Star Marine [is] a little more linear. Will we have AI combat modes similar to Vanduul Swarm?
TL;DRAI combat modes will come, but not in the first Star Marine iteration, which targets player-versus-player; AI is expected to first appear in a later release, possibly enabling modes fighting AI.
We certainly will, but it won't be part of the first iteration. The first iteration, basically the balancing we're working on, is all towards player versus player. So we're refining the animation sets, the combat moves, the way in a first person slash third person you can basically use cover and all this kind of stuff and so forth. Throw grenades, the works, it's that kind of level. So that's what we're refining to get players into the game. And then that's what will come out with 2.6. But then shortly after that, when the AI comes online, the AI basically will be in the game properly. The first you'll see of that will be in 3.0. You'll probably see some in Squadron as well. But basically the first version where people will play will be in 3.0, and so that would be the time when we'd actually probably have a mode where you can actually go in with some of your buddies and actually fight AI and have that level of going in, trying to take stuff out.
Yeah, like outlaws defending a space station or a ship that you've got to take over, or vice versa, defend against that.
But the really interesting thing is, yes, that's a scenario you can set up in Star Marine, but the really interesting thing is actually the 3.0 stuff, where you can be in your spaceship with your buddies, and you come across an abandoned space station somewhere, and in the actual Persistent Universe, you have to go in and take them out. For me, that's the really exciting stuff.
Yeah, we'd probably do more of that. And if you did something in Star Marine, it'd be more like a horde mode where it's just wave after wave. Space zombies.
When AI and subsumption matures, it gets more and more and more, then the designers just start going crazy. So that's when it opens it up for us to create more play scenarios.
Yeah, but there's loads of stuff. Obviously this was specifically about Star Marine, but just with the AI stuff, we're looking forward to it, because there's so many things we can do in terms of having bases which are actually protected by AI and so forth. We can bring in lots of different things where you can deal with griefing in some ways, which at the moment we just have to have green zones and stuff like that.
That's another interesting point, because Chris has said before, well, there was kind of no point to bring out Star Marine way back when, after we wound up releasing that same level of functionality, players going up against each other, within the actual Persistent Universe. Now, however, things are starting to change. We're very close to basically having the AI out, and so all of a sudden you see, oh, well, Star Marine will actually be a quite effective testbed for some of these AI concepts. So if we'd released Star Marine six months ago, we were still too far away on the AI to really realize any sort of significant benefit. But now these two things are coming together. For the same reason we used Arena Commander to test and tweak the responsiveness of the ships and basically get that polished, so that when we were actually able to release players in the Persistent Universe we had things working at a pretty good level, the same is going to be true with Star Marine and AI and all that type of stuff.