In both cargo running and mining, what types of hazards can we expect? Understandably, there will be the threat of pirates, but what other dangers will we run into, i.e., hitting a combustible methane vent will mining, or the consequences of a container malfunction during transport?asked by Cyrocommander

This is actually one of my favourite ones because I like the concept of exploration, discovery and just as I'm flying, going about my business, doing one thing maybe mining or whatever. I'm encountered other stuff and so in terms of the things other than pirates that might kick you out quantum travel for a period of time, this would include everything from meteor showers, comets, derelict ships that cross your path, debris fields, micro black holes, just a variety of things like that. The most interesting aspect about this I think is that all these things that you encounter can not only have potential value to you even though you're currently engaged in something else because this represents information, if you cross paths with a comet and that comet's not known to anyone else you can actually sell that information that may be very valuable to somebody who actually wants to mine it.

You start thinking about debris fields and derelict spaceships and those are very valuable to these guys that want engage in salvaging operations and micro black holes are very interesting to scientists that actually want to be able to study these things to extract value from them. So, you can see this whole circular ecosystem to where as you're going about your business you're encountering both directly and indirectly that can feed other parts of the economy. The other thing that I really, really like about this particular aspect is just the variety that it's going to bring when you start getting all these players interacting in all these different ways.

Yeah, I had else to say that the other things, well obviously we talked about mining potentially hitting a gas vent that can cause an explosion and those sort of things. Cargo and in general just transit we… besides things you can encounter, we very much have this high fidelity of simulation of various components of your ship and part of the big pink unicorn of Item 2.0 is the fact that we have age and wear and things will break down. So, that's not currently in the game as you guys are playing it but it's very much part of the systems that will be part when the full Item 2.0 comes online. Which means that under stress, being used a lot say in a long quantum drive like when you're on a trading cargo run or something, the items… you're powerplant, your engine, your thrusters, lights, whatever, they have aged, they can fail, they can misfire.

So, there will definitely be a certain amount of maintenance keeping your ship running especially in the bigger ships. If you've watched any science fiction movie and you've seen Chewie banging the Millenium Falcon or the crew of the Nostromo having to keep their ship running and stuff like that. That is going to be a gameplay component besides just things that… you know, pirates you can run across and everything like that. We mentioned that with the real vast scale that we have in the game, we're not sort of compressing the star systems the way a lot of other space games have. I mean we are compressing it because if we went full real scale then it would take way, way longer for people to travel across one solar system than I think people would enjoy but we are still having a massive amount of scale. Much more so than other games will have and therefore when you're in quantum drive at 0.2 speed of light, which is very fast you theoretically could spend half an hour to go from one side of the star system to another side of the star system.

Now likelihood is you'll never be in quantum drive for that long because you'll be pulled out for some reason or there'll be something in the way but you could quite easily be in quantum drive for a few minutes, 5 minutes or whatever, 10 minutes and part of we don't want you to be bored so you're running around. There will be things for you to do to keep your ship running while you're doing that, so it's sort of like travel gameplay and that will be one of the parts of being a long distance explorer or cargo hauler where you'll actually have things to do like you would if you were a sea captain on a container ship crossing the Atlantic ocean or the Pacific.

You mentioned boredom and that kind of goes back to that sense of discovery I was talking about. We don't want these things that pull you out of quantum travel to always be viewed, if you're currently doing something else, as an annoyance. We actually want make these things indirectly entice players to occasionally break off what they're doing and explore a little bit more. There's a variety of ways by which we can do that if you think about I'm currently mining and I've basically loaded up my ship with ore and I'm heading over the refinery and all of the sudden you're kicked out of quantum travel, and you got a ping on your radar and all you know is at this distance is that it's a ship and at conventional cruise speeds it's three minutes away.

Do you now start spooling up your quantum engines after you've course corrected to get around it and you're going to go ahead and jump out but the information that there's a derelict ship there when you don't know anything about it, its current state, whether it's already been salvaged, what type of ship it is… that information is worth much less. Or do you go off the beaten path and now you're actually going to invest three minutes to go… you were mining but it seems safe, so I'm going to head over and I'm going to get a little bit closer. Now I know what type of ship it is, I'm going to go a little bit closer still, now I can actually see it hasn't actually been scrapped.

There's a lot of value here, this key that I have is now very extraordinarily valuable when I go to sell that information to someone else but I got a little bit too close and it turns out there's already some other people. You know pirates that have pulled up or scrappers and they don't want anyone else to have this information so they're moving to basically take you out so can't alert other players and bring them there. All of the sudden you wanted to extract a little bit value about something you incidentally ran into and you ventured a little bit too closer and now you've basically walked into… not something that was intentionally meant as a trap but it works out that way none the less.

Yup, when a lot of this stuff is working we have a much bigger play field which is in the off thing, that's what we're working on right now. I think the gameplay possibilities and fun going to be much better… well, I mean much better than it is now. I think it'll be something really special so that's going to be cool, so let's carry on.