Two separate questions: On the development side, are there many manufactured hull pieces that are shared across the ships of a single company? Like hatch, thrusters, seats, doors, panels, etc? On the game side, visually speaking, how customizable are the ships in general? (like in a Need for Speed underground manner). I know about the possibility to change the seats but could we expect some more customizations like an interior paint job, switching to fancier escape pods/beds, changing the whole dashboard, more powerful headlights, better kitchen, etc.asked by Johan_26

I think it's a tentative yes to that second part. Just to hit on the whole manufacturer sharing assets. That absolutely a yes. It's almost, it's absolutely necessary that we do something like that in order to develop the number of ships that we have to make. So what that means is that we will have escape pods that are common to Aegis for example and you should expect to see those escape pods in other Aegis ships. Docking collars, same thing. You may even see chairs that are shared among the same manufacturer.Right now, you will notice that on the Freelancer, you've got a specific type of chair which also exists on the starfarer, which a very close version of that also exists on the Reliant. And there's a couple of reasons for doing that. One, it keeps the look and feel the same so you can identify what manufacturer built your ship. Two, we can actually build a ship much faster. Right, sharing of assets within manufacturers is absolutely something we have to do. In terms of customization, we are still working on what the full range of customization is. The most obvious and sort of start of the customization process that we really want to hit is allowing people to change the paint jobs on their ships. We're exploring a couple different ways of doing this. We haven't quite implemented a full working version of it yet, but it's something we are building our current ships to support.

Yup, no, definitely, just on Elwin's note, I mean part of the development process is making something, trying out different techniques for it, and find out whether it works. So we do a lot of R&D into different ways to do it. Some methods make the cut, some don't. We used to have a paint system that was... it was a little harder to work with. We had paints, we had it working, and it's just, it's a juggle. You say "does this help the pipeline?", "is there another way we can do this faster?".That constant iteration is kind of why we like working here as well. You can make changes to things, and find a better way to do it. You're not just stuck somewhere, you know? You might have to go back and change old stuff occasionally, but in the grand scheme of things, it's gonna help the entire pipeline. So, we're making everything basically as modular as possible within sensical terms. So, should be able to go out and get other parts. So definitely, modularity is something we already have and can expand upon. We just have to make sure it's a good use of time management and et cetera, et cetera.

Right, right, and just to touch on what you mentioned of us previously having a paint system. That system was harder to work with. But it also became... it created a conflict with the way we wanted to do damage, just because of the specific implementation method and as a result of that, we went in favor of the damage to find a different way of doing the customization of the paints.

'Cause the damage is so much cooler.

Well, yes it is.

Bomb metal melting away and everything! So instead of saving... basically, the way it works is you have UV maps, if anyone knows what those are, it's where the textures get painted onto and the way the tech works is the damage shader kind of, it works over the UV maps, but you also needed the UV, the paints in the UV too. So they were kind of sharing the same space, right? So we were like well, what do we pick? Then we're like "Well, the paints can probably be done a more another way, and more efficiently, and this is just the best way for the damage system to work". That's how, kind of how where opportunity calls for it.

That also, I mean, that also kind of touches back in the "what features have we decided not to implement". That is one of them. Yeah, so we're working on a much better way of allowing customization which... the goal is to let people not only change, you know, at least several different colors on their ship, but also attempt to allow them to pick, decals for their wings, or whatever, that way they have like a massive happy face or whatever they want to put on it. So we have some prototypes of that working and I think it's going to be really cool, but more work has to go into it.