The developers answer fan questions on fuel grades (regular, boost, jump), paid medical services on ships like the Cutlass Red and Endeavour, and FPS weapon showrooms in the mobiglas. They also cover alien life on derelicts, cosmic events, multi-crew seats and Cutlass Blue holding cells.
TL;DRHolding cells are still being worked out; the thinking is that a captured player appears in the cell via a cutscene but only for a short time-out, to avoid griefing, before a prison interstitial.
In terms of holding cells we're still figuring out the dynamics. If you're a bounty hunter and you got and arrest someone, we don't want you to be able to hold someone in that cell indefinitely because that enables griefing, so what we're thinking is you capture someone, they'll be in your cell for your intents and purposes, but the player who WAS captured has a very small time-out then ends up in the whatever-you-call-it prison interstitial, as a bit of a time wasting penalty that they need to serve or escape from. Essentially what we'll do is put someone IN your holding cell, so maybe you arrest them when you board their ship, or perhaps you stun them on planetside (if we're allowing you to do that) then that person/what they look like will "appear" in the cell through a cutscene or similar visuals, and on the other side the player will come back into the world in their own way.
TL;DROn multi-crew ships, functions like weapons, radar and power can be split across seats, with the biggest ships getting dedicated stations, making crews more effective than a solo player.
The idea on multi-crew ships is that different seats allow you to spilt up the functions, so obviously in a single seater you're flying it as well as managing weapons, as well as the radar, as well as communications (not yet, but will be) and power etc etc. So on the bigger multi-crew ships we're allowing you to spilt that responsibility to other seats. Some like the Constellation you could fly by yourself or you could fly with friends you can custom distribute these tasks if you need to, but on the very big ships there will be designated stations like engineering, or weapons, or helm, comms officer etc. We're definitely making it so that the multi crew ship's functions will be split if needed, and you'll be more effective if these responsibilities are handled by friends or NPCs because then you can multitask on a different level. It's actually one of the things I'm most excited about in the PU, I mean AC is cool and higher fidelity than I've implemented before, but really when you're able to fly around with friends manning various parts of the ship and you can go wherever you want, like EVA around the ship, board another ship, walk around planetside etc. So I feel like the co-operative play aspect will be really strong, which we emphasise in these Multi-crew ships, which I think is the most fun in PVE or PVP situations.
TL;DRA dedicated scholar or diplomat role is probably too specific this early and no ambassador plans exist, though exploration will tie into academia and more roles may be added over time.
I think that's a great suggestion, probably too specific for us this early on really, but definitely on the exploration side there are gameplay elements that will tie into academia, so if you think about it, Harrison Ford in Raiders of the Lost Ark was an academic that explored in the field, so that's kind of covered by a fiction series we've had on our site. So there's the level of exploration that might be commissioned by a university or something, though I don't know if you'd be able to write up Theses on the subjects, laughs, though I'm pretty sure on a player fan fiction side there'll be a bunch of that. On the diplomatic/ambassador side we currently don't have plans for that, but I will say that we have more specific roles planned for down the track, like in system-reporters where players can go around and record/report on stuff that might go on newscasts. We're creating tools for that, and perhaps letting players go on the advocacy and stuff like that so we ARE going in the way of allowing people to play most of the roles out there, I don't know if it'll get as high as a diplomat, but down the road who knows, I mean part of the magic here is is that we wan't to accommodate those players that don't necessarily want to be the war hero, or the dastardly pirate or whatever, perhaps they just want to exist in this world. We're definitely trying to make that happen, it'll be an ongoing thing as we feather in more roles after release.
I think that's WAY too early to say, I don't think we specifically have plans for an API in gameplay, but there is a plan to have an API for the website to allow people to scrape data from their Org or whatever they're up to to deal with sharing that information however they'd like. What we don't want to do is have an API that might allow players to run around and say, auto-mine or do any of that kind of stuff because it sort of defeats the purpose of existing in the world. We are placing a lot of emphasis on not making the player do tasks that would be considered tedious, doing the same thing over and over again that doesn't have much challenge, so I would say, we're not going to allow automation of any gameplay.
You'll definitely be using the mobiglas as a... IM device, or looking up/pinging your friends, but when you're on a ship you'll be plugged into the ship's comms systems which ties into the rest of the ship-based systems. But when you're not on ship your ship you'll definitely be able to use your Mobiglas as like a futuristic smart-phone, as that's pretty much what it's designed to be.
TL;DRYes, the team plans to use cosmic events as "game master" tools once the game is live, creating things like famines or disasters whose effects ripple through the economy and generate player missions.
Yes, that is definitely something that we are planning on. From our standpoint, the big cosmic events are some of the elements that we use once the game is live as "game masters" that we'll use to create a living universe. So once the game is live we might create a cosmic event that leads to a famine on a planet, which in turn makes a huge demand for food to be shipped in, which will create player missions, or maybe there's a huge disaster somewhere that players need to respond to by running rescue missions before that world blows up in 2 months time or whatever it'll be. So we're planning on using cosmic events to stir things up in the galaxy, to make sure that things are kept dynamic and interesting. All these things will have an effect on the economy, as that's sort of the driving factor of the universe, what makes everyone get up in the morning. Imagine these events to be something like throwing a rock into a pool, the ripples spread to every facet of the PU.
TL;DRYes, the team says it is going to include encounters with hostile alien creatures on derelict ships and elsewhere, enabled by the first-person nature of the game and a mostly NPC-populated universe.
Yes. It will be very fun, it will be very fearful, and we ARE going to do that. I've actually talked about this before, it's one of the best parts of Star Citizen being first person and not tied to your ship is that we can do things like this, so really we're a space-first-person-adventure-simulation game. It allows for a whole range of things, and because we're spending a lot of time building these systems up front in a holistic fashion, there are a lot of things like this we're going to get to do besides just the simple "Ok, lets fight someone in space" or "Beat off the pirates" or "Escort this ship" or "Collect this bounty". So we can do things like EVA over to derelict ships, explore them, get attacked by NPC alien creatures that jump down from the ceiling. We're going to do a lot of that in space, or even planetside. I always talk about the 90/10 NPC/Player ratio being how we make sure the economy doesn't get unbalanced, but this means there will be many PvE scenarios you'll encounter, getting into tussles with them, it'll just make the world alive, big and FUN! Some of the NPCs of course we'll make fun to defeat in the same sort of theory as vaduul swarm mode. Most space sims are limited to or at least place emphasis on the cockpit/flying modes, but we're aware and making use of the first person nature of the cry-engine which will let us explore all the other cool encounter templates we could spawn based on information or what the economy tells us.
Yes, definitely, there will be places you can go buy personal equipment, weapons, items, clothes (maybe not all in the same place) through your mobiglas using the augmented reality mode, which we'll show you early next year as part of the social module that we'll be releasing. If you haven't been watching closely, we've shared a couple of concept pieces already for these stores, and I've seen the 3D modelled versions now which are cool, you can go around and see all the weapons on the walls, and your mobiglas with the augmented reality mode will show their details up etc, so yes, it will be really cool, and yes we will have these showrooms.
TL;DRThe aim is a system where players can charge for services like healing, with a transactional job board that enforces payment and uses ratings, though whether prices would be regulated is undecided.
On the healing and charging for stuff, there are several aspects, like rescue and recovery, then healing etc. We're definitely building a system where players could charge for services like this, so in this case you could say ok, I'll heal you for so many credits and make money that way. Sort of a transaction done, I've talked about a transactional job board system where either party can rate someone, and it'll also be the bartering system board where once you're in there, it'd make sure that a mission can only be accepted if the person posting it actually has the credits to pay it and vice versa so it'll prevent people from saying they'd pay then not actually paying. So you'd say "This is what I do, pay me and I'll do it" and the mission board would enforce paying. I imagine if a person reneged on the service they were supposed to provide they would be forced to refund the credits or perhaps be banned from the services board until they are found to be performing the services/some kind of review process. A bit like the way that Uber works. I don't know whether we'd regulate prices for healing or something, but I guess we'd do something like Uber, which is a great system to rip off.
TL;DRThere will be different fuel grades, with boost and jump fuel more compact and pricier than regular fuel, though it may not apply to basic manoeuvring fuel and the system is still being sorted out.
Yes, there are going to be different grades of fuel, not so sure there'll be different grades for basic manoeuvring, but the boost fuel will be more compressed or compact than the regular fuel, as will be jump fuel, so those will be more expensive than regular fuel, might take more work to refine, the general manoeuvring fuel is much easier to sort of scoop up around gas giants. We're in the process of sorting out that system now, I'd imagine the boost fuel is most expensive (maybe jump?). There could be a base kind of boost fuel, and a more premium grade fuel that could be rarer from different stars, it's all on the cards. People could make a business out of collecting and refining fuel, it's resource management and it'll be kinda fun. There will probably be the basic kind of fuel, then if you're that kind of guy/girl that likes to tweak their ships they might only use premium fuel for that little bit of a performance increase at a cost.