https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/6l0yr2/erin_roberts_interview_studio_tour_overview/
I recently attended a Foundry 42 UK Office Tour at the end of June 2017. I was given the chance to see what was being worked on, with a large focus on 3.0 & beyond.
As well as having an Interview with Erin Roberts where I asked him some questions about the Upcoming Alpha 3.0, 3.1, mechanics, Squadron 42 & More, this post will be a quick overview of that interview & studio tour.
TL: DR You Can Watch an Overview Video of the Interview & Tour |
[video=youtube;ZarmUARgkDA]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZarmUARgkDA[/video]
Here is the audio Interview in a Rawer form |
https://soundcloud.com/redactedtv/star-citizen-erin-roberts-interview-alpha-30-beyond
Hooks & Tangible Gameplay Coming with 3.0
There are a good few new tangible gameplay elements & hooks to play in Alpha 3.0, there is a Number of New Shops & Items to Spend your aUEC on.
We will have the first real form of Persistence, if you leave a ship at a location or planet & logout there, you will spawn there when you come back in, you might have ships that will be at different locations around the Stanton System.
If you die you’ll go back to the last major zone or “respawn” area you were.
There is a logout timer when you try and logout, the idea being if you try to logout somewhere extremely “unsafe” or while someone is fighting you then you will very likely get killed.
But you’ll still have the ability to logout in an emergency OR if you can’t get back to a “safer” area.
There is still a reputation system for criminality & good guy bad guy, BUT you’ll no longer constantly spawn just at Olisar & GrimHex, there is a lot more locations & you’ll spawn back in where you were.
You will be able to buy upgrades, systems, weapons & items for your ships.
Generated Missions, Refueling ReArming, Planetary Exploration, Trading, Replacing your Ship there is a lot of ways to make & spend you aUEC.
Insurance – Supply & Demand | The idea here is to make common & cheaper ships more easily replaceable and available, you’ll lose all items on it & be given a stock model when one is available. Insurance will be cheaper with those common ships & if you lose the ship it will be replaced quickly.
Whereas more expensive ships could potentially take days to replace based on where it is on the Queue, if lots of Super Hornets keep dying then it could be a bit of a wait for the next one.
The mortality of your ship & player will be much more important, they want you to look after your ship and your character with consequences.
Erin didn’t specify if ships were going to purchasable in 3.0 with aUEC, so I suspect that omission means it’s unlikely BUT we will have to wait and see.
Delta Patcher
They want if possible to get the Delta Patcher in Alpha 3.0 or just after & that is the current plan, meaning that we won’t have to download massive files every update & the potential for much quicker, smaller patches, content, weapons, ships additions, hotfixes & balance is there too.
Mining & Alpha 3.1
Mining is the next mechanic being added after 3.0 & will land in 3.1.
You’ll be able to land on planets, find deposits and then mine them up.
The quickest & easiest iteration of this is planetside, creating the mineral veins and allowing players to mine them.
3.0 represents the backbone and skeleton of the game, it allows them to much more rapidly flesh out game mechanics & content as now a large portion of the features & engine are done.
Gas & Asteroid mining will be a thing with Asteroid mining possibly coming with 3.1 as well.
Again with 3.1, there will be more shops, locations, stuff to buy, missions and content.
Erin is very excited about Jobs and Roles that support and lead on to player interaction a lot of which will hopefully be coming with Alpha 3.1.
Like the information game, finding locations of asteroid fields, marking them for Nav Beacons and selling them on.
But also the Service Beacons which will allow us to request refueling, distress signals, calling for aid in general and even Quantum Interdiction, pulling players out of Q-Drive in an area of effect like a net, which will require working out where trade routes are & if players have made their own with Nav Beacons.
Ground Battles
Ground & Space Battles both can be of epic scale & in a lot of situations will bleed over to combat over ground, air & space.
The System allows for an Idris to go close to a planet and unload it’s weaponry.
They are adding Tracked Vehicles, Static Defenses, Tanks, Missile Systems & more.
And a lot more of this is planning on coming with 3.1 as well, they want locations where you cannot take ships because there are anti-air or ship defenses that would need to be disabled first, so you would have to go in on the ground with a group OR stealth in.
Base Building
They have plans for Base Building mechanics later down the road too, you’ll be able to spawn there, defend it, use it to store goods & ships. But they will be attackable too & ground vehicles & installations will be a big part of the combat there.
But players will be able to build functional bases, walls, habitation modules & lots more.
Vertical Slice & SQ42
They still plan to show the Vertical Slice, SQ42 is different from the PU.
It’s a Standalone Game, they can’t have the whole community playing & help reiterate it, it would ruin it. They want SQ42 to be as polished as possible for release & for it to genuinely WOW people.
They will show the VS when it’s at that AAA polished WOW stage.
There will be a public schedule for SQ42 as well, it wasn’t specified when this would occur OR the depth of that schedule BUT it was said that it would be when they were ready.
They are planning some forms of more traditional advertising for SQ42 closer to release, a lot of marketing will be in a similar vein of what they have already done until now BUT I personally would expect coverage in Magazines, Websites & Trailers too.
Ship Progression
Ship Progression, Values & Costs of ships are all still being worked out.
They want the community to help with this as they go forward.
The idea is that some ships especially the larger ones are going to be extremely expensive & would be bought by an ORG or group together.
He equates the value of ships being bought now with IRL monies as effectively good value.
The smaller starting ships will be much more affordable in game, BUT prices will ramp up fast.
Building up your ship and becoming attached to it are part of the gameplay they are going for.
But with 3.0 and beyond they will work with the community to balance ship progression appropriately.
Other Human Forces
Outside of UEE Control there will be other Human Forces & Militias as well as more legitimate pirate orgs controlling areas, they will have their own look and style.
Fleet Battles
They will have control of systems dynamic too, if you force out the Vanduul of a system in the PU then that system may get colonized by humans or military outposts & patrols might pop up from the UEE.
Pushing the Vanduul out of a system would be hard BUT it is possible and part of the game mechanics BUT also would be large scale invasions from NPCs that could take control of a system if players & other NPCs don’t protect it.
But there will be massive NPC Fleet Battles, that players can get involved with if they want, which will also feature heavily in SQ42.
Players Effect on the Universe
Players will have effects on lore, missions and news in game. Players may become a very well known pirate & mission generated to kill OR hunt him. They have ideas for News teams following players and their actions, reporting on them, kind of like an assisted GM role that aid player narrative & overall plot, but could also help with broadcasts in news being displayed in game almost like a real news network.
PvP – Casual & Hardcore Players
Some areas of space will be heavily regulated by UEE or some form of NPC presence.
IF you attacked someone law abiding in an area with good communications & policing then you would quickly be marked as a pirate & they would attempt to hunt you down.
Eventually they want to remove the armistice zones & allow players more freedom BUT if you did pull out your weapon in a secure area you will likely be taken down very quickly by security.
Some areas might require you to give in your weapons before entering OR only allow players of a certain reputation to carry weapons.
This system has some exploits they want players to use, communication arrays monitor areas, flagging players & NPCs as pirates. These can be disabled allowing for players to potential kill another player before they are fixed, thus never being flagged as a pirate… the perfect robbery!
But communication can take a while to travel & you can potentially outrun, by travelling from system to system, the law. It’s all about Risk & Reward.
Getting captured or committing crimes may have various consequences, fines, KOS orders, bounties, being outlawed from areas.
They specific want legitimate piracy as part of the game BUT they will not reward griefing.
Modding, AWS & Partners
There is still a commitment to allowing & supporting Modding for Star Citizen BUT after the game is finished.
In regards to partners & sponsorships with the game, anything that makes sense for the game and the community is a possibility.
Star Citizen After Release Revenue Streams
They are sticking with that you purchase a game package then the game is free to play.
A revenue stream for them will be selling UEC for the game once it’s live, some people will play a lot OR grind mission to earn credits, some players might only have a limited amount of time BUT a disposable income and be able to purchase UEC to grab their next ship or weapon. Literally paying to offset time.
This should also help regulate unofficial “gold” sellers like you get in WOW & EvE as well as helping support the game.
They will however keep an open mind when it comes to how to support the game, if other revenue streams are necessary BUT this would be discussed & explored with the community.
Longer Term Studio Plans
They have no plans for game after SQ42 Episode 3 and Star Citizen at the moment, their focus is on getting SQ42 Episode 1 & Star Citizen Alpha 3.0 beyond out at the moment.
The Engine that they have built and now use can build any game, it’s a massive Universe simulator, that you could create a game OR a mode on a single planet to an incredible high level of detail OR just focus on a system OR larger.
We will start to see the scale and quality of what is possible with 3.0 Alpha.
They want to support the PU for at least 10+ years.
A lot of that will be creating new systems, professions, ships, weapons, content, gameplay.
They’d like a lot of the linear super high quality missions, similar to SQ42 to get into Star Citizen as well, with large story arcs that can be played with friends & groups.
The planets themselves are going to be huge with massive amounts of gameplay BUT they can do a lot with them for the game & possible new ones in the future.
Studio Tour
There isn’t much I can tell you about my studio tour, it’s under an NDA to not divulge the specific content of what we saw. There are a couple of things I can tell you:
There is a lot more ships, weapons, vehicles and items that they have been working on that we haven’t seen yet.
Delays in Alpha 3.0 have not stopped them working on 3.1, 3.2, Squadron 42 Ep1 & beyond.
I was very much looking for how accurate the Schedule Report was while I was there, everything that I saw (and went out of my way to see) matches what the schedule report says except they are a lot more fleshed out with certain tasks and beyond that there are things clearly for after 3.0.
And when Ben on Bensday with Batgirl, said there was a "gamechanger" concept ship in the future, he did mean it.
Afterthought
I am a massive Star Citizen project fan, everything that I saw was exciting, and extremely hype worthy, I have no idea how they select what to put into AtVs as there is a lot. I am not paid or financially endorsed by CIG in anyway and seeing what was being worked on really gives you a perspective of WOW this is fucking cool and I this type of experience makes me feel very lucky almost to be covering the game.
