This post is a transcript of Reverse the ‘Verse: Episode 84, 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 84 – Transcript

And they’re live! Welcome to RtV!

We’ve got Disco, Ben, Alexis, and Justin.

It’s been a long week. Reverse the ‘Verse is CIG community team’s semi-formal show. It’s more formal now that they have graphics and stuff, but it’s still informal.

Really exciting week development. They’d been trying to push 2.2 to live starting Monday. Every night this week they stayed up, pushed out a patch as late as possible, and gotten go/no go’s at 10:30 their time each night. Chris has been very engaged all week, him, Paul, Sean Tracy etc… all trying to get things into the game.

Chris is working on zone transitions a lot.

Chris Roberts in the chat, smashing bugs.

Huge shout-out to the QA teams around the world. They’ve been working very hard. Programmers as well, fixing the things QA’s been documenting. Tremendous effort this week.

2.2 is out! AtV yesterday was delayed a bit. But it’s out now. They cut two versions of it, one where they had stuff about 2.2 in it, the other where they didn’t know. They talked to Chris and felt it was so close, and they wanted AtV talking about 2.2, so they delayed AtV till after 2.2 launched.

There were also tons of technical issues with AtV, so they just pushed it a bit longer.

Fantastic look at Pedro in AtV. Pedro interviews very well.

Pedro’s a terrific Star Citizen ambassador. Great guy, great composer, Pedro rocks.

There’s a snippet of the new Arena Commander theme, fully orchestrated, on the AtV episode.

Did some shooting on the documentary this week. Doing the Star Citizen Making Of documentary – which was a stretch goal.

A team came in, Hennessy brought his black magic camera, lots of video shooting, they got interviews from Chris.

Alexis had some management training this week. Focused on Merch stuff, working on new stuff. Did some stuff for events like Gamescom and the Bar Citizens for Concierge (which are tonight). Austin and Santa Monica are later tonight.

Where’s My Spaceship! Lightning round where they talk about states of ships.

Last week they covered lots of ships, other ships this week. Endeavour – Much further on the schedule, not in active development.

Javelin is being put together in the UK right now. Put together for SQ42. Wont’ be in AC tomorrow, but it’s getting put together.

Hull series is further down the line. Hull A first, scheduled, but not today.

Reclaimer – Scheduled, but not started.

An artists working on the Scout has moved onto the Herald, which is good. Tech foolks working on getting the Scout flyable. Reliant is getting Hanger-ified. People have moved over to the Bengal cause it’s needed for SQ42.

Concepts have come in for a small mining ship.

Guy in the UK is building Argo pods, cause it’ll be configurable for different missions.

Dragonfly is with tech designers in LA, signoff was this week so it’ll be going to concept soon.

Polaris – with design in LA, then it’ll go to concept.

Ben thinks Nathan in the UK wanted the Dragonfly.

They want to get Ryan Church for the Polaris, but it’s not a promise.

Polaris and Dragonfly and small mining ship are new, Prowler hasn’t been stopped though. It’s ‘blocked’ right now cause they’re still working on the Tevarin race.

Some Designers are coming in to talk about components in 2.2

Meanwhile, Star Traders is on Kickstarter – David Ladyman and Ryan Archer. Good people, good game, good kickstarter.

No Man’s Sky is available for pre-order. Looks very cool.

Ben picked up the collector’s edition.

The Humble Bundle this week is Star Wars themed, includes the X-Wing series on Steam. All four are 5$ and it goes to charity, fantastic deal.

And now we have Calix and Matt Sherman!

Calix and Matt are designers. They’ve been working on ship components which went in with 2.2 last night.

Rolled out groundwork for updated power plants and coolers; moving away from ships having just one power plant. Most ships now have 2-3 power plants installed and multiple coolers etc…

Will apply to shields as well soon. Will have an array of shield generators.

Powerplants make power per second based on how healthy they are. They can be throttled to affect signature, but that’s that.

Coolers take heat and disperse them. They use power to do it, and they generate signature as well.

Heat and Power on the ship move through the piping system on the ship.

Every ship, and every ship system, uses power and heat. Everything either draws power or generates heat as it operates.

Kirk Tome has arrived as well.

You wouldn’t want to use the most powerful powerplant all the time cause you’d ‘glow like the sun’. This will let them grow out bigger EM and IR signatures, which will help them effect missiles and such.

If your IR is glowing red-hot, flares won’t help as much as they could etc…

There are benefits and consequences for getting better and different equipment. Simply getting a better piece of equipment doesn’t mean it’s across the board better. They’ll be balancing things like becoming a bigger target for other ships, generating more heat which requires better coolers, etc…

Also its more risky to have. The higher power plants have more power going through the system. When things go wrong, things explode more if you have a larger power plant.

Same with a cooler – you wouldn’t want to use the largest cooler possible always, cause it’s a balance between emissions, safety, cost, etc…

You might be able to disperse a ton of heat, but you’d be drawing more power to do so. Things don’t necessarily scale one to one.

The Cooler on the Aurora CL has more industrial tuned components – higher power requirement, more cooling efficiency, but also has a much higher signature multiplayer. If you’re a cargo ship, you don’t care as much about your EM or IR signature, you want to move the cargo from point A to point B. It’s a tradeoff.

Also damage in battle to consider. Repairing a larger component requires more resources. If it gets destroyed, having spare parts would come at a greater cost as well.

That’s in 2.2. Shields are coming soon too.

Shields with 2.2, to get a better baseline, they’ve locked in shields on ships. Shields that every ship comes with inside its family is restricted to the ship for 2.2, so when they roll out the new system they can start fresh with more detailed and updated damage formulas.

Pool-based shielding. Everything becomes additive. Your overall performance will be an average of the sum of your parts; the damage you absorb and mitigate will be driven by updated components.

Rollout for that is targeting 2.3. Some is based on some final tech that they need to implement and be happy with. With that, there’s a replacement of existing shields in the store. There’s a conversion matrix in the 2.2 patch notes.

Some of the shield behaviour is being updated as well. looking at having – you scale for ballistic penetration. When it’s at 100% health verus. 0 health, ballistic penetration will scale between them. The curve on that makes it so you probably want to have mixed loadouts. Regen delay only happens when you hit 0; now’s your chance to push before they even begin to recharge.

Recharge is also on a curve. You’re recharging at all times. When you take damage it resets your regen rate, which recovers over time. It doesn’t reset it to 0, but it chips away at it towards 0. Conceivably the smallest weapon in the game could eventually overtake the best shield in the game.

Means that small weapons still have a place in a massive cap-ship game. If they were dealing with something with 100,000’s of shield points, and you’re doing 20 dmg per shot, that still matters.

If you have large ships doing the real meat of the damage, if there aren’t support ships lots of that health comes back, cause at larger scales rates of fire are reduced etc…

There’s a reason to have jabs from your small support ships.

Also, each ship is going to have its own shield emitter, which will derive the stats for the shield it generates based on the shield generators it has.

Faces will be locked. If it’s a four-face shield, it’ll always have four faces. But customizing power per face, shunting more power to faces, absorption factor, waste ration, etc… those stats are generated from shield generators that you can install and upgrade on your ships.

Upgrading a shield is done by getting better shield generators. If you have 3, and get one that’s better at generating shield repair, you can upgrade that stat.

If you get one that’s much better at hardening the shield, getting one improves that aspect, getting 3 improves it drastically.

Shield hardening- can balance shields so that if you never touch shield management, you get the performance it says on the tin. If you’re constantly moving your shield health towards incoming fire, you’re improving the percentage of health in the system, improving the damage resistance in that system. Could potentially be multiplying your total capacity for damage by as much as 5-10. Powerful having someone on your ship managing your shields. Makes shield management a real thing.

Turning off shield generators if you need to conserve power, regenerating shield health at a faster rate etc… all real things they can do with the system. All is coming out systemically. If you turn off a shield face it regens faster, because it’s still drawing the same amount of power, but it’s no longer using it for the maintenance cost of having it up.

You can drop your shields to regen your shields faster.

Also allows them to do more realistic damage simulations. If you do damage to a shield generator, it affects the shield performance as a whole.

Beginnings of this will be in 2.3. Core function of lots of the things they’re talking about. Some of the nuanced ability for players to actively configure shields on the fly will come later, but it’s something they’re pushing for.

They want it to be something where you want the most badass shield manager in the galaxy, cause they can manage the shields from 100,000 hp to 400,000 hp over the course of a fight.

Also they’re making it so there are internally accessible components. Shield gen A is down, run down the hall, repair it, pop a new one in, etc…

And now it’s QA time!

[News on whether we’ll be given material kits art uses to build stuff for player housing?] Probably not soon. Player housing isn’t in the original design spec. There will, eventually, have customizable hangars, but that’s it.

[Future component types?] A lot of the components that will be rolling out, most ships have a placeholder for them. Similar to what they’re doing with shields, taking something they’ve had somewhat functional but simpler and expanding over it. Fleshing out radar components, avionics, life support will matter, etc… slowly taking all the things they have snubbed in foundation for and fleshing it out and making it nuanced and compelling.

Gravity generators, avionics, etc… more specialized components on a case by case basis till there’s a unifying strategy, but things like mining equipment will be built per ship.

[Will Dragonfly be able to use jump drive?] The Dragonfly is still in the concept design phase. They’re exploring the notion of it being the first snub that can quantum, but it couldn’t land on a planet or do orbital takeoff. In terms of jump, they don’t want to commit yes or now, they’ll look at it, but they want it to be something you could do quantum on, if nothing else.

[Any plans for buying components in mini PU store? earn UEC from missions and buy components?] Working towards it, but it’s longer term. They want parts to be buyable in the store. Folks in Austin are focusing on clothes and decorative items cause they can get that in and working, then apply it to other things like components.

[Future of ships speeds?] Speeds have changed a bit with 2.2 Lots of re factoring going on with ship speeds, looking through all ships and re-examining them. They’ve nailed down metrics better for how ships should perform, and how they are performing. 2.2 is some of the first pushes into that. Speeds are all in flux a bit right now as they’re getting pushed towards a better balance for Crusader. Previous all balance had been towards AC, now they’re balancing for Crusader, and the PU as a whole.

[How long is the Caterpillar right now?] It’s changed. Don’t know the number offhand, right now Calix is working on interior white box and implementation and stuff. He wasn’t too keen on it before but now he’s really happy and excited with it. Seeing the floor plan come out and walking through it and having the doors functionally opening and having things moving around is very exciting, but the dimensions are slightly altered. Won’t know the full scope till they get the second art pass.

Caterpillar – it’s huge, it’s awesome.

[Different engine components?] As in thruster engine components? You’re meant to be able to upgrade engines. Part of what they’re looking at in terms of the universe economy – what’s it like to alter things. They’re looking to simplify and unify the systems so they can get some benefits they’re seeing in coolers and power plants applied to engines as well.

[Cockpit views will they get better?] Some cockpit views will be changing, probably not any of the ones you’re thinking of, cause they design the cockpit experiences to be as open or limited as the ship requires. Don’t want every ship to feel the same. Needs to fly different, have different strengths and weaknesses, etc… Freelancer cockpit is fundamentally different than a Merlin or Mustang cockpit.

Driving force to improving them is bringing in improvements to HUD. When you sit down in front of the bulky thing, that thing is doing something. you won’t see space, but you won’t see static parts either.

[2.3 this month, or in April?] To be determined. The goal is to try to get a patch every month. They will sometimes slip, sometimes they won’t. They’ll know more in 2-3 weeks.

Patch has gone to PTU every month on schedule, but it’s impossible to guess how long a PTU will be needed.

Two criticisms – SC is a scam, they’re stealing money – no. They’re taking money, and delivering something every month for it. Second, nothing’s on time, and yeah, it’s Chris Roberts’ game, things will always be delayed.

[Crashing and ramming? will shields protect from that?] No good answer to that. Lots of shield work has been active damage caused by weapons, not much for ramming and collision. That’d be a down the road kind of thing to explore later. Probably not with 2.3.

They’ve talked about some features to address this, but it’s not next on the plate yet.

[Buccaneer will it have cargo?] Not ready to share that yet. The description on the Buccaneer is being left intentionally vague. They have a plan, they know where they want to take it, but it’s being left open ended so no-one thinks they’re restricted on what they could submit as their inspiration for reference images.

[How will component repair work for non multicrew ships?] Same as for multicrew ships. You have to get out. Components have physical locations on the ships. When you have full access to them you open a panel and you repair them directly with your tool.

can also do subcomponent replacement. Pop open panel to component, pop open subcomponent panel, replace it, etc…

[How will updated ship components work with Vanduul ships?] Right now components are mainly for made-by-human flyable ships. Won’t be sprawling out much to the glaive or the scythe. Those’ll be more bespoke for what the Vanduul make.

[What’s the difference between engines and thrusters?] Engines generate thrust, thrusters point it in a direction.

[Fan-cave love. Will there be more sets?] yes. Soon. Ish. There are three sets of walls like that, others’ll be decorated in other ways.

[Matt said each ship type will have all the same shields. Does Gladiator have shields as the Hornet?] No. All Avengers will have the same shield on them. The Gladiator has its shield fixed to that ship. There’ll be differences between ships, you just can’t move shields between ships. Has to do with changing numbers and how quickly changing components can break the system. Look at the Vanguard in PTU if you want an example of this.

Bad pottery jokes.

[More ship commercials?] Not immediately. Cinematics guys are working on SQ42. Once that’s finished, they’ll do things like the Tali commercial. For now no big ship commercials.

Also when they started doing the ship commercials, there was no game. Now you can go start seeing them in game. 2.2 is a ship commercial.

[Plans for the Sabre being rent able?] Yes. Might be fixed right now. Was on the list for Turbulent this morning.

[AtV sneak peek?] It was the Reliant interface. The HUD pre-vis by Zane. pre-vis, it’s not enabled in game. It’s what they use as look-dev. Figuring out the look they want before they have to build it. MISC UI tends to use 3D holograms. Expect similar in all MISC ships eventually.

The Reliant will have an unprecedented viewing angle. They removed some struts from the initial concept of it, and the HUD helps with that as well.

[Chances shopping’ll be in 2.3 or 2.4?] There’s a chance, but they can’t promise any features for the next patches yet. Bunch of cakes baking simultaneously, and there’s a specific time, and when that time hits you take all the ones that are done out… Ben is bad at analogies, sorry.

And that wraps up QA.

10 for the Chairman on Monday. Monthly Report coming later today.

Subscriber flair next week. It’s space plant. Not the same space plant as everyone already got.

There should be a segment with Behaviour next week on AtV as well.

Bar Citizen is tonight. CR is headed back to the UK to handle some SQ42 stuff, probably away 2 weeks or so.

Working on 2.2.1, looking at hotfixes within the next couple days. Pure bugfixing. Improve stability etc…

‘imagine a conveyor of cakes, and each of the cakes has a number on it, and when the time comes they just grab the cakes in front of them that are ready to put into 2.3’