Hello fellow Citizens! Welcome to INN’s notes for Reverse the ‘Verse – Episode 60!

Reverse the ‘Verse

Notes by Erris and Myself

Notes in bold are important. Notes in italics are our own thoughts.

– Soon tm

– I see Disco, James Pugh. It’s Ben just rolled in.

– Alyssa’s here now. Videographer Thomas Hennessy is there as well. And Alexis.

– And Sandi’s here now too

– Week in Review: Sandi can’t remember what she did yesterday. Mostly emails saying where stuff is.

– Weird week for Ben. Ben worked from home on Wednesday due to illness, on Thursday a construction crew cut through the Santa Monica fiber optic line, cutting them off from the internet for the day, so everyone worked from home. James was running files back and forth from the office via USB drive.

– Social module hit early in the week, and we’ll see more of that shortly. First person in Social was a person named Josh.

– The first line spoken in the PU was something about where to get tacos.

– Alyssa: Helped the CS guys this week by answering some tickets, which was interesting. She had to be polite, which is not her forte.

– Alyssa also helped Sandi chase down a lot of things for CitizenCon, and killed her phone checking for when the internet would be back.

– Hennessy did some videos, and figured out some new cameras to build, and put together a piece for AtV about how Social was put together.

– Justin was away on vacation. Went to Cancun for his anniversary.

– James Pugh worked on posts that we should see today. Lots of stuff coming out today.

– Posts ‘up the wazoo’ as Kids these day are saying.

– Vanguard variants post is going out today. Undergoing final styling. Turbulent are working on that now.

– Post focuses on the interiors of the variants.

– Shorter design post on Ewar from Todd Papy – jamming and such – it’s on Ben’s plate, and he’ll be working on that after RtV.

– FPS post from Jason Hutchins is coming, as usual.

– Post with the Dragon Con schedules for Ben, Sandi, and two Dave’s.

– Doing a ‘social media roundup’ Media’s caught fire in the past week.

– Will talk about the digital trading cards and such.

– There’s another potential post that will be a surprise if it happens and a disappointment if it doesn’t.

– New ‘digital trading cards’ are going up. The Vanguard Attacks, #56 in the back, is up. And it’s getting the back for it added too. Check back every day for those on Instagram.

– The #imastarcitizen is doing well, go to http://www.imastarcitizen.com to make your own star citizen card.

– Ben and Alexis watching X-Files now… and pairing the episodes with the most popular music video the week each episode came out.

– The coolest #imastarcitizen posts will get Vanguards next week.

– Getting ready for DragonCon next week – Star Citizen Q&A @ Hilton. Will have swag. Walk up to them and demand a pin.

– Ben is getting better now.

– Social module is looking great. They very quickly diagnosed some connection issues which was more to do with the launcher than anything else. Test going well, ramping up quickly and that will continue.

– Ryan Archer is creating the art for the Star Citizen Conceirge citizen cards. They will be for sale probably within a month.

– Battlefield upgrade kits upgrade the components but not the look for the Vanguard variants.

– Two Vanguard variants were overpriced. They will be $10-15 cheaper than previously announced. They take their pricing seriously.

– Patches will be available soon as well.

– CS queue is still very backlogged… a little over a week behind. Please be patient.

– CS is working their butts off.

– Internal studios will be the focus of News from Around the ‘Verse from now on. Still get FPS updates Fridays.

– Battlefield upgrade kits for Vanguard can be utilized in the field.

– Vanguard Warden, Harbinger, and Sentinel available starting today.

– No LTI on Warden.

– Community team will be at Culver City Toys R Us waiting for midnight sale of Star Wars toys.

– The escape pod portion of each Vanguard variant is swappable with the other Vanguards.

– PMs will be in chat system eventually. A lot of iterative development coming on chat system.

– The Social module, the deployment of features is very scheduled and timed out for the next year or so.

– Sandi, Chris, and Hennessy are the only ones going to CitizenCon from Santa Monica.

– No ETA on the new holotable.

– [Is the Vanguard Harbinger superior to the Retaliator?] No? What does it mean for it to be superior? Less ordinance on the Harbinger but somewhat more maneuverable. It’s a tradeoff.

– Battlefield upgrade kits – the Hornet lineup might get something like that someday.

– Redeemer vs. Vanguard? – TBD. We’ll see how that matcheup plays out when they’re all available. People ask this ship vs. that ship a lot, and the best example they’ve got of that right now was the Tali vs. the Connie. The Tali was supposed to win that fight every single time, but the crew in the Connie made it happen so the Connie won.

– PAX South? No plans for pax south right now, but there might be people there. That’ll be decided later.

– Lisa has no info on the Freelancer right now, it’s been handed off to the UK. Doing Art for ships by Manufacturer, helps keep things stylistically similar. It’s actively being worked on. She’ll try to find out the status for next week.

– Probably won’t see the Drake Dragonfly before end of 2015.

– Next week on Ship Shape she’ll try to do the Avenger.

– Blanket answer for all ship status questions – there’s the post on the forums that has the most up to date information they’re willing to release.

– [Vanguard variants have LTI?] Yes. The two new variants will have LTI, the Warden will not.

– The new ships will also come with Takuetsu models.

– [Will variants be sold on Friday in Europe?] It will be Friday LA time. Hopefully they’ll be sold before Friday in Europe. They had a post this morning, they’re just making it fancier right now.

– No plans for Paris Games Week unfortunately.

– [Disco when will you remove your mask] Chat’s getting weird.

– [Will Anvil get a cap ship someday?] Maybe. They’ll have the Crucible, which can carry a fighter around in it. Mini capital ship, coming soon-ish.

– Everyone loves running around Arc Corp.

– [Will CIG be at EGX?] No, becuase they don’t know what EGX is

– Unfortunately Tony Zurovec is in Austin, and probably won’t be on RtV. He’s like a horse, a magical horse outside of time.

– Work continues on the base Constellation.

– Tony is working on an introductory post about Social Module for when the module goes live to everyone.

– [Will the Phoenix be sold again?] There were a couple (less than 30) left after last sale. There could be another lot of them at some point.

– [How’s the Carrack looking?] No changes lately. When more work starts, they’ll let us know.

– Ben’s going to say two words he had a meeting about this morning. Caterpillar Variants.

– Looking to put the ‘pillar in the game, so they’re thinking seriously about what’s next for it.

– No-one’s slated to work on the Banu MM, but it’s being slated for work soon. Nothing new now, but we’ll know as soon as Lisa knows.

– In the future, we’ll be able to explore more of Arc Corp. Lots of the alleyways will expand, Casaba will open at some point, etc…

– Zane is in the UK right now working with UI designers to come up with strategies for how manufacturers will be styled for ship HUDs. Some will be holographic-ish, some will be less. They’re figuring out HUDs for the companies vibe now.

– [Update on new jump point hardcover?] None yet.

– [Buggy racing in ArcCorp?] Someday. Disco wants it. He’s talked to everyone for it. Doesn’t mean it’s going to happen, but he’s championing it.

– [Are the blades on the vanduul fighter supposed to heat up?] No. They shouldn’t even have a head pool to heat up. They should not heat up, and there’s no way they should be capable of it.

– [Why don’t the Glaive blades do any damage?] Do they not? Calix has seen them do damage. He’ll look into it.

– Matt Sherman and Calix Reneau are here now as well.

– ArcCorp is limited right now because it’s just a grain of sand. Soon we’ll see the whole beach.

– [Can you take the launcher from the Harbinger and put it on the Warden?] Yes. That’s the idea of the battlefield kits.

– From Lisa’s experience, the Cutlass has had a lot of teamwork between the UK and LA, so everyone’s hesitant to give updates right now, cause it’s being handed forward and backward. They wanted to get it solid for Gamescom. They’ll go back to it later. It’s not a disaster.

– Cutlass has had its health changed previously, but its components healths weren’t changed, so components still had old health values. Those have now been increased, and should be seen in an upcoming patch. This should also affect the Hornet. Not the Gladius though. Gladius’ mostly lose thrusters cause they lose wings.

– [Can you take the rocket turret from the vanguard and put it on the Tali?] Not sure given the current design. It was originally specced that you could, but it was also designed so if you move it to another ship, it doesn’t come with its suite of ammo. ~30 shots, instead of constantly reloading. Buyer beware.

– No tournament at Dragon Con planned yet, but if the person who set it up last year wants to set it up again, they’ll support that.

– [Can you rotate rocket turret 360 degrees?] Just a concept right now. Will be cleaned up when the ship gets built to ensure you don’t tear a feed belt off your ship when you rotate the turret to shoot some guy behind you. It will definitely be taken into consideration.

– People are being creepy towards Lisa and Sandi. Stop being creepy. It’s not acceptable.

– [Harbinger comes with a railgun?] Don’t believe so, no.

– [Are there plans to sell the new corvette this year?] TBD. When it’s ready it’s ready.

– [How will ships go from hangar to takeoff platform?] Door will open and it’ll go out. They had a lot of meetings about this early on, it’s been thought out.

– [New weapons in Voyager Direct?] Not soon enough. You’ll see more components soon, but not weapons yet. They want to get a full set of weapons out soon, cause they realize it’s limiting.

– Apparently someone owes Ben a writeup about some weapons.

– [When can I stream Social module?] If you’re in the PTU, you accepted an NDA. Once it goes live, you can stream it. Can’t say when that’ll be though.

– [Javelin updates?] Nothing right now, but Lisa will look into it. It’s in the works for SQ42, probably will see it later this year. As is the Idris, but the Idris is further along. We just saw the Idris, Connie, and Cutlass in Gamescom, that’s where they are.

– [How many ship artists working at CIG?] A lot. Several in Santa Monica, a few in Texas, most in the UK. Tricky to give an exact number. Some artists go back and forth between ships and other things, some don’t work on creating them but do bugs and support, less than 10 in Santa Monica, a few in Texas, more than that combined in the UK.

– Mustang Delta hasn’t recieved changes to how it flies, but the rockets have increased damage and flight speed. Should be more useful now.

– Go vote in the Glaive poll on the forums. Based on response so far, they might offer some more Glaives from the Gamescom pool. If you were at Gamescom, this weekend’s the last chance to get one with the special badge.

– Balance are generally future focused. Changes to health and damage is more on establishing what’s expected out of physically based damage system. Same thing for signature work that’s being done now.

– [Why are dominator II missiles slower?] Matt will check their stats to check their current performance. Probably a lot of legacy things in Missiles that needs to change. Need lots of engineering time to re-examine missiles.

– Bigger ships that have more stations and more responsibilities, Captain could theoretically run them, but it’s not really feasible. As far as station design is going, you’re empowered to access everything on your ship as a Captain, but you won’t necessarily be awesome at it. A solo managed Idris won’t be good. Won’t be able to beat a crewed Idris.This one is hard to explain, there’s a lot of talking going on about it. Doesn’t represent the full breadth of design decisions, but nothing will mechanically lock you out of full control of your ship if you want to do it alone. You just wontt be effective.

– Just because you can do a thing, doesn’t mean you should do a thing.

– And that wraps up RtV.

– Next week will be a quieter episode. Ben will be at DragonCon. James is away, probably just Lando and Alyssa next week.