This post is a transcript of Reverse The ‘Verse – December 2015 Subscriber Edition, 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 – December 2015 Subscriber Edition – Transcript

This is a once a month Reverse the ‘Verse for subscribers where they answer only subscriber questions from the CIG forum and Subscriber chat on the CIG’s website

They’re currently in the room coded Studio 42 (May change) where they will host other shows and mocaps

[Will the backdrop be available for download?] Yes, it was in a post in August

Crucible vault has been updated today for subscribers, over 100 images

[ Is the current SCU number 88 now different from Reclaimers,caterpillars, (Lists various ships)] Currently that number is subject to change until they have the ships in and can accurately determine the numbers really are from actual flight experience.

Randy had an idea of a human catapult for the caterpillar but the issue was that it logistically was difficult to implement, but they have plans for something else in place of that but not quite like that.

[ What do you designers do?] Every designer does something different, Randy works on ship core design and mechanics, ship building in general. Matt is working on the component systems and similar stuff to Randy

[ Will we be able to give specific orders to people on a ship that only they can respond to?] Yes, you will be able to dictate what people can and can’t do, you can have certain stations that do certain things and others that are more general. When it comes to permissions a captain for example take over any station if needed depending on what permission is set and can kick people out of seats to get in them himself.

[ What’s the deal with Vin Diesels hair(IE randy)] I’m lazy

[ Can you recover broken off pieces of a ship like a gun and put it in your cargo to repair it later? ] Parts are broken up into modules like guns and other parts you can swap on a ship, if it’s not completely destroyed you can salvage it and use it to repair that area later, there’s still a lot being worked on but the general idea is as long as a module is intact, it can be rebuilt and isn’t simply scrap.

[What’s the plan for locking ships?] This plays into what we talked about before. We want people to be able to do what they wish with their ships in the long term without having to worry about their stuff getting jacked. The permission system is what’s needed to make that happen and it’s being worked on to come out soon but other systems need to come online first before that becomes a reality

[ What’s the plan for self destruct sequence in multi-crew ships? Will other crew members be able to initiate it or notified?] We will have warning lights and alarms to give crew members enough time to evacuate. Only the captain can activate the sequence unless he has given specific permissions to a crew member. They also want enemies to have a chance to stop it as well so it wont be a short sequence. Ultimately Self destruct means death in the PU, you wont survive the explosion so it’s a big decision to make.

[The Curicble can repair larger ships like the Idris. I get it for patch work for a ships hull, but how would it work for internal structural damage?] You’d have a repair team. once you’ve sealed the breach, people inside can control. Can’t have too much more detail on repair, but the outside arms will be for external stuff, or things at the outer hull. But that could also be done by EVA or drones. Interior stuff, the arms are way larger than has been shown so far (they’re massive). They’ll be able to move and manipulate large and capital class components, which are room-sized. For an Idris, you may need a couple of crucibles, but they’ll have that functionality.

[Will we be able to turn off gravity in a larger multicrew ship like an Idris?] Still being determined. Like they showed for Gold Horizon wher ethere was a gravity generator, that’s definitely something they want to explore how it will play nice with the local physics grid. That’s going to be a question where they need more multicrew ships online to answer.

One of the bugs in one of the PTU builds yesterday. I you spawned a ship, gravity would turn on in all of space.

[Multicrew alpha ships are pretty weak and can be taken out with a hornet. Plans for balancing?] Ongoing. That was a bug that they saw on a stream, where a hornets shields were the same shields as the constellations, so one hornet was going to town and just not dying. But the shield and 15000 health when it should have only had about 5. The Tali and Connie, it’s the first time they’re in our hands. There will be lots of tuning over the next few patches, but they’ll be keeping an eye on it and addressing it.

Ben – ‘No-one loves the Cutlass people’ Disco – ‘We love everybody. We just love making fun of them a bit more. We’re terrible people’

[Ship intakes, will ship regen fuel at the same time or vary based on fuel and speed?] Intakes will be a tunable aspect to an extent on how much fuel you can take in, Starfarer has a special intake to be able to do more than most ships due to the way it’s designed

[Would you say SC ships have enough fans on them, or not enough?] Not enough is the answer. Definitely.

[How long does it take to design something like the crucible or caterpillar, and how has the process changed?] Every ship is a unique little snowflake in that it takes different amounts of time. On average it takes anywhere from 3-5 weeks to get the interior, the confluence page, art, mechanics, talking with matt Sherman looking at components, component sizes etc… access panels, everything. A lot of thought goes into the interiors. And this is just the whiteboxing, not even building out the interior of the ships.

They do build in engine, but it’s all basic blocks, but it takes a while to get through. Lots of iterations, lots of checks, feedback, adding, changing things, etc… Working on the crucible towards the end, Calix asked ‘where are the spotlights’, little things like that get added in. It’s also something where it’s never just designers doing work on ships. They have to work in tandem with artists as well. Everyone has to work ot their strengths. Designers have to work with and trust the Artists to be able to make something incredible.

Calix has arrived!

[Mining drones, Any info?] No information on it

[ Randy I love the side opening of the caterpillar, will both sides open and what happens if both sides open in flight, will ammo go clean through it?] Yes both sided will open up and if nothing is hitting anything a bullet will go through. If people are near the ship they can see people shooting from the inside to out, vice versa.

[Damage inside of ships?] Definitely still in progress. They’ve talked about this; components will cook off. If components start exploding they’ll damage components around them, there’s so much that can have cascading damage. If a power plant overheats, that’ll affect the rest of the pipe system, till eventually the whole thing goes up. Generally requires more than one component to fail at once. Engines, Shields, and Power Plants all go up at the same time, things get explodey.

Conceptually, blowing up munitions or setting off mines / etc.. inside ships should and could function the same way as doing component damage. Damage to the area, propagate that out to components, damage from those propagate out, etc… That’s the theory, but it hasn’t been done in engine yet. It’s all design ideas right now.

[Is it possible to steal components from a ship? Can you board and take out components like a hyperdrive?] Components are not designed to be manipulated by hand, you will be able to move them as cargo items and transport them but not swap them out in space. At a vendor on a planet perhaps you can swap them out that way.

It also depends on what the ship is, not all the components will be accessible to begin with like smaller ships, it would require dismantling aspects of the ship to get at them. Sabotage is something they’ve thought of but they don’t want it to be easy.

[for multicrew ships, can we expect TTK to increase, giving people the ability to run around inside?] Yes. TTK keeps growing as things get larger and as they playtest more. The first patch that has multicrew ships isn’t even online yet. Shields and armour are getting tweaked and retweaked, and will be revised totally during the component revamp. As more multicrew ships come onboard, they’ll look into more and more balance passes. They’re still only doing medium size ships too, they haven’t hit large or capital yet. Once something like the Idris M is in play too, an Idris’ TTK against a Connie would be much less if it hits a clean shot with its railgun. Balance will be ongoing.

Note – They know what components are in the Idris now.

[ Will we need space forklifts to transport cargo from larger ships to another or can we float things over?] Ideally we want to be able to put stuff on a pallet jack and EVA over and then just EVA back to your ship. So you can do it in space or on ground. They have things where they can bundle objects together like a cargo jack to move things together so you’re not making 30 trips and can do one trip etc.

[Outside of the ‘if it fits’ concept, what ships other than Reclaimer can break ships apart for salvage?’ Undetermined. Right now the Reclaimer is the only one. THe Caterpillar can do LIGHT salvage, but it’s all meant for EVA tools. None of that is for the ship itself. So far the Reclaimer is the only purpose built ship for it, but they’re looking at concepts for… they’ve done the biggest salvage and mining ships, now they’re looking to do concepts for filling in the blanks.