Can we have some information on what to expect for space combat improvements?

Okay, so yes, we'll be improving it. We've made adjustments to how thrusters work and so forth. A while back, we purposely slowed combat down to combat speeds because we wanted a more visual experience. When you're in combat against AI, we don't want you just fighting with pixels, because it's not fun, and we want the AI to act intelligent. So we'll be putting a lot of work into that. Yes, we want the ability for a player, if they're just cruising down to a planet and it's boring because they've got 1,000 kilometers to go, to use afterburners on the straight line so they can get down there faster. But I think when you're not in a straight line, we're going to have to make some adjustments. And also the way the AI actually flies and what they do, to make that experience against the AI more interesting. Which means there'll be work on the physics system. Obviously there'll be more work on combat over planets as well, because we're going to be improving the atmospheric flight. But yes, making the flight AI better, those are the games I've worked on, and that's something I take a great personal interest in, making sure that experience is better. So there will be improvements for 3.1, absolutely, but this is a process which is going to keep on going. We plan on making it better and better. So think of this as a first step, and then the next version comes out and it'll be better again. The team isn't going to stop working on it. So you'll see this as an improvement through the year, where things just get better and better, because the team is still there. We have our flight AI team and they'll just keep on going, and we have our physics guys and they'll be doing the same thing all the way through.

And the great thing is, as we go out, we see how people are playing. I'm sure we've mentioned this before to the community, but our developers spend a lot of time looking at the videos that are made by the community. It's a very collaborative experience. You might throw some questions in about this stuff, but actually the stuff you're playing and showing when you're flying, that's the stuff our designers and our programmers will download and look at, and they'll go, okay, that's not how it's meant to work. This stuff is really good info for us, not just if it's entered as a bug in the system. Literally we go to YouTube and just watch what's going on. And that's brilliant. We have that with the community; other businesses do not have that at all. We can make this game in that sort of way and with that support, and it does make a massive difference.

And of course, ship combat is not just a system that helps Star Citizen. It's obviously a system that's going to be very important for Squadron 42.

Absolutely. But likewise, I don't want to throw too many promises out, but we're not that far off from getting FPS AI into the PU as well, to really make missions more interesting. I'm not promising this for 3.1, but when we have that, when you can go onto a planet and do stuff, then all of a sudden there's a bit of danger: you go down to do a mission and someone might attack you. And likewise, while we're making these changes here, the Squadron guys are also very much focusing on the FPS side. As soon as that's in a state that we believe is good enough for a tier zero implementation in the PU, we'll put that in, using a lot of the work that's come from the FPS team as well.