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When will we see ground and air race tracks on Yela, or additional tracks in Arena Commander?

TL;DRFixed race tracks on the moons are shelved for the foreseeable future because the planets keep changing; a scramble race is in progress, and Arena Commander racing waits on a new team.

Luke PressleyLead Designer, Star Citizen Live

So, I mean, there's obviously the asteroid field around Yela. I'm assuming they mean planets. I made that assumption. Not sure. We have, for 3.0, tried to make the traditional kind of start, interesting track, finish line races on all three moons. And then the moons changed, just changed beneath us. The technology keeps moving on. I mean, anyone who's seen the difference in Daymar and Yela from 3.0 to 3.1 will see the huge difference and improvements that have been made. It does mean that it would throw out completely any track that you'd made there. You want to go through a canyon, that canyon won't be there maybe next time we regenerate that planet. So we kind of had to put that by the wayside for now, and for the foreseeable, because these planets, we assume, are just going to keep improving.

Jared HuckabyHost, Community

Yes, it is one of the trials and tribulations of running a live environment in the middle of game development. Daymar and Yela and Cellin are not locked. They're not final yet. So while they're making these changes, you don't want to do work that just has to be redone and redone and redone every patch.

Luke PressleyLead Designer, Star Citizen Live

Exactly. And that doesn't mean we're not working on races. We are working on a scramble race right now that takes place in space and on planets. What's cool about that one is that you pick an interesting location at the time, and you don't pick a track or anything, just an interesting location to start, and around it. And everyone gathers in one place, and it's a death race; obviously we gather in an armistice zone. And the moment the race starts, they head off to a randomly generated location. And the first guy to collect that checkpoint, that's one to him, up to a certain limit, at which point he wins. What you do when you get to that checkpoint, we are currently working on balancing. So we don't want the super fast ones to win all the time. So if they flew there, collected it, and then get to fly after the next one immediately, it gives no time for the slower, more heavily armored ships to catch up. So we're working on ways of, maybe you have to hold it for a certain time, or we don't announce the next checkpoint until afterwards. What is for sure is that you will definitely have to backtrack. We will put the next checkpoint on the opposite side of where you started. So you have to kind of go through all those people who were coming towards you, or overtake all those slower, more armored things. So, yeah, it's going to be interesting.

Jared HuckabyHost, Community

So in a basic sense, just kind of like a figure eight, like a flat figure eight, where you have to go back while the fast people are going to their next checkpoint, the slow people will still cross them and have a chance to blow them out of the...

Luke PressleyLead Designer, Star Citizen Live

Not like that. Once the checkpoint's gone, that's gone. So the people who are heading there don't have to keep heading there. They are closer then to the one that's going to spawn behind them, kind of thing. I don't mean literally behind, but it kind of works in a circle kind of thing. It moves its way around. But you're always crossing paths. And it gives the slower ships a better chance and keeps them fighting each other as well, as it is a death race. We've got this working on the planets; it's just players only. We've got this working in space, where AI can actually join; our AI are capable of racing in space. So we have these things around the asteroid field at Yela. So, yeah, when it comes to Arena Commander, I think we've announced that we're going to be maybe starting a team that is Arena Commander, racing, Star Marine kind of focused. Until we have that manpower, I don't see us expanding or working on those racetracks for now.

Jared HuckabyHost, Community

Yeah, this is a common question that comes up quite a bit. When are you going to iterate on Arena Commander? When are you going to iterate on Star Marine? There will be small changes here and there, like new props that are made for the prop teams. But as Erin Roberts stated on ATV, I don't know how many weeks ago now, 10 weeks ago now, we are looking to hire up for Arena Commander and for Star Marine specifically. And once that process has happened, if that process gets to happen, once it happens, we'll have a lot more information about what our plans are, because those teams will get to be the ones who make the plans.

Calling All Devs›Racing, NPC Traders and the RSI Roadmap·
Published on this date.23 Apr 2018