Will there be a pipeline for landing zones like there are for ships? Also, will landing zones be released in stages like Arc Corp is with the stores and the like coming in later or will the landing zone be fully fleshed out by the time we are able to walk around it?asked by Lock Ostrie

So definitely, there is a pipeline. We don't call them landing zones, we call them the environment pipeline, that's actually lead by Ian Leland in the UK who runs the UK environment team and also supervises the environments that are being built by Behaviour. Great, strong team you've just seen a little bit of their work, they've done a whole bunch of stuff Shuban looks amazing, Nyx looks amazing, a few of the other locations we're working on look amazing. So, it's a pipeline not too dissimilar to ships in terms of some of the modeling, building set ups. We start with concept and then we move our way onto whitebox, then greybox, then we start applying the materials and alpha mapping and textures and stuff like that. As far as the landing zones being released in stages like Arc Corp, what will happen as time goes on and we create, like where we're at the point where we're leaving one zone, going to space, landing on another zone....those zones will come in more full featured. They'll come in with ships, they'll come in with AI running around, doing their stuff. The reason why Arc Corp is pretty bare right now is because some of that functionality is still being worked on so it's not ready for primetime. So, when we need to persistence working properly for us to really sort of have the shops work. So, persistence is us saving your state, your equipment off to the database up in the cloud for your character or your player account. So, what happens right now is when the game starts up it just looks up what you have on your web account, your RSI account, and says, 'oh he's got the Hornet and the Constellation and he's got this item' so it adds it to your account. But it's not particularly persistent, you change what you're wearing or change your load out, that's really not saved back to the database. We save it locally on a local XML file but that's a really short term solution. The real proper solution is changes to your state, changes to your ship, whatever. Whether it's getting old, dirty or broken, they get saved back out to your entry in the player database, the persistent database. That's what we need to have running so it's actually one of our next milestones. That's what we need to have running so you can go buy or sell stuff in the persistent universe. You can go to a shop and buy a weapon and now you'll have that weapon when you come back into the game and you'll be owning that weapon. So, once the shops and all that kind of stuff is working, persistence working, when we launch a new environment, it'll just come in with it's appropriate ships and it's appropriate AI going about their daily schedules. I would say later as the new environments come in they will be much more fully fleshed out. You're just sort of seeing Arc Corp grow and functionality and features come in. It's sort of like our....test kitchen or test bed for some of the PU and social stuff. That's what happening in Arc Corp, same is going to happen in multicrew, so multicrew is like the space version of that and Arc Corp sort of the ground environment version of us testing a whole bunch of stuff. So, Tony's got a whole bunch of plans for really cool AI interactions, some things to do down on the environments that just isn't walking around, emoting or waving at people or glitching through a wall. I think you'll sort of see that the possibilities come around via multicrew and social, then a background will be finishing out these other environments and we'll sort of at some point just turn on some systems for you to explore around and bam it will be kind of there. So, you'll see a lot of the functionality and features come in like I sat multicrew and social and you'll be able to give feedback and sort of kind of see how things come together. That's all aiding towards getting the persistence universe done and out there and also aiding towards Squadron 42.