This post is a transcript of Reverse the ‘Verse: Episode 99, material that is the intellectual property of Cloud Imperium Games (CIG) and it’s subsidiaries. INN is a Star Citizen fansite and is not officially affiliated with CIG, but we reprint their materials with permission as a service to the community. INN edits our transcripts for the purpose of making the various show participants easier to understand in writing. Enjoy!



Reverse the ‘Verse: Episode 99 – Incomplete Transcripts

Starting with the Week in Review. They went to the LA zoo this week. Bigger thing is they got 2.4 out last Friday. It hit live Alpha servers. They’ll talk more about 2.4 soon.

The trip to the LA zoo can only be described as ‘darkly horrifying’

They won’t go into details, but apparently the animals weren’t getting along. There was a jaguar head and a bear butt. A giraffe peed for a long time. They saw terrible things.

Monday they came back, it’s E3 week in LA. Everyone’s everywhere. Marketing folk in meetings, everyone has seminars and offsite things, there’s an urgency this week that they weren’t involved in in any way.

They worked on Jump Point and the Dragonfly this week. They were supposed to go to E3 Thursday, but they got busy with an idea which we’ll see in a couple hours, so they didn’t go.

Chris is back, Erin is in town, Carl Jones is visiting as well. Lots of top-level guys in town as they work out roadmaps for 2.5, 2.6, etc…

Nothing they’re ready to share yet though. Busy week.

2.4 is live! 2.4 hit live Friday. It’s not bug-free. Live servers are still an alpha environment. It’s still a testing phase.

The long time between 2.3 and 2.4 spawned the idea that the game’s done, it’s not. It’s still alpha everywhere. They learned a lot from going live on 2.4. There were lots of hotfixes etc…

It’s smoother now, but there’s still plenty of work. They’re still discussing whether there’ll be a 2.4.1

They start small with Evocati, then go to larger PTU waves, then when they know it’s not perfect but it’s running well enough, they need to go to a larger audience, so they go to the live Alpha environment. And as they scale, they discover more issues.

Keep up using Issue Council, it helps everyone at CIG a LOT.

Drake Dragonfly – Goes on sale later today. It’s been a long-time coming. They pitched it to the community almost two years ago as an option in one of the stretch-goal goals. They thought it’d win, it was beat by the Reliant. The Reliant was done, but they’ve always been asked when they’d do the Dragonfly.

They’ve finally done the Dragonfly. They thought of compelling things to do with it in the SC world, it’s a really cool ship, really different. It’s kind of like actually getting a motorcycle.

There’s a segment in AtV about it this week, about how it was designed and such, and some of the first art was in AtV as well.

Ben used to take Privateer 2 and hex-edit it so you could fly different ships. He got to the end of the list, and there was ‘spaceman’, little guy with a static gun, and he could behave the same as a ship. You could swap the ship with him, travel around as a spaceship with one tiny gun.

That’s where the idea for the Dragonfly came.

The name comes from Ben as well – Apparently it was an inn on Gilmore Girls.

With the Drake Dragonfly, they started a contest last week on RtV about Dragonfly art. Rules were simple – draw what a Dragonfly might look like. They wanted them done in Paint, throwback to old Ben drawings.

Everyone on the community team picked their favourites, they’re gonna show all the favourites.

Justins’ favourite came from Rath McTaren.

Alexis’ pick came from Pit_16

Winners get a dragonfly (they’re talking about all the ships as they get shown

Ben’s favourite is from Barny Graneiro

Tyler’s favourite came from Fist’tkufs

Hennessy’s favourite came from AdzAdama

Disco’s pick was from Wykstrom

For anyone wondering, all of the drawings look suitably eye-searing.

And now they have a guest. Matt Sherman is on the show now. And they’re moving on to Q&A phase.

[How many dragonfly’s inside a Caterpillar?] Exact numbers are still being sorted out. A decent number, but like they said with the Endeavour sale, there will be hard limits as to how many you can store and scramble. It’s not how many you can stack wall to wall, it’s something that wont’ make the servers melt. At least two, probably more per module. The Dragonfly is very tiny. The art from AtV makes it look bigger and longer than it is.

[How’s the huge spider mining drone coming?] Might go on sale, but there’d need to be a reason to give it to us first. They’ll revisit when there’s mining.

[Motorcycles made by other manufacturers?] Maybe someday. The lore of the Dragonfly is it’s the first one. Hopefully years down the line there’ll be competing space motorcycles.

[How many CIG members to screw in a lightbulb?] Who knows?!

[Disco! Can we buy the Endeavour?] Eventually.

[Concerning longer space travel, is there a plan for gameplay for crew downtime?] There are plans. It’s in the stuff they’re going to have to have something there, but it’s also still far enough from needing it in-game that they haven’t fleshed out what’ll be there. It’s more a Tony Z question.

[Can I change Buccaneer seat for a Dragonfly?] It’s not that small.

[What utility does the Dragonfly offer?] Special to the Caterpillar, nothing in particular really. The Cat will have the ability to scramble Dragonflies, but it’s not exclusive to the Cat. They went into it with the idea of a space motorcycle gang with a Cat hauler that picks up loot.

[Status of Herald?] Herald is wrapping up now. Last week on News from AtV the Buccaneer and Herald got confused in the LA phase. Buccaneer still hasn’t started whitebox, Herald is starting Greybox. It’ll have an updated interior, can walk around it inside, shaping up really cool.

[If we get LTI with the Dragonfly can we upgrade later to a larger ship and keep LTI?] Yes. One of the packages today is two dragonflies and a Caterpillar. There’s no way to have separate insurances in a package, they’re all LTI. They wanted to give people the ability to get two Dragonflies and a Cat at a discount, and it came down to either give the package, or have to bash things together brokenly. Within the confines of the system, the Cat has to have LTI.

[Is there support for Steam controller in 2.4?] No support, but QA has a steam controller to test with. They are currently working on controller support for a few things.

Ben asks [ what did we like from E3? ] Disco had never seen or heard of Dishonored. Seeing the reveal of Dishonored 2 was interesting for him. Ben thought it was a slower year, definitely gonna grab PS VR though. Ben also things COD Space was really cool. He watched it in the Sony trailer. He didn’t see what it was, but thought it’s really cool to see the natural evolution of where Wing Commander might have went. He’s wary that he wants a back-story. Usually COD / Battlefield games have to build in a backstory cause they tie into a war, WWI, WWII, etc… interested to see how much worldbuilding there is in COD Space.

Alexis – Death Stranding was intriguing, also the new Fifa game with the story mode looked interesting.

Justin – His first year going to E3. Kid in a candy store. He was really impressed. Got to see CoD show, lots of promo videos, the new Zelda game, etc… Everything is visual and cinematic, quite the experience. He thought everything was interesting.

Ben – E3’s kinda cool cause they get to see what everyone else’s doing.

Matt – Lots of stuff. Sony’s press conference was awesome. The new God of War looks awesome, Horizons, Days Gone, etc… Bunch of cool stuff. Dishonored 2 looks awesome.

Disco’s answer would have been Red Dead 2, but… where is that?

Matt liked the look of We Happy Few

Matt’s tempted to grab PS VR for the new Resident Evil

Tom – One thing to say – Visceral’s new Star Wars game. That’s the most exciting him on the horizon for him. Ben wishes they’d shown more about it.

Ben’s excited about Mass Effect and Star Wars, just wanted to see more.

Disco hates it when developers talk about something and never show it (sarcasm)

Back to questions!

[Limit for characters on planets and ships?] That’s something that comes after planets, and after ships can go on planets. It’s not an arbitrary number. They’re trying to add more with each match. Year ago they had 4 player maps, now they have 24. With networking work it will get even better soon.

Ben imagines that they’ll be pushing it forward forever, even after the game launches.

Chris will constantly push the number of people that can fit in a game.

[More ship commercials please?] No more for the time being. They’ll return someday, but the folks that did those are doing cinematics for Squadron, don’t want to interrupt them. The Tali one is still coming eventually.

[Dragonfly loaner?] Merlin for now. The Dragonfly will probably be in-game sooner than later too, so won’t need a loaner for long.

[I wish you a good day] Thank you!

[I know the Dragonfly cant’ travel in Atmo, but why not?] Need checks and balances. Also atmospheric re-entry wouldn’t make sense. It’ll make more sense once you see it, and once it’s in-game. Even sizing it against a Merlin, it’s half the size of a Merlin. It’s a fireball waiting to happen. Folds up for easy storage though.