This post is a transcript of Reverse the ‘Verse: Episode 86, 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 86 – Full Transcript

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

We’ll meet a new member of the team soon, and then there’s a ‘special surprise’ at the end of the show.

Week in Review! Ben – Crazy week, especially Thursday, did an all day shoot for the making of documentary. Shot Ben, Sandi, Paul Reindell, Sean Tracy and Forrest.

The new Vanduul Blade is up for sale, and there’s a free-fly sale going on now.

Every flyable ship in the game, except the Scythe and the Glaive, is for sale right now.

There’s an Andy Serkis interview video up right now

Talks about the Vanduul Language, and they’ll be able to show it to us soon. There’ll be an event about that soon.

Hired the next Community manager, who they’ll introduce in a bit.

10 for the Chairman on Monday, Bugsmashers was on Wednesday. Vault this week is new effects being done for the Khartu Al. AtV had a loremaker interview

Justin wants to thank the backers that went out to his movie premier.

Someone stole Disco’s hat and now he’s sad and funny lookin’.

Alexis’ week – got stuff set up for CitCon ticket sales – they sold out within a half hour. Got stuff set up for the Starmap sale, which’ll go up at noon pacific (right after RtV). Also doing dogtags, went on sale last week, still available.

Lots of work on the collector’s box this week, they got a demo sample of it.

Disco designed the cover for the CD cover artwork.

There’s a starmap hanging on the wall in the place of the Retaliator.

There was an ‘incident’ last night. They went to a theater to see 10 Coverfield lane and it was all shut down. Apparently there were alarms going off and there was an ‘incident’. Still don’t know what happened, but they got turned away.

Ben’s sister is visiting and has been helping out around the office. Cataloguing footage, helping with the documentary shoot, etc…

Charlotte does 3D lighting. She’s wearing a galaxy dress today. She’s a student at Pratt, studying 3D animation.

Ben got her into video games. He’d play half life with her when she was 3.

Moving on to Meet the new Guy! They got a new guy. They’re all putting headphones on to bring in the new guy. Newest community manager is Tyler Whitkin.

He’s in the Austin office. His alias is Xyloh. Was senior QA in Texas, gonna join the community team now, based in Austin. Community team is back in Austin!

He’ll get interviews and which glitches from Austin.

And now it’s Q&A portion! Taking questions from RSI General Chat!

[Why is CIG selling another Vanduul ship when 2 are already available?] The two previous were limited to specific events and wouldn’t be sold again. Lots of people want a Vanduul ship, and it would be easy to say everyone can get a glaive, but they don’t want to. They’re doing the Blade instead, so that people who couldn’t get the other two can still get a Vanduul ship.

And also, the more Vanduul ships being flown, the more Vanduul ships that are getting tested, so it’s better for the game.

Also the post about the ship says not to buy the ship. And there’s always the disclaimer – don’t have to buy every ship out there, and you probably shouldn’t. Earn things in the game. They sell ships to support the continued development, and they appreciate when people buy them, but you can always get them in the game.

Blade first encountered in 2681, it’s an older Vanduul ship.

[Heirarchy of the Blade?] Blade’s at the bottom; it’s the hornet / Ferret / Arrow from Wing Commander. The Glaive and Scythe are Medium fighters, Scimitar, Rapier, etc…

Also why it’s cheaper than the other Vanduul ships. It’s a standard concept sale, will go through to Monday the 28th.

They try not to sell limited ships. The Blade’s price has to do with lore, cause they don’t want too many of them.

[How is it a concept ship if it’s already been 3d?] The 3D version that was leaked has been completely replaced. It’s getting an interior thanks to the concept sale. The whole ship’s being remodelled, so it’s still a concept.

Also these sales let them put more detail and thought into ships. Some of the things that were in the leak won’t be in the game at all. Entire ships that don’t exist any more.

[Will Tyler stay in Texas?] Yes.

[Chances of another Sean Tracy / Steve Bender 10 ft Devs?] Chance, but it’s like doing very hard drugs. It’s a sometimes food. Once every once in a while. The last one almost killed everyone

[Will the Cat get more modules?] Caterpillar’s in Gurmukh’s hands. And yes, it’ll get more modules.

Disco talked to Gurmukh about it yesterday, lots of people working on it. Generating a lot of new art they’ll be able to share in the future once they’re done.

Lando’s playing ME2 right now. He really enjoyed ME1

He thinks ME2 is way simpler than ME1.

[Plan for variants and reworks?] Currently planning out Q3 & Q4 asset assignments for that stuff. Connie’s gone through its final revamp, have to take that base connie and turn it into the variants. The priority’s going to be getting the base ship to game-ready, then working on the variants, and that’ll happen for all the ships.

[Where’s Nyx?] It’s had a final lighting pass a month ago, then there were some design changes, so they’re implementing those changes, but it’s gorgeous and it seems far along. Can walk all over the place. Adding a giant ship engine that’ll float above the marketplace that looks sweet. Can see some of Emre’s lighting work on Nyx in an AtV from December.

They’re talking a lot about Mass Effect now.

About Miranda’s butt cam.

Star Citizen will not feature a butt cam.

[The Rift’ll be in consumer hands in 10 days. Any progress on VR support?] They do have folks on VR support, but they’re not working on Oculus’ timeline, they’re working on their own. Disco’ll ask Brian Chambers for a state of VR update on next week’s AtV.

[Update on 2.3? Starfarer and Reliant?] Fingers crossed. They hit the ‘commit’ deadline for 2.3. Everything’s in the stew, testers are testing to see what works. Still too soon for a feature list, but they may have something later that might answer one of those questions.

[Weather patterns / natural disasters on planets?] Yes. procedural folks are working on that. They don’t just want to make a planet, they want to make a genesis planet from Star Trek 3. There can be a natural disaster. Can give the GM’s the ability to cause a disaster that’d effect a planet’s economy.

[Is there going to be a concept sale every month for the next 6 months?] They hope so, that’s the goal. They have that many ships, and more. The goal is every 6 weeks, so there’ll be a skipped month, but there’s stuff to show. They’ve got lots of concept assets freeing up from SQ42, so artists and designers have some time so they can build more ships.

[Prowler?] One of the ships on the schedule. It’s been held up by the Tevarin race. Can’t do art for the ship till the race style guide is locked down. Chris Olivia’s working on that now. He did the Xi’An and Vanduul originally. He’s working on the Tevarin.

[Haven’t had a design post in a while. When’s the next one?] Ben’s been talking to folks, there’re two in flux. Mining is getting serious, as is the economy. Just about to answer one question which is [‘how much are ships going to cost in game?]. There’s an immersion problem right now with flare item prices vs. ship prices. An aurora is not the same as 25 posters of Wingman. Chris Roberts has directed Design to come up with a close-to-final plan about the Economy.

Pete Mackay’s been working on that, and it goes along with shopping, and they’ll start to sell some ship models with earned credits rather than actual dollars. A ship bought during the pledge campaign doesn’t translate into UEC, actual ships are many times that number of credits.

Also had a long talk with Turbulent about persistence this week; it’s coming.

[Saitek HOTAS?] Again, watch AtV this week, the interview with Karl Jones has been at the forefront of that, he talks about where it is right now. They’re still waiting for a production prototype. They’ve seen some non-production ones, but they want to see the final one before they start selling it.

[Will Justin perform interpretive dance soon?] Is there something to interpret that needs dance?

[Info in Idris test video?] Two weeks ago Ben emailed Chris asking if they could show off stuff, didn’t hear anything, he replied and said yeah we can show stuff, but not the Idris. They’re holding on the Idris video for now, but there’ll be other cool stuff soon.

[Upgrade Blade to Aquila?] Should be up, just an oversight.

Putting every ship that’s flyable up for sale along with all the CCU’s is a pretty massive task. They’ll look into it.