and the speakers call it a fundamental building block for progression.
That's the plan. In essence, if you think of frequent flyer miles or anything like that in real life, you use it, you get perks. It might be that you get an item for free. It might be that you get 10% off. It might be that now it allows you to access it or load quicker, or you get moved to the front of the line, per se. There's multiple ways for us to go through and do this and make sure that this, to me, is kind of gifting or unlocking stuff for the players and unlocking benefits for them one way or the other. So it could be that that benefit goes from 10% to 15% to 20%, or it could be that you did so well with a certain... oh my gosh, I'm blanking on the word... a certain corporation, now you get to fly their ships or you get to fly one of their ships or something like that. So let's say you're a delivery person. You move up to, let's say, a small delivery van, and then from there in the future, maybe you get to drive a Caterpillar or something like that that's branded Covalex or any other kind of thing. So that's the idea behind it: based off of what they do and what they're geared towards, the mission givers or even the corporations, that's the way that we'll be looking at gifting things and unlocking certain tiers.
And especially if you think about the ship progression in the game, the ship progression is very much driven economically. Obviously, you will have potential other ways, like Todd says, in terms of reputation, to be able to unlock different ships. But from an actor or FPS side of things, if you own an Idris, the choice of which armor or which weapons or which food you should buy is obviously minuscule. You just buy the best that you can get, because the pricing is never going to be the same as an Idris. It's like saying to Jeff Bezos, hey, which island do you want? And then in the same conversation going, which packet of crisps do you want? It doesn't tie up in terms of progression. So reputation is definitely going to be the underpinning of the vertical progression of weapons and armor and all of the gadgets that you'll get access to. Because right now, for example, we have, I think, 30-plus weapons in Star Citizen that are live, and a lot of them provide different play styles, or what I'd classify as horizontal progression. So you could pick the P6-LR, or you could pick the Atzkav. Now, the Atzkav has more of an area-of-effect damage, whereas the P6-LR is more about single strike. But it's a choice about playstyle rather than a choice about one being better than the other. And we do want to offer that vertical progression where you can get better-performing weapons, whether the barrel's been changed or different materials are used to go into making the gun or different innards, so that they are direct upgrades. And those things are things that you shouldn't just be able to go to a store and say, oh, look, it's an extra 10,000 credits or whatever. Those things should be locked behind missions. And then that will give players a bit more clear objectives, like, oh, I want to get that thing, I have to do X, Y and Z. It gives reason or purpose to the play, because obviously we have this giant sandbox environment, and we're making a sandbox game, but it's nice to have objectives inside that sandbox, so you can decide, okay, I want to go and do this, or my goal is to get a bigger ship, so I'm going to go do trading or mining because I need to get credits. Or, oh, I want to get this particular item or gear, so I'm going to do these specific missions. And then you can work towards your own personal goals. So reputation is a fundamental addition to the game.
I think there's a ton of opportunity for other teams, mission teams, content teams, feature teams, to all look at the reputation system when it's fully going and firing on all thrusters and ask how they could integrate this into their new content.
Like Rich said before, or maybe it was you that said it, I do view this as a linchpin, a fundamental building block for the way that we unlock things and move the game forward for the players.
TL;DRThe plan is the usual wipe rather than a complete one, though they reserve the right to change that, and they want to avoid frequent wipes so long-term ship goals can be tuned.
Exactly. But again, the reason why we don't want to wipe constantly is, again, this sounds wrong, because we want to make sure that earning a ship and stuff like that is a very long-term goal. FPS purchases or anything like that, we always view those as short-term goals. Earning a ship, that's a long-term goal. And we want to see, okay, is that something that you need to grind for three months or six months or a year to get? Just to see if our numbers are right, for tuning and those types of purposes. So obviously, that ties back into the exploits. Yes, we want to know of any exploits, because that's short-cutting the goals and the goalposts and everything like that we have.