Hello Citizens!

Welcome to another episode of DevChat, this time covering August 12th to 14th!

First, a brief explainer. DevChat combs through the RSI chat logs, and picks out any interesting comments made by Devs. It amalgamates them, and puts them here, with quotes. While I try to provide context to the comments made by Devs here, these comments sometimes have a very off-the-cuff nature, and everything here should be taken, maybe not with a grain of salt, but for what it is. Interesting, helpful, though not always 100% official, information.

That said, here comes DevChat!

DevChat

August 12

Good bit of information on the 12th, from ships and modularity to a raft of Marketing information from Alyssa.

Ships & Modularity

The Constellation isn’t 100% flight-ready yet, but it is close. This might explain why we weren’t shown much of the interior during Gamescom.

(9:54:05 AM) Mike-CIG: The Constellation still isn’t flight-ready yet, so I can’t fetch any specific data for you. (9:54:14 AM) Mike-CIG: It’s close, though. :P

Tali is still being worked on as well, while there’s no new news on the Vanguard.

(9:55:10 AM) Mike-CIG: Tali’s being worked on as well. Vanguard: I’ve not got anything interesting I can share yet. Except that it’s still bad-ass.

There will always be new equipment over time, but CIG will be avoiding ‘Torpedo-Bay +1’ style choices.

(6:04:43 PM) CIG Matt Sherman: There will always be new equipment over time, but it’s not going to be Torp-Bay +1 choices. Even like I was saying yesterday, the goals is to make it more horizontal progression and not linear. (6:06:36 PM) CIG Matt Sherman: Different torp sizes as well. They’re not one-size-fits-all munition launchers.

The plan is that everything in your ship, including ammo, munitions, etc…, will have an impact on overall mass.

(6:10:26 PM) CIG Matt Sherman: The plan is overall mass from anything in your ship, including ammo/munitions/etc, should have impact. (6:10:36 PM) CIG Matt Sherman: Getting that built out and functioning, that’s another matter. (6:15:48 PM) CIG Matt Sherman: Even if that space is open on the F7C-S, adding anything in will directly impact your stealth and sig-reduction. You won’t be getting no-cost upgradability, there’s always some price.

Modules will add flexibility, but they shouldn’t allow a purpose-built ship to go so against its role that it will overtake a completely different purpose-built ship.

(6:17:06 PM) CIG Matt Sherman: With the modules overall though, even though they’ll offer a lot of flexibility, don’t expect to take a purpose-built ship so far off that initial role that it’ll overtake the usability of a ship built for a completely different purpose.

Ships are very complicated, and space is very large. There will be lots of places in the larger ships though where there will be no view outside, so draw calls and performance issues will be limited by that.

(6:29:50 PM) CIG Matt Sherman: Something to consider with multi-crew ships though, as ships get bigger, there’s going to be lots of spaces where you’d be inside a ship with absolutely no window to the outside space, which means your character wouldn’t need to know/draw/etc any of the ships flying around outside, so there’s a lot of load-balance tricks the network engineers are going to be working with to get as big of server sizes as we can without compromising the gameplay.

Errata

Don’t expect to be running private servers with anywhere near the capacity of the PU.

(6:45:14 PM) CIG Matt Sherman: Ya, don’t expect to be running full-force private servers anywhere near to what the actual capacity of the PU is going to be.

Marketing

The social module should actually be released this month.

(1:49:42 PM) Jao Thaun: so is the social module REALLY going to be released this month, I mean by August 31 at 11:59:59 pm PST? (1:50:02 PM) Darth_Alyssa_CIG: Jao, as far as I know, yes.

CIG know we want them to sell posters, but it’s still a ‘maybe’.

(1:55:10 PM) FyreMaster: Marketing : will CIG ever sell posters? (1:55:46 PM) Darth_Alyssa_CIG: Fyre, it’s possible! Alexis says “maybe” but we know you guys want them.

No new ship commercials in the works right now, but there’s work slated for commercials next year.

(1:55:13 PM) [ ∆ ] CommonParadox: @Darth Alyssa CIG: Are there any new Ship Commercials in the works?? I love thems! (1:56:04 PM) Darth_Alyssa_CIG: Common, not at the moment but we have some work on commercials slated for next year.

Next years’ CitizenCon will probably be in Frankfurt.

(1:55:59 PM) Rougarou: @Darth_Alyssa_CIG can we have a US-based CitizenCon next year? (1:56:32 PM) Darth_Alyssa_CIG: Rou – It will probably be in Frankfurt.

Expect mind explosions at CitizenCon.

(2:10:10 PM) Raisin: what can we expect from citizencon (2:10:23 PM) Darth_Alyssa_CIG: Raisan, to have your mind blown.

CIG haven’t yet done any true marketing for SC, and most companies spend more on marketing than on the game. CIG do not do that.

(2:14:07 PM) Darth_Alyssa_CIG: Clean, since our game is still alpha, we haven’t done any true marketing. Once the games is ready to launch, then we will look at territories and distribution. (2:17:08 PM) Darth_Alyssa_CIG: Josh, I’ll tell you this: most game companies spend more in marketing than they do on the game. (2:17:18 PM) Darth_Alyssa_CIG: We are not one of those companies.

Stretch goals were paused because there’s already enough of the game announced to build. Piling more things on top wasn’t the best way to move forward.

(6:07:46 PM) CIG Matt Sherman: Stretch Goals were paused since we already have more than enough parts of the game we’d already announced and still need to build out that piling more things on top wasn’t the best thing to keep doing.

August 13

Some nice information on why ships have top speeds, and also some clarification on weapons and hardpoints today.

Speed

Top speeds. Just read what Calix says, he explains it better than I ever could.

(4:00:00 PM) CIG Calix Reneau: in real life, if object a accelerates faster than object b, object a will always catch up with object b (4:00:41 PM) CIG Calix Reneau: in Star Citizen we have physics simulation constraints that allow us to manage collision detection at the scale of ships that are hundreds of meters long, and also at the scale of humans that are 2 meters tall (4:01:21 PM) CIG Calix Reneau: this restriction means that a top speed must exist somewhere – and if that is the case, the having top speeds that do not allow object a to eventually overtake object b is the less realistic simulation (4:02:22 PM) CIG Calix Reneau: additionally, having a disparity between top speed and acceleration provides much more room for giving ships distinctive flavors (4:03:35 PM) CIG Calix Reneau: but I do agree with circumstance affecting top speed – I’d like component choice, damage, and cargo to tie into the flight experience at all levels

Weapons and Hardpoints

Missiles are due for a serious overhaul, which will also include a re-code.

(4:05:14 PM) CIG Calix Reneau: missiles are due for a serious overhaul, which will require code. I don’t believe that they can ever be a truly compelling part of the game (not too OP or useless) without behavior changes (4:07:42 PM) CIG Calix Reneau: my biggest issue with missiles is that it doesn’t feel like the player has a great deal of agency over whether or not missiles will be effective in a given scenario

The Cargo system is on the backburner, waiting for AC 2.0

(4:05:48 PM) CIG Calix Reneau: I did the cargo system design, but it is currently on the backburner pending the context of AC 2.0

A modular system doesn’t mean you can rearrange hardpoints at will. There will always be limitations for ships and variants.

(4:07:58 PM) CIG Matt Sherman: The system being modular doesn’t mean you get to rearrange hardpoints at will. There’s still going to be limitations with different ships and variants.

Gimbals will not be removed from single-seat ships. It’s not even being considered. Gimbals are part of the game.

(4:19:16 PM) CIG Matt Sherman: Removing gimbals from single seat ships is not something that’s even being let in the house let alone being brought anywhere near the table of things being considered. (4:19:58 PM) CIG Matt Sherman: They’re a part of the game, they’re gonna stay apart of the game. Instead of trying to find ways to ‘nerf gimbals’ or any device, try to think more of ways to make use of fixed weapons more compelling.

There will be more changes once the physically-based damage system rolls out.

(4:30:46 PM) CIG Matt Sherman: ballistic-boating will be due for its own changes when we get physically based damage rolled out. (4:31:02 PM) CIG Matt Sherman: it doesn’t have the right setup/counterbalances, especially in the gameplay-vaccum of AC

Errata

Star Citizen and Wing Commander are completely separate. They will not be tied together at all.

(5:41:41 PM) CIG Matt Sherman: SC and WC are completely different IP’s, the stories will not be tied together at all.

While any talk about stations is still theorycrafting, the idea is they would be treated like persistent ships. You can control one, but no single player can own one.

(6:43:35 PM) CIG Matt Sherman: Most talk about stations has more been the theorycrafting of it, but overall, they would be treated like the idea of the persistent-ships, in that you may control one, but no single player would individually own a station.

The REC system doesn’t generate CIG any money.

(6:49:10 PM) CIG Matt Sherman: REC doesn’t generate any money. Objectively, it’s not greedy at all, plus it drives people playing where perm.unlocks would result in more one-and-done purchasing which gives up no viable information for long-term planning.

August 14

Lastly, not much was said on Friday the 14th, except for this one excellent quote from Ben.

(6:07:37 PM) CIG Ben Lesnick: I remember Galway telling me there’s a point in a game’s development where you FINALLY understand how it’s really coming together… that was the multicrew stuff for me, I think.



Thanks for reading!