Citizens! Welcome to INN’s coverage of today’s special edition of Reverse the ‘Verse, featuring the Chairman himself – Chris Roberts!

In this Reverse the ‘Verse, Chris Roberts answers questions from subscribers live alongside the regular crew from the show!

While the show is live, this page will display a live blog of the event. Shortly after the show finishes the live blog will be converted into proper notes.

Notes by Erris and Myself

Notes in Bold are important and notes in italics are just our blathering.

– Soon

– They are panning across the incredible banner image created by FiendishFeather for Gamescom.

– And we’re live! I see Disco, Ben, and Alexis, so far.

– There’s some fancy music playing in the background as Disco and Ben and Alexis are introduced.

– ‘Joining us momentarily will be’ ‘Me!’ says Tom Hennessy

– They will only be taking questions from the subscriber chat on RSI for this episode.

– Sandi’s in the background now too!

– Chris is here!

– The man who needs no introduction.

– I have to hide my grin at work. Can’t be too happy – Erris

– [Are we able to move scopes around on guns for FPS?] Not sure. It’s using the item-port system, which is different than the general CryEngine stuff. All weapons have item ports for things like silencers, magazines, scopes, etc… Wouldn’t be too difficult, but not sure if there are plans to be able to shift sights yet.

– Sights are specifically tuned so they look good on screen. They’re getting basics in first, they’ll look at certain things like that later.

– [Additional hangars buyable?] Yes, definitely. You’ll be able to rent them, and there are plans to have the equivalent of real estate. Hangars, places you could buy or rent, etc… Trying to do a simplified version of real life.

– They’ll try to simulate things. If you’re on a planet that has high law and order, there’ll be higher taxes.

– [Difference between missiles and torpedoes?] In space, they’re not that different. Torpedoes tend to be bigger, with a higher yield, and less top speed and less turning abilities. Built for slower, bigger ships than missiles.

– [Death of a Spaceman mechanic – how does it work with SQ42?] Death of a Spaceman is purely PU stuff. SQ42 will play like a single-player game. If you die, you can go back to the last savepoint. There will be save points, not checkpoints every two minutes. Have to clear a certain amount of the mission.

– Death of a Spaceman is still 100% the plan, even though it’s been a while since the original post.

– They’re building wear and age into all the shaders. Characters and ships and buildings, things will get older in the game. The technology is there for it, just have to implement it on the game side. There will be an ‘age’ variable on items that change as time goes on.

– [Player-owned property outside of ships and hangars?] The Million Mile High club exists, and longer term, there’ll be some things like a penthouse apartment, stuff like that around the galaxy. Things that people can spend their money on in the game. Spend it on a giant ship or some real estate in Terra Tower or something, but that’s a longer-term plan.

– We will see Million Mile High Club at CitizenCon. It is being built in Austin.

– [Update on Jump Point sizing?] Hasn’t changed. The Starmap, which will be unveiled at CitizenCon, will have the sizes. The idea is… think of a jump point as a mountain pass, some are narrower than others. If you have a Hull C think of it like a container ship, there are certain places it can go but it can’t go everywhere. It can carry more but have to go the long way around. Freelancer could take less cargo but potentially do it faster. That’s the attempt at balancing. Small ships can sneak through smaller jump points vs large ships can carry way more cargo.

– There will be pros and cons to flying different sizes of ships. Different reasons to do different things.

– Want groups of players to create fleets with an array of ship sizes, create an ecosystem.

– If you want to haul tons of cargo in an economical manner, you use a larger ship and it will take longer. If you want to get something quick, you use a smaller ship and it gets there quickly.

– [How does fuel work?] It was in the pre-question thread, lots of people asking. They’re in SC Alpha 1.3, the multicrew, which will have FPS and stuff, it will have proper fuel consumption.

– There are 3 types of fuel. You need to use two types. Basic maneuvering, without boost, that’s basically free. Can’t run out if you’re flying normally. Boost though, which will have a lot more use in the multicrew stuff, it’s a resource that you use. You’d either have to replenish it or buy it at stations. There’s equipment you can get to refine it too. It’s similar to Nitrous in a car.

– More flight modes are being added. ‘Precision’ is the lowest speed, landing, maneuvering. ‘SCM’ Space Combat Maneuvering, which is what’s right now. ‘Cruise’ Faster than SCM, but not as fast turning.

– Beyond Cruise is Quantum Drive. Quantum Drive is the second type of fuel. It uses Quantum fuel. And Jump Drive – the fiction with the first Jump drive, there was a reactor leak in a Quantum drive. Jump drive is a bit bigger a Quantum fuel, but it uses a lot to go to Jump.

– Quantum’s something you can harvest, like Boost fuel, but it’s more rare a resource. This will be a good role for Starfarer captains.

– [Movement / progress on planets and moons rotating around their stars?] They’d like to do it. They’re debating it. The Zone tech will allow them to do that. They can just move the zone around, and everything in that can move. Could have an entire zone moving around a star, and a space station orbiting a planet, etc… The trick is how to handle the relativistic issues of, when you’re not in that zone.

– They still haven’t fully made a decision if they want to go with it or not, it’ll be a gameplay thing.

– Probably wouldn’t simulate the proper gravity effects and orbit effects that really happen. It’d be simplified. First stage probably won’t have orbits, but they want to do it long term.

– [Maneuver at all in Quantum?] No. Quantum is moving forward only. If there’s anything betweeen you and your destination – ship, planet, etc… Quantum will pull you out. You can’t do a course correction at Quantum speeds.

– [Org owned stations and ships?] There will be org hangars, where Orgs can decide to tithe their members, so the orgs would have their own treasury, to buy and assign equipment.

– [Updates on PvP slider?] It’s still how it was described. People should, before theorycrafting on it, should try to experience it. Because they’re simulating the game with so many NPC’s, doesn’t matter if there’re no humans, there’ll be lots of NPC’s around. There’ll be a whole world of life just like Privateer or Freelancer.

– PvP in a lawful area, you’ll get bounties on you, and other players can get bounties on you and will come after you. If you want to have the Privateer experience, you can find that. You won’t really be forced into either.

– Even if there are millions of players, you’re more likely to encounter AI than players, because the world needs to feel alive. Part of the SC setup is building the live world. Can’t rely on the player base, cause sometimes there might be few players, sometimes there might be lots.

– But really, 9/10 of people and ships you meet will be AI, not players. It’s up to you to decide what style you want. Chris sees PVP coming into play a lot more with Orgs. Orgs will want to fight over asteroid bases. There’ll be areas where players can come together to try to dominate them.

– [Is there going to be a method to knock ships out of Quantum and Jump travel?] Jump points, no, but Quantum, if you’re in the way of someone travelling in a straight line, Quantum’ll pull someone out. If there’s a trading lane that you know people go through that lane, and you park your ship or a beacon in it, that’d probably bring people in Quantum out, and then you can try to attack them.

– [How often do you get questions about DirectX 12?] Get lots. Chris is doing a Gamers Nexus interview about it soon. They’re working on DX12. It’ll take a bit longer for SC to support it, they’re refactoring some base engine features to use it better.

– They want to support DX12, not just use the API, but use it to its full potential. Next year they’ll probably have DX12 implementation out.

– [Cap ship battles] Definitely, they’ll happen. Still early days yet though. The biggest things being worked on right now is server stuff. Some of the changes recently allow them to be more flexible with transitioning between servers. Lots of games, you get bound to one server. SC’s system is a global entity ID system – 64 bit rather than the usual 32 bit.

– Switching to 64 bit ID’s means that your ship in the game, that ID is your ship, and that’s your ID forever.

– Right now, things aren’t consistent, which is why you have to load and unload when you go between multiplayer and such. But when the new system is implemented, your ship will always have the same number, regardless of the server, regardless of if you’re online or not.

– This means that servers can hand over object ID’s a lot more easily. Very big change. Not many online games do this, but it allows flexibility to connect people to multiple different servers.

– Multiple servers can talk to one planet, for example. One server taking care of people inside a cap ship, and then another server handling all the ships around the cap ship, etc…

– [Paint system – Where’s that, where’s it going, will it apply to interiors as well?] Not sure if it’ll apply to interiors. You’ll be able to change wall colours for the interior probably. There’s a new character shader system, which allows them more control and fidelity, and some of that tech will be in the ships.

– Not all ships are done with the new system. New ships are, because the paint system and the damage system are using the same system. But until all the other ships have been outfited with the new system, which is an ongoing process, they’re working on finishing that up before we get a paint system.

– They’re doing Version 3 of the Connie, they’ve done at least three versions of the Hornet, now they’re trying to focus on getting newer stuff done, and only going back when they have to. Painting tech is set up, but people won’t get to play around with it till later on. It’s a longer term goal, as is giving people mission creation tools eventually.

– They still can’t generate stuff quick or fast enough, so they’ll try to give us some tools to create stuff eventually.

– [FoV’s for people with multi-monitor? ] Three monitor surround view stuff is cool, but it clashes with the idea of, if I have a heavy marine helmet I should have a restricted view. They’re figuring out how best to do it right now.

– [What methods of Star Marine are there for marking things. Dropping flares, etc… so you can mark rooms as clear for fireteams?] As of now there aren’t any, but it probably wouldn’t be difficult. Could add a flare item. In the first FPS there isn’t anything. There’s a set of gadgets, holograms, shields, area denial systems, etc.., but no markers yet. But it’s a good idea.

– [What’s being done to flesh out gameplay for explorers, miners, salvagers, etc…] It’s a big focus. It’s a big focus for Chris and Tony. People think FPS has taken over everything, because it’s what’s going to be next, but most of the design work going on right now aren’t working on FPS, or even combat. Yes, people are working on balancing, but they’re working on lots of stuff for what you’ll do with exploring, what you’ll do with medical stuff, refueling, mining, etc…

– There’s some tech that needs to be deployed – for mining, the asteroids will be voxel, they have the Endeavour that we’ll get to see soon, but you’ll be able to do tons of things with an Endeavour – Farming, hospital ship, observatory, etc…

– Chris wants there to be combat, but he also wants lots of non-combat stuff, because that’s what makes it feel like a real world, and inclusive. Can potentially avoid combat entirely.

– CryEngine’s always been a First Person engine. Even the first prototype, it was in First Person. All through the characters eyes. FPS means you can have guns and shoot people, but the focus is on FPS because that movement, the movement that comes from FPS, is essential for everything. But you don’t have to fight. You can have a peaceful occupation.

– [Favourite ship?] Idris is turning out to be pretty amazing. Connie’s pretty awesome too. People’ll see some peeks at the inside of the Idris next month, which is way bigger than it was first imagined. It’s massive inside, so the few people that have it, they A, got a deal, and B, they’re gonna need some friends.

– And that’s it, CR is heading out. The stream will continue though.

– They’re going to talk about the Endeavour!

– In the very final stages of getting the Endeavour ready to go. They’ll provide information on it, the roles, the pods, etc… no date yet, but it’ll be within the next week. Just waiting on a last set of art, then they’ll get pricing up on the forums for the base ship later today. A la carte pods will come later.

– They asked for 5 pods, Jim Martin looked at the 5, said aaaaah I’ll do ’em all, so they’ve got a lot more than they expected.

– Endeavour is coming soon! They usually let us know a week before, but they weren’t sure till today that it’d be coming. They’ll plan the sale length accordingly.

– [Merch updates?] SQ42 stuff for Cit Con is being done.

– SQ42 coffee cups, a patch set that’s in production, there’s a bunch of things coming soon for Merch. They’re looking at doing a poll about Jump Point 2 physical in the New Year, they’ll need to sell at least 2000. They’ll do physical dog tags in the new year again as well.

– The Citizen Cards are really hard for them to do. Sandi’s busy doing the Collector’s boxes. Connie now, then Hornet, Freelancer last (cause the Freelancer collector box will have a modding manual in it). They’ve approved an SC Polo.

– Track jackets will start shipping in a few days.

– There will be a few posters for Cit Con that will get put up for subscribers and regular folk after Cit Con.

– They’re looking into doing more brochures like the 890’s as well.

– They updated their sound setup, so it actually sounds much better than last week’s RtV.

– They’re talking about getting additional stuff into the game too… ideas… percolating. Nothing coming yet, but yes. They’re looking for ideas for upcoming subscriber flair.

– Concierge card – they’re getting samples made, trying to make it look as good as possible.

– The Caterpillar is in full effect right now. Randi is white and greyboxing it, including ideas for variants. There was a long discussion, it’s staying asymettrical. Check out AtV tomorrow for a special ShipShape about the Caterpillar.

– The Idris and Starfarer and Endeavour are very big.

– Keep the Endeavours 200+ meter size in mind when we see its price. It can overclock, it can grow crops, etc… Pricing for it on the forums later today.

– Concierge card will be for ‘pop-up parties’ if you’ve got the card, show up, and talk to them.

– CIG won’t sell Org shirts.

– CCU system is coming in ~3 weeks time. It’s beiing worked on right now.

– SQ42 hoodie coming to the store. The fabric of the Drake hoodie was very popular so they’ll be using the same one.

– TBD update on Friday was a possible date for the Endeavour sale. It’s still possible but it might be moved to next week.

– CIG are still looking for additional marketing staff too.

– [Connie having research, medical, or mining modules?] No talk on that yet. All the modules will be premiered on the biggest possible coolest ship. Endeavour for Science, Orion for Mining, then they’ll go back and see how to slot them into smaller ships. Ideally they’ll make smaller ships for those things as well too.

– [SC ties?] Sandi sounds pretty eeenh about those.

– Sandis’ not saying no to ties, just not now.

– [Submerge ships underwater?] Probably not a good idea. They’re talking about Into Darkness now.

– They’ve talked about doing a water hangar, but it’s a matter of having bandwidth later.

– The stream will be up on the YouTube channel later today.

– [Can pirates and non pirates play in the same org?] Do they explode when they get near each other? Yeah, why not?

– The untitled corvette is still just an idea. So many large ships in the pipeline, they won’t be looking at it for a bit.

– The Next Great Star Citizen is waiting for a tech update for the hub.

– They have a meeting tomorrow about v 1.1 for the Community Hub.

– And that’s it!

– Thanks to subscribers in general. They couldn’t do this without Subscribers. They’re going to do a stream like this every month. It won’t always be Chris, but they’ll have a special Subscribers stream every month.

– Aaaaand they’re done.