Star Citizen Live: Q&A Characters and Creatures

This question simply says, Yeah, so yeah, that's correct. We did see a lot of combat stuff. I think we were very excited to show a lot of the new armor sets that we're making and it was just by chance that they were combat-focused. But any eagle-eyed spiders would have seen in one of the slides, we actually had the concept or the prototype of our mining suit. So the mining suit is going to have its own dedicated mining visor, where you'll be able to scan and find more detailed information about mineables that are around you, much further distance. And obviously it offers great environmental protection. So obviously we want players to be going down in caves and obviously with different temperatures and distance and obviously for storage as well. So those mineables, whether they be large or small, we want the player to be able to think if they're dedicated in mining, that they can head towards that. And we've got the salvage suit as well, like just, it reminded me of that. Like we obviously, the beauty of this as well is we are going into some of our armor sets that are more legacy as well. So it's not just new armor sets. So obviously we've got the current Grin armor, which I actually think has got a really cool feature. So it will be kind of streamlined more with the backpack, it's having its own dedicated backpack, which will stream from the tool through the arm into the backpack, which means once you're salvaging, you won't have to worry about changing the vials and whatnot, it'll go straight, streamlined straight into your backpack. So if that is something you're dedicated in, then that has that opportunity as well.

So the mining suit, because we almost had a miner in our demo. The armor wasn't quite ready. There's a visor specifically for the miner suit that'll help you better identify materials and stuff like this. For the salvage suit, is there something similar for the visor? Are we working on a specific salvage visor? Yeah, so that's still kind of in concept phase for that. I know the mining one's a bit more obvious, but we'd like obviously to provide the players with enough details they need. So if that is a profession that they're particularly interested in, then when they do scan and ping out towards objects that they can interact with, then they will get more detail about potentially what material is and how much the health of the component, of the chip component.

Yeah, most players who don't have that visor will be relying on the screen on their weapon to understand what they're salvaging, whereas the visors may get extra information either side.

So Rich is very keen on it not being a mobiglass mission. He understands the almost pompousness that you need with something that is of this scale and this goal, and we do have a specific plan already. We know what we're gonna do. It's nothing like we've seen in Star Citizen before, and it's very cool. And I've seen the brief, I know what it is, and it's incredibly cool, but no details because we wanna make it an event.

Okay, and some of the things, we tried to make it as evident as possible in our demonstration, but some people, you don't always get it. The having to taunt it out, using a ground vehicle and doing donuts and stuff. Obviously, again, we're not gonna go into the details just yet, but that's representative of the kind of thing. It's not just about going and finding it. It's about coaxing it out. Coaxing it out.

And there is something you'll have to do with the big event that you coax it to a certain location. So that's what we thought of. So it's not just, oh, there it is, get the vehicle, go out. It's a very cool multi-stage process. When you get your guild together, you're all together, and be able to just get the boys together too. Let's go kill the sandworm. It's really cool.

Well, those are on very different teams like the Starware and the lockers. So those guys have very different priorities as well. I can't guarantee they'll come out at the same time. All ships that should have inventory though, do currently. And for 4.0, a lot more of those will have like physicalized panels and things that you interact with to find those. And like the lockers themselves, those are really cool. Like they allow you to kind of pre-customize your load. And then swap into it very quickly. Like, and your clothes would go into like the mannequin on the inside as well. So you can quickly swap back and forth. They also have like, you know, small inventory space. So you can put your spares on your glasses and your grenades and whatever in there. Yeah, so like there will always be somewhere to store these things when you have to take them off or swap. But you know, they may not come online at the same time.

A couple weeks ago, might be a couple months ago now because time is illusion. I've been sucked into CitizenGone for so long. We released a preview on social media about the upcoming base building and the suit lockers and these gorgeous, you know, lockers where you can just display your full load out and stuff like this in your homes and whatnot. And it occurs to me that, you know, with cargo grids and having these things that you might be able to, ships have their own suit lockers, but you might be able to, you know, kit your ships out with even more lockers and stuff like that, you know, and carry them around and basically really do the doomsday prepper kind of thing. Like, you know, I've got my Zeus, I've got my, you know, a C2 and in the back, I've just got, you know, the Batman armory for every occasion, no matter what comes up, I can run to the back and you know, there's my mining outfit and there's my salvage outfit and stuff like this. And that's a really exciting moment for me because it's not like, obviously the inventory screen is cool, you go through and you drag and drop and whatever, but this idea that you just said.

It's almost like, you know, your models in the background, like if you want to show off your favorite armors, you know, they are behind a shiny glass.

And then to immediately just go right to it and be like, equip, I want that. Yeah, I think that's gonna unlock a lot of cool gameplay.

Yeah, that's something that Rich is really passionate about as well because, you know, we have so many different types and these like specializations, they kind of enhance the other styles of gameplay. So if you're in a drop ship, for example, you don't want to be dropping into a hot war zone and then you're like, oh, okay, one minute, let me drag this and let me drag that. You want to be like, no, I want my combat. Yeah, I want to go straight to, I want to get out there, I want to fight. So they kind of, all these little things that we're doing kind of start to compliment one another and it starts to feel more cohesive and what we intend.

Yeah, when your ship's been attacked, you know what I mean, the lights are going off, you're really worried, you're not like, oh, hang on, let me open a menu. It's like, people are coming, yeah. You want, yeah, you want the Doom shotgun gif, right? Like these guys are coming, well, boosh. And then, yeah, it's gonna be cool.

So all armors are gonna get this, like roles and specializations, all of them. And the subscriber stuff is all variants of things already in game, mostly. Mostly. And even the more unique stuff will get a role. So yeah, you don't need to worry about that. Like, we'll just... I won't go through them all.

Yeah, I was gonna say, I think what the question is actually looking for is like a comprehensive list. Like, back when I was running the subscriber program way, way back when, we invented the Overlord armors, which was a vigilante gang in Pyro and stuff like that. Well, which roles are those armors and stuff like this? The parasite helmet is like, what role is that for? It's like this, so yeah, a little too detailed for something like SCL, but I think absolutely when the time comes and stuff, we can write up a FAQ. That's the appropriate thing to have a FAQ. We'll work with the community team, put that together, pull a list together and work that out.

Yeah, it should be made clear as well that the things, the armors you saw at CitizenCon, they're our newest, shiniest ones. That's the reason we picked those. But all the legacy stuff, all the stuff that's currently in game right now.

It's also worth saying, a lot of these armors, they were very specialized and we were trying to use that as a showcase to show like, okay, so if you wanna be the ultimate stealth, you pick the stealth suit. But we are having items that are, not every item is gonna be specialized to the T. There are gonna be ones that tinker towards that way. Like, oh, they're a little bit of stealth, but they also have loads of attributes. It's not like, oh, I picked the stealth out of Sam, now I'm really weak. We just focused a lot on those ones, so a lot of the subscriber ones are absolutely gonna still have traits and stuff, but it doesn't mean. More generalized, exactly, but it doesn't mean like, oh, okay, I've got this helmet, so that means I'm forced down this route.

That's a good point. Two points to remember that the majority of armors will be a more generalized thing with little tiny advantages here and there and stuff. And the second that you can still do almost anything in any armor. It's just a question of how well you'll do it or how much of an advantage you'll have in one particular area.

Exactly, and then when you really wanna specialize and you progress through the game and you work with factions and guilds and you get rewards and then all of a sudden it's like, I wanna be the salvager. You have that suit, etc.

You will need to stow them, yep. It will be a case of, obviously, we have so many different backpacks and we've got more coming down the line. So it might be a case of that we, and I think it depends on the ship as well, we talked about, right? It depends on whether it'd be automatically stored.

There are seats that, you know, the dropship seats that have their own inventory and you'll automatically have that backpack and your weapon, anything else that would clip, taken off and put in that inventory and when you stand up, it will appear back on you because as you said before, Nick, the last thing you wanna do is be strapped into your dropship and then the doors open and then suddenly, oh, backpack gun, you know, taking all that visual.

That's a major piece of information there, Luke. Like, you know, it's in the last couple patches when people have seen, you know, we've seen people sticking chairs, you know, to the cargo grid on the sides of, you know, hull Cs and stuff like this and people have had questions about, well, what does this do for dropships if you can just put seats anywhere and whatnot? Like, where's the value of my dropship? But you just dropped a great little pearl there that, you know, a dropship seat will have its own specific inventory, it will store your backpack, your weapons, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, so you can sit comfortably and when you get out, all there for you, that's huge and I think folks who own a dropship will appreciate that.

We're looking at other places where we can maybe do that as well. Like, you know, maybe single seater ships and things but, you know, nothing confirmed.

Yeah, of course, you will see different, like weight classes for the majority of the roles with the main differences, like the unique differences but main differences obviously being protection versus mobility on foot and then in flight. So, for instance, like, you know, the hunter, say we've got a light hunter, we've got a medium hunter and two heavies currently. And they'll all be, you know, the best in their classes at scanning, finding life forms but maybe the heavy will be way better at it than the light but the light gets the benefit of being stealthier and faster. And it's like, you know, which one do you take? If you're storming, if you know your bounty is in an underground facility they've taken for themselves, you know, you're gonna go in the heavy one. Whereas if it's in like, you know, busy streets and stuff you take the light. So it's all about, you know, you know.

It's about knowing your prey. If you're stalking somebody, you know, who's savvy and knows what's going on like space to me or something, you'd want a heavy armor cause you know, they're probably gonna fight back and they want the additional protection. But if, you know, if you're stalking someone who has no clue what's going on you're just gonna be able to sneak upright them like Captain Berks. You can just, you just use the light armor. It's like, you know, it's just getting there fast. He's not gonna know what's going on anyway.

Yeah, and I do want to clarify actually, like there's a bit of confusion about the full suit feature. That isn't some like arbitrary buff. It's not something we just made up. Seven of seven, super powers. Yeah, yeah. Like not all suits will have this kind of thing but like it tends to be systemic. So say the stealth suit is a really good one, right? The bit you put, like the piece you put on your arms that masks the emissions of your arms, right? So you need the full set to fully be hidden. Otherwise some part of you is giving off emissions. It's not like, you know, you put it on and then suddenly you vanish off the face of the earth. It is systemic.

Well, taming is a very specific word and I had to ask Rich about this. So I'm gonna make sure his wording is correct as to not have speculation: "We don't have anything in development right now". So no speculation. There's nothing in active development in terms of pets, but yes, TM down the road sort of thing. We're still committed to it.

It is one of the stretch goals. It's definitely still committed. It's just, it's what we said at the beginning of the show. Not everything is in active development. So not everything has an answer that we can give you at this moment. I think everybody likes the idea of having a pet Kopion. I know some of our NPCs, in Pyro have pet Kopions and stuff like that. So those systems are being worked out with NPCs, and being able to issue commands and stuff like this. And when the eye of development Sauron turns its gaze back to pets and whatnot, you will have a lot of things that we can build on.

I'm glad you said medics, because I saw a lot of comments about medics. So yeah, we do have lots of non-combat, so things like, obviously, a medic. And again, we kind of, not just by class, because obviously like Luke mentioned, it's not just always about the mass and the size or more protection. It's also about like, what makes sense? You know, if you're a first responder, what would you wear? You probably wear something light, quick on your feet, can get down to it if, you know, someone's in a cave or whatever, get down there and help someone out. But then obviously we talked about potentially the ideas of like a medic on the front line, so they'd have a bit more protection. But the things with the medic, obviously they've got the visor, so they're gonna have more, when they ping and scan, they're gonna have the vital signs of people in their group. So if someone's down, they're gonna get a notification on their screen, be like, someone's over there and that may be how long they've got before they're incapacitated. And then obviously we've also looked at the idea of like refilling your med pen, so the vials on your leg, again, kind of being a systemic system about it. Rather than discarding your med pen, you actually put them back and they slowly refill. So it means that your primary role isn't just focused on combat, you're on the front line, like healing people up and helping them, body dragging them to areas of safety and whatnot. But then we've got a lot, we've just started concepting like the tech suit, which I know is quite a vague term, but obviously we've got hacking in the game coming soon and that would be like the idea that you can remote hack, so maybe you don't actually have to go up to the terminal and this suit will excel at that. And obviously, again, you'll have your own different visor. And one exciting feature is like wireless charging, which I know we're quite passionate about. So some of our combat armors, which we've not really spoke about before, but if you have your energy magazines and you store them onto your suit, you'll start to get a bit of trickle charge because they are essentially batteries. So these magazines will start to slowly recharge and there's kind of like the trade off, right? So it's like ballistic, they've got limited capacity, but maybe they do more damage, whereas like energy ammo, you can slowly recharge it over time via your suit is powering it, but maybe they do do as much damage or maybe they don't have as much travel distance. And one of the beauties with the tech suit is the idea that you can wirelessly charge your teammates around you. So if I was wearing the suit, Luke and Zach would have their energy mags start to slowly recharge. But yeah, like obviously we mentioned like the pilot suits and we talked about racing[, the environment suit, the leader.] [...] So we've got environment suits. So obviously like, you know, we're going to have these planets that we're introducing and all these different systems are going to have lots of hot and cold temperatures, radiation, corrosive. And these planets are going to be, you know, you're not going to be able to travel to these in just any old army. You're going to have to prepare. You're going to think about storage. And it's like, if you're like an artifact hunter or you want to, you grab resources or you want to be the Luke guy and you want to collect everything, like in a Fallout game or whatever, then you're going to have to wear one of these suits and go from there.

The other thing is like, we'll be scaling back which suits have EVA capabilities as well. So there are some very specialised EVA suits in the game. So if you want to spend a lot of time out in space, these are the ones you'll wind around.

Yeah, exactly. And if you're like a salvager, for example, and you're going out in space, like you're going to need a lot of, like oxygen capacity and EVA capacity, these are going to be a much bigger deal than they are now. Like it's going to be a lot of kind of preparing for like, okay, like you said, if you're, you know, mid-battle, maybe I want to sneak out, do some salvaging, get back quick.

Absolutely. Absolutely. That's core to the whole system.

Yeah, but again, you will be worse in some other ways. You might find that mixing together like some random bits of armor get you exactly what you want, for a very specific situation. But for instance, we're gonna have these full suit kind of features. So there'll be systems and even just kind of weight, you know, the mass support, these things clip together. So right now, for instance, you can put on like a heavy backpack, heavy core, heavy arms, heavy helmet, and then absolutely no trousers, right? Just run around with you. Feeble little legs, somehow holding all that up, and you will be faster currently than if you wore leg armor. So that's going. Like your puny little legs won't be able to carry the weight of that because we're making all armors heavier as well. So you will need the support of this leg armor to make that viable.

So what you saw in the demo was completely fightable. We've been playing that. We're really happy with where it is and how quickly it's come along. So we're able to balance that, but what we need to do is have the worm have bespoke collision because there's not really a human being or any kind of creature that is able to withstand a ship hitting it. So that needs its own collision, basically. Yeah, so that's the one major thing missing from the Valakkar. We also need to make sure it behaves on the server because, you know, AI historically. Add some more attack animations, polish its animations, VFX, as well as setting up, you know, the big event that we talked about. Yeah, so, but there's a lot of things we need to do with like Planet Tech and spawning creatures and all that and that we need to like nail down because when we did the Kopions initially, we basically could use the stuff we used to spawn rocks to spawn Kopions. We're like, oh, cool, this works. But there's some things we need to do to validate where creatures spawn better. For example, like if we have quasigrazers, we need to make sure they spawn their food sources and waters and basically make the spawning more logical.