The developers say in-game ship buying or renting hasn't been discussed, despite the alpha 3.2 shop item kiosks. They explain that insurance times will use real-world time, like habitation rentals and cargo or refueling timers. They also say the Genesis Starliner won't arrive within the next year.
No. We haven't talked about that.
TL;DRNo release date is given for the Genesis Starliner; ship priorities follow each release's needs, it has no driving need in the Persistent Universe right now, and it isn't expected in the next year or so.
Well, we try and match ships priorities with the needs of each release. And while there's a schedule in place right now, when we plan out future releases, those priorities may change. The roadmap is on the website. It's not listed right now. So don't expect it in the next year or so, but I can't give you an actual release on that ship, unfortunately.
In the years past, we developed ships as we had resources for them. When you have the right mix of artists and the ships, it's like, okay, put them on there. Squadron 42 needs were a big priority for some ships, like the reason the Avenger got reworked recently, because of its need for Squadron 42. The Starliner, which is a ship that's special to me, because it was the very first concept promotion that I got to work on myself when I hired in, doesn't really have a driving need in the Persistent Universe right now, so it's not being prioritized. But you can bet that when that day comes, I'll be right there on ship's day, just like, it's happening!
TL;DRInsurance timers are planned to run in real-world time, but the clock won't start any time soon, not while server wipes continue, and no date is decided; players will get plenty of warning.
Insurance times, as far as I understand it, are going to be based on real world months, days, weeks. We have other things like rent a habitation unit for a week, a month, a year, and discounts for those various amount of time. So insurance is going to be very similar, much like we're trying to implement loading times for cargo and refueling times. These are going to be things that are, something like it'd be weird to see a timer going down super fast just because game time is actually sped up to help allow people to see different day and night cycles. So all timers, as far as I understand, are going to be real time. So that it's easily understandable, it's consistent across the game. And players, if they go on vacation for a week, won't get kind of screwed out of some of their time just because they happen to be out of town.
A lot of times these questions tend to deal with subjects that are still quite a ways out in development. This is one of those such questions. This is not a system that we plan to implement any time in the near future. We're not going to start the clock on these. So if you have a ship with six months or 12 months or three years insurance, we don't anticipate that clock starting anytime soon.
And certainly while we're still doing server wipes for our own testing purposes, it would never start during that time phase. So it'll be sometime after that. When it is, it's going to be up to directors to kind of figure out when they want that timing to be. But yeah, it'll be in the future.
We can't tell you anything about when. Like I said, it hasn't been decided, but you can rest assured that when that decision has been made from the director levels and whatnot, we'll let you know. We'll give you plenty of heads up, like, hey, the clocks are going to start at this time or whatever.
Yeah, our thinking is get all the game timers in, make them work cohesively together, and then we worry about the details of flipping stuff live.