Chris Roberts Back in your wallet - STAR CITIZEN

[Merusk]

They'll be going with the Diamond package without any of the optional art or customization add-ons.

[Falconeer]

Apparently the dogfight module will hit in two weeks, this time for real.

Before I leave you to the individual studio weekly reports, I’d like to walk you through exactly what the next two weeks—if all goes well—mean for Arena Commander’s development:

May 17th: our IT groups will be updating our global internal server infrastructure. A lot of the internal tools we use for game development (checking in builds, storing assets, etc.) are in dire need of downtime and update; we’ve been running them in the red zone so we can have 24 hour round-the-world development on Arena Commander. During this downtime we will also be switching over to a much more flexible and advanced architecture for our content management system Perforce. We will be upgrading to using Perforce Streams which will allow much quicker and more flexible movement between code branches for our development team. This prepares us for the added complexity of launching and supporting a live multiplayer service like Arena Commander. Saturday’s update will allow us to push the final Arena Commander update out to the world with much more confidence (corrupted data from these servers was a major issue at the PAX East reveal!)

May 18th: with the new servers in place, we will split off the “Arena Commander Release” branch of Star Citizen. This will separate the Arena Commander you play from the rest of the game that is being developed by other teams. So data checked in by teams around the world that doesn’t have anything to do with dogfighting (such as FPS weapons, planetside maps or future ship assets) won’t cause additional bugs for the team to worry about.

May 19th: The QA team will begin their final troubleshooting session with the new Arena Commander Release branch. They will go through the entire game and catalog all the current bugs they can find – ships not spawning in the correct place, physics not functioning correctly, disconnects during battle and so on. This will help to generate our final “Must Fix” list for release. It is important to remember though that our internal QA team cannot find everything and it is very likely that we will not fix everything prior to release. We are releasing playable code to the community much, much earlier than you normally would in AAA game development. Because of this it will not be as polished as a final game would be so we are going to need a lot of support from all of you to help us in bug finding and gameplay feedback!

May 23rd: The official cross-studio playtesting of the Arena Commander Release begins. This represents a “pencils down” phase where, unless you are working on an authorized must fix issue the team is expected to QA the game as much as possible. After this point, only a limited number of “designated driver” team leads will be able to check in any changes to the game itself.

May 27th: By this point, we hope to have the egregious, game breaking issues resolved but there will still be plenty of known and unknown issues. This is also our deadline for making sure the launcher is hardened for the deluge of users and the first set of necessary servers for the release have been spun up. After this point all check in privileges will be revoked and will only be returned on an as needed basis by senior Production staff and myself.

May 28th: The release candidate build of the game will be compiled. If all goes as planned, this is the version of Arena Commander you will be playing! The team at Turbulent will begin switching over the website to the version that will make Arena Commander available to backers. I will personally ‘sign off’ Arena Commander as ready for the community on the evening of the 28th. To be clear, we fully expect that there will be bugs remaining, potentially some bad ones. That said, our primary focus is getting a version out to the community to help us find all the issues and work together to improve Arena Commander.

May 29th: This morning, the web team will spin up additional authentication and web servers in the in anticipation of high traffic during the release. The engineering team will begin “warming” caches on cloud servers around the world, making sure the release candidate game is ready and waiting for users. By the end of the day, we will update the website making the game available, and the first public release of Arena Commander (which we’re calling v0.8) will be live to the world for testing!

[Mrbloodworth]

Relevant. 

http://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/260lap/newcomers_guide_to_star_citizen/

[Lucas]

A fictional background of the software house developing the Arena Commander combat simulator. Sounds familiar  

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/13886-Galactic-Guide-Original-Systems

---

Later today, during Wingman's Hangar, we should get a glimpse of the single-player scenario (Vanduul Swarm) which will be available for everyone*  on Day 1, May 29th.


* that is alpha backers and, more recently, beta backers who, beside a ship package, also purchased an arena commander pass.

[Lucas]

So, the first release of Arena commander is still on track for May 29th, next Thursday 

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/13891-Arena-Commander-Weekly-Report-May-19-23

The attention to details continues to be amazing on the graphics side (pilot suit and helmet) but also on what could be considered more marginal things: for example, among the other features that the latest Letter from the Chairman (released yesterday) outlines, is the work being done on the cargo system (diagram pic in the letter), and also a peculiar room that we'll have access to on the Banu Merchantman freighter, called the "Negotiation room" (the letter includes a concept art pic):

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/13888-Letter-From-The-Chairman-44-Million

You’re looking at what we call the “negotiation room” in the Banu Merchantman freighter. It’s a place where traders can invite others into their ships, display their cargo (the bay is visible) and make deals!

As we look to the next stages of Star Citizen beyond dogfighting, we’re putting more and more thought into how systems like cargo and trading will take shape. We’re building a system that makes sense, measuring ship interiors, building a standardized cargo container measurement system (see diagram) and determining exactly how cargo will be loaded, unloaded and interacted with in port (and during flight!) As the most recent set of changes to our preliminary ship stats reflect, transporting cargo is going to be more complex than just finding the ship with the highest storage capacity… it’s going to involve finding the right ship type for the job.

[Malakili]

As we look to the next stages of Star Citizen beyond dogfighting, we’re putting more and more thought into how systems like cargo and trading will take shape.

 

[satael]

As we look to the next stages of Star Citizen beyond dogfighting, we’re putting more and more thought into how systems like cargo and trading will take shape.

 
[/quote]

Isn't it nice that they are giving a thought on how cargo and trading will take shape in the future?   
(then again you'd think trading would be a bit further along than "putting thought into how it will take shape" since it is kind of a big part in games like this)

[KallDrexx]

Maybe they mean how you'll have to board the other person's ship, perform a special clan handshake to agree to the deal, then drive the cargo boxes from your cargo hold into the other person's cargo hold.

I mean, I would normally say I'm joking but they do have to justify the purpose of you being able to run around your space craft and physical cargo holds somehow......

[Miasma]

The cargo system is a running joke and the poster child for stupid shit they shouldn't be doing.

[Lucas]

Cargo and trading seems to be intertwined in a much more tangible way because, as they're hinting, they want to somehow visualize the actual cargo, which might also get damaged, or taken if someone successfully board your ship, etc.

The proper "economy" system is already in the works, they mentioned it multiple times in the previous weeks...But regarding it, you probably still have to see THIS:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lmLb2fbeQs

Watch from about the 18:00 mark  

[Margalis]

The idea that people will meet in a physical space to shake hands and inspect cargo is just hilarious.

It would be neat if cargo was represented by actual objects in your cargo hold. That has a lot of cool ramifications, like a hole getting blown in your ship and distinct pieces of cargo falling out.  But nobody is going to travel to the cargo hold and physically inspect the cargo - that is why menus exist. That sort of thing gets old after the first time you do it.

[Lucas]

The idea that people will meet in a physical space to shake hands and inspect cargo is just hilarious.

It would be neat if cargo was represented by actual objects in your cargo hold. That has a lot of cool ramifications, like a hole getting blown in your ship and distinct pieces of cargo falling out.  But nobody is going to travel to the cargo hold and physically inspect the cargo - that is why menus exist. That sort of thing gets old after the first time you do it.

That's exactly what they're aiming for: consider that capital ships (or multi-crew, smaller ships anyway) will also be flyable and boarding will be possible. In other words, you could put other crew members (PC or NPCs) in the cargo hold to guard it if you see trouble incoming.

Over designed and bloated? Yep, might be; potentially very cool? Yes.

[jakonovski]

The idea that people will meet in a physical space to shake hands and inspect cargo is just hilarious.

It would be neat if cargo was represented by actual objects in your cargo hold. That has a lot of cool ramifications, like a hole getting blown in your ship and distinct pieces of cargo falling out.  But nobody is going to travel to the cargo hold and physically inspect the cargo - that is why menus exist. That sort of thing gets old after the first time you do it.

It won't get old if the stakes are high enough. But no game will do that, except maybe Eve but they'll fuck it up in other ways.

[schild]

The idea that people will meet in a physical space to shake hands and inspect cargo is just hilarious.

Wait, wait. This is a thing? hahahahhahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahah

no

[Margalis]

That's exactly what they're aiming for: consider that capital ships (or multi-crew, smaller ships anyway) will also be flyable and boarding will be possible. In other words, you could put other crew members (PC or NPCs) in the cargo hold to guard it if you see trouble incoming.

Over designed and bloated? Yep, might be; potentially very cool? Yes.

Over designed is the very last thing I think here. The design of everything in this game is little more than "wouldn't it be cool if?" without any concrete design behind it.

[Torinak]

The idea that people will meet in a physical space to shake hands and inspect cargo is just hilarious.

It would be neat if cargo was represented by actual objects in your cargo hold. That has a lot of cool ramifications, like a hole getting blown in your ship and distinct pieces of cargo falling out.  But nobody is going to travel to the cargo hold and physically inspect the cargo - that is why menus exist. That sort of thing gets old after the first time you do it.

That's exactly what they're aiming for: consider that capital ships (or multi-crew, smaller ships anyway) will also be flyable and boarding will be possible. In other words, you could put other crew members (PC or NPCs) in the cargo hold to guard it if you see trouble incoming.

Over designed and bloated? Yep, might be; potentially very cool? Yes.

Awesome! When I want to kick back with a game after a hard day, the first thing I think is "Gee, I'd love to be a glorified mall cop for a few hours!"

Have they announced a pricing model for the minigames you can play while sitting around in someone else's cargo hold? Maybe $50 for a Bejeweled clone, or $2500 for the deluxe virtual handheld gaming system that plays an emulated Wing Commander I?

[Malakili]

Over designed and bloated? Yep, might be; potentially very cool? Yes.

It sounds cool because people imagine it like the movies where two illegal smugglers meet in some clandestine location to do their business.  The thing is the movie cuts directly to the interesting 30 seconds and then the scene is over.  In real life you're spending an hour on something that should be done, as others have noted, via an interface in 2 minutes.

[satael]

Over designed and bloated? Yep, might be; potentially very cool? Yes.

It sounds cool because people imagine it like the movies where two illegal smugglers meet in some clandestine location to do their business.  The thing is the movie cuts directly to the interesting 30 seconds and then the scene is over.  In real life you're spending an hour on something that should be done, as others have noted, via an interface in 2 minutes.

And stuff like that is interesting once or twice but repeating it dozens of times gets tedious very quickly.

[Lucas]

Yeah, I understand, and it will probably get old for anyone including me, don't worry :P

The thing is, when it comes to trading between two players or NPCs, I think that Merchantman ship scenario is just one among many.
Another, already detailed, is visiting shops and other POIs planetside, that will also give out NPC missions and host other features. And since they're going for an handcrafted approach, it's safe to assume that it will be a tad more professionally done than the latest X: Rebirth fiasco.

Also, just like any other MMO, going down planetside (or inside a space station) is a way to show off your character outfit and have a chat with your "real" avatar and not just your ship.

And hey, maybe, after a while (don't think it will be immediate) they might allow you to trade and commerce via a total computerized interface from your ship, just like EVE or Elite Dangerous.
----

Regarding boarding ships and possibly "guarding" cargo, it's just an immediate reaction to the danger of being boarded, not something you need to do around the clock :P . Also, consider that the other, potential crew of your multi-person ship can be made entirely out of NPCs/hirelings and THEN you can also go there in person to participate in the fight.

[UnSub]

The design of everything in this game is little more than "wouldn't it be cool if?" without any concrete design behind it.

A lot of people have reacted to this design style by wantonly throwing money at it, so it seems to be working.

[Malakili]

Regarding boarding ships and possibly "guarding" cargo, it's just an immediate reaction to the danger of being boarded, not something you need to do around the clock :P . Also, consider that the other, potential crew of your multi-person ship can be made entirely out of NPCs/hirelings and THEN you can also go there in person to participate in the fight.

Do we really KNOW anything about boarding though?  Or do we just imagine it's like the opening scene of star wars and therefore cool?

There is way too much in this design that feels like something that would be really engaging a scene in a movie, but not as a game mechanic.

[Lucas]

Here:

http://starcitizen.wikia.com/wiki/Boarding

As shown at the bottom of the wikia entry, that is taken from the early internal doc they had regarding this particular feature. From other interviews/Q&A sessions during the various shows etc. the outline is still more or less the same as of today.

The FPS module, which will feature an outlaw space station first, and then the possibility of boarding multi-crew ships (possibly integrated in Arena commander, so you would have a sort of "mini-loop" with dogfight, disabling ship and boarding action), will of course give them better data about pretty much everything concerning that feature.

[Kitsune]

I can't see having a compelling firefight in many of these ships, given that they only seem to be about the size of a tractor trailer.  You open the door and there's some guy crouched behind a box six feet away, and that's your arena.  It's not exactly a fight through the corridors of the rebel blockade runner.

[ajax34i]

You guys have moved to the topic of boarding, but my question about the cargo inspection thing is, what exactly are you inspecting for?  Cockroaches?  Mold?  Weapons underneath a thin layer of sand?  Drugs inside archeological artifacts?  Cause it seems like he isn't coding all that functionality and all cargo will be the same - a gun is a gun is a gun - thus there's nothing to inspect, just wasted time.

[Margalis]

I was going to mention that. Inspection implies a lot of stuff - can cargo be damaged to different degrees? Can you purposely mislabel cargo boxes? Can the cargo itself have varying degrees of quality, which can only be ascertained through inspection?

There's a lot of stuff that goes into making inspection worthwhile.

[KallDrexx]

None of which is going to be fun to do if you have to do that inspection action every single trade...

[Mrbloodworth]

The idea that people will meet in a physical space to shake hands and inspect cargo is just hilarious.

It would be neat if cargo was represented by actual objects in your cargo hold. That has a lot of cool ramifications, like a hole getting blown in your ship and distinct pieces of cargo falling out.  But nobody is going to travel to the cargo hold and physically inspect the cargo - that is why menus exist. That sort of thing gets old after the first time you do it.

[Yegolev]

Cargo inspection game has come and gone.

[Draegan]

Yeah, I understand, and it will probably get old for anyone including me, don't worry :P

The thing is, when it comes to trading between two players or NPCs, I think that Merchantman ship scenario is just one among many.
Another, already detailed, is visiting shops and other POIs planetside, that will also give out NPC missions and host other features. And since they're going for an handcrafted approach, it's safe to assume that it will be a tad more professionally done than the latest X: Rebirth fiasco.

Also, just like any other MMO, going down planetside (or inside a space station) is a way to show off your character outfit and have a chat with your "real" avatar and not just your ship.

And hey, maybe, after a while (don't think it will be immediate) they might allow you to trade and commerce via a total computerized interface from your ship, just like EVE or Elite Dangerous.
----

Regarding boarding ships and possibly "guarding" cargo, it's just an immediate reaction to the danger of being boarded, not something you need to do around the clock :P . Also, consider that the other, potential crew of your multi-person ship can be made entirely out of NPCs/hirelings and THEN you can also go there in person to participate in the fight.

Can I remind everyone how shitty SWTOR was when you had to constantly run through giant empty and useless spaces when landing on planets to get to the "fun" stuff?

[Lucas]

Yeah, it was pretty bad Draegan, especially in SWTOR: while I liked the attention gave to the environments, they were devoid of anything remotely interesting, like casual banter between NPCs, animation variety etc.

But here I don't think we'll see gigantic spaces, even in spaceports or planetside; let's take planetside, for example:

- Your instanced hangar (with possible multiple rooms for immersion sake, where you can also invite your friends)
- External landing zone
- Commercial hub (buy ships, commodities, ship equipment)
- Leisure hub (bar, other similar buildings)

But everything will be near each other (then of course they'll attempt creating interesting vistas e of the whole urban environment/zone you are in). I would say that the areas I listed above, minus the instanced hangar of course, might result in... hmm...Less than half the size of the Citadel in Mass Effect 1? (and of course you'll be able to run)

Yeah, you won't be able to cut directly to them like, let's say, Freelancer or Privateer, but since everything is handcrafted and no matter what, they're not Blizzard, it won't be like traversing Orgrimmar :P

[Malakili]

What is cargo inspection actually for, besides making you go through the motions?  Can a guy like, put the wrong cargo in there and try to fool you?  Can he sell you 15 tons of space rocks instead of 15 ton of whatever crystal you're after?  What can I do if he has showed up with the wrong stuff?  Can I just shoot him in the face and take it anyway?  Do I lament the fact that this guy has decided to try and screw me and, while I guess at least I didn't fall for it, there is nothing I can do about the hour I just wasted?

[Lucas]

What is cargo inspection actually for, besides making you go through the motions?  Can a guy like, put the wrong cargo in there and try to fool you?  Can he sell you 15 tons of space rocks instead of 15 ton of whatever crystal you're after?  What can I do if he has showed up with the wrong stuff?  Can I just shoot him in the face and take it anyway?  Do I lament the fact that this guy has decided to try and screw me and, while I guess at least I didn't fall for it, there is nothing I can do about the hour I just wasted?

Note: what I'm writing is a mix of what I read/heard and also my interpretation of the ideas they outlined during forum Q&As, shows, interviews, etc.

No wait, there is probably a misconception here: from everything I've read, for now there is no realistic cargo inspection planned, meaning that you don't have to go to your cargo area, or a common area inside a Merchantman ship for example, open the crates and check every single piece of equipment :P.
Still, cargo won't be just a list of items on a computerized screen: on any ship where you can transport cargo, there will be a visual sample/representation of the crates (they speficially mentioned this) and, inside them, a sample representation of the goods contained.

Let's say "cargo" can get damaged during a boarding action or even during heavy dogfight, I assume (and, again, they threw in this specific idea) you'll see that same visual representation I mentioned before now damaged.

They also mentioned they're currently investigating ways to make the smuggler "profession" viable with their current concept of cargo and trading, but it's quite an advanced system that I think it's normal not to have implemented already in the game, at this time.

[Ingmar]

What's to stop some 3rd party from coming along and just blowing up both of your ships while you're having your little FPS boarding shootout and your ships are drifting together in space for however long that takes?

[Lucas]

What's to stop some 3rd party from coming along and just blowing up both of your ships while you're having your little FPS boarding shootout and your ships are drifting together in space for however long that takes?

As it stands:

- Like it's written it the current boarding outline doc linked a few posts above (http://starcitizen.wikia.com/wiki/Boarding), boarding has some very specific pre-requirements. With added balacing and experimentation, I think the Dev Team won't make boarding an inconvenience that wil happen to your multi-crew ship every day, 20 times a day. But hey, we'll see.

- With multi-crew ships, there are advantages and trade-offs: you can assign one or more of your crew mates (PC or NPCs) to pay attention for a boarding action, and actually fight off invaders while you still try to put things back online in the ship command center (or just via your ship main cockpit or whatever); or, you join him/them yourself, but the scenario you outline in your message (3rd party) becomes a reality.

- Still, in UEE space (civilian space), attacking a "neutral" ship means immediate bounty on your head, and possible kill-on-sight attempt by the UEE NPC ships that might teleport in the sector where the boarding is happening ("GUARDS!!!"  )

- Hence, boarding will be much more convenient in lawless space, but again, expect to find everyone much more "ready" in those areas.

[Margalis]

The problem with this is that it requires a lot of prototyping to explore the systems and see if they even make sense, but their development approach is to put a series of vertical slices next to each other and call it a full game.

Independent vertical slices are extremely unlikely to come together into a coherent whole with systems this complex.