Reverse the Verse: September 11th, 2015

Yes, that hangar flair will be going out later today. Alexis would know for certain, but I believe it's Vanduul related. I can't remember what it is. I think it's the ship. Honestly, I don't know. I've got this list of flair in my head, and I don't know which one is next. So strike the Vanduul comment. I'm not sure that that's what's next. But when we get Alexis in here, we'll answer that question for you. I thought I had the answer. I do not.

It's the next Puglisi.

Yes, it's a Puglisi thing. I just can't remember which one it is in line. Anyway, the hangar flair is going out today. It's another one in the Puglisi series, so it'll be a rock or a scrap of metal or a fragment of some ship or something. It'll be something along those lines.

Nothing new on the Freelancer rework. It's still in progress. It's not at a point where we're ready to share much about it.

Yes, for limited sales.

You will. I can't say when, but it will happen.

There'll be a number of options. I can't tell you how long. It's all still in development. But we have a section of artwork in our Shotgun called Terra White Collar. So all of the clothing options you've seen on ATV in the last several weeks, including those hair options, are part of the Terra White Collar series. So that's just one series from one fashion designer on one planet. It's not indicative of the broad range of options that will be in the finished game. Just like with the Avenger thing on Ship Shape. There's just one set of options for the Avenger modularity. Not the only.

I think the answer to that is no. I believe the Reclaimer is slated for next year. Ben?

I have not seen the latest schedule. I know they're moving stuff around. I would expect to see us do the combat multi-crew ships before the role-specific ones, but I don't want to give a timeline. I don't know if it's December or January or February. We're getting close to the end of the year, so it becomes increasingly difficult to say which year.

Yes, that's one of those things that's slated for 1.1. So when we finished up the very first iteration of Community Hub, that was the same day they launched YouTube Gaming. So it should be in the next iteration, which we don't have a timetable for yet.

Nope. That's probably more on the Frankfurt guys, since they've done a lot of the heavy work on the engine. That's all programming and design far beyond my realm of comprehension.

I see that question every week and we normally don't answer it because we're not the ones who possess those kind of answers. So I figured we'd just do it once and finally tell people we don't have that answer.

Hopefully, yes. There was an FPS report we did two or three weeks ago that had the different characters and different poses. I'm pretty sure one of those was a finger gun. I could be wrong though. I probably am.

No, it's the same variants as before.

Just making it better.

Not every ship is going to be the Retaliator.

It's just like in the real world, like you've been saying for a while. Some manufacturers utilized a variant system. Some manufacturers made their ships more modular. It has to do with the individual project. They're not all manufactured using the same process.

And they're definitely not mutually exclusive, because we can have very distinct variant hulls that still have modules that are interchangeable across the whole series, which also then can create a lot more different loadout and gameplay opportunities for just how do you want to set up your ship.

Yeah, I would love to see additional Retaliator hulls personally. I see the current Retaliator as the B-17G, the one with the nose turret and all of them.

I think the work is mostly on expanding Area 18 right now, right? Well, next is the... Yeah, the Nyx landing zone right now. Which is why we previewed it in that very cool video. By the way, if you haven't seen the Nyx landing zone preview video, see the Nyx landing zone preview video.

Yes, it's much more interesting than anything we're going to tell you in this hour.

Like we did with the Phoenix. Not one like that, but we will have the Endeavor sometime, and the Genesis after that.

And then eventually the Prowler.

Eventually the Prowler, yes. And we've also got the Reliant variants coming. Dave Hobbins.

Yeah, Reliant's going to be really fun getting to you guys.

I just saw some work. They're working on it right now. It'll be in an upcoming iteration.

It's the Fed Records of Area 18.

Prowler is the boarding ship, the Tevarin-derived boarding ship. So it's taking some additional time because we want to just work on...

For those of you who may not have been around back then, when we were doing stretch goals, all the Wave 4 ships were voted on by the citizens. We put up a list of possible concepts and the citizens voted on them. And the Prowler was one of the very last player-voted ships that we had. So it's made by Esperia, who is the manufacturer of the human version of the Glaive that was on sale recently. And they are producing the Prowler. And like you said, it's a boarding ship.

I just sent Ben an email with it.

It's the Puglisi Collection, it's like a tablet fragment with alien writing on it.

The Puglisi Collection is proud to announce the third in their line of artifacts, the Vasili Fragment Stone. The quasi-ruins on Terra have been shrouded in mystery for centuries. That is, until 2832, when an expedition made a bold discovery: a fragment of stone buried deep within Zafaray Bay. Named after the discoverer, the stone is inscribed with what many believe is a remnant of the ancient civilization's language, holding its secrets. The Puglisi Collection created the perfect replica of this tremendously important artifact for citizens to enjoy. So you're getting a rock.

Desire, yes. Plan, no.

Not sure when. It's definitely something that we're working on getting worked out a bit more, because we need the power, heat, distortion, data pipes. We need to get all those up and running how we want them as part of the component physically-based damage system changes. So hopefully in the near future, but I can't give an exact timeline just yet. But that's going to actually be one of those first step bits for the electronic warfare, especially when we get distortion working how we want it, where you're using those sucker punches to take out a ship and stop them dead in the water. So once we get that going, it should be really cool.

Folks have already started using the feedback thread for ATV since that's where the segment was. So you can continue doing that.

There's that one. Some other guys on the general thread also started up a post that's been getting a bit of traction. I've got bookmarks. So definitely seeing a lot of the suggestions you guys have put out. There's actually one really cool game that someone messaged to me yesterday that I really want to check out, but I don't speak French, so I'm going to have to figure out a way to overcome that.

I speak French, I can help you with that if you want.

Yeah, definitely appreciate the different thoughts you guys have. And it's good to get an idea on what kind of activities you guys think would be fun while still being faithful to electronic warfare type activities.

Remember when I was talking about how the folks voted on the Wave 4 ships? The Dragonfly was one of the ships that did not win the vote. It actually lost out to the Reliant. So it's one of those things we'd like to put in the game at some point, eventually, but it's backburnered.

No details yet. There's no details on it. We've got a bunch of previous ships we want to finish first.

The ones that were actually chosen by you, the fans. Got to make those ships first.

Well, even ones that we sold a while ago. Without giving out any details because he's still ironing everything out, I know the Caterpillar is getting some much-needed love that people have been asking for for a few months now. We'll have some cool stuff for that, hopefully in the future as well.

I would watch 10 for the Chairman on Monday, because we have a question about AC 2.0. The short answer, and short, not as accurate an answer, is that there's going to be a difference between the multi-crew test universe and AC 2.0. And you'll be learning about that real soon now.

10 for the Chairman on Monday, 3 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time.

It's because Chris is a very, very busy man. And we film 10 for the Chairman around his schedule, not the other way around.

There's a lot of evenings and weekends involved in catching Chris at an hour of time. But it's also an edited show. It's like the old Simpsons joke: very, very little animation is done live. It would be a terrible strain on the animator's hands. But there's multiple cuts and different takes and all that.

That's easy. There won't be Nyx before Multicrew.

Yeah, that's also true. But as for the actual system, it will probably be some sort of magic game thing until we actually go to the universe.

Yeah, it's sort of like how you get in the elevator in your asteroid hangar, and that elevator takes you up to ArcCorp.

Actually, yes, it's much more appropriate for the elevator to take you to Nyx from the asteroid hangar, but just assume it's like a Wonkavator for a while.

I know that the UK is working on that. Again, I don't know exactly what they're doing, but I know that they're making progress on it.

Let's wait to see it before we say.

At least once. It's still a question we're going to answer eventually.

That's a good question. I don't think so. I think they did a little dimension tweaking on the inside just to make sure it fit with our cargo dimensions, but the size of the ship itself hasn't changed.

Yeah, the main changes I think we're seeing right now, some of it was just a bit of visibility and pilot movement cleanup around the cockpit, and making sure that as it's transitioned from vertical into the horizontal flight mode, it wasn't going to cause any clipping, that we'd have all the right screens and panels that we need so that you have your full HUD. But it's still about the same size as when we first sold it.

It's not designed to land in water. Whether it can or not, I don't know. At least once.

We actually have Chris and Josh who've been working on the Constellation. They're still working on that right now. They're finishing some stuff up. So art for that ship will start probably before the end of the month, around the beginning of next month. But they still have some stuff to do. So I'm sort of doing my rounds right now and making sure that design and everything is ready for them to start.

So it's definitely one of the things that we're exploring. Actual gameplay would still be something we'd have to sort out, but it's definitely on the list of things that we want to look at, especially for the communication and scanner aspects of electronic warfare, where it's something you're able to do without having to spike a target.

Inside of the bigger nacelle bays, that's where a lot of its core components are going to go. So one thing you guys didn't see in those cutaways is that's really the walkable core space of the ship. And you didn't see where its power plants are, where its shield generators are, where its coolers are. So those components all have a place. None of that empty space it looks like in the cutaways was actually empty. There's going to be things placed into all those compartments. So just because it wasn't filled to the brim in the concept art doesn't mean it won't have place or purpose.

No updates right now, just that there will be an update soon.

That's a long process. It's at the very beginning. Most products like that, you never know they exist this early. So it'll be quite a while.

Max crew is one of those terms that we used in the very early pitch document for how ship specs work, and people just kind of gravitate towards it still. I would just ignore that number on every ship forever, if I were you.

Right now, it's looking more like when we get some cleanup on those kinds of numbers, we'd actually be more listing, hey, this is the max number of interactive stations that a ship would have, and then the number of people that could physically survive on that ship will actually be more determined by your life support. So don't expect to just cram 50 guys into your Constellation and not quickly suffocate.

So I don't believe we have someone slated to work on them full time coming up. But I did hear something this morning about how we wanted to do some cleanup on it coming up. So there won't be major rework or anything like that. But I know we have some bugs floating around that we want to try to prioritize in the next week or two. Maybe I can even do something about fixing bugs, if they're interesting.

That is something I might also cover in the next week or two of Ship Shape. So stay tuned. I've been talking to the UK about putting something together. So yes, keep listening.

That is entirely lore. Just bringing you into the Star Citizen world.

Talking with the writers, they do have a purpose to it. I don't know what that purpose is. I just heard them talking two days ago about what they were doing and what they were going to do with it, just not hearing enough to actually retain the details. So there is a plan, whatever that plan is. It's a writer thing. So if you see a 10 for the Writers thread on the forums, maybe throw that question in there.

That's a very vague question, but I do kind of want to cover eventually, when we have a little more further along, a little more shown, an episode on what makes the capital ships the capital ships and stuff. That's too vague of a question to answer.

Justin has absolutely nothing to do with the ship commercials.

That's actually a question for those guys.

The answer is that yes, there will be more ship commercials. Retaliator will be the next one. We did our first set of ship commercials essentially to help train up our Cinematics guys before we started getting mocap, PCap data and so on for, of course, Squadron 42. Now that we've done the shoot, we have all that, Cinematics is working 26 hours a day to make Squadron 42 awesome. Once that winds down, we will get resources back to do ship commercials, but for now, advertising is blocked by the real game.

Why? You guys enjoy theorycrafting, turning every ship we create into a pocket carrier. We're talking about the Endeavor, and people are already talking about converting the Endeavor into a pocket carrier.

It does have a pod bay.

Yes, but it's every ship in the game people want to convert into a pocket carrier. I don't understand it.

Anything that we'd let you do that on, you're not going to be coming out ahead on that. You're not going to be having a bunch of guns and be a pocket carrier. Guess how much you have to lose, how much you're going to sacrifice, to try and do this less effectively than a role-dedicated ship would be doing that.