This post is a transcript of Loremakers Guide To The Galaxy: Horus System, 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!



– Welcome to the third anniversary livestream!

– Chris is saying this is a much better idea than a 24 hour livestream. Apparently Ben fell asleep during the 24 hour one that happened last time.

– Chris – ‘I never would have guessed that we’d have such a big, enthusiastic community

– ‘I think we have the best and most supportive community in gaming. Thank you guys for your support.’

– They’ll show us some cool new stuff. And a lamp. A lucky lamp.

– Ben – We have a little bit of everything. Alpha 2.0, material from SQ42, PCGamer has spoiled some of the surprises but we’ve got cool things to show. Updates on new and old ships.

– It’s been a heck of a year, made leaps and bounds on SC in the past 12 months. From the inside it’s incredible seeing 2.0 coming together; the first real glimpse of everything coming together at once.

– Chris – It’s been busy. We have the critical mass on the team now, working on SC through out four studios. Frankfurt came online and made huge contributions, also working on stuff we haven’t seen yet, but we’ll like it. UK studio has grown as well.

– Going now to check in with other three studios, to see what they’re up to.

– Looking at F42 Manchester right now, the whole team’s standing.

– Seems to be a pre-recorded video of F42 Manchester, wishing themselves happy birthday.

– We’ve got the Frankfurt team on now, thanking everyone for the support, in English and German.

– And now we’re seeing Austin. Brief glimpse of all the studios, and the people who’re working on the game.

– Austin will talk about what they’re most proud of. Mark Skelton now.

– Last year has been huge. Worked on Arc Corp extensively, got it to a ‘gold standard’, worked on issues with modularity, game flow, etc..

– Can’t wait to show us Nyx. Which we’ll have to wait for. Nicest floating rock they’ve ever seen.

– Area 18, a lot of really important stuff for design and art and programming have been done, but the thing that stands out the most was getting Area 18 out as a multiplayer experience, allowing players to congregate. Make social connections that are supposed to be a big part of the final game.

– Lots of work is being done on persistence; extensive shortcuts had to be made to get AC into the hands of the community, and now they’re finishing up the re-architecting of some of those things, to get them done properly for the shipped game. Persistence will allow them to build a game where you can explore a first person universe, where you can get jobs, make money, survive, etc…

– That was Jason, Mark, and Tony. And now we’re back to Sandi and Ben!

– They’re here with Randy and Calix, to talk about the Crucible. Newest ship, penultimate ship in the wave 4 concept program.

– The Crucible’s designed for a new repair mechanic they’re building right now. There should be a design post on Repair right now going up on RSI

– Calix started with the repair. They looked into the ship, realised they needed the mechanic; what’s it going to be like to fix a ship in space.

– First images of the Crucible up on screen now.

– We’ve got a group of Crucibles on screen that have repaired an Idris. For larger ships, the Crucibles can open up their bays, manipulate repair arms, articulated arms like the canadarm, that can do hull fabrication. Mix materials to create alloys that are needed.

– You’ll be able to do the repairs better than stock, and could come away with higher durability than you would have before, but it will always be a patch-job. Think about it like submarines. They do underwater repairs to make it back to base.

– Ship is pretty big. Bigger than it was expected to be. Ship is 80 meters long, with 4 crew.

– Repair will continue to be expanded upon. They’re working on getting all the repair systems to feed into the economy as well.

– The Crucible’s quite modular. One available today has a single ship repair bay that slots into the back of the ship. Designed to fit a single-seat anvil ship. Can be closed, repaired, etc…

– One of the big inspirations for the Crucible is the American space shuttle.

– the Scarab, the garage area goes on the back of the ship. But the back of the ship is also the front of the ship. Cockpit can rotate, the engines are fully articulated. Full vectored mains; full control over manoeuvring action.

– seeing in chat that the Avenger variants are going up as well

– The bridge works like a revolving restaurant. Can repair remotely if you want to. The concept design of the ship is done by Ryan Church.

– We’ve got images of the Crucible landed in the hangar, and some more of the Crucible with its repair hangar attached.

– Ryan Archer did lots of blueprints for the ship. Lots of arms on the ship; four internal arms and two on the exterior, modelled after the Canadarm

– We’ve got some images of the anvil chairs that have been created for the crucible. Looking good!

– We’ve got a special edition of Ship Shape coming right now.

– Ship shape, with Randy Vazquez, taking us through early whitebox of Crucible interior.

– Looking at the Crucible, we can see the overall layout of the ship.

– What we’re seeing is very early concept and designs.

– Randy’s been working about a week or so, working on interiors for the crucible. Touches on salvage, repair, and some other systems they can’t talk about yet.

– Single-seat ships will sit inside the ship.

– There are repair pumps, cooland pumps, fuel pumps, etc… to help with refuelling and resupplying as well.

– Being a repair ship, there are lots of airlocks to get in and out of the ship easily and quickly.

– Lots of entrances for crew, airlocks are elevators as well (some of them)

– the elevator can hold 36 SCU

– SC starter packages are on sale for $30, 950 left

– There’s a service elevator that will service the rest of the ship. First level is engineering. It’ll have components and piping to keep the ship running.

– Detailed post on repair system should be on RSI site

– There’ll be ballast and drone launch bays

– sounds like there are four or five separate levels.

– The engines will shift to deal with the mass of ships that are being put in the hold, as the mass of the ship as a whole changes.

– Drones won’t be talked about for a while, they’ll be in another doc.

– Lots of what they’re showing is VERY early whitebox. What they’re showing is about as early as whitebox gets.

– The bridge on the ship is unique, in that it rotates.

– The middle seat on the bridge is the pilot seat. Other seats can do arming operations, drone operations, etc…

– Airlocks are everywhere, there are escape pods everywhere too, from the bridge and the airlocks, to be able to escape.

– Lots of things to still work out with the ship, but it’s looking good in whitebox.

– The cockpit view gives a good overview of all the repair bays.

– Some images of an argo / connie / tali / in the repair bays. Larger ships like the connie and tali can fit partway into the Crucible. Larger ships would have to be repaired by drones.

– The turrets on the ship will be remote turrets. Pilots can turn into turret operators when they need to without switching from stations. People will switch jobs very quickly on the Crucible.

– And that’s it for the brief whitebox of the Crucible.

– Ship is on sale, design doc on repair is up, take a look!

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/pledge/ships/crucible/Anvil-Crucible#buying-options

– And Ben and Sandi are back!

– all the wave four ships introduce some new gameplay elements. Mining with orion, passenger stuff with Genesis, etc… Crucible’s no exception.

– Ben keeps knocking down his mic.

– There’s a design post from Todd Pappy on the site, but now we’re gonna talk with Todd Pappy about repair

– High level goal of repair is to make it scalable, repeatable, and skill-based.

– Has to be fun over 1000s of iterations, over all ship sizes, etc…

– assessing – find the damage. Cleaning – clean the area – clean off damaged area of a wing to get it ready to fix. Mixing – mix a compound for repairing, – Patching – mixing that component over the wing to repair it.

– assessment – When your ship takes damage, some of that damage will go to nearby components. Those componenets have internal fuses that will shut down components before they’re ruined. You’ll be able to go in and fix fuses and such on those.

– We now see Hennessy and Chris, but there’s no audio. And now we’ve got video of the RSI chat.

– CIG having typical CIG livestream issues.

– And now Chris has audio! Dave Haddock and Chris are on camera.

– Going to talk about SQ42, and Mark Hamill’s character.

– unveiled the cast at Cit Con, showed us Gary Oldman. The scene we saw is a very small scene in the larger scope, but it’s a good proof of concept.

– Next person to talk about is Mark Hamill. Chris has worked with him on Wing Commander 3 and 4, Mark Hamill’s awesome.

– SC is in PCgamer and Gamestar with Mark Hamill interviews.

– The next reveal, talking about John Rhys Davis, with Mark Hamill and him, will be shown down the road.

– Now we’ve got a quick snippet of Mark in the game.

– Red One!

– wow. The video that’s being shown right now. Just… unbelievable.

– It’s short, but amazing.

– Shows Mark Hamill flying the Gladius.

– SQ 42 – You’re the character, not Mark Hamill as your character. You create your character, to be who you want; your journey, not Mark’s.

– But they’ve written a deliberate role for Mark, he’s got the most screentime aside from the player, and he’s your mentor. Senior pilot.

– Mark Hamill gets angry at you and yells at you. You’re the rookie pilot, just out of flight academy, Mark’s the veteran on the ship, in charge of getting pilots into shape. Doesn’t tolerate fools; he’s got a backstory. Seen a lot of stuff

– He’s had himself reassigned to the Stanton, which is on patrol not on the front lines, because he’s been worn down by the people he’s lost.

– SQ42 is really a quest for the approval of your disapproving father, Mark Hamil.

– Plays into Gary Oldman’s character as well.

– There’ll be a lot of stress and heroism in the game. Characters will be meaningful, because you spend time with them.

– Characters won’t be identifiable at first blush. This character isn’t the ‘jokester’ when you first meet them. You want to learn more about the characters.

– They’ve announced the main characters, but there’s a large secondary cast as well, lots of whom we’ll probably recognize.

– Chris is going to take some questions from the RSI chat now.

– [2.0 today?] at the end of the stream, they’ll share some info on 2.0. Stick around for that.

– [Starfarer status] rules are, asking about Mark Hamill and SQ42.

– [fun working with Mark again?] Yes. Chris knows Mark and his family, knows Mark’s daughter, who’s grown up and handles his PR and such

– Really nice, wonderful people. Mark is the consummate professional. Biggest role of everyone in SQ42.

– The AW42 scrips it 7 movie scripts.

– [Does Mark make Star Wars references?] Yes. There are some easter eggs in there.

– [Does Mark use the Force?] No, he doesn’t use it in SQ42.

– [How open ended is SQ42?] Because they’re telling a bigger story, and to do it at the fidelity that they want to do it at, the overarching story isn’t possible in one game. They’re doing it over three games. They’ll have a diary that you’ll keep up that; you playing SQ42 will be your earlier self. As you play in the 3 SQ games that combine the story, it’ll fill in the diary in the PU, and will unlock stuff in the PU.

– Sounds like the PU will be set after the trilogy of SQ42 games.

– [Will Mark shoot me down if I shoot his ship?] He will get angry. And there are lots of ‘brig’ scenes where you get a dressing down if you misbehave.

– [Who does Mendelson play?] Stay tuned. He was very good, but it’ll be a reveal next year probably.

– [Will we fly a ship like an Idris in SQ42?] In the opening, might fly a Javelin. Not sure about an Idris.

– Time for some more videos, now a behind the scenes video with Mark Hamill.

– Nice interview with Mark Hamill

– Mark Hamill’s playing a Lee Marvin character.

– Mark – it’s the essence of what acting’s all about. It’s about pretending. A really technical version of gameplaying you played when you were a kid.

– ‘We could all die, wipe that smile off your face’

– Good interview.

– And Chris and Dave are back!

– [do we have to be a man in SQ42?] No, you can choose your sex at the start of the game, and your appearance and skin colour.

– [Multiple paths in the story?] There are definitely different parts iwth branches. INteractions with various characters will effect how they deal with you. There is a beginning and an end, but it ‘s similar to the way Wing Commander works. Different approaches and branches.

– it’s a fine line of letting players feel like they’re deciding stuff, but if it’s too wide you have to thin out the plot to account for all the various paths. Trying to straddle the line it feels like your choices have consequences, but there’s still…

– There are parts where different characters may or may not make it further in the story depending on your actions.

– [How awesome is it to work with new tech vs. the old WC games?] There’s still acting and performance, which is fun. Not the same as on a real set; real set is easier to put yourself in a Universe. But there’s more immersion when the actors and their faces are in the game; in the story, rather than watching it.

– Chris is happy with the fidelity right now. Pushing it a ways beyond what was shown in Citizen Con. Emotion, eyes tearing up, etc… comfortable that they’ll be able to deliver.

– [Will our decisions in SQ42 affect our standing in the pU?] Some of it does. Still trying to figure it out, but there are some discussions about how they connect up. They’re working on figuring that out.

– [co-op?] Erin’s described it. There will be multiplayer in SQ42, but you won’t be able to play the story all the way through with another person; the iterations on the amount of things you’d have’d be too many. When you play through missions, you’ll be able to go back and play them again, and some custom missions again. Play a big battle in the story, then play the same battle with your friends. No co-op with people playing other characters in the story. They need the characters to do their things in the story.

– [SQ42 to PU transition?] Basically, they’re going to treat your char. in SQ42 as an earlier version of yourself. As you play SQ42, Behind Enemy Lines, and the 3rd game, your diary will be updated, and will update thing sin the PU as well.

– You play as your older self in the PU.

– [Ship loadout customization in SQ42?] Still fleshing out the design spec for it, but probably pretty extensive. Can customize the loadout of you, and some other characters as well.

– Later in the game there are interactions to let you get special modules and stuff as well.

– Interactions third or first person?] Building everything for first person, but you’ll be allowed to switch to third person.

– some of the conversations might force you into first person, but they’ll figure that out. They haven’t decided yet.

– [How has Mark changed his acting style since Wing Commander?] He’s done a huge amount of VO work. The Joker, etc… He was really good and quick at dialing stuff in. He would usually do three various lines for each line, with subtle variations, for different colour. He had 24 pages of ‘wild lines’. The straight up acting was no different really, but he’s a real professional.

– Now we’ve got an interview; Sandi interviewing Mark Hamill

– Lt. Cmdr. Steve Coulton. is Mark Hamill’s character. He’s a lifer, resents the more educated ‘college boys’, but he’s not a people person. He doesn’t really instruct people as much as he hammers them into shape. Doesn’t suffer fools.

– When Chris asked Mark to come onto SC, he didn’t need a script, he immediately said of course.

– Mark Hamill jealous of Andy Serkis getting all the Pcap character parts. Wearing all the gear and looking at it on the monitor is really impressive. Not much dignity when you get into the outfit; look like a penguin. But it’s stunning when you see the virtual sets.

– Wing Commander was cutting edge in its day, but here we are decades later, and Chris has done it again.

– Chris is a guru. He’s easy going, has a firm grasp of what he needs from a technical point of view, but he’s great with actors. He’s an accomplished director, knows the problem actors face, etc…

– Mark Hamill – probably won’t die in the first episode of SQ42 it sounds like.

– And now we’re back to Chris and Dave, taking a few more questions. Then they’ll get into the character pipeline.

– Will the SQ42 have piracy oriented characters? Will Mark’s char. be in the PU?] Redacted. No spoilers.

– [in the PU, is there an overarching light vs. dark storyline?] Sort of no. They’ve embraced the idea that there’s a lot of grey.

– Lots of conflict even among the humans as to whether the UEE’s a good or corrupt institution. Lots of narrative based on people making decisions.

– The Vanduul are a black and white threat, but others like the Xi’An and Banu are different. And same with the factions in humanity. Lots of greys.

– [localization?] They’ll try to do it the same way as they did in the Wing Commander series.

– The idea is full localization in German, French, potentially in Spanish, etc…

– [go up in rank in SQ42?] Yeah. You’ll be able to earn medals, commendations, etc… and progress a little bit in rank. But there needs to be room to grow throughout the trilogy.

– [How does it feel that Mark didn’t read the script before he accepted?] Kinda nice. It’s a really good relationship, means he trusts Chris and the team. They talked about the character; with a 700 page script you can’t just hand it to people, but they were writing all the way through production anyway. Talked about the character, had an outline of the story, shared some key scenes, etc….

– We’ll find out why Mark’s Character’s name is ‘Old Man’ ‘later on’

– [what was inspiration for the script?] inspiration for the script; partly liked Heart of Darkness, Apocalypse Now, Lost Legion, that was what started to formulate the overarching story. Wanted to do a sort of build-up and working hard for approval. Origin is you finding your footing in the military. Rendering that in a way that has nuance and detail.

– Typical movies don’t cover vast amounts of times, they tell in 2 hours a story in incredible detail, but that’s it.

– Die Hard just got mentioned.

– Even Lord of the Rings is over months, rather than years. Need a larger canvas to tell it in more detail and over larger periods.

– Dave will always look back to Aliens and Generation Kill. The characters shone through; real people in real situations.

– Lots of things they drew from over the course of 750 pages and 80 characters. And some Top Gun. There are some Top Gun eastereggs in the game.

– If you do certain things, things will happen later on. There is that kind of stuff.

– Talking now about the character pipeline.

– What they showed at Cit Con was very early on. They’ll go through the pipeline in the video coming up, R&D is still being pushed. What we’re going to end up with is way beyond what was seen at Cit Con. Using next-gen techniques for characters; they want to make it as real looking as possible. Characters should match the ships.

– Pipeline video plays.

– For characters, the pipeline is how to start from no character, to an idea, to the final character in the game.

– Just saw Mark Hamill holding two assault rifles at a time.

– Lots of detail about how they do character rigging and meshing and such.

– Video in SC won’t be pre-rendered; it’ll be real time.

– As they build the pipeline out more, everything’s getting faster.

– There’s a giant balloon floating in front of Chris. No audio though.

– We’ve got sound!

– Chris apparently made another Red 1 joke, that we missed.

– Forrest is here to answer questions about Character Pipelines.

– [VR headests?] They’ll support it, and try to support it in SQ42. Should be working in SQ42 and SC.

– [any actors ask to have body models changed for the better?] Not really, aside from Mark joking they should make him 6ft tall.

– [how long does it take to get a top tier char through the pipeline?] Come a long ways since the initial iteration. When they started, it could take almost a full year. Now, they’re doing a month per head, with concentrated art support. And it keeps getting faster.

– [How many bones in chars?] A lot. Up around 200 for the face, just for tier zero. Sean Tracy just appeared.

– About 400 bones for a full character. Lots of blend shapes and bones; just approaching the 1000 mark on controllers. They don’t differentiate between blend shapes and bones. They’ve also got texture performance; 44 areas on the face that can wrinkle and deform map etc…

– [How does the char pipeline handle mocap requirements for each ship?] How do we handle all the ships that you walk around, get into, etc… – Lots of standardization. Making sure that all the metrics are respected across all the ships. That said, there were already a lot of ships when they started standardizing, so there are a couple types of airlocks, seats, turrets, etc… main goal is to make sure it never gets slower to make more models.

– First time you make an asset, it takes 6 months, then 3 months, then 1 month, making it as fast as possible. Standardizing and streamlining means they’ll be able to deliver on time.

– There are some variations across the various manufacturers, but there are little test scenes everywhere to make sure everything lines up. Lots of data, but lots of optimization on the engine front.

– Jared’s laptop auto-locked on Chris, so…

– Marines / modular armour. Talked a little about trying to have a different approach in 10ftC; not just light, medium, and heavy armour, you can buy different pieces. All clothing is attachments; everything can come in and out and swap and be compatible.

– When you’re making a singleplayer only game, you can do a lot that you can’t do when you’re making an MMO. Everything in SC, it has to be an item.

– Can build up the skeleton in SC as you need to, same thing will happen with SC. What they’re going to do is make sure gameplay design and the tech go hand in hand. Gameplay surrounding the armour will allow for a lot of customization, and give reasons to do that customization.

– customization will modify gameplay. There’s a point to put on a bionic arm; if it exists, it won’t be just visual.

– Characters are like ships; pieces you can stick on and take off and upgrade etc…

– They’ve already got the systems for the ships, so they can recreate the ship easily for characters. Being able to provide content faster each time.

– They’re going to have different shaders for aliens and such.

– [How much facial tech will be available for character customization?] Researching that right now. First, they’ll give us character customization rather than creation. Long term though, they plan on having the same fidelity and tech. They’ve got base NPC heads. Same idea as Fallout 4; can change and morph the heads etc…

– Can tweak bloodshapes, skin tone, race, etc…

– Also working on real-time, in-engine rig logic. Right now, everything you’ve seen is baked out of Maia as an animation form. They’re working on rig logic to say this pose, that pose, etc… which would happen in real time in engine. That’ll mean that you can play the same emotion on all the faces, and you won’t have any weirdness.

– Player head is a ‘tier 1 head.’ Tier 0 head is 40,000 polys. Tier 1 is 10,000 polys. Hard to tell the difference between then two.

– Diff between tier 1 and tier 2 is the resolution and the textures. Blendshapes as well. Overall animation compression gets applied to tier 2 as well.

– Lots of technical talk about animations and blend shapes and rigs and such.

– Idea is that the quality will look like offline, rendered cinematics.

– [hair and hair simulation?] They have a lot of physical simulation. They have the engineer that wrote the animation a component of Cry Engine. He’s working on the core engine stuff, doing rig logic and stuff. Wrote a nice physical stuff. Lots of animation of hair and such.

– Sounds like they’ve got lots of customization for different parts of the body, from leather jackets to large stomachs.

– There’ll be more deep dives into characters down the road. Now going back to Ben and Sandi.

– Star Citizen and SQ42 will be on the cover of two major PC gaming magazines in the next few weeks. PC gamer will have SC as a regular cover, starting next week.

– Now, time to talk about more ships! To talk about another of the new ships launching now, Avenger Variants! They’ll be flight-ready with AC 2.0.

– Cargo variant of the Avenger, there’s a police variant with the cells- the Stalker (what everyone has now). The EMP version – the Warlock- will be fully functional in SC 2.0.

– So Calix is here to talk about that. EMP gameplay is coming in. Distortion damage from suckerpunches is coming back. Those were on the Avenger and the Cutlass. That damage will do direct damage to a units power supply. The EMP module on the Warlock is a huge, 2000 kilo thing that takes up the entire back of the ship.

– Variants for the Avenger are more like module updates to the Retaliator. They’re offered as Variants right now cause that’s what’ll let you fly them. You’ll eventually be able to pick up the modules individually as you want to.

– We’ve got art of those as well.

– When you activate the EMP on the Warlock, it starts charging, and it’ll release a lot of energy when it’s ready, including your own ship. Only way to counteract it is to turn off your own components.

– You’ll be able to bring down your own ship to prevent someone else doing it forcibly. Shields are also affected.

– It’s a short-range effect, but it’ll still cripple people. Shows much deeper gameplay than there was in AC.

– Final variant is the bounty hunter, where you can lock up captives in the back.

– Also launching with 2.0 is the hangar ready Vanguard.

– They’ll be bringing ships into the hangar a bit sooner than they would before hand. Trying to get things hangar-ready as soon as possible.

– They’ve got a new employee that they’re trying to find.

– Calix is now gone, and Vincent, a new employee, is appearing.

– Sandi’s talking French. Vincent’s from Paris.

– Felicitations au concurs de referral, bon continuation. AlphaCast – Winner for the referral program right now is part of the French community.

– They will be adding new tiers to the referral program as well.

– Vincent works with Sandi in the marketing department, CIG’s new marketing manager.

– Vincent was working in Montreal beforehand, and now he’s with CIG!

– The next community contest is going to be the helmet and titan stuff. ‘

– There will be pre-signed HOTAS, which are 149.99. The keyboard is 199.99.

– They’ll be locking that down before it goes up on the site. Delivery for the HOTAS is may.

– They’ve shown off the low-end HOTAS, no news on the high-end one yet though.

– More details about the HOTAS in the coming weeks. Pre-orders will kick off in December with the December livestream.

– Santa Monica are moving tomorrow, 2.0 is closing down, lots happening right now.

– Archimedes sale!

– Gurmukh is on now. Showing us the Archimedes.

– Thought process for the Archimedes – it goes with the Phoenix. It’s a variant of the Merlin. Only certain parts could change, but it has a whole new feel from the Merlin.

– race-car ‘luxury’ version of the Merlin. Redesigned wings, no more Gatling gun in the centre, it has a new intake that charges and can add interesting gameplay.

– The ship feels like your bachelor, luxury sports-car. Midlife crisis ship.

– sexy luxury spaceship to take to Tera. or something fancy. It’s a fancy ship.

– Should be fun to fly and own. It’s a small ship, and it will be relatively cheap.

– CIG are working on a ship speed review, reviewing all the ships. Some are too slow some are too fast, so they’re working on that.

– Like the Merlin, it should be in the engine relatively quickly.

– And that’s it for Gurmukh! Going to Chris now, to talk about 2.0!

– Everyone’s wondering about 2.0. Erin’s going to join Chris in a moment. to talk about what’s going to happen. One of the features in 2.0 will be the million mile high club. They’ll show us a bigger deep-dive of it now.

– Mark Skelton and Jared Huckaby going to look at the Million Mile High club.

– Lots of the ideas that came about, they were bouncing around different ideas for what it should be. Mark wanted to use previous assets, cause it makes the process go faster. They used a tiny bit of the g-loc bar to start with, then expanded away from there. The gloc bar already had an industrial vibe to it; high-end, nice, industrial bar. Wood and gold inlay and such.

– Took inspiration from the Edison bar in LA.

– First did an initial layout, that Behaviour did a layout of the bar itself.

– Talking about the level design for the Million Mile High Club.

– They’re looking at the million mile high club, and it looks gorgeous.

– There are giant fish tanks. Look like they have a lot of depth to them.

– The graphics of the million mile high club look somehow better than what we’ve seen in Arc Corp. It looks beautiful.

– And we’re back to Ben!

– They’ve done so much on the million mile high club because it was one of their initial promises, and they’ll be coming up with initial ways to get into the club in the near future.

– Chris and Erin are here now, to talk about 2.0, and take questions about it.

– We’ve also got some updated images of the Idris.

– All the insides of the Idris are ready apparently. We’ve seen some of it during the Morrow tour from CitizenCon, we’ll have more video like that in the future.

– In one of the future releases, things like the Idris and Starfarers will start flying around.

– Not just yet in 2.0 though.

– The Starfarer is massive.

– All the ships have things like crew quarters, incredibly high fidelity. They’re actual vehicles flying around. The ships are a realised space, something we haven’t seen yet in space games. Feels likee you can live and adventure on the ships.

– [When is 2.0?] They’re going to go limited PTU today.

– Going to some of the backers who report bugs a lot. That’ll be mailed out to people when they have access. PTU for the first thousand folks. Picked from who’ve been helpful in submitting things to the issue council.

– From there, they’ll get going, stress test, new builds on a daily basis, then they’ll eventually go live and get it to everyone.

– PTU 2.0 will probably break in a few places, but that’s why they’re doing it.

– 8 combat missions, 8 research missions, 1 exploration mission, 1 PVP missions, 20 random encounters (random security battles between pirates), random scavenge, etc… 3 hours just on missions themselves, random encounters going on. 12-16 ships limited right now, but max players are much more than that right now.

– Three stations that you can visit. Olisar is the starting point. Security post Karea is the PVP FPS location which will have weapons. Everyone’ll have at least a pistol, but if you go to Karea, you can get more than just a pistol.

– Of the new ships, the Tali and Connie will be in, as will the Avenger variants, the Warlock (which brings in EMP gameplay), the suckerpunches will be back, and the Vanguard is Hangar ready.

– Now that the Style guide is done from the Connie, other RSI ships will be faster to make.

– The Freelancer, which we’ll get right after 2.0, will move faster because of the new MISC styleguides as well.

– There are multicrew seats now. Engineering, ships systems management, turrets, etc…

– New flight control is on; changes up how you fly a bit.

– More talk about the new IFCS flight modes. precision, combat, quantum, etc…

– Fuel is in and required.

– Lots of new features added in 2.0.

– FPS is fully functional in 2.0. More animations and stances will be added over time, but the core FPS functionality is there.

– Port Olisar is a green zone. Weapons are shut down inside the green zone. Gives people a safe place to spawn.

– They’ll be working round the clock to work on issues in 2.0, get it live to everyone as soon as possible.

– And now it’s question time for 2.0

– [invites?] Invites haven’t gone out yet. They’re in the process of getting that ready for later today.

– [ship you get if you have a higher multicrew ship?] Connie in most cases. It’s the most all around ship.

– [trading and cargo mechanics?] Can’t say when we’ll get them, but they’re working on it. It’s the next thing they’re working on. Need to be able to travel from A to B with cargo and such. They’ll announce it as soon as possible. They have a new plan for the production process that they’ll share in the future that they think will make the process better for everyone.

– Going to be more about consistent releases, less about locking onto a specific featureset.

– working on getting features to the point they’re ready to go live. Too often their releases drag on, waiting for a minimum feature set, now they’re going to work more on developing features and releasing them to us faster than before.

– 2.0 is very big, not just in terms of gameplay but in terms of background tech.

– It’s like if you’re building a lego house. You start with a green board, build everything on top. The 2.0 is kinda like that green board, with a very basic shape of the house.

– [Ship signatures?] They’ve increased some stuff. Some things were shut off in AC; in 2.0 you have to target to get a signature on someone. Lots more scanning and signature work coming in later. Not all of it’s in 2.0 yet though.

– [what happens in the PTU permanent?] No. You won’t lose your ships. In the game itself, if you’re having a fight, you get blown up, you’ll respawn in Port Olisar, wake up, and you’ll be able to just load another ship and keep going.

– What they’re trying to do with 2.0 and Crusader is create a situation where it’s more like you’ll play in the final game. Won’t be like AC where you respawn immediately.

– Two seater Avenger doesn’t have a role it can be used for right now. It’s not one of the current variants.

– [NDA on PTU 2.0?] Chris and Erin aren’t sure.

– Freelancer won’t be flyable when 2.0 kicks off, but it’s being worked on right now in the UK. It’ll be the next multicrew, it and the Vanguard.

– Trying to get those done for one of the next updates.

– Presales for the HOTAS next month, mid next year for delivery of it hopefully.

– [Timeline for introducing people to the PTU?] Can’t say right now. First few days, hardcore pioneers will probably suffer for a while. As the first few issues and days go by, they’ll slowly open it more and more. At some point they’ll just go live.

– [New footage to share?] Planning to do a full-on gameplay trailer when 2.0 is launched live. They aren’t there yet, but they’re in the process. The UK QA team played around with some things and put together a WIP though. That’ll run now!

– And we’re back, with a a large group of the studio people.

– There’ll be a cooler trailer done in around a week when Live goes up

– CR is talking about how the game is a dream that everyone gets to build, and it’s amazing to have gotten to this point.

– They’re incredibly thankful, can’t wait to see what we do in 2.0

– Through the week there’ll be Q&A’s and some various reveals. Lots of talk about the new ships etc…

– Bye from LA